Philanthropist

by Larry Hill

“I just know. I know what kind of man I am.”

  “Fred. That’s going to be really hard to sell to a jury.”

  “I guess it is. But you’re the best. You can do it.”

  “Thanks for your confidence. You’re more confident that I am. I got to tell you that you may well be convicted.”

  “So you think I’ll go to prison?”

  “Remember, we talked about that. Our best bet is to convince the judge that society is better off with you under house arrest than in the penitentiary.”

  “Oh yeah. You did tell me that. Make sure it happens.”

  “Not my call. It’ll be up to the judge. Let’s hope she sees it the same way. In the meantime, I’m going to make one more attempt to get the DA to see it our way and accept the plea bargain for house arrest.”

  Greenberg talked directly to the DA. He said they’d accept as many as five year’s house arrest. The DA did not see it their way. Jury selection was set for three weeks hence.

  A week later, Jennifer and Fred lay together in bed, both finding it impossible to fall asleep. Sex, previously a precedent and instigator of sleep, was, after the failed attempt of three months earlier, not an alternative. They rarely had talked about the possibility of their not being together, either because of his death or his incarceration. They almost never talked about anything after the lights were out. With the trial getting close, that changed.

  “Jennifer.”

  “Yes, darling.”

  Fred sat straight up. “I’m guilty. I killed Teresa Spencer. I took away the mother of a child, as surely as had I shot her with a gun. How can I not go to jail?”

  “I don’t want you to go to jail. I need you with me. I love you, old man.”

  “How can I have you in my bed when I am responsible for Mark Spencer having to sleep alone?”

  “Come on, my love. What good will come to Mark Spencer if you are in prison? You’ve paid a big price already. Your life has been shattered, beyond repair.”

  “But I’m alive. Teresa is dead. The price I have paid is tiny compared to hers.”

  “Isn’t that why you are going to have a trial – to let others who don’t know you and didn’t know her decide what price is right?”

  “Jen, I think I should call Greenberg and tell him to accept a prison term.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it now. Let’s just go to sleep and talk about it tomorrow.”

  Neither mentioned the issue the following day or the days thereafter. Greenberg did not receive a call.

  It was Optometrist Lenny Gettleman’s turn to host the Friday night poker game the weekend before the trial. Klein had not attended, or been invited to attend, since the aborted four-man match many months earlier. The late Jake Ross’s spot had been filled by JJ Munther, a transplant from Ft. Worth, but Munther was away at a high-end Texas Bat Mitzvah. The idea of inviting Fred was floated; Schofield was of the mind that his friend was up to the task. Jennifer agreed, with minimal hesitation. She bought the big bag of Doritos and two tubs of hummus. At Schofield’s recommendation, she purchased the groceries to obviate any publicity that might result from the alleged felon making a return visit to the now famous convenience store on California St. The case and impending trial had been resurrected as a feature story in print and electronic media.

  “You up to this, Fred?” asked the attorney as they circled Gettleman’s block in the Sunset District, looking for the ever elusive parking space.

  “Yep. Good to go.” Klein was dressed, once again, in his poker outfit, just back from the dry cleaner.

  “You weren’t so good to go six months ago. You acted like you had never played. Tell me. Does a flush beat a full house?”

  “Cut the shit, Artie. You think I’m an idiot?”

  “Does it?”

  “Yes, goddamit. No, I mean, no.”

  “I’m worried about you, Fred Baby.”

  “Don’t worry. How much could I lose – another fifty bucks? I’m a rich son-of-a-bitch. I can afford it.” They found a parking space four blocks from the Gettleman place.

  “OK. Let’s give it a try.”

  As Art opened the door to get out, Fred said, “Just a second.”

  “Change your mind? Want to wait ’til after the trial?”

  “No, that’s not it. I want to play. It’s about the trial. I want to plead guilty and serve time.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “Just what I said. I should go to jail.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m guilty. I killed Teresa Spencer, then I ran away.”

