Dead Money

by Grant Mccrea

Seriously, I said, just between you and me …

  He laughed a good-natured laugh, which I ignored.

  … just between you and me, doesn’t the whole thing strike you as a bit of a snake pit?

  What whole thing? he asked disingenuously.

  The twins thing. The mother thing. The whole thing.

  I was being deliberately vague. I didn’t want to tell him anything he didn’t already know.

  He reciprocated.

  Ah yes, he said. It’s an interesting family.

  Don’t you think there might be some rather tangled motives in all of that? Stuff worth following up?

  We follow up whatever seems appropriate to follow up, he said, a testy edge creeping into his voice.

  Well, can you tell me anything about these twins? Without revealing any trade secrets, of course.

  He gave me a wan smile. Thought an inordinately long time. I pulled out a cigarette. Lit it. What the hell. I figured I was entitled. He wrinkled his nose slightly, but didn’t protest. That was good enough for me.

  They’re curious, he said at last.

  Curious?

  Yes. Curious.

  In what way?

  He thought again. I could almost see the wheels spinning inside that handsome head.

  They’ve certainly taken full advantage of their position, he said. In what way?

  The phone rang. The ADA looked me in the eye while he answered it.

  He nodded his head once or twice.

  Okay, he said into the phone. I’ll be right there.

  He smiled apologetically.

  The audience was over.

  I bowed to the inevitable. I very politely excused myself. He very politely excused the interruption. I understood, I assured him. It’s the nature of the business.

  The elevator ride to the street seemed to take forever.

  Damn. The guy could have given me a bone. Dropped a crumb.

  39.

  I NEEDED TO GET OUT OF TOWN.

  I popped into a record store. Picked up a couple of Allman Brothers CDs. Grabbed a cab. Curiously, it had no smell. I directed the driver to the local Avis shop. Rented a generic pale blue car, with Utah plates. I’d hit the road. A good long drive would give me time to think.

  On second thought, I didn’t want to spend that much time with myself.

  I called Butch.

  Butch, I said, let’s hit a casino.

  I hope you don’t mean what it sounds like you mean, he said with a laugh.

  No, no. Let’s go play poker.

  Ah. Poker. I’m tempted.

  Come on. Take the rest of the day off. I did. If I can do it, you can do it.

  I’m not sure that’s always true, he chuckled. But today, it just might be. I don’t have a whole lot on my plate.

  I’ll pick you up in ten.

  Man. You’ve got a serious Jones on.

  I do. Come protect me from myself.

  Okay. But I’m charging my usual rates.

  No problem. I’ll take it out of my winnings.

  I picked up Butch. We hit the road. I asked him to drive. I wanted to look at the pictures.

  I figured we’d go to one of those new Indian reservation casinos. I’d never been to one before, but they were popping up everywhere. We could do our bit for the indigenous peoples, and scratch that poker itch.

  I was pretty sure I knew which one was closest to the city, and what road to take. I wagered there’d be signs as we approached.

  Once we were on the road I asked Butch if there were any developments in the Larry Silver case. That he could share with me.

  Not really, he told me.

  I pulled out the manila envelope. Looked at the crime scene photos. Offered them to Butch.

  Nah, he said. Seen them before.

  It was the usual grisly stuff. The left side of the kid’s face was caved in. Okay, right-handed perp. That really narrowed it down. I made a note to check Jules. We get lucky, he’s left-handed. Blood soaked down Larry’s shirt. Stopped and pooled at the belt-line. He was sitting down when he got whacked. Another interesting detail. Maybe. Nothing much else.

  Murder weapon? I asked.

  I’m not supposed to tell you that.

  Come on, Butch. They find anything?

  He didn’t respond.

  I peered at the photos. Turned them this way and that. The wound was ugly. But symmetrical. Rounded. Narrower at one end.

  Baseball bat? I asked.

  Butch glanced at me. Didn’t say anything.

  Baseball bat? I repeated.

  He looked at me again. Winked.

  I wasn’t sure what it meant.

