Dying Embers

by Robert E. Bailey

  “That right?” I said.

  “That’s right,” said the one on my left, pulling at the straps of his bib overalls. Sweat stained the armpits of his white T-shirt and made a vee down from his neck. Wiry yellow hair stood out from his head like it was trying to get away, except for the top part, where it had made good its escape.

  “Happens I’m partial to my suitcase,” I said.

  “Damn fine suitcase,” said the man on my right, wearing a black T-shirt featuring a picture of a camel shooting pool with a cigarette dangling from its lips. A man blessed with plenty of hair, which he wore slicked straight back from a pronounced widow’s peak—most likely brown hair if he took his head in for an oil change. His stubble beard had gone mostly gray. “Good for playing cards.”

  “You want to play cards for my suitcase?” I said.

  “Want to play cards on your suitcase,” he said.

  “You know how to play euchre?” asked the man with the gun. “Jerry can’t play because he’s back on days at the mill. His wife had a stroke, and he has to take care of her when he gets home. So he has to sleep now—can’t play cards with us no more.”

  I asked, “Is it a hard game?”

  They all smiled.

  “Real easy game,” said the man with the gun. “Hell, you only use half the deck. How hard can it be?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I have to wait here until morning anyway.”

  They pulled up a bench so that we could make a table by setting the suitcase on our knees. The man with the yellow fright-wig hair was named Greg. His partner—in the cigarette shirt—was Ralph. My partner—the one with the gun and guard shirt—said his name was Morning Bear, but mostly he went by Max.

  A dime a point and a quarter a euchre?” asked Max. He took the cards out of the breast pocket of his guard shirt.

  I shrugged. Greg and Ralph shared a sly grin—but couldn’t ante up a full set of teeth between them.

  “We just have to keep track,” said Max. “We can’t put no money out because I’m working.”

  “You can play cards but you can’t gamble?” I said.

  “Boss says I just have to stay awake. I think if he knew we were gambling he might get pissed.”

  “Who cares?” said Ralph. He looked at his cards. “We ain’t been paid for three weeks and I ain’t going to my post until I get my check.”

  The smell just sort of crept up on you. Like someone had left vegetable beef soup to go sour in the pan and then accidentally turned on the burner. Could have been one or all of them, but I was betting on Greg because of the yellow half-moons that stained his T-shirt under his arms. On the upside, it took the edge off my appetite.

  “Dixon gonna lose that contract,” said Max, “then you ain’t gonna have no post to go to.”

  I let all that slide for the first half hour while I successfully named suit based on having three cards the same color. Finally I asked, just in passing, if they all worked for Dixon.

  “I don’t work for him no more,” said Greg. “I don’t get paid; I don’t work. Maybe I find something at Pinks or Burns.”

  “I was looking for something,” I said. “I was hoping you guys would put in a word for me, with Dixon.”

  The Omaha bus showed up, and Max went to wake Jerry so that he could load the express packages. The passengers crowded into the restrooms. I retired to the coffee machine with Greg and Ralph. They said that since Max and I were up a buck and a half, I should stand them to a round of coffee. I obliged and threw in a package of peanut butter crackers from the vending machine. It was a small package but we each got an orange cracker. Greg said that he’d save one for Max, but he ate it anyway.

  “So you think I can get a job with this Dixon guy?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Ralph. “Just about everybody quit but Max. Most folks won’t work where they don’t get paid.”

  “That happen a lot?”

  “Just only once’st, last year,” said Greg. “Dixon said it was about the Feds taking his bank account and about how it was a mistake. But that was just only a couple of days so I didn’t quit that time.”

  “Yeah, but he keeps a new car and he’s got that brick house up on the bluff,” said Ralph.

  “He keeps that on account of he’s retired from the FBI. That’s why we get the guard jobs,” said Greg.

  “I think he ought to sell that damn white Lincoln and gimme my paycheck,” said Ralph.

  “FBI,” I said. I wagged a finger and gave them both the thousand yard stare. “I heard of Dixon. A guy named Jack Anders—up in Wisconsin—said Dixon might have some work, was I to come down here.”

