King of Diamonds

by Ted Thackrey

  Las Vegas players who had sneered at their California cousins for decades suddenly found themselves booked into seven card stud, razz, and hold ’em tournaments in towns like Bell and Commerce and Gardena, whose names were not even on their road maps a year or two earlier, while the casinos quickly took on the plush-carpet-and-dank-air-conditioning ambience formerly limited to the gaming spas of southern Nevada.

  Results were immediate.

  A few of the older casinos folded, unable to compete with the sleek and glitzy newcomers.

  A few of the newer casinos did the same, proving again that there is no substitute for competence—even when you own a money machine. And a few councilmen found their way into prison cells, alongside the casino operators who had suborned them in aid of getting a siphon into the well of flowing cash.

  But most towns that legalized the game and set up casinos found they had tapped a mother lode. Fun and games beside the sea. One chamber of commerce even went so far as to have a new slogan affixed above its city limits sign: “Welcome to Las Vegas by the Sea.”

  But what the hell was the Reverend Gideon Goode doing in charge of casino operations in South Bay City?

  And how did the casino fit in with his Temple of the Eternal Flame?

  And where would I find the crowbar to pry him loose from both for long enough to steal a sixteen-year-old girl?

  “You’re going out tonight,” Angela said when we got back to the house.

  “For a while, maybe.”

  “To the casino.”

  “Well . . . ”

  “Take a gun.”

  Her face was composed and her voice controlled, but I could feel something fierce and primitive moving around behind the calm exterior.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Don’t own one. Besides, they’re illegal here among the city folks.”

  She didn’t smile. “Then don’t go,” she said.

  I crossed the room and tried to take her in my arms, but it was like embracing a statue and after a moment I stepped back.

  “Angela,” I said gently, “it’s not a matter of choice. We need information, and the casino is the best place to get it. People’s mouths run on automatic when they play poker. Their minds are on the game and the words are just there as a kind of smoke screen, so they come out like the stream-of-consciousness thing the headshrinkers like to do.”

  “Don’t go,” she said in a voice so small and quiet I almost missed it. “Just . . . don’t go.”

  Her face was averted; she was looking at the floor. I reached out to turn the chin upward and in my direction. The expression was still calm. But the eyes were huge and bright and bottomless.

  “I have to,” I said. “But we knew something like this would be necessary when we came here, and the risk is minimal. Preacher might attract attention there. And you surely would. But not George Armbruster. No way! Good Old George—new in town and anxious to spend a little money—who’d look twice at him? Safe as the Bank of America.”

  “It almost went broke, damn you!”

  And I laughed . . .

  Which is just another example of how wrong I can be when I really try.

  A SERMON

  (CONTINUED)

  And the Reverend Jim Jones, who led his followers first to a world of madly inverted values and finally to a holocaust of mass suicide, was cast in the same hideous tradition.

  EIGHTEEN

  Finding willie the ear after the game I couldn’t seem to lose that night was two kinds of luck.

  Good, because a snitch like Willie would have sources of information I could never otherwise have hoped to tap without being on the ground for longer than I wanted to spend in South Bay City.

  And bad, because his voice had the unmistakable ring of the True Believer—which meant I could expect my presence, in disguise at that, to be known to the Master of the Temple of the Eternal Flame as soon as Willie got home.

  So Good Old George Armbruster was history.

  Unless I could con an old friend . . .

  “This Gideon,” I said, playing it wide-eyed and backcountry. “He any relation to the little boy used to be on television, years back?”

  “Same dude.” Willie nodded. “Only born again of the blood—and of the flame. And filled with the Truth.”

  “The truth . . . ”

  I made sure my inflection didn’t capitalize the T, and Willie picked up on it.

  “I was like you,” he said. “Shee-yit! Like you? I thought I was gonna laugh my guts out first time one of the Flamies—that’s what the gentiles call us, y’know—one of the Flamies talked to me.”

  “But you listened.”

  Willie laughed a single harsh bark. “I was broke,” he said. “Down on my luck and living on the beach. Some trouble with a cop who thought I lied to him, y’know?”

  I knew.

  “So I was out here and I didn’t have nothing going for me, see. So all right, I heard this guy preaching away right on the street about the Temple of the Eternal Flame and I’d seen the name on a sign over on the old hotel on the beachfront and I figured what the hell? Maybe they were like the Salvation Army—pray for your supper, right? I was hungry and what could it hurt?”

  He wasn’t expecting an answer and I didn’t give him one.

  “Well, okay, then, so I go over and listen to the dude and follow him back to the hotel, and sure enough, they had some food for me. But I got to tell you I didn’t hardly eat any of that. Because of what went with it.”

  “With the food?”

  “With the food went preaching, yeah. Okay. But not like at any mission I ever seen or heard about. This was preaching by him. By the Master.”

  “Gideon.”

  “In person,” Willie gave me a gap-toothy grin, remembering. “That’s where I first heard the truth. The first time any preacher—beggin’ yer pardon, Preacher, no offense—the first time any preacher ever said anything made sense to me.”

  I waited for him to go on, but this time he wanted a prompt.

