Lucky at Cards

by Lawrence Block

  “Milani,” I said. “August Milani. Is he in?” My voice didn’t sound quite like Rogers’ voice. But it was as close as I could come. I waited while the desk clerk checked. Milani wasn’t in. This didn’t exactly surprise me.

  “I’d like to leave a message,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “My name is Rogers,” I said. “Tell Mr. Milani his terms are impossible and I’m afraid we cannot do business.”

  I made him read the message back to me. Then I thanked him and broke the connection.

  I took care of my evening appointments by ten. I drove the Ford back to the apartment, switched to the shabby suit and the loud tie. On the way to the Glade I pulled the hat down over my forehead and added the glasses. The desk clerk gave me the message from Rogers. I chuckled nastily and said something to the effect that the bastard wouldn’t get off so easy, that he was going to pay off sooner or later. The desk clerk tried to keep a poker face but I could tell that the words had registered. He wouldn’t forget them.

  Tuesday and Wednesday, I kept feeding dimes into telephones. I called Murray Rogers’ office four or five times, each time giving my name as Milani and asking in a hoodish tone to talk to Rogers. I got through to him once and fed him the life insurance pitch all over again and he hung up on me almost at once. The other times I didn’t get past the receptionist. The poor girl must have had an interesting picture of me by then. I got nastier and nastier, and if she asked Murray about me he could only say that I was some nutty insurance salesman, a little stupider and a little more persistent than most. The girl wouldn’t believe it. She was a perfect receptionist, starched and prim and proper. But she couldn’t swallow a pitch like that.

  I called my hotel a few times, leaving messages from Rogers, and I picked up the messages at the hotel and cackled triumphantly. The stage was setting itself up neatly.

  Tuesday night I took Barb Lambert to dinner at an Italian restaurant. She had veal mozzarella and I had lobster fra diavolo and we knocked off a bottle of chianti together. The restaurant was the sort of place where David Niven and Jean Simmons always had dinner as a prelude to an illicit affair in a Hollywood bedroom farce. Candles burned in straw-covered wine bottles. Violin music melted forth from a public address system. The lights were dim.

  Reality slipped away. Barbara became a little prettier, a little cleverer, less the unsure schoolteacher and more the vibrant woman. My hand crossed the table and covered hers. Her fingers were cool, soft. Her eyes shone.

  “I’ve missed this,” she said.

  “This?”

  “Romance. I like it, Bill.”

  “So do I.”

  “We should have met more romantically,” she said lazily. “We could have been seat-partners in a transatlantic jet. You could have rescued me from a rapist in the park. Something like that. But instead we were fixed up by a pair of meddling matchmakers. That’s not very romantic, is it?”

  “We could always pretend.”

  She picked up her wine glass with her free hand and finished her chianti. “Let’s,” she said. “Let’s pretend. Let’s be different people. Instead of a schoolteacher I’ll be something exciting. I’ll be a call girl, all right?”

  “I’ll be a customer, then.”

  She laughed wickedly. “No, no, no,” she said. “That’s not romantic. I’ll be a high-priced call girl. And what will you be?”

  “A wealthy prince?”

  “I don’t think so. How about a master criminal?”

  “A jewel thief?”

  “Mmmmm,” she said. “Perfect. And do you know how we got together? You just finished robbing a horrid old woman of a fortune in emeralds, and I just finished breaking off with my wealthy old lover, and now we’re having dinner together in an intimate little spot on the Italian Riviera. Isn’t that romantic?”

  A movie wouldn’t have been romantic enough. Instead we drove around searching for something exciting. We wound up in a jazz club. We were the only non-beats in the place and we drew stares that would have made Barb uncomfortable if it hadn’t been for the wine. As it was, she didn’t mind at all. We sat at a small table in front and drank dubious scotch and listened to a hard-bop quartet play funky blues.

  “Romantic,” she said.

  A fat girl tried to sing like Dinah Washington. A uniformed cop strolled into the club, stood for a few moments surveying the place, then turned and left. Our waitress brought fresh drinks. The musicians took a break, then came back on again.

