by Mark Joseph
“I know you can’t help yourself, Studley,” Charlie snarled, “but you don’t have to be a jerk all the time.”
Dean grinned and let it pass. Bobby saw it was just like the old days, back and forth, teasing and testing. Nothing had changed.
“I don’t know if it’s nerves or the cards are slick or what,” Charlie said, gathering up the deck and shuffling again. He stopped manipulating the cards to fan himself with the deck, saying, “Christ, it’s hot in here. The damned air-conditioning must have broken down. I think next year we should play at the Saint Francis, you know what I mean?”
He stood, ripped off his jacket and shirt and, naked to the waist, passed the deck to Bobby. “Jacks or better,” he announced. “Cut the cards, if you please.”
“You’re right. It is hot,” Nelson agreed and yanked off his shirt.
“I feel like I’m in sweaty old Manhattan,” Alex said and removed his glasses and hat and pulled his shirt over his head.
Dean wasn’t wearing a shirt, only a sleeveless undershirt that exposed the queen of diamonds inked into his skin. “Four cards to the flush,” he said and they all looked at Bobby.
What the hell, Bobby thought, cutting the cards for Charlie. I don’t know what they’re really up to, but at least there’s a chance for a decent game before the shit really hits the fan.
“You guys are fuckin’ nuts, y’know,” he said. “If you’re nuts, then so am I.”
He pulled off his jacket and shirt and the splendid ace of diamonds glistened on his shoulder. Without spoiling the occasion with words, they all remembered that this was how they’d played in Alex’s garage during those few brilliant weeks when their tattoos were new, when they were indeed a royal flush of glorious young men.
Alex started to laugh and his mirth was contagious. First Dean, then right around the table they all started to laugh and sputter like teenagers. Sniggling, trying to avoid a misdeal, Charlie slowly passed out cards for a hand of five draw and counted them off with a bouncing lilt, “Ah one, ah two, ah three, ah four, ah five, ah one, ah two …”
“Jesus, space cadets,” Nelson said. “You all right, Deano? You calmed down?”
“How the hell do I know? All I can see is I’m sitting around a hotel room with a bunch of half-naked lunatics. You’re up, copper. Can you open?”
Nelson picked up his cards and said, “I open for fifty.”
Still giggling, Alex tossed a blue chip into the pot and said, “I see your fifty and raise fifty.”
Dean scooped up a handful of blues and poured them indiscriminately into the pot. “I see the first fifty, the second fifty, and raise five hundred, more or less.”
“You can’t raise ‘more or less’ in poker,” Nelson objected.
Dean laughed again. “Oh, yeah? You wanna throw another firecracker at me?”
“Haha. Not while you’re lookin’.”
“I call,” Bobby said.
“How much is it to me?” Charlie asked.
“Six hundred.”
“Okay, I’m in, I’m in. Who wants how many cards?”
They played the hand the way they’d played as kids, reckless and crazy, laughing, as though the game were actually fun. After all, it was only poker, not life and death.
Nelson won the hand with a pair of queens, and they sat there, bare to the waist, feeling silly and a little better.
“What we need is some of that good old rock and roll,” Dean hollered. “Da da da da da, back in the U.S. of A. Yeah!”
In an instant the great Chuck Berry was rolling out of the stereo like a steamy night in Memphis. Dean danced around the room, throwing his arms into the air, shouting and singing, “Oh man, oh man! Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!”
“Gimme some of that weed,” Charlie demanded of Dean.
“Oh, ho ho ho. You ready for that?”
“Hell, yes.”
“You’re a wild and crazy guy, Charlie.”
Chuck Berry broke into “Johnny B. Goode” causing heads to bop and fingers to drum. Dean sat down, rolled a joint, and passed it to Charlie who fired it.
“Rocket Fuel,” Charlie breathed.
“The one and only.”
“What’s that? What’s Rocket Fuel?” Bobby asked.
“You’re gonna learn all the secrets tonight, dude,” Dean said. “I’m a grower and this is the product.”
