“Congratulations,” I said.
“Thank you.” She spoke so softly that it was only her lips moving under the sounds of the fire and my own blood pumping that told me the words.
We watched the bonfires. Or pretended to. A row of miniature suns, each brighter than the last.
“The town’s booked up,” I said, “but there’s room at the house Ganz rented.”
“I—I should drive back tonight.”
“You can have the place to yourself.”
“That’s not it. I just wanted to be here for Leo. And so we could talk.”
“And now that’s done.” I nodded. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
Luce looked startled but said nothing. When I started walking, she did, too.
It was only a handful of blocks to the courthouse. We made one stop, at the corner market, where she bought Luna bars and water for the drive.
“We should have dinner,” I said, “before you have another six hours on the road.”
“I’m fine.”
No hesitation from her this time. We walked the rest of the way in silence. Whatever energy we’d had between us before had grown thorns.
In the courthouse lot, she stopped at a pearl-white Audi. Its parking lights flashed once as she unlocked it.
“New car,” I said.
“New for me. I never get to drive it, living in the city. I’m making up for that today.”
“You could still get some rest—”
“No. Really.”
“All right. Drive safe.”
“You be careful, too.” She opened the door. “Please.”
She got in, started the car, and pulled straight ahead through the empty spaces in front of her, looping out of the lot and out of sight within seconds.
Eighteen
Goddamn it.
I mean, goddamn it.
Was I supposed to have said something? Asked her something? Had Luce come all the way to Mercy River just to break the news of her engagement? Or to see if I would fight for her?
No. She’d come for Leo. And Luce didn’t play games like that. She was a woman who knew her own mind. If she’d told the asshole—I couldn’t help but think of her fiancé as a raging asshole—that she’d marry him, it was because she meant it. Felt it.
So who was this son of a bitch she’d reignited this great love with? She hadn’t mentioned any old boyfriends in all the time we’d been together.
All the time, like it had been a long relationship. It hadn’t. Luce and I had known each other as children, sure, and found one another again when I was on leave from active duty—all while I was dealing with the hell-storm kicked up by Dono’s shooting. That had been pretty damn distracting, too. Luce and I hadn’t really started dating, if that was the word, until I was finally out of the Army months later. And how long had we lasted? Five or six weeks, tops. Weeks that had flown by in a rush of sex and laughter and me getting my feet underneath me as a civilian. Or trying to.
Then it had ended. The life Luce needed to have wasn’t the life I was leading, surrounded by trouble and crime and threat. She’d had more than her share of that as a kid. She’d left, and I’d let her go.
She could feel more than one way. She could want to marry this guy, and want—what else? My blessing? Hard to picture Luce needing that. To make sure we were still friends?
I circled the center of town, walking without concern for direction. By the time my spiraling path connected with Main Street again, the stars were out.
I needed a drink. And I needed to put my questions about Luce in a box while I figured out how to help Leo.
The slim vial of Trumorpha in my pocket felt cool to the touch. If Erle had the drugs, he must have been selling them or buying more, and either way maybe that deal had gotten him killed. He’d turned off his cameras that morning. Expecting someone to join him in the shop. Someone still in town, I was betting.
On the dark stretch of road, the Trading Post Saloon shone as bright and cheery as Easter morning. The buzz of a human hive within grew as I approached the window. Every round table in the main room of the saloon was crowded with cardplayers, ninety percent of them Rangers. A team of Redcaps carried trays back and forth between the tables and the bar. The mustachioed owner, Seebright, had three taps flowing to keep up with demand.
I pulled the ornate door handle, and it thumped against the frame. Locked. At the sound, an obese guy sitting on a tall chair by the coatrack reached behind him without looking to press the door’s push bar and allow me in. The rush of chatter and laughter was visceral. I said thanks to the gatekeeper. He stayed resolutely focused on the football game playing silently on the nearest TV.
Seebright wasn’t the only person behind the bar. My new friend Paulette was occupied mixing some sort of Red-Bull-and-vodka concoction at the near end. I took a stool in front of her.
