by Mark Joseph
“You’d better not be bullshitting about the stock.”
“You pays your money and takes your chances, Nelson. Looks like it’s L.A. versus New York. How about it?”
“I’m in,” Nelson declared.
“I call,” Alex said, and Nelson, hands shaking, turned over the fifth heart.
“Flush, king high,” he announced unnecessarily, a grin and a grimace struggling at cross-purposes on his bright, sweating face.
Alex sighed theatrically, adjusted his glasses and turned over a third seven and a hidden pair of aces for a full house.
Bobby lit a Winston, the double snap of his Zippo as sharp as a gun bolt.
There was a tiny delay as Nelson revved from zero to tornado. Eyes popping, face contorting like a Chinese dragon, he snatched up his cards and viciously tore them to pieces. “Motherfucker!” he shouted, gasping for breath. “God damned mother-Rrrrrrrrr!” Flinging the shredded cardstock into the air, he charged into the master bedroom, slammed the door, and a moment later they heard a crash, a thud, and another crash.
Bobby flinched, unsure what to make of Nelson’s noisy fit of destruction.
“It’s happens when he loses,” Dean said to Bobby. “Don’t worry about it.”
“One of our finer traditions: Nelson loses and wrecks the place,” Charlie added. “It’s an annual melodrama and usually adds up to about a grand in damages. They’d never let us come back if I didn’t know the manager.”
“He isn’t going to hurt himself in there, is he?” Bobby asked, raising an eyebrow and gesturing toward the bedroom with genuine concern. With two and a half million dollars in cash in the suite, the last thing he wanted was a player launching himself out the window and attracting attention.
Dean shrugged. “You have the gun, Bobby. He’ll be all right.”
“Nelson!” Alex yelled.
The muted reply: “Go to hell!”
“He’s never lost so much before. None of us has,” Charlie said. “Nelson puts on a brave front, but he’s an emotional guy. It’s hard to say what he’ll do. It doesn’t feel good to get wiped out. I can testify to that.”
“Yea, brother,” Dean chimed in.
“Stop whining and feeling sorry for yourselves! This is poker!” Alex shouted, and gathered in the hefty pot. Cooling off, he added in a normal tone, “We need a new deck. Any cards left?”
Dean looked away, embarrassed, and Charlie coughed in his hand.
“What’s the matter?” Alex demanded. “It’s a card game, not a popularity contest. There’s always winners and losers.”
“You’re a cold son of a bitch, Alex,” Charlie said. “You didn’t let Nelson back into the game like Bobby did for Dean and me.”
“Poker is not a game that rewards compassion. Emotions get in the way.”
Easy to say, Bobby thought. Easy to say.
Dean laughed, sputtering in his drink. “You’re so full of shit, professor. I’m tired of your pompous fucking pronouncements. You won the hand, good for you. That’s terrific. Shut up and show some class.”
“I’m giving nothing back, Studley. I came to play.”
“Are we gonna play with four players?” Charlie asked.
“We’re going to play until there’s one player left,” Alex snapped.
Bobby tilted his head sideways and slowly nodded his head in agreement. “Last man standing,” he said. “The old way. It’s okay with me.”
Charlie silently tore open a new, sealed deck to replace the one Nelson destroyed, removed the jokers, and began to shuffle.
“Roll ’em, Charlie,” Dean said and rapped his knuckles on the felt.
45
“Check.”
“Check.”
“Check.”
“Check.”
“Checked all around. Nobody’s got nothin’. Turn ’em over.”
“Charlie takes it with a pair of eights.”
“Christ, I’m too old to play all day and all night.”
“Let’s open the windows and air out the joint.”
At 4:00 A.M. they paused the game and ordered breakfast from room service. Sulking, Nelson refused to leave the bedroom and only opened the door to admit a hotel engineer with a new TV.
Dean walked into the second bedroom, pushed open a window, and watched garbage trucks and newspaper vans work the early morning hours.
