Afraid to Death

by Marc Behm

  Couldn’t she tell just by looking at his fingernails that he didn’t do anything with it because he didn’t have any. It made him feel better. Maybe he wasn’t as visibly dilapidated as he thought.

  ‘He started losing.’ (Now she was talking about her exhusband.) ‘As soon as we were married he couldn’t win anything. He said I put the hoodoo on him. Then I began to lose too. A double-hoodoo yet! Well, that relationship lasted about five minutes. I’ve got a house in Santa Monica.’ (Back to real estate.) ‘Just a small place. Properties are lousy there, because of the rent control. I think he’s in New York now.’ (Her husband again.) ‘Living with a couple of guys. He’s not a fag. I mean they’re all probably straight, even if they are living together. Up and down! Up and down!’ (Her blood pressure.) ‘Sometimes a hoodoo can last a couple of years.’ (Back to cards.) ‘You ever gone through that?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. For sure. Long endless hoodoos.’

  ‘Not me. Knock on wood. These last eighteen months have been pretty peachy. But I can’t keep it stabilized.’ (Blood pressure.) ‘That’s why I wear a patch. Catapres-TTS. That means transdermal therapeutic systems. You just stick it on and forget about hypertension for a week. I change it every Saturday morning at nine a.m. Depending on what time zone I’m in. I’m thinking about buying an apartment in Las Vegas.’ (Real estate.) ‘A nifty place on Spring Mountain Road, not far from the Frontier Hotel. How did you lose your hair really?’

  They stopped for the night in a motel in Tracy City. He spent an hour under the shower, scouring himself over and over again, scraping away every last trace of Atlanta.

  Lieutenant, sir!

  What is it, sergeant?

  Atlanta is ours and fairly won!

  Good. Burn it.

  B-burn it, sir? Surely you …

  You heard me. Put the city to the torch.

  But, sir, what about Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara?

  ‘Hey, you!’

  ‘Yes, Maxie?’

  ‘Who’re you talking to in there?’

  ‘Nobody. Just myself. That’s the only way I can get an intelligent answer.’

  ‘Oh, brother!’

  They slept together. But no matter how hard she tried, he couldn’t rise to the occasion.

  She didn’t mind. They became good friends.

  13

  In Santa Monica, on the edge of Venice, was a Victorian mansion housing the 4 Straight Club, the Mecca of every poker player in the US. Its roster of members, past and present, was impressive: John Wayne, Alfred Hitchcock, Diane Keaton, John Ford, Richard Nixon, Liv Ullmann, Prince Andy, Fellini, Howard Hawks, Gore Vidal, etc.

  Joe went directly there from the airport, only to learn that the membership fee was three thousand dollars.

  He moved into a fleatrap on Wilshire Boulevard and during the next few days spent some of his meagre funds outfitting himself more presentably – including the purchase of an inevitable valise or two to allay management suspicion.

  He went to the beach every day for an hour until the sun turned his shaven skull a bright pink.

  He wasn’t worried. The hoodoo was over. He had almost a grand. He just needed a few dollars more.

  A bartender told him to look up a hooker named Ida, near the Santa Monica Pier. He found her and she introduced him to her pimp, who wanted twenty dollars for the information. Joe paid him and that same night knocked on a door on Ocean Park Boulevard. He was led down into a basement filled with panting men and women clutching fistfuls of money, crowded around a crap table.

  He began by making side-bets. He lost a hundred, lost fifty more, lost another hundred. Then he began winning.

  Two hundred, three, four, five. He lost half of that, won it back, lost it again, won again.

  When he finally accepted the dice he threw three straight sevens. Six grand. By midnight he had his membership money, plus more than enough to pay his rent at the fleatrap for the next couple of months.

  A man with a jack o’lantern face was watching him sullenly.

  ‘You’re doin okay, baldy,’ he sneered. ‘You brung your own dice with you?’ He had a doghouse accent and was wearing a green suit, a yellow tie and a red shirt. He looked like a salad bar. ‘Watch this hustler,’ he yelled. ‘Who is he anyhow? Anybody ever seen him before?’

  ‘Ibn Kasim sent him,’ somebody said.

  ‘Ibn Kasim,’ he smirked at Joe. ‘What’re you, a pimp too?’

