The Best of Lucius Shepard (103 page)

We
went down to the casino early the same afternoon we checked in, and Pellerin
nabbed a chair at one of the poker tables. I watched for a while to ascertain
whether he was winning—he was—and went for a stroll. I wanted to see how far my
leash would stretch. There were several men hanging about who might be Billy’s
people and I was interested to learn if any of them would follow me. I also
wanted to get clear of the situation and gain some perspective on things. Once
I reached the entrance to the grounds, I turned right and walked along the edge
of the highway, working up a sweat in the hot sun, until I came to a strip mall
with about twenty-five or thirty shops, the majority of them closed. It was
Sunday in the real world.

A
Baskin-Robbins caught my eye. The featured flavors were banana daiquiri and
sangria. Sangria, for fuck’s sake! I bought two scoops of vanilla by way of
protesting the lapsed integrity of ice cream flavors and ate it sitting on the
curb. I tried to problem-solve, but all I did was churn up mud from the bottom
of my brain. The assignment that had been forced upon us—upon Pellerin—was to
attract the interest of a wealthy developer named Frank Ruddle, an excellent
poker player who frequented the Seminole Paradise. Pellerin’s job was to play
sloppy over the course of a couple of weeks. That way he would set himself up
as a mark and Ruddle would invite him to the big cash game held each month at
his Lauderdale home. According to Billy’s scenario, once Ruddle went bust, he
would feel compelled to open his vault in order to obtain more cash. At this
point Billy’s people would move in on the game. He wanted something from that
vault. I thought it might be more of a trophy than anything of actual value,
and that his real goal was purely personal. The plan was paper-thin and smacked
of Billy at his most profligate. There were a dozen holes in it, a hundred ways
it could go wrong, but Billy was willing to spend our lives for the chance to
gain a petty victory. Had the aim of the exercise been to secure the item at
any cost, it could have been far more easily achieved. That he was willing to
squander an asset with (if Jo were to be believed) unlimited potential was
classic late-period Billy Pitch. If we failed, it was no skin off his butt.
He’d wait for his next opportunity and while away the hours throwing Tanqueray
parties for his fellow reality-show addicts. And if we succeeded, he might
decide that his victory would not be secure so long as we were alive. I saw a
couple of outs, but the odds of them working were not good.

Across
from the mall lay a vacant lot overgrown with weeds, sprinkled with scrub
palmetto, and adjoining it was another, larger lot that had been cleared for
construction, the future site of LuRay Condominiums—so read a sign picturing a
peppy senior citizen couple who seemed as pleased as all get out that they
would soon be living next door to a casino where they could blow their
retirement in a single evening. Farther along was a cluster of tiny redneck
dwellings set among diseased-looking palms. Squatty frame houses with shingle
roofs and window-unit air conditioners and front yards littered with sun-bleached
Big Wheels and swing sets. They looked deserted, but each of them harbored, I
imagined, a vast corpulent entity with dyed hair and swollen ankles, who
survived on a diet of game shows and carbohydrates, and went outside once a day
to check the sky for signs of the Rapture. Now and then a car zipped past and,
less frequently, one pulled into the mall and disgorged a porky Florida Cracker
family desirous of some Burger King or a couple of bare-midriffed Britney
Spears clones in search of emergency eyeliner.

This
dose of reality caused the mud to settle, the sediment to wash from my
thoughts, but clarity did not improve my prospects. I tossed my trash into a
bin. Zombie hold ‘em players and doe-eyed ladies who were a little damaged ...
I wanted that crap out of my head, I wanted things back the way they had been.
Small Time. That was me. Yet I was content with my small-time life. I was adept
at it, I was pleased with my general lack of ambition. Tentatively, I gave the
trash bin a kick. It quivered in fear, and that inspired me to unload on it.
The bin rolled out into the parking lot and I kept on kicking it. I crushed its
plastic ribs, I flattened it and squeezed out its soggy
paper-and-crumpled-plastic guts. Inside the Baskin-Robbins, people stared but
didn’t appear terribly alarmed. They were accustomed to such displays. Heat
drove men insane in these parts. The manager took a stand by the door, ready to
defend his tubs of flavored goo, but the moment passed when I might have
stormed his glassed-in fortress and engendered the headline “Five Dead in
Baskin-Robbins Spree Killing—Louisiana Native Charged in Crime.” I strode out
to the highway, fueled by a thin, poisonous anger, and was nearly struck by a
speeding Corvette that veered onto the shoulder. Dizzy with adrenaline, I gazed
off along the road. Despite the vegetation, I felt I was on the edge of a
desert. Weeds stirred in a fitful breeze. One day the Great Sky Monkey, sated
with banana daiquiri ice cream, would drop down from the Heavenly Banyan Tree to
use the place for toilet paper. I tried to calm myself, but everywhere I cast
my eye I saw omens and portents and outright promises of doom. I saw a wine
bottle shattered into a spray of diamonds on the asphalt, I saw a gray-haired
man poking his cane feebly at a dead palm frond, I saw a sweaty twelve-year-old
girl with a mean, sexy face pedaling her bicycle full tilt toward me, and I saw
a black car with smoked windows idling beside a dumpster under the killing
white glare of the sun.

* * * *

Frank
Ruddle looked like an empty leather gym bag. He had recently lost a great deal
of weight, something he proclaimed loudly and often, and his skin had not
tightened sufficiently to compensate. Forty-something; with thinning blond hair
and a store-bought orange tan and a salesman’s jaunty manner; these
attributes—if attributes they were—had been counterbalanced by dewlaps, jowls,
and an overall lack of muscle tone. His outfits always included some cranberry
article of clothing. A tie, a pair of slacks, a shirt. I assumed this was his
lucky color, for it was not a flattering one, serving to accent his
unhealthiness. At the tables, prior to making a bold play, he was in the habit
of kissing a large diamond signet ring. He appeared to have taken a shine to
Pellerin, perhaps in part because Pellerin was an even unhealthier specimen
than he, and, when sitting at the same table, he would applaud Pellerin’s
victories, including those won at his expense, with enthusiasm.