  Ralph and Greg looked at each other and back at me, their faces blank. “Ain’t never heard of him,” they said in unison.

  “I ain’t heard of Dixon doin’ nothin’ in Wisconsin,” said Greg.

  “Ask Max,” said Ralph. “Him and Dixon is pretty tight. He’s like a sergeant for him. I think he still gets paid. He don’t let on though—in case we might want a loan.”

  The Omaha bus departed just before three. Jerry bitched about me hanging around without a ticket and I used my “waiting for money off the wire” line. Max and the boys smiled real big and told Jerry to shut up and go back to sleep.

  “Max,” said Ralph as we settled my suitcase on our knees, “you know some guy works for Dixon, name of Jack Anders?”

  Max got the cards out and looked at them while he shuffled. “Why you ask that?”

  “Art here says he run into him up in Wisconsin and this Jack guy says maybe Dixon has some work.”

  Max looked at me. “Where at in Wisconsin?”

  “Madison,” I said.

  “Don’t know him,” said Max. “Maybe he worked for Dixon in his janitor business. Dixon don’t tell me much about the janitor stuff.” Max smiled. “I told him I don’t do windows.” Ralph and Greg laughed. “Anyway, there’s gonna be plenty of work since these two got too self-righteous to cover their posts.”

  Max and I took the first two points. Greg reneged on Ralph’s ace, but it didn’t help. Max set hard eyes on me and said, “Maybe there’s something you didn’t tell us.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Like something! You know what it is.”

  Greg had turned up the ten of hearts on the deal. I had both bowers, the ace and queen in suit, and the ace of clubs. “Pick it up,” I said. “No, really! Like what?”

  Max grinned. “Like maybe you played this game before?”

  “If that cat’s out of the bag,” I said, “stay home.”

  Max folded his hand. I led power and had all the trump in the first three tricks. The queen was a gimme trick, but when I led the black ace, Max smiled and the boys cussed.

  “I think you been sharpin’ us,” said Greg. He tried to sound agitated but his face was sly.

  “Sure, he’s sharpin’ us,” said Max. He laid the hard eyes on me again.

  “But he’s my partner, and we’re shearing you guys like sheep. Ain’t like I’m gonna find fault with that plan.”

  “You got to give us a chance to get even,” said Ralph. He smiled at Max. “Or we got to tar and feather you both.”

  “I only wear feathers when the tourists pay me,” said Max, “and you ain’t got no money.”

  “I guess you guys want to make it more interesting,” I said.

  “You want to make it a dollar a point?” asked Greg.

  “Let’s keep it friendly,” I said. “I can’t run too fast dragging a suitcase.”

  “Fifty cents,” said Ralph.

  I looked at Max. He shrugged.

  “Works for me,” I said, “but you got to settle up now.”

  Ralph had a buck—bitched about it being his gas money, but forked it over. Greg had change, including a nickel stuck in a plug of chewing tobacco flocked with pocket lint. He peeled off the nickel, took a bite from the plug, and then offered it to me.

  “My mother beat that particular habit ou
t of me with a switch,” I told him. I fished the hard pack of cigars out of my hip pocket. “But I got a smoke here if you don’t think Jerry will throw me out.”

  “That would be my job,” said Max. “But I couldn’t hardly complain if I was smoking too.”

  I passed them around. We all lit up except Greg. He put his in the bib pocket of his overalls and said that he was “fixin’ to smoke it after he ate the breakfast he bought with my money.”

  Max suddenly turned into a real lame partner, while the boys started using signals. For clubs they made a fist. Spades was a hand flat on the table. Hearts was a scratch in the middle of the chest. For diamonds Greg spit in his coffee cup—Ralph drummed the fingers of his left hand.

  By five I had let them get about twenty bucks up. After that every hand I could play alone without getting euchred I had Max stay home. Some of the loners paid off due to the boys telling me what was in their hands.