  There were signs for the casino, but it still took us hours to find the place. Once you got off the thruway you had to thread your way through rural roads and small towns, and in the end a forest. Twenty minutes of trees and the road opened up, and there it was: a string of behemoth casino buildings, stark, banal and insistent, in the middle of nowhere.

  Not your father’s Indian reservation.

  Inside, we navigated miles of not so tempting kitsch. Trinket shops, arcades, three zillion tacky restaurants and the usual array of glittering machines designed to take your money all night long. We found the poker room, way in the back. They didn’t want to advertise the game. The margins were too low. It was the only game you didn’t play against the house, which meant that though the take was regular – a small percentage of each pot was raked – it was not spectacular. Never would be.

  Three in the afternoon. The few active tables were full of lifers. The yellow faces and stale banter of guys who’d played each other every night and day for years. Just keeping busy til some fish swam up.

  Once I sat and played a hand they’d all converge like sharks on chum.

  Butch had no fear. He sat down. Bought in for five hundred. Gave me the wink and the nod.

  I, on the other hand, I told myself, am not that stupid.

  I wandered back through noisy corridors. They beckoned me at every step to spend my hard-earned cash on things I didn’t want and needed less. Blow-up alien dolls. Ten-dollar plastic amulets. Tickets for the second coming of some washed-up third-rate crooner.

  I resisted the temptations. I found the hotel desk. Checked in for a nap.

  Butch was a big boy. He could take care of himself.

  The elevator to the rooms was hard to find. They’d hidden it in a corner. Back behind the Indian trinket shop. They didn’t want you in your room. You couldn’t spend your money there.

  The bed was hard. The TV didn’t work. There was no mini-bar.

  I fell asleep.

  I had a dream. I was pulling at my ear. The ear came off in my hand. I looked at it with curiosity. Turned it over in my hand. On the back were buttons. Ah, I thought, in my dream, so that’s how they’re attached.

  I drifted slowly awake. I touched my ear.

  It was there.

  There were no buttonholes.

  I had no idea what time it was. My watch said seven o’clock. Morning or evening, I wasn’t sure. The window in the room overlooked an atrium. No help there. Until I looked up. Skylights, black as pitch. Evening, then. A winter night in paradise.

  I smoothed the creases from my suit.

  40.

  IT SEEMED FIVE MILES to find the poker room again. I stopped for coffee and a Danish. The Danish was obscenely sweet, the coffee thin and odorless.

  I found Butch. It wasn’t hard. He hadn’t left his seat. The table had become highly promising. Two guys in Hawaiian shirts and shorts, red-faced and pounding bourbon shots. One long-haired guy, steaming. Cursing every card as it was dealt. Guaranteed irrationality on tap. It’s what you dream of. A brace of young depressed compulsive losers there as well.

  Heaven.

  I sat down.

  Deal me in, I said.

  It was a five-ten limit game. Not huge, but you could win, or lose, enough to make you notice. I started slow, conservative. Taking time to educate myself about the
players’ tendencies. Mr. Longhair jamming every pot with hope and desperation, trying to recoup his long-lost stake. The depressives on the other hand played slow. Agonizing over every bet. Tight and passive, they call it. Plum pickings. Any time you felt like taking their money, you just put in a big bet. If they didn’t have the nuts, they’d fold like origami. If they had the cards, they’d gleefully re-raise, their childlike excitement so apparent on their sallow desperate faces you’d have to be a brick to fail to notice.

  Not to say there weren’t some good players at the table too. Butch. Me, maybe. A woman to my left. Small and feisty. I liked that. I liked the worn suede boots she wore, zipper on the side. I liked the tear in the knee of her jeans. I liked the hand-knit driving gloves, the crumpled visored khaki hat. I liked her large and succulent mouth, her watchful eyes. I liked that she chewed gum with unselfconscious vigor. That she threw her chips into the pot the same way.

  With all the dead money at the table, it didn’t take long to double my stake.

  Once I’d taken a couple of easy pots from the sallow pair of desperados, they wandered off to recoup at the slot machines.

  I wished them luck.