“He’s big time,” Charlie said. “Or he was.”
“This is the last crop,” Dean said. “Recent events require prudence in the production of controlled agricultural substances. Too bad, but that’s the way it goes. That’s just the beginning of what this little episode is going to cost.”
“You know about this?” Bobby asked Nelson. “Jeez. You guys are so tight, I guess you must.”
“I couldn’t care less,” Nelson answered. “I didn’t become a police officer to throw my friends in jail. Besides, it’s just weed. It’s not heroin.”
This last word caused Bobby to blink rapidly.
“We know about that, too,” Alex said.
“What do you mean?” Bobby asked.
“I think you know.”
Alex pulled out his wallet and flashed a Department of Defense ID. “Recognize this? I’m sure you do. It’s coded class one priority so I can do my own security checks for people who might have access to my classified work. I can obtain a complete dossier on just about anyone, and it’s especially easy if the individual in question is or was military.”
Alex waited until the meaning of his declaration sank in.
“You’ve seen my jacket,” Bobby said.
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“I think so. I could recite names and dates, but what’s the point?”
Bobby’s face grew solemn and he said, “I don’t know whether to be pissed off or overawed.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t blame you for being angry, but we had to protect ourselves.”
“Against what?”
“Against your giving us away, of course. Look, I have access to your government records, and Nelson has sheets from the Reno police and the Nevada highway patrol, from Louisiana, Arizona, North Carolina, West Germany, I could go on. We know about your addiction, about detox and the car wrecks and all of it. You’re sitting here with your shirt off, and I can’t see any fresh needle tracks. That’s a good sign. Shit, man, we’ve followed your life all these years, and you scared us to death more times than I can count.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. You guys are bouncing me around like a basketball. You work for DoD? I thought you were a professor.”
Alex nodded. “I am, and neither Columbia University nor DoD would be happy to learn I used my clearance and access for personal reasons. They’d be even unhappier if they knew about my involvement with a young girl whose bones were dug out of a riverbed. I’d be disgraced and tossed out on my ear in a New York minute.”
“You do classified work?”
“Yes.”
“On what?”
“Space-based laser communications for nuclear weapons platforms.”
“Wow.”
“No, shit, wow.”
“That’s the price you’ll pay for the queen of hearts?”
Alex smiled his most gracious smile, took off his glasses and let Bobby catch a glimpse of Dr. Goldman. He sat up straight, pulled his shoulders back and chin up, and the fact that he was naked to the waist with his white, round, bourgeois tummy exposed only increased the effect.
“Dr. Goldman summers in the Hamptons,” he said, deadpan. “Dr. Goldman reads the Times and Journal and the New York Review of Books. Dr. Goldman goes to conferences in Berlin and speaks German. Dr. Goldman knows how to comport himself in a safe room in the Pentagon. Dr. Goldman leads a sophisticated life on the Upper West Side and knows the first names of a dozen headwaiters as well as the names of their children and grandchildren. Dr. Goldman is successful, well-connected, intellectual, and rich.”
Alex sniffed, relaxed his hau
ghty manner and became Alex again. “Yes, Bobby, I’d lose my lab and my security clearance. I’m sure my wife Joanna would divorce me, and I’d probably never see my children again, or at least not for a long time.”
What Alex didn’t say was that the wizard of Alvarado Street didn’t like Dr. Goldman very much. He’d rather play cards and think about nothing beyond the next hand.
“How many kids do you have?” Bobby asked.
“Four. Two with my first wife Naomi and two with Joanna. All girls.”
“That’s a heavy price to pay.”
“No foolin’.”
“You never told either of your wives anything? Didn’t they ask about the tattoo?”
“Sure they asked. Women always ask. Joanna has tried for years to get me to have it removed. I lie. We all lie, make up a story, spin some bullshit, and that’s that.”
“So you know all about me. That’s scary.”
