Aces and Eights

by Ted Thackrey, Jr.

  I got the toilet lid open just in time.

  After that, things could only get better.

  Splashing my face with cold water and rinsing my mouth and wiping it all away, I found that I was able to think clearly and coldly about things to be done during the next few hours.

  First and foremost, there was the game.

  Moving away from the lavatory, I reached into the shower and pulled the central knob and turned the indicator all the way over to hot and left it there while I shucked out of my undershorts and hung them on a towel rack, wondering irrelevantly if it might not be a good idea to wear them into the stall and wash them along with everything else.

  But that was a logical thought, and the thought of logic brought me back to focus on the game.

  Still first and foremost.

  Decency, propriety, sanity—and logic—all demanded that it be demoted, relegated to a far lesser priority. But the back part of the mind, the division that does the best and most important work with the least expenditure of time and effort, was hammering on the table and stamping its feet and making threats. So all right, already! Leave it there. At the top.

  The shower was hot now, and I reached in and turned the knob the other way and gave it a three count to turn stinging cold and then forced myself to step inside.

  It was like an electric shock.

  But it cleared away the last of the cobwebs and the dizzies and settled the world firmly back on its base and made the transition even sweeter when I finally allowed myself to inch the pointer back toward warm. And then warmer.

  The game tonight would tell all.

  Never mind logic.

  Never mind correlation of all the factors and touching all the bases. Poker is an obsession and a weapon and an art and a tool of matchless potency and precision. A tool to my hand. Tonight...

  Movement. Behind me.

  Standing flat-footed and relaxed in the shower, allowing the balm of water and steam and warmth to do their work, I was deaf to any small sounds that might have given early warning. As it was, the only perception was of a minor disturbance in the air as the shower door opened and closed behind me. I tensed...and then relaxed again.

  Bare arms, deeply tanned and strong, surrounded my chest and pinned my upper arms, pressing twin circles of warmth against my back.

  “Abajo con tus pantalones,” Maxey said.

  “Already attended to,” I said.

  “Well, now, is that a fact?”

  A SERMON

  (CONTINUED)

  The only obstacle—the only encumbrance in our path—is the one we have put there ourselves. We must reject the lie, must break through the prison wall of fantasy, put away the dream world that our fears have made.

  TWENTY-NINE

  We slept through the morning and woke just after noon and made love again and slept again, and when I woke a second time I was alone between the peach-pink sheets.

  There had been no dreams.

  And there had been no strangeness between us; time had taken a vacation. Whatever had been seemed still to be. Older, perhaps. Warmer. More accepting. But recognizable still, and compelling in a way that was familiar yet very new.

  No doubts. And no reservations.

  I sat up, wincing a bit as my feet touched the carpeting but not prepared to make an issue of it. What can’t be cured must be endured—and days like this one make the trip worthwhile.

  Blackout curtains kept the bedroom in a state of semi-darkness, but the door was open and through it I could see the slanting benediction of a setting sun.

  Time for breakfast.

  I stood up and stretched and yawned jaw-breakingly and noticed several bruises I hadn’t before and decided to treat them as the ancient Greeks had. With contempt. I strode from the bedroom, looking for Maxey to complain about the service—fire that blighter, Jeeves; never around when you want him—but discovered I was on my own.

  Not even a note.

  Very well, then, a grown man ought to be able to fend for himself even in the wilds of a luxury hotel. I went into the little kitchen and began to forage.

  But the full-size refrigerator set the tone: six bottles of Perrier, unopened jar of cocktail olives, ditto cocktail onions, two small bottles of cologne, and something called facial toning rinse.

  I closed it and turned to the upper cabinets.

  One contained party glasses—virtually unlimited quantities of cellophane-wrapped plastic highball, lowball, wine, and hollow-stem champagne glasses all bearing the ersatz crest of the Scheherazade. Its next-door neighbor was more elegant: dinner plates, cups, and saucers for eight, Scheherazade crest on the upper surfaces and a startling Haviland imprint on the bottoms. Touch of class there. Or a working agreement with the Union Corse.

