Aces and Knaves

by Alan Cook

  I wrapped it up again, placed it carefully in my fanny pack and jogged back to the house. The card was in such good condition that maybe I could resell it for more than I paid. Even if I lost a few thousand dollars it would be worth it. Of course, carrying out another auction, even on eBay, would take more time than I had to square things with Buchanan. And it was too soon to place the card back on eBay.

  Back home, my thoughts returned to Elma. Now, even as I understood as much as I ever would about what had happened between us, a tinge of guilt remained. I couldn't make it go away with logic. It continued to haunt me after I ate breakfast and started working on my baseball card business. And after I sent a thank you email to the seller of the card and gave him positive feedback on eBay, which would increase his credibility with other buyers and sellers.

  Conflicting ideas went through my head. On the one hand, I wanted to protect Elma and help her. On the other hand, I wanted to convince her to give her proxy to James—the man who had killed her husband.

  The incompatibility of those desires suddenly rang in my head with the clarity of the tone produced by a fork striking a piece of crystal. And I knew there was no way I could do what James wanted me to do. And I knew that if I didn't do what James wanted me to do I was a dead man.

  For an hour I wallowed in despair. I felt sorry for myself. I, Karl Patterson, would be cut down in the prime of my life. Fortunately, after reaching the depths I began to understand how ridiculous these maudlin thoughts were. I fixed myself an iced tea and told myself sternly that I wasn't dead yet and until I was I had damn well better do something to improve my situation.

  Okay, fine. What? The obvious answer was to prove that James had arranged to have Ned murdered. Easier said than proved. Maybe the way to get at James was through Stan. Was Stan possibly a weak link? He had been the front man. Could I get him to admit that?

  Arrow knew Stan much better than I did. But in order to get her assistance I would have to confess to her that I had sold my soul for a baseball card. The idea galled me, but what choice did I have?

  Could I intercept Arrow when she came for the morning briefing of my father? No, because she wasn't coming today. I had heard her and my father discussing that yesterday. She was working on something else.

  I called Arrow and got her voice-mail. I left a message, asking if she was free for lunch, knowing that I wouldn't hear from her. She didn't need me anymore and in the business world that put me at the bottom of her list of calls to return. And low priority calls never got returned.

  ***

  The phone rang at three o'clock in the afternoon while I was buried in my baseball card business, trying to forget about my impending doom. It was Arrow. Arrow! I had completely given up on her.

  "Karl, I'm sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner. I had to finish a project by two. I haven't eaten lunch yet. What about you?"

  "No," I lied. I never skipped a meal and probably wouldn't, even if I were on the way to the guillotine. Which I was. "Can we get together?"

  "You sounded upset in your message. Is anything wrong?"

  "I'll tell you about it at Norms. See you in half an hour?"

  "If that's enough time for you."

  "I think we've had this conversation before."

  ***

  We sat in the same booth we had used the first time we had met at Norms. I attempted a joke, saying, "I see they saved our table for us," but it didn't sound very funny to me.

  At first it was difficult for me to look Arrow in the eye. Would she suspect what I had done with Elma? Reason told me she didn't even know I'd been with Elma. What does reason know?

  Arrow's normalcy brought me back to earth. She acted concerned but not suspicious. Since I'd already eaten I ordered a piece of pie. After we finished ordering, Arrow said, "Okay, Karl, I can see you're not your usual exuberant self today. Tell me what the problem is."

  "You aren't leaving me much wiggle-room," I said, "so I guess I'll have to tell you. Remember when I told you I needed several hundred thousand dollars?"

  "That was in London when I was beating you at darts."

  "Rub it in. Well, the reason I needed the money was to buy a baseball card."

  "One baseball card?"

  You would have thought I had said one piece of bubble gum. I explained to Arrow why the Wagner was so valuable. I wasn't sure she understood. Then I told her that James had lent me the money. Her eyes got very wide.

  "You are a complete idiot," she said.

