by Nicol, Mike;
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Let me go.’ Coughing to get her breath back.
‘There’s a Vicki-chick,’ says Cake Mullins, holding her at arm’s length. ‘Sweetness herself. Come and meet the man himself, the other guys.’ Cake pressing the remote to bring the door down behind them, shutting out the darkness.
They thread through the cars to a room at the back of the garage. The room Cake’s decked out like a gambling saloon. ‘Hell,’ as he would say, ‘it is a gambling saloon.’ Round card table covered in green baize in the centre under a low light with a wide metal shade. Five chairs circling it. Bar down one wall, posters, movie photographs on the others: saloon scenes from Unforgiven, Tombstone, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Maverick, Shane. Some of them signed, Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah, Val Kilmer. What Vicki doubts is the authenticity of the signatures. Far as she knows Cake’s never set foot on US soil, despite his Vegas stories.
There’re four men in Cake’s saloon. Two men at the bar drinking whisky, the whisky bottle on the counter between them. Jacob Mkezi at the table, a bottle of mineral water at his elbow.
‘We meet again,’ says Jacob Mkezi, standing, his hand outstretched. ‘How wonderful.’ Mr Ultra Dude wearing the kind of jacket you don’t buy in Woolies. Don’t buy in the Waterfront boutiques either. The sort of jacket you buy in Germany or France, Italy. Underneath, a cashmere sweater, V-neck. A chain round his neck, not bling silver, this’s delicate. But it’s still a chain. Vicki’s not into chains on men.
They shake.
The whisky drinkers watching them, their eyes on her boobs and crotch like she’s part of the game. Men with wet mouths. Cake doesn’t introduce them.
‘Sit, please,’ Jacob Mkezi pointing at a seat to his right. ‘I’ve heard all about your poker skills. It is a favourite pastime for me, nothing serious. Just something I enjoy.’
Vicki thinking, This’ll be fun.
‘I asked Cake to arrange this. Thank you for coming.’
Vicki saying, ‘I’m on the programme, Gamblers Anonymous. I shouldn’t be here.’
‘I know,’ says Jacob Mkezi. ‘Which is why I appreciate your coming tonight. I hear you are called the poker queen. The killer lady.’
‘Was.’
‘Okay,’ says Cake Mullins, ‘all good, let’s do it.’ Saying to one of the men at the bar, the coloured guy, ‘Whitey, bring the bottle.’ To Vicki, ‘You want a drink?’
‘Vodka,’ says Vicki. ‘Lime and soda.’
Cake Mullins goes behind the counter. Vicki nods at the whisky drinkers. They nod back, unsmiling.
‘So were you the poker queen?’ Jacob Mkezi focused on her.
Vicki meeting his gaze. ‘Don’t believe everything you hear.’
‘I don’t. Just some things, from some people.’ He leans back, appraising her.
Vicki doesn’t like it, glances down at her hands. Decides to shift the terrain. ‘Last Thursday, you mentioned you knew my aunt.’
‘I did. In the 1980s, when she was in Paris. A dynamic woman.’ He pauses. ‘What they did to her was … criminal.’
Vicki waits for more but he leaves it there. ‘They, the security branch?’
‘Not only them. Long story.’ He leans towards her. ‘For another time.’
‘She was assassinated by a government hit squad.’
Jacob Mkezi frowns. ‘That’s what it looked like.’
‘What’re you saying?’
He lays a hand on her wrist. ‘Another time.’
‘You’re saying it wasn’t that?’
‘I’m saying, another time.’ His face bland, his eyes hard on her. ‘I will tell you. I give you my word.’
Vicki draws her wrist from under his hand. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’
‘I expect it.’
Cake Mullins plonks the drink next to her, says to everyone, ‘Your buy-in chips’re in a drawer in front of you. Green’s ten, yellow for twenty, pink for fifties, purple for hundreds. I’m the dealer. As agreed, seven-card stud.’
The two whisky drinkers shrug, don’t say anything. Poker-faced poker players.
Jacob Mkezi says, ‘If that’s the way you do it.’
‘House rules,’ says Cake, breaking the cellophane on a new pack. He hands them to Vicki. ‘You do the honours.’
Jacob Mkezi intercepts. ‘I’ll shuffle.’