  “Jesus, Fred, that’s quite a change of pace. Let’s talk about it after the game. We’ve got plenty of time. There are seven guys tonight, not four like our last go-round. We can’t keep ‘em waiting.” Fred, whose gait was considerably friskier than that of his friend, slowed his pace to allow Art and his cane to keep up.

  The two entered Gettleman’s modest home. The other five players were already at their fold-up metal chairs. The host had covered the pool table in the middle of the family room with plywood and draped it with a mauve blanket. Seven stacks of red, white and blue chips were already positioned around in anticipation of the game about to begin. Fred and Art each added four ten dollar notes into the traveling rosewood bowl and set the chips and hummus, plus Schofield’s coconut cream pie, on the snack table. All of the five early-comers had open beers in front of them. Art followed suit while Fred popped a 7 Up. The distribution of the first seven cards selected the man to the left of Klein as the initial dealer. He was a young Indian-American guy, maybe 35, whose name Fred couldn’t remember after having been introduced three minutes before. He dealt out a quick hand of five card draw, jacks or better to open, which was won by one of the old boy network, Smith, who wore a 49ers cap and a neck brace. Fred, having nothing higher than a ten in his hand, dropped out before the draw. The deal rotated to Klein.

  “Gentlemen, how about a hand of seven card stud, high-low?”

  “Sounds good to me.” “Go for it.”

  Art became anxious. The game was more complex than draw. No way that his good friend would have dealt a hand of stud last time they got together.

  His shuffling technique was clumsy but there was no doubt that he had done a workmanlike job of rendering the cards in random order. Seven stud involves giving each player two cards face down, then one face up, followed by four more up cards, one at a time. Bets take place after each round of up cards. The high-low addition requires that each of the remaining players decides after the last card is dealt if he is going to go after the half of the pot that goes to the best hand at the table or the half for the worst. Dementia, even mild dementia, would make the task of dealing and controlling a hand of this game essentially impossible. Fred succeeded. He dealt flawlessly. His hand showed no promise after the second up card, so he folded. The pot was shared, half to the Indian man who had a straight and half to Bill Kreutzer who had 7,5,4,3, ace, known in the trade as a seventy five, an excellent low. The old banter for which Klein was famous (pair of whores and a bullet = two queens and an ace), was absent, but his motor and cognitive skills were fully intact. Each player got the right number of cards in the right sequence – up when they should be up, down for down. Fred was back!

  The deal passed around the table clockwise. Every seventh deal fell to Fred Klein and every time he chose a different game, never failing to get the cards to the right player at the correct time. It was like he had never been gone. He won a few, lost a few more and folded early in the majority of hands. By snack break, he was about five dollars in the hole.

  “What’s this dip, Fred? Where’s the clam and sour cream? This one’s got beans in it,” asked Gettleman.

  “Talk to my wife. She bought it. Said that it was healthier than clam dip.”

  “Screw healthy! At least you brought Doritos and not some lo-cal thing.”

  Scattered on the snack table, in addition to Klein’s contribution and Schofield’s
pie, were gourmet popcorn, herring in wine, garlic nan and, from the host, a big plate of cold cuts including turkey, pastrami, and lox. All went well with coconut cream pie. By the end of the break, most of the players were complaining about gut aches and/or the desire to vomit.

  They reassembled at the pool table at eleven. “Ninety minutes to go, gentlemen,” announced the host. Decades earlier, the games would go into the wee hours, often ending not long before sunup. That changed as the players aged. For most, a windup time of 12:30 was well beyond their bedtimes.

  Fred won two of the first three hands after the restart. His status changed from low level loser to fairly significant winner, as not only did he hold good hands, but so did some of his competition, just not quite as good as his. The pots that he raked in were, as a result, sizable. He folded the next three hands and the deal rotated to him.

  “Let’s play Omaha, high-low.” Schofield was impressed that his friend was prepared to take on the most challenging game that the group had in its repertoire. Omaha involves each player getting four of his own cards and five common cards for all to use. The final hand requires each player to use two from his own hand and three from the shared group. It’s a complex poker game, a bigger logistical challenge than the usual draw and stud.

