Dead Man's Hand

by Pati Nagle

  “Fffuuuck.”

  Ned waited, shifting from foot to foot. He could feel the concierge’s eyes boring into the back of his head.

  “OK,” Donny said slowly. “In the lobby, then. Fucking Christ.”

  Donny hung up and Ned handed back the phone with another big smile. “Thanks.”

  The concierge hung up the phone, glanced at Ned’s hands, and saw no tip forthcoming. His face turned sour and he said nothing. Ned hurried away, out the big glass doors that slid aside with a whisper, out into the sweltering night. He was half afraid the cabbie would have left, but she was still there, snapping her gum and watching the meter tally up the bucks.

  Beyond the cab sat the black Lincoln. The back of Ned’s neck prickled as he froze in his tracks.

  The back door of the limo swung open and a woman leaned toward him, her cleavage drawing his gaze. Something sparkled there, a pendant of diamonds or rhinestones. She was dark, Mexican maybe, and small. She smiled and beckoned to him.

  His body said “yes,” but his brain screamed “no.” He’d been hijacked once already.

  He jumped in the back seat of the cab and told the driver to go to Planet Hollywood. She looked over her shoulder at him and rolled her eyes.

  “My friend moved over there, OK? I talked to him, he’s bringing some money. You’ll get paid, all right? Now move it!”

  Move it she did. Ned had to grab the Jesus bar to keep from sliding off the seat. He looked back at the hotel as the cab sailed down the very long, sloping drive. Definitely a New Vegas style place. He preferred Old Vegas.

  The limo followed.

  Ned wished there was more traffic. The Strip wasn’t so crowded this late, though there were still plenty of people shuffling from casino to casino with their cups full of tokens. Most of the tourists had gone to bed, and the hard-core partiers owned the town from now until dawn. Ordinarily he loved this time of night, but the Lincoln prowling behind him killed his pleasure.

  Trying to distract himself, Ned gazed at the lights of the casinos, looking for differences now. If he’d been gone long enough for the Desert Inn to go down and that slick bastard to go up in its place, he’d lost a few years.

  Jesus. Years. Holy crap.

  He didn’t want to think about that. Instead he looked at the hotels, seeking familiar places. Bellagio and Paris were both open—they had been under construction last he knew. The heap next door to Paris was vaguely familiar, then he saw the sign that said Planet Hollywood and almost pissed his pants. It was huge, a three-armed thing that looked like the old Aladdin on steroids, swollen to three times its normal size.

  That’s right. They’d torn the old Aladdin down. He’d watched the demolition with some friends. Donny had been there, come to think of it. Ned had been feeling down because he’d lost his gaming license. They’d mourned about that and about the loss of another Old Vegas hotel, about how the new Aladdin was going to be a mega-resort like Wynn’s new Bellagio, with a mall built in so the gals could shop while the men played the tables.

  Had they scrapped that plan? Built this slick, white Planet Hollywood thing instead? Ned wouldn’t have thought Donny’d be caught dead living in a place like that.

  The cabbie pulled up to the entrance and gave him a bored glance. He told her to wait and hurried into the lobby. Soft, thick carpet hushed his footsteps. He looked anxiously around for Donny and spotted him next to a big potted palm.

  Donny looked as wiry as ever. There was a lot more gray in his curly black hair than Ned remembered. He was dressed in a rumpled red jogging suit, and looked less than happy. Ned put on a smile.

  “Donny. Thanks, pal, I knew you’d come through for me. You got the hundred?”

  “Fuck, it is you!”

  “Of course it’s me! Listen, somebody’s done a number on me. Give me that cash so I can pay the cab and then we’ll talk about it.”

  Donny slowly put his hand in his pocket, eyes fixed on Ned in a puzzled frown. He pulled out a small wad of twenties and handed it over.

  “Thanks, pal. You’re the man. Be right back.”

  Ned hurried out to the cab and ransomed his jacket with three of the twenties. He looked for the limo but didn’t see it—which didn’t make him feel any better. He shoved the other bills in his pocket, slung the jacket over his shoulder, and went back to the lobby.

