by Mark Joseph
As the only player still living in San Francisco, Charlie took it upon himself to make the annual arrangements. Every year he reserved the Enrico Caruso Suite at the Palace, a deluxe accommodation named for the hotel’s most illustrious guest who was tumbled from his bed by the earthquake of 1906. Accustomed to Charlie’s special requirements, General Manager Jonathon Sweeny pretended not to hear the word “poker,” and every year agreed to install a round card table and overhead light, set up an old-fashioned stereo record player, and hang a set of framed photographs supplied by Charlie.
On this Friday afternoon in June, Charlie was driving through rush-hour traffic on Montgomery Street to check into the suite at five o’clock, meet the caterers, and have everything ready when the others arrived.
It was hot. Once or twice a year cool and foggy San Francisco endured a heat wave that turned the city into instant New Orleans. People wilted on the sidewalks, sagging and sweating with the thermometer stuck at ninety-five. Poor Charlie, the air-conditioning in his new Mercedes had failed and the heat was making him crazy, as if the pending poker game hadn’t made him crazy enough, especially this year. Bobby McCorkle, Jesus Christ, after all this time. When Nelson told him about the new construction at Shanghai Bend Meadows, Bobby had no choice. He had to show up for the game.
The past wouldn’t stay buried forever.
Rush hour. Commuters jammed the financial district, and the city sweltered in the monstrous heat. As Charlie crossed Market onto New Montgomery, traffic halted him behind a dozen limos and taxis queued up in front of the hotel. Sweaty, sticky heat boiled off the pavement and into the car. A sixty-thousand-dollar-autobahn-burner and the air went belly up. Not that Charlie was superstitious, but it was not a good omen. Things were starting to go haywire. Shanghai Bend Meadows. He shuddered, put the thought away, and demanded of the gods, “Why are we having an impossible heat wave the weekend of the game? Why not last week or next week?”
Charlie fidgeted. Ahead, a young girl in a pink dress escorted by her father emerged from a white limo and skipped through the doors of the Palace. Having checked the hotel calendar when he made the reservation, Charlie knew tonight was Formal Night for the Rainbow Girls.
Immobile and suffocating in his Mercedes, Charlie furiously dialed the car phone.
“Sheraton Palace Hotel. Jonathon Sweeny’s office.”
“This is Charlie Hooper. Put Mr. Sweeny on the line, if you please. I’m dyin’ out here.”
The manager’s velvety voice came on in a few seconds. “Charlie, how are you?”
“I’m stuck in traffic on New Montgomery and sweating like a week-old cod. Can you send someone out to get the car?”
“Charlie,” Sweeny said patiently, “you’re a pain in the ass but that’s okay. I’ll send a valet. Your suite is ready. The caterers are here.”
“You didn’t let them in, did you?” Charlie demanded.
“No, Charlie. I’m familiar with your protocols.”
“Good. I always go in first. That’s the ritual.”
A uniformed valet knocked politely on the car window. Charlie waved and wiggled the phone.
“Okay, the guy is here for the car. Did Bobby McCorkle check in yet?”
“Let me see. Just a moment. Hang on. McCorkle, McCorkle, no.”
Without waiting for the doorman, Charlie grabbed a small valise, a heavy canvas bag, and four large framed photographs from the back seat, handed a twenty to the valet, snatched his parking stub, and barreled into the Palace like he owned the joint, stopping just inside the doors to throw back his shoulders, puff out his chest, and breathe it all in.
The white marble lobby was a sea of foamy chiffon and sparkling satin: Rainbow Girls. The demoiselles and their dads were arriving for an early supper in the Garden Court, the hotel’s fancy restaurant. Just what the boys from Noë Valley needed, nubile teenaged girls running around the hotel.
Sweeny was waiting at the registration desk.
“Table set up?” Charlie demanded.
“Yes.”
“Caterer upstairs?”
“Yes, Charlie, they’re waiting in the corridor. Do you have any luggage?”
