Grifter's Game Read Online Free

powder.
    It stared back.
    I managed to finish my cigarette and butt it in an ashtray thoughtfully provided by the management of the Hotel Shelburne. Then I turned back to the box. I put one finger to my lips and licked it, then dipped it gingerly into the powdery substance.
    I licked the finger.
    It was absolutely astonishing. I blinked rapidly, several times, and then licked my finger again, dipping it once more into the box.
    I licked it another time. There was no mistaking the taste, not now, not after many years. When you work in a racket, even briefly, you learn what you can about the racket. You learn the product, first of all. No matter how small your connection with the racket or how little time you spend with it, this much you learn. I had played the game for two months, if that, in a very small capacity, but I knew what I had on my dresser.
    I had approximately sixty cubic inches of raw heroin.

2
    For a few minutes I just stood there and felt foolish. I’d picked up more than a wardrobe at the railway station. I’d picked up a fortune. How much was the heroin worth? I couldn’t even begin to guess. A hundred grand, a quarter of a million, maybe more, maybe less. I had no idea and I didn’t even want to think about it.
    I couldn’t keep it and I couldn’t sell it and I couldn’t give it back. If L.K.B. ever found me with it he would kill me as sure as men make little green virgins. If the government ever found me with it they would lock me up and drop the key in the middle of the China Sea.
    I could throw it away. Did you ever try throwing away a hundred grand, or a quarter of a million?
    I put the lid back on the box and tried to figure out what to do with it. I couldn’t hide it. People who carry around large quantities of heroin are not amateurs. If they search a room, they find what they are looking for. And if L.K.B. and his buddy boys realized I was their pigeon, no hiding place in the room would keep the heroin away from them. And I had to hold onto the stuff. It could be my trump card, the only thing that would keep me alive if they ever caught on. I could use it to work a deal.
    I needed a hiding place for the time being, though. I rejected the standard ones, the cute places where a real pro always looked first. The toilet tank, the bed, the outer windowsill. I stuck it on the floor under the dresser and tried to forget about it.
    I got dressed in a hurry and left the hotel. The store I was looking for was two long blocks off the Boardwalk on Atlantic Avenue near Tennessee. I went in and bought a good attaché case for twenty dollars and change. It was a nice case—I didn’t know you could get them that good so far from Madison Avenue.
    I lugged the case back to the hotel, bought a pair of Philly papers at the newsstand in the lobby, then went back to my room. The little box with the hinges filed through was right where I’d left it under the dresser. I took it out, wrapped it up tight in paper so it wouldn’t come open, and put it in the attaché case. Then I crumpled up paper and packed it in tight so that nothing would rattle around. I used all of the paper, closed the case and locked it up. I made a mental note to get rid of the key. When the time came, I could always break the thing open. But I didn’t want to have the key on my person.
    I hefted the case a few times experimentally. It was neither too heavy nor too light. It could have been almost anything.
    Then I took it back down to the lobby and hauled it over to the front desk. The room clerk waited obligingly while I picked up my case and put it on the desk between us.
    “Wonder if you’d do me a favor,” I said. “I’ve got a commercial presentation here that I’m in the middle of. Not valuable to anybody but me, but there’s always the chance that somebody might walk off with it not knowing what was in the case. The company would raise hell if that happened. Could you stick it in the safe for me?”
    He could and did. He