AHMM, March 2008 Read online

  "And you've been drinking. You shouldn't drive."

  "Don't worry. I'll be fine."

  * * * *

  In the reception area at work, only half the lights were on, the ceiling checkered with fluorescent panels, one bright, one dark. He shook the snow from his coat, hung it on the coat tree, and pulled off his rubber overshoes. He went into the main office where, far at the back, he saw Patrick working at his computer.

  When his boss saw him coming, the old man's face changed, not much, but enough to tell Lance that maybe Patrick knew more than he thought.

  As Lance reached his door, Patrick said, “Another Superior Life warrior, braving Duluth's worst."

  "Patrick, I'm going to release the Osteen money."

  Patrick grew still. He stared at Lance through his wire-rim glasses. He pulled at the collar of his V-neck, his eyes traveling first to the right of his computer, then flicking to Lance's face. He leaned back in his chair and hoisted a wary smile to his lips. He gestured at the chair opposite.

  "Have a seat."

  Lance studied his boss, then pulled out the chair and sat. “I think we've made Everett wait long enough. We'll accomplish nothing by making him wait longer."

  His boss glanced out the window. The old man's wary smile faded, and creases of perplexity formed at the corners of his eyes. “Lance, the investigation isn't over yet. Why not hold off?"

  "Everett's been a loyal customer for forty years, first of yours, now of mine. Why put him through this torture?"

  His boss paused, then said, “It's not going to be that much longer. Graham's made a breakthrough. I spoke to him last night. He's traced the gas can to a lot number in Rochester. I find that promising. He's saying the investigation could be over in as little as a week. So Everett's not going to have to wait that much longer."

  He stared at his boss. His boss stared back. The silence between them lengthened. “Can I release the money now?” Then, in a more aggrieved tone, added, “At least without jeopardizing my promotion? It's a preconsolidation policy. I don't know why I can't sign off on it."

  Patrick took off his glasses, leaned back, and ran his liver-spotted hand through his thinning gray hair. “Why can't you be on the up-and-up with me about what's going on with this whole Osteen thing, Lance? If you think I don't know about Brian Baum coming here last week, I do. Carol told me. And I know Vicki visited you at home on Friday night as well. Lindsay talked to Vivian, and Vivian talked to me. You should thank God Lindsay's looking out for you. Why don't you tell me what's going on?"

  Lance glanced out the window where the winter night thickened like an oil spill. Patrick withdrew a bottle of White Label and poured hefty doses into coffee mugs. He handed a mug to Lance. Lance contemplated the contents, then downed the double shot in one go. “Lindsay shouldn't spy on me."

  Patrick smiled, but it was an odd smile. “Let me ask you something, Lance. If you were in a burning building, and you had to choose between saving Miss America or the president, who would you save?"

  Lance's answer was disgruntled. “Probably the president."

  "And if you were in that same burning building, and you had to choose between the woman who left you standing at the altar sixteen years ago, or the man who's fed and clothed your family for the last decade-and-a-half, who would it be? Because I'll tell you one thing, if you sign off on the Osteen policy, corporate's not going to look too kindly upon me, even though it is your own personal policy. It will be me in that burning building."

  "It's not as simple as you think, Patrick.” Lance stared at his boss and made another try. “Can we just sign off on it? That way, no one gets hurt."

  "So someone's going to get hurt?"

  He prevaricated. “If we sign off on it, I'll take the blame. Underline for corporate that it was my own independent policy. Tell them I was managing it long before consolidation. Tell them I don't care about the promotion."

  "Yes, but Lance, we work as a team. The profits are measured together, regardless of whether it's a post- or preconsolidation policy. Corporate couldn't care less about your solo policies."

  Lance looked away, the booze starting to sour his stomach. “I'm going to sign off on it."

  Patrick pressured him. “Lance, come on. You really want to think about that."

  "They killed his dog."

  Dead silence. It was as though there had been an explosion in another part of the office, and all the air had been sucked out of the room. Then Patrick said in a voice that had all the brittleness of fresh harbor ice, “Who killed whose dog?"

