Love's lovely counterfeit - James M. Cain [37]
"Well, we all get drunk."
"Just what I said to myself. Now get this: On some of that perfume, they got a rule that the customs officer has to destroy the label before it's brought in. You got that?"
"Gee, you sure can spread light, Ben."
"You know how he destroyed it?"
"No, but I'm dying to hear."
"He drew a blue pencil across it. He made one blue mark on it, and legally that destroyed it. Listen, Joe, if one blue mark will destroy a label, why won't it destroy a pinball machine?"
Mr. Cantrell jammed his hands into his trousers pockets and stared at Ben for a long time. "Say, you can think of things, can't you?"
"I do my best."
"You mean, destroy it legally?"
"Yeah, legally."
"If you got a blue pencil, I could try."
"I got one, right here."
"Then we'll see."
"And one other thing."
"Yeah, Ben?"
"You'll want those trucks again, hey? To haul the destroyed machines over to the Reservoir Street dump?"
"Why—they got to be put some place."
"O.K.—I'll have them here tonight. And if you don't mind, have a police photographer at that dump tomorrow, to take pictures of the destroyed machines. Of course they'll be nothing but junk, but it'll prove I hauled them—and that you destroyed them."
"Funny how a blue pencil ruins stuff, isn't it?"
"Oh, and another thing."
"Just one?"
"Sign these vouchers."
"What vouchers?"
"For the trucks! The trucks I furnished the city yesterday, to haul these gambling machines from various and sundry addresses, here to the Ninth Street station house. Three hundred bucks in all—"
"Hey, what is this?"
"You think trucks work for nothing?"
"No, but I got to check—"
"Costs money to clean a town up, you ought to know that. Now if you'll sign there, where I put the pencil check, I can get over to the hotel with them before they close the safe, and—"
"Won't they keep till tomorrow?"
"Joe, I need cash to pay workmen. I—"
"O.K., Ben, but don't run a good thing to death."
"Nuts, it's the people's will."
"What?"
"You forgot that mandate to cleanliness. Sign."
Around nine, however, Ben wasn't so cynically confident. He walked up and down the main room of a big warehouse with a neat little man in a blue gabardine suit and a soft straw hat. It was a shabby warehouse, and the only illumination was from a single poisonous light hanging very high. He kept looking at his watch, but presently a horn sounded outside, and he hurried to open the big trolley door at one end. Shaking the building, while the man in gabardine yelled to "cut those lights," a truck rolled in, and when it was squarely in the middle of the room, stopped. Cutting lights and motor, three men jumped down, peeled tarpaulins from the load, and proceeded to unload it. It was the same equipment as had been seized, condemned, and legally destroyed in the last twenty-four hours, but appeared to be in quite passable condition. Working rapidly, under the direction of the man in gabardine, the three from the truck stacked the machines against the wall and departed, saying the other crew would report at ten, and from then on they'd make time.
The man in gabardine looked over the machines with professional interest, testing springs here, counting bright steel balls there. Ben, however, seemed uneasy. Presently he said, "Listen, Mr. Roberts—of course I'm sure you know your business, but are you really sure these games can be transformed?"
"Of course I am."
"Yeah, but—look, this is what I mean. Like in golf, which is one of the games we're going to have, there's only so many things a player can do. He can get in the rough, he can shoot past the green, he can pitch on the green, he can sink a putt—I don't know how many, but it's just 50 many. Well, suppose that don't correspond to the number of holes on the table? Without we plug some holes up, or put new ones in, or redesign the whole thing, how do we—"
"O.K., now—pick out a table."
"Well, that one. What do we make out of it?"
"Baseball."
"How?"
"I'll show you."
Taking off his coat, Mr. Roberts went over to a chest that stood in one corner, opened