New York Nocturne

by Walter Satterthwait

  Or perhaps kill us himself.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m quite sure you’re right.”

  For a few moments, we sat there.

  After a while, I said, “Miss Lizzie?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “I just want to say that if things don’t go the way they’re supposed to . . . well, I just want you to know that I think you’ve been a good friend. A really good friend.” I felt my throat thicken and my eyes begin to sting. “And I’m really grateful for everything you’ve done.” One more word and I would start melting away.

  Smiling, she reached out and gently touched me once on the cheek. “I thank you for that, Amanda.” Her hand fell to her lap. “And permit me to say that you’ve been a good friend, too. An excellent friend. I’ve been extremely grateful for your company these past few days.”

  “I know I’m a pain in the neck. I know I’m stubborn . . .”

  Smiling, she said, “But think how tiresome things would be if you weren’t. I regret none of it, dear. Truly. None of what’s happened. I regret only the circumstances in which we came together again.”

  “Do you think—”

  The front door opened, and Arnold Rothstein stepped in, grinning. “Hello, ladies. Guess you found the place all right.” He shut the door, and the sounds of wood meeting wood, of the metal latch catching in its metal slot, were somehow final and irrevocable.

  “Your directions were perfectly accurate, Mr. Rothstein,” said Miss Lizzie.

  “Glad to hear it.” He stepped over to the opposite side of the table, slipped the paper bag of figs from his jacket pocket and plopped it onto the table. He took off the jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. He pulled out the chair, sat down, and slid it a bit closer to the table. He untied the bow at his neck, letting the ends hang loose, and unbuttoned his collar. He slipped a flat, round, gold cufflink from his left cuff, set the link on the table, and rolled his cuff back. On his thin, pale wrist was a gold watch with an alligator leather band.

  “Nice watch,” he said, nodding toward Miss Lizzie’s.

  “Thank you.”

  He slipped the cufflink from his right cuff and dropped it beside the other. “My father had a watch like that.”

  “Did he?”

  He rolled up the cuff. “Used to keep it hidden in a drawer in his bedroom.”

  “Not hidden terribly well, it would seem.”

  He smiled. “I used to snatch it once or twice a week, pawn it, and use the money to play cards.”

  She nodded. “As you said, Mr. Rothstein, you are a great believer in family.”

  The smile became a grin. “I redeemed it, every time, and put it back in the drawer before he got home. He never knew. And I made a nice little profit of the deal. Every time.”

  “Very enterprising of you.”

  The smile faded. He glanced at his watch. “Okay,” he said, “you’ve got the cards?”

  Miss Lizzie opened her purse and took out two decks of Bicycle brand playing cards. “A red one,” she said, “and a blue one. Have you a preference?”

  “I don’t care.” He reached into the bag and pulled out a fig.

  “Shall I choose, then?”

  “Fine.” He popped the fig into his mouth.

  “Then I choose . . .” She held the red package in one hand, the blue package in the other, as though weighing them. “I choose blue. Is that acceptable to you?”

  He swallowed. “Fine.”

  She tucked the red package back into her purse, leaned over, and set the purse on the floor. She was about to open the blue package when Mr. Rothstein said, “Hold on.”

  “Yes?” said Miss Lizzie.

  “You want to, we stop this right now. You forget the game. You forget your questions. You leave. You get out of the city, you go home. Both of you. No one’ll stop you.”

  She smiled. “Well,” she said, “that’s very kind of you, Mr. Rothstein, but if we did that, then we should never have our questions answered, should we?”

  He nodded. “Okay.” He shrugged and gently waved his manicured hand. “Okay. Whatever you want.”

  Miss Lizzie tugged at the cellophane strip at the top of the package. It tore off before it finished its circle. “Drat,” she said. She knifed her thumbnail along the wrapper, working it.

  Mr. Rothstein smiled. “Need some help?”

  “I am perfectly capable, thank you.”

  At last she peeled away the clear wrapper. She balled it up in her left hand and looked around for a place to deposit it.

  “Toss it on the floor,” said Mr. Rothstein. “Someone’ll get it in the morning.”

  “That seems rather cavalier.”

  “I own the place. Someone’ll get it. Toss it on the floor.”

  “Well,” she said reluctantly, “if you say so.” She opened her hand and let the wrapper fall to the wooden floor.

  She pushed back the lid of the package and pried out the deck. One of the cards, a seven of clubs, skittered loose and tumbled to the green felt of the table. She set down the empty package, picked up the seven, slotted it back into the deck, and began a clumsy overhand shuffle.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said to Mr. Rothstein, “I feel that I should deal first. I am, after all, the visitor.”

  He shrugged.

  Looking down, watching her hands, she split the deck and did a slow riffle shuffle. Toward the end of it, the topmost cards snagged together and stood upright, creating a small, stiff, triangular tent.

  “Oh dear,” she said. Carefully she straightened them out, aligned the deck, split it again, then did another riffle shuffle, more successfully this time.

  She looked up at Mr. Rothstein and smiled proudly. “Rather like riding a bicycle, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “How about an ante?”

  She frowned. “But we’re not playing for money.”

  “Just to make it interesting.”

