The Only Girl in the Game: A Novel

The Singular John D. MacDonald

Dean Koontz

When I was in college, I had a friend, Harry Recard, who was smart, funny, and a demon card player. Harry was a successful history major, while I passed more time playing pinochle than I spent in class. For the three and a half years that I required to graduate, I heard Harry rave about this writer named John D. MacDonald, John D to his most ardent readers. Of the two of us, Harry was the better card player and just generally the cooler one. Consequently, I was protective of my position, as an English major, to be the better judge of literature, don’t you know. I remained reluctant to give John D a look.

Having read mostly science fiction, I found many of my professors’ assigned authors markedly less exciting than Robert Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon, but I was determined to read the right thing. For every Flannery O’Connor whose work I could race through with delight, there were three like Virginia Woolf, who made me want to throw their books off a high cliff and leap after them. Nevertheless, I continued to shun Harry’s beloved John D.

Five or six years after college, I was a full-time writer with numerous credits in science fiction, struggling to move into suspense and mainstream work. I was making progress but not fast enough to suit me. By now I knew that John D was widely admired, and I finally sat down with one of his books. In the next thirty days, I read thirty-four of them. The singular voice and style of the man overwhelmed me, and the next novel I wrote was such an embarrassingly slavish imitation of a MacDonald tale that I had to throw away the manuscript.

I apologized to Harry for doubting him. He was so pleased to hear me proclaiming the joys of John D that he only said I told you so on, oh, twenty or thirty occasions.

Over the years, I have read every novel by John D at least three times, some of them twice that often. His ability to evoke a time and place—mostly Florida but also the industrial Midwest, Las Vegas, and elsewhere—was wonderful, and he could get inside an occupation to give you the details and the feel of it like few other writers I’ve ever read. His pacing was superb, the flow of his prose irresistible, and his suspense watch-spring tight.

Of all his manifest strengths as a writer, however, I am most in awe of his ability to create characters who are as real as anyone I’ve met in life. John D sometimes paused in the headlong rush of his story to spin out pages of background on a character. At first when this happened, I grumbled about getting on with the story. But I soon discovered that he could make the character so fascinating that when the story began to race forward again, I wanted it to slow down so I could learn more about this person who so intrigued and/or delighted me. There have been many good suspense novelists in recent decades, but in my experience, none has produced characters with as much humanity and truth as those in MacDonald’s work.

Like most who have found this author, I am an admirer of his Travis McGee series, which features a first-person narrator as good as any in the history of suspense fiction and better than most. But I love the standalone novels even more. Cry Hard, Cry Fast. Where Is Janice Gantry? The Last One Left. A Key to the Suite. The Drowner. The Damned. A Bullet for Cinderella. The Only Girl in the Game. The Crossroads. All These Condemned. Those are not my only favorites, just a few of them, and many deal with interesting businesses and occupations. Mr. MacDonald’s work gives the reader deep and abiding pleasure for many reasons, not the least of which is that it portrays the contemporary life of his day with as much grace and fidelity as any writer of the period, and thus it also provides compelling social history.

In 1985, when my publisher, Putnam, wanted to send advance proof copies of Strangers to Mr. MacDonald among others, I literally grew shaky at the thought of him reading it. I suggested that they shouldn’t send it to him, that, as famous and prolific as he was, the proof would be an imposition on him; in truth, I feared that he would find the novel unsatisfying. Putnam sent it to him anyway, and he gave us an enthusiastic endorsement. In addition, he wrote to me separately, in an avuncular tone, kindly advising me how to avoid some of the pitfalls of the publishing business, and he wrote to my publisher asking her to please carefully consider the packaging of the book and not condemn it to the horror genre. She more or less condemned it to the genre anyway, but I took his advice to heart.

In my experience, John D. MacDonald, the man, was as kind and thoughtful as his fiction would lead you to believe that he must be. That a writer’s work accurately reflects his soul is a rarer thing than you might imagine, but in his case, the reflection is clear and true. For that reason, it has been a special honor, in fact a grace, to be asked to write this introduction.

Reader, prepare to be enchanted by the books of John D. MacDonald. And Harry, I am not as much of an idiot as I was in years gone by—though I know you won’t let me get away with claiming not to be to any degree an idiot anymore.

• • •  one

It was the middle of April, and the morning sun laid its white weight across all the architectural confections along the Las Vegas Strip, and shone with bright impartiality upon the grubbiness of the town itself, upon the twenty-four-hour-a-day marriage chapels, the sour little rooming houses and anonymous motels.