“Damn!”
he would say, and give an admiring shake of the head. “I didn’t see that
coming.”

Pellerin,
in heads-up play, let Ruddle win the lion’s share of the pots and took his
losses with poor grace. Watching him hustle Ruddle was like watching a wolf toy
with a house pet, and I might have felt sorry for the man if I had been in a
position to be sympathetic.

We
had been at Seminole Paradise ten days before Ruddle baited his hook. As
Pellerin and I were entering the casino in the early afternoon, he intercepted
us and invited us for lunch at the hotel’s fake Irish pub, McSorely’s, a place
with sawdust on the floor, something of an anomaly, as I understood it, among
fake Irish pubs. Pellerin was in a foul mood, but when he saw the waiter
approaching, a freckly, red-headed college-age kid costumed as a leprechaun, he
busted out laughing and thereafter made sport of him throughout the meal. The
delight he took from baiting the kid perplexed Ruddle, but he didn’t let it
stand in the way of his agenda. He buttered Pellerin up and down both sides,
telling him what a marvelous player he was, revisiting a hand he had won the
night before, remarking on its brilliant disposition. Then he said, “You know,
I’m having some people over this weekend for a game. I’d be proud if you could
join us.”

Pellerin
knocked back the dregs of his third margarita. “We’re going to head on to
Miami, I think. See what I can shake loose from the casinos down there.”

Ruddle
looked annoyed by this rebuff, but he pressed on. “I sure wish you’d change
your mind. There’ll be a ton of dead money in the game.”

“Yeah?”
Pellerin winked at me. “Some of it yours, no doubt.”

Ruddle
laughed politely. “I’ll try not to disappoint you,” he said.

“How
much money we talking here?”

“There’s
a five hundred thousand dollar buy-in.”

Pellerin
sucked on a tooth. “You trying to hustle me, Frank? I mean, you seen me play.
You know I’m good, but you must think you’re better.”

“I’m
confident I can play with you,” Ruddle said.

Pellerin
guffawed.

“I
beg your pardon?” said Ruddle.

“I
once knew a rooster thought it could run for president ‘til it met up with a
hatchet.”

Ruddle’s
smile quivered at the corners.

“Shit,
Frank! I’m just joshing you.” Pellerin lifted his empty glass to summon the
leprechaun. “This is a cash game, right?”

“Of
course.”

“What
sort of security you got? I’m not about to bring a wad of cash to a game that
doesn’t have adequate security.”

“I
can assure you my security’s more than adequate,” said Ruddle tensely.

“Yeah,
well. Going by how security’s run at the Seminole, your idea of adequate might
be a piggybank with a busted lock. I’ll send Jack over to check things out. If
he says it’s cool, we’ll gamble.”

I
sent Ruddle a silent message that said, See what I have to put up with, but he
didn’t respond and dug into his steak viciously, as if it were the liver of his
ancient enemy.

Somehow
we made it through lunch. I pushed the small talk. Movies, the weather. Ruddle
offered curt responses and Pellerin sucked down margaritas, stared out the
window, and doodled on a napkin. After Ruddle had paid the check, I steered
Pellerin outside and, to punish him, dragged him on a brisk walk about the
pool. He complained that his legs were hurting and I said, “We need to get you
in shape. That game could go all night.”

I
walked him until he had sweated out his liquid lunch, then allowed him to
collapse at a poolside table not far from the lifeguard’s chair. They must have
treated the water earlier that day, because the chlorine reek was strong. In
the pool, a huge sun-dazzled aquamarine with a waterfall slide at its nether
end, packs of kids cavorted under their parents’ less-than-watchful eyes,
bikini girls and Speedo boys preened for one another. Close at hand, an elderly
woman in a one-piece glumly paddled along the edge, her upper body supported by
a flotation device in the form of a polka-dotted snail. The atmosphere was of
amiable chatter, shrieks, and splashings. A honey-blonde waitress in shorts and
an overstrained tank top ambled over from the service bar, but I brushed her
off.

“You
got a plan?” Pellerin asked out of the blue.

“A
plan? Sure,” I said. “First Poland, then the world.”

“If
you don’t, we need to start thinking about one.”

I
cocked an eye toward him, then looked away.

“That’s
why I played Ruddle like I did,” Pellerin said. “So you could get a line on his
security.”

“We
do what Billy tells us,” I said. “That’s our safest bet.”

Three
boys ran past, one trying to snap the others with a towel; the lifeguard
whistled them down.

“I
did have a thought,” I said. “I thought we could tell Ruddle what Billy’s up to
and hope he can protect us. But that’s a short-term solution at best. Billy’s
still going to be a problem.”

“I
like it. It buys us time.”

“If
Ruddle goes for it. He might not. I’m not sure how well he knows Billy. He
might be tight with him, and he might decide to give him a call.”

A
plump, pale, middle-aged man wearing a fishing hat and bathing trunks, holding
a parasol drink, negotiated the stairs at the shallow end of the pool, stood
and sipped in thigh-deep water.

“I’ll
check out Ruddle’s security. It may give me an idea.” I put my hands flat on
the table and prepared to stand. “We should look in on Jo before you start
playing.”

Pellerin’s
lips thinned. “To hell with her.”

“You
two got a problem?”

“She
lied to me.”