Janey didn’t like to think about that. But so far the gimmick had worked four out of four times. They had collected two thousand bucks. Another three or four operations, Janey thought, and they would have enough green stuff to pick up stakes and head out for California and the good life out there.

“Okay,” she said to the patiently fuming Charley. “I’m ready now.”

“Damn near about time.”

“Remember what I said about getting me riled up?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll lay off. You’re pretty damn touchy tonight, though.”

“I always am, just before an engagement.”

* * *

They went downstairs, and out of the house. It was a cheap boarding house, and they paid fifteen bucks a week for their dingy two-room place. When they moved to California, Janey thought, they would get someplace nice to live in, and a nice car, and a lot of other nice things. Right now the two thousand bucks they had collected on their little sucker game was sitting in the bank, and they weren’t touching it. That was their nest egg.

They got into the old rattletrap Ford that Charley had bought last year for eighty-five dollars and drove downtown to the big hotel district. That was the way they worked it. Janey dressed up and went wandering around the hotels, looking for a likely mark. She picked him up, went to his room, gave him a good time. Later that night Charley would show up and do the outraged brother act, and the mark would cough up five hundred smackers rather than get hooked into a statutory rape charge.

Four out of four, without a hitch. Janey remembered all four clearly. The first had been a bald-headed, potbellied stock-broker from New York. Then a playboy type from out west, with a red Jaguar and a little clipped mustache. After him, an accountant from Chicago, and then, last week, a middle-aged Milwaukee businessman. They had all coughed up the cash without too much of a squawk. They were all afraid of getting dragged into court.

Charley parked the car about a block from the elegant Boardwalk Plaza Hotel. The rickety little Ford looked pretty pathetic next to the massive Cadillacs and Imperials and foreign sports cars all over the place, but Janey told herself that someday they were going to have a fancy little car like that.

“Let’s synchronize watches, Captain,” Janey said with an impish smile.

“Right. It’s quarter after eight now. Figure you’ll pick up your mark by nine, at latest, and spend an hour in his room. You ought to be back here by ten; I’ll be waiting for you.”