Skip stepped close and put a hand at the back of her neck, where the skull joined the fragile spine, and he closed his fingers slowly. She tried to lunge forward, out of his grip, but the dresser held her. Then she tried to twist sidewise and away and Skip put an arm tight around her waist. He went on pinching the base of her skull and she turned white and started to scream and he lifted his free hand and slapped her hard. “Give,” he said. He let up on the pressure at her neck and her head sagged forward drunkenly.

“My head! My head!” she moaned.

“It’ll ache a little,” he agreed. He pushed her aside and inched his fingers into her purse and extracted a chunk of money.

“Don’t . . . take it all!”

“I’m not. I’m leaving you plenty.”

He had a bad moment when he opened the hall door. A big man stood there, beefy inside a neat blue suit, hands like slabs of granite, a cold green eye. Skip repressed a start of fright. He said quietly, “I’m just leaving.”

“Fine,” said the man with the green eyes. He looked inside the room at the girl in front of the dresser. “You leaving too, Tina?”

“Yes, I’m leaving,” Tina got out.

The big man waited, intending to see that Mr. Salvatorre was comfortable and alone. Skip started down the hall, and then from nowhere at all came a curious hunch, a thing to say. He obeyed it instinctively. He paused and looked back at the beefy man in Salvatorre’s doorway. “I don’t suppose it means anything.”

“What’s that?”

“What Mr. Salvatorre was telling me. He said if I wanted a job here in Las Vegas, he’d speak to somebody he called Mr. Stolz.”

No change in the green eyes or the patient manner; the beefy man looked at Skip as from a vast distance, somebody looking at nobody, or a man on a curb watching a bit of trash blow by in the gutter.

“This . . . this Stolz. Is he anybody?”

The granite lips parted. “Mr. Stolz has retired for the evening. If I were you I wouldn’t try to come back to see him. Mr. Salvatorre might not recall what he promised to do.”

“Mr. Stolz owns the hotel?”

“A partner.” The beefy man turned away to look at Tina inside the room.

Skip went away, through the lobby and into the desert night outside. He looked for a cab. In a freakish way he could never have foreseen he had found out about Stolz and made a little money into the bargain.

CHAPTER FIVE