The Right Jack (Sigrid Harald)

by Margaret Maron

  Heedless of the nymphs above, Mr. Wolferman was enjoying the pre-tournament social hour immensely. He had taken a glass of wine with a schoolteacher, a plumber and an insurance broker, and had heard the president’s economic programs lauded and damned with equal fervor until the plumber tactfully insisted they change the subject to cards; whereupon Mr. Wolferman slipped away to replenish his glass and join a promising-looking group of hearty outdoorsman types.

  At the last moment, he recognized Sam Babcock, a piratical old tycoon who had evidently sailed down from Newport for the tournament with a contingent of fellow yachtsmen. He’d hear nothing from them he couldn’t hear over lunch at any one of his clubs every day, so he veered off sharply before they recognized him and almost sloshed his wine on a very attractive woman.

  “I do apologize!” he exclaimed. “It’s crowded in here, but I should never forgive myself if I’ve spoiled your pretty red frock.”

  Commander T.J. Dixon smiled at his quaint turn of phrase and assured him that no harm was done. She glanced discreetly at his name tag. “No harm at all, Mr. Wolferman.”

  Her voice immediately charmed Mr. Wolferman. It was soft, but absolutely clear, with bell-like overtones that suddenly reminded him of childhood summers in Switzerland. He leaned forward to read her name tag. “Commander T.J. Dixon?”

  “United States Navy,” she nodded.

  “And what does T.J. stand for?” he inquired.

  “That, Mr. Wolferman, is a closely guarded military secret,” she laughed, and the pure tones of her laughter tugged even more strongly at the fringes of deep-seated memory and made him helpless.

  “Forgive my saying it, but you have the most enchanting laugh. Would you object to meeting my cousin Haines?”

  He saw her give his wineglass a considering glance. “Forgive me again, Commander,” he said hastily. “I assure you I’m neither inebriated nor a lunatic. My cousin is here tonight, also a contestant. He has a much finer ear than I and I’m sure that if he could but hear you speak or laugh, he’d be able to explain why your voice reminds me so clearly of our boyhood.”

  Intrigued, Commander Dixon agreed. “Only we have to wait until—” She stood on tiptoes to search the crowd, then waved to a tall bearlike man whose glowering face broke into a happy grin when he spotted her. He carried two brimming wineglasses, one of which he handed to her as delicately as if it were a stemmed eggshell, then beamed at Mr. Wolferman as the small woman said, “Mr. Wolferman, may I present Comrade Vassily Ivanovich of the Soviet trade delegation?”

  “Charmed, charmed,” said Mr. Wolferman and guided them through the crowd toward his cousin.

  After an unobtrusive glance in one of the gilt-framed mirrors to reassure himself that his tie was knotted properly, Detective Tildon joined the crowd gathered around the list of pairings. He saw the figure 102 beside his name and scanned the placard for his opponent. He might have known: the other 102 was a Commander T.J. Dixon. He’d be sunk by the Navy before the evening even began, he thought gloomily. Probably some grizzled old mustang who’d come up through the ranks and polished off amateur cribbage players like him before morning chow.

  He tugged at his tie again. It was a rich brown rep, heavier than his usual workday ties. The kids had given it to him on his last birthday and they’d made him wear it today for good luck. Tillie miserably decided he’d rather be home reading them a bedtime story right now.

  As he stood there contemplating disaster, he heard the woman beside him say, “I’ve got an Eisaku Okawara. What about you, John?”

  “Zachary Wolferman,” he replied. “As in hungry as a. He’ll probably swallow me whole.”

  “Don’t be such a pessimist,” said the woman. “And no fair playing to lose just because you want to get back to your lecture notes. We both stay till we both lose, agreed?”

  “Agreed. Now let’s go see if their wine’s worth drinking.”

  The couple moved off and Tillie suddenly wished Marian was here tonight, too.

  “Sprechen Sie deutsch by any chance?” asked Haines Froelick when his cousin presented him to Commander Dixon and Comrade Ivanovich and invited him to listen to her musical voice.

  “Only enough to say nein,” she smiled, revealing an unexpected dimple in her left cheek.

