The Great California Game l-14

by Jonathan Gash

  Suddenly I wanted Nicko to win. Not because my throat was slate dry, no. And honestly not because I felt faint at the thought of the terrible crime that would be committed on him if he didn’t win. But we’d been, if not quite friends, sort of acquaintances who’d done each other no real harm, and I’d quite enjoyed my stay in America after all, lovely country and everything —

  “Ten of diamonds is Alhambra’s card.”

  Nicko placed the card face up for all us watchers to see. Coats nodded to the girl, who slowly started dealing her pack, one card to her left, another to her right. People murmured. I swallowed, trying tiptoes to see over heads. Word had spread that more hinged on this result than mere money, crime.

  “Your win,” she said. Jack of clubs.

  “My win.” Three of hearts.

  “Your win.” Ace of spades, to a swell of talk swiftly muted. People near me made superstitious gestures.

  “My win.” A four, clubs.

  Fingers sometimes do their own thing. Mine were trying hard to grasp hold of my palms, hoping for a heavenly ladder.

  “Your win. Game over!”

  The babble erupted, me whimpering what was it, who’d won, was it—?

  “Lucky,” the man grinned with gold teeth at me. I could have throttled him.

  The crowd relaxed, talking, betting, swapping predictions. I pressed through to glimpse Nicko stepping back, taking his place in the line-up as the next player stepped up. God, but he was cool, that Nicko. I saw Gina’s expression across the arena fishbowl. Waxen, a million years old. Where was Sophie Brandau? I’d not seen her since I’d arrived. And Kelly Palumba, lucky in her addiction to be out of this. Monsignor O’Cody was grey, talking intently with three grave-suited men, explaining his innocence in everything, the way of all religious leaders.

  “Philadelphia to play. Frank Valera the nominee.”

  We—Nicko, I mean—were safe for the rest of this round. I didn’t listen. All I wanted now was for the rest to lose first round, and Nicko’d be clear. I went to ask for a drink. The door goon wouldn’t let me out until the whole first round had been played all through. Then he allowed me into the grand salon, where a good-humoured barkeep poured me lemonade, asking if I’d won much so far. They all wished me luck as I re-entered. The pillocks thought it was routine gambling.

  Start of the second round. I asked people in the semi-darkness who was still in, got told to shush. Nicko was just stepping up to pluck the marker card, as the girl’s new pack was shuffled in. We —no, he —wanted the seven of spades this time.

  He made it with only five cards remaining. I collapsed with relief. He had the cool to smile at Vermilio as he withdrew without a wobble. I was almost fainting with fear, my suspicion hardening that maybe Nicko’s fate would also be mine. I wanted to ask the man with the gold teeth why he’d called me lucky. It was Nicko who was up for the chop, wasn’t it?

  People were whispering all round the gallery now. There’s something about terror that stimulates. The women were panting, the men steaming with heat. Passion was king. The place felt humid, as tropical outside as in. Hands were moving. Suggestions were being whispered. I heard some woman groan a soft Oh God, pure desire. A lecher’s dream. It happens in cockfights, some sudden lust blamming your mind from nowhere.

  By taking hold of people I learned that four had lost in the first round. I stood as if stunned. Gina’s face had gone. Instead, Fatty Jim Bethune’s stared down beside that of Monsignor O’Cody. His lips were moving. A prayer, even? I was tempted to walk round the glass gallery, stand with them, maybe ask Gina where was Sophie, decided I didn’t want to be with a load of losers, and stood shaking while the cards were shuffled. I wanted the dealer girl, now a lovely dark lass who’d removed all her rings, to fall down in a palsy, anything to stop the cards coming.

  Six remaining for the second round. Two more lost while I watched and had to forfeit their stakes. People had calculators out, clicking and tapping, in that terrible tide of whispering, the heat impossible.

  “Third round,” the caller announced. “Alhambra, Nicko Aquilina.”

  The door was just closing. I made it to the salon, asked for some grub, went to the kitchen, following its noises.

