by Victor Koman
"Here comes the chase scene!" I hit the accelerator. The car raced to catch up. Other drivers blared their horns. Pedestrians jumped out of the way. Bystanders grinned. They were probably looking for the movie cameras.
"Brace yourself!"
Ann wedged herself farther down into the space under the dashboard.
I tested the other driver's reaction time by ramming the brake pedal into the floorboard. The Chrysler skidded.
The other driver failed the test. The DeLorean's tires screamed in unison. I fought to stay loose and resilient. Then they hit us.
The roll down the hill outside Auberge had been worse. The sedan slammed into us while it was still braking. I took my foot off the brake and let the impact shove us forward. I floored it while the other car skidded sideways. A couple of sharp turns deposited us downhill on La Cienega. Ann sat up and looked around. After a couple miles, I checked for the DeLorean. No sign.
"Ecclesia?" she asked.
I shrugged. "Lead is lead. I don't care who fired it-it's impolite."
"What now?"
I cut over to Crescent Heights and turned toward the Valley. "Let's go shopping."
"This," the man in the lab coat said, "is the Theta Wave Amplifier." He rubbed one pudgy hand against the light blue enameling of the device. His body described the general outline of a small mountain. Or perhaps a large beachball topped by red hair and beard that framed a ruddy face.
"We've been working on it here at Peripherals for the past ten years."
I wasn't interested in a history lesson. Ann was off talking to the owner.
He reacted to my lack of response by clearing his throat just enough to stuff a Twinkie into it. His extremely off-white smock served as his napkin.
"The Theta Wave Amplifier increases the activity of the brain in the four-to-eight Hertz region-the frequency associated with dreaming and creativity. At the same time, it maintains a corresponding balance in the Delta and Alpha region. We use it mostly to intensify dreams in thought-mapping of test subj-"
"Sold."
"Huh?" he said.
"I said, '
sold.
' I'll give you the delivery instructions and a check. If you have no objections."
"Uh. . . why, no." It was probably the quickest deal he'd ever made. Staring at me from under puffy eyelids, he asked, "What sort of research will you be using it in?"
"Something involving a twelve-year-old telepathic hooker."
He blinked a couple of times and reached for another Twinkie. The plate fell to the floor without his noticing.
We took a trip down to the trading floor of Auberge. Even though it was well after midnight, all the shops were open. Our destination was Selene Pharmaceuticals.
An alluring sky-blue dress enwrapped Ann in a disturbingly sexy manner, yet no one on the trading floor noticed her. I asked her about it. She shrugged, though her coolly flip reply contained a good deal of caution.
"I must have applied the wrong makeup."
We wandered through the drugstore, picking up the necessary contraband. As long as we were in Auberge, we could buy and do pretty much what we wished.
Once we left the complex, we were subject to the drearier laws of the City and County of Los Angeles, State of California, United States of America. Which would mean we'd be about as safe as we were in Auberge, but we'd have to handle our own bribes.
Ann placed the drugs in an attaché case while I forked over some gold to the proprietor of Selene Pharmaceuticals, whose paisley shirt sported a patch embroidered with the name Tom. He hardly raised an eyebrow at the way in which we cleaned out his inventory of psychoactive drugs. His mind was quite probably elsewhere.
I lugged the attaché out of the store. "All we need now is a spaceship."
"I've been checking into that," Ann said. "Commercial Phoenix flights are all booked for the next five months, and no one is willing to sublet us some room. I even went as far as finding out about the two old NASA shuttles. It turns out that they're such rusty hulks, they'd cost billions to get working again."
"Well, we can't do it from the ground. The direct broadcast satellites can only be modified in orbit."
She smiled. "There is a way. A company called StratoDyne has filed Chapter Eleven bankruptcy."
I snorted. "I don't think even Zacharias has enough dough to buy a shuttle manufacturer."
"He won't have to. The owner will give us the company and its one working shuttle for practically nothing."