  Mr. Froelick was even more charmed than his cousin.

  “Fraulein Schlaak!” he exclaimed. “Remember, Zachary? When we were eight? Higgins broke her leg and couldn’t come to Europe that summer, so your parents engaged Fraulein Heika Schlaak as our nursemaid and she used to take us on picnics up to an Alpine meadow near a little waterfall. We’ve never again had such wonderful cream puffs.”

  “There.” Mr. Wolferman nodded his dignified silver head emphatically at Commander Dixon. “I knew he would remember. Fraulein Schlaak,” he murmured blissfully. “She was young and gentle and she told us the most blood-curdling fairy tales in a voice just like yours while water gurgled down on the stones behind her like the chuckles of a dreaming giant.”

  Mr. Froelick and Commander Dixon were unprepared for Mr. Wolferman’s sudden excursion into poetry. Even Vassily Ivanovich looked respectful.

  Mr. Wolferman blushed. “That was what Fraulein Schlaak used to say. That the river giant was laughing at her stories.”

  The gray-haired Comrade Ivanovich remembered something similar from his own childhood and had begun to share the memory in somewhat awkward English when he was interrupted by the public address system. Turning expectantly toward the podium, they heard Theodore Flythe say, “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your places so that we may begin.”

  Ten long tables, each seating fifty players, had been arranged in a double row. Tables 1 and 6 were nearest the podium, Tables 5 and 10 were at the rear.

  “I’m back there at Table 5,” said Commander Dixon, offering her small hand to Mr. Froelick and Mr. Wolferman. “Good luck to you, gentlemen. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

  “I’m at Table 5, too,” said Mr. Wolferman as the other two men turned away. “Number 101. Are we opponents?”

  “No, I’m number 102. Against a Mr. Tildon, I believe.”

  As they started down the wide central aisle between the two rows of tables, the crowd parted briefly and Commander Dixon came face to face with a taller, younger woman who gave her a startled look, then quickly moved away through a swirl of people.

  “A friend of yours?” inquired Mr. Wolferman.

  “I must have been mistaken,” said the commander, but the expression on her face was puzzled.

  At Table 5, Tillie had located board number 102, the second position at the rear corner table. Each long table was set with twenty-five ashtrays, twenty-five new decks of cards, and twenty-five cherry wood cribbage boards, each of whose six pegs were in starting position. Across the aisle from Table 5 was Table 10; beyond 10 was another wide space and then, perpendicular to the playing tables, was the refreshment table, which ran the length of the room’s side wall.

  With ten years of police experience behind him, Tillie had automatically taken the chair with its back to the wall so that he could look out across the crowded ballroom. He recognized the player already seated at 101, diagonally across the table from him, as the man he’d seen earlier up by the seating chart. A John Sutton, according to the man’s name tag.

  He was disconcerted when another couple approached their end of the table and the woman smiled at him pleasantly. “Mr. Tildon? I’m Commander Dixon.”

  Tillie jumped to his feet. “Commander? I was expecting—” He hesitated, patently embarrassed.

  “Someone with anchors tattooed on his forearms?” she dimpled, which made him abruptly conscious that her forearms were nicely rounded and absolutely bare of any tattoos.

  Before he could answer, Ted Flythe was requesting their attention again.

  As everyone settled in their seats, busboys in short green jackets swept through the aisles with their trays, clearing away abandoned glasses under the watchful eye of the room steward, who was
very much aware of La Reine at the front of the room. Her attention seemed focused on the speaker, but he knew that if any of his people made the slightest slip, he’d get the cutting edge of her tongue before the night was over.

  Pernell Johnson resisted tugging at his short green jacket. If anyone looked at him, he wanted them to think, “Look how sharp that kid moves. Look how smooth he is with the tray.”

  From dishwasher to busboy in two months. Not bad. Next stop, dinner waiter in the hotel’s fancy Emeraude Room. That’s where the good money was. Even after splitting with the busboys, bartender, and headwaiter, those guys went home with a wad of bills every night and it was going to take money, lots of money, to finance his new dream.

