Bluff

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Bluff Page 9

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock


  I look at Billy with the face that’s launched a thousand folds at the poker table. No one can ever believe that this old bat is capable of a three-barrel bluff.

  “No, Billy, I did not know Sunderland was a bigamist. Happy now?”

  He studies my face, my body language, the pulse in my neck—all the little “tells” that poker players focus on to try and figure out if an opponent is lying, and if they should fold or call.

  “Okay. I believe you,” he says at last.

  He folded.

  I’d bluffed him.

  I knew.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The day after Balter’s interview, Danya is “outed” as Sun Sunderland’s mystery bigamist wife. Burt Sklar has driven down to D.C. to whisk her back to New York before the reporters find out where she lives. They are in Danya’s bedroom, where Danya is packing and Sklar is sorting through a banker’s box of photographs. The TV is tuned to CNN so they can follow the news. When the anchor mentions Sunderland’s name, both Danya and Sklar immediately stop what they’re doing and focus on the set.

  “Danya Dickert Sunderland is a twenty-eight-year-old former stripper from D.C…”

  As the anchor speaks, a photo of Danya dancing at King Arthur’s appears on screen. Danya shrieks in horror and runs to turn off the set.

  “Shit! Where’d they dig up that horrible shot of me!?”

  “Calm down, baby. You looked gorgeous.”

  Danya whirls around, leveling a furious gaze at Sklar. “Gorgeous?! I was on a pole with daisies on my boobs and a jungle vine halfway up my ass. You call that gorgeous? This whole thing’s a fuckin’ nightmare!”

  Danya picks up her beloved cat and cuddles the creature for comfort. Sklar bridles at the sight of the hairless Sphinx. He’s always loathed the wrinkled, veal-skinned beast who reminds him of a fetus. He tries to hide his repulsion by smiling too broadly.

  “Aw…you and Mooncat are so cute together. But we really need to get going, baby. Soon they’re gonna find out where you live down here.”

  Danya looks plaintively at Sklar as she continues stroking the cat. “The whole fuckin’ world thinks I’m some two-bit stripper who was only after Sun for his money.”

  “They may think that now. But soon they’re gonna think you’re a poor, innocent young woman who was taken advantage of by a rich and powerful man who you loved...and feared. That’s how we’re gonna spin it.”

  “You’d have to be a genius to spin that one, Burt.”

  “That’s what I am, baby—a genius! Truthfully…? PR’s the only thing in this world that counts. The truth is bullshit. It’s what people want to believe that matters. Jean thinks she’s a sympathetic victim? Just wait’ll they get a load of these!” Sklar says, closing the lid on the box of photographs documenting Danya and Sunderland’s kinky sex life together, plus her injuries.

  “You think we’ll ever use those?” Danya says.

  “I’m gonna use whatever it takes to achieve our goal. Candidly…? We’ve got Jean over a barrel and she knows it. All this other stuff is window dressing.”

  “Bigamy is a crime. You know my history. Hell, I could get arrested here!”

  “That will never happen,” Sklar says, waving a decisive hand. “Now keep packing. I’ll take Mooncat over to your neighbor’s.”

  “I still don’t understand why he can’t come with us!” Danya says.

  “For the hundreth time: My building doesn’t allow pets.”

  She gives the cat a hug and kiss, then reluctantly hands him over to Sklar, who grits his teeth at the feel of the animal’s suede-like skin.

  “Mooncat’s going bye-bye,” Sklar says, playfully waving the cat’s paw at Danya.

  In more ways than one, he thinks.

  When Sklar returns, he loads Danya’s luggage into the trunk of the car—all except the box of photographs which he lays on the backseat so he can keep an eye on them.

  “Just out of curiousity, baby… How come you didn’t destroy those pictures like Sun told you to?”

  “Insurance,” she says, slamming the car door.

  Sklar nods his approval. “Smart girl.”