  “It’s getting late,” Barb said.

  “Close to twelve.”

  “And I have school tomorrow. Isn’t that silly? A call girl with school tomorrow. And my handsome jewel thief has to go to the office and sell pieces of buildings, or something. I guess we’re just turning into pumpkins, aren’t we?”

  I paid the check and left too big a tip. We ducked out of the smoky club and gulped fresh air on the street outside. In the car I started to turn the key in the ignition but she put her hand on mine and stopped me. I turned. Barb’s eyes were closed, her mouth pouty. I picked up my cue and kissed her and her body shivered in my arms. Her mouth tasted of liquor and tobacco and sweet hunger. I kissed her again and she stirred in response, shifting her weight and locking her arms around my neck. My hand moved to the side of her breast. My fingers pressed the firm softness of her and she gasped with excitement.

  I felt like ten different kinds of a bastard.

  We didn’t talk on the way back to her place. Barb sat very close to me, her head on my shoulder, her eyes shut. She was breathing heavily. I forced my mind on my driving and tried not to think about other things. It was like struggling not to think of a white rhinoceros. The thoughts were there and I couldn’t shove them aside.

  I stuck the Ford in her driveway and walked her to her door. I stood at her side while she opened the door. She turned to me, slowly, and I kissed her. Partly because I was supposed to, partly because I wanted to. The kiss lasted and built up a small head of steam, and then she shuddered slightly and drew back.

  “Damn it,” she said, “I wish I were a call girl, Bill.”

  It would play either way. I kissed her again and felt the warmth and intensity of her embrace. I stroked the side of her face, let my hand trail lingeringly down the front of her fine body. Then I tensed up and let go of her and forced myself to step back. “I’ll call you,” I said softly. I let go of her hand and she turned into the house and closed the door and I went back to my place and tried to sleep. It wasn’t easy. I thought about two girls, a girl named Joyce and a girl named Barbara. I thought about two ways of life, a life of back rooms and fast action, a life of hard honest work and straight living. Dangerous thoughts for a man called Wizard.

  I made more calls Wednesday, two to Murray’s office, one to the Glade. I made them automatically, working like a programmed computer, speaking automatic words in my two mechanical fake voices. I left work early that day for my apartment. I took out the three onionskin copies I had typed up in Murray’s office and read them through. The second one had Thursday’s date at the top—tomorrow.

  I took my Milani costume from the closet, spread it out on the bed. I looked at the snap-brim hat, the shabby suit, the loud and food-stained tie. I read through the letters again. Then I picked up the phone and dialed a number.

  She answered it herself.

  “Bill,” I said.

  “I’ve been wishing you would call,” Joyce said. “I wanted to talk to you but I didn’t know when it would be safe. How is it going, Wizard?”

  “It’s going all right.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  I lit a cigarette first. I took a deep drag, held the smoke in my lungs until I was slightly dizzy.

  “Listen,” I said.

  She waited.

  “I don’t want to go through with it,” I said. “I don’t want to job the guy. I want to call it off.”

  10

  “No,” she said. “You’re not going to do this to me, Wizard.
”

  “Joyce—”

  “You can’t weasel out. It’s all set up and we’re going to push it through. You can’t change your mind now.

  We weren’t talking on the phone now. We had talked on the phone just long enough for her to be sure I wasn’t kidding. Now we were in my living room and her Caddy was parked at the curb in front. She was standing in front of me and her eyes were angry. I asked her if she wanted a drink. She said she didn’t. I made one for myself and she changed her mind and I made one for her. We sat at opposite ends of my living room couch and sipped scotch.

  “Wizard?”

  I met her gaze. She was angry now, and slightly desperate, and the combination of anger and desperation had deepened the lines at the corners of her mouth and pointed up the hardness of her face. And yet somehow her beauty was more striking than ever. My mind did what minds have a tendency to do, erected a little balance scale and put her on one side and Barb on the other. The contrast was vivid. Barb was soft and gentle, steady and sure, a good long-term investment. The other was fire and fury and handle-with-care, a much greater risk. And much more exciting.