That puzzled me a tad. "Why do you think that?"
She smiled wickedly. "He draws to inside straights."
It was all she had to say.
16
Poker
The first blast of autumn cold blew through Old Downtown the next night. Twilight colored the sky a deep, somber red as Ann and I made our way from my office to Auberge. Wind eddied around the little hill and headed toward Westwood and Santa Monica. The frigid breeze transformed street dust and paper trash into dancing spirits, whirling like drunken showgirls down the avenues and alleys.
We passed through the security entrance to head for the Casino of the Angels. I wore a tux for one of the rare times in my life. Basic black with a light blue shirt that lacked all the effeminate ruffles that seemed currently in fashion. If I was a sore thumb, I was proud of it.
Ann had somehow managed to adhere an emerald evening gown to her skin. No detail of her allure could hide beneath the clinging fabric. She found some way to breathe, though. Did she ever....
A slit in the dress traveled up her left thigh to where it had no business being. A slender blue garter peeked out with every graceful step she took.
I expected half the casino to suffer myocardial infarction when she entered. No one gave her as much as a mild glance.
Eunuchs. Or worse.
She took a seat at the no-limit poker table. Familiar faces haunted that patch of green felt. Big time gamblers. She was ready to slaughter them in her own lovely way.
"The one in the grey sharkskin suit with the pink shirt is George," she whispered back to me without turning her eyes from the action.
I made a noncommittal sound and left the table. It might take a while for her to up the stakes. I sauntered over to the dining area.
I returned an hour or so later. The first words I heard from the table were, "Jesus Fucking Christ!"
The skinny, dark-haired man in the sharkskin suit and pink shirt threw down his cards in disgust. He made a motion as if standing to leave, then plopped back in his seat again.
"One more," he muttered, "one more."
George was a born target.
Ann smiled at him. She didn't have to breathe a word. Her expression said it all quite plainly:
sucker.
The other five gentlemen at the table held divided opinions. Two of them looked as happy as Shriners at a hookers' convention, while the other three exuded all the warmth and personality of stale cigar smoke. One of the happy ones-a chubby old man with a prominent nosedealt the next hand of five card draw.
Ann tossed her head to one side, sending a cascade of gold over her shoulder. She drew her cards to play them close to her chest-which the lechers in the crowd finally appeared to notice.
The betting proceeded calmly, except in the case of George. He bet nervously and thoughtlessly. He was a plunger, all right, and a desperate one at that.
The pile of chips near Ann's elbow stood in shoulder high stacks. Dozens of stacks. Had it been piles of paper money, there wouldn't have been as much a mystique about it. Something in the way poker chips look and sound instills an almost religious reverence in people.
I lit a cigarette and stepped toward the table to kibitz.
Ann drew two cards and raised when her turn came about. The three grumblers-who looked as if they'd all come off the same boat from Sicily-folded immediately afterward. The fat man and a smiling, gaunt old gentleman remained in, hoping the odds would shift against her.
George stayed in, t
ossing his chips in angrily. His dark, tousled hair hung down in his eyes-eyes as furious as a cat cornered in an alley.
"Call," he said after the second round of raises. The chips skittered across the table to land in the center with the rest.
Ann laid down her cards. Three queens.
The plunger ground his teeth together and threw down his hand. Two pair with an ace kicker.
The other two players shook their heads at him and laid their cards face down.
"Lady Luck is certainly with you tonight, my dear." The fat man leaned back in his chair.
Ann smiled. It was George's turn to deal.
The skinny young man picked up the cards to shuffle them. He slammed the two halves of the deck together as though trying to hammer luck into it.
Ann gazed around the smoky room to find me. She smiled again and winked. Her eyes turned toward George, then back toward me.
The owner of StratoDyne dealt a round of five-card draw. Ann took three cards after the first round of bets, then immediately folded. This did little to endear her to several of the players, who would have forced her to stay in the game if the rules had permitted it.