  Joe couldn’t believe it. Who needed this shit? A run-in with a creep was to be avoided at all costs.

  He left.

  He was back at the 4 Straight bright and early the next morning. He paid his fee and was issued one of the club’s famous membership cards – a grinning joker with an antic face, captioned, ‘I Pass.’

  The doorman, a midget in a tux named Roscoe, led him into the games room. ‘Show me your hands,’ he ordered. According to club legend, he could spot a card-sharp instantly, just by looking at his fingers.

  ‘You got the shakes, dude.’ He examined Joe’s knuckles and fingertips. ‘You on speed or something?’

  ‘I’m excited.’

  ‘No need to be. Unless you’re planning to rip us off. In which case you’ll be deported to Bakersfield.’ He scowled at the palm. ‘What do we have here?’

  ‘You read palms too?’

  ‘I do. You got a funny life-line, pal, all crooked and zigzag.’

  ‘Is that portentous?’

  ‘P-o-r-t-e-n-t-o-u-s,’ he spelled out the letters. ‘I can spell any word you throw at me. I got an ear for syllables. Don’t think just because I’m an insignificant little fellow that I’m an illiterate dork. Jerry Lewis once asked me how to spell shalom aleichem and I got it right on the first try.’

  ‘Tell me about my life-line. No … on second thought, don’t bother. Forget it.’

  14

  The room was an enormous rotunda with stained glass windows, filled with hundreds of tables. It was only eight o’clock but there were already scores of games in progress. Joe bought a thousand dollars worth of chips and waited for an invitation. That was one of the rules, never sit down without permission.

  ‘Chair open!’ someone called.

  Dominating his stage fright, he sat down at a table with four blank-faced men who all gave him a fast once-over. They all saw the same thing. A bronzed youngster with a shaven head and a condescending smile. A smartass. They tagged him: ‘Neophyte.’ He’d probably last less than a week. They’d move in on him for a fast fleece before he threw in the towel and went back to Kansas or Idaho.

  One of them wore a baseball cap, one a stetson, one a kepi. Obviously their good luck hats. The fourth was the same jack o’lantern-faced ballbreaker he’d encountered last night.

  ‘Baldy!’ he yodeled. ‘They let pimps in here now?’ To the others: ‘This dude’s got ten chicks out on the streets suckin cocks while he’s sittin here lookin mean. What’s the 4 Straight comin to I ask yous!’

  Joe ignored him. So did the hats. Cards were all they were interested in, not bullshit.

  Rattled, Joe folded on the first hand. Pumpkin-face was getting to him. That would never do. This was too important.

  With an effort, he concentrated on his cards, oblivious of everything else – except that baleful shithead staring at him across the table. He folded again, losing more precious chips.

  Roscoe the midget marched over to them. ‘Ladies are complaining about the language you guys are using,’ he warned. ‘Knock it off.’

  ‘We was just wonderin about the membership rules,’ Jack O snickered. ‘Aren’t there regulations about keepin bums outta here?’

  ‘You behave, Milch.’

  ‘Not that I got any objections, as long as he minds his manners and just keeps foldin like Mr. Nice Schlep.’

  Joe had to fold a third time. As soon as someone shouted ‘Vacant chair!’ he changed tables.

  ‘Good riddance!’ Milch yelped after him.

  His new opponents were more congenial. A stunning Air
France stewardess, an Army Colonel, a lady smoking Players and a Movie Star. Joe was immediately at ease. He won the first pot – and the second and third. This was more like it.

  He continued to win more than he lost all morning and all afternoon. The stewardess flew off to Paris and was replaced by a man in a wheelchair. The Movie Star left and was replaced by a girl wearing gym togs and carrying a shopping bag filled with chips. The Players smoker left and was replaced by Milch.

  ‘You still here, hairless?’ he sniggered at Joe. ‘Nobody caught you cheatin yet?’

  Joe immediately got up and cashed in his chips. Eight grand. Way to go!

  It was six-thirty. He had dinner at Bruno’s in Venice then went back to his Wilshire fleatrap and slept like a log.

  He was back in the rotunda the next day – and the next and the next. In five weeks he estimated that he’d spent about a thousand hours at the tables.