  Lance felt he was standing on top of a tall building, was scared to jump, yet at the same time felt compelled to jump. “Horse guys from Chicago. They killed Everett's dog. He borrowed money from them and made a few crappy bets. Big ones. And lost. Now he owes them. They're up from Chicago to collect. With golf clubs."

  Patrick's eyes narrowed. “Golf clubs?"

  Lance shook his head. “The dog went first. The old man's next. That's why we should sign off on the policy."

  The snow ticked against the window. “Why doesn't Everett call the police?"

  "Because they'll murder him if he does. Do you want murder on your hands, Patrick?” Even as he spoke, he knew it was a despicable tactic, shifting blame, and more despicable, to parrot Vicki's exact words. “For a policy he's loyally paid his premiums on for the last forty years? Let's do the moral thing. Let's sign off on it."

  Patrick's features settled, and he shook his head. “There's been a lot going on behind your back while you've been stewing yourself up about all this, Lance. If you want to know the truth, Graham's taking a real close look at Brian Baum. That's the breakthrough I was telling you about. Graham's linked Brian to the gas can. So it's looking bad for Everett, and if you sign off on things now, you're going to make a lot of trouble for yourself and your family. And do you really want that?"

  That's when Lance began to see there was nothing he could do, that karma, as payback for the way Vicki had left him stranded at the church, was going to have its revenge against her, first by killing her father, then incarcerating her husband, whether he wanted it to or not. Oddly, he felt a sick thrill from the notion, and an unexpected catharsis that left him weak with a bitter joyfulness.

  "How did Graham specifically link Brian to the gas can?"

  "By the lot number in Rochester, and with a gas station security tape showing Brian filling a can similar to the one in photo four.” Patrick sighed. “Lance, if Everett and Brian are playing us for the settlement—and Graham's convinced they are—there's no point in trying to protect them now. If you sign off on the policy now, your credibility as an insurance agent would nose-dive. You'd never work in the industry again. You'd put your family through hell. And do you really want that? Do you really want Vicki to wreck your life a second time after she wrecked it a first time sixteen years ago? Because I know that's who you'd be signing off on it for."

  He looked out the window where he saw snow coming down harder. “No, I guess not.” And knew he would have to get used to having murder on his hands.

  * * * *

  The news of Everett Osteen's brutal slaying came a few days later. Lance and his family were at Wendy's having burgers and fries. Melvin Graham called him on his cell phone and gave him the details.

  "They drove him to Arrowhead Road, beat him to death, and left him in the trunk of his car. A state trooper found him. Oh, and by the way, I have Brian Baum in custody for the arson."

  Karma. Revenge was his. Whether he wanted it or not. He couldn't help picturing Osteen, dead in the trunk of his car, a shrunken old senior, the man who would have been his father-in-law if things had turned out differently, beaten to death with a nine iron. And he couldn't help thinking of Brian in an orange corrections jumpsuit. And of how Vicki was now all alone.

  On Monday, as if irony were a necessary component to karma, Patrick gave him the promotion.

  Over the coming week, he looked for a funeral notice, but the paper
didn't print one. He learned from Melvin Graham that the homicide detectives were holding the body indefinitely, pending a conclusion to their investigation. “A bit like the arson thing. We had to keep it open a while. These things take time."

  As there was no funeral scheduled in the foreseeable future, Lance drove to the Osteen place two days before Christmas to offer his condolences to Vicki, only to discover that there was a for sale sign in the front yard. He knocked on the door. An armed security guard answered. He was relieved. At least Vicki had had the good sense to hire some protection. The guard patted him down, then went to get Vicki.

  When she finally came, she looked drawn and thin. Her eyes were puffy, shell shocked—like the eyes he had seen in his own face when, purple bowtie hanging around his neck, he had finally realized she wasn't coming to their wedding.

  "What are you doing here?” She showed no trace of human feeling. Everything that had ever happened between them seemed forgotten.

  "I just wanted to say I'm sorry.” His words caught like an old car starting on a subzero Minnesota morning.

  "No, you're not. You're happy. I can see it in your eyes."

  This stung, partly because it was half true. “I see a for sale sign on the lawn."