“No, not everything, only what’s in the paper trail, and we never had any intention of using the information except to keep ourselves informed. We needed to know whether you were alive or dead, where you were, and who you lived with. We’re your friends, Bobby, and we’re not sitting judgment on you any more than on ourselves. We know the Army sent you to shrinks, and we worried about them. We worried about your being a junkie, because sometimes a junkie will say or do anything to score dope. We know you have two kids. Nelson has one although he’s never been married, and Dean may have a dozen, but if he does, he doesn’t know about them. He does have the finest wife on the planet, so I hear, but I’ve never met her.”
“You will on Sunday,” Dean said. “Billie’s coming down to pick me up.”
“Sunday’s a long ways away. Whose deal? Nelson? What’s the game?”
“Seven stud. Ante up.”
Each in turn threw a white chip in the pot. Dealing, Nelson called out the cards, “A seven to Alex, a five to Dean, an eight to Bobby, a nine to Charlie, and another eight to the dealer.”
“We know about you,” Charlie said, “and it’s only fair that you should know anything you want about us.”
Bobby added it all up and the sum of his thoughts was that his old friends were scary and dangerous, methodically deceitful, and perhaps as crazy as he was. He peeked at his hole cards and said, “All I need to know about you, Charlie, is whether or not you learned to play this game. You’re high, nine of clubs. Bet ‘em or forget ’em.”
18
Early on a foggy, wind-swept morning in June, 1963, the twenty-seven-foot cabin cruiser Toot Sweet and her crew of five left San Francisco bound for points east. The bay was choppy and all the boys except Dean, the skipper, suffered seasickness until the wind died and the fog burned off. Around ten o’clock as the boat entered the Carquinez Strait, the thermometer started to climb and the party began in earnest with a card game and a few beers—a sure cure for a queasy stomach. The Toot Sweet carried two twenty-gallon gas tanks and twelve cases of beer, and one of each was empty by the time the boat arrived in Sacramento around two in the afternoon.
An accomplished boat handler, Dean motored slowly into a marina to take on fuel. A little drunk, a flimsy tri-cornered hat perched on his crewcut, he shouted from the flying bridge, “Ahoy, me bawdies, bringin’ her about. Look smart now.”
Ready with a line, a red bandana tied around his head, Nelson manned the stern; Charlie, who in those days sported a wispy goatee, stood on the foredeck prepared to secure the boat to the dock. After navigating ninety miles from San Francisco, they felt like hardy mariners, ready for adventure. They were, to use an old phrase, higher than kites.
“Aye aye, cap’n,” Nelson hollered as loud as he could.
Charlie sang out, “Easy now. Steady as she goes.”
“Ha!” Dean laughed and demanded, “Do you have any idea what that means?”
“Not a clue! Hahaha!”
Bobby and Alex remained below playing five stud in the compact cabin. Hearing Dean bellowing like Captain Bligh, Bobby peered out a port hole and saw pilings sliding by and muddy water slick with kaleidoscopic oil film that dazzled in the bright sunlight. A few small boats were tied to floating docks. Weeds and Cyclone fence and dilapidated metal sheds in varying shades of rust lined the near riverbank.
The boat shuddered as Dean reversed the prop.
“Hmm,” Alex pondered. “Maybe we should go up and see what’s going on. What’s the bet?”
“Half a buck on the four,” Bobby said lazily. “You think Dean is sober enough to drive this boat?”
“So far, so good. Let’s finish the hand, and I’ll go up and smell his breath.”
“Like hell! How’re you gonna smell his breath when yours already smells like a brewery?”
“Hear, hear,” Alex toasted, raising his can of Schlitz. “To the hops.”
“To the grain,” Bobby replied in kind.
“It’s the water!” they both cried out and shared a laugh. They were enjoying heads-up poker while the others ran around the boat like little kids playing pirate. The engine stopped and suddenly the boat was quiet. They could hear little river wavelets slapping against the hull and the pilings of the floating dock. They finished the hand and Alex won for the eighth time in a row.
“Damn, you’re a lucky son of a gun,” Bobby swore.
Alex winked and said, “It’s luck if you think so. I’m going up on deck.”