  I meant it.

  I had a small rush.

  Poker players live for the rush. The statistics guys tell you it’s all random. And yes, you can grasp that. But, like saying love’s a chemical affair, it might be true, but it doesn’t come close to describing what it’s like to be there. When you know, you just know, the next card will fill your boat. Full house. Give me your money. And the rush can run and run, hand after hand of mammoth cards in the hole and improbable draws on the end. Until, as suddenly as it started, you hit a wall. Bricks in your face. Wake up. Back to normal. Fold, fold, fold.

  The key is to recognize the rush when it comes. Loosen up. And when it ends, go tight again, before you lose it all.

  Every poker player knows the rush. Even the bean counters, the statisticians. A rush by any other name is still a rush. The master of the rush is the master of the game.

  But it’s a truism that most decent players can maintain their A-game only for an hour or two. Success, especially, tends to weaken your resolve.

  I was no exception. I started loosening up. Feeling cocky. Playing non-suited connectors for a raise. Forgetting to vary my play. Even tourists will pick up your habits after a while. I was duly punished a couple of times, most embarrassingly by one of the Hawaiian shirt guys. Lost half of what I’d gained, on busted draws. Retrenched. Went back to tight aggressive. Got back to double.

  The hours went past like a river in the rain. The dawn came through the skylights. It seemed like I had just sat down when I looked up and half the tables had emptied. As the high-limit tables broke up the pros drifted over, looking for small fish to fry. The game got tough. Butch was up a grand. He could play with these guys, with a cushion like that. I stayed awhile, to see if I could hold my own with them. A glib young Asian guy with shades and a thin mustache slow-played a boat and caught me napping. Just calling with two pair instead of raising or getting out. He and the dealer bantered like old friends. A grizzled bent-backed veteran sat down. He and the Asian guy traded unsubtle gibes about the fishing season.

  It didn’t take me long to figure out the fish was me.

  I folded a few hands, until I finally got something worth playing. Ace Queen off-suit. A good hand. Not a great one. A hand that could get you in trouble, especially in early position. I raised. The old guy re-raised. The Asian guy called. Everyone else folded. I had a bad feeling.

  The flop came Queen and rags. It’s the flop you want with that hand. If an Ace comes, you can get out-kicked by someone with Ace King, which is exactly the type of hand the old man might have re-raised me with. But with the Queens, I couldn’t get out-kicked. I had the Ace. And if an Ace came now, well, Aces up can win a lot of money. So I was feeling better.

  I put in a bet.

  The old guy raised, and the Asian guy re-raised. Hell, I thought. What was going on here? It was a rainbow-flop – the three flopped cards were different suits – and far enough apart that straight draws were unlikely, the more so because of the pre-flop action. Someone could have the same hand as me, of course, which would be a pain but not a disaster. The big problem was if someone had flopped trips. I eyed my two opponents. Could one of them have played that way pre-flop with a small pair, hit the trips on the flop? Sure.

  Damn. I didn’t know what to do. And I was taking too much time thinking about it. Giving them a read. I always try to take the same seven seconds to make my move. Fold, call, bet, fake an angina attack, whatever. Keep the tells to a minimum. But I was well over ten seconds. I could feel them figuring me.

  I folded my Queens.

  The old guy and the Asian guy checked it down. Showed their cards. Junk.

  That was enough for me. They were very good. Or colluding. Or both.

  I got up and stretched. The pros encouraged me to stay, eyeing my remaining chips. I declined.

  Butch gave me a Look. The Look said: Hey, man, you’re a pussy.

  The office beckoned. A three-hour drive awaited. It wasn’t going to be an easy day.

  Come on, I said. I got to get to work.

  Butch heaved a sigh of friendly exasperation.

  We cashed our chips. Butch had a healthy wad. I hadn’t done as badly as it felt.

  Hey, I said, I did you a favor. Those guys were going to eat us both for breakfast.

  Speak for your own self, said Butch.

  I grabbed an acrid coffee from the kiosk by the door. I tipped the valet an absurd amount from the chips I’d kept.

