The Quiet Gun - Edge Series 1 (3 page)

‘Well, gentlemen,’ he announced with a sigh. ‘It looks like just the three of us, uh?’

Kress said: ‘I’m happy with that.’

‘No sweat,’ Edge responded to their quizzical looks.

15

Rider explored his jaw line with fingertips and thumb as he suggested a little coyly:

‘Maybe we could make the game a tad more interesting?’

Kress toyed with a large signet ring on the third finger of his left hand as he answered: ‘I’ve always thought of poker as a fascinating game, friend.’

Edge shrugged. ‘It’s been no limit since the start, feller.’

‘That’s true,’ the liveryman allowed. ‘But Billy Williams and Frank Sawkins . . . Fine men, both of them. Enjoy a few hands of friendly cards. Trouble with them is they’d be as happy playing for dead matches as money.’

Kress nodded sagely.

Edge remained impassive.

Then the drummer augmented: ‘I’m sure Mr Edge and me have got your drift, friend. It’s your deal.’

He and Rider eyed Edge expectantly and he told them:

‘Like I said, the same rules as before.’

So it was that as the final pair of threadbare suited drinkers moved away from the bar and left the Lucky Break, calling farewells to the bartender and Rider, a different style of poker began to be played. While Bart moved about his place, straightening chairs and giving other tables a token wipe with a piece of wet rag.

Rider’s watch struck nine times while Bart began his chores, but the dour faced big man did not give the impression he was cleaning up to encourage his remaining customers to leave. And when he had finished out front of the counter, he retreated without haste behind it, took a bottle with a colourful label and a glass from beneath it and poured himself a drink. Pale liquor half filling a beer glass from which he frequently sipped: obviously relishing the taste of the tequila, like a man who figured he deserved this simple selfindulgence at the end of a long day during which he had done his best at what he did best. And the Dalton Springs liveryman showed himself to be the kind of gambler who believed a man’s good luck ran for as long as he felt it in his water, his backbone, the pit of his belly or wherever: started to double and treble his raises from the onset of the three handed game.

16

For awhile it seemed like fortune really was going his way and a few hands later Edge estimated Rider was more than fifty dollars ahead. Most of it won from Kress who took his losses with a brand of strained good humour that seemed a little histrionic. Then, after the next deal, the cards shuffled and distributed around the trio of players by Kress as the bartender poured himself anther large drink, Edge fanned his hand and was sure he had been right to suspect something was wrong with the game since it took its new, higher stakes turn.

For the drummer had dealt him four aces: which was a hand he had come to regard over recent years with sceptical suspicion. But, as on former occasions, he knew he could be superstitiously wrong and tonight he opened for a dollar. Rider and Kress both called and Edge took one card: traded the seven of hearts for the deuce of clubs. The liveryman and the drummer each drew two cards. The taut smile that appeared on the heavily wrinkled face of Rider meant nothing. The man was no novice poker player, but he knew he was unable to conceal his satisfaction when he filled a good hand: so he had learned by experience to summon up a smile in exactly the same way when he held a dud he thought he could maybe bluff into making a winner.

The round faced, smooth complexioned, green eyed Kress was his usual undemonstrative self when he fanned his new cards with the old and looked at Edge. ‘You opened, friend, so you to bet.’

Just the merest twitch across the upper left side of the drummer’s recently shaved face betrayed his unease when Edge squeezed his cards closed and placed them on the table as he murmured:

‘Fold.’

‘Bet a five spot, Mr Kress,’ Rider said and pushed his money into the pot as he made a final check on his hand before he placed it, still fanned, face down on the table. Edge began to slowly arrange his bills and coins into neat piles in front of him, signalling his intention to leave the game as soon as this hand was played out. And was aware that Kress directed a surreptitious double take at him before the drummer concentrated on the liveryman.

17

‘Call, Mr Rider.’ The drummer matched the other man’s five dollar bill with five ones, then added a ten. ‘Raise a sawbuck.’

Rider obviously felt an urge to pick up his cards to re-check the worth of the hand. But his fingers that hovered over the table suddenly moved away, delved into his pile of money and transferred two bills to the pot. ‘Your ten and another.’

Kress, who had not put down his cards, did not now look at them as he nodded, picked up two ten spots from his pile and added them to the pot as he said evenly: ‘One more time, perhaps?’

Rider swallowed hard and blinked his deep set eyes rapidly as he interlocked the fingers of both hands, like he needed to physically force himself to leave his cards alone as he switched his gazed between them and the pot: agonised whether he would be throwing good money after bad.

Behind the counter, Bart topped up his glass and put the stopper firmly into the bottle.

At the table where the elderly, slightly built Rider struggled to reach a decision and Kress, who was at least twenty five years his junior and carried twice his bulk waited patiently, Edge pursed his lips and became more convinced than ever that the game was crooked.

‘Just ten to have me show,’ the dudish drummer encouraged. Rider barked testily: ‘I know!’ Reached a snap decision, extracted a ten, then two more from his pile and pushed them into the pot, ‘A double sawbuck for you to see what I’m holding, mister.’

Kress did not have enough in front of him to cover the bet. But Rider and Edge could see this did not present him with a problem as they watched the expressionless man count fifteen dollars and seventy five cents to clean him out of visible funds. Before he reached into an inside pocket of his expensively tailored suit jacket and took out a stiff with newness leather billfold that did not bulge.

From this he drew a crisp one hundred dollar bill and rested it almost reverently on top of the pot as he said softly: ‘Your wager is matched, friend. And I raise you ninety four dollars and seventy five cents.’ He smiled briefly as he added: ‘If my arithmetic does not let me down.’

