Aces and Knaves

by Alan Cook

  I wrote one down and kept going. I came to my own name, "Patterson, Karl." I clicked on it and went to my page. It contained my address, telephone number, email address and the fact that I was Richard Patterson's son. It noted that I drank iced tea and that I was a card counter. So James did care about that, even though he pretended indifference.

  I continued down the list and wrote another name. I finished the list, went back and clicked on the first of the two names. A personal page appeared. The woman lived in Paso Robles, well south of San Francisco.

  I clicked on the other name, Flora Sung. Her address was San Francisco, but I didn't recognize the street, so I looked it up on my map. It was just two blocks from Grant Avenue and less than a block from where Ned had parked his car. And close to the spot where he had been murdered.

  ***

  I walked up a few steps to the front door of the row house, into a sheltered entryway. There were two buttons beside the intercom. Evidently, the house contained two apartments. I matched one of the buttons to the street address I had and pressed it.

  The house had been here for a while, but it was freshly painted and well cared for. A green plant grew out of a pot on the landing.

  "Who is it?" a female voice asked. I detected a slight accent, probably Chinese, even through the questionable sound quality of the intercom.

  "My name is Karl Patterson," I said. "I'm a friend of James Buchanan."

  "What do you want?"

  That could be the stopper. However, I had nothing to lose. "I...I'd like to talk to you about Ned Mackay."

  Silence. It appeared that I had struck out. Then, "Are you from the police?"

  "No, ma'am. I am...I was a friend of Ned's." Better not say anything more.

  Finally, the welcome sound of a click and the voice saying, "Come up the stairs."

  I opened the door and found the stairs directly in front of me. They creaked as I ascended them. The dark brown color of the wooden stairs and paneled walls didn't lighten the gloom. Nor did several dim lights mounted on a wall.

  The door at the top of the stairs opened, letting out welcome light from the room beyond. In the doorway stood a small woman with short, dark hair and bangs, wearing a skirt and blouse. I couldn't see her face clearly because her back was to the light, but it was round and could be Asian. The sound of opera emanated from beyond the doorway, featuring a man and woman dueling with their exquisite voices.

  "How did you find me?" the woman asked as I climbed the steps toward her.

  "Uh, it's a long story," I said, "but James didn't give me your name, if that's what you're thinking."

  "I wouldn't expect him to," the woman said, holding the door open so I could precede her inside. "He wouldn't want to identify anyone who could bring him into this."

  That was an interesting statement. I walked into a beautifully decorated room, with expensive furniture and trappings. The voices of the opera singers filled the parts of the room not occupied by furniture.

  "I'll turn that down," the woman said, going over to a cabinet and twisting a button on an amplifier. "Would you like some tea, Mr. umm..."

  "Patterson. Yes, if it's no trouble. And you are Flora Sung?"

  "I am she." She gave me a smile that lit up her face and then disappeared into the next room. Her small size tempted one to describe her as cute, a word that is overused, but in her case it fit. I guessed that her age placed her in the same generation with Ned and James.

  When she returned she caught me looking at a somewhat abstract painting on the wall.

  "That's a Joan Miro original," she said. "I bought it one time when I was feeling giddy."

  She ushered me to a seat on a large sofa, sat down beside me and poured tea into china cups.

  "So, do the police know about me?" she asked.

  "No...that is, I don't think so."

  "Are you going to tell them?"

  That was a stumper. "I...don't expect to," I said, hedging a little.

  "Well, you're a nice looking boy so I hope I can trust you. Tell me how you knew Ned." Her voice had a musical sound now that she had accepted me.

  "He worked with my father, Richard Patterson."

  "Oh, that Patterson. I thought your name sounded familiar." She looked at my face with her dark eyes. "Yes, you do resemble your father."

  "So you know him."

  "I've met him a couple of times. And I own some stock in Dionysus. Tell me, has he recovered from his stroke?"