  "I knew you'd understand."

  "I don't want to hear this, but how are you going to pay him back?"

  I told her I had to get Elma's proxy for James. Now she looked horrified.

  "Karl," she said, quietly, "you are betraying your father."

  "I know. If it's any consolation to you I'm not going to do it."

  "Then what the bloody hell—excuse my Londonese—are you going to do?"

  I started to tell her about my meeting with the gangbangers.

  Her response was quick. "You could have been killed."

  "But I wasn't." I told her they had mentioned Stan's name.

  This time she didn't respond immediately. Then she said, slowly, "How can you trust them?"

  "I can't, but I don't think they would have pulled a name like Stan out of thin air. That's too much of a coincidence."

  "It's difficult to picture Stan killing anybody. But isn't that always the case? When reporters question the neighbors of the murderer they always say, 'He was such a good boy.'"

  "Then you admit it's possible."

  "You can't prove it, Karl. You said yourself that the gang members won't talk to the police."

  "I was hoping you'd have an idea about...about how to make Stan confess."

  I must have looked forlorn because Arrow reached across the table and took my hand. She said, "You're in serious trouble, Karl."

  "Maybe it's better if you stay out of it. Don't make it a company problem."

  It's already a company problem. Ned's death is a company problem and as long as James is a Dionysus stockholder, even a minority one, that's a company problem. Besides..."

  Arrow paused for so long that I prompted her. "Besides what?"

  "Before, you were always the self-sufficient outsider, aware of the problems of Dionysus and your father, but not personally affected by them. This is the first time you've been...vulnerable."

  "So, are you going to come galloping to my rescue?"

  Arrow smiled and let go of my hand. "Yes, if I can. You and I are going to have a talk with Stan."

  "I'm not sure that's a good idea. That could be dangerous."

  "Your life could be in danger if we don't. We'll be careful. We'll make a plan. We'll play good-guy, bad-guy, like the cops do. Or maybe seducer, seducee."

  "If we do that, knowing Stan's proclivities, I would have to be the seducer. And the thought of his hand on my knee..."

  "You might have to go a lot further than that..."

  "Arrow!"

  "Okay, scratch that idea. We'll come up with something." She whipped her cell phone out of her bag and started pressing buttons.

  "And you're calling who?"

  "The airline, to see if we can catch the six o'clock commuter flight to San Francisco."

  "Don't you have to tell my father—Richard?

  "I will; I'll call him from San Francisco."

  "I wonder if you can leave frequent-flyer miles to your heirs."

  ***

  Of course there wasn't a parking place within several football fields' lengths of James' house so I jammed our rental car up behind several other cars in the driveway. If someone needed to get out they would know where to find me. It was a little past 8:30. We had driven directly here from the San Francisco airport.

  Arrow wore about the brightest and tightest red dress I had ever seen. As I helped her out of the car it rode up almost to her waist. One of the benefits of being a gentleman.

  My surge of hormones made me realize that I
had fallen well behind my quota in complimenting her. I said, "You look fabulous in that dress, especially since you had about five minutes to both pack and get dressed."

  "Ten, actually, since I had to wait for you to pick me up. But, thank you, sir. You look pretty sharp, yourself."

  I wore a sport coat and tie.

  "You'll notice that tonight I'm actually wearing underwear," she continued. "If we have to take off our outer clothes as part of our investigation I have a second line of defense."

  Had she caught me looking? "I trust we won't have to go that far."

  "You never know."

  She was pretty upbeat, considering the gravity of the situation.

  Another car pulled up behind ours. As we walked up the steps, with Arrow's arm in mine so that she wouldn't stumble in her high heels, a couple got out of the car, not much older than we were. They followed us up the steps and caught us as we reached the landing by the front door.

  "Good," the woman said. "You can help us with the puzzle. George always screws it up and then I have to get out a pencil and paper and solve it. Men are supposed to do those things."