18

The old man’s frame seemed to diminish even further in size as he failed to conceal how shaken he was while he peered fixedly at the pot that had abruptly more than doubled with a single raise. Then shifted his shocked gaze to the expectant look on the face of Kress, to the impassive Edge, finally the disinterested Bart behind the counter. Who suddenly finished his drink and replaced the bottle under the bar top in a determined manner that indicated he had finishing drinking: was maybe through serving drinks for the night.

Rider watched the big bartender go through this economic series of movements with a kind of numbed fascination – like a hunted animal trapped by the hypnotic effect of a lantern’s glow in the deep dark of night.

Only when Bart straightened up to look pointedly toward the table where his final three customers sat was the liveryman released from the trance-like state. Switched his gaze back to Kress as the drummer prompted:

‘You to bet, Mr Rider. Or to fold?’

Rider licked his loose lips and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed rhythmically under the slack skin of his throat while he flexed his fingers, as if to assure himself he could keep his hands from shaking before he reached for his cards and picked them up. He peered fixedly at them for several seconds, then squeezed the hand shut. Looked down at his much diminished stake which he knew did not come close to covering the bet he needed to make to have Kress show what he was holding. But he was heavily committed to the pot and suddenly put down his cards on the table, reached into a vest pocket and withdrew the watch that had chimed regularly during the game.

‘It’s solid gold, mister,’ the liveryman pleaded as he displayed the watch in the palm of his hand. ‘Made over in Europe someplace. Keeps real good time.’

Kress held out his free hand, slightly cupped, and Rider placed the fine looking timepiece into the un-calloused palm.

‘It’s just got to be worth at least a hundred dollars of anyone’s money, I’d guess,’

Rider pressed anxiously.

The drummer glanced at the face up watch, raised and lowered his hand in a weighing motion, then tilted it so the timepiece slid clear to drop among the bills and coins in the pot where it gleamed richly in the low light of the kerosene lamps. 19

‘To beat me, friend,’ Kress said evenly, and began to drop his cards one by one on to the table face up, ‘you need better than a middling straight flush. Five through nine, in spades as it happens.’

Rider’s sunken eyes developed the hypnotised glaze again as he stared down at the cards Kress had revealed. And it was plain he did not have the winning hand seconds before he began to shake his bald domed head in dismay.

‘I take it you cannot do that?’

Rider continued to move his head dolefully from side to side. Edge said evenly: ‘I figure you’ve known that all along, feller.’

Kress paused in the act of reaching to rake in his winnings, his round and shiny face as impassive as that of Edge as he said tautly: ‘It is to be hoped you do not imply what I suspect you do, friend?

Rider was totally detached from the exchange as he displayed his cards to show a quartet of queens and the ten of hearts, then muttered morosely: ‘Yeah, that little running flush sure as hell beats my four ladies.’

‘I’m gonna close the place up now, you guys,’ Bart announced, an insistent rasp in his voice.

The drummer continued to peer fixedly at Edge as he waited for a response to his challenge.

‘You’re good, feller,’ Edge told him. ‘Maybe the best I’ve ever seen.’

Kress withdrew his hands, leaving the pot where it was.

Rider, still deep in rueful private thoughts, began to gather up the meagre remains of his money.

‘I don’t think you mean the best at playing poker, am I right?’ Kress asked. Edge acknowledged to himself that he was a fool to get involved in this dangerous situation. Which was nothing to do with him, unless he counted his opening dollar ante – a small enough price to pay to see if his four aces were worth their face value.

‘I said I’m closing up the place!’ Bart repeated more insistently as he half stepped out from behind the end of the counter, trailing an arm.

20

Rider at last became aware of the tension surrounding him and blurted: ‘Mr Kress . .

? Mr Edge . . ? Why, whatever is up?’

‘There appears to be a little misunderstanding,’ the drummer explained as he slid both hands off the curved rim of the table. ‘Which will be no cause for concern if our friend here will assure me that is all it is?’

‘Look, I don’t want – ‘ Bart started vehemently.

Rider began at the same time: ‘Will somebody tell me just what is going – ‘

Both cut themselves off as Edge dropped his hands from the table. Kress said through gritted teeth: ‘I do not cheat at cards! And be warned, friend: there is little chance you will cheat death unless you withdraw your accusation what I do!’

Edge nodded, the impassive expression subtly altered by a steely blue glitter in his narrowed eyes. ‘Maybe I ought to take back what I said about you being the best, feller.’

He started to rise slowly from his chair. ‘Because I guess the best cardsharp in the business can work the game without being spotted.’

Malevolence suddenly seemed to have a palpable presence within Kress. Rider groaned: ‘Oh, my!’

Bart muttered an obscenity.

Edge unfolded fast to his feet and the force of the move knocked his chair hard on to its back. At the same time he hooked his fingers under the tabletop and jerked it up. Glass were shattered and coins scattered on the floor,

Men yelled.

Edge recognised Bart’s voice as, on the periphery of his vision, he saw the scowling bartender swing a shotgun into view. But he ignored the big man toting the weapon and concentrated his attention on the drummer. For with the solid cover of the table gone, he could see Kress had not made an idle threat.

The dudishly attired man’s meaty right hand was fisted around a small over-andunder derringer: the way he was crouched showing he had drawn it from a boot holster. But Kress was frozen for a stretched second in indecision that was surely caused by the intimidating advance of the big bartender gripping the shotgun.