The Gambler

by Molly O'Keefe

  All I needed today was this.

  “No press,” I told Jim Blackwell, who, for a month, had been chasing me from function to function like a hound after a fox. And there wasn’t much farther I could run.

  “I’m just a concerned citizen, Deputy Mayor,” Jim said. Smarmy bastard. My title wasn’t Deputy Mayor; there wasn’t even a deputy mayor position in this city. But when I took over the neighborhood issue task force, the Gazette had run a political cartoon of me on the front page with a ten-gallon hat, shotgun and a deputy star. In the background, the mayor, as sheriff, snored at his desk.

  The deputy part of the joke had stuck.

  “Are you aware your father’s arraignment has been postponed?” Jim asked.

  The question drew whispers and gasps from the women in the crowd.

  “I do not discuss my family with the press,” I finally said, trying to keep what was left of my dignity in front of the suddenly wide-eyed crowd. I’d worked long and hard to put the Notorious O’Neills behind me, but my father’s arrest last month had stirred up all the old rumors.

  “I have a question.” It was the elf again, waving her arm in the back row, but Jim talked right over her.

  “Last month, your father was arrested in possession of The Pacific Diamond, which was initially part of the Ancient Treasures exhibit stolen from the Bellagio seven years ago. The Pacific Diamond, Ruby and Emerald were all taken.” Jim flipped his notes, putting on a heck of a show for the spellbound public. “One man was arrested at that time, a…Joel Woods, who had the emerald in his pocket. He served seven years, claiming all along that he’d worked alone.”

  “What is your point, Mr. Blackwell?” I asked, biting every word.

  “Well—” Jim smiled, looking around at the crowd he held in the palm of his hand “—this is interesting, though slightly off topic, but Joel Woods’s son is now dating your sister? Is that right?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Right, sorry, off topic. Back to your father. According to the D.A., they’re postponing the arraignment in order to reexamine your father’s involvement with the original theft. Both your parents were questioned during the initial investigation.”

  “Excuse me?” elf girl was saying, but I held up a hand, putting her off. Rude, I knew, but I had a fire to put out. A city-politics mosquito to slap down.

  “Whatever my father has or has not done, I’m sure will be handled by the appropriate authorities. I have no contact with him.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “My mother?” I asked, startled by the question.

  Don’t tell me she’s gone and gotten arrested, too.

  “I haven’t seen her in years.”

  “Would you say…ten?” Jim asked, consulting his notebook, and suddenly the room spun. I was dizzy. Sick.

  There is no way he could know, I told myself. No way.

  “Am I right?” Jim asked. “You would have seen her when you testified on her behalf in court ten years ago.” Jim held out his tape recorder, his bland face crowned with conceit.

  Jim had made a career of shining a light into the dark corners of the previous administration, but for the last two-and-a-half years, Jim Blackwell had been stymied in his efforts to pull up any dirt on the current administration.

  But my father’s arrest was changing all that.

  “You’ve already done this story, Mr. Blackwell,” I said. “When my father was arrested, you took great care in giving the residents of Baton Rouge a good look at my bloodline. And I say now what I said then—I am not my family. I have very little contact with my family. I do not discuss them. I think you’re repeating yourself,” I said.

  “I’m just trying to get my time line straight. You testified on your mother’s behalf in a breaking and entering case ten years ago. You seem a bit fuzzy on the specifics, which makes me wonder what else you’re fuzzy on. There is, after all, a thirty-carat ruby still on the loose.”

  “We’re done here,” I said stacking my cards, getting ready to leave. Amanda, my assistant and soon-to-be campaign manager, swung up on my left.

  “Answer the damn questions,” she breathed in my ear. “Or it looks like you have something to hide.”

  And then she swung away.

  I did have something to hide. I had a whole family tree of criminals and rogues that needed burying. But I grit my teeth, and stayed. “Yes, it has been ten years since I’ve seen my mother. We are not in contact. And I have no idea where the ruby is.”