  Danya thinks: Burt, you have no idea.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Maud Warner’s continued evasion of law enforcement is a major embarrassment for both the NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. Vance Packer is feeling the heat. He and Detective John Chen are in Packer’s office going over some logistics of this troublesome case.

  “So you finally got the warrants for D.C., right?” Packer says.

  “We’re heading down there tomorrow,” Chen says.

  Packer takes a couple of Advil for his headache. “You saw Jean Sunderland’s interview. Can you believe she’s been married to a bigamist for years and she just finds out about it when he’s dying…? You’re married, right, Detective?”

  “Sixteen years.”

  “So let me ask you something. You think it’s possible for a wife not to know somewhere deep down that her husband’s leading this major double life?”

  Chen chuckles. “My wife suspects I’m leading a major double life if I’m in the shower too long.”

  Packer is deep in thought. “Here’s what I want to know. When did a guy like Sunderland have time for all this? I don’t have time for one wife, let alone two.”

  “I guess the heart wants what it wants…”

  “Oy! Don’t remind me of that case, please. You understand we’re getting killed in the press on account of this new revelation, right? Did you happen to watch CNN this morning?”

  “No.”

  “So they’re talking about Sunderland and what a shock it is to find out this great man was a bigamist. They’re showing pictures of his funeral and I see myself coming down the steps of the church. I swear to God I almost threw the glass of orange juice at the set. Anyway, there’s not one shred of sympathy for our victim anymore. And worse, they’re now calling Maud Warner a folk heroine. Folk heroine, my foot! She’s a murderer! It’s all because Sunderland’s such a scumbag and we can’t catch her!”

  “She’s the D.B. Cooper of little old ladies,” Chen smiles.

  “Jesus, I hope not! They never did catch D.B. Cooper. Face it, John, we have a very, very unsympathetic victim here.”

  “True,” Chen agrees. “A billionaire bigamist is one rung below serial killer in the unsympathetic department.”

  “Exactly. How the heck do I get a jury to convict Grandma Moses for killing Ted Bundy?” Packer says ruefully.

  “Let’s catch her first.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Billy’s wife is getting home from Spain tomorrow. It’s time for me to leave. I think I’ve overstayed my welcome. Billy won’t even play heads up with me anymore. I think he thinks I’m nuts. After I make a phone call to my next port of call, I get dressed in the thrift shop clothes Billy bought for me, plus a ratty blond wig, floppy hat, and sunglasses. Billy drives me to a deserted side street and lets me out near Wisconsin Avenue. He leaves me with a friendly caution.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Maudie. This isn’t poker.”

  “Oh, yes it is, Billy. You watch.”

  I thank him for everything and walk to the nearby McDonald’s. I sit in a corner and keep my head bowed low nursing a Coke and some fries. I have several hours to kill. I watch a family of five having a meal of Big Macs and milkshakes. I can’t help thinking they look a helluva lot happier than my own family did dining at “21” on filet mignon and Chateau Lafitte. Alan used to joke that our family meals were Inquisitions where we got burned eating steak. He coped with the constant shouting and criticisms by coming to the table high. I just tuned out and excused myself before dessert.

  I have to admit that after Sklar came into the picture, mealtimes became bearable, pleasant even. Mummy and Siddy s
eemed happier together. Siddy credited Sklar for easing tensions in the household.

  “Your mother has someone to complain to other than me,” Siddy said.

  Sklar encouraged Mummy’s confidences. She got into the habit of dropping by his office unannounced to show him the new clothes she’d bought, or a new hairstyle. Sklar gave her the attention she felt she wasn’t getting at home. Then Siddy suddenly died of a heart attack. His death was a great blow to our family. At the funeral, my mother wept on Sklar’s shoulder, not Alan’s or mine. In poker that’s called a “tell.”

  “If it weren’t for Burt, I’d have followed your father into the grave,” Mummy said.

  A wealthy widow is a predator’s dream. In my mother—a needy, narcissistic aging beauty with an addict son she adored and a daughter she viewed as direct competition—Sklar, the patient pro, had his aces at last.