Vicki says, ‘Be my guest.’ Thinking, going to be interesting. The thrill starting in her, pulsing at her heart. Going to be a session. But that’s okay, she’s entering the zone.
54
The side window shatters, the man’s inside the car with a .45 at Fish’s head before Fish can raise his gun.
‘Too slow, my friend,’ says the man. ‘Give me that.’ Takes the revolver from Fish. A snub-nose S&W .38 special. ‘Nice. We can use this.’
‘Who’re you?’ says Fish.
‘Don’t worry,’ says the man. ‘Tonight I am your guardian angel.’ He laughs: Ha, ha, hey. The sound pitched upward. ‘Now watch.’
Fish is sitting in the Perana, Sunrise Beach, on the wrong side of midnight. Crazy mad southeaster sand-blasting his precious car. He’s got a night scope. He’s watching a white Subaru on the other side of the parking area stopped, facing the beach.
‘Drop the scope,’ says the man. ‘You don’t need that.’
Fish does.
‘Both hands on the wheel.’
Fish clutches the steering wheel.
‘You watching?’ says the man.
Fish doesn’t respond.
‘I need an answer.’
‘I’m watching,’ says Fish.
‘Now learn, my friend.’
The area’s lit by high mast lights, enough illumination but the salt spray hazing the windscreen.
‘Wipers,’ says the man with the .45.
Fish flicks them back and forth. The windscreen still smeared, streaky.
A Jetta approaches from the traffic circle, goes slowly towards the Subaru. Stops. The men get out. Wait. The driver of the Subaru joins them. There’s talk. Gesticulation. The two from the Jetta separating either side of the other man. Muzzle flash. Four shots.
Fish says, ‘Jesus Christ!’ leans forward to start his car.
‘Don’t,’ says the man in the passenger seat. ‘Keep watching, my friend. This is what happens when you play shit with us. You get fucked up. We know you, Mr Fish Pescado. You are the next one. You kill one of ours, we kill one of yours. Last time, the man you shot died, Mr Pescado. Bad luck for your friend over there.’
Fish sitting helpless. The man getting out, Fish planning to grab the Astra in the glovebox.
The man leaning in, opening the glovebox. ‘Very obvious, Mr Pescado.’ Looks at the gun. ‘What old rubbish is this?’
‘Leave it,’ says Fish.
The man smiles, shakes his head. ‘You whiteys. Use any antique.’
‘Leave the gun.’
The man pockets the pistol. ‘You better call Emergency for your friend, my friend. They can fill out the, what’s it? … The declaration of death.’
The laugh: ha, ha, hey.
Thing is Fish gets maudlin at times. Times like this. Times alone with doob. Time when things aren’t working out. Is inclined to replay moments.
This scene’s a top-ten replay. It burns him that he can’t remember what he said to the dude. That he didn’t react. Didn’t shoot first. Smash the night scope into the guy’s face. Grab his arm when he leant into the car. Anything. Burns him that the guy had it all his own way.
Has had it all his own way since. Not that Fish has let it go, he’s biding his time. Patience being the virtue Fish’s father told him it was.
Thing is in this mood Fish starts dredging up other questions. Questions like: what if his father hadn’t died? Would he have finished his law degree? If he hadn’t gone to work for the insurance company, would he have got into investigations? If he hadn’t hooked up with Mullet would he have been shot? Would he have had to watch his partner being gunned down?
And the question: what does he really know about her?
She’s a lawyer.
She’s compulsive.
She’s a gambler. Now in the programme. So technically reformed.
She’s got her own flat.
Drives a zooty car.
But she doesn’t talk about family. All she’s ever said was they’re dead. Didn’t want to talk about it further. The most he’s ever got out of her is that she grew up in Athlone.
Why’s that?
Fish realises he’s never pushed it. In their time together he’s talked about Estelle, his father. Even telling her his father had died didn’t bring her folks into their heart-to-heart. So nothing about her mom, dad, brothers, sisters, grannies, grandpas, aunties, uncles. No past. No background. Like she was loose, an unconnected body wandering the city.
Not so much a lost soul, he thinks, rather an alone soul. He can identify. Despite his family history, despite his mother’s distant presence, he knows alone. Only-child alone. The reason he took to surfing, because he could do it alone.