In the big hotels … Sahara, Desert Inn, Tropicana, Riviera, New Frontier, Sands … the guests slept in too darkened rooms, in the chilly whisper of air conditioning.

At the Cameroon, the front desk phoned at the customary nine o’clock, bringing Hugh Darren, the assistant manager, up out of a submarine nightmare where he had been fleeing through endless coral caverns from a Thing which wore the red compulsive face of Jerry Buckler.

He put the phone back on the cradle and swung long legs out of his bachelor bed and sat there for a time, making the transition from the fading terror of the dream to a bright Wednesday, to the shifting intricacies, the partial projects of this day. He was nearing the end of his twenty-ninth year, and he sensed that thirty was a label of a significance he could not yet comprehend. He was a big lean limber man who gave the impression of leisure and indolence and low-pressure amiability. He moved with that elusive look of style and special favor that some athletes achieve. His hair was a crisp short brown, with ginger highlights; and his eyebrows were a lighter shade, unusually bristling and heavy over gray-blue eyes set aslant in the bony, slightly freckled, asymmetric face. It was an ugly-attractive face which had adjusted itself to a habitual expression of mild irony. He could not have imagined for himself any kind of life work which would not have required a constant involvement with people. He had the detectable composure of a man who knows he is very, very good at his work, and the humility to appreciate the luck that led him into it.

Hugh Darren rubbed a coppery stubble with his knuckles, stretched until the flat muscles of his shoulders popped, remembered the last of the dream before, it was all gone and mumbled aloud, Son of a bitch nearly caught me that time.

He walked to the window and yanked the cord to open the slats and let the desert sunshine into the room. It was a second-floor room in the rear of the building, in the old original wing. New construction had made these rooms unsuitable for paying guests, and they had been assigned for staff use. They used to look out across the brown floor of the desert toward the eroded mountains. Now they looked out at a blank wall of the new convention hall, and down into the rerouted service alley. He squinted at the too-blue sky and had a glimpse of a commercial jet swinging into its landing pattern before it disappeared behind the cornice of the convention hall. He looked down into the service alley and, with a professional eye, checked the neatness of the long rank of garbage cans outside the rear doors of the main kitchen.

After he took his shower, and before he shaved, he phoned down for breakfast. It was wheeled in just as he finished shaving. He looked out at Herman, the bald maestro of the Cameroon Coffee Shop, and said, Currying favor again, I see.

Good morning, Mr. D., Herman said with broad gold-flecked grin. We got the good sausage again. So I serve myself. So you remember Herman with pleasure, is it not so?

Hugh walked out of the bathroom in his robe, drying his face. And you bring it up yourself when you want to be the first with the news. And it is always bad news. So where is the pleasure in that, my friend?

No special news, Mr. D.

But there happens to be one interesting little thing?

Herman inspected his place setting carefully and stepped back and shrugged. Just a small thing. Mr. Buckler came back earlier than anyone expected. At three this morning, I think. Mr. Downey, the new man on the night desk, displeased him, and so he was fired.

Hugh Darren lowered his head, closed his eyes and told himself to count very slowly to ten.

Herman, I don’t know how I’d ever get along without you. Get Bunny Rice up here on the double.

Hugh Darren had barely begun his breakfast when Bunny Rice arrived. Bunny, when summoned, always arrived looking as though he had run all the way. When Hugh Darren came to the Cameroon the previous August to rescue what was possibly the poorest hotel operation on the Strip, he had given the most careful consideration to the selection of people to help him. Bunny Rice had then been working the front desk on shifts that changed from week to week.

He was a spindly man whose greatest flaw was his tendency to come apart when faced with a crisis. But he knew his job and knew the town and the special problems of the area. He had energy, imagination, and a capacity for loyalty. And Hugh had judged him honest. And so Hugh had made him a special assistant in charge of hotel operations from midnight to eight A.M. In a normal hotel operation this would have been a job that held no challenge. But Vegas runs twenty-four hours a day.

Bunny Rice, at his own volition, came on duty at eleven, and did not leave until Hugh was in his own office. Bunny Rice was pallid, with bulging blue eyes, thinning mousy hair, jug-handle ears, a long severe upper lip, and a mouth which tended to tremble when he was upset, as though he were fighting back tears. He nonetheless seemed to enjoy his new scope, new responsibility and increased pay. He lived with his wife and three children in a new housing development on the far side of town.

Sit down, Bunny. Relax. What’s this about Buckler firing Downey?

There wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it, Hugh.

Why didn’t you wake me up?

Because there wasn’t anything you could do either.

Jerry was loaded?

He was ugly drunk, Hugh. You know how he gets. If he’d gone right to bed there wouldn’t have been any problem. But he stopped at the desk to see if he had any mail. Downey may have seen him at a distance, but I don’t think he ever talked to him. Downey thought Mr. Buckler was a drunk trying to check in. I guess Mr. Buckler wasn’t talking very clearly. In the confusion, he got abusive, and Downey tried to get help from the casino guards to have him put out. So he fired Downey. Downey left right away. I filled in at the desk.

Let me do some thinking. No, don’t go yet. Stick around a little while.

Hugh Darren finished his breakfast. He poured a fresh cup of coffee. I guess it’s time, Bunny. I guess that’s the final straw. He goes or I go.

Bunny licked his lips. It … makes me nervous, Hugh. I don’t like to think of how it’ll be here if you’re the one who goes.

I won’t like it either. I’ve never made this kind of money before. And only a damn fool could say this kind of money doesn’t mean anything. And the job I want to do around here is only half done. But I just can’t keep taking the responsibility without having the authority.

Who will you go to with this … ultimatum, Hugh?

Darren shrugged. The man who can say yes or no. Al Marta. Who else?

Bunny Rice looked as though he wanted to wring his hands and sob. I think you ought to … to talk to Max Hanes about it first, Hugh. Really I do.

Max runs the casino operation. What’s that got to do with this?

Just talk to him, Hugh. Please. Tell him what’s on your mind.

Max and I aren’t what you’d call buddies, you know.

He’s a very smart man. And … excuse me for saying this … he knows a lot about how things work around here … things you might not know about, Hugh.

Hugh Darren felt the quick anger tauten his body. Bunny, I told them when I came here, and I’m telling you again, I have no interest in knowing anything about any clandestine arrangements. I’m no conspirator. I don’t give a damn about the casino and the money room, or any foxy tricks those boys practise. They had a sick horse here, and so they had enough sense to go out and hire a good vet. They hired a pro, Bunny. They hired me away from one of the biggest operations in the Bahamas. They said I’d have a free hand. I don’t have a free hand. All I want to do is run this hotel operation.

Just talk it over with Max, Hugh. Will you do that first instead of going up and hitting Al Marta with it cold?

Darren studied his night manager’s anxious, loyal face. Byron B. Rice, condemned from the very beginnings of pinkness and trembling to be known as Bunny, robbed by that inevitable name of both passion and authority, never to be called Mr. Rice even by the bus boys.

Darren sighed. All right, Bunny. I’ll do it your way.

Hugh Darren’s office was at the end of a short corridor which opened off the lobby near the registration desk. The door to that corridor was marked Private. In the smaller offices opening off the corridor were the nerve centers of the hotel operation—bookkeeping, accounting, billing, purchasing, credit, payroll. Since taking over the game, if not the name, Hugh Darren had made clear and specific a functional division of all his complex activities.

In simplest terms, he was concerned with every aspect of food, drink and shelter—their acquisition, preparation, serving of and collection for. And he was responsible for maintenance of the whole plant, inside and out. And so he had pinned—in a triumph of the obvious—the specific responsibilities onto specific people: hiring sullen temperamental gifted George Ladori away from the Casa Vegas and loading him with all the functions concerned with food served everywhere in the hotel; promoting humorless reliable John Trabe to supervise all liquor operations; leaving bitter old Walter Welch in charge of all inside and outside maintenance, and giving him a freer hand than he had had before, because he was good.

That left Darren with nothing to do but run the hotel, handle lease of concessions, supervise all non-casino personnel, solicit trade, control Ladori, Trabe, Welch and the front desk, clean up after Jerry Buckler’s mistakes … nothing he couldn’t handle in a ninety-hour week … based always on what is known as the First Rule of All Hotels, If something hasn’t gone wrong, it will.

He walked into his office a few minutes after ten. This morning time in the office, an hour or so for the analysis of operating reports and the signing of this and that, and quick conferrings with key personnel, was the nearest thing to established routine that he was able to manage—though sometimes he arrived there after sleep, other times before he had had a chance to go to bed.

He pushed the office door open and wished the lettering on it could miraculously cease to irritate him. Jerome L. Buckler, Manager. Hugh J. Darren, Assistant Manager. In the practical mythology of the hotel trade, the average assistant manager has approximately the same status as the elevator starter, and usually works for less money.