Poker. Infernal game. How could he explain to Billie that he’d cashed in their life for a pile of chips that was vanishing like their youth? For what? For guilt? For the chance to play with Bobby McCorkle? If he didn’t win back the machine shop, maybe he could get a job driving a Chronicle van. He wondered what they paid.
Charlie wandered into the bedroom and stood next to Dean at the window. Below, steam vented from grates in the asphalt, a fortune going up in smoke.
“Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Charlie asked.
“What’s that?”
“Why’d he let us back in the game?”
“Damned if I know.”
“He’s torturing us,” Charlie said quietly. “He gave us two hundred grand apiece to work for him in our businesses, and if we lose that, we have to work for nothing. We’re screwed. You know that, right? We can never beat Bobby. Jesus, we can’t beat Alex.”
“There’s always hope, Charlie. You keep playing and maybe you’ll get a hand, but if you think like a loser, you don’t stand a chance.”
“You can bullshit yourself if it makes you feel better, Dean, and maybe you have a chance in this game, but not me.”
“Then you shouldn’t play, Charlie.”
Charlie thought about his response for a long minute. Finally, he said, “You know I have to play, Dean, Jesus. I’m the king of diamonds, and ever since we got our tattoos, that’s been the most important thing in the world to me. You guys—all of us together, and the game, that’s my identity. I have to play even if I know I’m going to lose, because if I don’t play, it’s like denying who I am. I know I’m just a spear carrier, but this year’s game was my one shot at the big leagues, to play for real and to play with Bobby again. I had to play.”
Charlie finished by shaking his head, desolate and confused.
Dean listened with a sympathetic ear to Charlie’s convoluted effort to understand himself. Playing poker in a game destined to be lost was like going to war for your country. Most who were called simply packed their bags and went, irrespective of whether or not the cause was just, and some were born to be cannon fodder. If you were a player, you played. Even if you were a loser, you played.
“I was just standing here thinking about driving a truck, or maybe working as a mechanic,” Dean said. “I know engines and you know fish. Maybe you can score a berth on a fishing boat. What the hell, you can always find a game on the fishwharf.”
“Losing everything doesn’t bother you?” Charlie asked. “It bothers me.”
“I knew what I was in for when I sat down, same as you,” Dean said, shaking his finger at Charlie. “We’ll survive. We’re outlaws, remember? And in the end? Well, we’ll see. Maybe Alex will beat him.”
Over bacon and eggs in the living room Bobby asked Alex, “I hope you like Corvettes. What are you gonna do with five of the buggers?”
Alex shook his head. “Damned if I know. It doesn’t make sense to own a car in New York, and when I rent one, I’m a Buick kind of guy. I dunno. I might change my tune.”
Alex tipped his hat to a jaunty angle and tilted up his cigarette with his teeth like Franklin D. Roosevelt. A moment later he squared his hat and crushed his smoke.
“Nah, not my style.”
“Where would you keep five cars in New York, anyway?” Bobby asked out of idle curiosity.
Smirking, Alex decided on impulse to drop his bombshell. “You know what, Bobby? I don’t care because I’m not going back. I’m going to resign from Columbia and the DoD, no matter what happens in the game. I’ve already written the letters. I’m through with physics, finished with New
York, and done with academia and the bloody government.”
Coming back into the room, Charlie and Dean overheard Alex’s pronouncement, and Charlie squawked, “You’re putting us on. You never said anything about that.”
“Well, I’m saying it now and I’m not putting you on. I’m walking away from my life. It’s different with you guys. With you, it’s like pulling teeth, but since Bobby’s already taken your companies, you have to walk away whether you like it or not, unless you’re lucky enough to win them back. I don’t think it’s dawned on you yet, Charlie, but we’re playing for keeps. Don’t you get it? You’ve been handed a midlife crisis free of charge. We’re condemned to be free from our miserable lives no matter what happens.”
“What about your wife and kids?” Charlie asked.
“Oh, Christ. My marriage to Joanna has been dead for years. Our kids are in college, and the ex-wife’s girls already graduated and have decent jobs. As far as I’m concerned, the kids are okay and the women can go to hell. These modern ladies can take care of themselves, as they constantly remind us. Fine with me. And if I lose the apartment and the condo and the stocks, well, tough shit.”