  “I brought no money with me.”

  “The watch. You put in the watch; I put in my cufflinks.” He scooped them up and rolled them like a pair of dice into the center of the table.

  “This watch,” said Miss Lizzie, “was my mother’s.”

  “You take it off her body?”

  Miss Lizzie stared at him.

  He waved his hand. “Never mind. Bad joke. The cufflinks are genuine gold coins. From ancient Rome. Ante or not?”

  Holding the cards in her left hand, she took the watch in her right, moved it to the center of the table, and placed it beside the cufflinks. She sat back and shuffled the cards again, overhand.

  “I think they’re plenty shuffled,” said Mr. Rothstein.

  She set them on the table, using both hands to arrange them neatly, and then sat back. “Cut them, please,” she said.

  He reached out, tapped the deck, and smiled. “I trust you,” he said.

  “How nice for me,” she said and picked up the deck. Slowly, carefully, she dealt five cards to each of them, leaning over and placing his directly before him, one atop the other: snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. Mr. Rothstein waited. When she finished and put down the deck, he picked up his cards and fanned them, tightly, only enough for him to see a sliver of each upper right-hand corner.

  Miss Lizzie picked up hers, fanned them much more broadly, and said, “Oh, Amanda, look!” She showed me her hand: three queens, the ace of diamonds, and the four of clubs.

  “Hey,” said Mr. Rothstein. “You can’t do that.”

  She looked across the table, puzzled. “Amanda has as much interest in the outcome as I do.”

  “You just can’t do that, lady.”

  “You cannot seriously object to her seeing my cards. What harm does it do?”

  He looked between us, back and forth, and finally sighed. “Forget it.” He picked up his hand,
plucked out a pair of cards, and placed them face down on the table. “I’ll take two,” he said.

  She laid down her hand then slowly and meticulously dealt him two cards. She returned the deck to the table, lifted her hand, and studied it thoroughly. “Hmm,” she said.

  Mr. Rothstein hooked his fingers into the paper bag, pulled out another fig, poked it into his mouth, and chewed.

  “Hmm,” said Miss Lizzie. “Yes. I shall take . . . no . . . yes. I shall take one.” She removed the four of clubs, laid it face down, carefully placed her cards on the table, picked up the deck, and dealt a single card neatly on top of her four. She picked up the hand, looked at it, showed it to me, and then asked him, “What do you have, Mr. Rothstein?”

  “Two pair,” he said and spread them along the table. He smiled. “Kings and jacks.”

  “A full house,” said Miss Lizzie and spread out her own hand. She had picked up another ace, the club.

  Mr. Rothstein looked down at her cards. He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “One hand, one question.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Was John Burton helping you bring drugs into this country?”

  “Only one question, and that’s the one you want to ask?”

  “It is, yes, the one I wish to ask.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “He was.” He gathered up the cards. “My deal.” Smoothly, he shuffled overhand, split the deck and riffled it once, twice, again, then put it in the center of the table. “Cut,” he said.

  Demurely, precisely, taking her time and using both hands, she cut the cards.

  “Ante?” he said.

  “Ante what?” she asked him.

  He unbuckled the strap of his watch and laid the watch in the center of the table.

  Miss Lizzie pushed his two cufflinks forward.

  “That’s a Cartier,” he said. “You know how much it cost?”

  “Those are genuine gold coins,” she said. “From ancient Rome.”

  He stared at her.

  “But,” she said, “if you choose not to ante . . .” She reached for the cufflinks.

  “Leave ’em there,” he said, and then, his fingers a blur, he swiftly dealt out the cards, each of Miss Lizzie’s clumping with the others into a small, trim group directly in front of her. He dropped the deck, picked up his hand, and fanned it.

  Once again, Miss Lizzie showed me her hand: three of clubs, five of diamonds, two of hearts, jack of spades, and ace of spades.

  “How many?” Mr. Rothstein asked her.

  “Two, I think. No. Sorry. Three.” She removed three of her cards, including the ace, and tabled them.

  “One for me,” he said. He exchanged one of his cards, picked up his hand again, glanced down at it, and looked over at Miss Lizzie. “What’ve you got?”

  “Four aces,” she said and spread them out along the green felt.

  Chapter Thirty

  Once again, for a moment, Mr. Rothstein stared down at her cards. Then he flipped his own onto the table and put his arms along the arm of the chair. “What’s the question?”

  “Mr. Rothstein,” she said almost formally, “did you order the murder of John Burton?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I did. Your deal.”

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  He turned to me. “What?”

  “May I use the toilet?”

  He waved dismissively. “Yeah, yeah.” He looked at Miss Lizzie. “Your deal.”

  As Miss Lizzie collected the cards, I got up and walked over to the water closet. I opened the door, jerked the string that turned on the light, closed the door, and leaned against the wall, my arms crossed. I was short of breath.

  I had come in here for two reasons. First, my heart was slapping so loudly against my chest that I was afraid Mr. Rothstein would hear it. He had confessed. He had admitted that he had been responsible for the death of my uncle.

  We knew now. Or, rather, we knew part of it. We did not yet know why.