  Silverware and cooking utensils were where they should have been, crowding the drawers just under the countertop, and the cabinets below were filled with the various pots, pans, colanders, and kettles of gourmet technique.

  But no food.

  Not even instant coffee.

  The remedy was, of course, ready to hand. Just dial room service. They deliver.

  But they also talk. And ask questions.

  No...

  Desperate, I went back to the refrigerator for a second look. The cocktail olives were beginning to seem almost palatable, but I resisted the urge and opened the freezer door instead.

  And stood gazing at its contents for a long, long time.

  No frozen food. Not even ice cubes. But the space was occupied nonetheless. Maxey had always been a meticulous housekeeper—no dishes left in the sink, no undusted corners.

  The six sticks of dynamite were carefully wrapped in a cellophane bag, with silica gel desiccant.

  And so were the electric blasting caps.

  I was wearing the remains of my clothing when Corner Pocket arrived with the key to my room.

  He had returned my call to his office within minutes and retrieved the key without questions and I should have offered at least a word or two of thanks, but we rode the elevator to my floor in a silence doubly enforced by the presence of an elderly couple who had evidently just returned from the hotel’s golf course.

  His approach shots had been sloppy and she was being properly supportive. And I was grateful.

  I hadn’t shown Corner Pocket what was in the freezer compartment because I didn’t want to discuss the matter with him until I was able to sort it out in my own mind, and I had been in a hurry to get out of there because I didn’t want to discuss it with Maxey yet, either.

  Sufficient unto the day...

  Once inside my own room, of course, all bets were off as far as Corner Pocket was concerned.

  “What the hell?” he demanded.

  So I told him. Part of it, anyway: the aces and eights that had been delivered to Manny Temple, the murder of Happy Apodaca, the hangar-arsenal in the desert. But, as with Maxey, I edited, omitting the part about Jorge de la Torre.

  And the atom bomb.

  “Nice people,” he said when I was done. “And I don’t suppose I have to tell you that you’re luckier than a seven-roll chump.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t.”

  We stood looking at each other in silence for a moment, and I couldn’t help wondering how lucky he’d think I was if he knew the rest of the story.

  Maxey.

  Oh, Christ...Maxey!

  But talking about it wasn’t going to help anyone or anything, and before the moment could get too long or the silence too heavy I turned away and stripped, checking to make sure my other suit had been cleaned and returned to its rack—it had—and that everything else I would need was in readiness.

  All right, then.

  First the eye: I took the spare from its case and, noticing Corner Pocket’s reaction, went into the bathroom to go through the routine of putting it into place. Everyone has his limits.

  Then another shower. Alone this time. To wash away the last trace of the scent that seemed to linger
and cling. And clear my mind for the night’s work.

  Corner Pocket had hitched a ride to the hotel in a police car—as usual—and so we went to the game in my rented wheels. Which was just as well. He knew where it was and I didn’t.

  Francis Carrington Shaw had made the arrangements; this time we would be playing in one of the individual villas near his own on the grounds of El Cholo Loco. And this time we would be taking no chances.

  Cars bearing the seal of something called Beehive Security, Inc., were parked, not unobtrusively, in position to form quick roadblocks on all access roadways, and a discerning eye could pick out various parts of the landscape that had been cleared for what a combat infantryman would recognize in a moment as textbook-quality fields of fire, each with its own guardian, alert and ready.

  I looked around for antiaircraft guns and couldn’t spot them, but decided that was only because of effective camouflage.

  Francis Carrington Shaw did not do things by halves.

  We were not the last to arrive, but we were not the first, either.