One of the three little guys at the far end brightened visibly when he won the round.
George nearly bent the remainder of the deck in his fist. His right hand slid back toward the edge of the table, stayed there just long enough to tremble hesitantly, and safely returned to shuffle the cards.
I didn't like the looks of that particular motion.
"Stud," George muttered through thinned lips. He knocked a curl of black hair out of his eyes before dealing the hole cards.
Ann scanned the first round of face cards. Her gaze lighted on the fat man's card-a king.
"Fold," she said, sliding her cards forward.
George's knuckles popped.
Her face card had been a jack. To me, that meant that her hole card had been a king or lower. She didn't gamble-she played poker.
The kibitzers muttered among themselves as the rest of the hand played through. No one could help noticing that, while she wasn't winning anything at the moment, she also wasn't losing much. By the last round of betting, the fat man had squeezed out everyone but George. The younger man called.
He shouldn't have.
The fat man had four diamonds showing. Possible flush. The young man had a pair of black queens.
The fat man grinned, touched a hand to his thinning reddish-blond hair, and turned over his hole card. A king. Of clubs. He laughed, leaning back in his chair.
"Looks like I couldn't fool you, my boy! You won!"
The plunger flipped his hole card over to expose a third queen. "Three of a kind!" he shouted with sudden exuberance. His hands trembled toward the pile of chips.
"Hold it," I said, leaning over the fat man's shoulder. My voice sounded like Robert Stack's Elliot Ness. Even so, it had as much stopping power to George as tissue paper had to a rhino. I looked down at the fat man. "Take a look at your cards. That's no busted flush."
He leaned forward. One of the foreign guys laid a restraining hand on George.
The fat man sorted the cards out. "King, ace, jack, ten, and... queen." He looked up at me, then across to George. The other players developed an obsessive interest in the patterns on the casino ceiling.
"You were so anxious to bluff him out," I said quietly, "you overlooked an ace-high straight." The old man stared at his cards and nodded, dazed beyond speech.
I gazed noncommittally at George and cleared my throat. "Ace-high straight beats three queens." I said it in as friendly a manner as possible. Just a helpful bystander. I could predict what was probably coming next.
George looked at me with eyes the color of muddy water.
"He didn't call his cards."
"He doesn't have to," I said. "The cards speak for themselves."
We shared one of those instants frozen in time that last forever and end in a heartbeat. His right hand fidgeted again. He shoved the chips away.
"Take `em," he muttered. He said nothing while shuffling for the next deal. Stud again.
This time, Ann was ace-high on the first round. "The pair of aces opens," she said with a sweet smile. Maybe they believed her, maybe they didn't. Poker was as much the art of lying as was politics. Any dame that could handle something as cutthroat as a table full of men ready to rip out and devour one another's livers was a dame worth knowing.
On the second round of face cards, two of the Sicilians raised. The gaunt old man folded, stood gracefully, and headed for the bar. The fat man scratched at his nose, frowned, and threw in some chips to see the bets.
George looked at his cards. After pondering for all of a few seconds, he raised. I almost felt sorry for him.
Ann called, saying, "Okay, so I lied." She looked so troubled, I wondered what cards she did have.
The third round revealed no pairs among the exposed cards.
"Check," Ann said.
The three foreigners folded and began talking to each other.
The fat man checked, too.
George gritted his teeth and made his bet. High.
The courtly old gent returned from the bar, shaking his head at the younger man's desperation.
Ann raised him. Higher. "Maybe I don't have aces, gentlemen"her voice drawled lazily-"but I've got something just as nice." She just let the sentence hang there, like lingerie on a breezeless clothesline.
The fat man scanned the cards displayed. He pursed his lips to blow through them like a horse. His cards slid toward the center of the table.
"I believe prudence forces me to fold." He inclined his head to the gold and emerald figure to his right. "You may have him, my dear. I think I've taken enough out of him, as you have out of me."
Ann politely acknowledged his words, then turned back to the game.