  Scared the bejesus out of him when the Dade County police caught him boosting hubcaps off Ferraris. Scared Granny, too. “I’m too old for this mess, boy,” she’d told him. “Ain’t no way I’m gonna let you turn into jail meat.” She’d shipped him right up here to Aunt Quincy, who spent the weekend putting the fear of God in him and then brought him down to work with her on Monday morning and talked to them about giving him a job in the kitchen.

  Aunt Quincy’d gone from maid to assistant housekeeper at the Maintenon, so they’d taken him on. She had made a comfortable life for herself and when she saw that her nephew wasn’t afraid of hard work, she’d immediately tried to open his eyes to bigger possibilities. She watched his growing fascination with the workings of the hotel, the smoothness with which the many operations meshed; and she casually planted in the boy’s mind a vision of the small hotels all over Florida that were just waiting for a young black man with ambition and determination.

  The seed had taken root. He worked diligently at the hotel and he’d even begun a night school course in hotel management. When an extra busboy was needed, she’d spoken the right words in the useful places. It wouldn’t be long now before he’d be wearing one of those dark green jackets in the Emeraude Room.

  Even La Reine knew who Pernell Johnson was. Scared everybody to death she did whenever she came poking and prying around the kitchens, but he just smiled and yes ma’am’d her like all bosses expected the help to do and she said, “You’re Quincy Johnson’s nephew, aren’t you?”

  At first he’d thought the others were calling her La Wren behind her back; and from the way she looked at the sinks and opened cabinet doors and fussed about grease on the floor, it had seemed apt. Just like one of the wrens on his granny’s back porch, she was. Nosiest bird God ever made. Always sticking its beak in every nook and cranny, pulling clothespins off the line, hopping in and out of the wash pans, chirping and tweeting the whole time. Same bright eyes. Wasn’t anything got by her. Look at old George and Ms. Baldwin—both of them standing there like they had corncobs up their asses just because Madame Ronay was up there at the front with that games man, looking at them . . . looking at him, too, he remembered, and gracefully swung through the open service exit with his tray balanced on his finger­tips.

  Lucienne Ronay stood to acknowledge Flythe’s introduction and the great chandelier overhead caught every facet of her emerald and diamond jewels and made her taffeta dress smolder with green fire.

  Tillie heard a feminine sigh several seats to his right and a whispered, “Isn’t she gorgeous? Can you believe she’s almost as old as I am?”

  In charmingly accented English, Madame Ronay welcomed them to the Maintenon, hoped they enjoyed the tournament, and graciously wished everyone success. “Bonne chance!”

  While most of the eyes at his table were on the Maintenon’s glamorous owner, Tillie noticed that Commander Dixon’s attention kept straying to the hospitality table off to the right, or rather to the tall girl in a dark blue gown who seemed to be conferring there with a man Tillie assumed was a headwaiter.

  Lucienne Ronay retired from the room in a flurry of applause and Ted Flythe reclaimed the microphone. For the next half hour, he reviewed the rules of cribbage and reminded them that a player must win four out of seven games to advance. “Double elimination. Those of you who have played our tournaments before know it takes skill, luck and stamina to play for two straight days. We’ll begin with two rounds tonight and pick it up tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp.”

  The bearded young man next directed their attention to several men and women positioned around the room. All wore navy blue blazers with Graphic Games logos on their breast pockets and toothpaste smiles of helpfulness on their youthful faces.

  “If there’s any discussion or misunderstanding, just raise your hand and one of our referees will come over immediately. And now, ladies and gentlemen, you may cut for the deal. Low card deals first and may the best player WIN!”

  Amid the flurry of applause, Tillie shyly offered their deck of cards to Commander Dixon. She cut the three of clubs, but he turned the deuce. When he’d finished dealing and their crib cards were lying face down off to the side, she cut the deck again. Tillie turned over the top card. It was a jack.

  “His nibs,” he murmured happily and pegged the first two points. Maybe he wouldn’t get blown out of the water so quickly after all.

