What was this, Tombstone?
I said, “I would imagine a lot of ‘strangers’ come to Haydee’s Port.”
“But why did you?”
I didn’t answer right away.
He jumped on the silence. “One thing, Jack, a lot of people have tried to pull something on me, and on my papa. You know who my papa is?”
I nodded.
He paused in his shuffling to jerk a thumb upward, as if it were God he were referring to and not an old Mafioso. “Different kinds of cops have come here, do-gooders of various varieties, and it’s just never worked out for them.”
“I came to play poker.”
“You understand, we can play kind of rough, and I don’t just mean the cards. This isn’t a matter of me asking you if you’re a cop, and you saying yes or no or whatever, and we cover the entrapment ground. No. That river out there, it doesn’t discriminate between local or federal or reporter or just about anybody who tries to play us.”
I never really intended to pretend to be a salesman of vet supplies, at least not for longer than enough to get in the game, and then come clean later. But I could tell I needed to skip a step.
“My name isn’t really Jack Gibson,” I said.
“What is it then?”
“I haven’t told anybody that in a long time. I’ve used a bunch of names, and I’m using one right now, not Gibson, where I live. And I prefer to keep that private.”
“All right. I can understand that. What brings you to Haydee’s Port? To the Lucky Devil?”
“I used to do work for the Giardellis. I did quite a few jobs for them, usually through a middleman. I did one directly for Lou Giardelli, not long before he passed.”
He had stopped shuffling. He was studying me, eyes tight now, forehead creased, not exactly a frown. Not exactly.
“I came hoping to have a word with your father,” I said.
“About what?”
“Rather not say.”
“If it concerns my father, it concerns me.”
And that was when the first two of our fellow players arrived, and then another showed, and another, and soon we were playing cards.
I have to give Jerry G credit-our interrupted conversation did not seem to throw him off his game. He had good concentration, and played smart cards, marred by an occasional reckless streak. He was friendly to me, often joking between hands, as did they all, but the table talk during play was limited to say the least.
You don’t need to be too concerned about the other men at the table. One was a doctor from River Bluff, a surgeon, and another was a lawyer from Fort Madison; both were in their prosperous mid-fifties. Another was a guy from Port City, Iowa, a good sixty miles upriver, who had blue-collar roots and ran a construction business; he was in his late thirties. The player who’d come the farthest was an executive with John Deere who’d come from Moline.
Everybody seemed to know each other, though this did not seem to be a regular group-my take was that a pool of maybe twelve provided the players for these mid-week games.
Jerry G ran the bank out of a small tin box, and we played white chips at fifty, red chips at one hundred, and blue chips at five hundred. You could only bet five hundred on the last round of betting. I admit I was not used to stakes like this, but you soon learn to just play the cards and bet the chips at their relative value. I played conservatively, and did not bluff. If I bet them, I held them.
The players picked up on this early, and started kidding me about it. Before long they had accepted that I simply did not bluff.
With this approach, I was just barely holding my own. I had trouble in particular with Texas Hold ’Em, which was not a game I’d ever played before. Apparently it was a Vegas favorite, and I did my best. I was strongest on draw poker, which is what I’d grown up playing, though the stud hands were the ones that allowed me to build my “never bluffs” reputation.
The game was pleasant-nobody bitched, nobody got mad, nobody was insulting. These were professional men, and even the construction guy had the right tone, and a good sense of humor-he enjoyed saying “fuck” and “shit” in front of these men who never uttered the words unless a really bad loss came their way. Only the surgeon and the construction guy were smokers, and ceiling fans keep the air breathable.
The little barmaid kept the drinks coming, and here I noticed one of Jerry G’s little tricks-he was not drinking. I had to watch the barmaid out of the corner of an eye to see that Jerry G’s tumblers were being filled not with Scotch but with tea from an under-the-counter pitcher-the boss was like his B girls out front, only pretending to get tipsy. At least he wasn’t talking patrons into buying him Dewar’s that was really Lipton’s.