  "Er, yes," I said, caught off guard. "He's back at work. Ms. Sung, I wanted to ask you about the night Ned died. I heard that he might have come here before he was shot, to get a gun."

  "My, you're just a fountain of information, aren't you?" Ms. Sung said, looking at me with surprise. "Tell me what else you know."

  "That's all."

  "That's a relief. For a minute there I thought you were going to tell me my life story. The gun actually belonged to Ned. He insisted that I keep it to defend myself because I live alone. But I can't picture myself ever shooting anyone."

  Ms. Sung stopped talking and sipped her tea. I didn't say anything, hoping she'd continue.

  "I don't think Ned intended to take the gun when he first arrived," she said, and then apparently rethinking the way that sounded, continued, "I've known Ned almost forever. James, too. Anyway, the phone rang and I answered it. It was a woman who said she had a message for Ned from James, or Mr. Buchanan, as she called him. I thought that was strange because, as you know if you know James at all, he surrounds himself with young, good-looking men like yourself."

  "But he does have a woman receptionist."

  "Anyway, I gave the phone to Ned. He talked for a minute, then hung up and asked me for the gun. Naturally, I was concerned so I asked him why he wanted it. He said James wanted to meet him in a questionable part of town so he felt safer carrying the gun. He said he would return it later in the evening." Her voice faltered when she said the last.

  "But you didn't see him again."

  "No." Softly.

  "Do you know what time that was?"

  "A little before nine, I think."

  "Did Ned say why he was meeting James?"

  "They had been talking together about a possible takeover of Dionysus by Tartan, James' company. Ned would have become CEO of Dionysus. Your father would have been out but he would have been left financially well off so I didn't feel too sorry for him. But then Ned had a change of heart and decided he didn't want to team up with James again. I think he was going to tell James this."

  "You know more about what Ned was doing than his wife," I blurted.

  "I've known him longer than his wife—at least in this country," Ms. Sung said, an inscrutable look in her eyes.

  She had been honest with me, as far as I could tell. Should I ask the definitive question? Why not? "Do you think James had Ned killed?"

  Her dark eyes studied me. "No, James isn't a killer. What I do think is this. I think Ned may have taken the gun to give him the guts to tell James off. Not that he would have ever used it against James."

  "But then, was the telephone message from James legitimate or not? I don't think James left his house all evening." A fact easily verified.

  "James told me the message did not come from him. I believe him."

  Then who did it come from?"

  Ms. Sung smiled, sadly. "If you can answer that question you can probably find the killer."

  "Shouldn't you go to the police and tell them what you know?"

  "I don't know anything that would help. It is too late to trace the telephone call and I don't believe James did it so I am not going to implicate him."

  "But it was you that James called when he was looking for—or pretended to be looking for—Ned."

  "Yes."

  "So he knew Ned had been here."

  "But that was no surprise. Ned visited me every time he came to San Francisco. And James, bless his sexually mixed-up little heart, knew that."

  I tried not to show a reactio
n. "What about the cocaine?"

  She shrugged. "Ned was as clean as a newly diapered baby. I don't know anything about the cocaine."

  I couldn't think of any more questions. I said, "Ms. Sung, thank you for your time." I stood up.

  "What are you going to do now?" she asked, also standing. "Are you going to tell the police about me?"

  "No. Although...I would like to reserve the right to do so if I can find out who made the phone call—so that you can verify that the phone call was actually made."

  "If it will clear James I will testify. But I don't think my testimony would make Ned's wife very happy."

  "Probably not. But I guess that's a chance we'd have to take."

  Chapter 32 LOSER

  I arrived at James's place in my rental car just before seven. Arrow pulled into the driveway ahead of me. We walked up the steps together. I had decided not to tell Arrow about Flora Sung because doing that would be tantamount to telling my father and the whole world.

  I was feeling better about Arrow being there. I said to her, "Are you going to solve the puzzle tonight or am I going to have to do it?"