On the bridge Dean tossed the hat aside and clamored to the dock to roust the attendant. He was walking back toward the boat with the gas man in tow when he saw her sitting on a bench near the gas pumps, blond and pretty, forlorn, chin on palms, elbows on knees, tiny suitcase by her side and transistor radio in her lap. She was wearing blue jeans and a pink blouse, and Dean asked the gas jockey who she was. He didn’t know. Never saw her before. Fill ’er up?
She was watching him and watching the boat. A young girl on a dock had only a handful of possible reasons for being there, and Dean guessed she was waiting to join someone on a cruise.
“Hey,” Dean said, face ruddy and sweating, trying to sound cool.
“Hey, yourself.”
“You waiting for someone?”
“Maybe. What’s it to you?”
She smiled and he read her as streetwise with her wits on a hair trigger.
“You from around here?” he asked.
“Uh-uh. No.”
“Too bad,” he said
“Why? Why is that too bad?”
“We could use a little help, you know, a pilot, a navigator.”
“I don’t know what that is. I don’t know anything about boats.”
Dean took a long look over the docks and water and the craft afloat around the marina, pointedly drawing her attention to the aquatic nature of their surroundings, and then said, “I suppose it’s not as hot by the river as it was wherever you came from. What’s your name?”
A string of different names she liked to use flashed though her mind, but because he was near her own age she told him her real name. “Sally,” she answered. “Is this your boat?”
Dean turned to look over his shoulder at the white cabin cruiser to make sure she was talking about the Toot Sweet.
“I’m the captain,” he declared with pride. “My name is Dean.”
“What’s that mean, ‘Toot Sweet San Francisco’?”
“That’s the name of the boat. It’s sort of … French. It means ‘Hurry Up’ only it’s spelled funny.”
“So what it says is Hurry Up San Francisco? That’s cute. Are you from there?”
“From San Francisco? We’re from the city, yeah.”
She walked toward him, swaying sexily and asking, “Are you going there?”
“We’re headed the other way. We won’t be going back for two or three days.”
“How many—?” She looked past him and started counting the young men assembling in the stern. She counted three young high school or college guys with crewcuts, one of whom was Chinese or Japanese, and a fourth little guy
with a scrawny beard. Savage adolescent horniness dripped out of them like sap.
“Five,” Dean said.
“Ooo. All guys? From San Francisco?” If there were five, one was still invisible.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“What are you guys? You look like, I dunno, pirates, only I bet you’re not.”
“We’re gamblers,” Dean said. “Riverboat gamblers.”
She laughed. “My foot. You guys aren’t gamblers. I bet you’ve never even been to Las Vegas.”
“So what? We don’t need Las Vegas. We have everything we need which is exactly one deck of cards.”
She smiled up at the boys who were staring down at her from the after deck. “Do you really have everything you need?”
Watching the girl tease the boys, the gas man hollered, “Hey, kid, you got any money?”
Dean walked down the dock to pay for the gas, leaving Sally looking up at Nelson, Charlie, and Alex. She shifted her pose, placed her hands on her hips, and said, “Hi.”
“Hello,” Alex answered, trying to sound like an adult. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sally.”
“What are you doing down here on the docks, Sally?”
“This is where I got dropped off,” she said. “I was hitchhiking.”
Alex furrowed his brow and asked, “Hitchhiking from where to where?”
“L.A. to San Francisco.”
“Why? Don’t you have any money? You can fly from L.A. for twenty dollars.”
She considered several answers and considered her interrogator who looked Jewish and smart like a lot of kids from Hollywood. She happened to like wise guys, and so she said, “If I wanted to spend twenty bucks then I wouldn’t be here on this dock talking to you, would I? Besides, hitchhiking is fun.”
“And dangerous.”
“I guess that depends on what you’re afraid of, doesn’t it?”
“You’re running away,” Alex stated flatly. “Tell me the truth.”
“Yes.”
“You’re fifteen but you tell people you’re eighteen.”
“Sixteen.”
“Why do you want to go to San Francisco?”
“Why not?”
“Tell the truth.”
