The Wild Card

by Mark Joseph

  Her lungs drew no breath; her heart was still; she didn’t sweat or see or talk to the stars, and when Bobby saw her blue and bleeding, his head began to implode like a dying star. In an instant he was taken from the most wonderful night of his life, the zenith of his existence, to the worst moment he could imagine. In a flash his future evaporated like river mist in the morning sun. The fuse was lit, the detonation only seconds away—

  He got off the bed, splashed cold water on his face, opened the well-stocked minibar and stopped his hand an inch from a bottle of tequila. Poker, he reminded himself. You can’t play when you’re loaded, and there’s a ton of money to be won. He drank a can of tomato juice instead.

  There was no salvation for Bobby McCorkle, poker player from Reno, but justice had to exist for Sally, the runaway who talked to the stars. Star light, star bright, grant this wish I wish tonight. Would dragging Alex, Dean, Nelson, and Charlie into court provide justice? Legal proceedings would destroy their tidy lives and embarrass their families, but they’d have expensive lawyers who knew how to blur the line between guilt and innocence. The scumbags would plea bargain, negotiate, post bail, file motions, hire experts to delay and obfuscate until in the end their clients would walk away poorer and humiliated but free. No justice there. What else was there? He could kill them, but ritual execution would be nothing more than vengeance. Revenge was for fools, bad movies, and the Count of Monte Cristo, and killing them would say more about him than about them. He was no angel of vengeance. Hell, he was no angel of any kind.

  He locked Sally away in the corner of his mind where she lived like an eternal flame, smelling good, shining bright, smiling like an oracle. His mind steady, he ordered a club sandwich from room service, took a shower, and ate the sandwich. Then he toted the bag stuffed with C-notes down to the front desk and checked it into a lock-box.

  The lobby was busy and through the glass doors he saw swirls of fog blowing down New Montgomery Street. Frisco. The wicked city beckoned, her devil-may-care attitude on full display in the sexy clothes of the women, the smiles of the men, the profound understanding of a people who lived directly atop an earthquake fault and didn’t give a damn about anything except the party that wouldn’t stop until bang! The Big One. Six miles straight down the great fissure shifted a fraction of a millimeter, and Bobby felt it in his soul. The earth moved! God damn! Bobby breathed it in and liked it and let it enhance his mood. Out of sight around the corner a lone guitar player sang the blues.

  Oh lawd oh lawd, baboom baboom. Oh lawd oh lawd, baboom baboom. My baby done lef’ me an’ I’m so all alone. Baboom baboom. I’m just a lonely old houn’ dog lookin’ to bury his bone. Baboom baboom.

  He looked into the bar. Standing near the entrance, smelling the liquor, he imagined that after two or three double tequilas he’d be saying, what dream? I don’t got to show you no stinking dream. A couple more and he’d be in Dolores Park flushing out some China White, the perfect nightmare cure in a little plastic bag.

  He had a game lined up in Biloxi later in the week. Maybe afterwards he’d go into New Orleans and blow it out his ear on Bourbon Street. Tonight, he felt obliged to seek justice for Sally. He’d take their money at low hole card wild or any other damned game, and not just their money. He wanted everything they had.

  He headed for the elevators. It was a good night to stay inside and play cards. You deal the hand and play the cards, and when it’s over only one question is answered, not a cosmic or moral question or a question about the meaning of life, just who wins and who loses.

  37

  No one dared chase after Bobby this time. A muffled Saturday night drifted up from the streets below, but the city no longer existed for the men in the Enrico Caruso Suite. The game had been suspended, the stereo silenced, and the suite was dark; even the light over the card table had been extinguished.

  Shocked by the depth of Bobby’s contempt, they’d spread out, each wrestling with his own moral quandary. Alex and Charlie lay on opposite couches in the living room, Dean on the plush carpet, and Nelson on a bed in one of the bedrooms. They’d regressed into adolescence, loudly bellowing comments and flurries of conversation back and forth in the dark with long pauses in between, the way they had as kids late at night announcing newly discovered common truths as though they were earth-shattering revelations.

  “After all these years, he still hates us,” Nelson said.