  "I'm moving back to Rochester.” She glanced past his shoulder to his car. “Are you happy now?"

  He didn't like the way she could so easily dismiss him, just as she had dismissed him sixteen years ago. Karma got the better of him, and he said something mean. “Merry Christmas, Vicki."

  She said nothing. A moment later, she quietly closed the door.

  He left her to her devastation, just as she had left him to his.

  He got in his car and drove away. Snowflakes drifted from the sky, large ones that thudded into his windshield and disintegrated on impact. He glanced in his rearview mirror at the Osteen place. He would never come out here again. He turned his attention to the road ahead where, in the harbor below, he saw the Aerial Bridge, blurred by the blizzard, its girders faint in the thickening weather. He tried to concentrate on his wife and kids and the Christmas they would share in two days, but it didn't seem real. He remembered what Vicki had said about regret, and about murder on his hands.

  And he had to wonder if she hadn't, after all, ruined his life a second time.

  Copyright (c) 2007 by Scott MacKay

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  Fiction: SET ‘EM UP, JOE by David Edgerley Gates

  Edward Kinsella III

  * * * *

  If you can't identify the sucker in a card game inside the first hour, the sucker's probably you.

  * * * *

  Arnold Rothstein, famously, was killed for welshing on a gambling debt. He was even more famous for his part in fixing the 1919 World Series, which is neither here nor there, but it's fair to say that Rothstein, more than any other, was the man responsible for the business model the Syndicate followed. The three men who took over his rackets were Benny Siegel, Charlie Luciano, and Frank Costello, and twenty years after Rothstein's murder, only Costello was still in power. Benny was dead, a victim of his own success, Las Vegas the twinkle in his eye, and when a .30 caliber round exited his head, an eyeball was later found on the carpet. Lucky Luciano had been deported—betrayed by Dewey, the Italians were wont to think—and although his influence was felt, first from Cuba, then from Sicily, Luciano was no longer a player. Costello, who got his start as a rum runner, financed by Rothstein, was now the most formidable mob boss in New York. Even after the Five Families gang war and the Kefauver hearings, Costello was capo di tutti capi.

  Before the Italians, the Irish had run the city, but strong as we were still on the West Side, we labored in their shadow. Old Tim Hannah, the boss as was, had made accommodation, and Young Tim, who'd taken his father's place, understood necessity.

  Not that it didn't chafe.

  What has all this to do with the matter at hand? Well, it began with a card game, and a man who reneged on his debts. The rest is Fate.

  * * * *

  I thought it no more than coincidence, but it was an unhappy mischance that the game was in a suite at the Park Central, Seventh and West 56th, the very hotel where Rothstein had been shot in 1928. I'd been summoned by a man named Dunnigan. He'd arranged what was known as a four-wall. Dunnigan provided the room and the amenities, the players ponied up for a buy-in of a thousand each. Professional dealers, in rotation, new decks with every dealer or on demand. The house took a small percentage of every pot. There was an open bar, girls on call. You could probably find the same thing in any town in America from Galesburg, Illinois, to El Paso. The difference here was the stakes.

  Poker is a game for five or six. Five of the men at the table were from out of town. The sixth man was Jimmy O'Donnell, known as Thin Jim. And he was winning.

  No, it's not a setup, Dunnigan explained to me, off to the side. They asked to play Jimmy.

  Because of his reputation, I suggested.

  "They think they can beat him,” Dunnigan said.

  "And they're not,” I said.

  It was four in the morning, and the game had been going eight hours. It could go eight more, or eighteen, or eighty, as long as the money held out.

  "One from St. Louis, one from Chicago, one from Baton Rouge,” he said. “Some kind of lumber king from Bangor, Maine."

  "Which of them is your problem?” I asked.

  He tugged his ear, without pointing. “Guy sitting in first position, left of the dealer. Elyria, Ohio."

  "Where the hell is Elyria, Ohio?"

  "Who knows? I went through Cleveland on the train, once."

  "Why's he a problem?"

  "He's losing,” Dunnigan said.

  "He could lose in Ohio,” I said.