  “Maybe you just never listened before.”

  “The hell!” His voice was indignant. “I know I don’t look much like it now, but my folks were real strict church people. Lutheran, y’know? Solid. So natch I had to go to Sunday School and then in to church and to other stuff through the week. I heard it all, see. And it was the crapola. But this Gideon—”

  “The Master.”

  “Yeah. Him. I mean, like, here was a dude who really had his shit together. When he laid it on you—like about who was really in charge Up There, and how you could make out like a bandit playing it according to his rules—when he done that, it was something you could make book on because that’s the way things really go down.”

  “He proved it to you.”

  “Didn’t even have to! I could see it for myself, couldn’t I? I mean, look at the way people treat each other—the way they cheat.”

  “And suffer for it, Willie.”

  “Yeah? You know, Preacher, sometimes I wonder about you. Like, if maybe you commencing to believe you a real preacher just because you dress like one. Because that’s a lot of preacher talk there. Suffer for it, my ass! The ones that suffer, Preacher, they’re only just the little cheaters. The ones who stick up a liquor store. Or snatch a purse in the street. Fuck, they can get killed for doing that if they get a few bad breaks.”

  “There are a lot more ways to suffer than by getting hurt. Or going to prison.”

  “Uh-huh? Well, you go tell someone about that who ain’t been hurt or done no time in the joint, okay? Because it’s bullshit and you know it. Or ought to, man like you. Sure—you can go punish yourself, feeling bad about something you done. But don’t tell me it’s as bad as getting shot, because I been shot, and that’s worse. And don’t tell me it’s as bad as being inside. Because I been there, too. And I got my choice, I know which one I choose. Especially now.”

  “Why especially now?”

  “Especially now, because Gideon made me see the truth. Made
me look at the way things really are and see how feeling bad about things like that is just for chumps. Gentiles. People who don’t know who’s really running the world and what He really wants for all the ones of us who know the score.”

  His voice had been rising as he talked, and we were beginning to get a little attention from other late-night customers in the little café. He noticed it, and when he spoke again, the volume was back down to a personal level. But the intensity was still there, and it went right on building.

  “Look who comes out on top alla time,” he said. “Some little shlunk works all his life for one of the biggest companies in the world and when it comes time for him to retire—boom! The company’s broke and the people who ran it stole all the dough from the pensions and put it in a bank in Switzerland or something. So, do they pay it back or go to jail? In a pig’s ass! They live like kings for the rest of their lives, and the guy who played it by their rules and trusted them gets to live on welfare and eat dog food.”

  “Look, Willie . . . ”

  “No, you look, Preacher! Look at the truth. The guys who lie and cheat and steal and don’t give a shit one way or the other, they wind up on top, and the guys who play it according to the Sunday school teacher wind up in the shitter. Always. Because of who’s running the show.”

  He’d run out of breath, but I didn’t interrupt because he was finally starting to give me a clue about how to keep his mouth shut—at least for long enough to do the business I’d come to town to do.

  “This world,” he said in a tone of passionate conviction totally alien to the Willie Axe I’d known, “is the property of Lucifer.”

  “Lucifer?”

  “Lucifer—the true Son of God! Brother to that other One, whose mother was a Jew, but clothed in the garment of power that he tore from his Father’s grasp in their final battle, and able to work wonders here and now for those who do his bidding. Blessed be!”

  The voice was Willie’s. But not the words. They came straight from the brain and throat of Gideon Goode. And made me see him in new perspective.

  Angela’s reactions, terrified and hysterical, and the similar pattern I’d heard from Perdita Soames had offered a picture of Gideon as the classic religious charlatan—cynical and contemptuous in preaching the doctrine he has tailored to the weakness and susceptibilities of a secretly despised flock. Willie’s little speech, however, had the ring of conviction; it was testimony of a man fanatically persuaded of an essential truth and willing to put his perceptions to the test.

  Willie had heard the same thing and responded.

  That thought—and its obvious corollaries—gave me a moment of vertigo, and I found myself reaching internally for the patience of waiting that is the foundation of all strength and understanding. And needing it.

  Gideon went on talking. Through Willie’s mouth.

  “You got one thing right a minute ago,” he said. “A gentile sin, and one way or another it is going to hurt him, even if he don’t get caught, because whether he’s a religious type person or not, he really thinks he done wrong and will find some way to kick his own ass for doing that even if he doesn’t know he’s doing it.”

  “But not you.”

  “Not me, and not anyone else who’s been washed in the blood and flame. Because it’s what the ruler of the world wants for us, and there is no sin about it—we’ll even be rewarded! You lie to someone, and you feel bad about it. I do the same and want to laugh. You steal, and you’ll pay. One way or another. I steal—and Great Lucifer accepts the gift as his due and smiles upon the thief!”

  He was exalted, eyes shining with the certainty of a rightness he had touched and found good. And I made the move that seemed best to me.

  “Blessed be,” I said.

  Two words of no particular distinction. Innocuous. But uttered then and there they were a lie, calculated and base to the core, presuming upon old friendship and exploiting it for my own purposes. The sense of shame was immediate and powerful.

  But Willie bought it.