  He successfully doled out the four cards to each player. A round of betting eliminated only one of the seven. Of the five shared cards, three are uncovered at once. Four, ace, ace. Very, very good group for those going either high or low. Nobody folded when Smith bet two dollars. Next, one card. A six of hearts. No obvious help for the highs, good for the lows. Smith bet two dollars again, the Indian guy raised and Gettleman raised him. Two dropped out. Schofield and Klein called by throwing in six dollars each. “Last card, my friends,” said Klein as he reached for the deck.

  He picked up the cards with his left hand. His right hand grasped for the top card to turn over, revealing the last up card of the deal. The card was in his hand and then it wasn’t. It fell out, face down in front of the dealer, not face up to the side of the previous four up cards. Klein’s right hand dropped to the table top. “Ugghh.”

  “What’s up Fred?” asked Schofield, seated to his right.

  “Ugghh.” The deck dropped out of his left hand. He moved his left hand to retrieve them but missed them by three inches.

  “Hey, Fred. Talk to me.”

  “Uh. Ugghh.” The left side of his mouth moved normally. The right side was fixed in a half open position.

  “Let’s go over to the couch Fred.” Art put his hand in his lifelong friend’s armpit and raised him up from the metal chair. His left leg supported some weight. The right leg was motionless as Klein, unbalanced, fell to the floor. He did not hit his head on the hardwood flooring. Four players lifted him, one on each extremity, and carried him to the sofa.

  “Can you hear me, Fred?” asked Schofield.

  Klein looked at him, fear in his eyes. “Ugghh.” He shook his head, as if to say, NO, NO, NO.

  “Call 911. I think he’s having a stroke.” Smith pulled out his smart phone, punched the buttons and asked for help.

  “My wife has a blood pressure cuff upstairs. Shall I get it?” asked Gettleman.

  “I don’t know what we’d do with the information. Forget it. What’s his pulse?” Art asked the question and got the answer by holding his left wrist. “Feels pretty normal to me. Fred, you’re going to be fine. None of that slow pulse problem like you had before. We’ll get you in an ambulance and get you taken care of.”

  NO, NO, NO. He shook his left hand and his head. He attempted to sit up. No luck. A tear appeared in his motionless left-facing-right eye.

  Sirens heralded the arrival of the City Ambulance which pulled up into Gettleman’s driveway. The two EMTs darted into the family room and cut off Klein’s shirt. They put an oxygen mask on and turned it to high flow. They slapped a monitor on his chest then wrapped their blood pressure cuff on his good arm. 180/80. Pulse 60. EKG monitor showing that his heart was entirely under the electronic control of the pacemaker, but it was working just fine.

  “How are you doing, Sir?

  “Ugghh.” He flapped his left hand as if waving goodbye.

  “Can you shake hands with me?” He offered his boxer-like right hand. There was no response from Klein. “How about those feet?” No movement from the right, moderate movement on the left.

  “Who knows anything about this man?”

  “I do, he’s my best friend,” answered a distraught Art Schofield.

  “Tell me what you know. What’s his name? How old is he?”

  “Fred Klein and he’s 77.”

  “THE Fred Klein? The one whose trial is next week?”

  “Yes. That’s him.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said the lead EMT to his sidekick who was busy putting an IV in the patient’s right arm. “I pulled this guy out of some bar in the Tenderloin a couple years back. As I recall, he had a stroke then too and something wrong with his heart. It wasn’t ’til the next day that I found out he was the guy who ran into and killed the Spencer woman.”

  “Please talk with more respect if you will. I think that Fred can understand everything you are saying.”

  “Sorry. You’re probably right about that. What can you tell me about what’s happened?”

  “You were correct about the heart. He had a heart attack and his pulse got very slow. So he fell. No stroke. He bled into his skull and suffered brain damage, but he was pretty much back to normal after surgery and a pacemaker. Tonight, we were playing poker.”

  “Yeah, I can tell.”

  “He was dealing and suddenly a card fell out of his right hand and he couldn’t do anything but grunt. We tried to get him to walk to the couch, but he fell. We caught him on the way down. Looks like he can move the left side but not the right. I think he knows when I’m talking to him but he can’t talk back to me.”