  Donny led him to a bar where they retired to a booth in the back and ordered double whiskeys. Low music thumped in the background, and the place was cool and dark. Ned took a large swallow of his drink and sighed, then loosened his tie and unbuttoned his cuffs, turning them back a couple of times.

  “I can’t believe it,” Donny said, shaking his head. “You were dead.”

  “So I heard. I don’t know how they did it, but somebody put me on ice and gave it out I was dead.”

  “You were dead, man! I came to the viewing. You were wearing that same tie.”

  Ned glanced down at the tie, a striped number, pale blue and white with a kind of silvery sheen. He didn’t remember it, but then he had about a billion ties.

  “Must’ve been some poor schmoe they dressed up to look like me. Whoever did this is a sick fuck, you know? Obviously it was a threat.”

  “A threat? Put you on ice fourteen years as a threat? Man, who’d go to the trouble?”

  “I don’t know. I thought at first Randy’d done it, but I don’t think she could pull this off. Maybe I pissed off the mob. They been after me anyway, ever since they did Fat Herbie.”

  Donny glared at him over his whiskey glass. “Piss off the mob, they ice you permanent. No, it’d take some weirdo with a lot of cash and too much imagination to dream up something like this and pull it off.”

  “Yeah, but Hughes is dead.”

  “He wasn’t the only rich weirdo in Vegas.”

  They both took slugs of their drinks. Ned rolled his glass between his palms and looked for a waitress to order another round.

  “Somebody’s living in my house.”

  “Yeah, well. You were dead.”

  “So my assets are all gone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got some silver stashed.”

  “No, you don’t. Dick Tabbet dug it up.”

  Ned stared at Donny. Donny took another pull at his drink.

  “That’s why he and Randy were taken to trial,” Donny added. “They also tracked some of your coins and stuff back to Tabbet. I assume you heard about the trial?”

  Ned frowned. “Some.”

  “They were accused of burking you for your cash.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Ned finished his drink in one large swallow. A red haze was beginning to form around the edges of his vision. Unusual on only one drink, but then god only knew what the kidnappers had doped him with. He didn’t feel too bad physically. He was getting angrier by the minute, though.

  Donny caught the eye of a passing waitress and called for another round. “So, what did happen?”

  “Fuck if I remember.”

  “Oh. You don’t remember anything for the past fourteen years?”

  Ned shook his head. “I remember sending Connie off to college. I remember telling my lawyer to take Randy out of the will. Had the feeling she was going to try something. Did he do that?”

  Donny shrugged. “She was convicted, so she didn’t inherit anything. Only they overturned the conviction, so I don’t know what happened.”

  “Sonofabitch! She got off?”

  “Both of ‘em got off. Some of the evidence was thrown out, something about button-marks on your chest. You got any of those?”

  Ned glanced at his chest. He didn’t know, and he wasn’t going to strip in the bar to find out.

  “I’ll fucking kill ‘em!”

  “Ch, ch, ch,” Donny said as the waitress came up. She set down their glasses, shot a questioning glance at Donny, then left.

  Ned gulped down half the new drink. “You gotta help me, Donny. You gotta help me get my life back.”


  “Afraid that’s beyond my scope, buddy. Talk to your lawyer.”

  “Yeah. I’ll call him in the morning.” Ned took another swig, frowning at the table top. “You ever been to Atlantic City?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just wondering. Been thinking about it.”

  “If the mob’s after you, I’d stay out of Jersey.”

  “They’re not after me. I’m dead, right?”

  “Christ, Neddy.”

  “Think about it. It’d be like starting with a clean slate.”

  “OK, I’m too tired for this. It’s three in the fucking morning, Ned.” Donny finished his drink, then stood up, pulled a couple of crumpled bills out of his pocket, and dropped them on the table. “You want a place to crash? I got a spare bed.”

  Ned looked up at him and managed a smile. “Thanks, Donny. You’re the best.”

  “Come on.”