  She said, "The Arrow approach is to bull your way in."

  "Like Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian knot."

  Stan answered our ring and I wondered whether he would let us in at all. He did, without even giving us the puzzle. Either Arrow had set a precedent or you didn't need to solve the puzzle when you were in the middle of a bet.

  Stan met us at the bottom of the stairs. He gave Arrow a hug and shook my hand. I didn't detect any animosity toward me, but that didn't mean it wasn't there.

  He did say to me, "I understand you're going to come to work for us."

  "If he loses," Arrow said. "But he's not going to lose."

  Stan laughed and said, "If we had voted for the most determined student in grad school you would have won. But I'm afraid you can't substitute determination for luck."

  But my luck, or rather my skill, was working and I increased my stake to $3,000 in a relatively short time. Only $1,000 to go. At that point Arrow made me take a break, even though I was hot.

  "I don't know what you mean by hot," Arrow said after we sat down. "I took statistics in grad school and I know that each trial is independent of all others. Each throw of the dice, each deal of the cards, has no relationship to what happened on the previous throw or deal. So there's no such thing as hot."

  I grinned sheepishly and said, "I guess you really did learn something at Stanford."

  "One thing I know that I didn't learn in school is that the longer you play the harder it will be for you to maintain concentration. Therefore, I suggest the following: Bet small until the odds swing in your favor. Then bet a thousand or whatever you need to win."

  "In other words, all or nothing."

  "Not quite. If you lose you'll still be ahead of your original stake."

  The more we discussed this the better it sounded. I went back to the table determined to try to win quickly while Arrow kept an exact count of my chips. The opportunity came three deals later. Toward the end of the deck the odds swung radically in my favor.

  I nudged Arrow. We did a quick calculation and pulled out the chips I needed to reach $4,000. If the dealer was surprised at my bet he didn't show it. He dealt two cards each to the other two players, to me and to himself. His up-card was a six.

  This was the best of all possible worlds. I cautiously looked at my cards. A king and a jack. I mentally counted my money. The other players didn't take any hits and neither did I. The dealer flipped over his down card. It was a five. He dealt himself a jack. Twenty-one. I had lost.

  ***

  "Are you ready for your comeback?" Arrow asked.

  She had made me stop playing for a full half-hour to regain my composure. She had taken the loss much more lightly than I had, but of course she had a lot less to lose. I still had about $2,000, double my original stake, so I could have been in worse shape.

  "What do you think about me betting the whole thing at the next good opportunity?" I asked.

  "That would really be win or lose. No, I can't let you do that. Based on the rules of capital preservation, which you, yourself, taught me, I think your maximum bet for the moment should be $100, until you build up your capital again. Don't worry; I'll stick with you as long as it takes."

  I agreed to this strategy, went back to the table and immediately started losing. I knew there was no such thing as hot or cold, but if there had been I was an iceberg. Soon I had less than my original thousand. We took another break.

  "There's nothing wrong with your strategy," Arrow said. "You're playing the same game you were before. All I can think of is one of your own quotes: If you play games of chance long enough you'll see every combination that is statistically possible."

  "It's very comforting that my own wisdom explains why I'm dying," I said. "Well, we might as well get it over with."

  It didn't take long. I lost my last dollar as someone sang about that old Bilbao moon. Bilbao, Spain. I wished I were there instead of here. Arrow patted me on the back like a mother patting a child. She didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.

  The dealer must have pushed a button or something because James immediately appeared out of nowhere. He shook my hand and said, "I'm told you played very well. The fates just weren't with you tonight. Let's the three of us sit down for a minute. I want to ask you a question."

  I was too stunned to do anything but obey. We talked about the gods of chance until our drinks appeared, including a margarita for Arrow who had decided it was time to fall off the wagon.

  "I have a question for you," I told James. "What is it that you're always drinking? If I'm going to work for you I have to know things like that."