“These.” Charlie gestured toward the photos and bags.
Sweeny crooked his finger and a bellhop appeared. “Take Mr. Hooper up to the Caruso Suite and make sure he’s satisfied with everything.”
“Don’t drink,” Charlie told himself aloud in the elevator. “And don’t smoke any of Dean’s dope or do any of that shit, because if you do, you’ll lose.”
“Pardon me?” the bellhop asked politely.
Charlie iced him with a glance.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Andrew, sir.”
Charlie stuffed a twenty into the young man’s breast pocket. “Andrew, a Mr. Bobby McCorkle is going to check in sometime this evening. When that happens, you come up and tell me.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“You are the soul of discretion, I suppose. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”
“Oh, yes sir, Mr. Hooper. I know my job.”
The Caruso Suite was on the fourth floor in a corner overlooking Market Street. Carrying the canvas bag himself, Charlie charged down the corridor trailed by Andrew lugging the framed photos and valise. The caterers, Miss Carmen and an assistant, were waiting outside the suite with two carts loaded with comestibles and supplies.
“Hello hello hello,” Charlie sang. “Nobody’s gone in?”
“Not while I’ve been here,” said Miss Carmen.
“Got the records?”
“Yes, Charlie. I have everything.”
Charlie quickly peeked at the carts laden with food and drink and checked out the green felt he would use to dress the card table waiting inside.
“Everything’s fine. I’ll take it from here. You can go. Thank you.”
With a deep breath Charlie keyed the lock and with the bellhop’s help pushed the carts through a small foyer and into the living room.
The poker table in the middle of the room was already covered with felt. Alex Goldman’s laminated teak chip carousel occupied the center of the table, and another heavy canvas bag lay on a couch. Charlie could hear the fizz of a shower and awful, off-key singing coming from the rear of the apartment.
“Son of a bitch!” he snarled. “Alex, you scumbag!”
He stomped into one of the bedrooms and the bellhop heard riotous shouting and then rowdier laughter. Having been instructed by Mr. Sweeny and tipped by Charlie, the bellhop hung the photos and left.
Alex stepped out of the shower and heard Charlie storming around the bedroom shouting obscenities at the top of his lungs.
“Hi, Charlie,” Alex yelled. “How the hell are ya?”
Charlie entered the bathroom and grinned at Alex who stood there, naked and dripping.
“What the fuck, man,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “I told you last year if you did it again I’d kill ya. I bribed these fucking people. I told them you’d try some bullshit to get in here first. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. How’d you do it?”
“I ain’t tellin’.”
Alex had a small red and blue jack of diamonds tattooed on his left shoulder. Charlie tore off his sweat-soaked Polo shirt and thrust his left shoulder toward the steamed-up mirror. His arm sported the king of diamonds inked into his skin in the same style.
“You’re a prick, Alex.”
“It’s all part of the game, Charlie. Any little edge. You got anything to eat out there?”
“Whatever you want, pal. Alaskan king crab legs. Suckers walked all the way from Anchorage.”
Alex slipped on a hotel robe and punched Charlie in the shoulder. “Good to see you, man. You doin’ okay?”
“Yeah, sure, the ocean isn’t empty yet, but who cares? We’re gonna play cards. The rest of the world is bye-bye.”
Alex smiled and looked his old friend up and down. “Bobby check in yet?” he asked.
“Not yet.
”
“He’s here,” Alex said. “I can smell him.”
4
This year was going to be special. Nelson hit the bank and the gas station, zoomed onto the I-5, punched the go pedal, and left Los Angeles in a haze of exhaust. Next stop: San … Fran … Cisco.