  Ned followed his friend to the elevators and they rode up in silence. The mirrored elevator wall gave Ned his first good look at himself since he’d woken up at the mausoleum. Rumpled suit, tie loose and askew, face round and flushed and the silver hair fading back from his temples. He looked like a fucking chipmunk. When had that happened?

  He was fifty-five. In the prime of life, right? But he looked like shit and he felt strangely adrift. His house, money, mistress, all gone. Frankly, he didn’t care if he never saw fucking Randy again.

  “What happened to the silver?” he asked.

  “I think it went to Connie after they caught Tabbet digging it up.”

  “Good, good.”

  If Connie had the money, that was all right. He’d wanted it to go to her anyway. He could call her—no, that wouldn’t be good. He could go out to her school, explain what had happened, and she’d give him some money back. She was a good kid, and she loved her dad.

  Only she must have finished school by now. Donny was right, he should talk to Tom White in the morning, find out what the hell had happened.

  He sighed. More than ever he wanted a fix. Smoky white dragon rising from the heated foil. He could practically taste it.

  The elevator doors opened on a hall with plush carpets and gentle lighting from lamps on the walls. Donny led Ned to his suite and dropped the key card on a table by the phone. Ned strolled past him into the living room. The picture windows looked out on a prime view of Bellagio with a glimpse of Paris to the side.

  He ambled over to the coffee table, which held a couple of big picture books of the kind useful for impressing chicks. “You got anything about the murder trial?”

  Donny stifled a yawn. “Nah. It was all over the papers. Been a couple of books written, too. You’re fucking famous, now that you’re dead.”

  “Not dead. I’m getting better.” Ned glanced up at Donny, but the joke had missed. “Maybe I’ll go pick up one of those books. Give me more of an idea what the hell happened.”

  “None of them mentioned alien abductions as far as I know.”

  “Ha, ha. Can you lend me a thousand?”

  “I just gave you a hundred.”

  “Yeah, but I had to pay the cab—”

  Donny came toward him suddenly like a bull at a red flag. Ned instinctively took a step back.

  “I will give you another hundred,” Donny said in a fierce, low voice, “but you will not bring any drugs back here or I will kick your ass down the elevator shaft.”

  Ned laughed, a kind of sorry, apologetic laugh. “Sure, Don.”

  “And if you get busted for doing smack in some doorway, I will not bail you out. You get into that shit, you are on your own, bro. Got it?”

  Donny’s eyes were on fire. Ned nodded.

  “Yeah. Got it.”

  Donny stomped out of the room, into his bedroom. Ned watched him out of sight, then his gaze drifted back to the window.

  Glitter Gulch. Beautiful town.

  He looked up when he heard Donny coming back. Pocketed the bills Donny pushed into his hand.

  “Thanks, Don. I won’t get in trouble. Can I borrow your key?”

  “Just knock on the door when you’re back. I don’t mind.”

  Implication being he minded giving Ned his key more than he minded being awakened. It felt like a slap in the face, but Ned swallowed it and let the subject drop. He put on a grin.

  “OK. Thanks Donny. You’re a great guy.”

  Donny didn’t smile. “Yeah. Take my advice, buy a couple of books and come straight back.”

  “Right.”

  Ned gave a thumbs up sign and headed for the door. When it closed behind him he paused for a moment as the hush of the hotel hallway descended on him.

  In the distance he imagined he could hear the siren call of the slots, beckoning him to the casinos. Game of Hold ‘em to settle his nerves. Maybe stop by a strip joint, find a cutie, score some horse. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a happy sigh, then headed for the elevator.

  ~ Clive ~

  Bloomfield, New Jersey

  He woke from one nightmare to find himself in the middle of another. He’d been dreaming of Orson Jones, the captain of the Silver Slipper, who had taken exception to his success at cards in the Slipper’s saloon and pursued him into Bloomfield.

  Clive remembered quite clearly running from the captain, who had been rendered unreceptive by drink and who, most unreasonably, demanded the return of the monies Clive had won. Memory clouded after that. The dream had been terrible, and seemed to have repeated itself over and over. There was always a knife, a wicked blade in the captain’s right hand. The other details were unclear, but the blade shone sharp and bright, though it had felt much the same as a punch, going in.

