The Digger's Game by George V. Higgins Read Free Book Online Page A

said, “What?”
    “Yeah,” Schabb said, “Saint Barbara’s Holy Name from Willow Hill there. Going to Freeport over Labor Day. Three glorious days and nights of sun, sand, excitement and luxury living in the glamour center of the Caribbean, a welcome Daiquiri in the well-appointed Casino Lounge, a pineapple in every spacious room, a spectacular view of sparkling beaches and azure water from your own private terrace. Plus: a surprise gift for the ladies, an orchid corsage about the size of a quarter that we get for thirty-eight cents apiece. All for the incredibly low price of three hundred and fifty dollars a couple, including round trip by jet and transfers between the airport and the hotel. I cut the parish school in for five hundred to get the pastor to let me in the door, but I did it.”
    “Per couple,” the Greek said. “They’re taking their wives.”
    “Sure,” Schabb said. “One or two of them wanted to know if they could bring the kids, but I said I couldn’t arrange it.”
    “Isn’t that something?” Torrey said.
    “It sure is,” the Greek said. “It’s a mess of shit, is what it is. Those guys haven’t got ten bucks to put on the table. What’re you giving them, counters? How much you staking them?”
    “Twenty dollars a couple,” Schabb said. “I could’ve done a little better, it’s a cheap plane ride, but I figured the twenty was enough. That’ll get them inside at night.”
    “It’ll get them inside the first night,” the Greek said. “Daddy’ll lose the twenty while the little woman watches. Then he’ll lose six bucks more. Then they’ll goback the room and eat the fuckin’ pineapple. Why the fuck’re we giving away pineapples, for Christ sake? Who wants a goddamned pineapple?”
    “Everybody wants a pineapple,” Schabb said. “They started doing that in Hawaii. Pretty soon the word got around. Now your average clown doesn’t think he’s been to a resort if there isn’t a pineapple on the commode when he walks in the room.”
    “Yeah,” the Greek said. “Well, this group, we probably ought to give one slice of pineapple. All night long the old lady’ll be at him, dropping all that great American dough, gambling. He wasn’t so goddamned stupid they could’ve stayed home and seen a movie on the six bucks. The next two days they spend getting the sun, on which we don’t make no money, the way I get it. We’ll be lucky we make expenses.
    “We get unlucky,” the Greek said, “it’ll be worse. The silly bastards won’t quit. They’ll lose their fuckin’ shirts and sign everything you put in front of them, and then I’ll have to go out and take a lot of washing machines and secondhand cars to write the stuff off. Why in Christ you want them nickel-stealing hot dogs for, can you tell me that?”
    “We’re, they’re not signing any papers,” Schabb said. “The priest thought of that one right off, and I agreed with him. ‘No, Father,’ I said, ‘nothing like that. No credit gambling. Just what they bring with them. We’re not that kind of operation, Father, trying to victimize people. Basically, we’re just a travel agency. Labor Day’s a slack period in the package-tour business. Just a way to keep the airplanes going and the hotels full. Frankly, we expect to take a loss on this, but the hotels make it up to us.’ ”
    “At least you didn’t lie to a priest,” the Greek said. “What are we gonna do with this?”
    “We’re gonna take pictures of them,” Torrey said. “That first night, they’re blowing the twenty, we’re gonna, we got this guy with a camera. He’s gonna take about eighty pictures of those jerks. Then he’s gonna send them back, and Mill’s gonna make up a brochure.”
    Schabb grinned.
    “I don’t get it,” the Greek said.
    “It makes the flyer,” Schabb said. “I talked to the Philadelphia group the other day; they did that. They got a deadhead bunch and they made about sixty dollars on the deal. But then they