  “What changed your mind, Wizard? You were all ready to go, all set to job Murray and get the money and take me the hell out of this rotten town. What turned you off?”

  “Things.”

  “What things?”

  I finished my drink, started a cigarette. “A few things,” I said. “In the first place, I don’t think it would work. Murray is a highly respected guy. Clean, established. And on top of that he happens to be a lawyer. There are a million holes in the frame, Joyce. If he were someone shady it wouldn’t matter, but a fellow like Murray could kick the prosecution’s case to hell and back.”

  “You really don’t think it would work?” Joyce said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t believe you, Wizard.” Her eyes challenged me. I glanced down at my drink, which was gone. I dragged on my cigarette. I raised my eyes and she was still watching me. “I don’t believe you at all,” she said. “If you thought the frame was wrong you’d look for another way, a fresh angle. What’s the real reason?”

  I didn’t answer her.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I can figure it out. You’ve had a taste of respectable life and you like the flavor. You’re a salesman for Perry Carver. Or don’t you call yourself a salesman? Maybe you prefer to think of yourself as an investment counselor.”

  “Joyce—”

  “You play cards with the upper middle-class and you don’t even cheat. You go out with a brain-dead schoolteacher—yes, I heard about your new love, honey. You go out with her and think about marriage and respectability and what a cushy little life it will be. Are you going to marry her, Wizard? Are you going to settle down in the suburbs like an All-American success story?”

  I said, “Stop it.”

  “The hell I’ll stop it! You’re such a goddamned fool, Wizard. It’s a kick now, isn’t it? It was a kick for me, too. I didn’t just marry Murray for his money. I wanted a house with a lawn and a backyard. I wanted people to look at me without wetting their lips and wondering how much it would cost. Oh, it’s fine for the first little while. It’s a brand-new way to live. But it changes. It turns sour. It gets so damned dull you could scream.

  “It doesn’t work, Wizard. It doesn’t work because it’s a lie, a stupid lie front to back. You wind up wasting your life on a bunch of fatheaded squares who don’t speak your language or think your thoughts. You shape yourself over and try to convince yourself you’ve managed to change inside, and then one day you wake up and realize you never changed at all and you’re a very round peg stuck in the squarest hole on earth. Your little schoolteacher won’t be much fun then. Your little job will be the biggest bore since Maynard the Magnificent. And if you think I’m going to let you blow a damned good chance for both of us you’ve got to be out of your mind.”

  There was more. It went on like that, and I sat there telling her she was wrong and trying to make myself believe it. Maybe the good life hadn’t worked for her. It could still work for me. I had floated into the gray world of the card mechanic pretty much by accident, and I could float out just as easily and just as accidentally. I didn’t feel that much of a commitment to dishonesty.

  But she had another argument, and it was more persuasive. She stood up and planted herself in front of me, and before she delivered it she put her hands at the sides of her breasts and ran them slowly down the length of her body. Then she grinned at me.

  “You can’t get out,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ll damn well ruin you. Do you think Perry Carver would keep a crook on his payroll? Do you think Sy and Murray and the others would want a card sharp in their game? And they would find out, Wizard. I’d make sure they found out. Your new friends wouldn’t have any use for you. Neither would your new little lost love. Are you laying that schoolteacher, Wizard?”

  I didn’t mean to slap her. My hand moved by itself, rising fast and landing over her left cheekbone. She reeled backward and for a moment I thought she was going to fall over. But she only smiled.

  “You can have the teacher,” Joyce said levelly. “You can keep your job. Some day you’ll wake up, but you can sleep as long as you want, if that’s the way you want it. But first you’re going to take care of Murray for me.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She turned on her heel and stamped out of my apartment, hopped into her car, took off fast enough to leave a rubber patch on the street outside.

