Well Now My Pretty

Ludovick had approached her one afternoon while she was sun bathing on the beach. His harmless, kindly manner, his deference to her youth and his smile captivated her. He had explained that he knew she worked at the Casino. He gave her an embossed card, bearing his name with the magic New Yorker magazine added as his address and his reference. He explained that he was looking for inside information about the Casino. He sat at her feet on the soft sand, his panama hat resting almost on the bridge of his beaky nose as he talked. He told her he had had an interview with Harry Lewis, the manager of the Casino. His face screwed up in a comical grimace of despair. What a man! How secretive! If he had to rely on Harry Lewis's information, he would never produce anything to satisfy the New Yorker's tremendously high standards. He felt he could approach her. She worked in the Casino's vault with a number of other girls. This, he had found out. He looked up at her, his grey eyes mischievous. Well then, my pretty . . . how often had she heard him use this phrase that she had come to fear and to distrust? Suppose you tell me what I want to know and I, in my turn, will pay you for the information? What shall we say? The New Yorker is a rich magazine. Five hundred dollars? How about five hundred dollars?

She had caught her breath. Five hundred dollars! She was hoping desperately to get married. Terry, her boy-friend, was still a student. They had both agreed that if they could only raise five hundred dollars, they could take a chance and get married, and at least have a one room walk-up . . . but how to get five hundred dollars? And here, now, was this harmless little man actually offering her just this sum to tell him the secrets of the Casino.

She was about to say an immediate yes when she remembered that warning clause in her contract — a contract that everyone working for the Casino had to sign. No member of the staff should ever talk about the Casino's affairs. The penalty was instant dismissal and possible prosecution.

Seeing her hesitate, Ludovick had said, "I know what you have signed, but you need not be afraid. Think it over. No one will everknow who gave me the information. After all, five hundred dollars is a useful sum. There could be more . . ."

He had got to his feet, smiled at her and walked away, swinging his panama hat, stepping around the large, overfed carcasses of the rich, laid out to broil in the sun with their knotted veins, their hammer toes and their glistening fat.

That evening, when she had had time to think over his suggestion, he had called her on the telephone.

"I have spoken to the Editor. He is quite willing to pay a thousand. I am so pleased. I thought he might be difficult. Now, my pretty, can you help me for one thousand dollars?"

So, with a sick feeling of guilt and of fear of being discovered, she had helped him. He had given her five hundred dollars. The other five hundred would come, he explained with his fatherly smile, when she had given him all the necessary information. And as he probed, his questions becoming more and more disturbing, she had come to realise that he might not be after all a journalist. He might be a man planning to rob the Casino. Why so much interest in the number of guards, the amount of money that went into the vault each night and the security system . . . surely this was the kind of information that a man planning to rob the Casino, would need? Then this final request: the need for the blueprints of the Casino's electrical system. He had asked her for this three afternoons ago while they sat in his shabby Buick coupe on a lonely beach on the outskirts of Paradise City. At this request, she had rebelled.

"Oh, no! I can't give you that! You couldn't possibly want that for an article! I don't understand. I'm beginning to think . . ."

He had smiled a little crookedly, and his dry, clawlike hand had dropped gently on hers, making her draw away and shiver.

"Don't think, my pretty," he said. "I need the blueprints. Don't let us argue about it. My magazine is willing to pay. Shall we say another one thousand dollars?" He drew an envelope from his pocket,"And here is the second five hundred I owe you . . . you see? And now you will have yet another one thousand dollars."

As she took the envelope, crushing it into her bag, she knew this man was really dangerous, that, in spite of his appearance, he was planning a robbery and he was using her to make an impossible robbery possible. If she had another one thousand dollars she wouldn't have to bother to get to the Casino every evening at seven and remain in the vault until three in the morning ever again. She would be free to marry Terry. Her whole drab life would be completely changed.