  “You were her alibi in the breaking and entering case,” Jim said. “The charges against her were dismissed on the basis of your testimony.”

  “What is your question?” I asked, knowing in my stomach what the question was going to be.

  “No question,” Jim said, and I nearly sighed in relief. “Just getting my facts straight.”

  So you can come at me later. I had no illusions that Jim Blackwell was just here to get his facts straight. Jim Blackwell was throwing down a gauntlet, right here in front of me, Mrs. Vogler, and the kid with a mouthful of chocolate-chip cookies in the back.

  Well, good luck to him. Jim Blackwell was starting a fight, and I loved a fight.

  “I feel it’s necessary to remind you of my law degree from Old Miss,” I said. “I understand the legalities of libel better than the previous administration, and I would say after your last article about my family, you are skating on thin ice.”

  “Is that a threat, Mr. O’Neill?”

  “Just helping you get your facts straight, Mr. Blackwell.” I glanced over at Amanda, whose smile was sharp, approving. Apparently I’d handled that right. Score one for the Notorious O’Neills.

  “We’re done here,” I said and stepped away from the podium toward Amanda, who had pulled out her phone and was, no doubt, already on damage control.

  “Your father is giving me heartburn,” she muttered, shooting me one poisonous look. “And now I’ve got to look out for your mother?”

  “No one has any idea where my mother is,” I said. “She’s a nonissue.”

  “Excuse me!” a woman cried, and I knew, just knew it was elf girl, and I just wasn’t up for more questions about how these women would live their lives without this community center.

  It was bad politics, bad human, even, I knew that, but I pretended not to hear her.

  “Wait a second!” she yelled, her voice sharper. I reluctantly turned.

  The elf had gotten on a chair. Great.

  She was lovely, actually. Her long, shapeless coat had some kind of wild embroidery on it, and her short, ink-black hair sparkled in the light coming through the dirty windows.

  A pixie.

  She slowly pushed back her long coat to reveal the swell of a very pregnant belly.

  Maybe it was the way this day had been going; maybe it was the bloodthirsty toddlers, but some warning system in my head went: uh-oh.

  “Where have you been for the last five months?” the elf asked, her eyes snapping. Her hands cupped her belly, and Mrs. Vogler sat down like a stone.

  “Oh,” she sighed. “You’re a bad, bad man.”

  The whispers started immediately.

  Jim Blackwell lifted his cell phone and snapped a shot of the pregnant elf on the chair.

  “Oh, crap,” Amanda said.

  “I’ve never seen this woman in my life,” I said to Amanda and to the crowd.

  Elf girl shook her head and got off the chair. “I knew you’d say that,” she whispered, convincingly heartbroken.

  Thank God, the little liar started to walk away.

  “You need to go after her,” Amanda furiously whispered in my ear.

  “Are you nuts?”

  Amanda pointed to Jim Blackwell, who was writing everything down. “Get to the bottom of it, before he does,” she said. “We can’t let that guy get the drop on us any more than he has.”

  Amanda was right. I pushed my notes into her hand, and she immediately stepped forward and began spinning the situati
on, but it was like waving a tissue in front of a bull. I felt every eye, especially Jim Blackwell’s, on my back as I approached the girl.

  I caught up with her at the front door and put one hand under her elbow. Carefully, so it didn’t look as if I was manhandling her, I spun her around and led her back around toward the pool, and the second exit onto an alley, where things would be less busy.

  “I’m sorry,” she said right away, her voice breathy. “Really, really sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “About what?” I snapped. “Ruining my career?”

  “Getting your attention.”

  “Really? Nothing but accusing a total stranger of leaving you knocked up and alone?”

  “You just kept ignoring me. Which, may I say, was pretty rude.”

  “Don’t talk,” I said. “Don’t say one more word.”

