Dead Money

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  The Club catered to the rich and powerful in Idaho, from the governor to the corporate presidents. A limited membership of three hundred kept a long waiting list active and political. It took ninety percent of the members voting to allow in a new member when an opening happened, due to death. Ace got voted in when I was still a kid, right after he won his second World Series of Poker Championship. I had always figured they wanted him for the poker action.

  Ace just looked at the place as easy money.

  The Club filled the top two floors of a downtown office building. As a kid, I thought it was really cool that the elevator only said it went to the eleventh floor. But magically, Ace, with a key, could get me to the secret floors above.

  “Is your mom all right?” Fleet asked.

  “Upset. Very upset.”

  Fleet just shook his head. “So how are you going to handle telling Ace?”

  “There’s no good way that I can see to tell him his only child was killed. I suppose just get him into a private area in the Club and tell him.”

  “How about we call him, get him to meet us at his house?”

  “He’d want to know why I was pulling him from a game, and he’d argue with me. I don’t want to have to tell him on the phone.”

  Fleet pulled onto Main Street and then, in one block, turned again onto Capitol Boulevard. The Club’s building, called the Hoff Building, towered beside the Capitol Building. The top two floors used to be a restaurant and bar before the Club bought them and moved there.

  When home from college, Ace had let me sit in on a few of the poker games at the Club. Ace had always offered to cover my poker losses during those games, but I had never taken him up on it. Instead, I usually went home thousands ahead. Some of that money helped me and Fleet become two of the only people I knew to go into college flat broke and come out rich—from my ability to make money at a poker table, and Fleet’s ability to have the money make even more money in real estate and investments.

  We were the perfect team.

  “You want me along to talk to Ace?” Fleet asked.

  “Damn right I do. I don’t want to do this alone.”

  “Figured.”

  “Would you in my spot?” I asked, turning to stare at my best friend.

  Fleet shook his head. “Not with your grandfather. Ace comes up to my chest when he’s standing up straight, and he still scares the hell out of me. He could intimidate a lamppost into bending over.”

  “Only if there was a good bet riding on it,” I said.

  “No kidding.”

  A minute later, Fleet found a parking spot in the building’s garage and we got on the elevator. I pushed a small, unmarked blue button on the top of the elevator panel. Ace had pointed out the official guest button before I was tall enough to reach it, and warned me that the button was only to be used in emergencies. This was the first time I had used it.

  “Yes?” a voice asked as the elevator doors closed and we started up out of the parking garage without pushing any floor buttons.

  “Jonathan ‘Doc’ Hill and Fleetwood Korte, guests of Raybourne ‘Ace’ Hill. He should be in the card room.”

  “One moment, please,” the voice said.

  The elevator stopped at the first floor and the door opened, revealing a woman wearing a purple pants suit. She had a stern, take-no-prisoners look on her over-made-up face. Her dark hair was stuck up in a bun so tight, it looked like her eyebrows were trying to make an escape into her hairline.

  “Oh, oh, trouble,” I whispered to Fleet.

  The woman stepped on, pushing a wave of lilac perfume ahead of her. She nodded to Fleet, then gave my shorts, tee shirt, and water-stained tennis shoes a dirty, once-over look, as if I had shown up at a formal dance in my underwear.

  With what sounded a little like an actual “huff,” she turned her back and pushed the tenth floor button. Then she must have noticed that we hadn’t pushed a floor button.

  “Which floor would you like?” she asked, not even glancing at us, her voice sounding like it was just too much trouble for her to stoop to help.

  I hated people with this woman’s attitude. Just because I wasn’t dressed the way she thought I should be, I wasn’t worth anything. I didn’t get this attitude either on the river or in casinos. Money talked in casinos, and the cards didn’t care how a player was dressed.

  “None, thank you,” Fleet said. “We’re going to the Club.”

  “Of course you are,” she said.

  I could hear the slight laughter in her voice. I was annoyed enough that I had been forced to come off the river early because of my father. I didn’t need to deal with people like this woman.

  “Actually,” I said in a loud whisper, right to the back of her head, “if you must know the truth, we just enjoy riding elevators.”

  For some reason, I just couldn’t leave people like this woman alone. I was like a kid with a stick staring at a beehive. I had to poke. It had been a habit that had gotten me into my share of problems.

  “Yeah, we really love it,” Fleet said, following my lead. “A different building every day.”

  “Three hours a night. It gets us hot.” With the last word, my breath actually loosened a hair in her bun.

  “The short buildings are the hardest,” Fleet said, managing to keep a pretty decent poker face. “Up and down. Up and down. All too fast.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “slow is better. Longer is better. Slow. Longer. Don’t you think?”

  I stared at the back of the woman’s head. Her shoulders had hunched up by her ears and she looked like she was about to explode.

  “I sure do,” Fleet said, pretending excitement. “Longer is always better.” He stretched the word “always” out to the length of a normal sentence.

  The doors opened at the tenth floor and the woman fled into the hallway, not even looking back at us.

  “Nice meeting you,” I said as the door closed.