  The large room settled into a low murmur of voices, the riffle of cards, an occasional burst of laughter, or a smothered oath as the right—or more often wrong—card was cut before the play of each hand.

  After two hands, Tillie began to relax. Commander Dixon was a skillful opponent and he sensed that she was probably a better player, but as Lieutenant Harald had noted earlier, luck was a big part of the game and luck was keeping him slightly ahead of her skill.

  Play was brisk and after only five deals, they were heading down the homestretch. She would be ahead of him when she finished pegging this hand; but he’d have first count on the next and if his luck continued, he’d win.

  “I’m afraid you have position on me,” Commander Dixon said ruefully as she started to peg her points.

  Somehow the wooden peg slipped through her fingers, dropped on the lap of her scarlet gown, and skittered under the table.

  “I’ll get it,” Tillie said, pushing back his chair. With her left hand on the table, Commander Dixon peered beneath the table and when she could not quite reach the peg, she nudged it toward him with the tip of her neat satin slipper.

  At that exact instant, Zachary Wolferman pegged across the finish line with a double-double run and complacently inserted a peg into the game hole to mark his win.

  There was an immediate, blinding flash of blue light. The board exploded with a horrendous bang. The table splintered with the impact and Tillie was buried beneath it. Stunned silence gripped the room for an instant and then the screams began.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was a little past nine and Sigrid and her mother were already late when Anne Harald finally located her airline ticket jumbled into one of her camera cases. The editor of a large magazine was gambling that a certain elderly Peruvian poet would finally win a Nobel prize in literature and had made arrangements for Anne to do an extensive photo-interview with him before he dropped dead of old age.

  They came rushing down from Anne’s apartment, Sigrid feeling guilty because she’d taken advantage of her NYPD tag and parked in front of a fire hydrant. As they hurried from the bright lobby down a sidewalk shadowed by oak trees that still held their leaves in mid-October, Sigrid noticed a young couple standing just below street level in one of the unlit areaways.

  They were partially screened by a low hedge, but something in the girl’s demeanor triggered a subconscious response and Sigrid hesitated at the top of the steps.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked, peering into the shadows.

  “N–no,” the girl stammered. “N–nothing!”

  Her bloodless face belied her words. There was glittering hostility in the young man’s upward glance and an even stronger impression of wrongness in the way he gripped the girl’s arm.

  Sigrid reached into her purse for some ID even as the man was saying, “You heard her, lady, so bug off, huh?”

/>   “I’m a police officer,” Sigrid told the frightened girl. “Are you sure there’s nothing—”

  The filthy obscenities that streamed from the youth’s mouth startled her almost as much as the flickering switchblade which suddenly appeared in his hand. Before her own hand could disengage the ID and close around her gun, he had darted up the shallow steps.

  She automatically flung her left arm out to deflect the slashing blade and, as he crashed past her, the snub-nosed .38 came free. Deliberately aiming low, Sigrid sent him howling to the pavement with one shot.

  Behind her, in the shadows, the girl began to scream hysterically.

  With a startled cry, Anne Harald dropped her cases on the sidewalk and ran toward Sigrid, who clutched the iron railing feeling curiously giddy and light-headed.

  “Oh my God!” Anne murmured and Sigrid followed her mother’s eyes to her own left arm. It was still numb, but the streetlights revealed the dark stain that soaked through the thin sleeve of her jacket and dripped onto the steps. Blood also ran freely from a cut on the palm of her left hand.

  All stiffness drained out of her legs and she sank down on the steps. “My radio,” she told Anne as mounting waves of dizziness washed over her. “Tell them—officer needs assistance . . . assailant needs ambulance . . .”

  “I don’t believe this!” Anne cried. “Bleeding like a stuck pig and still you talk like a policeman.”

  She whirled and ran for Sigrid’s car; but for once, as if on cue, a patrol car appeared when needed.

  As the uniformed officers fashioned rough tourniquets for her arm and for the wounded man’s leg, Sigrid tried to hold onto consciousness, but the girl’s terrified cries turned into low sobs that were rather lulling against the street noises and Sigrid lost her tenuous thread of awareness before the ambulance arrived.