  "I just pick a number," I said. I rang the doorbell. "I'm Karl and this is Arrow."

  "George and Martha," the man said.

  We shook hands all around.

  A voice unknown to me said, "Yes? Oh, hello, Mr. and Mrs. Goodwin. Are those your friends?"

  "Uh, I'm Karl Patterson and this is Arrow Andrews," I said, somewhat embarrassed at not being recognized.

  Silence from the speaker.

  "I'm sure we're in the database," I said, lamely, trying to recover with George and Martha. "At least they know I like iced tea."

  "Don't worry about it," George said, laughing. He had a grating laugh and looked like an entrepreneurial type, with short hair and rimless glasses. "Sometimes they don't recognize us, either. It just depends on who's manning the camera."

  "Arrow—what a great name," Martha said. "And I love your dress."

  "Thanks," Arrow said. "It's worked so far."

  Martha's own dress hadn't exactly come from a thrift shop. She was fashionably thin and her hair was suspiciously blonder than that of 999 out of every 1,000 people in the world.

  The voice from the speaker said, "Here is the puzzle for tonight. Let's say that A and B both collect spiders. A says, 'B, I'll buy 18 of your spiders. Then I'll have twice as many as you do.' B says, 'Au contraire, I'll buy 18 spiders from you. Then we'll have the same number.' How many total spiders are there?"

  "Jesus!" George said. "What we have to go through to come here."

  "Do I have to get out the pencil and paper?" Martha asked. She opened the clasp of her purse.

  "Karl will figure it out," Arrow said. "He's brilliant at this sort of thing."

  As she said this she took hold of my arm, possessively, as if we were married or at least sweethearts, and pulled it against her body. This gave me an additional hormonal boost, but not the kind conducive to solving math puzzles.

  "Thanks for putting me on the spot," I said, trying to clear my head. Okay, let's see. If they swap 18 spiders and then have the same number, one has 36 more spiders than the other to begin with. They swap the other way and one has 36 plus 36 or 72 more spiders than the other. That's twice as many as the other so the other must have 72. Seventy-two times two is 144. Subtract 18 from 144 and you get 126. Add 18 to 72 and you get 90. Ninety is 36 less than 126, so that checks out. The answer is 126 plus 90 or 216. Right?"

  "If you say so," George said.

  "My hero!" Martha said, dramatically.

  Maybe she was an actress. I gave Arrow some time to pick apart my logic, but she couldn't do it so I announced our answer to the faceless voice within. A click told me I was correct and I opened the door.

  We made our way down the stairs to the casino, to the mellow tones of Tony Bennett singing, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Appropriate. Wednesdays must be slow nights because there weren't many people here. I didn't recognize the man standing at the bottom of the stairs to greet us. He looked older than Stan and even had some gray at the temples.

  He shook hands with the Goodwins and welcomed us all to the casino. He told Arrow and me his name was Art and that he was the floor manager on duty. I asked him if Stan was working.

  "Not tonight," Art replied. "He's scheduled to work tomorrow night."

  "Is he in the house, do you know?" I asked.

  Art shook his head. "I believe he's out for the evening. However, I'll ring his number and check for you."

  He headed for the room under the stairs. "Is James in?" I called after him.

  He shook his head again and said, "He's on a business trip."

  "I guess I was too impetuous," Arrow said, frowning. "It looks like we've wasted the evening."

  "Have a drink with us," George said in a hearty voice.

  "What I would really like is something to eat," I said. I had ordered a burger to go from the Norms when we had decided to fly here, but since then all I had eaten was some crunchy stuff served in tiny packages on the airplane with a list of ingredients that covered the package.

  Fortunately, there was some food left at the buffet table. Arrow and I filled two plates and sat at a table with Martha and George, who had ordered drinks. Art came over and confirmed that Stan was not at home.

  "So, have you been coming here long?" George asked us.

  "This is my fourth time and Arrow's second," I said. "What about you?"