But he could not fault the decor of the office. The wall-to-wall rug matched the Williamsburg blue of the draperies. The walls and the formica desk and table tops were oyster white, matching the white leather of the furniture. It was hushed, soundproofed, air conditioned. There was an intercom, tape dictation equipment, a noiseless electric typewriter at the secretarial desk in the corner. There were two custom executive desks. The larger of the two, seldom used, belonged to Jerry Buckler.

Hugh Darren went directly to his desk and began to check the daily operation summaries placed in perfect alignment in the center of his large dark blue blotter by Miss Jane Sanderson.

She came back into the office thirty seconds after he had begun to read the summaries. Good morning, or is it? she said. She was a slat-thin woman, very tall, with legitimately white hair in a cropped tousled cut which should have been too young for her and wasn’t. In spite of her indoor employment she managed to maintain a hickory tan. After too many disheartening weeks trying to make a secretary of various slothful dumplings, he had found Jane through a blind ad placed in the Los Angeles papers.

It is another one of those same mornings, Miss Jane.

That’s what I was afraid of.

Try to set up an appointment for me with Max Hanes, whenever he’s up and about. Neutral ground, I guess. So make it the Little Room. Then see if you can get Downey on the phone.

I think he’s still in that motel. His wife found something they like, but they couldn’t move in right away, and I guess maybe that was a good thing.

He went through the summaries, jotting down brief notes in his pocket notebook to use during his daily inspection trip, and then began to study the checkout-checkin list. The name of each guest had coded information beside it, indicating how many times, if any, he or she had previously been in the house, the type of accomodations, his occupation—if available, credit arrangements, any special services requested, the total amount of the bill on checkout. A note from the desk indicated that 603 had been reported by the housekeeper to have been stripped before checkout. A salesman from Denver, who should know better. Hugh made a note for Jane to send the usual letter. If the man ignored it, he would suddenly find himself unable to make reservations in fine hotels in many places.

Mr. Downey on the line, Jane said.

Hugh Darren picked up the phone and said, Tommy, there was an elective course you should have taken, all about how to cope with a drunken boss man.

Tom Downey’s tone was chilly. I had the four-year hotel administration course, Mr. D., and I had a year and a half at the L.A. Ambassador, and maybe the only thing I’ve learned is I don’t have to take abusive crap from anybody.

You’re just as sore as I figured you’d be, Tommy.

I get mad once a year, Hugh. And I stay mad.

I brought you in here, Tommy. And I’ve got good reasons for not letting you go like this.

I was fired, remember? I’m long gone. Sorry.

Suppose we had a big change here? Suppose all of a sudden it’s all mine?

In the long silence he heard Downey sigh before he said, In that case I’d come running back and you know it. Not loyalty, Hugh. But I guess there is some of that. Self-interest I can learn so damn much from the way you operate. But right now you’re dreaming. Buckler is Al Malta’s buddy.

All I’m asking is for you to sit tight while I give it the big try. Then either you can come back, or we’ll both be looking for work. Okay?

On that basis, sure, Hugh. And … good luck.

After Hugh had set up an appointment with Max Hanes for two that afternoon in the Little Room, he made his rounds, conferring with his lieutenants. He went with his maintenance chief, old Walter Welch, to the men’s shop in the arcade off the lobby. The concessionaire wanted to take out a wall at his own expense. Walter said removal wouldn’t affect structural strength, so Darren gave his conditional approval based on a final approval by the hotel architect. He went back to his office and called his food chief, George Ladori, in for a forty-minute fight over the price changes on the dummy of a new menu overdue at the printer’s, and he won those points he had expected to win, while giving Ladori the feeling, so necessary to that man, that he had achieved victory.

Next came John Trabe, Hugh’s liquor chief, with a satisfactory accounting for the discrepancy in the last liquor inventory, and the worried information that one of his best bartenders had been reliably reported as having been seen at the Showboat, gambling heavily. Hugh told John Trabe to perform his own discreet investigation and take the action he thought best. Trabe had obviously hoped to duck that responsibility, and so he accepted the orders grudgingly.

After signing the letters Jane had typed up, Hugh once again prowled the big hotel. He went up to the sun deck and looked at the new sun lounges which had recently been delivered. He checked on the progress of redecoration of two suites on the fourth floor. He cautioned Red Elver, the head lifeguard, that two of his boys were hustling the guests too strenuously for tips.