  “Too bad we have to continue to live with her smell.” Fleet waved his hand in front of his face as if it would help clear out the thick lilac perfume that hung in the elevator like a purple cloud from a bad horror movie.

  The elevator started up.

  “Mr. Hill will meet you in the lobby,” the speaker voice said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You are welcome,” the speaker voice said. “I hope you enjoy the rest of your ride. I’m afraid it’s not very long.”

  Fleet snorted, and I could feel my face turn red. Caught once again with the stick in my hand.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Boise, Idaho. August 18

  AS THE ELEVATOR doors opened onto the twelfth floor, Ace stormed into the marble-covered foyer like a bull entering a ring. His gold sweater, white shirt, and brown slacks made him look like a shrunken golf pro. More than likely, he had played golf earlier in the day. Like my passions were poker and the mountains, Ace’s passions were poker and golf. Ace’s nickname came not from cards, but from making two holes-in-one on the same day at the Dunes in Las Vegas back before I was born.

  I loved the way my grandfather never did anything half-heartedly, even walking. When Ace entered a room, everyone knew he was there. His attitude was that you either pushed every moment of life to the fullest, or you didn’t belong on the planet. I couldn’t count the times my grandfather had said to me, Move it! You’re wasting space.

  “Good seeing you again, kid,” Ace said, sticking out his hand.

  Same greeting, no matter how long we had been apart. I wanted to give the short, bald man a hug, but instead settled for our standard handshake. The routine handshake and greeting started back when I was a kid and my father had just left.

  “Good seeing you again, Fleet,” Ace said. “How’s that wonderful family of yours?”

  “Healthy and growing taller by the day.”

  “As they should,” Ace said. “Get worried when they start shrinking.”

  With a large gesture with his arm, he indicated we follow him throu
gh the ornately carved lobby doors and into the club bar area. The low lighting and fantastic evening view of the city made it feel as if we were walking out onto a rooftop. Only without the wind and the city noise.

  “So, what’s the bad news?” Ace asked as we entered the bar. “It’s got to be something to bring you off the river early and both of you here. And it’s not your mother, since she just called a while back to see if I was here.”

  “Let’s get settled first,” I said.

  “Kid, you’re scaring me.”

  Ace pointed to a table near a window looking down over the state capitol building.

  “View always gets me up here,” Fleet said.

  Ace snorted. “What would you expect in a playhouse for the state’s richest people? A view of Denny’s? You two ready for me to put you up for membership yet?”

  “You’re kidding?” Fleet asked.

  “You see me laughing?” Ace asked, staring at Fleet until Fleet shook his head no. “You know enough people, have enough money, are swinging some pretty good power with those businesses and land holdings, not to mention all that money you keep giving to charities. Who knows, you might just get in sometime in the next decade.”

  I noticed that Fleet actually shuddered.

  “Thanks,” I said, “I think we’ll wait a while.”

  “Just give me the word.”

  Fleet slid in beside the window and I sat beside him, letting Ace have the other side of the table. A waitress arrived before I had my chair up to the table.

  “Glass of Chablis, Debbie,” Ace said. “Ice teas for both these lightweights. Bring the pink sugar stuff with you. They can’t handle real sugar.”

  Ace had many tricks he’d learned over the years. He never forgot a name, even of a waitress, and he remembered what people drank, even if he hadn’t seen them in years. He got a lot of mileage out of those two details.

  When Debbie finished putting down the drink napkins and left, Ace focused on me, leaning forward. That laser look could get to the core of a regular card player, see their intentions, sometimes it seemed, their very thoughts. That ability to read other players had made Ace one of the most respected and feared card players in the world, both in tournaments and big-money games.

  “Spit it out, kid. What happened? What the hell are you doing here?”

  I forced myself to take a deep breath and then just blurted it out. “Carson was in a plane crash outside of Cascade.”

  Ace’s eyes seemed to sink into his skull. He sat back like someone had shoved him.

  “The one on the news this morning?” he asked softly. “I was afraid it was his plane.”

  Ace’s voice was barely a whisper. In all my life, I had never heard my grandfather whisper anything.

  “I’m sorry, Ace. He was killed instantly.”

  Right at that moment, I hated my father even more for making me hurt my grandfather. That son-of-a-bitch Carson couldn’t go into the ground fast enough as far as I was concerned.

  Ace sat there, his eyes blank.

  The soft sounds of people talking at other tables, the clinking of glassware, seemed to grow in volume. I wanted to move around to the other side of the table and just hold him. For the first time, my powerful grandfather looked small and weak and old.

  Debbie finally brought our drinks, and Ace seemed to come back into his eyes. “Thank you, darlin’.”

  After she left, he asked, “Do you know where they took his body?”

  “Cascade,” Fleet said. “Along with the money he had in the plane with him.”

  “How much?” Ace asked. “You know?”

  “Three-point-six million in a suitcase,” Fleet said.

  I glanced at Fleet. He hadn’t told me that little detail. Suddenly, Carson being in a small plane in Idaho made sense to me. A private game players called the Big Game was held at the R.A. Scott ranch on the upper Middle Fork of the Salmon. The ranch had its own airstrip, and the game was a weekend-long event held in the late summer every year.