“You’re on track to be chairman of the department,” Dean said, boggled by Alex’s declaration. “You must be out of your mind.”
“Hell, yes, I’m out of my mind. I’ve been out of my mind for thirty years. I planned for this. I knew this game would change our lives. From the moment we walked in here Friday night, we could never go back, win or lose. Shanghai Bend is reality. The game is reality. Losing is reality, because in this game we can’t possibly win. Even if we win, we lose because we can’t change what we did. All this talk about the right thing is just blather. We did the wrong thing that night, and the only way we can atone for that mistake is by giving up our lives and starting over. Sally’s bones are real and Bobby is real, but we’re fakes, Dean, you and Charlie and Nelson and me. We’re phonies, we’re bullshit, and we have to pay no matter what Bobby does.”
“Win or lose,” Dean said.
“That’s right. It’s the game and nothing but the game. The rest of it doesn’t matter in the slightest.”
“If you quit your job, what’re you gonna do, Wiz?” Charlie asked.
Alex grabbed a deck, shuffled and fanned it. “Play cards,” he answered with a stony face. “Straight poker, no wild cards.”
A tiny smile flicked across Bobby’s face. “You want to turn pro, Alex?”
“That’s the idea, yeah.”
“Think you’re good enough?”
Alex closed the fan, popped four eights off the top of the deck, and flipped them into the middle of the table.
“We’ll find out.”
Bobby picked up the eight of hearts, held it up to the light, and, squinting, examined it on both sides.
“You should already know,” he said with a smile.
46
With seventy-eight thousand dollars in chips, Charlie didn’t have to scan the table to know he was low man on the totem pole. Dean had about a hundred thousand left, and Alex and Bobby had well over a million apiece.
“At a thousand bucks a pop, how long would it take me to lose it all if I tossed in my antes and dropped out of every hand? Hahaha,” Charlie wondered out loud.
“’Til about noon, if you could stay awake that long,” Bobby answered. “Why wait? I’ll make it easy for ya. Twenty-five grand on my sixes. You in, Charlie?”
The game was five stud with Alex and Dean out. Bobby had a pair of sixes on the first two up cards and Charlie showed a king and queen.
“What the heck. I’m in.”
“Rolling,” Alex said, dealing the hand. “A four to Bobby and an ace to Charlie.”
“Runnin’ a straight there, boy,” Bobby said. “Hotsy totsy. Twenty-five more.”
“Gotta stay in,” Charlie said, counting out chips and dropping them into the pot. “Deal.”
“A deuce to Bobby and a ten to Charlie,” Alex announced. “Looking good, Charlie, four cards to a straight, ace high, but the sixes still rule the table.”
“Check,” Bobby said.
Charlie laughed. “That’s an old trick,” he scoffed. “Check to see if I have the nerve to bet my straight. Want to see if I really have it? Suppose I don’t have a straight. Maybe I have a pair of aces or a pair of kings. Any of my cards paired up will beat your sixes. It’ll cost you to find out.” Charlie pushed the rest of chips into the center of the table. “Twenty-eight thousand,” he declared, and held his breath.
Bobby hesitated. “What do you think, boys? Does he have it? Does he have a hot card in the hole, or is he trying to buy the hand?”
Alex lit a cigarette and Dean gazed at the heroes. Neither Dean nor Alex nor the heroes said a word. Like the others, Bobby had seen Charlie looking at his hole card and silently mouthing, “Nine nine nine nine,” repeatedly.
Counting out chips, Bobby said, “Okay, twenty-eight. And I’ll tell you what, Charlie. If you win, you can have your company back. And if I win, you tell me which one of you killed Sally.”
Charlie went white. Barely audible, he mumbled, “I can’t do that.”
“Why not? Is it a secret?”
“It’s not for me to say.”
“Don’t you want your company back? One word, point your finger, and you’re back in business.”
“You can’t turn us against one another, Bobby. We’re the royal flush.”