  “Okay,” she said quickly. “Right. I’ll shut up.” The silence lasted for all of ten seconds, in which I recognized the delicious smell coming off the woman. Ginger cookies. Weird. “Hey, sorry, I know I’m supposed to keep quiet, but could you just ease up on the grip?” she muttered. “And slow down—you’re like ten feet taller than me.”

  It was true. She barely came up to my shoulder and I realized I was practically dragging the woman. I didn’t even want to imagine what kind of headline that would create, so I slowed down.

  I even managed to wave at Mrs. Vogler as if this were all normal, all part of the plan, but she wasn’t buying it—she watched, slack-jawed.

  I punched open the door to the pool and led her into the giant cavern. As soon as the door shut I dropped her arm, still walking toward the side door onto the alley. Trying to control my suddenly rampaging anger.

  “This place really is in bad shape,” she said, staring into the empty tiled hole that used to be a pool. “You sure it’s going to cost less to rebuild? That seems counterintuitive.”

  I turned back and looked at her, the pregnant pixie who might have just created the worst scandal to hit this administration, and she was gazing into the deep end.

  She must have caught a whiff of my fury because she straightened and managed to look like a very contrite pregnant pixie. Her hands fiddled with the edges of her coat. “I’m sorry,” she said, waving her hand behind her. “About all that.”

  “Why the hell did you lie?” I asked. “Do you even know what you’ve done?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Try to explain it,” I breathed, barely keeping it together.

  “Let’s go outside,” she said, stepping by me. She gave me a wide, nervous berth, but I still smelled ginger and sugar. Sweet and spicy.

  I hit the doors under the unlit and cracked exit sign and led her into the bright warmth of midday. I yanked at my tie.

  “Is this a medical situation?” I asked. “Are you off your medication, or escaped from the psych ward?”

  The woman was silent, scanning the alley as if searching for someone.

  “Do I need to call the cops?” I asked, and that got her attention.

  “No,” she said quickly. “No cops. I was told—” She blinked big green eyes, and then shut up.

  “Told what? By who?” I asked, my voice hard.

  “Whom,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “By…ah…whom? It’s an object-subject…” She blinked again, the pretty green eyes like pine trees in sunlight. “I’ll shut up.”

  I stepped up to her and looked down at her glossy black hair. “Unless you give me one reasonable answer right now, there will be cops and you will be in more trouble than you can possibly handle.”

  “A woman gave me a thousand dollars to get you out here alone,” she blurted.

  I blinked, speechless.

  “But I don’t know where she is.” Pixie looked around again.

  “What woman?” I finally asked.

  “I don’t know her name,” she said. “She was blond. Pretty.”

  I stepped back. No, I thought. This can’t be happening.

  Amanda came barreling out the door we’d just come through.

  “What the hell is going on?” she asked.

  “Take her,” I said, gesturing toward the pregnant woman. I didn’t even know her name, which was crazy considering the story she’d just started. “Put her in my car and don’t let her leave.”

  “You can’t do that,” she said, her little face all screwed up with outrage.

  I leaned in, close enough to see the freckles across her nose, the thickness of her black eyelashes. “You can wait for me in my car or you can wait for the cops in my car, it’s your call.”

  She took her full bottom lip between her teeth, biting until the pink went white. “Fine,” she said, and whirled, her pretty coat sweeping out behind her.

  “Who is she?” Amanda asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “But don’t let her leave.”

  Amanda followed the woman through the gray doors, and I was left alone in the alleyway.

  I stared up at the clouds stretched thin across the slice of blue sky between the buildings. All I ever wanted was to do the right thing. Something good. And somehow it always got screwed up.

  “Hello, Carter,” a voice behind me said. A voice so familiar, despite its ten-year absence from my life, it made something small and forgotten inside me twist in fear and love. I didn’t even have to turn to see her, the perfect blond hair, the thin body no doubt impeccably dressed, the cold, ice pick eyes.

  Of course, she would show up now.

  “Hello, Mother,” I said.

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