  Pause.

  “So was it a mistake to bring him here and give him the money?”

  “No. It’s okay. It’ll be a great game, but I can’t say I blame him,” Alex answered.

  Pause.

  “Who do we blame?” Nelson asked.

  “Everyone but Charlie. He was the only one who wasn’t crazy with horniness.”

  “Is that right, Charlie?”

  “I was horny, all right, but not for Sally.”

  “Bobby?”

  “Sure.”

  Pause.

  “You still feel the same way?”

  “No.”

  Pause.

  “Are we going to tell him the story?”

  “Only if we have to. Maybe we won’t, but we probably will.”

  Pause.

  “Are you going to beat him, Alex?”

  “I haven’t lost yet.”

  “You haven’t played Bobby, either.”

  “I know how he plays, but if I lose, we agreed a long time ago that it would be worth it.”

  Pause.

  “Hey, Nelson, did you really paint that ’62 the original yellow?”

  “I did.”

  “Cool.”

  Pause.

  “Do you believe Sally cheated?” Dean wondered.

  “Yes.”

  Pause.

  “I wonder how she learned.”

  “Who knows? It doesn’t matter.”

  “Then what the hell does matter, Alex?”

  “The truth matters,” Nelson interjected.

  “Oh, bullshit,” Alex said. “The truth isn’t cast in stone. It’s only what people say it is.”

  “Thank you, Socrates, for your wise discourse.”

  “Fuck you, Nelson.”

  Pause.

  “If you were Socrates, you’d drink the hemlock and flip everyone the bird,” Nelson surmised.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “If the truth doesn’t matter, what does?” Charlie asked.

  Alex got off the couch, switched on the light over the table, and contemplated the cards and chips.

  “Poker matters,” he said, peeling a card off the blue deck, the six of diamonds, and speaking to it like an old friend. “Poker is important because it’s immediate and uncertain. Poker is an absolute in a world that has rejected absolutes. You win or you lose, and as we know, the best hand doesn’t always win but the best player does. It’s a perfect escape from reality if reality is too painful, yet poker can be the most painful reality of all. You can lose. You have to risk losing, and you put more than chips into the pot. You wager your soul. You have to make choices on every card, just like in life, and you might be wrong. We made a choice when we were kids, right or wrong, but we made it and lived with it, knowing it would come back to haunt us. And here we are, plagued by a ghost of our own creation. Even Bobby is a ghost, a phantom we’ve conjured up from the past. It’s like resurrecting James Dean or Elvis. And what is our phantom? A mirror in which we see our own reflections. Because of Bobby, we have to make our choice all over again. If we were real men with real character, we wouldn’t need Bobby to force us to do the right thing. But we’re not, we’re thoroughly modern cowards, hypocrites, and liars, and so we need him.” His voice trailed off as he picked up the deck and shuffled.

  “You’re really fuckin’ crazy, Alex. You know that?”

  “Crazy? Your language is astonishingly imprecise, Lieutenant. As a policeman you should know that being crazy is no longer a crime. It may be the only way to rem
ain sane in a corrupt and oppressive world, especially one of your own making.”

  The longest and last pause.

  “He loved her, and that’s a powerful force,” Alex said, feeling lame and deficient. “He needs to hear the story.”

  “He might kill us,” Dean said.

  “So what? We’ve talked about this a million times, man, and we know that. We have to take our chances.”

  “So what? He says, ‘So what?’ Bobby is a trained killer.”

  “He was, and that was a long time ago during the war. So were you, Dean, Captain Semper Fi United States Marine Corps. Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the Valley of Death I shall fear no evil ’cause I’m the baddest motherfucker in the Valley. I repeat: so what?”

  “You don’t forget how.”

  “You don’t forget why, either.”

  “He has plenty of reasons.”

  “That doesn’t make him a murderer. He’s not a murderer.”

  “Define murder.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Dean. Since when are you a lawyer? Every year you get melodramatic and threaten to kill yourself. I’d thought you’d be happy to have Bobby oblige you and put you out of your misery.”

  Dean raised himself off the floor, walked over to the table and sat down.