  He now had his favorite adversaries. Wheelchair was one. He was a retired tycoon from La Jolla. Another was Mademoiselle Air France, when she was in town. The Movie Star was another. Joe often went to parties at his Bel Air estate and played tennis with him at the Brentwood Country Club.

  There were others. A one-time senator who held the record for sitting in the longest stud game in California history – 72 hours nonstop. A sailor based in San Diego who spent all his winnings building a yacht. A screen-writer with four ex-wives and nine kids. An opera diva who showed up one night after a performance still wearing her Aida costume.

  And, of course, there was Milch. Joe had programed himself to play with the loud-mouth shithead whenever he had a chance and thoroughly enjoyed out-bluffing him over and over again. He kept a careful account of the amounts won from him – so far ten grand. Half of it in IOUs.

  Joe would have gladly given up poker for something else that paid as well. It was an exhausting way to make a living. It sapped your strength and turned the brain to quagmire. But where else could he earn a thousand dollars an hour?

  But for all these other people – these fanatics and zealots – poker went far beyond winning or losing pots of chips. The game was their quest for the Holy Grail, obsessing them in a lifelong captivation more consumptive than love or religion or crack. They were explorers trudging one behind the other in a safari through the jungles and deserts of a million games, searching for the lost city of Ophir, in the Valley of Delight, and every deal was another step toward the discovery of their heart’s desire.

  He couldn’t understand their passionate dedication. He always knew what cards they were hiding. Milch’s maniac eyes would burn with frenzy over a pair. Miss Air France would go into orgasmic spasms with three of a kind. The Movie Star would sit petrified with helpless ecstasy when he was dealt the queen that would build his full house.

  Even Wheelchair, the fabled corporation czar, the Attila of the boardroom, would blush like a maiden, speechless and agog over a good hand.

  Joe’s own cool lack of fervor made him realize that he was at long last becoming a pro.

  And he felt that he was missing something.

  15

  He opened an account at the California Overseas Bank in Marina del Rey. His hair grew. He read hundreds of books. He began smoking cigars.

  There was one dreary hoodoo period when he lost almost everything but within two months he won it all back again.

  He was still living in his Wilshire fleatrap and was looking around for a new place. But apartments in Santa Monica were hard to find and in LA they were outrageously over-priced. He didn’t want to invest in anything expensive and permanent. He was afraid that being too comfortably installed would make him lazy and careless. He had to be able to bolt at a moment’s notice.

  Then one morning while he was talking to Roscoe in the foyer, an old acquaintance strolled into the 4 Straight. A redhead, wearing earrings as heavy as golfballs.

  ‘Here’s one for you, shorty,’ she said. ‘Vaginismus.’

  ‘Easy!’ the midget beamed. ‘V-a-g-i-n-uhh-i-s-m-u-s.’

  ‘Correct. And I hope it never happens to you. Hi, Joe.’

  ‘Hi, Maxie.’

  They had breakfast together at Bob’s on Ocean Park. She’d just flown in from a bridge tournament in Mexico City. Since she’d last seen him she’d sold her condo in KC and bought two more in Colorado Springs and Cedar Rapids. She’d also visited her husband in New York. ‘He’s pumping iron now and living with a bus driver in the Bronx. Talk about out-of-the-closet! Brother! He’s so gay he’s merry. A muscle-bound hulk wearing fake eyelashes. I haven’t even been to my Santa Monica joint yet. I hope it’s still there. I mean, all these earthquakes. I was with a guy the night before last who was so huge he couldn’t get it in. I swear, his cock was bigger than a dinosaur’s tail. Do you still have a problem?’

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘Come on, Joe. Confide in Sister Maxie.’

  ‘Oh, you mean getting it up? I don’t think about things like that.’

  ‘So what do you do instead of things like that?’

  ‘I meditate.’

  ‘Oh, brother. I met a friend of yours in Des Moines. Last March.’

  ‘I don’t know anybody in Des Moines. Where the hell is it anyway? Utah?’

  ‘Iowa. A nifty chic-looking blonde with long legs and big eyes.’

  His stomach contracted. ‘Maxie, I think that might be someone …’ His coffee suddenly tasted like ink. ‘Someone I’d like to avoid seeing. How did you meet her?’