So he hasn’t gone after the family bit with Vicki. Figuring eventually it’d come out, just needed time. And Fish is nothing if not patient.
So what’ve they talked about?
About the jobs she’s moved his way. About surfing. Her gambling past. Lots about her gambling. He even went to some meetings with her in the early days, just after she stopped. When she was all jittery. There was some weird stuff had happened then that he’d never got a handle on. That she wouldn’t talk about.
Like now. Vicki stringing him a line. He knows it in his gut. But what can he do?
After he’s smoked the first joint, he goes out to look at the bakkie. Make sure he isn’t imagining it. He isn’t. It is as wrecked as it was.
He SMSes Vicki: Some serious prob’s happened. That’d get a reply from her. When it doesn’t, he phones. Get her voicemail.
He listens to Shawn, cheer me up, cheer me up. Thinks, right, you’re all that I’ve got.
Maudlin Fish.
The dope gets him through the hours.
Now he’s about to light up again he realises Shawn’s not singing. The remote’s on the table. Fish gets her back on the system: ‘These Four Walls’.
Shawn singing about dying in some godforsaken room. About being the hell in, had it with all the crap life dishes up.
‘She walked in here and said come, I’d go,’ Fish told Vicki one time about Shawn Colvin.
‘Leave me just like that?’ Vicki playing along with laughter in her voice. ‘For an older woman?’
‘Only if it was her.’
‘Thanks, babes,’ said Vicki. ‘Least I know where I stand.’
Fish never really sure if Vicki was joking or not. He dropped the topic.
He stares at the photo of Shawn on the back of the CD box: she’s lying propped against a wooden wall, wearing this yellow jacket zipped tight, a yellow dress puffed around her, a glimpse of thigh between the dress and her long black boots reaching up to her knees. Southern fancy. An edging of black lace to her dress. Her eyes’re closed. Maybe she’s smiling, recalling every little thing she can. A sad smile. Her heart breaking.
You wouldn’t want to look in her eyes, Fish thinks. You looked in her eyes you’d see the hurt of a lot more people than Shawn Colvin.
The same happened when you caught Vicki gazing at you. The same sadness in her face. The same feeling that it wasn’t just one woman staring at you.
He shakes a Bic, brings the flame to the joint, takes the smoke into his lungs. Keeps it there. Imagining the grey swirl rubbing against his blood vessels, being absorbed.
He exhales, hits it again quickly. Closes his eyes.
Shawn singing about being a tough kid.
Fish feels the world drifting off. Vicki and Shawn merging. Shawn in her flouncy summer dress, brushing her hair, going out to face the wilderness.
Vicki in that white dress she sometimes wears with the thin straps. The honey colour of her skin against the white. The sheen of the light on her shoulders. Enough to make you cry.
Fish smokes the spliff to the end. Long hits, taking the herb in, releasing it through his nostrils. Herbal medicine for those in what Shawn’s calling the dead of the deep dark night. Telling him, don’t worry me now.
‘Me neither,’ says Fish aloud.
He crushes the roach in an abalone ashtray, goes outside to shine the torch on his bakkie. The tyres still slashed. The windscreen still smashed.
He kills the torch, sits in the bergies’ chair. Gets a whiff of them that’s now part of the fabric.
Shawn stops singing. Fish’s spinning his cellphone between his fingers. Can’t even remember picking it up. He puts another call through to Vicki. By now the dinner’s got to be over. His call goes to voicemail.
55
The card players break after the eleventh for a drinks round, Vicki desperate for a vodka. She’s gone through her buy-in, the extra she brought, an advance from Cake. At the eighth she gave him the nod to chalk her up. Thought about it briefly: leave now or try a few more hands? Two more she had a chance to recoup then walk out.
Cake smiled, pushed more chips her way. Mouthed at her: there’s my girl.
But the cards didn’t favour her. Couple more hands like the last four, the tab would be hefty.
At the bar she whispers to Cake, ‘This’s making me nervous. Why’m I here?’
‘Pleasure of your company.’
‘Come’n.’
‘I told you. Debt repayment.’
‘And the new tab?’
‘We can talk about it.’
‘Jesus, Cake, what’re you doing to me?’