The music was strictly Vegas-the barmaid was using the turntable, not the CD player, and spinning Frank, Sammy, Dino, Bobby Darin, Keely Smith, Steve Lawrence, that kind of thing. I could see Jerry G, with his heritage, being a traditionalist, but guessed (with that skinny tie of his) that our host might really have preferred Robert Palmer or Kenny Loggins, or in his darker moments maybe Black Sabbath. Most of his guests, however, were of an age that the Vegas lounge lizards were more their style than Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat.
We were set to take a bathroom break around three-thirty, and were playing one last hand before then. Jerry G was dealing a round of Chicago, seven-card stud with the high spade in the hole taking half the pot. There had been some grumbles at the table, since the high spade thing struck several players as damn near offensive as wild cards; but it was clear Jerry G liked to deal a hand of this now and then, so we were all stuck.
The first card dealt me down was the ace of spades. That gave me half the pot, even if the rest of my hand had been warm spit; but it wasn’t-by the time the last bet came around, I had a pair of deuces up, plus the ace of hearts, and a piece of shit. But the three cards in my hand included that ace of spades, the ace of diamonds, and another deuce.
I had been betting modestly, getting everybody to stay in. You might almost call that bluffing, or reverse bluffing, anyway. Everybody but the lawyer took the ride-the pot was huge, two grand and change already. I could tell the surgeon probably had either the king or queen or maybe jack of spades down, and he seemed to have a spade flush going. Between me and Jerry G, in betting order, came the contractor, who could have had a jack-high full house going, and if he had the jack of spades as one of his hole cards, he would have to stay in, with a pot like that.
But the bidding had been hot and heavy enough to give him pause. The contractor bet a modest white chip-fifty bucks.
I had half this pot in the bag, and almost certainly the rest of it. I would like to have raised. I would like to have raised maybe one hundred thousand dollars.
But I checked.
The surgeon was next in line, and he raised a blue chip-five hundred clams.
Jerry G, who had two queens up (and might have had the queen of spades down), saw that bet. The contractor said, “Fuck this shit,” and folded.
I raised another blue chip.
Everybody gave me looks to kill, since checking and then raising was bad manners, if kosher. But the surgeon took the final raise of another blue chip, which both Jerry G and I saw.
I’d been right on every assumption-the surgeon had the king of spades down and a flush. Jerry G had a queens-high full house and the queen of spades down.
But, like I said, I had the ace of spades in the hole, and an ace-high full house, so I hauled in the chips. Math was never my strong suit, though I had to be four grand ahead on just that round.
The players swore at me good-naturedly, and Jerry G nodded for me to follow him out the exit door.
I was near a little light over the door to the poker room, but he was in the shadows, an arrangement he’d contrived. He offered me a cigarillo, I declined, and he lighted up the little cigar, and regarded the rear expanse of the Giovanni kingdom. At three-thirty A.M. on a Wednesday, the graveled lot was damn near full. A big-hair hooker in a
pink spandex minidress was leading a biker like a lamb to the slaughter (or maybe to the slattern) toward one of the eight little trailers that lined the lot at right and left.
“What do you want to talk to my father about, Jack?”
“I mean no offense not telling you, Jerry G. I don’t mind if you accompany me. But I need to talk to him in person.”
The amber eye of the lighted cigarillo stared at me. “What about, Jack?”
I had a feeling I better take a shot. I took it. “I used to work through a middleman, not directly for your friends in Chicago. There was always insulation. You know about insulation.”
“I know about insulation.”
“So maybe you can figure out what kind of work I used to do.”
The cigarillo looked at me; somewhere behind it, Jerry G was looking at me, too. “You don’t have the size for a strongarm. You’re no pipsqueak, but I wouldn’t hire you on as a bouncer, that’s for fucking sure.”