  I get more fries and another Coke, waiting for evening to descend.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Armed with the necessary search warrants, Detective Chen and his forensic team take the Acela to Washington to collect evidence from Maud Warner’s apartment in one of the colorful old row houses of Georgetown. Chen pokes around the cramped one-bedroom apartment while his team collects evidence and takes videos.

  The place is cluttered with faded chintz furniture and knickknacks—a brass hourglass, a pair of white china dogs, a horse weathervane, needlepoint pillows, a yellowing wicker chair that reminds Chen of old bones. There are books everywhere—in bookshelves, on tables, in piles on the floor. The apartment reeks of a shabby gentility, as if Warner had tried to import as much of her old life as would fit, only to wind up creating the atmosphere of a thrift shop.

  He wanders into a bedroom barely big enough for its single bed. The fraying, hand-embroidered sheets are relics of long gone luxury. A pillow on the bed is embroidered with a gun, the ace of spades, and the words, “Know when to hold’em… Up.” He picks up a photograph on the night table to take a closer look. It’s a black-and-white candid of a young boy and a teenage girl in wet bathing suits, laughing together on a beach. The photo captures the joyous camaraderie between the two. Chen removes the photo from the tarnished silver frame. “Me & Alan, East Hampton,” is written in faded ink on the back.

  In the bathroom medicine cabinet Chen finds several pill bottles, including a prescription for Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic drug. The prescription is a month old but the bottle is full. Someone wasn’t taking her meds, he thinks. He snaps a picture of it so the label is visible, then jots down the name of the doctor who prescribed them.

  Taped to the refrigerator in the kitchen is a shooting range target with a hole in the bull’s-eye. Chen finds similar targets showing she was a good shot stuffed into a cabinet.

  As Chen is making notes, a technician hands him a newspaper clipping stapled to a sheet of paper from a memo pad headed: From the desk of Burt Sklar.

  “This was on the desk with the computer,” the techie says. “Thought you’d be interested.”

  Chen was indeed interested in an article sent to Maud by her nemesis, Burt Sklar. The scribbled note on the pad read: “Poker player like you… E.E.D. defense expert. Enjoy! Burt.” Cut out from Washington Post Style section, the article is a profile of a woman named Joyce Kiner Braden with the headline: “D.C. Lawyer Wins Big In Poker Tournaments and In Court.” Chen makes a note to call her.

  The team finishes documenting the apartment. They bag the computer hard drive and head back to New York. Chen stays behind and grabs a cab to the West Wing of the National Gallery, where he has an appointment to meet Bunny Westerly. A woman in New York had told him Westerly and Maud were close.

  Chen is in the Garden Courtyard of the museum, admiring its towering marble columns and trickling fountain, surrounded by lush green plants, when the tranquil atmosphere is pierced by a chirpy voice.

  “Detective Chen?”

  He turns around. A tall, thin woman with sparkly brown eyes and slightly disheveled brown hair is striding toward him with girlish energy. Her breezy, self-assured air is like an invisible armor of privilege.

  “Ms. Westerly?”

  “Call me Bunny!”

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

  “Are you kidding? I couldn’t wait to see you! Maudie’s one of my oldest and dearest friends in the entire world. I just can’t believe it, y’know? It’s like, whaaaat? Oh, my God! Never in a million…! Wow.”

  They sit down near the fountain.

  “Tell me how you know Ms. Warner?”

  “Um, so…Maudie and I roomed together our junior and senior years in boarding school. I used to go visit her a lot in New York. The Warners had this huge apartment, like about ten times the size of our house in Hartford. The living room was roped off on account of the paintings. We weren’t allowed in there. But Maudie snuck me in one time so I could touch the Picasso and the Matisse with my finger. I never do that here, by the way,” she giggles. “Anyhow, they were so rich. I couldn’t believe it when Maudie told me her mother died broke.”

  “So you two kept in touch?”

  “So, like, yeah…on and off. We went to different colleges. I got married and moved to Washington. Maudie got married to this stuffy banker who lived in Greenwich. When she split up with him, she moved back to New York and opened her bookstore. I saw her whenever I went up there.”