‘Your decisions, Vicki. Your choices.’
‘And his choice?’ Vicki flicking her eyes at Jacob Mkezi still sitting at the table, drinking his mineral water. ‘What’s his choice?’
Cake shrugs. ‘He wanted it, this game.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t ask him why, Vicki. Nobody asks him why.’
‘First Clifford Manuel wants me to meet him. Now this …’ Vicki not finishing as Jacob Mkezi comes up behind her, puts a hand on her shoulder.
‘Gamblers Anonymous has taken away your luck.’
‘I’m sorry?’ She turns to face him, the movement dislodging his hand. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’re playing too cautiously. You think if you’re cautious you won’t be gambling. And people who are cautious lose. So, be brave. You see, I appreciate your sacrifice to play this evening.’
‘You appreciate my sacrifice …’ Vicki frowning. ‘I should go.’
‘Wait.’ Jacob Mkezi reaching out to touch her arm, a quick gesture. ‘Wait. Indulge me. I have my reasons.’
‘Which you’re not going to tell me?’
‘Not yet. Eventually. Please let’s play cards. Enjoy the game.’
‘She’s touchy,’ says Cake, bringing up a tray of cigars, Rey del Mundos, from a small humidor.
‘I understand that. I would be too under the circumstances.’ Jacob Mkezi running a cigar under his nose. ‘You smoke, Vicki?’
Vicki shakes her head. Stay or go?
‘She used to,’ says Cake.
‘I’m sure,’ says Jacob Mkezi. ‘She has the look of a late-night gambler.’
Stay or go? She should go. She stays. Looks at the card table, the cards, the chips, feels the pull. The need to fan open a hand, arrange the play. As the man says, be brave.
The thirteenth hand gets her close to the edge. It goes to Whitey. Jacob Mkezi doesn’t lose much, folding early.
‘Come on, Vicki Kahn, where’s that old rep?’ he says, that yellow spark still in his eyes. ‘We need the poker queen. The killer lady. To show these types what it’s all about.’ His leg brushing against hers, his hand reaching across to pat her arm.
Vicki shifts her leg, crosses her arms.
Jacob Mkezi gives a small smile
, sits back.
The fourteenth hand wipes out her chips. She’s got a wheel but Jacob Mkezi has a top straight ace to ten.
‘Advance me,’ she says to Cake.
He shrugs. Says, ‘Maybe speak to Jacob. He’s bankrolling.’
‘Ah, no, Cake. What’s going on? You’ve been chalking me up.’
‘You asked, I did it. You didn’t ask who’s bankrolling.’
Vicki speechless. Trapped. Hearing Jacob Mkezi saying, ‘You remember the old man who killed himself?’
‘What old man?’ Vicki focussing, her heart beating hard, her breathing shallow. Not liking this new tone in Jacob Mkezi’s voice.
‘After your last card game.’
Vicki all too up on the story of her last card game, the major reason she hit Gamblers Anonymous. She heard the old guy hanged himself.
‘You wiped him out.’
‘It was a card game,’ she says. ‘He didn’t have to play.’
‘You didn’t have to wipe him out.’
‘I offered him—’
‘Double or quits. The gambler’s Russian roulette.’ Jacob Mkezi now detailing the old man’s debt, the miserable lives of his family.
Vicki remembering the old man crying after she took the pot. The management shuffling him off. How he looked at her, said ‘Please, my sister’ before they bounced him into the street. Not a triumphant moment for her. ‘He’s why I stopped.’
‘Too late for him.’ Jacob Mkezi drinks water, half-turned towards her. ‘But he’s not the issue, he was a gambler: you live the life, you take what the life deals you. The issue is you, Vicki Kahn.’ Jacob Mkezi toys with his chips. ‘You’re down about twenty now. If I offered you the same option, double or quits, what would you do? What will you do?’
Vicki knows she should leave. ‘I’d say fuck you.’ Making to rise.
Jacob Mkezi clamps his hand over hers. ‘That’s what I hoped you’d say. Sit. Please. Let’s finish what we’ve started like civilised people.’
Vicki pulls her hand free. ‘Deal,’ she says to Cake Mullins.
‘Double or quits?’ Jacob Mkezi pushes chips at her.
‘Double or quits,’ says Vicki.