  The Voice of Heaven—gray–faced and sweat-shaky, but evidently still obedient to his Master’s voice—was seated in one of the chairs arranged around a kidney-shaped casino poker table, staring at the array of chips racked in its center. He looked up when we walked in, but didn’t speak, and I turned my attention to the blank-faced youngster seated in the dealer’s chair.

  Close-cropped hair and pink-scrubbed cheeks and blinding-white T-shirt all proclaimed him a member of Shaw’s Mormon Mafia.

  I looked a question at Corner Pocket, and he shrugged.

  “Last time, playing without a dealer,” he said, “things didn’t seem to go so well, what I hear. So the Man thought it might go better if one of his own troops did the shuffling and dealing for us. Just to keep the party polite.”

  We both glanced at the Voice of Heaven to see if he had anything to add. But he didn’t.

  I’m not even sure he heard.

  But Corner Pocket’s choice of words raised another question.

  “You’re in the game this time?” I said.

  “On a pass. Yes.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. Some game. I would be playing Shaw’s hand with Shaw’s money. Corner Pocket the same. And probably the Voice of Heaven, too. Four chairs. The colonel would have to be crazy to walk into a setup like this.

  But of course he might not show.

  The atom bomb he was supposedly selling us tonight was no longer available. Would he know that and stay away?

  I turned the idea over in my mind for a moment or two, trying to see it from his angle, but there were still too many unknowns.

  Francis Carrington Shaw had spoken of Colonel David Connor as though he believed the bearded man was acting as agent for the actual possessor of the stolen weapon. But Shaw must also have considered the possibility that the colonel was representing no one but himself.

  And if he was—and the more I thought about it the more likely it seemed—then he would be out of the country, or at any rate out of sight, by now.

  If Shaw’s assumption was correct, though, and the colonel was acting for someone else, then there was always a chance that poor communication or some other factor might cause him to walk back into the steel-lined spiderweb that had been woven around us. And if he did that, there might even be a game. Of sorts. Though certainly not the one that had been proposed.

  I sat down in one of the chairs and stared first at my hands and then at the chips and then into the middle distance, awaiting the turn of events.

  It was a short wait.

  Outside the door, a walkie-talkie buzzed in the hand of a guard I hadn’t known was there and he answered in a low voice and a moment later we heard the sound of a car approaching. Stopping. A door opened and closed, and footsteps approached.

  “Got to hand it to you yobbos,” Colonel David Connor said, striding through the door with a wide smile half–concealed in his beard. “Security around here’s tighter than a cow’s butt in fly time...”

  Reactions to that were not much.

  The Mormon dealer glanced up momentarily from the card deck he had been shuffling and reshuffling, gave the late arrival a good eyeful of bright-cheeked nothing, and returned his attention to his hands. The Voice of Heaven blinked. And neither Corner Pocket nor I seemed to be able to think of anything to say.

  But the colonel was all smiles.

  “Well, then,” he said, “I guess we’re ready to play some cards, are we? Let’s see...everyone understand the stakes?”

  He looked brightly at Corner Pocket and then at me, but spoke again before either of us could answer.

  “Oh, by the bye, Preacher,” he said. “Speaking of stakes, I have something that might interest you. A kind of added premium for the game, as it were. What do you think?”

  He reached into his pocket and handed me a color photograph.

  It was a Polaroid, slightly out of focus, but recognizable. Someone had taken a picture of Maxey. Quite recently.

  She was in a room I didn’t recognize. Tied to a chair. Gagged. Blue-violet eyes terrified and blazing an appeal for help that was far louder than a scream.

  A SERMON

  (CONTINUED)

  Reality, and the determination to accept it, is the key: To see the world as it is, and to find our own place in it—dealing with that which is real. This is power. Seize it!

  THIRTY

  I was the only one who saw the picture, and I handed it back to the colonel without comment and we sat down at the table and handed our money to the fresh-faced dealer and waited for him to count out the chips and after a few minutes we were ready to play.

  By general agreement the game, as before, was seven card stud.

  Ante $100, with a forced opening and straddle.

