(2004) Citizen Vince

by Jess Walter

  Vince looks down at his cards. He gets a pair of nines and calls a bluff so transparent it wouldn’t win a twenty-dollar pot at the Pit, let alone these stakes. Vince draws a third nine. And for a moment, the idea of squaring with Johnny Boy is less important than the way the cards are falling. The next hand he pulls jack-five off suit, and while he’d normally sit this one out, he doesn’t have enough time to play smart and he decides this is as good a time as any to buy a pot. It’s a scientific fact: the higher the stakes (and these are about as high as Vince has ever played) the easier it is to bluff, to buy one. It works. The other players fold—lucky because he gets no help. Four folds later, he goes after another pot. Now the other players take notice. They eye him; watch his hands and his face. Two players stay in. The flop: ace, queen, four. Dealer turns a nine and, on the river, a four. Guy across turns his cards: ace-nine. Someone whistles. Vince rolls his cards. Pair of queens. He rakes in another nickel. Two players leave the table, broke after less than an hour. One of them is the old guy from Omaha Beach. He looks at Vince, who can’t think of a thing to say. In his mind he sees the old man as a soldier, loaded down, sinking in the black water. “Good playing with you,” Vince says. His chips are heaped, not stacked, his original two grand now six. The real players are settling in.

  “So when you say you make donuts, do you mean—”

  Vince looks over at a guy on his left. “I’m sorry?”

  “Donuts.” The guy has a rubbery face—deep-set eyes and thick lips, heavy outer-borough accent. “You talkin’ maple bars and stuff? Bismarcks?”

  “Yeah. Maple bars. Bismarcks. Éclairs. Cake donuts. Everything.”

  Rubber Face laughs. “See, I thought maybe it was one of them euphemisms. You know…make donuts.”

  The rest of the guys at the table join him in laughter, but one of the players says, seriously, “You make them jellies?”

  “Yeah. We make jellies.”

  The guy smiles. “That sounds good right now. Don’t it, Ken? Don’t that sound good? A fuckin’ jelly donut?”

  Across the table, a black-haired boy with ferret eyes shrugs and points to his silk shirt. “I ain’t eatin’ a fuckin’ jelly donut in this shirt. Damn you, Tommy. Grow up. That ain’t no donut for an adult.”

  Vince considers the remaining guys at this table—drivers and second-story guys, talkers, five-to-teners, no talent that he can see; doubtful anyone here is made—and in a moment of the old bluster, he can’t imagine any reason why he shouldn’t take every cent off these assholes. He bends the corners of his two cards. Pair of tens. Look at that. He expected a lot of things tonight: that he’d be turned away from the poker game; that he’d get in the game but wouldn’t find Johnny Boy; that he’d find him, but Johnny Boy would immediately have him hauled away and shot. The last thing that he expected was luck.

  With a lead, Vince is ruthless. He bullies and ignores bluffs and his chips rise, tilt, and finally fall against one another like Roman columns. He alternates buying pots and nursing the other players along during his better hands. It is one those rare evenings when the cards themselves barely matter; it could all be in his head. He could play without cards and win half these hands. The other players do exactly what he wants them to do.

  When there are three left he goes in: spies his cards (queen-nine) when they come and then lets them sit. Bets light. Lets them raise. Then doubles their raises. They glower, look at their cards, look at Vince, look at their cards, look at Vince’s cards (face down, he will not look at them again, and they will wonder, Did he ever look?), look at their cards, look at Vince, and finally call. The flop comes; queen, jack, nine.

  Look at that. They can’t quit now, not with straights up, and the third player—a quiet guy with jet black hair—is all in. Vince just keeps doubling their bumps until Ken is all in, too. The turn and the river: a six and another queen. Pot’s right.

  Ken turns a queen-high straight. Jet Black has an ace flush. Great hands. One-in-eighty hands. But Vince has the full boat, queens over nines, and the pot. It’s been a long time since he’s played in a high-stakes game, let alone won. With a two-grand buy-in and eight other players, Vince has won sixteen thousand dollars in a little more than two hours. Even after paying off Coletti, the vig, and Pete’s two-K buy-in, he’s up to eighteen. Now all he needs is Johnny.