  “Was he drinking?” The EMT saw the scattering of beer cans on the table.

  “No, he drank 7 Up. Except for a few drops of wine at a party, I don’t think he’s had anything since the last time you saw him.”

  “Smoke?”

  “He hasn’t had a cigarette since college. He might smoke one cigar every five years.”

  “Marijuana? Cocaine? Does he shoot up?”

  “Jesus, what a stupid question! No.”

  “Gotta ask. This is San Francisco.” The EMT radioed into San Francisco General. “We’ve got a 77-year-old male who appears to have had a left middle cerebral stroke. Dense right hemiparesis and severe aphasia. Has a pacemaker, working OK. Vitals are normal. We’re out in the Sunset. Maybe 15 minutes. We’ll use the sirens.” Rapid response is everything in the emergency treatment of a stroke.

  “Jennifer, this is Art. Bad news, I’m afraid. I think that Fred’s had a stroke.”

  “Oh, God. What happened?”

  “He was doing fine and suddenly he couldn’t move his right side and he couldn’t talk – just grunt. The ambulance is just leaving, going to General.”

  “Oh, no, not there again. Can’t he go to UC or CPMC?”

  “The EMT said he was going to General. We didn’t complain and Fred couldn’t if he wanted to. They did a pretty good job with him last time. And, it doesn’t hurt that they know his case already.”

  “But that’s a hell hole. He hated it.”

  “You know, Jen, he probably wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for the care he got there when his heart and brain both needed treatment. We can always move him after he gets stabilized. I can’t imagine that he’ll need surgery this time.”

  “Jason’s here. We’ll go over right now. You going?”

  “Of course, I’m going. He’s my friend. And Jen, guess what?”

  “What?”

  “He was the big winner tonight. And he was the Fred of old.”

  The General Hospital Emergency Room was its usual chaotic self for a Friday night/Saturday morning. Gun shots, stabbings, falls, auto wrecks, psych
oses, chest pains, breathing difficulties, bloody noses, ear wax blockages, pink eyes, acute abdomens, delirium tremens, cocaine and heroin ODs, broken hips, arms, and collar bones, and itchy rashes that had been there for ten days but just got itchier that night. The ambulance had made it, sirens blaring, into its bay from the Sunset in less than fifteen minutes. Being a weekend night, the same silver-haired nurse that had triaged Klein after the fall in the Tenderloin was again on duty. She had heard from the EMT that a VIP was on the way; she had made sure that the three fat volumes of medical data, accumulated during his extended stay, were available for the ER docs to peruse. The nurses were vets, the docs and students, for the most part, rookies.

  “Mohammed, we’ve got Fred Klein coming in with a possible CVA!” yelled the triage nurse.

  “Who is Fred Klein, please?” asked the first year ER resident. This was his second night on call in the Mission.

  “Don’t you read the papers, man? He’s the guy who is supposed to go on trial Monday for a hit and run. We had him here for a subdural and an MI right after his crime…’scuse me, alleged crime.”

  Time to teach. Two third year med students were starting their ER rotation, one hefty black guy who had been a linebacker on the hapless Dartmouth varsity, one ultrathin blond for whom some half of her spoken words were either ‘awesome’ or ‘like.’ “The ambulance people say he’s had a stroke. What’s the differential?” asked the resident.

  “Hypoglycemia?” volunteered the linebacker.

  “Good. What do we do to rule that out?”

  “Find out, like, if he’s a diabetic?”

  “He can’t talk. Maybe he wears a wrist band, but most don’t. What else?”

  “Give him glucose. Like 50 cc of 50%.”

  “Right – he’d wake up right away. What else in the differential?”

  “Drugs?”

  “What drugs?”

  “Narcotics. Sedatives.”

  “He’s 77. Any chance he’d do drugs?”

  Probably not, but maybe. Suicide attempt?”

  “Sure. Don’t forget trauma. His chart showed that he came in last time with a subdural. Could happen again.”