  Ace nodded and sat back again. “He at least had a good last weekend. He would have wanted to go out that way.”

  Fleet whistled softly. “Three-point-six million. I guess you could say he had a good weekend. What was his buy-in? What kind of game was it?”

  “One million buy-in,” I said, letting my grandfather have a little more time for the news to sink in. “R.A. Scott started the Big Game a long time ago, holding it on his ranch. Ten players, half businessmen, half top poker players. The rich guys love to say that they sat down in a game with the well-known poker players. The players go for the easy pickings.”

  “I don’t remember you playing in it,” Fleet said.

  “I’m usually still on the river every year.”

  At that moment, I didn’t want to say I didn’t play because Carson was always there. Seemed wrong.

  Fleet nodded.

  “So what happens next?” Ace asked.

  “NTSB investigation unit will go to the scene,” I said, “to determine the cause. At some point they’ll release everything and we can make plans then.”

  “You’ve worked with the NTSB before?” Ace asked, staring at me again.

  “Sure. A number of times.”

  Actually, the last time I had gone out with an NTSB team was on a search and rescue dive. Three of us had ended up scuba diving in a muddy pond looking for a kid’s body from a small plane crash.

  Just the thought of having that child’s bloated face appear out of the muddy water inches from my face mask had given me nightmares for a month afterwards. Thank God, I hadn’t been the one to find the body.

  “Kid,” Ace said, the intensity back in his eyes as he stared at me. “I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “I need you to stay on top of every detail of Carson’s death.”

  “Why?” Ace’s favor actually surprised me. “The authorities are investigating. There’s nothing more I can do. They won’t even let me on the crash site.”

  “I need it for me. From you. I trust you. I don’t trust authorities.”

  I stared at my grandfather’s wrinkled face and his intense dark eyes. The old man never did anything without a reason. Especially something like this.

  “How far do you want me to go with this?”

  “All the way. Every detail. Doc, I know how you felt about your father, but do this for me.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Ace glared at me. “Kid, do it for me, as a favor, or don’t do it. Up to you.”

  “Dammit, Ace. You’re dealing me half a hand here. You think something more might have happened to Carson, don’t you?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Ace said, leaning forward, his voice intense and powerful. “That’s what I want you to be god-damned sure of. You’ve been on these sorts of investigations before, right? Worked with these people. Just bring me the damned answers about the death of my son.”

  I leaned back from the power in my grandfather’s words.

  No matter how much I wanted to just wash my hands of Carson’s death, it seemed my grandfather wasn’t going to let me. I owed Carson nothing. I owed Ace everything.

  “All right. I’ll head up to the crash scene tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Fleet said.

  “Thank you,” Ace said. “Both of you.”

  The old man again seemed to vanish from his eyes. He sat back, the glass of wine in his hands, his head turned to look over the city.

  The three of us sat there for a half hour in silence.

  Then we took Ace home.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 19

  AS GROVE PRIED open the top half of the casket lid, the stench of rotted human flesh hit him in the face and knocked him against the dirt wall of the newly opened grave.

  “Holy Christ!”

  He scrambled out of the hole, moving behind the backhoe. As soon as he was far enough away, he gulped huge bre
aths of the warm, fresh morning air, trying to clear his nose and the rotten taste in his mouth. It helped, but not much.

  The son-of-a-bitch who hired him to do this should have warned him about the smell.

  Grove leaned against the shoulder-high wheel of the machine and struggled to settle his stomach. The early morning traffic on the other side of the cemetery gave the place a distinct background rumble. It felt damn weird doing a robbery in the middle of a graveyard, with people going by on their way to work. But the guy had assured him that it wouldn’t be a problem. If Grove wore a cemetery maintenance suit and used cemetery equipment, no one would notice. It was normal for the cemetery crew to dig new graves early in the morning.

  So far, the man had been right, and this job had been a drop-kick. Except for the damn smell.

  Grove took a couple more deep breaths and moved back to the edge of the hole, peering in as if the dead guy might jump out at any moment. The cover of the concrete liner was hanging where Grove had left it, on a chain attached to the back-hoe bucket. The top half of the lid to the casket was flipped up against the dirt.

  He stared at the guy in the casket, surprised. He expected bones or something wrinkled and dried like a mummy. This guy looked like he was sleeping in a hooker’s bed, like he had been buried yesterday.

  “Oh, hell, did I get the wrong grave?” He moved around the pile of dirt and checked the stone at the head of the grave.

  Jeff Taylor.

  Right name, right death date. The guy has been down there for over twelve years. In his day, he’d been one of the best poker players around. He’d won the main event at the World Series of Poker three years before he had been killed.

  “Man, they’re cremating my ass,” Grove said, staring at Taylor’s body. “No way am I going to end up like that.”

  He glanced around, then checked his watch. Six-thirty in the morning. He needed to get the hell out of the cemetery in the next fifteen minutes. Besides, the smell was bad enough. He couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like when the hot desert sun hit the body.