  My voice had almost gone. I was drenched, sopping and unwholesome, wet running down my nape, my thatch of hair plastered down twenties style. A bloke suffering from super-nourishment among the trays and gleaming steel surfaces shouted for assistants, and I was brought a plate of genuine American food, meaning it was bigger than me. I asked could I sit in the air, and they let me through.

  It was coolish out on the kitchen step. I sat, noshing. Nicko was up there in the Game, his awful stare now no use. Everything hinged on the turn of a card his way. Or not. I looked out into the night. Sophie, Rose Hawkins, that sister of hers. The ambitions of Sophie’s husband Denzie, consummate politician. And the reason they—okay, so Hirschman gave the word—tried to have me killed in New Orleans. And Bill’s death. Sokolowsky. And the hotel fire. And upstairs in that enclosed arena of green baize Nicko was even now winning. Or losing. What was the statistical chance, one in four? Racing punters say there’s no way to win above two to one.

  Behind me the kitchen clattered in its steam. Hideous places, kitchens. The kitchen had gas. Gas from cylinders. I left my plate, stepped out. Two dogs loped by, black and straining. I called a hi to the dog handler.

  “Lovely animals,” I called.

  “Bastards,” he grunted, jerking and pulling.

  God, but dogs can look malevolent. A muted roar wafted out into the night. I almost collapsed. Nicko’s win, or loss? The card could fall only one way, no inbetween.

  Cylinders. I’d nothing to light anything with, and they were huge great things, shining with dull reflections from the floodlights of the Revere’s facade. It was eerie, a waiting film set. Movie memories. I shook. Maybe I was coming down with something. Worse, maybe I wasn’t, and reality was knifing my soul.

  Another guard walked by, coated in red plaid, a hunter’s nebbed cap showing for a second against the lake’s distant gleam, his boots scuffing gravel. I called a hi there, got a grunt as he passed. Maybe I’d sounded drunk enough. I’d tried.

  Seven cylinders, two already tubed into the wall below the noisy kitchen’s half-open windows. Each cylinder had a pale panel, presumably warning of calamities that could ensue if you didn’t watch out. I’ve always been frightened of these damned things. I once saw an accident at school. A cylinder had fallen sideways, being unloaded from a lorry, the valve striking against a kerb and popping off a hundred feet into the air. The oxygen cylinder had shooshed along the ground like a torpedo, smashing through the school wall, miraculously missing us little pests standing frozen to the spot. Nobody had been injured. We’d thought it wonderful, especially as the white-faced science teacher sent us all home for the day.

  If Nicko’d lost, they’d come looking for me. I reached, unscrewed each of the two connecting nuts until I could hear an ugly hissing sound from the valve. I wanted a long, slow leak. I went along the row of cylinders and did the same. It’s gambling people who are supposed to like fear. I’m not one. My arms were almost uncontrollable by the time I’d done the last. I stood there, legs trembling. Was this liquid gas fuel lighter than air once it vaporized? Did it just float up, to give some future astronaut a fright when he lit his fag in the stratosphere? Or did it sink low and lie on the ground like a marsh miasma? I’d vaguely heard that was what frightened our ancients, when marsh gases lit spontaneously, their sinister blue flames flickering along the roadside swamps and scaring travellers to death. If the latter, I was standing here being gassed, risking being blown to blazes. A stray spark from the kitchen window could set the gas ball off.

  I returned the chef’s plate, said it was the best nosh I’d had since my wedding, and scarpered back to the salon.

  To see a few men and women emerging for a smoke and a drink. They stayed clustered by the doors to the gallery, not to miss the call
.

  “It’s the last play,” a woman told me when I asked. “Nicko Aquilina’s on the line this time! Him and L.A. are left in.”

  She was drooling, kept taking my arm. Everybody was thrilled, breathing fast, loving it.

  “It’s thrilling, hon,” she told me huskily. “Know what I mean?”

  “Sure do,” I said. I lit her cigarette for her. “I’m so excited I just can’t tell you. You here with somebody? I’m Lovejoy.”

  “My husband.” She hid her scorn so only most of it showed. Her head inclined and her lips thinned. “I’m Elise Shepherd.” A suave man, cuffs glittering with diamond links. Ramon Navarro from some old black-and-whiter. Odd how many here were lookalikes of the famous. Something in the California air?

