“Check.”
“Check.”
“Check.”
“Check.”
“Checked all around. Nobody's got nothin'. Turn 'em over.”
“Charlie takes it with a pair of eights.”
“Christ, I'm too old to play all day and all night.”
“Let's open the windows and air out the joint.”
At 4:00 A.M. they paused the game and ordered breakfast from room service. Sulking, Nelson refused to leave the bedroom and only opened the door to admit a hotel engineer with a new TV.
Dean walked into the second bedroom, pushed open a window, and watched garbage trucks and newspaper vans work the early morning hours.
Poker. Infernal game. How could he explain to Billie that he'd cashed in their life for a pile of chips that was vanishing like their youth? For what? For guilt? For the chance to play with Bobby McCorkle? If he didn't win back the machine shop, maybe he could get a job driving a Chronicle van. He wondered what they paid.
Charlie wandered into the bedroom and stood next to Dean at the window. Below, steam vented from grates in the asphalt, a fortune going up in smoke.
“Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?” Charlie asked.
“What's that?”
“Why'd he let us back in the game?”
“Damned if I know.”
“He's torturing us,” Charlie said quietly. “He gave us two hundred grand apiece to work for him in our businesses, and if we lose that,
we have to work for nothing. We're screwed. You know that, right? We can never beat Bobby. Jesus, we can't beat Alex.”
“There's always hope, Charlie. You keep playing and maybe you'll get a hand, but if you think like a loser, you don't stand a chance.”
“You can bullshit yourself if it makes you feel better, Dean, and maybe you have a chance in this game, but not me.”
“Then you shouldn't play, Charlie.”
Charlie thought about his response for a long minute. Finally, he said, “You know I have to play, Dean, Jesus. I'm the king of diamonds, and ever since we got our tattoos, that's been the most important thing in the world to me. You guysâall of us together, and the game, that's my identity. I have to play even if I know I'm going to lose, because if I don't play, it's like denying who I am. I know I'm just a spear carrier, but this year's game was my one shot at the big leagues, to play for real and to play with Bobby again. I had to play.”
Charlie finished by shaking his head, desolate and confused.
Dean listened with a sympathetic ear to Charlie's convoluted effort to understand himself. Playing poker in a game destined to be lost was like going to war for your country. Most who were called simply packed their bags and went, irrespective of whether or not the cause was just, and some were born to be cannon fodder. If you were a player, you played. Even if you were a loser, you played.
“I was just standing here thinking about driving a truck, or maybe working as a mechanic,” Dean said. “I know engines and you know fish. Maybe you can score a berth on a fishing boat. What the hell, you can always find a game on the fishwharf.”
“Losing everything doesn't bother you?” Charlie asked. “It bothers me.”
“I knew what I was in for when I sat down, same as you,” Dean said, shaking his finger at Charlie. “We'll survive. We're outlaws, remember? And in the end? Well, we'll see. Maybe Alex will beat him.”
Over bacon and eggs in the living room Bobby asked Alex, “I hope you like Corvettes. What are you gonna do with five of the buggers?”
Alex shook his head. “Damned if I know. It doesn't make sense to own a car in New York, and when I rent one, I'm a Buick kind of guy. I dunno. I might change my tune.”
Alex tipped his hat to a jaunty angle and tilted up his cigarette with his teeth like Franklin D. Roosevelt. A moment later he squared his hat and crushed his smoke.
“Nah, not my style.”
“Where would you keep five cars in New York, anyway?” Bobby asked out of idle curiosity.
Smirking, Alex decided on impulse to drop his bombshell. “You know what, Bobby? I don't care because I'm not going back. I'm going to resign from Columbia and the DoD, no matter what happens in the game. I've already written the letters. I'm through with physics, finished with New York, and done with academia and the bloody government.”
Coming back into the room, Charlie and Dean overheard Alex's pronouncement, and Charlie squawked, “You're putting us on. You never said anything about that.”
“Well, I'm saying it now and I'm not putting you on. I'm walking away from my life. It's different with you guys. With you, it's like pulling teeth, but since Bobby's already taken your companies, you have to walk away whether you like it or not, unless you're lucky enough to win them back. I don't think it's dawned on you yet, Charlie, but we're playing for keeps. Don't you get it? You've been handed a midlife crisis free of charge. We're condemned to be free from our miserable lives no matter what happens.”
“What about your wife and kids?” Charlie asked.
“Oh, Christ. My marriage to Joanna has been dead for years. Our kids are in college, and the ex-wife's girls already graduated and have decent jobs. As far as I'm concerned, the kids are okay and the women can go to hell. These modern ladies can take care of themselves, as they constantly remind us. Fine with me. And if I lose the apartment and the condo and the stocks, well, tough shit.”
“You're on track to be chairman of the department,” Dean said, boggled by Alex's declaration. “You must be out of your mind.”
