The Golden Gizmo by Jim Thompson Page B

called softly. The dog's jaws waggled. They yawned open. "C'm," he said. "C'm, c'm, c'm…"
    Toddy looked over them and through them. He turned casually and stood staring into the bar. No way out there. The place had a kitchen, a busy one, and the rear exit lay beyond it. Up the street? Down? Pawnshops. A dime store. A butcher shop. All closed now.
    He heard the softly spoken command in Spanish. He heard the scratch of the dog's claws as it leaped.

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    In one swift motion Toddy stooped, grabbed the base of the basket, and lofted it behind him. Either his luck or his aim was good. There was a surprised yelp, the rattling scrape of wire. But Toddy heard it from a distance. He rounded the corner and raced down the gloomy side street.
    It was not good, this way, but no way was good. He was entering a semi-slum section, the area of flyblown beaneries, boarded-up buildings, flophouses and wine bars which lies adjacent to the Union Station. No cab would stop for him here.
    So now he ran. Now for the first time he knew the real terror of running-to run without a goal, to be hunted by the upper world and his own; to run hopelessly, endlessly, because there was nothing to do but run.
    Sweat was pouring from him by the time he reached the end of the street. And just as he reached its end he saw a huge black form, a shadow, whip around its head… The dog on his trail, behind him; the girl circling the block to head him off. That was the way it would be. He'd have to get in someplace fast. In and out. Throw them off. Keep running.
    The dusty windows of a deserted pool hall stared back at him blankly. Next, a barber shop, also dark. Next, a burlesque house.
    Across the grimy front, cardboard cutouts of bosomy women. Purple-eyed, pink-haired women in flesh tights and sagging net brassieres. Sprawled beneath them and gazing lewdly upward, the cutout of a man-putty-nosed, baggy-trousered, derby-hatted. Names in red and white paint, Bingo Brannigan, Chiffon LaFleur, Fanchon Rose, Colette Casitas. And everywhere on streamers and onesheets and cardboard easels, the legend: "Big Girl Show- DON'T DO IT SOME MORE."
    "Yessir, the beeg show is just starting!" A cane rattled and drummed against the display. "Yessir," intoned the slope-chested skeleton in the linen jacket. "Step right in, sir."
    He coughed as he took Toddy's ten-spot, but there was no surprise in it. He had always coughed; he could not be surprised. "Yessir"- -he was repeating the instructions before Toddy had finished them-"Split with the cashier. Haven't seen you. Close the door."
    "Exit?"
    "Tough." The skeleton coughed. "Over the stage."
    Toddy went in, anyway. It was too late to turn back. He moved past the half-curtains of the foyer and stood staring down the long steep aisle.
    Not that he wanted one, but there didn't seem to be an empty seat in the joint. It was packed. Twin swaths of heads, terrazos of grays and blacks and bald-pinks stretched from the rear of the house to the orchestra pit. In the pit there was only a piano player, banging out his own version of the "Sugar Roll Blues." It must have been his own; no one else would have had it.
    Toddy's nose crinkled at the stench, a compound of the aromas of puke, sweat, urine and a patented "perfume disinfectant." All the burly houses used that same disinfectant. It was the product of a "company" which, by an odd coincidence, also manufactured stink bombs. It was the only thing that would cover up the odor of a stink bomb.
    He went slowly down the aisle, ears strained for sounds of the danger behind him, eyes fixed on the stage. Three chorus "girls" were on it-the show's entire line, apparently. They were stooped over, buttocks to the audience, wiggling and jerking in dreary rhythm to the jangling chords of the piano.
    As Toddy advanced, the women straightened and moved off the stage, each giving her rear a final twitch as she disappeared into the wings. A man in baggy pants and a red undershirt came out. In his exaggerated