  Clive moaned and rolled over. The ground he was on was very hard. He put a hand beneath his face to shield it and tried to recapture sleep, but it was hopeless. He would only dream again, and he had been caught in that dream far too long.

  Over and over, the knife, the blow, falling and more blows, Jones’s hands rifling his pockets, the chink of gold as the captain took his winnings. Then the dragging, the endless dragging.

  He put a hand to the back of his head, expecting to find it sore. It was not. The night was silent except for the occasional swish of water from the paddlewheel of a passing steamboat. He listened for the creak of wagon wheels on the towpath. It never came.

  Strange. Clive opened his eyes. There was an odd, smoky smell in the air. He had an intuition things weren’t right.

  He lifted his head, and in doing so became aware that he was not in Bloomfield, at least not in any part of it he remembered. The road beneath him was peculiar, like pressed gravel coated with tar. He sat up and found that it was not a road at all.

  He’d been lying between two monstrous machines, somewhat like locomotives though smaller, and not sitting on any rails. They were painted identically with shields labeled “New Jersey State Police” on their sides. Clive sat still for a long while, listening and pondering.

  It occurred to him to check the wounds Jones’s knife had given him. He wasn’t able to find them, which rather annoyed him after all that endless dreaming. He felt perfectly all right.

  Had it been a trick knife, then? The sort used on stage, with a disappearing blade; it must have been. Jones had used it to catch him off guard and had robbed him. And he’d fallen for it!

  His pockets were empty of everything, valuable or not. A glance around where he’d been lying informed him that Jones had apparently taken his valise as well. And his beaver hat.

  That was the last straw. He’d find that miserable bastard and have his hat back. It was a good hat, it fit him well, and he wanted it.

  Let Orson Jones beware! Clive’s dignity had suffered a worse blow than his person, and he brooked no insults to his dignity. He wanted his own back on that rascal.

  He stood up and looked around, trying to get his bearings. He saw a building, large and blockish, lit very brightly by what had to be electric lights. He’d seen those in Manhattan, but not in Bloom
field.

  Doubt shook him, stopping him in his tracks. This building was no part of Bloomfield, either. Though to inquire within seemed the simplest way to get help, his intuition warned him away from it.

  Go south, a silent urging told him. South, to the coast, to the sea. To the Atlantic.

  A seaside resort, yes. Pleasant weather, pleasant company, civilized folk who might enjoy a friendly game. A smile tugged at the corner of Clive’s mouth.

  The thought of such company was certainly more alluring than the idea of confronting Jones, knife or no knife. He’d get his own back, make no mistake, but at present he was disadvantaged. If he could build up a stake, he could hire a lawyer to harass Captain Jones, and perhaps extract additional damages from him.

  Clive’s eyes narrowed even as his smile widened. Yes, that would be the way to handle that brute. The gentleman’s way.

  Parentage aside, Clive considered himself a gentleman in every respect, saving the minor detail that he was not above turning a card to win a pot. A fellow had to make a living, after all.

  The night sky was starless, heavy with cloud. With a last glance at the strangely lit building, Clive turned away and walked out into the darkness, toward the swishing sounds that must be coming from the canal. There he’d find passage with the next willing boat captain.

  Jones and his Slipper were probably long gone. He knew Jones had been heading down to Jersey City, so he might as well head that way himself. If the Slipper was not in evidence, he’d proceed down the coast, restore his finances, and then come back and find Jones.

  Happy to have this plan settled, he dared to whistle a tune as he strolled down a street toward the canal. Houses on both sides—strange, boxy structures—unfamiliar, but never mind. The rushing sounds were growing louder. They came and went, stopping and starting, which Clive found rather disturbing. No steamboat he’d ever been on had operated in that way. He found himself revisiting his nightmare, realizing this sound had been in it, sometimes. Not every time.

  The more he listened, the less it seemed like any sound he’d heard associated with a riverboat. Some other kind of machinery, then? Locks, or something? He knew the Morris Canal was fully contraptionized to an extent that bored him silly. Engineering had never interested him. He was a man of opportunity.