  It must have been around five-thirty when Joyce left. I had a few drinks after that. I went out for a bite, ate a third of a hamburger and left the rest. It didn’t taste right. I don’t suppose there was anything wrong with the hamburger. It just didn’t taste right.

  So I went back to my place and had a few more drinks and I stared at the onionskin letters some more and looked at the Milani costume. I squinted at myself in the mirror, too. But not for very long.

  And then I called Joyce. She must have been sitting on top of the phone because she picked it up before the first ring was finished.

  I said, “All right. I’m in.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Because there’s no way out.” I called Murray’s office at nine o’clock the next evening. There was no answer. I let it ring long enough to make sure that no one had stuck around. Then I drove to the Rand Building on the double. I followed the established routine—I took the elevator to the seventeenth floor and walked the rest of the way. I let myself into his office, thumbed through the Yellow Pages, found a twenty-four hour messenger service. I called them and told them to send a kid over for a pick-up and delivery.

  During the day I had picked up a batch of singles from the bank, along with a couple hundreds. While the kid was on his way over I made a bundle of money, a sheaf of singles with two one-hundreds at the top and bottom of the roll. I stuffed the money into an envelope and started to scrawl A. Milani on it. Then I changed my mind and typed the name on Murray’s office typewriter. I sealed the envelope and dropped it on the table in the outer office. I left the hall door open and retired to Murray’s private office and sat in his chair, with the door closed.

  When the kid came in I called to him through the closed door. “There’s an envelope on the table there,” I said. “Run it over to the Hotel Glade near the station. It’s for a man named August Milani. Make sure you give it to him in person.”

  I had left a five-spot on the table along with the envelope. I told the kid to help himself to it. As soon as he left I got the hell out of Murray’s office, ran down seven flights of stairs and caught an elevator the rest of the way. I drove home, changed into my Milani costume, hurried over to the Glade. I made myself slow down on the way in, forced myself to walk with the head-back, shoulders-slouched swagger of my man Milani.

  The kid was there when I reached the hotel. He leaned up against the desk, waiting to deliver Milani’s envelope
in person. I took it from him, gave him a quarter and watched him go. Then I turned to the desk clerk, a buddy by now—I’d been cultivating him carefully. I winked at him, then ripped open the envelope and snatched up the stack of bills. His eyes bugged.

  “Money,” I said.

  I fanned the bills for him. He saw the hundreds on the top and the hundreds on the bottom, and all the singles in the middle were just a big flash of green ink.

  “Money,” I said again.

  And I started dealing the bills out, slapping them one after the other onto the top of the counter. The basic principle is pretty much the same as the one used in a second deal or a bottom deal. Each time I was slapping down two bills, a hundred on top and a single under it. Each time fast fingerwork brought the hundred back on to the top of the stack for the next shot. By the time I was finished there wasn’t any question in the desk clerk’s mind. Quite obviously I had a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “I told you, didn’t I? I leave this town in the longest Caddy Detroit ever made.”

  “How did you get that kind of dough?” the clerk said.

  I winked at him. “A guy named Rogers,” I said. “The one who left me all them nasty messages.”

  “Yeah?” I nodded solemnly. “Yeah,” I said. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure.”

  “So can I.” I laughed aloud. “And that’s where all this wonderful bread came from. I get paid for keeping secrets. I get paid real nice.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Who?”

  “Rogers,” the clerk said. I was glad to see he could remember the name. “What the hell did he do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But—”

  “He’s a real nice guy,” I said. “A big-time lawyer. It’s just that he’s got this little secret, see? And he’ll pay to keep it.”

  I slapped the roll of bills against the palm of my hand. “And I’ll tell you a secret,” I said. “He ain’t done paying yet. That bastard just started.”

  I left him there and went to my room at the rear of the hotel. I closed the door, locked it. I tucked the bills into my pocket, dropped the envelope on the floor in a corner of the room. The envelope had Murray Rogers’ return address on it. It would probably still be there in the room on Monday, since the personnel at the Glade weren’t too fanatic about housekeeping.