  He goggled at me for a moment, frowning, and then leaned back in the chair with a snort of laughter and a dismissive little flap of the hand.

  “Damn you, Preacher—you know you still one hustlin’ old son of a whore!”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  He laughed again, still registering surprise. “You!” he said. “You of all the damn people. A brother of the Temple!”

  I shrugged, trying to take at least a little of the curse off it for myself. “You’re surprised.”

  “Surprised? Shit, I’m on my ass! But I don’t get it—if you’re one of us, what the hell you doing playing cards at the casino? And in that hay-shaker getup?”

  That was the right question.

  Now to see if the answer would buy me any cards . . .

  “Gideon’s got enemies,” I said. “And I’m glad to see you’re not one of them, Willie. Really glad.”

  It was a stopper, as intended. True Belief is the brother of paranoia, and the words brought him up short, widening his eyes and causing him to swallow painfully before he could speak.

  “Enemies?” he said. “Enemies? You mean, like, to do harm to him? To the Master? But how? Who—”

  “Someone inside, Willie,” I said, lowering my voice and changing to the color of conspiracy. “Someone right in the temple itself. Right here at home.”

  “And you thought it might be me?”

  I smiled, hating myself a little for what I was about to say and do, and shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “No, I didn’t. But a thing like this, you’d have to be sure of everyone. You can see that.”

  He saw it. And nodded, waiting for me to go on.

  “We started with the casino because it’s the outer limit,” I said. “The rim of the circle. Some funny things have been happening there.”

  Willie nodded again and broke in, as I’d hoped he might.

  “Never liked that setup nohow,” he said. “The thing with the shills—it makes a few extra bucks, sure. But it’s real dumb, Preacher. Always a hassle. You know that. Like tonight.”

  “Like tonight?”

  “Tank Thomas—that’s the guy you coldcocked back there in the parking lot—old Tank, he just asked me to help him with you. As a friend. A brother. Because he’s a shill, y’know. And the shills there at the casino, they ain’t allowed to lose. No way! That’s what I mean about a hassle, see?”

  It was a big bite of information, and I took a sip of coffee to give me the extra moment I needed for digestion.

  I’d suspected the gaunt man might be a house shill, of course. But tentatively discounted the possibility on two grounds: He’d bought a hand in the game without identifying himself as a house employee, and I’d seen him raise a second time instead of calling on several occasions before our final hand.

  The use of shills—casino employees who take part in poker games using house money for a stake—is a legitimate and necessary part of a poker casino’s operation. They make sure the customer can always find a game with enough players to make it interesting, no matter what time of day he decides to come in. But the shill’s role is necessarily limited.

  It has to be. The best and easiest way to cheat in a game of poker is with a partner; nobody has to mechanic the cards when there are two of you betting against a lone hand. Ask anybody who’s ever sat down at a table with strangers in a strange town. So legitimate casinos make sure the customer doesn’t see himself walking into that kind of setup.

  They post signs notifying one and all that some of the players are their own employees.

  They insist that the shill identify himself to other players, including those who sit down after the shill has already joined the game.

  They made sure their player drops out as soon as his chair can be filled by a real customer, no matter whether the shill is winning or losing.

  And—most important of all—they forbid the shill to raise more than once. Because no matter whether he wins
or loses, the shill is, after all, playing with the house’s money rather than his own. And that is, in itself, a psychological weapon of considerable power.

  The one-raise rule doesn’t keep the shill from winning, of course. A shill’s “pay” begins with the stake of $50 to $100 he is handed at the beginning of the workday. If he loses the money, he leaves the job empty—only one stake per day, and you could get to be a stranger if you lose it too early too often—but it he wins, he can keep whatever is left after paying back the house its original stake. Limiting the number of times, a player can raise also limits the amount he can take away from others at the table. Which puts things pretty much in balance for the customer.

  But Willie was telling me the South Bay Club had decided to break the rules.

  It was a wild card, exactly the kind of lever I’d hoped to find. A side door into Gideon’s operation. A potential soft spot. Future usefulness of such a weapon, however, would depend in large extent upon surprise. And that meant misdirecting Willie here and now.

  “It’s nervous work,” I agreed, falling in with his argument. “But all it really takes is a little finesse. One or two professionals . . . ”

  “And that,” Willie said, “is just exactly what we ain’t got, Preacher. See, that’s the whole thing, right there: They trying to run a scam like that with guys like Tank, who don’t really know their butt from their elbow about poker.”

  “You mean the shills aren’t pro?”

  That earned me a quizzical look. “Fuck, no,” he said. “Of course not—they must’ve told you that.”

  It was a misstep, a hole in the tissue of lies I was trying to spin him, and I moved to cover it the best way I could.

  “They brought me in because they thought no one here knew me by sight,” I said. “And the whole idea was for me to come in blind. No preconceptions, right? So, no, I didn’t get told very much.”

  “Well, they should’ve told you that, anyways.” Willie’s eyes showed me he still wasn’t totally convinced. But he was still Willie. A snitch. And if there is one thing a snitch can’t resist, it is the chance to make himself look smart by coming up with inside information.