Quarry's Deal Read Online Free PDF

side booths, next to a window, which had shutters below and ruffled, red-and-white checked curtains above. The curtains matched the tablecloths. I was wondering if I could see the parking lot from where I sat, but the shutters proved to be permanently closed.
    I wanted to look out over the cars in the lot and see if I could spot a certain one.
    Glenna Cole, or Ivy (as my late friend the Broker had called her), drove a light blue Stingray. Of course she might have changed cars en route, but not necessarily. It was worth checking, anyway.
    I was standing up in the booth, peeking out through the ruffled curtains, when the waitress came, a girl less busty but equally as attractive as the honey-haired greeter at the door. She too was wearing the red sweater and denim slacks combination, which proved to be the uniform of all the young women working at the Red Barn Club.
    I ordered, spent some time trying to look out the window at the lot, to no avail, and the food came, and was nothing special. The specialty was nothing special, in fact: barbeque ribs that were okay but that’s all. Salad, hash browns, bread, all of it okay. Nothing more.
    Outside of whoever hired the waitresses being a good judge of pulchritude, the Red Barn didn’t seem to me to have what it took to attract a hundred or so cars on a Thursday night. But that’s how many cars were out there.
    Only how many people were in here?
    A few couples, some foursomes, everyone dressed casually (I was the only person in the room with a coat and tie on). Twenty-four people, maybe. Figure ten cars, at the most.
    I had the waitress bring me a Coke from the bar and I sat and drank it.
    Then I went down to find out what was behind that closed door.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    8
    _______________________________________________
    _______________________________________________
     
     
    IT WAS A room full of tables. The walls were that same barn red with white trim, but there was a noticeable absence of decoration. Only at the far end, which was given over to the bar, was the mock western motif of the upper floor continued: horse-collar mirrors; some western paintings; chairs made from the same rough wood as the picket fence booths upstairs; tables that were glass-covered wagon wheels. But that was just in the bar area. Throughout the rest of the room the walls were bare, the tables were cardtables, round, the chairs metal folding type with padded backs and seats.
    It was also a room full of people. The cars in the parking lot now seemed justified, and then some. There wasn’t an empty seat in the house, though I felt sure one would be found, and room made, at any table I might care to join.
    There was one small area of the room that was unlit, with several long tables which were covered. This, I learned from a waitress, was where the roulette and craps was played, on the weekends. Week nights, only the card tables were open.
    This wasn’t Las Vegas, but for a place stuck between a couple of Iowa cornfields it was close enough. It certainly lacked the trappings of Las Vegas, excluding the showgirl-pretty waitresses, who went around keeping the customers well-lubricated, but all of it went on the bill, none of your free drinks stuff here, and instead of chips, the players used money, stacks of it littered each table, paper money, and not that multicolor stuff they use in Monopoly, either: the real, green thing.
    To be in this room you had to be a member. I was a member. I had just paid ten dollars for an out-of-town membership. Des Moines area members paid ten dollars, too. Membership was lifetime. The little brown card, which I was required to sign, said so. Considering the kind of stakes in question here, ten bucks was a drop in a bucket so deep you wouldn’t hear the drop.
    I played blackjack for a while. For half an hour. I lost fifty bucks without trying. I went from there to a table where they were playing five-card stud and lasted five