  “That’s just talk and you know it, Wiz.”

  “But this is real, is that it? Bobby makes it real. Bobby makes you afraid that you might have to pay for your sins.”

  “You’re not afraid?”

  “Of course I am, but why dwell on it?” Alex said with a big smile. “I’m a Zen Buddhist. I’ll accept my fate.”

  “Yeah, some Buddhist. If you’re a Buddhist, I’m Santa Claus.”

  Nelson came out of the bedroom and took his place at the table. “You guys can talk more bullshit than a room full of convicts, I swear to God,” he said, shaking his head.

  “We can still have a hell of a card game,” Alex said peevishly. “We’ve been saving our dough and planning this game for a long time, just for this, to play for millions. What the hell, this is San Francisco, our precious little hometown. Eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow—” He drew a finger across his throat.

  “Afraid of the Big One, Wiz? That why you stayed in New York?”

  “Qué sera sera, amigo.”

  The discussion was interrupted by a knock at the door. Dean’s head instantly jerked toward the foyer.

  Charlie roused himself from the couch, flipped on the lights, looked out the peephole and waved at everyone to relax before unlatching the door to let Bobby in.

  “Feeling better?” Charlie asked, the solicitous good host.

  “Definitely, much better, yeah, thanks,” Bobby answered with a convivial grin. “I took a nap and splashed on some fresh cologne like Minnesota Fats, so watch your money, Charlie.”

  He tapped Charlie gently on the chest, crossed the room, and sat down at the card table. The game was poised in freeze-frame, waiting, the piles of chips untouched.

  Grinning, all traces of anger removed like makeup and replaced with a mask of serenity, Bobby poured a glass of soda and squeezed the juice from a wedge of lime into his drink. Taking a sip, his eyes flashed X rays around the table, taking snapshots of four nervous, frightened souls. Only Alex stared back, resolutely recording every twitch, and Bobby weathered Alex’s scrutiny by squinting and looking up at the lights.

  “Jeez, it’s bright in here. You guys must have quit playing.”

  “We all took a break,” Nelson said.

  “I can turn down the lights, no problem,” Charlie said, reaching for the dimmer.

  As the lights came down, reducing the suite to the familiar cone of illumination over the table, Bobby set a blue chip on the back of his left hand and delicately rolled the chip from finger to finger without touching it with his other hand.

  Charlie said, “Wow.”

  Alex chuckled.

  Bobby winked.

  “Zounds!” Dean exclaimed.

  “You like that?” Bobby asked, his voice laced with the gentlest of acids. “Is that what you want? Tricks?” He laughed and held open his coat. “No more tricks, no more fooling around. I know only one way to have a fair trial and pass judgment. If you gentlemen are ready, let’s play poker.”

  38

  “Let’s have fresh cards.”

  “Good idea.”

  Charlie broke out two sealed packs of playing cards and gave one to Alex and one to Dean.

  “It’s still Alex’s deal.”

  “Low hole card wild?” Alex asked.

  “Nah.”

  “Fegiddaboudit.”

  “Okay,” Alex said, thumbing the slick new deck. “Five stud. Cut the cards, Nelson, cut the cards. That’s good, okay, a five to Dean, a jack to Bobby, another jack to Charlie, a seven to Nelson, and a six to me. First jack bets. Bobby?”

  “Five thousand on the jack.”

  “Five thousand is the bet. Five thousand, five thousand. Charlie?”

  “I’m in.”

  Bobby lit a cigarette and checked the table. They’re just players, he mused, rich amateurs with too much money they’re just dying to lose. Except Alex. Dear old Alex had blood in his eye and poker lust in his heart. Tiny creases at the corners of his mouth revealed an undercurrent of anxiety. The Wiz wanted to win so bad he could taste it. Well, Bobby thought, let him have a little taste. Let him have ideas.

  Bobby relaxed, smoked, and settled in. He had all night, all day, all week if he wanted. They weren’t merely opponents now; they were targets.

  “I’m out,” Nelson declared.

  “See the five.”

  “I’ll see the five and raise five.”

  “Well, all right, there’s a player in this game. Let’s get it on.”