“Now, that’s loyalty,” Bobby said. “I’m impressed. Tell me this: Was it you?”
“No.”
“Want to make the bet?”
“No.”
“Then it’s table stakes. What do you have?”
Charlie turned over his hole card, the nine of hearts.
“Hahaha hahaha, shit. I thought you’d pack it in. Oh, my God.”
Charlie’s exit from the game was more dignified than Nelson’s. He silently went into the bedroom and took a long, hot shower.
47
“You want me to be judge and jury,” Bobby said to Alex and Dean, “but I don’t have all the facts, do I?”
“When the game is over, you will,” Alex said.
“It may never end,” Bobby said. “It could turn into a marathon and go on forever.”
“That would be okay with me,” Alex said. “Let’s play.”
“Five draw, anything opens,” Dean announced.
“Not jacks or better?” Bobby asked.
“Nope, not with three players. Anything opens. You can open on guts if you have any.”
“That’s a game for a desperate man,” Bobby commented.
“Listen, at Khe Sanh sometimes artillery rounds were coming in every twenty seconds. Boom! Boom! Made it hard to sleep, spilled the coffee, guys getting wasted all over the place. But the worst was, one day these other officers and I were trying to play cards, and we didn’t get to finish a hand because a shell landed on our bunker and two guys in the game got blown up. Now that’s desperation.”
“Spare us the war stories, Studley,” Alex complained. “Just deal the cards.”
“You play much poker in beautiful Southeast Asia, Bobby?”
“I never talk about the war, Dean. That’s my rule.”
“Don’t you ever pull out those Silver Stars and read the citations?”
Bobby gave Dean a long, cold stare. A drowning man, clinging to anything that might keep his head above water, in the last thirty-six hours Dean had been drunk, hungover, drunk again, stoned, lucid, incoherent, crazy, sane, and now, desperate, reaching for anything that might keep him in the game.
“I don’t talk about the war, and I don’t like to repeat myself. Since you really want to play this out to the end, let’s stick to poker. Deal, por favor.”
With a grimace, Dean pushed the deck across the table. “Cut ’em, Wiz.”
Alex symbolically cut the deck by touching the top card with the tips of his fingers, and Dean swiftly dealt each player five cards.
Bobby picked
up his cards and watched Alex and Dean perform their rituals. Poker, he thought, is monotonous, routine work, paying attention, remembering details. Alex looked at his cards one at a time, and, showing no reaction, a clue that he had nothing in his hand, left them on the felt. Dean picked up his cards and moved them around in his hand, trying this configuration and that as though he wasn’t sure of the best way to play the hand. Bobby didn’t play the hand; he played the players.
“Check,” Bobby said.
“Check,” Alex echoed.
“Open for twenty,” Dean wagered.
“See your twenty,” Bobby said promptly, “and bump it twenty.”
“Fold,” Alex said and pushed his cards into the center of the table.
“I’m in,” Dean said. “I’ll see the raise.”
Bobby looked at Bret Maverick and then at Dean who grinned back and stroked his beard.
“One card,” Bobby said.
“Dealer takes two.”
“Your bet, Deano. You opened.”
“Check.”
Bobby shook his head, his tolerance for Dean’s sloppy play at an end. By taking one card, Bobby had convinced the big man that he had two pair or four cards to a straight or flush. Bobby’s mind was as clear as a cold night in Reno, and he knew Dean had a low three of a kind. If he had three aces, he’d bet more, or raise, but he did neither. By checking, Dean sealed his fate.
“You should have about one fifty,” Bobby said, counting chips. “That’s the bet. One fifty.”
To Alex, watching Dean make the final plunge was like watching a suicide jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Dean was a complex human being whom Alex never completely understood although he loved the big man like a brother. He never understood Dean’s tattoos or wild streak or why Dean lived so close to Shanghai Bend, but Dean lived his life according to a closely held code, a renegade’s code, and Alex understood that. Dean was faithful and true, but in the end, he couldn’t control his guilt. He wanted to jump off the bridge, and there was nothing Alex could do to help him.