“It’s the mop engineer,” she said. “What kin I get you?”
“Porter. Thanks.”
I surveyed the tables. Seven-card stud was the game of the night. And relaxed was the mood. Some players used poker chips, others tossed cash into the pot. Most of the games had a low enough limit that no one was sweating. A dollar to raise on the first rounds, two bucks after that. A group near the back had made their game more work than play. Stone faces watched one another over a pile of twenty-dollar bills in the center. One of the faces was Rigoberto’s, the morose marksman buddy of Zeke Caton’s.
“What’s the buy-in?” I said.
“As little as you want.” Paulette shrugged. “Or as much. It’s for charity. You win a hand, you kick ten percent to the kitty.” She pointed toward an elfin young woman wearing cat ears in place of a red baseball cap, and carrying a woven basket with a lid. A roar went up from Rigoberto’s table. The kitty shimmied over to collect the house’s cut.
No cops in the makeshift gambling den, neither the sheriff’s deputies nor Constable Wayne Beacham.
“Nice racket,” I said.
Paulette chuckled. “If the general wants to throw a party and his guests want to play some cards, that’s all right by us.”
“Just keep the door locked and the riffraff out,” I said.
There was a relaxed lawlessness to the way Mercy River ran their town. I understood it. I might have even liked it, if Leo hadn’t been attacked by the mob from this same town, in this same saloon, two nights before.
“Henry, you rat!” a woman exclaimed. I turned my head to see a jowly elder at the same table as Rigoberto, as he reached out with long slim hands to rake in his winnings.
Paulette brought a pint of Black Butte to me.
“Is that Henry Gillespie? The lawyer?” I asked, tilting my head toward the table.
“Sure.” Paulette fixed me with an amused eye. “You want to buy some chips?”
It was possible that Henry Gillespie was a junkie. I knew damn well he was near the scene when Erle was killed. My grandfather once told me you could learn more about a man from three hands of cards than three hours of talking.
“I’ll take five hundred,” I said, laying a handful of fifties on the bar. Paulette raised her eyebrows at the amount before counting out stacks of white, red, and blue plastic chips into a carrying tray. I made a beeline for the last empty chair at the back table, next to Rigo.
“What’s the game?” I asked the Ranger shuffling the deck.
“Seven-card,” he said, as his eyes passed over my loaded tray. “No limit.”
I waved a casual hello to the other players. Rigoberto gave me a slow nod of greeting. Henry Gillespie and the woman seated next to him were the only citizens from Mercy River at the table. Rigo and the current dealer, a blond man with thick stubble and a thicker paunch, were former Rangers like me. The last three players might be actives in the same platoon, fresh off the assembly line. Their shield tattoos might smear if you brushed a thumb over them.
Gillespie was three times the age of any of the younger men. And judging by the mound of chips in front of him, three times t
he cardplayer. Rigo wasn’t doing badly, either. His carefully arranged stacks totaled somewhere north of three hundred bucks.
I had played a lot of poker, in barracks and off-base apartments and a hundred bars. Enough to know that I was no shark. A true expert could reflexively remember every card that had passed over the table, from every hand, freeing their mind from the work of calculating odds to watch for any hint of pattern in the players opposite them. Comparatively, I was a hack. But I was a determined hack.
The paunchy Ranger who had the deal passed out two cards to each of us, facedown, as everyone tossed in a red five-dollar chip for the ante. He followed with one more card, faceup. He had a three, the lowest card showing, and threw in two ten-dollar chips to get the betting started.
I already knew Henry Gillespie used a needle. The question was for what. He was gaunt enough to have an opioid problem, his clean-shaven jowls the only fleshy part of his spectacled face, but his hands were steady as they counted chips from his stack to match the bet.
I played out the hand, betting a little too high for the cards I was holding each round, and finally folding after the sixth card when it looked like I might be building a strong full house. The blond Ranger to Rigo’s right grunted in surprise.