To Lt. Nelson Lee of the LAPD, the annual reunion with his old friends up north was all about the party and the stunts he planned months in advance. After all, he was Crazy Nelson and the guys expected something outrageous as his contribution. Genuine outrageousness was hard to come by in California where eccentric weirdness was the norm, but he’d do his best. His briefcase was a Pandora’s box of surprises. As for poker ability, he was a wriggling minnow in a school of sharks, and unless he was dealt an exceptionally good run of cards, he didn’t stand a chance of cashing in money ahead. Alex—he didn’t know if Alex cheated or what, but the guy was a mind reader. And Charlie—Charlie would go nuts and yell and scream and throw cards around in frustration at his failure to beat Alex. Then he’d smoke some of Dean’s loco weed and convince himself that losing was hilarious. Dean, the country philosopher, would sit across the table like a teetering sequoia, folding almost every hand while waiting for Alex to drop. When Alex did toss in a hand, timber!—the tree would crash on Charlie’s head and Dean would pull in the chips with an acerbic, devastating comment. Nelson wasn’t in their league and that didn’t bother him one whit.
Five grand, hell. Some years Nelson spent more on the stunts than he dropped in the game. One year he bought into the game with counterfeit hundred-dollar bills, played wildly, lost everything, and then had to pull every string he could when Charlie got busted for passing one of the phony C-notes. Three years ago he’d staged a fake robbery, the one thing the boys from Noë Valley always expected that had never happened. He’d hired Hollywood extras to play bad guys who entered the suite dressed as room service waiters, and then he’d called in a favor to get real SFPD cops to burst in right behind the phony crooks. The boys and the robbers were taken completely by surprise. The gag so rattled that year’s wild card, a poker buzzard from Las Vegas named Cookie, that he broke a window and was about to jump from the fourth floor when a cop grabbed him and pulled him back in. Every year it was something: vice cops, fire alarms, flamenco dancers, belly dancers, strippers—this year would be different. He had something special this year, but with Bobby McCorkle sitting in, he expected fireworks aplenty without the goofball diversions he dreamed up.
Bobby McCorkle. By now Bobby was more myth than human being. The Bobby he remembered was only eighteen, the toughest, smartest, best-looking kid at Lowell High School. If Bobby had been normal he would have been varsity quarterback and student body president, but Bobby was half hoodlum and half Lenny Bruce. Oh my god, what times they had; it was a miracle they survived all the screwing around, shoplifting six-packs, hot-wiring cars, and driving drunk. Bobby would go for ideas the other guys wouldn’t touch, the wimps. On Saturday nights they drag-raced on the Great Highway, got drunk on China Beach, and hustled three card monte on Powell Street. On Sunday afternoons they scalped forged 49er tickets at Kezar Stadium for money to spend in black whorehouses on Third Street and Pai Gow parlors in Chinatown. Once, stoned, they climbed the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge and mooned the tourists. Ah god, it was great. They knew what fun was. They invented fun. Rambunctious and full of themselves, testing themselves, finding out who they were, often reaching farther than was possible, they dragged Alex and Charlie and Dean kicking and screaming into the good times. Nelson liked to remember the good times, and he would have preferred never to think about the Feather River, white water at Shanghai Bend, cold beer, teenage madness, and raging hormones. Naturally, he thought about those things all the time.
Radar detectors beaming fore and aft, the speedometer of his ’62 Corvette steady at seventy-five, Nelson drove north through the Central Valley, passing oceans of lettuce and white-capped seas of cotton, and after six hours arrived in Oakland just in time to get stuck in Friday evening traffic on the Bay Bridge.
It was hot. Nelson sweltered in the car with the top down and his shirt off. Citizens in Hondas gawked at the vintage Corvette and Nelson in wraparound Italian shades and ten of diamonds tattoo. A panorama of cityscape spread beneath the bridge, and Nelson felt a huge pang of emotional homecoming to his city by the bay. Hills and cliffs, water and steel, Embarcadero, Ferry Building and Market Street cutting a pristine swath through the high-rises. The Palace was right there at Market and New Montgomery, a monument to the Barbary Coast and the earthquake of ’06. To the right he could see the swell of Nob Hill and the slope of Chinatown spilling down the flank. He felt like Bruce Lee driving into San Francisco to kick some ass. Nelson was Chinese, a fact he often forgot in L.A. but never here in Old Gold Mountain, the Chinese name for San Francisco.
