by Tim Powers
“Cards?” said the house dealer loudly.
Crane realized that the man was talking to him, and was probably saying it for the second time. Crane raised two fingers and tossed out the Four and Nine of Hearts. The cards he got in exchange were the Nine and Two of Spades, no help.
The two players to his left just rapped the table; they were standing pat, at least pretending to have unimprovable hands.
And, Crane thought sadly, they had both been playing tight all along, not staying with low Two Pairs or trying for gutshot Straights or three Flushes and apparently never bluffing. They probably did have pat hands. Certainly at least one of them did.
So much for three Jacks.
He checked instead of betting, and when one of them did bet, and the other one raised, and the “cold” raise came around to him, he slid two of his Jacks under his chips and threw the other three cards away. When he would be asked to show his openers, he would show the pair, which was the minimum a player could have in order to open; and opening with just a pair of Jacks under the gun was a foolish move. Seeming to have done it would confirm him in the eyes of the other players as a money-careless drunk.
He had been playing Poker all over town for about sixteen hours, starting in the Flamingo’s cardroom right after the first phone call from the ghost of Susan. She had called several times since, ringing pay phones he had happened to be standing near; her voice was hoarse, and she didn’t talk for any longer than it took for her to tell him that she forgave him and loved him. He knew she’d waiting for him in the bed of whatever motel room he would eventually wind up in, but like a nervous bridegroom on his wedding night, he wanted just a couple more drinks before…retiring.
Twice among a thousand snatches of desultory conversation, once at the Sands and once from a cabdriver who had asked him what line of work he was in, he had heard of a series of Poker games that was to be played on a Lake Mead houseboat next week, starting Wednesday night and continuing through Good Friday.
He tried not to think about that now.
He reached for his drink, then hesitated and glanced to his right—but of course there was not a woman standing there. All day he had been catching these glimpses out of the corner of his false eye. Somehow it didn’t worry him that he was able to see through the painted plastic hemisphere; somehow he had always known that his father could give back what his father had taken away.
Fifty feet away Richard Leroy and Vaughan Trumbill stood watching the Poker game over the tops of two video Poker slot machines; the Horseshoe was crowded, even this late on a Wednesday night, and to maintain their places, the two men kept feeding quarters into the machines and inattentively pushing the buttons.
“Beany’s going to need more buy-in money,” said Trumbill, staring impassively at the game.
“Hmm?” said Richard, following the fat man’s gaze. “Oh, right.” His face went blank, and at the Poker table a white-haired little man with an asthma inhaler on the table beside him pulled a billfold from his jacket pocket and separated out twenty hundred-dollar bills; he tossed them across the green felt to the dealer, who slid several stacks of green-colored chips across to him.
A moment later animation returned to Leroy’s face. “There,” he said. “Hey, did you see our fish open with Jacks under the gun? He must be ready to just fall out of the tree, he’s so ripe.”
“He showed two Jacks, Betsy,” Trumbill said. “Sorry, I mean Richard. He might have folded Two Pair or even Trips. I’m not convinced he’s as cut free as you think.”
In the Betsy Reculver body the old man might have gone into a snit, but now in the Richard one he just laughed. “The way he’s been soaking himself in alcohol today? He’s as cut free as a blood clot traveling up an artery.”
Trumbill just shrugged, but he was uneasy, and he didn’t like the old man’s metaphor. Several men driving cars with Nevada plates had been to the motel Crane had been staying at, asking questions about a Scott “Scarecrow” Smith, and Trumbill was afraid some jack might be on Crane’s trail, out to eliminate one of Georges Leon’s about-to-be-assumed bodies, his precious fish, and somehow the assassination this morning was bothering him—maybe because explosions generally tore the bodies to bits and flung the bits away to dry on rooftops and tree branches; and Trumbill’s stomach was uncomfortably weighted down with LaShane. This afternoon, naked except for the splendor of his thousand tattoos, he had dragged the dead dog out into the backyard and eaten a good half of it raw. Richard had hosed him off afterward.