  Vince sits back and finishes his whiskey. The guy with the jet-black hair lights a cigarette and leans back in his chair. “So, you’re in donuts.”

  “That’s right,” Vince says.

  Waves his cigarette over the table. “You play a pretty fuckin’ good game of cards for a guy makes donuts for a living.”

  “Who said I did it for a living?”

  The guys laugh.

  “You a cardsharp? That what you do?”

  “No,” Vince says. “I just got lucky. Anyone can get lucky.”

  “No,” Jet Black says. “No. They can’t. Anyone can’t get lucky. That’s the thing about luck. It discriminates like a motherfucker.”

  Vince just smiles.

  Jet Black sticks his hand out. “I’m Carmine. This is my game that you just won.”

  “Vince.” They shake.

  “It’s early yet. You wanna play a little more, Vince?”

  “You saying there’s another game, Carmine?”

  “Vince…” Carmine takes a pull of his cigarette. “There’s always another game.”

  GHOSTS EVERYWHERE. GHOULS, too. Skeletons. Cowboys and princesses and frogs and hobos and costumes that Dupree can’t quite make out, weird combinations of masks and capes and fake whiskers. Yoda and Darth Vader each grip a pillowcase. Detective Charles drives slowly down the street, packs of kids drifting in and out of his headlights. They troll a long, straight line of neat, two-story row houses, American flags jutting from half the stoops. “I forgot what day this is,” Dupree says. He finds it comforting that they have Halloween even in this upside-down place, where the cops drive around like drunken lunatics, stealing drugs and taking blow jobs. Other than the houses being right next to one another—not a yard in sight—Alan thinks he could be in Spokane; it returns his bearings a little.

  Charles parks in front of a small brick building with a plywood sign reading LOCAL 4412. Above the door is another sign, for Jimmy Carter, and in the windows signs for a Newark City Council candidate named James Ray Burke. Charles climbs out of the car. “I’ll be right back.”

  Dupree opens his mouth to protest, but Charles slams the door shut. He walks to the front of the building, tries the door, but it being Saturday, the door is locked. He walks around to the back, and after a moment Dupree hears a window smash. A few minutes later the Burke signs are yanked out of the windows. Charles comes out the front door, smiling, with the two Burke signs and a phone caddie open to a tabbed page. At the car he throws the signs in the backseat and puts the phone caddie in his lap, the tab slid open to the name Daryl Greene.

  Dupree doesn’t say anything, just stares out the window.

  Charles drives along the mowed curbs, reading addresses until he pulls up to a white house with red trim. He turns off the car, looks once more at the phone caddie, then tosses it in the backseat. He turns to Dupree. “Look. I know this ain’t exactly what you signed up for. I’m sorry if this seems”—he can’t find the word—“bad. But there’s more to it than you know. This is a very important investigation.” When Dupree doesn’t say anything he continues. “Anyway, I’m gonna take care of this little thing that Mike put me on and we’ll go find your guy. What’s his name?”

  “Vince.”

  “Right. Vince.” Detective Charles steps out of the car, then reaches back in and gets his jacket off of the backseat. He also grabs one of the Burke signs and a box of swag tennis shoes. At the curb he looks back once more at Dupree, smiles, then reaches in and—Alan is pretty sure of this—unbuckles the chest holster inside his jacket.

  The name D Greene is painted on the mailbox. Two little pirates are on D Greene’s porch, having
settled on the treat option. An old Scottish terrier sniffs them, then limps back and lies down on a blanket on the porch, emits a big dog sigh. A tall, slender black man leans out the front door, holds the screen with his shoulder, and drops small candy bars into their bags.

  Charles looks like a conscientious parent standing in a rock garden just off the porch while the boys get their candy. He looks back at Dupree once. Grins. Something about the trick-or-treating kids sets Alan’s mind; he won’t let this happen. He’ll go along and he won’t say anything, but he’s not going to let anyone get hurt. This is where he draws the line. Dupree pulls his gun out, holds it between his knees, and turns off the safety without looking down. This is not about the kind of cop he is. This is about what kind of person he is. Tells himself: If Charles goes for his coat, he will get out of the car. Steels himself.