  A single red chip—the button, used to indicate the theoretical dealer position for purposes of the game—began its rounds to the left of the actual dealer, and we began to play. Or, anyway, the colonel and I did.

  Corner Pocket and the Voice of Heaven might as well have been in Peoria. They were only playing for money.

  But for the first hour or so nothing much seemed to be happening.

  Corner Pocket lost what he probably thought of as a big one—nearly $100,000, a chance he’d never have taken with his own money—to the colonel, who showed real finesse in running what turned out to be a cold bluff.

  Not that anyone else at the table knew it. And the only reason I did was that he was showing four cards of a closed-end straight and two of the cards he’d needed to fill were already visible in someone else’s hand, while the others were the concealed low pair that I’d folded after the second round of betting.

  Nice technique.

  But once again I found myself struggling with that peculiar sense of familiarity, of having met the colonel—or someone whose poker game was similar—somewhere before. But I couldn’t put a face with the memory. And the beard he was wearing was as effective as an old-fashioned bandanna mask. Jesse James in a bush jacket...

  Half an hour later, we finally came head-to-head.

  I was in the trapping position, to the left of the dealer button, with queen-jack concealed and ten-nine showing. I stayed with it through a deuce and a seven and by that time my only company was the colonel, with three deuces and a king. One other king was gone, which left a good chance that both of us were chasing the same card.

  He bet like a man with at least one more kowboy, and I hesitated for a moment before buying my final card, which was an eight.

  Well, okay, then. Not exactly what I’d hoped for, and there were still three kings roaming around the countryside somewhere, one or more of them perhaps in the colonel’s hand.

  But you just don’t fold a queen-high straight.

  Not when the pot is already up to $26,000. The trips he was showing were best, so he bet first: $5,000.

  I wanted to raise.

  And if he’d pushed in another $26,000, or even $10,000, I
might have done it. That kind of betting would have indicated a probable desire to buy me out of the pot, make it too rich for whatever kind of fighting hand I thought I had.

  A mere $5,000, on the other hand, gave the opposite message. It could signal a desire to milk the hand, bring the Preacher along step by step into the trap instead of edging him out. And both could be mere artistry.

  That’s poker...

  I counted a $10,000 raise out of the stake on the table before me and got no response of any kind from the colonel and counted the chips again. Still nothing. So I picked up half of the $10,000 and pushed it in, to call.

  But I never found out what cards he had concealed. The three deuces were all he wanted to show. Fair enough. I flipped my concealed queen-jack and eight face up and raked in the $36,000. The colonel smiled a little and pushed the remainder of his hand toward the dealer.

  “You could have had more,” he said. “I was willing to go the distance.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “It’s not even your money.”

  “While it’s on the table, it’s nobody’s money,” I said. “While it’s on the table, it’s just a way of keeping score.”

  “If you say so,” he said.

  And the button moved and we anted again and the game went on.

  Twice more in the next hour, the colonel and I found ourselves alone in sizable pots. And twice more we bet into each other—with mixed results.

  He was holding an unexpected fifth club the first time, and finding out about it cost me $30,000.

  The second time, he had three kings with one concealed and I had two low pair in the open and we bumped the action to about $70,000, with Corner Pocket and the Voice of Heaven standing doggo on the sidelines, and finally it came to showdown and his trips were high and good, but not as good as the third card to one of my pair, which gave me a full boat and the pot.

  Call it almost even.

  The game had been going on for more than two hours. But it still hadn’t gotten serious.

  Both of us seemed to be waiting.

  Not that the other two players were just sitting around in their chairs. Corner Pocket played a good conservative game with cool and knowledgeable appraisal of the chances, and if his pile of chips seemed slowly to dwindle, it was because the cards just weren’t running for him yet. Given a full night or more of play, that condition would rectify itself and he seemed to have the good sense to wait it out with the patience that is the recognized First Commandment of Poker.