A young man in a sweat shirt sidled up to Trumbill now and whispered. “One of the cars that was at the motel just parked in the lot by the liquor store around the corner on First. Three guys, flipping coins, angling this way.”
Trumbill nodded. “Keep your people on them,” he said quietly, and the young man nodded and hurried away.
Richard was looking at him with raised eyebrows.
“We’re not the only ones that sensed him playing,” Trumbill said. “Three guys, gotta be working for one of the jacks, coming this way. Can you work the fish yet?” Trumbill asked.
“No, not till day before Easter.”
“Why don’t you try? If we’ve got to run, it would help if he was cooperating.”
Richard hesitated, then nodded and stared hard at Crane.
Crane was lifting his glass to his mouth—and suddenly his arm jerked and the rim of the glass hit him in the nose and bourbon stung his eyes. His mouth sprang open, and he made a loud, prolonged hooting sound.
Then he blinked rapidly, feeling his face reddening with drunken embarrassment, and he carefully lowered the emptied glass to the paper napkin on the green felt.
“Uh,” he said to the house dealer, who was staring at him in some surprise, “just waking myself up.”
“Maybe it’s bedtime,” the dealer suggested.
Crane pictured a motel bed, dimly and whitely lit by a streetlight beyond a curtained window, and he imagined a figure in the bed, reaching out white arms for him. “No, not yet. I’ve still got some money!”
“Sure, le’ ’im ply,” said the well-dressed businessman, apparently English, who had won the pot Crane had opened. His graying hairline was damp, and his play so far had been very tight, very conservative; Crane guessed he was uncomfortable in a high-stakes game and appreciated having a moronic drunk at the table. The man now grinned nervously at Crane. “Iss a free country, roit?”
Crane nodded carefully. “Sure is.”
“Grite country, too, I my sigh,” the man went on eagerly, “though you have goat a lot of goons.”
The dealer shrugged and began skimming cards across the table to the players. The button that indicated the token dealer was in front of Crane now, so the first card was dealt to the man on Crane’s left, the Englishman.
“Got a lot of what?” asked Crane.
“Goons,” the man told him. “Goons everywha you look.”
The dealer was quick; each of the eight players now had five cards face down in front of him.
Crane nodded, mystified. “I suppose.”
“No use,” said Richard Leroy, resting his elbows on his slot machine. Absently he thumbed a quarter into the slot and pushed the deal button, and the front of his suit coat flickered with color as the cards appeared on the screen.
“Not unless you want to have him throw a fit,” Trumbill agreed.
Crane mopped his chin with his shirt sleeve, and when the cocktail waitress walked by, he waved his empty glass at her.
Twitches and animal noises now, he thought blurrily. Well, at least I’m developing a terrific table image. I just hope I don’t vomit or lose control of my bowels or anything.
The Englishman had opened under the gun, in first position, and Crane knew the man must have a pair of Aces at the very least. None of the other players called the fifty-dollar opening bet, and when it came around to Crane, he belatedly remembered to curl up the edges of his cards and peer down at them with his right eye closed. He had the
Kings of Spades and Clubs and the Deuces of Spades and Diamonds and the Seven of Hearts. A very nice Two Pair. He let the cards fall back flat and slid forward one black hundred-dollar chip.
“I raise,” he said clearly.
The Englishman called the bet and then asked for one card. Crane didn’t think the man had the nerve to be chasing a Flush or a Straight against a raise; probably he was drawing to a Two Pair, which was unlikely to be better than Crane’s Kings Up.
Crane considered rapping pat to scare him off, then decided that the man would assume he was bluffing, or even so drunk that he saw a Flush where there wasn’t one. He decided instead to toss the Seven and try for the eleven-to-one chance of getting another King or Two and having a Full Boat.
But when he tugged at the Seven, the Two of Diamonds came with it, as if the two cards were glued together.
Surprised, he lifted the cards off the table and opened his right eye. Then he closed his left one.