  The pirates leave D Greene’s porch. Charles rolls up the Burke sign and holds it like a sword, but the boys simply edge past him and he straightens his jacket and walks up the porch steps.

  Dupree puts the gun in his left hand, puts his right on the car-door handle.

  Charles knocks on D Greene’s door, then steps over and pets the dog. The thin black man answers again, and looks down for trick-or-treaters. Charles straightens up from petting the old terrier and walks over, maybe a foot away. D Greene cracks the screen door and listens. Dupree tenses. He’s never fired his weapon outside the range. He’ll think of this as the range. Put a round paper target right on Charles’s back. Squeeze.

  It’s like watching TV without sound. Charles gestures with the Burke sign and the shoebox. D Greene listens. Charles hands him the Burke sign. He tilts his head left, then right, as if offering two options. He throws his head back and laughs. D Greene doesn’t laugh. Charles sweeps his hand around the neighborhood and says something.

  D Greene points a shaky finger in Charles’s face. Charles shrugs, as if saying: Hey, slow down. No one is threatening anyone here. Then he laughs and waves the shoebox in D Greene’s face. He puts his arms out to the side, pleading innocence. Then he steps closer and opens the shoebox. D Greene doesn’t look inside the box. He says a few words, rubs his temples, backs into the house, nods a few times, closes the door, and turns out the porch light.

  Dupree relaxes, lets go of the door handle, and slides his gun back into his jacket. His breathing still feels loud and forced when Charles walks to the car cheerily, opens the back door, and tosses the shoebox in. “Nice guy,” he says. “But it turns out he’s a size twelve. Guess it’s true what they say.”

  He laughs at his own joke and grabs another shoebox, closes the back car door, and saunters toward the house. He pauses in the rock garden, grabs a rock the size of a softball, and continues up the steps to the porch. He sets the shoebox against the screen door, then walks over to the terrier’s blanket, and before Dupree can even form a thought, Charles pins the dog with his foot and swings the big rock into the dog’s head. He swings the rock again. And again. The dog doesn’t make a sound.

  “Ah Jesus,” Dupree mutters.

  Detective Charles carries the bloody rock to the shoebox, which he opens with his foot, and drops the rock in. When he gets back to his car, he looks relaxed for the first time since he picked Dupree up. “Always pick treat,” Charles says. He takes a drink of the whiskey and offers it to Dupree.

  “Okay, Seattle. Let’s go do your thing.”

  ABOUT JOHNNY BOY: he is just like Benny’s client described him—black dress shirt stretched over a barrel, with thick, muscled arms, a big gold chain on one wrist, Rolex on the other. Slick. Good-looking guy, for the type—and he is the type. His hair is threatened back, graying at the sideburns and receding on either side of his head, a thick round tuft of black in the center. His smirk could kick the ass of Vince’s smirk.

  Vince sits at the open spot—right across from Johnny Boy. He gets ten thousand (more than half his money) in chips—the buy-in for round two of this game. They are in the dining room of an empty apartment, around an oval table, nine guys with varying stacks of chips and full highball glasses. Forests of white stumps smolder in the ashtrays. The guy to Johnny’s left holds up a glass and a bottle of Crown Royal. Vince nods, even though he doesn’t like to drink when he’s winning. In the living room next door, a handful of guys sit and quietly watch TV.

  The guy to Johnny’s right is fat and friendly, wearing matching tan shirt and tan pants; it’s like a jumpsuit, the shirt tucked in at the widest part of the pants. His waistband looks like the equator. “Carmine says you cleaned his table out in two hours. Won every cent. That right?”

  Vince shrugs. “I did okay.”

  “You come here to give us that money?”

  Vince smiles. “We’ll see.”

  “I’m Ange.”

  “Vince.”

  Ange goes around the table, pointing. “Toddo. Jerry. Huck. Nino. Beans. And you met Carmine.”

  He doesn’t introduce Johnny Boy, who goes last. “John.”

  “So what’s your business, Vince?” asks Ange.

  “He makes donuts,” Carmine says.

  A few guys laugh. A kid comes to the table, whispers in Johnny Boy’s ear for almost a minute. He takes in a great deal of information, then turns and gives the kid a one-word reply.

  “We’re in plumbing,” Johnny says when the kid is gone.