  They’re only made of clay, I told Butch.

  He shook his head in mock despair.

  We got into the car.

  My first instinct, on settling into the well-upholstered seat, was to lean it back and sleep. I fought the feeling, shifted slowly into drive. I drove. I felt empty. My stomach growled and hurt. I hadn’t eaten all night.

  My mind wandered with the road. Against my better inclinations, I started talking about Warwick.

  He was not a man you reasoned with, I told Butch. Warwick was a man you obeyed or defied. There was no middle ground. The last time I’d tried to reason with him, I’d learned my lesson.

  I’d come to the defense of a junior lawyer who’d been accused of having too much fun. Some associates had gone out partying one night, after a long day of combing through hundreds of boxes of financial documents. They’d had some drinks. Things got a little out of hand. Unfortunately for the young fellow in question, somebody had a disposable camera, and took a few shots of him blearily, and apparently incompetently, trying to impress his favors on a female associate. She was herself possessed of considerable, shall we say, charms. Which charms were rather well displayed, in at least one of the photos.

  I was Chairman of the Hiring Committee at the time. Sometimes better known as the Firing Committee. Warwick called me into his office. Showed me the pictures.

  I laughed. Silly kids, having a little fun.

  Warwick found my laughter inappropriate.

  What we see here, he said, is highly unprofessional behavior.

  Charles, I said. They’re just kids. Need I remind you of some of the more entertaining evenings we had as juniors?

  He looked genuinely puzzled. It struck me that in fact he did need to be reminded – Warwick had a prodigiously selective memory. But as soon as I began describing a certain hot-oil wrestling incident of fifteen years earlier, he cut me off.

  Those were different times, Redman, he barked. There are potential liabilities here.

  Charles, I said. Last I heard the girl hadn’t complained to anyone.

  Be that as it may, he replied in his flat stentorian voice, the firm has a responsibility to react forcefully and expeditiously to such incidents.

  Why should this guy be punished out of proportion to the event? I asked. Just because he was unlucky enough to have been with someone who had a camera? Worse th
ings happen every night of the week, I’m sure.

  We cannot fail to act when we have acquired reliable information, he pontificated. To do so could set a precedent, or be used as evidence of a firm policy of disregarding such incidents.

  Don’t you think this is a bit hypocritical? I asked. A whole bunch of our partners are married to former associates, Charles.

  We cannot allow the values of the past, even if we personally share them, to undermine the well-being of the firm.

  I felt like I was talking to a badly programmed automaton, and was about to launch into a screed about his lack of humanity when I noticed on his desk a piece of paper filled with neatly regimented point-form sentences. I belatedly realized that he’d been glancing down at his desk regularly as he spoke.

  Egad, I thought. Talking points.

  He’d been reading from a script.

  I hadn’t been talking to a human being. I’d been talking to a piece of paper.

  Butch laughed long and loud.

  With an evil as overweening as Warwick’s, I said, driving mechanically toward the office, there must be a pre-existing pestilence, germinating in some organ or another. The spleen, probably. The gall bladder. Some eighteenth-century thing involving bile. I’m confident that whatever it is will kill him someday. I’m just not sure I can wait that long.

  I got some friends, said Butch with a laugh. Anatomists.

  Anatomists?

  Sure. They specialize in certain bones.

  Bones?

  Sure. Kneecaps. Like that.

  Sure, Butch, I chuckled, have them call me up. We’ll do lunch.

  For a moment, just a moment, I thought it might be a real good idea.

  41.

  THE OFFICE, WHEN I FINALLY GOT THERE, seemed a touch unreal. The light was too bright. The furniture shimmered in the fluorescence, vague, unfamiliar. My colleagues had a vulpine air. I saw an accusation in every glance. I tried to avoid them. I closed my office door.

  All I wanted to do was sleep. I eyed the sofa on the far wall. It threatened to seduce me. I fought to resist its charms. Its soft cushions. Its inordinate length. Room enough and then some for a tall man, say six foot two, to lie upon. To sleep. To dream.