By the time he had returned to his office and dictated more replies to current correspondence, he barely had time for lunch before meeting Max Hanes. He angled across the main casino floor to the Little Room. In all the big hotel casinos of Las Vegas, it is always a few minutes after midnight. The sun never touches these places. The lighting is clever and directional—so that the playing surfaces are bright enough, and all the rest is shadowy—a half light that fosters indiscretion. They are big rooms, all darks and greens, sub-sea places. He saw the guests clotted close around one of the crap tables, their faces sick in the reflected light, the smoke rising, the stick man chanting, a casino waitress taking drink orders.

The Little Room is a shadowy place of leather, dark wood, white linen, small lamps that give a flattering orange glow. At the raised dais in the far corner there is always someone at the piano. It never stops.

Max Hanes was alone in a big leather booth on the far side of the room. He was a man of medium height with an astonishing breadth of shoulder, a hairless, shining head, a face that sagged into saffron foldings yet had a simian alertness. People frequently thought him an Oriental. The rumor went that from time to time during his life people had tried to nickname him Chink. And he had hospitalized each of them with his hands. He was thought to be a Latvian, and it was known he had been a wrestler long before the days of gilded bobby pins. The people who worked for him gave him that special, undiluted respect that can only be achieved through pure terror.

As Hugh sat opposite him, Max Hanes said, I was listening to the slots. A man spends his life by the sea, he can tell you the size waves coming in without looking. I can tell the casino take for the afternoon to within a thousand bucks. The slots give you the picture of how the tables are going.

That’s interesting, Max.

Everything in this place is based on the slots, Darren. And that includes me and you, and all your fancy plans. Don’t ever forget that.

It’s a lousy way to start this little conference, Max. When I first came here you told me you’re more important than I am in this picture. No casino—no hotel. Okay. So you keep telling me. Should I put it in writing?

Maybe you should. You keep forgetting.

You won’t let me forget it, Max. I can depend on you.

Ten years ago it was easier around here. Not in this place, because this place wasn’t built then. But the liquor was on the house, and a good meal was a dollar, and a room was three, and we didn’t have these problems. We didn’t need guys like you. Hotel managers!

Hugh Darren leaned forward. And when I came here eight months ago, Max, you were supposed to be running the casino and Jerry was supposed to be running the hotel. But both of you were messing in each other’s back yards, and the place was such a mess they had to bring somebody in to straighten it out. Now stop telling me how good it used to be and tell me something I want to know. Is your life a lot simpler and easier than it used to be?

I don’t know. I guess so. If you tell me it is.

You know it is, Max. You want all the hotel operations run in such a way that you get maximum play in the casino. That’s what I’m giving you. And when you have any beef, you know where to come. People who have had bad food, short measure on their drinks and dirty rooms don’t come back and play your tables. So I’m building a new reputation for this place.

It’s slow play out there this week. How come?

You know how come. You booked a dog into the Safari Room, and when that show moves out and the Swede opens in her show, you’re going to get more play. So it’s your own fault, isn’t it? You book every bit of entertainment in here, and it comes out of the casino take, and I have nothing to do with it.

Too much comes out of the casino take lately.

Max, when you request me to give away food, drinks and lodging to special people who gamble heavy, I have to charge it to the casino. Otherwise, how can I keep logical books on my own operation? And the thirty per cent of all overhead wasn’t set up by me. You know that.

What you’re trying to do, Darren, you’re trying to operate the hotel part with a profit, Max Hanes said accusingly.

"That’s what I was ordered to do, damn it! And I should be almost over into the black by the end of this year."

It isn’t right. The hotel should run at a loss. It’s a service to bring the big play around, to sweeten the casino take.

Don’t argue with me, Max. Argue with the management of every hotel on the Strip. That’s what they’re all aiming for. It’s the trend.

It’s a bad trend.

A waitress came over to the booth. Hugh ordered a pot of coffee. Max Hanes asked for another sherry. The wine glass looked incongruous in his hairy, thick-fingered paw, as out of character as the ancient yellow of his long ivory cigarette holder and his salmon-pink sports jacket. He always reminded Hugh of some cynical old chimpanzee who goes through his act for the sake of the bananas.

Hugh grinned at him. "No matter how much it bugs you, Max, we are working together, and it is becoming a better place to eat, sleep, drink and … lose your money."

Every operation is getting so goddam legitimate lately, Max said. So I got to put up with changes. What do you want now? I should move out some slots so you got room for tea-dancing?

"You know damn well you’re stealing half my lobby next