Maybe he’d come home when he retired in another six years, if he lasted that long. If he made it through the weekend. They were going to play a little cards and then make a decision that would affect them for the rest of their lives.
Evidence. All the original documents were in his briefcase, including the LAPD missing person report from 1963, dental and medical records, county welfare department records, birth and death certificates. At great risk he’d collected them from archives and warehouses throughout Los Angeles County and kept them in a safe deposit box for more than twenty years, just in case. Well, just in case had arrived. The rest of the evidence was locked inside their heads: five men, five heads, five different versions of what happened. To Nelson the issue was cut and dried. As teenagers, they’d taken the easy way out. They’d buried a piece of their lives on an island in the Feather River and then vanished as though they’d never been there. Now, no matter what the cost, they had to do the right thing. If they could agree on what the right thing was. If they could agree on what happened. If they could even know what happened. There were many ifs and buts and uncomfortable questions and much more at stake than five thousand dollars—careers, families, fortunes, reputations, and the quaint notion of honor. The consequences of their decision were going to be expensive no matter what they decided, even if the price was no more than their self-respect.
As a kid Nelson had learned from Bobby McCorkle how far out of bounds he could go, and that was pretty damned far. Then, all at once, he’d learned that ethics are self-imposed, and the only real limit to what a person can get away with is self-restraint. Nelson had established and followed strict rules for himself, and he believed he’d been a decent cop. As commander of a street-crime unit in the beach community of Venice, he’d put away his share of vicious criminals and even turned a few into civilized human beings. He’d attacked his vocation with unrestrained zest, but he’d reached his limit. He’d held his breath for thirty-two years, and now he was ready to exhale. With a long sigh of relief or a panic attack? That remained to be seen.
Turning off the first exit from the bridge, he fought traffic to New Montgomery, stashed the car in a garage across from the hotel, pulled on a shirt, grabbed the briefcase, a small suitcase, and a hefty canvas bag, and walked across the street to the Palace.
“Checking in?” inquired the doorman. “Let me help you with those bags.”
There was a time in San Francisco when Chinese were not allowed anywhere in the Palace except the laundry and kitchen. Now, rich Asian tourists and Rainbow Girls crowded the lobby. No one afforded Nelson a second glance. His name was in the computer, and a desk clerk politely handed over a key to the Caruso Suite.
On the way up in the elevator he whistled theme songs from old TV shows and fingered several dozen firecrackers stashed in his pocket. He decided to save them for later. Instead, he dismissed the bellhop with a nice tip, opened the briefcase and took out his piece, a Smith and Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum Dirty Harry special. He pushed open the door to the suite, kicked the canvas bag inside, and then rushed in combat style, crouching, the gun in his hand flashing left and right.
“Hiyaaaaa
a! Look out! Look out!”
The cool sound of Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” wafted from the stereo as Nelson shouted and grunted unintelligible noises through the living room, bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchenette. Unmoved by this display, expecting it, Charlie sprawled on a couch and Alex stood by the caterer’s carts stuffing his face with fat crab legs and sourdough.
“Nelson is here,” Charlie said lazily. “At least I think it’s Nelson. It may be Dirty Harry.”
“Nah,” Alex said. “It’s that other guy, from Streets.”
“Michael Douglas?”
“Yeah, him.”
Nelson duckwalked into the living room, stood up from his crouch, laid the gun on the poker table, unwrapped a cheroot, and asked, “Anybody got a light?”
“It’s Clint after all,” Charlie said, tossing a box of wooden matches across the room.
“Thanks,” Nelson said and lit the cigar. “Hi, Charlie.”
“Hi, Nelson.”
“Any ghosts in the closets?” Alex inquired.
Nelson grinned. “When did you get here?”
“An hour ago.”
“Well?” Nelson asked.
“Well yourself,” Alex countered. “Well, what?”
“Don’t you want to know how I got Bobby to play?”