“I’d get a nosebleed up on those boxes. No, my specialty wasn’t handling problems or convincing people not to be problems.”
“Your business is removing problems.”
“Used to be.” I held my hands up in surrender, my empty hands. “I retired. I made a lot of money, and I retired.”
“So you just happened to be in Haydee’s Port.”
“I heard a good time could be had.”
“Got that right. So, then…you just want to pay my papa your respects? I don’t think so.”
I shook my head. “No. I want to tell him about somebody I saw over at the Paddlewheel. Somebody I recognized.”
He settled a hand on my shoulder. Gently. His smile emerged from the darkness, Cheshire Cat style. “Jack, you’re going to have to tell me. The only path to my pop is through me. I’m the gatekeeper, capeesh?”
I capeeshed.
“I saw a guy I’d worked with once in the old days,” I said. “He was a specialist in hit-and-run. You know, ‘accidents’?”
The hand came off my shoulder, the smile disappeared, and the cigarillo tip stared.
“I believed he was casing that guy Cornell, who runs the Paddlewheel-”
“I know who Cornell is.”
“And I think Cornell was his mark.”
“ How do you know, Jack? Did you talk to this old pal of yours?”
Improvising like a jazz solist, I said, “I only worked one job with him, a long time ago, and that was before I had my face worked on.”
“You had a plastic surgery job? That good, was it?”
“My mother wouldn’t know me. Anyway, I didn’t want any part of it. No skin off my ass if my old ‘pal,’ as you put it, takes Cornell out. My experience is, anybody with a target on his back probably mostly put it there himself. Fuck the guy.”
“All right,” Jerry G said.
He’d liked the sound of that, I thought.
“Anyway, last night, or I guess this morning, I was in my car in the Paddlewheel parking lot. I drank too much and fell asleep in the back seat. Something woke me, and I realized it was daylight, and I saw a couple of Cornell’s security guys grabbing Monahan. That’s his name, Monahan, the hit-and-run specialist.”
“What do you mean, grab?”
“Well, more than grab. One of ’em smashed his head into the steering wheel. Then another shoved him over, and took off out of there, and the other Cornell security guy followed in a second car.”
“Disposing of the body…”
“Obviously.”
Silence.
He dropped the cigarillo, crushed it under his heel, and stepped into the light. “And what does this have to do with my father? And me?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I can see who around Haydee’s Port would want rid of Cornell. If a hit on that guy has gone tits up, I figure you guys would want to know about it.”
“Just out of the goodness of your heart.”
“Not really. I thought your papa might think the information was worth a buck. Or maybe…well, I should save this for him.”
He thumped my chest with a finger. Lightly but the threat was there. “No, Jack. Give it to me.”
I shrugged. “I thought you might need somebody else to step in, and take care of Cornell.”
“…But you’re retired, Jack.”
I grinned at him. “Yeah, but I retired early. I’m still healthy enough to pick money up in the street.”
His tan puss split into a white grin. He and Cornell were two fucking peas in one fucking pod.
He slipped an arm around my shoulder and said, “Let’s play cards.”
We played cards. I continued to play conservatively, hanging onto my stacks of chips, which were the envy of the others. I continued not to bluff. When my wristwatch said it was nearing six, I finally asked how late we were going to go.
I could see from the expressions around me that the others would have gone on till either hell froze over or they’d won their money back. Neither seemed likely, and our host knew it.
“Once more,” he said.
He dealt a simple game of five card stud. I’ll cut to the finish, which may be of interest. I had an ace of diamonds up and otherwise bupkus. Jerry had two kings up. We each had two cards down, Jerry having dealt the first and last cards that way. The others had dropped out, and along the way, not a single other ace had been on the board.
Time to bluff.
I had the bet, and tossed out a blue chip.
Jerry G gave me the snort laugh. “You want me to think you’ve got an ace down, Jack? I don’t think you do.”
He raised me a blue chip.