Gillespie folded, too. But he won the next two hands, and Rigo the hand after that. I continued to slip and slide, not committing to one strategy or another. Almost by chance I took the fifth hand with three aces, after one of the actives overplayed his bluff. Belligerent betting had been the default tactic for all three of the younger soldiers. At this rate, Henry and Rigo would own their paychecks through their next enlistment. After every hand, the girl with the cat ears circled around to collect her ten percent from the winner, placing the chips and the cash into her wicker basket.
Ninety minutes later and three hundred dollars in the hole, I thought I had a handle on the others as well. Rigo had a good memory and played a straight game based on the odds. He’d bluff, but only if he had strong enough cards showing to make stealing the pot plausible. He was silent throughout. I had the impression Rigo was always silent, unless forced to be otherwise. The blond guy with the paunch was the worst player. He was slightly toasted, and maybe also prone to distraction. He’d played with increasing fervor, folding if he had nothing at the start and betting large consistently when he held anything worthwhile.
Gillespie was tougher to read. He changed up his level of forcefulness more by reading the mood of the table than from what he might be holding. He never fell for Rigo’s traps. I caught him watching me carefully during the second hour, and was sure he’d figured out I was willing to drop hands just to see what would happen. And he kept scratching the inside of his left elbow. More in the past fifteen minutes than before. A nervous tic, or was he craving a fix?
In either case the elderly lawyer played the game without any apparent pleasure. While the actives had joked and pounded back beers, Gillespie had limited himself to a few quiet words with Ivie, the woman seated next to him.
Ivie had touched him on the arm more than once, a gesture more comforting than romantic. A relaxed player, she rarely bet large, apparently prizing the experience over the money. She had dressed for the occasion, in a velvet blouse the shade of pinot noir and silver necklaces that kept snagging in her soft gray curls. In contrast, Gillespie wore a simple black fisherman’s sweater over a white collared shirt. Mourning colors.
“I was sorry to hear about your friend,” I said to him during the next pause in the game, while the server was passing out a fresh round of lager to the actives and the paunchy blond was outside taking another toke.
He and Ivie both looked up.
“Thank you,” Gillespie said. “It was far too early for Erle. Did you know him?” His voice may have once been baritone, but time had allowed tenor notes to creep in.
“I met Paulette yesterday. She told me. A terrible thing.”
“Crime is always terrible. Foam-flanked and terrible. Twenty years in the system, but I learned that much in my first month.”
“They’ve arrested the man who did it,” Ivie said to me. “He’s confessed.”
Gillespie snorted. “We’ll see how long he serves after the appeal. Bargaining can cut justice off at the knees.” He licked his lips and scratched his arm.
I could feel Rigo’s eyes on me. The actives shifted in their seats, uncomfortable at the change in mood.
“Do you still practice?” I said to Gillespie.
“I switched my specialty to family law. Never looked back.”
“And you benefit the whole town.” Ivie placed a reassuring hand on his.
“That must be difficult when it’s a friend,” I said. “Did Erle have kids? Somebody to take over his shop?”
“None of his own,” Gillespie said. His eyes drifted past my shoulder and his mouth snapped shut.
I turned to see Dez by the bar, as the pixieish girl who’d been taking the house’s cut handed over her cat ears and basket. Leo’s girlfriend would be taking the next shift. Like her predecessor, she wore a short jeans skirt and bright red T-shirt with the familiar double-R symbol on the back.
The blond guy returned to the table, bringing with him the heady scent of kush. “Are we playing or what? I gotta get my money back.”
His fool’s confidence cheered Gillespie enough for him to shoot me a conspiratorial smile.
Dez passed by the table and pointedly ignored me. Her face, normally the prettiest in town even against the high bar set by the Redcaps, appeared drawn with fatigue. It wasn’t hard to guess the reason. Her secret boyfriend had pleaded guilty this afternoon to killing her hated stepfather. Worse, Dez couldn’t tell anyone. She had to carry on like nothing was wrong.