  "We've been coming here off and on for six months," George said.

  "And lost our shirts in the process," Martha said.

  I detected real bitterness in her voice and I wanted to ask for details, but all I said was, "Oh?"

  "We'll probably lose our company," Martha added.

  George said, "Martha..."

  "We might as well tell them. It'll be common knowledge soon. Maybe we can save them from having the same experience. Have you heard of a company called everything.com?"

  I hadn't but Arrow said, "Yes. I read in a trade journal—a number of months ago, I think it was—that you were going to do an IPO."

  "Yes, we were all set to have a stock offering," George said. "Then the market turned sour, and now it's too late."

  "Too late," I repeated, wondering how James entered into this.

  Martha said, "You see..."

  "I'll tell it," George interrupted. "I want to make sure it's told right."

  Martha gave him a dirty look.

  "I had this great idea for a dot-com company and was able to raise some venture capital to get started. Originally, Martha and I were the only employees. Then we started growing..."

  "But we were still losing money," Martha said.

  "Yes, but that's normal for a young, rapidly growing company. We planned to have the initial public offering to raise more capital. When the stock market tanked we put it off, expecting the market to come back."

  "But we were bleeding money too fast," Martha said, "and needed more right away. Suddenly we were pariahs. Our venture capitalist wouldn't give us any more money; he said it was too risky."

  "To make a painful story shorter," George said, "we came to James, who we had heard of through friends, and told him our situation. He offered us a deal: we could gamble for an infusion of capital. If we won he would put money into the company in return for stock. If we lost he would get the stock anyway but wouldn't put in any money.

  "It sounds one-sided," Arrow said.

  "That's James' adult version of The Game," I said.

  "We were desperate," Martha said, "and we took it. We played roulette..."

  "And you lost," I said, picturing the situation. "But if the company goes out of business, what good is the stock to James?"

  "He has no intention of letting the company go out of business," George said. "He has offered us two more deals: the first is to gamble again for another cash infusion. Of course, if we lose again he gets most of our remaining stock. Then he'll put money into the com
pany and try to save it. The second alternative is to sell him practically all our stock at a bargain-basement price. He made the same offer to our venture capitalist for his stock."

  "The diabolical part," Martha said, "is that the offer becomes worth less each week—so the longer we delay in making a decision, the worse off we are."

  "If your problems are so bad that nobody but James will help you," Arrow said, "then there must be a substantial risk that you will go out of business—and that James will lose his investment."

  "But James makes it up in volume," I said, suddenly understanding the big picture. "If he invests in ten small, high-tech companies, even if only one makes it, his return on that one will be enough to pay for the nine losers many times over."

  "You should go to work for James" Martha said, ironically. "You obviously have the kind of mind he's looking for."

  "He offered me a job."

  Arrow kicked me under the table and I almost yelled out loud.

  She asked, "What are you going to do?" in a sympathetic voice.

  "That's why we're here tonight," Martha said. "George thinks he has a system for beating roulette. He wants to practice."

  She made "system" sound like a dirty word.

  "Is everybody who comes here in the same boat?" Arrow asked.

  "Pretty much," Martha said. "If they're not gambling for their lives already, they're thinking about it."

  "Do you know the odds against winning at roulette?" I asked George, trying to sound more empathetic.

  "I do," George said, "but what choice do I have? We could take James' piddly offer to buy most of our stock. He would still employ us to run the company—on a salary, of course. Then, if we succeed he makes billions while we make chicken-feed."

  "Or we can lose at roulette," Martha said, "and hand him the stock for nothing."

  "But using my system we might win," George said, "and then we'd get to keep a substantial amount of stock."

  George had polished off three drinks during our conversation so I already knew one probable flaw in his system. I said, "Explain your system to me."

  "I play only red or black, even odds. Forget the long shots. I start with what I call my basic bet. If I win I keep my winnings and keep betting my basic bet as long as I keep winning."