  There was something else in the air.

  “Pity,” I said quietly, squeezing her arm. “Elise, love. I’ve watched you since I arrived.” I made sure Ramon Navarro was making headway with a slender bird sequined in turquoise.

  “You have?” She squeezed my arm, glancing, weighing opportunities. Somebody caught her rapid scan, waved. She hallooed, trilled fingers.

  “Is there nowhere we could go for the last round and… ?”

  “Yes?” Her tongue idled along her upper lip.

  “And enjoy each other’s company?”

  “God, no. I might be able to… No, that wouldn’t work. Bar-ney’d miss me, the bastard.”

  An announcer called the restart. I kept hold of her, desperately needing camouflage. She interpreted my fright as passionate desire, which it was.

  “There’s a corridor round the gallery,” she said quickly, as we all began to move and talk rose excitedly. Some silly old sod told me this was the most exciting time he’d ever experienced. I could have hit him.

  “Where, for Christ’s sake?” I could have clouted her too.

  A smile flitted across her mouth. “You’re a tiger, hon. Door to the right. We could hear the calls from out there, while…”

  “See you there. Hurry, darling.”

  The goon standing at the gallery entrance had seen me talking with the woman. I winked. He raised his eyebrows, knowing the score. I walked through the corridor door, leaving the gallery entrance.

  The corridor was empty. Wide, dark maroon velvet walls, gilded statues with lamps simulating old torches in frosted glass. Pathetic. Twice the price of genuine antique lanterns. Designers are unbelievable. I walked slowly down the corridor, counting steps, hearing the faint hubbub inside. The corridor curved round the gallery. Windows, closed against the thick night’s slushy aromatic air, were serried round the curved walls. Ornate, with alcoves every ten yards, plush double seats trying to look Regency.

  Except there was a goon, standing against an inner wall. And another beyond him. They’d thought of everything, our Malibu hosts. I walked, nodding as I passed the first. The second was twenty yards further on.

  Hurry Elise, you lazy cow. Where the hell was she?

  She was coming to meet me at a trot, somehow having escaped from her husband the other way. I grabbed her, nodded to the goon with a feeble smile. He turned away, walked deliberately back towards the door I’d come through. I crushed her close, squeezing the life out of her, pulling her along the corridor.

  “Wait! Here —”

  “No, er,” I gasped, trying to rush and reveal deep heartfelt passion. What the hell was her name? “We must have… I can’t wait, darling.”

  “This one!”

  She tried slowing into another alcove. Luckily it was occupied, a couple twisting sinuously to synchronized gasps. I hauled her, whisper-babbling. A goon turned aside, arms folded. God knows what they were used to.

  “Last round, folks!” The announcer’s echo made me whimper.

  “Here, darling?”

  “Yes, yes!” I flung her down and clawed feverishly at her bodice. Why the hell are their clothes so complicated? You’d think they’d go for simplicity. You can get scarred for life. “I can’t wait, er…” Name? Esme, Ellen? “Darling.”

  Directly below us, faint clashes of the kitchen. If I’d had any sense I’d have counted the windows along that side to make absolutely sure, but maybe the dog handlers would have stopped me.

  We overtook passion on the outward run, me ripping at her, shoving the dress off her shoulders and scrabbling at her thighs. The more uncontrollable my sheer lust, the more authentic my presence out here in the corridor while the idiot of an announcer called for silence.

  “Alhambra’s card, the jack of hearts!”

  My mouth was everywhere on Esme, only occasionally meeting hers as we mangled and mauled.

  “Don’t mark me, Lovejoy, for God’s sake, honey, no, no —”

  “Darling,” I gasped, sprawling over Ella, almost forgetting why I was there in the storm of frenzy. There was no doubt she was gorgeous, a million times more wondrous than any woman I’d ever —

  “Alhambra win…!”