  By six-thirty I was only down two bucks, the boys were surly, and Max seriously amused. He dealt a hand and turned up the ace of spades. We all passed, and Max looked at me. I took the jack of spades out of my hand, licked the back of it and stuck it to my forehead.

  “Jesus!” said Ralph. He threw in his hand.

  Max laughed so hard our suitcase table jerked up and down and sent the cards skittering.

  Greg splattered his hand on the suitcase and said, “If y’all gonna cheat!”

  “He’s been reading your signs all night,” said Max, and laughed some more.

  “There an Art Hardin out there?” asked Jerry from behind the counter.

  “That’d be me,” I said.

  “I need to see some ID,” said Jerry. “I got your wire here.”

  “I’ll settle up when I get back, fellas,” I said and went up to the counter. Jerry checked my driver’s license and asked me what my mother’s maiden name was. I told him, and he slid my license back with a check for two hundred dollars.

  “Don’t you have cash?” I asked.

  “Don’t keep no cash here at night,” he said and then yelled into the lobby, “because all the damn guard does is play cards all night.”

  “I’da played a damn sight better but for all that snoring going on back there,” Max yelled back.

  “Mama Rosa down at the Breakfast Nook Café will probably cash that for you if you’re in a mind to eat,” said Jerry. “If not, the bank down the street will cash it when they open, but they charge five dollars.”

  I nodded and returned to Max and the boys. I gave Ralph back his gas money, and Greg got his change. “The man said Rosa at the Breakfast Nook would cash this,” I showed them the check. Their heads wagged up and down as they tried to read the check. “If you give me a ride down there, breakfast is on me.”

  “Unless you guys don’t eat with no card sharps,” said Max. He laughed some more.

  “Card sharps is my favorite people,” said Greg, ‘“specially when they’re buying. When we’re done we can go down to the Crystal Palace for a couple of cold ones.”

  “You’re awful generous with the use of my pickup truck,” said Ralph.

  “I’ll buy you some gas,” I said. Ralph seemed pleased. I added, “I’m gonna go in here and take a dump. Then we can head for Mama Rosa’s.”

  I took my suitcase into the men’s room and opened it in the stall. I slapped a magazine into the hilt of the Detonics, racked a round into the chamber, and eased the hammer down. The high ride holster would make too big a bulge in my T-shirt, so I took a rubber band out of my shave kit and snapped it a couple of turns around the grips and put pistol in my waist band just behind my right hip.

  When I opened the stall door I found Max standing there with his arms folded. I hadn’t heard the restroom door open.

  “You want me to ask Dixon about that Jack Anders fella?” Max asked, his face blank.

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “I’ll head over to the Dixon Agency after breakfast. I can ask him myself.”

  “The boys want to go for a beer.”

  “Too early for me,” I said. “Maybe tonight, after I talk to Dixon and get settled. You gonna put in a good word for me?”

  “Sure,” said Max. “I don’t get off here for a while, but I’ll meet you at Rosa’s. If you want I’ll give you a ride over to see Dixon.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said. “See you at the Breakfast Nook.”

  Ralph drove a mix-and-match collection of parts assembled from old Chevy pickup trucks—the doors and fenders all different colors. The gas tank was a red five-gallon jerry can, bungie-strapped into the corner of the truck bed. The fin I had left in my money clip filled the tank with change to spare.

  • • •

  The Breakfast Nook, a white clapboard affair with a flat roof, stood in the middle of a hard packed dirt parking lot. Folks hadn’t parked so much as just pulled up and stopped.

  “Don’t everybody have a reverse gear,” said Ralph, by way of explanation.

  Inside, three rows of picnic tables covered in red and white checkered oil cloth seated a crowd of people dressed for the factory or farm labor. A chipped five-foot plaster sailfish, with a red and white “Bud Light” baseball cap duct taped to its head, decorated the wall behind the buffet serving line.

  Mama Rosa collared Ralph and Greg before the screen door could bang twice behind us. Five feet tall and about the same in circumference, she wore a starched white bib apron over a red and white granny dress, her henna-red hair neatly secured in a bun under a hairnet. Greg and Ralph called her “Ma’am.” She wanted to see their money.