George dabbed at droplets of sweat gathering on his chin. I sidled over to him, reaching around him to snuff my cigarette in an overflowing ashtray at his elbow.
"I'd suggest folding," I offered softly. "It'll fool her into thinking you know what you're doing."
"I don't need-I can't. It's-" He breathed the stuffy air in short, frantic gasps.
Some people shouldn't play poker.
He raised his opponent by an idiotically astronomical amount. The crowd gasped.
"What a
mark
," somebody whispered.
Ann languidly threw in her chips. "Call." She had nothing to do but wait for the kill.
George dealt the final two cards. A deuce of clubs slid over to her side to join the ace of hearts, five of spades and nine of diamonds.
He dealt himself a queen of spades next to his king, ten, and five of diamonds.
Ann's lips pouted in disappointment. She looked again at her hole card, letting her shoulders drop. "Check," she said, listless as wet newsprint.
Lights seemed to flick on in George's eyes. He looked at the chips between them-enough to purchase several Central American countries. He calculated madly. Nervous hands shoved the remaining pile of chips forward.
Ann stared emptily until George had withdrawn his hands. A grin spread across her face. She added the last of her own chips to the stunningly huge mound between them.
"And I raise you." The words didn't come out as a slap in the face, but the young man reacted as if he'd been socked. She had him pegged from the start.
I was pretty sure what their hole cards were now. Ann must have figured his out a few rounds back.
George bowed his head to stare at the table.
"I can write you a check."
The gaunt old man bent over him to say, "You know the rules, my friend. No checks or notes. No lending."
It saved me from having to say it.
Ann straightened in her chair, making no sound. Her face had become as rigid as a stone carving. She gazed at George with wintry eyes and waited.
"I-" He glanced pleadingly around to the crowd. His gaze fell on Ann. "I have so
me shares. In my name. A controlling interest." He pulled some papers from inside his jacket.
I frowned. Had he been expecting to need them? Make that a
reckless
plunger-doubled and squared.
"A third of it should meet the raise."
Ann glanced at the shares with a disdainful look. "Oh, all right. You'll probably win them back anyway."
That, I thought, was unnecessarily cruel. The young man's eyes blazed like oil burning on a polluted lake. He threw in five of the folded blue sheets.
"I call." He reached to turn over his hole card.
"See you and raise."
Their gazes locked like handcuffs. The crowd stood like a statue garden, their only similarity their stillness. Their expressions ranged from disapproval to glee to shock.
The only one not frozen was George. He began to shake. His gaze fell to the remaining papers in his fist. He tossed them in.
I pitied him. Pity, though, has no place in poker. Then again, neither do fools.
She called. He turned over his hole card. He didn't have a flush. Just a pair of kings, as she must have suspected. His right hand edged off the table to drop limply onto his lap.
All eyes stared at Ann's hole card, as if their combined hopes could lift it from the felt. It resisted. It lay there until Ann reached over to invert it.
An ace. A diamond for the heart already exposed.
The fat man laughed, looking at the loser. The tall old man gazed with sympathy at the pitiable figure. Ann motioned for a security man to retrieve her winnings. The shares she recovered personally, tucking them away in her purse.
The fat man's laughter faded like a good memory when he saw the pistol in George's hand. A maddened finger jerked against the trigger.
I tried to outrace the bullet. My arms rose up in a double fist to come smashing down on his right shoulder. Too late. The gun lunged backward in his hand. He dropped under my blow like a bag of wet garbage, the pistol falling onto his lap.
The chair Ann sat in had a hole in it. High up, at chest level.
Ann was gone.
While guards jumped on George's unconscious frame, I looked for Ann. I saw no sign until I noticed a mound of chips slide off the table. I had to concentrate in some odd fashion in order to see her. Staring more intently, I saw her shoveling the chips into a Mylar bag. Not even the guards seemed to notice her. Whenever someone stared directly at her, it was as if his gaze just kept moving.