So I raised him another blue chip. “It’s only five hundred to find out.”
He was frowning. I didn’t think it was unfriendly, just a deep, thoughtful frown. He was losing. Down maybe three grand.
“Fucker doesn’t bluff, Jerry G,” the surgeon said.
Jerry G snorted another laugh and threw in his cards. Because it was the last round, though, he gathered all the cards, and I noted him discreetly checking my hand, to see what I’d had. He flinched, but resisted the urge to let everybody know I had indeed, finally, been bluffing. He hadn’t bought the right to see those cards, after all, and that was bad manners indeed.
Jerry G cashed everybody in. I was up six thousand and change above the five thousand I’d brought along. Hands were shaken all around, the little barmaid provided everybody with coffee and sweet rolls (the coffee in Styrofoam to-go cups to prevent the group from lingering), and soon Jerry G and I were by ourselves.
“Let’s talk outside,” he said.
I followed him, and two guys grabbed me. One was the big bald black bastard and the other was the limpnose prick from the dance club. They dragged me out of the lot and into an alleyway between the Lucky Devil and some other dive, and Jerry G followed along. I have no idea how he set it up, other than maybe enlisting his goons by way of a whispered command he’d given the barmaid. He’d risen from the table to do this more than once, and she’d slipped out several times, presumably for supplies, and now I was up against a brick wall, the black guy holding onto my one arm, the noseless guy onto the other, doing my Jesus on the cross impression.
“You’re working for Cornell,” Jerry G said, grinning at me, and it was a vicious thing, a horsey look worthy of a stallion getting ready to kick your head in. “You were seen there, you were heard there, and I gave you a chance to play it straight, but you thought you’d fuck me, didn’t you?”
“I did talk to Cornell! I hadn’t finishing tell you-”
“No, you are finished.”
And Jerry G walked away, into the dawning day, while in the darkness, the two bouncers took turns. I felt a fist rattle my teeth, and another bash my nose, then my belly played punching bag first for one, then the other, while I coughed and gurgled on blood. I wish I could tell you this is where I came roaring back, but the truth is, I fell to my knees and then my face found the filthy brick floor of the alley
and I got used to the taste of blood while they kicked me in the ass and the ribs, and finally the toe of a shoe caught the side of my head.
My last thought was, Shouldn’t have bluffed the fucker…
Chapter Eight
Somebody was asking me a question.
A woman. A girl. Some kind of female…
I couldn’t make it out, but I felt hands on me, small, struggling to get hold of me, trying to lift me, but I just wanted to sleep.
“Come on… come on…get to your feet. They might come back…”
As those words came into aural focus, so did the pain, starting with a blinding headache. I opened my eyes, saw a blur, and shut them again. I was on my side, on something hard, but moving only made it worse. My instinct was to stay put.
“Get up…”
The hands pulled on me, and I found myself standing, through no real effort of my own, a broken puppet whose improbable limbs went in every direction but the right ones, operated by an unseen puppeteer, and the headache eased just a little to let in the pools of pain that were throbbing in seemingly random regions around what had once been my body.
“You have to help…They’re coming back…”
That was when I remembered where I was, if not who I was, and what had happened before I took my nap on a brick bed, specifically that I’d been beaten bloody, and not long ago, because the blood was still warm and wet in my mouth and on my face.
I willed my feet to support me and my legs went along with it and my eyes focused enough to tell my savior was the little blonde stripper I’d done the favor for. She was in a black silk baseball-type jacket and her makeup was off and her hair was ponytailed back and she looked about twelve. She also looked scared shitless.
“You have a car?” she asked.
What the fuck was this, small talk?
But I nodded.
“Parked close?”
She was on my right, helping my legs hold me up. With my left hand, my wrist limper than Paul Lynde’s, I gestured toward the street.
“Ponty,” I said.
She was walking down the alley toward daylight and the street. “Pontiac?”
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