  "Of course you do," he said, smiling. "It's water."

  "Perrier, or some other designer brand?"

  James shook his head. "I reserve the Perrier for my guests. I drink tap water. I learned in school that water is water, H2O, and there's not much you can do to it, and since the city of San Francisco assures me that the tap water has no dangerous levels of carcinogens in it, why not? I drank it in Scotland and I can drink it here."

  If I was going to go to work for James I needed to make arrangements with him. I was about to mention that when he started talking again.

  "What I want to know," he said, "is what question you wanted to ask me that was so important that you were willing to risk having to work for me for a year to ask it. Although working for me is not going to be as bad as you seem to think."

  "It doesn't matter now," I said. I was formulating a vague plan about infiltrating James' organization from the inside and solving the murder.

  "Ask me the question, Karl. Who knows, I might even answer it."

  Why not? What could he do, fire me? Or have me killed sooner than he would, otherwise? Actually, asking the question with Arrow there was a relatively safe thing to do. I cleared my throat and said, "What I want to know is...the question is, did you have anything at all to do with the murder of Ned?"

  I watched James' face closely. He looked flabbergasted at first. Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face and he started to chuckle. Finally, he turned sober and said, "I'm glad we got this out in the open. What kind of an animal do you think I am? Okay, it's true that I prey on people, on their dreams and hopes and fears. On their abiding faith that they can beat the odds. But I don't kill them. That wouldn't be sporting."

  He sounded so sincere that he had me convinced, at least for the moment.

  Arrow said, "Karl isn't the only one who has considered that possibility. I have, too. Can you prove you didn't kill Ned?"

  James became irritated. "Do you mean, do I have an alibi? As Karl can tell you, I was here with him around the time it happened. But that doesn't mean I couldn't have ordered it done. If I had I probably wouldn't have told people that the drugs found in Ned's car looked like a setup. Why would I help to refute my own misleading evidence?

>   "But more than that, I had no reason to kill Ned. As you two know, we grew up together, worked together, played together, even shared Elma." He smiled. "I might have had a better motive to kill him then than I do now. It's true that Ned and I were talking about Dionysus. We had our differences and might not have reached an agreement. But that's business.

  "If I killed people because of business disagreements I'd be the leading serial killer of all time. Besides, Ned started acting a little crazy before he died and I wasn't sure I even wanted to do business with him."

  "So you won't have me killed if I don't deliver Elma's proxy," I said.

  James smiled again and said, "No. But I might ask you to work for me for an additional year. I suspect that you and I can make a lot more money together than that baseball card is worth. You have good instincts and you're not afraid to take chances. All I have to do is train you to take chances when the odds are in your favor."

  ***

  "I completely screwed everything up." I didn't say this directly to Arrow, although she was the only person within earshot. It was a general statement to the universe. We were standing next to Arrow's rental car, after having left the casino.

  "Talk to your father, Karl. Tell him that you didn't try to get Elma to change her proxy. You didn't undermine him. He'll respect that."

  "Even if he believes me, how can I explain why I'm working for James when I won't work for him?"

  "Lots of kids don't want to work for their fathers. You haven't done anything to hurt Dionysus, that's the main thing. In fact, you have been trying to solve Ned's murder. And you and I gathered the evidence that swung Elma's proxy over to Richard."

  My behavior had been Jekyll-and-Hyde toward my father, toward Dionysus. I wasn't proud of it. In addition, I had ethical questions about working for James, even though I knew I would learn a lot. I needed time alone. My head was a swirling mass of confusion.

  I said goodnight to Arrow. She patted me on the shoulder again. She had become my mother. After she drove away I checked my rental car to make sure it wasn't blocking anybody. I didn't feel like driving; I needed to walk.

  The route to my hotel went steeply uphill at first. That was good. It would get my heart pumping, help me exhale the poisons from my body. Soon I was panting in fine style.