  Thanks, Heaven, I remembered to say as Emma and I sank into that mutual torment, giving hurt and receiving it, wrestling to deny and abuse. She was openly weeping with delight, mouthing crudities, emitting a guttural chugging cough as we —

  “Alhambra lose… Alhambra win…”

  Win, Nicko, I thought. At least, I would have thought that if I wasn’t sinking below consciousness as Elsa dragged me in and down and out into space and bliss was enveloping —

  “Alhambra lose. Jack of hearts, and Alhambra lose…”

  Eh? I slammed into Esta, listened to that reaching hum which followed me, calling desperately for my mind to realize, and do something. I dragged away from Elena with a long wail of deprivation, scrabbled for my jacket which some stupid pillock had cast aside, fumbled, yanked out the cigarette lighter which I’d stuck in the right-hand pocket after lighting the bird’s cigarette and hopped with my pants round my ankles across the corridor towards the window, whimpering with fright and seeing Elsa’s thunderstruck face gaping after.

  You can’t open a window with your pants down, nor trying to pull them up. You can’t kick, either. I had my jacket. I wrapped it round my arm, averted my face and slammed the window glass, feeling something maybe give in my elbow. I felt the muggy night air wash in.

  “What the—?” somebody along the curved corridor called.

  The lighter was a gas thing. I pressed, got light, spun the control for tallest flame, tried to look out and down as a goon hurtled at me, lobbed the thing out onto the cylinders below.

  Heat slammed the world, spinning it round. Odd, but all a brain remembers is clatter, clatter, when you find it hard to think what on earth could be clattering, when fire is shooting with a terrible tearing noise and a whole side of a building comes apart with a low screaming sound.

  I remember thinking I should have maybe warned Emelda, at least told her what I was planning, but that’s typical for me, because by then something prickly was cramming itself into my face and people were screaming about fire, and a great golden shape was mushrooming out of the darkness nearby as a building crumbled and the hillside spread light and flame as a beacon for the world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  « ^ »

  YOUR mind plays tricks. I can see myself running, scrambling up when I fell among vegetation, hauling myself along on all fours when the terrain suddenly let me down. It was some old serial I’d seen when little, funny man at antics to make laughter. Except this one was bleeding, clothes anywhere. And it was me.

  Finally laying himself down, spent and stunned, among rocks with a curtain of flames ascending the hillside, something from a biblical epic now, roaring with a terrible grandeur and a massive building’s turrets silhouetted against the orange-scarlet. So many colours, so much to see, if only the man’s eyes could see. They couldn’t quite focus. And people were screaming and shouts coming closer among scrub. And, oddest of all, whole trees suddenly exploding like they’d been fragged by grenades as the heat reached them and their aromatic perfumes caused the night to quiver i
n a death thrill as they sucked the flames into each burst of spark.

  And the wahwahs, flicking their reds and yellows and blues in feeble simile while the mountainside erupted in roars and the fire moved through the vegetation like savage ascending lava.

  The helicopters came, and police, and lights shone from the sky throughout the land, and it was all fireworks and spacecraft and people jumping down.

  In one last feeble frame, me looking down from some great flying thing onto the forecourt of that great palace, where uniformed people, very like police, were taking orders from a dapper figure standing there in the mayhem and disorder as vehicles and helicopters moved stately all about him, the centre of that swirl. Except it couldn’t be him, because he was surely dead, wasn’t he? He’d lost the Game. And in any case he was the instigator of the crimes, and the deaths. Hadn’t he ordered two people killed, not counting me? And I sank and let the frigging world get on with it. I should have stayed with Irena, and left things alone, let them take their course. Or maybe I ought to have run back in for her after the explosion? Better to have stayed making love, even if it was on that fake antique banquette.

  At least I’d have finished something.

  “MR SHAMOON? Joe?”

  Somebody was tapping my face, like nurses do when you’re coming round from the anaesthetic, the swine.

  A policeman was sitting by the bedside. Mine. Why mine?

  He had a brewer’s goitre, the beer belly hauled in by an ineffectual belt hung about with firearms and ominous leatherette cases. All that blubber was presumably paid for. But why is adiposity threatening in uniform? A thin geezer would have seemed friendlier.

  “Eh?” Who was Joe? I wasn’t up to discussing people yet. I watched the cop. He chewed, more threat. A nurse swept in, swept out. Should be paid by the mile.

  “Where were you when the fire started at the Revere, Joe?”