  "He's not a good loser,” Dunnigan said.

  "Is he being cheated?"

  "I don't trust him to pay his losses."

  "That's not what I asked."

  Dunnigan looked at me. “I needed you here to stop trouble, not to keep me honest before God,” he said.

  "Give me five thousand dollars,” I said.

  There was a long pause before his jaw dropped. “What?"

  "Are you running an honest game?” I asked. “I'm buying in. But not with my own money."

  "Why don't you use Tim Hannah's money, you barstid?"

  "This isn't Tim Hannah's game,” I said.

  "I asked you for protection,” he said.

  "And now you're paying for it,” I said.

  "I'm not paying for your entertainment,” Dunnigan said.

  "No, you're paying for an education,” I told him.

  Table stakes. Ten-dollar ante, fifty to open. There was a button that went around the table to indicate Dealer's Choice. They stuck pretty much to five card draw and seven stud, playing it high-low when Elyria's turn came around. He seemed to think it gave him better odds, although he was fifteen thousand in the hole. Thin Jim O'Donnell was taking half the pots.

  It's a not uncommon phenomenon. Some big noise from Winnetka regularly beats his poker buddies back home, and when he goes on a business trip, he decides to try his skills against a professional. Problem being, O'Donnell was exactly that. He didn't play cards for recreation, he made his living at it, like another man might sell dry goods.

  Baton Rouge took a bathroom break, and then decided he was going back to his room. He arranged with Dunnigan for a girl to meet him there.

  Which left an open seat, and I was invited into the game.

  Thin Jim O'Donnell knew who exactly I was, but he didn't let on, out of policy, or to protect his winnings.

  We played half a dozen hands. I folded three, called twice, against better cards, and stayed in to win one. None of the pots went over a thousand, so my net loss was about five hundred of Dunnigan's money. I was trying to get a feel for the table, and the other men in the game.

  There's a gambling maxim, attributed to Arnold Rothstein, that if you can't identify the sucker in a card game insid
e the first hour, then the sucker's probably you. In this case, it was Elyria. Baton Rouge had been more or less even when he left the table, and Bangor was keeping his head above water, but aside from Thin Jim, Chicago and St. Louis were the big winners.

  Elyria's problem was that he chased with weak hands, in hopes they'd get better. It's not an unworkable strategy, but you have to read your opponents, and their cards, and know their own betting strategies. His was transparent. He'd bet out high and then check, or bet out higher after the next turn of the cards. Every once in a while, it worked, when he'd fill a stronger hand, but you can't win over the long run winning only one hand in a dozen, and he was a plunger. I took him for two hands running myself. He must have been used to buying the pot, back at the Elks or the K of C.

  The other pattern didn't jump right out at me, not until we'd played a good three hours. O'Donnell, well versed in confidence tricks and skin games, would have caught on early, but he didn't call attention to it because it actually increased his percentage. I was a little slower on the uptake. St. Louis and Chicago were in cahoots.

  It worked like this. In the first round of betting, both men would bet out strong, if they held cards. Then the one with the better hand after the draw or showing on the board would check-raise, and the other one would fold, so they weren't going heads-up, or simply fattening the pot. It was subtle, and it only happened every four or five hands, when they both had cards worth betting. And it didn't mean the one who stayed would necessarily win, either, but it cut their losses, taken jointly, and increased their odds of winning. Together, they made up a third of the table. Out of ten hands, if O'Donnell took four or five, St. Louis and Chicago took three or four.

  I wondered which of them had brought Elyria into the game.

  * * * *

  At seven thirty the next morning, we took a break. Dunnigan had called down to room service for breakfast, and it was welcome.

  The place was stale with cigar smoke and whiskey sweats, and feral energy, like a cage at the zoo. I went to the lavatory and splashed water on my face, washed my hands to get rid of the greasy card feel, and shook some talcum on them. I slipped my jacket off, and shucked out of my shoulder holster, and put them both on a hanger, but I tucked the .38 Super in the small of my back, in front of my shirttail, under my vest. I took out my cufflinks and rolled my sleeves up to the elbow. It was time to piss or get off the porcelain.