  “This is our good friend, Art Hardin,” Greg said. “We brought him cause he said he wanted the best breakfast in town. He got a check from Western Union and he’s gonna pay.”

  “This the only breakfast in town,” said Mama Rosa. “And with you vouching for him, I’d say the three of you ought to git, and don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.”

  I handed her the check and said, “Jerry up at the bus depot said that you might cash that if we had breakfast here.”

  She glanced at the check and then studied me from head to foot. “Them boots worth more than this check,” she said, “and where’s the rest of your suit?”

  “In the locker at the bus station.”

  She gave the boys a sidelong jerk of her head and they bounded off to the serving line.

  “Your teeth are too good to be hanging with them two,” she said. “If you want to keep ’em you best find someone else to ride with once’st I cash this check.”

  “You want to see some identification?”

  Mama Rosa wagged her head in the negative. “You got cop eyes. Besides, I’ll know about this check ‘fore you leave. If it ain’t right I’ll have Junior whup your ass till I tell him to stop.” She nodded at a tall, well-built man serving scrambled eggs with a long metal spoon. I’m sure he had to duck to get in the door.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “I charge five dollars, same as the bank, but you tell that colored girl spooning grits that I said fix you a steak any way you wants it.”

  “Don’t you need me to sign that?”

  “You can sign it after I call Jerry and I bring out your change. Now you go and wade on in,” she said and gave me a wink and a smile. “The water ain’t too deep.”

  I found the boys parked at a table and attending to groaning board-loads of scrambled eggs and flapjacks. I set my tray down. “I’m going outside to make a telephone call. Mamma Rosa says that if you eat my steak when it gets here, she’ll have Junior whup your ass until she says stop.”

  “She give you a steak?” asked Greg.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I guess because I was buying.”

  “You in big trouble,” said Greg, shaking his head.

  “How’s that?”

  “Mama Rosa done set her cap for you,” said Ralph between bites and without looking up. “I hope you like ’em hefty.”

  I found the pay phone outside, around the cor
ner and near the back, by the doors to the restrooms. On the way I pondered the sly smile the gal serving grits gave me when I ordered the steak.

  I dialed up Dunphy with my phone card and got his secretary. She said that he was out in the plant and couldn’t be reached.

  “Tell him Andy called about that Hardin guy,” I said.

  “Just a minute,” she said.

  “Dunphy,” he said.

  “You put my expense card to sleep,” I said. “I need you to wake it up.”

  “Who is this?”

  I said, “Who do you think?”

  “My secretary said that it was someone named Andy.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “she must have misunderstood. I asked if you were handy. This is Art Hardin. Who’s Andy?”

  Dunphy didn’t answer.

  “You still there?” I asked.

  “I’m here. I don’t know who Andy is, Mr. Hardin. I thought it was one of my suppliers. I’m trying to track down a shipment of pigment. What can I do for you?”

  “Like I said, your Platinum Card is a dud.”

  “Mr. Hardin, I’m a fiduciary for this company. Unless I know what’s going on, I’m not turning you loose with our assets.”

  “I report directly to Scott Lambert.”

  “Mr. Lambert is out of town. You can report to me.”

  “Fine, I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on. I had to spend the night at a bus depot playing cards with some of the local color. I charge extra for that. By my watch you’re two thousand dollars into the toilet. If you waste any more of my time, the hourly rate doubles.”

  “Mr. Hardin,” said Dunphy, “you’re fired.” He hung up.

  Something hard poked me in the back of the head. I turned around to find myself looking up the barrel of a revolver in the hands of a man with a ski mask over his face and fire in his eyes.

  11

  I FLEXED MY KNEES to lower my head and clamped my fist around the barrel of the revolver in my face—levering the muzzle to my left as I jerked my head to the right—hoping I was fast enough. My hand found the short grip of the Detonics. I heard my thumb rack the hammer as the pistol came off my hip.