“Hell, yes, I'm out of my mind. I've been out of my mind for
thirty years. I planned for this. I knew this game would change our lives. From the moment we walked in here Friday night, we could never go back, win or lose. Shanghai Bend is reality. The game is reality. Losing is reality, because in this game we can't possibly win. Even if we win, we lose because we can't change what we did. All this talk about the right thing is just blather. We did the wrong thing that night, and the only way we can atone for that mistake is by giving up our lives and starting over. Sally's bones are real and Bobby is real, but we're fakes, Dean, you and Charlie and Nelson and me. We're phonies, we're bullshit, and we have to pay no matter what Bobby does.”
“Win or lose,” Dean said.
“That's right. It's the game and nothing but the game. The rest of it doesn't matter in the slightest.”
“If you quit your job, what're you gonna do, Wiz?” Charlie asked.
Alex grabbed a deck, shuffled and fanned it. “Play cards,” he answered with a stony face. “Straight poker, no wild cards.”
A tiny smile flicked across Bobby's face. “You want to turn pro, Alex?”
“That's the idea, yeah.”
“Think you're good enough?”
Alex closed the fan, popped four eights off the top of the deck, and flipped them into the middle of the table.
“We'll find out.”
Bobby picked up the eight of hearts, held it up to the light, and, squinting, examined it on both sides.
“You should already know,” he said with a smile.
With seventy-eight thousand dollars in chips, Charlie didn't have to scan the table to know he was low man on the totem pole. Dean had about a hundred thousand left, and Alex and Bobby had well over a million apiece.
“At a thousand bucks a pop, how long would it take me to lose it all if I tossed in my antes and dropped out of every hand? Hahaha,” Charlie wondered out loud.
“'Til about noon, if you could stay awake that long,” Bobby answered. “Why wait? I'll make it easy for ya. Twenty-five grand on my sixes. You in, Charlie?”
The game was five stud with Alex and Dean out. Bobby had a pair of sixes on the first two up cards and Charlie showed a king and queen.
“What the heck. I'm in.”
“Rolling,” Alex said, dealing the hand. “A four to Bobby and an ace to Charlie.”
“Runnin' a straight there, boy,” Bobby said. “Hotsy totsy. Twenty-five more.”
“Gotta stay in,” Charlie said, counting out chips and dropping them into the pot. “Deal.”
“A deuce to Bobby and a ten to Charlie,” Alex announced. “Looking good, Charlie, four cards to a straight, ace high, but the sixes still rule the table.”
“Check,” Bobby said.
Charlie laughed. “That's an old trick,” he scoffed. “Check to see if I have the nerve to bet my straight. Want to see if I really have it? Suppose I don't have a straight. Maybe I have a pair of aces or a pair of kings. Any of my cards paired up will beat your sixes. It'll
cost you to find out.” Charlie pushed the rest of chips into the center of the table. “Twenty-eight thousand,” he declared, and held his breath.
Bobby hesitated. “What do you think, boys? Does he have it? Does he have a hot card in the hole, or is he trying to buy the hand?”
Alex lit a cigarette and Dean gazed at the heroes. Neither Dean nor Alex nor the heroes said a word. Like the others, Bobby had seen Charlie looking at his hole card and silently mouthing, “Nine nine nine nine,” repeatedly.
Counting out chips, Bobby said, “Okay, twenty-eight. And I'll tell you what, Charlie. If you win, you can have your company back. And if I win, you tell me which one of you killed Sally.”
Charlie went white. Barely audible, he mumbled, “I can't do that.”
“Why not? Is it a secret?”
“It's not for me to say.”
“Don't you want your company back? One word, point your finger, and you're back in business.”
“You can't turn us against one another, Bobby. We're the royal flush.”
“Now, that's loyalty,” Bobby said. “I'm impressed. Tell me this: Was it you?”
“No.”
“Want to make the bet?”
“No.”
“Then it's table stakes. What do you have?”
Charlie turned over his hole card, the nine of hearts.
“Hahaha hahaha, shit. I thought you'd pack it in. Oh, my God.”
Charlie's exit from the game was more dignified than Nelson's. He silently went into the bedroom and took a long, hot shower.
“You want me to be judge and jury,” Bobby said to Alex and Dean, “but I don't have all the facts, do I?”
“When the game is over, you will,” Alex said.
“It may never end,” Bobby said. “It could turn into a marathon and go on forever.”
“That would be okay with me,” Alex said. “Let's play.”
“Five draw, anything opens,” Dean announced.
“Not jacks or better?” Bobby asked.
“Nope, not with three players. Anything opens. You can open on guts if you have any.”
“That's a game for a desperate man,” Bobby commented.
“Listen, at Khe Sanh sometimes artillery rounds were coming in every twenty seconds. Boom! Boom! Made it hard to sleep, spilled the coffee, guys getting wasted all over the place. But the worst was, one day these other officers and I were trying to play cards, and we didn't get to finish a hand because a shell landed on our bunker and two guys in the game got blown up. Now that's desperation.”
“Spare us the war stories, Studley,” Alex complained. “Just deal the cards.”
“You play much poker in beautiful Southeast Asia, Bobby?”
“I never talk about the war, Dean. That's my rule.”