  “Did she ever talk to you about Burt Sklar?”

  “Oh, my God, yeah. I mean she really liked him a lot in the beginning. And she introduced him to her stepfather and everything. But then after he died, she started getting suspicious that Mr. Sklar was stealing from her mom. She also thought he was manipulating her brother, Alan.”

  “How so?”

  “I think, um, like giving him money on the sly and keeping him addicted to drugs. Maudie said that Mr. Sklar wanted to keep Alan as a friend so Alan wouldn’t side with her.”

  “When did Ms. Warner move down here?”

  “Pretty soon after her mom died. She called me up and said she couldn’t afford to live in New York anymore. I was, like, shocked because I thought they were so rich. Anyway, I told her to come down here. It’s cheaper and a helluva lot more friendly—if you’re not in politics, that is. A pal of mine who’s a real estate agent found her this cute little apartment in Georgetown. Not quite what she was used to, but safe.”

  “Was she seeing anyone in particular?”

  “Like dating? Not that I know of.”

  “The superintendent of her building says she often stayed out all night. Is it possible she has a relationship she didn’t tell you about? Someone she might turn to if she was on the run?”

  Westerly laughs. “She’s staying out all night because she’s playing poker!”

  “She plays poker?” Chen says, thinking about the article Sklar sent her on Joyce Kiner Braden.

  “Oh, my God, she’s an total addict. She’s really funny about it. She calls herself a poker slut! At her age! Go figure.”

  “Interesting…”

  “Yeah. She told me she got so depressed the day they shut down Internet poker she actually thought about moving to Las Vegas. I mean that’s really depressed.”

  “April 15th, 2011. Black Friday. A lot of people got really depressed that day,” Chen nods. “Where does she play around here?”

  “So there’s this casino called Maryland Live. I know she plays there a lot. And then there’s some guy she calls the Gypsy, who has this illegal game. She says it’s dicey, but it’s the only place to play every day. I don’t really get it. Poker’s definitely not my world, as you can see,” she says gesturing to the paintings.

  “So, I have to ask… Have you heard from her?”

  Westerly guffaws. “No! My husband works for the State Department. I’d tell you if I had. Scout’s honor.”

  “You’ve been very helpful, Ms. Wester
ly. Thank you.”

  As Westerly escorts Chen out of the museum, she says, “One thing I can’t figure out. Why’d she shoot Sunderland, not Sklar?”

  “People assume she missed,” Chen says.

  “Are you kidding? She’s a great shot. We nicknamed her Maudie Oakley in school because she was a champion skeet shooter.”

  “Shooting people is a little different.”

  “I dunno…I guess she was out of practice. Trust me, in the old days, if Maudie was aiming at someone, no way she would have missed. No way.”

  Chen thinks back to the shooting range targets in the apartment. She definitely wasn’t out of practice. He’s beginning to get a clearer picture of Maud Warner. But the more he finds out about her, the more mysterious she becomes.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chen is ushered into Joyce Kiner Braden’s office. Braden stands up to greet him with a big smile that is both disarming and oddly threatening at the same time.

  “So have you caught my poker sista yet, Detective Chen?”

  Chen notes that Ms. Braden’s newspaper picture didn’t do her justice. She’s a vivacious redhead with violet eyes magnified by jeweled butterfly glasses. A tweed suit hugs her hourglass figure like a corset. She’s wearing a gold bracelet that looks like a handcuff and gold earrings the size of ingots.

  “So you two know each other?” Chen says, taking a seat.

  “We do.”

  “I read the article about you in the Washington Post. I liked your quote about poker and the law.”

  “This one?” Braden says, turning a plaque on her desk toward Chen.

  Chen reads the inscription aloud: “‘There’s no law in poker, but plenty of poker in the law.’ That one, yeah.”

  “It’s very true. There’s plenty of poker in a lot of things.”

  “The article says you specialize in the Extreme Emotional Distress defense.”

 

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