  They played straight poker through the evening and into the night, five stud, seven stud, five draw jacks or better, a little lowball, and a few hands of high-low split-the-pot to spice things up. A stack of vinyl crooners—Ben E. King, Jackie Wilson, Judy Henske, Bobby Darin—serenaded the table from the stereo, a smooth counterpoint to the tension rippling like an electric charge across the green felt. Charlie ordered a buffet spread from room service, and they made sandwiches without stopping play. The game was on, the dream game, the big money game.

  “See your twenty and raise fifty,” Alex said.

  “You raise me fifty grand on that piece of shit?” Dean boomed. “Whoa, mamma, button yo’ buttons. You got two measly, dinky nothing pairs showing against my four cards to a queen high straight. Tell you what. You’re gonna do the humpty dumpty and fall down go smash all the king’s horses and all the king’s men ate one hell of a Joe’s Special. Eggs, hamburger, spinach, and onion, for your information. I’ll see your fifty and raise you one hundred thousand smackers. Yeah.”

  “A hundred grand? Okay, your hundred and up another hundred.”

  Two hundred seventy thousand dollars on the seventh card in an ordinary hand. This was big time poker, crazy and wonderful, their teenage fantasy of what a poker game should be, playing for stakes beyond imagination. Even Bobby had never seen anything quite like it.

  “We coulda done this a long time ago if you’da showed up, Kimosabe,” Nelson said.

  “Wouldn’t have been as much dough to play with, right? I mean, you guys put more in every year.”

  “That’s true. Twenty-five grand each into the poker pot for twenty years.”

  “Glad I waited. Ante up, boys. Let’s play a hand of seven stud.”

  “Hey, the wheel of fortune is spinning my way.”

  “You wish.”

  Adrenaline city, shrieks and groans, flying cards, chips clinking into the pot, rattling ice, and Judy Henske belting “Baltimore Oriole.”

  “She was the only woman I ever loved,” Charlie exclaimed with a cackle. “Judy baby! Queen of the beatniks.”

  “I remember,” Bobby said. “At The Hungry i with the brick wall and the chicks all in black.”

  �
��That was the joint,” Charlie reminisced. “I was there the night Lenny Bruce got busted.”

  “The first time or the second time?” Nelson asked.

  “How the hell do I know? There was me and about a hundred cops and Lenny Bruce. He was the first man I ever loved.”

  “You’re a sick motherfucker, you know?”

  “Hahaha, at least I know what I like. The real edgy types … like Bobby. Hahaha.”

  “Screw the nostalgia,” Alex growled. “Play cards.”

  Once the giddiness passed, the ebb and flow ran true to form with Charlie and Nelson losing steadily, Dean swinging wildly from ahead to behind and vice versa, and Bobby and Alex winning. They didn’t talk about Shanghai Bend; they played cards with a desperate intensity, wolfishly devouring the rituals, the contests of wit and will, the jousting and fencing and laughs. Between hands Bobby was amused by anecdotes from previous years in the Caruso Suite. The fake robbery was re-enacted and embellished like an old family recipe, and the game went on, twenty thousand on a card, thirty, fifty, with so much money in every pot that every card was a legend in spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds. For a few hours the game was pure poker, five card poetry. Of the 2,598,960 possible poker hands in a straight deck with no wild cards, they saw their fair share.

  Slowly but steadily Bobby juiced the game, increasing his bets in small increments, changing styles from hand to hand to confuse his opponents, bluffing, folding, raising, checking, and all the while keeping up a charming patter of jokes. When Bobby felt he had a mission in a game, he babbled an endless supply of short, fast jokes, dirty jokes, clean jokes, ethnic jokes, even elephant jokes.

  “What’s the gooey stuff between an elephant’s toes?”

  “I dunno. What?”

  “I called your pair. What d’ya got, Wiz?”

  “Tens up.”

  “Slow natives. Bippitty boppitty boom, three sixes, Satan’s trips. I think that beats two pair.”

  “Slow natives? Jesus, enough jokes, already. Let’s play cards!”

  “Easy, Alex. Cut the deck and keep your hat on.”