  ‘I was walking along Fleur Drive on my way to a realtor’s office and she was standing in front of the Bible College. “You’re Maxie,” she said. Just like that. “Yeah,” I said. “Who are you?” And she said, “I’m a friend of Joe Egan’s. Do you by any chance know where I can get in touch with him?’”

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t know where you were.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘She was really a knock-out. Like a cover of Vogue.’

  ‘Did she say anything else?’

  ‘Yeah. She asked me why you shaved off your hair.’

  They went to her house on Eleventh Street. A small place, only half-furnished, but clean and tidy. She invited him to move in with her for three hundred a month. He jumped at the chance. It was an ideal hideout, only twenty minutes to the airport and just a few blocks from the Santa Monica Freeway. He’d have to buy a car.

  They lived together for a year, sleeping in separate beds, spending most of their time at the club. They’d leave in the morning and come home at night, like colleagues working in the same office. Milch snarled and called them ‘Mr. and Mrs. Schmuck.’

  ‘Don’t pay any attention to Milch,’ she told him. ‘He’s got a problem. He’s been busted twice for transvestism. Can you imagine that repulsive hyena in drag? It’s beyond belief! He made a deal with the cops the last time they collared him. They use him as a decoy. He swishes around Hollywood Boulevard in an evening gown, picking up guys who’re into kink, then turns them over to the Vice Squad.’

  She dragged Joe all over LA and Orange Counties, inspecting properties. They went to several of the Movie Star’s parties and spent some weekends at Wheelchair’s palace in La Jolla. Since her unfortunate sexual encounter in Mexico City, she’d sworn off men for a while and had a brief affair with Miss Air France.

  And, except for the debits and credits of the poker games, life was smooth and pleasant.

  And yet …

  Any sign of the Apaches, Sergeant?

  No, sir, Lieutenant. It’s mighty quiet out there.

  Yes indeed. Too quiet.

  He couldn’t forget Des Moines. How had she known about Maxie? And how did she find out he’d shaven his head? She must have been making inquiries all the way from the poker den in Deerwod Park to Nashville. Like a detective. Tracking him down, looking for his footprints. She probably even had a photo of him.

  Do you know this man?

  Yeh, I think so. Looks like the guy who was in here
yesterday playin cards. No hair. Bald as a cueball. He left with Maxie Hearn in her Toyota. They went to Nashville. What’re you after him for, lady?

  I want to kill him.

  How could he lose her? A foolish question! Or was it? He’d done it before, he could do it again. And again and again. But he had to have some kind of a head start on her. A … what did they call it? A coign of vantage. Maybe he should go to Mass again. Or change his name. Or disguise himself …

  Now he was just being silly.

  16

  His skill at cards brought about his downfall.

  Coming back to the club after lunch one day in April, he was astonished to find all the tables empty. Not a single game was in progress. All the players were on their feet, cheering and applauding.

  Roscoe banged a staff on the floor and blared, ‘Make way! Make way!’

  The ex-senator made a speech. Caterers served champagne. Joe was presented with a new ‘Royal Golden’ membership card and a check for $10,000. Then he was ceremoniously escorted to a throne in the center of the rotunda.

  And he was coronated.

  The event was written up in the second page of the Herald Examiner. There was a photo of Joe, enthroned, wearing his crown and holding a scepter, under the headline: ‘4 STRAIGHT CLUB CROWNS POKER KING OF THE YEAR.’

  He was appalled.

  His name, his address, his picture … yike! She’d come after him now faster than lightning.

  How much time did he have?

  A car! Shit! He should have a car. He’d kept putting off buying one, now it was too late.

  He went to his bank and withdrew everything, closing his account. No … he didn’t need a car. He didn’t want to find himself stranded on some lonely country road out of gas or with a flat tire.

  He took a cab back to the house. He tried to pack, not knowing what to take. Suit, some shirts, ties, a rain-coat, an overcoat. He was in the middle of reading The Brothers Karamazov, he’d have to take that too. He had a whole god-damned library of unread books. Cities of the Plain, Napoleon, From Reverence to Rape, A Stillness at Appomattox, The Red Knight of Germany … fuck it! He wouldn’t take anything. Just a few cigars.