“Don't you ever pull out those Silver Stars and read the citations?”
Bobby gave Dean a long, cold stare. A drowning man, clinging to anything that might keep his head above water, in the last thirty-six hours Dean had been drunk, hungover, drunk again, stoned, lucid, incoherent, crazy, sane, and now, desperate, reaching for anything that might keep him in the game.
“I don't talk about the war, and I don't like to repeat myself.
Since you really want to play this out to the end, let's stick to poker. Deal,
por favor.”
With a grimace, Dean pushed the deck across the table. “Cut 'em, Wiz.”
Alex symbolically cut the deck by touching the top card with the tips of his fingers, and Dean swiftly dealt each player five cards.
Bobby picked up his cards and watched Alex and Dean perform their rituals. Poker, he thought, is monotonous, routine work, paying attention, remembering details. Alex looked at his cards one at a time, and, showing no reaction, a clue that he had nothing in his hand, left them on the felt. Dean picked up his cards and moved them around in his hand, trying this configuration and that as though he wasn't sure of the best way to play the hand. Bobby didn't play the hand; he played the players.
“Check,” Bobby said.
“Check,” Alex echoed.
“Open for twenty,” Dean wagered.
“See your twenty,” Bobby said promptly, “and bump it twenty.”
“Fold,” Alex said and pushed his cards into the center of the table.
“I'm in,” Dean said. “I'll see the raise.”
Bobby looked at Bret Maverick and then at Dean who grinned back and stroked his beard.
“One card,” Bobby said.
“Dealer takes two.”
“Your bet, Deano. You opened.”
“Check.”
Bobby shook his head, his tolerance for Dean's sloppy play at an end. By taking one card, Bobby had convinced the big man that he had two pair or four cards to a straight or flush. Bobby's mind was as clear as a cold night in Reno, and he knew Dean had a low three of a kind. If he had three aces, he'd bet more, or raise, but he did neither. By checking, Dean sealed his fate.
“You should have about one fifty,” Bobby said, counting chips. “That's the bet. One fifty.”
To Alex, watching Dean make the final plunge was like watching
a suicide jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Dean was a complex human being whom Alex never completely understood although he loved the big man like a brother. He never understood Dean's tattoos or wild streak or why Dean lived so close to Shanghai Bend, but Dean lived his life according to a closely held code, a renegade's code, and Alex understood that. Dean was faithful and true, but in the end, he couldn't control his guilt. He wanted to jump off the bridge, and there was nothing Alex could do to help him.
“You've been drawing one card all night and then bluffing that you caught a hand,” Dean said and pushed all his chips into the pot. “I call.”
“You can bet more,” Bobby said, “like the truth against your machine shop.”
“Fuck that. That won't work with me any better than it did with Charlie.”
“You sure? If your cards are worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, surely they're worth an answer to a simple question. Who killed, Sally, Dean? Was it you?”
“Just show your cards, Bobby.”
“Three tens,” Bobby said and laid his cards face up on the felt. “Read 'em and weep.”
“Holy shit.”
Dean sighed and tossed his hand willy-nilly onto the table. Alex spread out the cards and revealed three fives.
Bobby tensed, expecting a violent explosion from the big man.
Dean's eyes fluttered around the table, from the cards to the chips in the pot to Alex to Bobby and landed on the revolver, still on the table next to Bobby's chips.
Reaching into his pocket, Bobby drew out a single cartridge, tossed it in the air and caught it. Prudently, he removed the gun from the table and placed it under his seat.
“It's a cruel game,” Alex said.
“I need a drink,” Dean said and reached for his bottle of rum.
“You lost your business but not your house,” Alex commented dryly. “You still have something to play with.”
“Do you want everything, Wiz, down to the last nickel?”
“I'm just a player, Dean. If you want to play, we'll deal you in. I don't give a shit one way or the other.”
“The house isn't mine. It belonged to Billie before we got married, so the answer is no. I'm tap city.”
The second bedroom door opened and Charlie emerged in fresh clothes, hair dripping from the shower.
“What's going on, guys?” he asked.
Bobby didn't glance up. Alex turned around briefly to look at Charlie, then focused intently on the cards in Bobby's hands.
Dean pushed himself away from the table, cleared away his glass and ashtray, and daintily swept the felt with his hands.
“What's happening is what we all suspected would happen,” he said to Charlie. “A shootout at the OK Corral.”
Charlie and Dean pulled their chairs away from the table and settled in to watch, the pain of their losses tempered by the sheer excitement of the confrontation. Their lives had become chips in somebody else's game, a peculiar situation that wasn't too far removed from the world beyond the Enrico Caruso suite. At its best, poker is a facsimile of the human condition, charged with vigor and energy, fraught with whimsy and unexpected twists, and always ending in sudden death. The best man didn't always win, but the best player, no matter what his character, almost always took the final pot.
“I guess it's time to go fishing,” Charlie said to Dean.
“Looks like.”
Bobby and Alex paid no attention. All that existed for them was a deck of cards, two immense piles of chips, and each other.