Viewed through Crane’s false eye, the King of Clubs was a King holding a metal rod and sitting on a lion-carved throne; the King of Spades was a weird King of Swords—just a crowned head poking up out of the surface of a body of water and an arm raised out of the water holding a sword; and the Two of Clubs was the by-now-familiar Two of Staves—the severed cherub head transfixed with two metal rods.
All three faces were toward him, and their painted eyes seemed to be looking into his false one with urgency.
Dully Crane wished this would all end. Where the hell was his new drink?
But, obediently, he threw the other two cards away, keeping the Kings and the cherub.
He closed his right eye and opened his real, left eye. All this squinting and winking, right after the splash of bourbon, was making his eyes leak tears. “Two,” he told the house dealer. In spite of the tears running down his cheeks, he was perfectly calm, and his voice was level.
Seen through his good left eye, the three cards he held were again just the Kings of Spades and Clubs and the Two of Clubs. Breaking up the Two Pair and keeping a Two for a kicker was not a move any Poker expert would approve, but the two cards the dealer spun to him proved to be the Kings of Hearts and Diamonds. He now had four Kings, almost certainly better than whatever the Englishman had.
His lone opponent now slid four twenty-five-dollar chips into the pot, and Crane raised with eight of his own, and the Englishman reraised, and so did Crane, and they alternated at raising each other’s raises—pausing just long enough for Crane to drain his newly arrived drink and ask for another—until Crane’s entire stack of twelve hundred and some dollars in chips was tumbled into the pile in the center of the table. There was cash in his pockets, and he wished the rules permitted him to buy more chips during the course of a hand.
He blinked curiously at the Englishman, who almost looked ready to fling a drink into his own face and then hoot. The man was trembling, and his lips were white.
“Well?” he said in a scratchy voice.
Crane laid down his hand, face up. “Four Kings,” he said.
The Englishman blinked at him; his whole face had gone white, but he was smiling and shaking his head. Then he lunged forward out of his seat to stare hard at Crane’s cards.
His lips moved silently, as if he were counting the Kings—and then he shuddered violently and rolled over backward, knocking over his chair and tumbling to the carpeted floor.
The house dealer stood up and waved, and in seconds two security guards had loped up, taken in the situation, and were crouched over the fallen Englishman.
“Looks like heart,” said one of them quickly. “Yeah, fingernails already dark.” He began thumping the Englishman’s chest, hard, with a fist while the other guard unholstered his radio and spoke quickly into it.
In spite of what Crane had heard about the single-mindedness of Las Vegas gamblers, a number of people abandoned slot machines or even Poker hands to come over and peer at the man on the floor. As they speculated in whispers about the man’s chances, Crane was glad they couldn’t know that it was he who had felled the harmless Englishman. Again he cuffed tears out of his eyes. I could have just thrown all five cards away, he thought. But how could I have known? It wasn’t my fault. What was he playing for, if he couldn’t afford to lose?
The house dealer leaned forward across the table—the twin tails of his tie dangling under his chin, each with HORSESHOE lettered down it in silver—and with thoughtful deliberation turned over the Englishman’s cards.
An Eight and four Queens. The man had certainly suffered a bad beat.
Crane closed his left eye and looked out at his own laid-down cards. The Kings and the speared cherub head were smiling triumphantly now.
“Get somebody over here with some racks for my chips,” Crane told the dealer harshly. “I want to cash out.”
The dealer gave him a blank look. “Bedtime at last.”
When Trumbill saw Crane stand up from the table, he turned and waved to the young man in the sweat shirt, who was mechanically working a slot machine three rows back; the young man nodded and made a hand signal to someone further back.
“I’ll take him as soon as we’re outside,” Trumbill told Leroy. “He’s never seen me, and fat men are reassuring.”
“If they smile,” said Leroy tensely as he watched Crane laying the stacks of his chips into a wooden rack. “Can you smile?” He glanced at Trumbill.
Trumbill’s cheeks tensed upward, and his lower lip pouched away from his teeth, and his eyes became glittering slits. “Ho-ho-ho,” he said.