  No laughter this time.

  The stakes are higher here, and the play is better; Vince loses four bills on a suited ace-king. At this table, there is no talk of work or parole or balls being busted. They talk about sports betting, how much they lost on this game or how that lousy spread was. If you didn’t know better, you might think this was a roomful of profane football coaches. They like the Packers with points against Pittsburgh (“My dick is smarter than Terry Bradshaw”), Tampa over the hapless Giants (“Fuckin’ Giants couldn’t score in Times Square”), and the Jets plus nine at New England (“My dick throws a better spiral than Steve Grogan”).

  Cards go out. Vince pulls an unsuited ace-ten. Opens.

  Vince has to admit: it’s kind of nice, being back around guys like this. Gives him a charge. The thing that people don’t realize about crooks is that they can be pretty funny—except of course when they’re not. More football. Seems everyone at the table got killed on the day’s college games: UCLA’s loss to Arizona State and, especially, Mississippi State’s upset of number-one-ranked Alabama.

  “Fuckers gave fourteen points and they go out and lose six–three. No fuckin’ way that happens, give fourteen and only score three. I don’t buy it. It’s fishy.”

  The flop. Vince gets a second ace. Bets big.

  “Only an idiot gives fourteen points,” Johnny Boy says.

  “I’m just sayin’, it ain’t out of the question that somebody got to that fuckin’ quarterback,” says Carmine.

  “Oh bullshit.”

  “I’m just sayin’ it ain’t out of the question.”

  “No. No.” Johnny Boy drains his drink and turns on the guy. “It is totally out of the question. It is completely out of the fucking question. It is fifty fuckin’ miles out of the question.”

  “Look, John. All I’m sayin’—”

  “All you’re saying is that you’re totally ignorant, Carmine. Who is gonna do this thing you’re proposing—the fuckin’ CIA?”

  Carmine’s voice is losing steam. “I’m just sayin’ it’s possible.”

  “No. No. It ain’t possible. Do you think Bear Bryant is gonna let some kid piss away a national championship? Has Alabama ever thrown enough forward passes for a quarterback to lose a game? What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

  Turn. River. No more help for Vince. He has a pair of aces. Hopefully it’s enough. Bets large. Ange and Johnny Boy stay with him.

  “I’m just sayin’ it’s possible, that’s all. You can fix anything.”

  “You stupid motherfucker.” Johnny Boy is pissed. Waves his drink and it’s immediately refilled. “You could’ve dropped this, bu
t you’re too fuckin’ stupid. Okay. You wanna know why it ain’t possible? You want me to tell you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because I didn’t know about it.”

  “Because you didn’t know about it?”

  Johnny drains another drink and it’s refilled again. “That’s right.”

  Everyone at the table is laughing except Vince, who is concentrating on the twelve hundred bucks in the center of the poker table.

  Pot’s right. Vince shows aces.

  Carmine is intent on pushing this. “So you’re saying that if you don’t know about something happening, then…then it didn’t happen?”

  “Now you’re getting it.” Johnny flips his cards: two eights. With the common cards he’s got three of a kind. Winner.

  “So if some guy in China invents a flying car but you never hear about it—”

  “Did not fucking happen.”

  “What do you think, Johnny, you’re God or somethin’?” Carmine asks.

  “No.” He sweeps in the chips. “Not yet.”

  THE FIRST THING Dupree notices about Tina DeVries McGrath is that she is curvy for a short girl, with wild, reddish brown hair and unimpressed, show-me-something eyes that make Dupree want to talk faster than he probably needs to. She wears a long nightshirt and stands in the doorway holding the screen open at the same short angle that D Greene held the door for Detective Charles.

  “I told you. I don’t know anybody named Vince Camden. Now, if you don’t mind. It’s late and my husband has to work tomorrow.”

  Dupree hands over the letter in his hands. “Did you write this?”

  She looks at the letter and Dupree sees a shudder in her lower lip. She covers her mouth and pretends to cough. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you know why the name was cut off the envelope?”

  She looks at Dupree, then down at the letter in her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about it.”

  “You didn’t write this letter?”

  She stares.

  Dupree takes the letter back. “At least tell me if you’ve had contact with him.”