  My second reason for coming, of course, had been to distract him briefly while Miss Lizzie palmed and disposed of her winning hand. It would not please him to discover that the deck held an extra four aces.

  Miss Lizzie had not asked for my help, and she probably did not need it. But friendship, as she said, carries with it concern.

  I lowered the toilet seat and flushed.

  I washed my hands then dried them with the towel hanging on the rack at the door.

  My mouth was dry. There was a small tumbler on the sink, but it was filthy. I ran the water, cupped my hands beneath it, and drank. I dried my hands again, opened the door, pulled the light’s string, and went back into the room.

  Mr. Rothstein was saying, “. . . family probably came over on the Mayflower, am I right?”

  “Not quite so early as that,” said Miss Lizzie.

  Each of them held five cards. In the center of the table, next to Mr. Rothstein’s watch, was a heavy gold money clip. Along its gleaming front sparkled a horseshoe made of diamonds and gold.

  As I sat down, Miss Lizzie showed me her hand.

  A four-card flush: hearts and a queen of clubs.

  “You know when my family came over here?” Mr. Rothstein said.

  “No,” she said. “When was that?”

  “Less than a hundred years ago. You know what happened to the Jews in Europe?”

  “I’ve read about it, yes. They were very badly mistreated. They still are. Did you want any cards?”

  “One.” He spun a card forward.

  Carefully, snap, she dealt him a new one.

  He left it lying there. “And they ran away. The ones who didn’t get killed in the pogroms. You know about the pogroms?”

  “Yes. They were horrible. I shall take one card as well.” She laid down her hand, picked up the deck, and carefully dealt herself a card.

  “The Jews all ran away,” he said. “None of them had the gumption to fight back.”

  She picked up her cards. “Against insurmountable odds? Gumption, in such a case, would seem rather foolhardy.”

  “It won’t happen again,” he said. “Not here. Things are different now.”

  “I am sure they are. Do you wish to play this hand or not?”

  He snatched up the new card, tucked it into the cards in his hand, looked down at them, and then, with a grin, slapped all five cards onto the table. “Beat that if you can.”

  A high straight: ten, jack, queen, king, and ace.

  Peering at him over her cards, Miss Lizzie smiled. “I can, actually.” She laid out her hand on the table. She had completed her flush.

  Mr. Rothstein sat back and blew some air from between his pursed lips. He said nothing.

  “Mr. Rothstein?”

  He looked up. “What’s the question?”

  “Why did you order Jack Burton killed?”

  “He was shorting me. My deal.”

  He reached out for the cards, but Miss Lizzie held onto hers. “In what way was he shorting you?”

  Still leaning forward, elbows on the table, hands hovering over the cards, he said, “One hand, one answer.”

  “That is not an answer. It requires clarification.”

  He sat back. “Clarification.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the last time I clarify.”

  “I accept that.”

  “I found out he was making deals on the side. Using my money. My product.”

  I said, “How did you find out?”

  He turned to me. “You playing in this game?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then shut up.” He turned to Miss Lizzie. “My deal.”

  She pushed all the cards across the table, then drew in the Cartier watch and the money clip and set them beside the cufflinks.

  Now as Mr. Ro
thstein shuffled, he examined the cards. Not obviously—just a casual glance at their backs as he shuffled overhand, to see if they were marked. He split them, reversed the two portions, melded them, then casually ran his fingers along the edges to see if they were stripped. He split them again, riffle shuffled, laid them down. “Cut.”

  Miss Lizzie cut them. “Shall we ante?” she asked.

  He reached into his left pants pocket and slipped out a large roll of cash. It seemed to consist entirely of five-hundred-dollar bills. He counted out twenty of these—ten thousand dollars—picked them up, and smacked them onto the felt. “Against everything you’ve got,” he told Miss Lizzie. He shoved the roll back into his pocket.

  “Against the watch and the cufflinks,” she said.

  “All of it,” he said, “or nothing.”

  “Ah, well.” She pushed everything into the center. “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Rothstein.”

  I reached toward the bills. He glanced at me. I said, “May I look?”

  Impatiently, he waved a hand: Go ahead.

  I picked one up and examined it. In the center was a portrait of President McKinley. I had never seen the bill before, and I thought it astonishing that such a flimsy piece of paper could represent so much money. A single one of those bills would buy an automobile.

  “Okay, okay,” he said and pointed at the stack. I returned the bill.

  He dealt the ten cards. Miss Lizzie discarded three then took three more. He discarded one then took another.

  His three jacks lost to her straight.

  He threw in his cards and sat back. “Cards are going your way,” he said.

  Miss Lizzie smiled. “Lady Luck. It is early yet, however.”

  “Not that early. What’s the question?”

  “How did you learn that John was cheating you?”

  He looked at me and sighed. He turned back to Miss Lizzie. “Owney Madden,” he said. “He figured it out. Come on. Deal.”

  Miss Lizzie collected the cards and, again, meticulously shuffled them. An overhand. A riffle. Another overhand. Another riffle.

  Owney Madden. He seemed to genuinely like John. I had genuinely liked him. The world was, once again, not the place that I had imagined it to be.

  Mr. Rothstein plucked a fig from his bag and put it in his mouth.