“Forget it,” said Leroy. Crane had picked up the rack and started weaving through the crowd toward the cashier’s cage, and Leroy strode after him, flanked by Trumbill. “Act sad, like you lost your life savings,” Leroy said as they elbowed their way through the phalanxes of gamblers. “A sad, fat man is probably good enough.”
Ahead of them Crane had lifted the rack onto the cashier counter, and the woman in the cage had slid it inside.
“Jesus, cash again,” said Trumbill a few moments later, watching Crane take a roll of bills and fold it and stuff it into his pocket. “With his scores at the Dunes and the Mirage, he must have twenty grand on him.”
“You can have it when we’ve taken him. He’s heading for the door—Moynihan’s boys will have a van out there at the curb somewhere. Get him into it.”
“Right.”
“Baaad luck!”
The picketers were still marching up and down the Fremont Street sidewalk, and the short-haired young woman was using her electric megaphone again.
“Baaad luck at the ’Shoe!” droned her flat, amplified voice on the hot air as Crane lurched out into the glaringly lit night of downtown Las Vegas. “Come on out, losers!”
I’m coming, thought Crane as he slapped his pockets for his cigarettes; luckily for the environment, I’m sociodegradable. He found a pack of Arky’s Camels, fumbled one out, and tucked it between his dry lips. Now did he have a match? Again he slapped his pockets.
His good eye was stinging with smoke and exhaustion, so he let it close and peered around through his plastic eye. The street and the casinos were hallucinatorily exotic viewed through it, impossible Samarkand-scapes of glowing crenellated palaces and broad boulevards peopled with robed Kings and Queens.
He smiled and breathed deeply, feeling the liquor humming in his veins.
Then it all started to change. The metallic clank-clank-clank of the slot machines was the fast, hammering background of a savage music that could be played only by an orchestra of honking cars and pavement-clicking heels and drunken shouts.
“Time to go home, looooozers!” quacked the striker in jarring counterpoint.
The people on the sidewalks were moving jerkily; apparently they were unwilling participants in some degradingly mechanical dance.
Suddenly Crane was near panic, and he opened both eyes wide and breathed deeply. He smelled exhaust fumes, and sweat, and the eternal hot desert wind.
He was
on Fremont Street, and the people around him were just random tourists, and he was just drunk.
The cigarette still hung from his lower lip, and he thought that if he could get it lit, he would feel better, would sober up a little.
“Need a light?” asked someone next to him.
With a relieved smile Crane turned—then froze at the double exposure with which he found himself face-to-face.
Through his left eye he saw the fat man who had ransacked his apartment, the fat man who had had on the seat of the gray Jaguar the envelope with the URGENTLY FOLD note about Diana, the fat man who had eaten the leaves from the ginger plant across the street from his house in Santa Ana.
And through his right eye Crane saw a man-size black sphere, with a black, warty head and stubby, bristly black arms; away from the boundaries of it, excluded by it, boiled away a Kirlian aura of green tendrils and teal carapaces and green fishtails and red arteries.
Handlebar! thought Crane—no, the Mandelbrot Man—and then Crane was running away, ignoring the blazing pain in his cut leg, blundering through the crowds and hearing only the whimpering in his own head.
Some traffic light must have been green under the blue-white neon suns of the Horsheshoe, for the crowd stretched entirely across Fremont Street, and he found himself on the opposite sidewalk before he had even realized that he had stepped off the curb.
The crowd was sparser to his left, and he ran that way, his shoes flopping on the stained pavement. A street opened to his right and he spun around the corner, nearly losing his footing when his left knee refused to flex, and half hopped and half jogged toward the blue and red beer signs of a liquor store ahead.
This street, disorientingly, was nearly empty; a cab idled at the curb ahead of him, and a solitary man in overalls was trudging along the opposite sidewalk under the high shoulder of a parking garage. Crane ran for the cab…but out of the corner of his good eye he saw the man in overalls look alertly toward Fremont Street and then point at Crane.