Luce had urged me to trust Dez, and share my theory that Leo was taking the rap out of some kind of chivalrous instinct. It looked like Dez could use a friend.
But now wasn’t the time. Gillespie’s fidgeting could be normal behavior for the old man or the signs of a growing craving. If he left the table to stick a spike in his arm, I’d make some excuse to follow him and maybe find out if Erle had been his supplier.
Rigoberto had the deal. He shuffled and dealt the cards with a smooth rapidity that might have earned an approving nod in any casino. Ivie wound up with the low card showing this time, an eight. I tossed one of my last ten-dollar chips on the table to match her bet. Only then did I peek at my hole cards. Two jacks, to match the one showing. Goddamn. Three of a kind, and just getting started.
Everybody called the bet. Rigo dealt a fourth card faceup to everyone. The eight I received didn’t change my standing, but it took one possible match away from Ivie. Rigo had a pair of queens showing. The blond had another queen and a king, both hearts. We were all as quiet as Rigo now. It was shaping up like a whale of a hand. Even Dez had paused in her circuit around the tables to watch.
The following round was clay. No one’s fortunes seemed to wax or wane with their fifth card, and even the gung-ho actives were content to call the minimum bet.
On the next round, the last round with the card dealt faceup, I saw my second eight. Full house, jacks over eights. To the other players, I was showing only a pair of eights and what might reasonably become a pair of jacks or sevens to match it. Two pair wasn’t going to scare anyone away.
Even better, I hadn’t seen another jack cross the table. I had a slim shot at four of a kind. Getting the measure of Gillespie had been my reason for playing, but I couldn’t help but feel a tingle at the prospects.
Ivie had been chasing a ten-high straight, at best, and she knew enough to fold. Rigo raised fifty dollars. High, but not the highest he’d kicked. Was he holding three queens and maybe a larger full house than mine? Or bluffing? There were enough possible strong hands on the table that the sharpshooter might be pushing a little, to see what happened.
The blond threw in his last fifty dollars. Did he have the high flush, five hearts, already? Or was he praying to make it on the seventh and fi
nal card?
“I raise,” he said. We all looked at him. He took a shrink-wrapped spliff out of his pocket, an olive-colored sticky cylinder the size of a basketball player’s finger, and dropped it on the pot. “That’s coated in hash. Cost me sixty bucks.”
He was dead serious. Even Gillespie laughed at the guy’s balls.
And it gave me an idea.
“You know we can’t smoke that shit, man,” said one of the actives in between guffaws.
Rigo tossed in sixty, deciding the matter. “I’ll match cash value if one of you guys win.”
“Same for this?” I reached into my own pocket for the vial of Trumo and tossed it into the center of the table. It clinked lightly against a stack of red chips, knocking them askew. Everyone stared at it. I watched Gillespie.
“The fuck?” the blond said.
I snapped my fingers. “Trumorpha. Name-brand painkiller.”
Gillespie looked quizzical, but no more than that. Dez’s attention was on Rigo and the blond to see if they’d accept the bet. Neither of them appeared to recognize the vial in the slightest.
Shit. It had been a reach, but I’d still hoped that the Trumo was more than just Erle’s secret stash. If he had been selling drugs to the locals, that might give someone motive.
Rigo shrugged acceptance. “Anybody else?”
The actives called the bet. I put the pot at somewhere around six hundred dollars. We all settled in to receive our final card.
“Move that,” Rigo said, frowning at the pint glass obscuring the blond’s hand as the cards began to skim from his fingers over the table.
I was seated next to Rigoberto, glancing across him while the blond repositioned his beer, as we all were. So I saw it, barely, as Rigo dealt the last card from the bottom of the deck to land in front of him. He was so quick that the sleight of hand must have been invisible across the table.
Had Rigoberto been cheating all along? His previous turns at the deal hadn’t won him those hands. So why now? My eyes turned to the vial of pharmaceutical heroin, presented like a shiny bauble on the colorful pile of poker chips.
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