Aces and Eights

by Ted Thackrey, Jr.

  He stopped talking, and this time a response seemed to be required. I had one ready.

  “Who?” I said. “And why?”

  The head nodded.

  “Proper questions,” he said. “And in proper order. Excellent. The tip came—by a route I could trace only because I began at the other end—from your old friend and fellow Vietnam veteran, Samuel Clemens Goines. And his objective was to bring you here. To Las Vegas. For the poker game he had arranged.”

  I thought it over and shook my head.

  “Not logical,” I said. “Sam didn’t have to be devious. And he wasn’t. He picked up a telephone and called me and I came. The tax problem wasn’t necessary. We were old friends; I’d have come to see him and he knew it.”

  “But not to play poker.”

  “Well...”

  “You are a professional.” The whisper-voice was strengthening again. “You enjoy the game, and it is good to enjoy your work. But all the same it is a business, your chosen craft and livelihood, and you approach it therefore with a certain respect and appreciation. And with a standard of ethics.

  “You do not, for instance, play against those who cannot afford high stakes...”

  “No profit in it,” I interjected.

  “...and you do not play against compulsives—degenerates whose secret intention is to lose their money in order to punish themselves.”

  “I also don’t play with Friday–night friends who get half–bombed and want to argue about whether a straight beats a flush,” I said. “So what? Neither does any real professional.”

  “Precisely. So Goines could hardly invite you to a ‘friendly little game.’ Yet he had to have you sitting in on that one.”

  “But...why?”

  “Precisely what I have been wondering.” The eyes seemed darker and more compelling than ever. “You see, that game was arranged at my behest, the players selected by me. And your name was not on the list.”

  He gave me a moment to digest that, but the time was wasted because it didn’t make sense to me, either.

  “I set it up,” he said, “to pay a ransom—but not for an individual. The ransom was for the city of Las Vegas itself. The whole city.

  “It was being held hostage.

  “Your friend Corner Pocket tells me you know that Sam Goines had obtained an atomic bomb and was offering it to the highest bidder. What he has not told you, because he does not know it himself as yet, is that Goines had found a buyer. He had sold the device to me.

  “But before it could be delivered it was stolen...by someone who threatened to set it off in the vicinity of Casino Center.”

  A SERMON

  (CONTINUED)

  Adolf Hitler was a bloodthirsty lunatic—and a rather passable artist. Albert Schweitzer was a gentle saint—and a thoroughly incompetent physician. We accept these contradictions and make peace with them...but we cannot seem to apply the lesson to the person we see in the mirror...

  TWENTY-FOUR

  My first impulse was to ask him what he had wanted with an atom bomb in the first place.

  But I stifled it. Beside the point now, and I wanted to hear the rest of the story. It still didn’t make sense. But it began to as he went on.

  Collecting the ransom, he explained, is always a problem for the kidnapper, as retrieval of the hostage is for those who do the paying. The game seemed a sensible solution. Two items would change hands: the ransom, disguised as a poker pot grown beyond normal proportions between two players with good fighting hands; and the bomb itself, in the form of a key to the house or apartment or room where it was hidden.

  “First the money—then the key,” Shaw said. “The two principal players to remain at the table until both items had been verified and made secure.”

  “And the other players?” I asked.

  “The Reverend Mr. Gillespie, sad to say, is a card cheat. He was there to manipulate the cards. Make sure the hands went as planned. The others were merely witnesses, not personally involved in the transaction.”

  “Did they know what was going on?”

  “No. They were simply to be my nominees, men who could be counted upon to keep the evening orderly...or tell me the truth about what happened if things went wrong.”

  “But it got out of hand anyway?”

  “More than that. Violence, I think, might have been expected. We were, after all, dealing with someone who was prepared to threaten the life an entire city. Yet this was, at least on its own terms, a rational threat intended to produce a rational result.”

  “Rational?”

  “Rational in the sense that we both wanted something and were prepared to take logical steps to obtain it: He wanted money; I wanted my bomb.”

  I didn’t even bother to reply. But he caught my reaction and responded in a way that I found oddly touching.

  The head blushed.

  “I am not a machine, sir,” the dry voice said as color rose and then faded, “present indications to the contrary notwithstanding. And not a madman, either. But think what you like. And be damned to you...”

  I considered the offer and nodded. “Fair enough,” I said.

  The eyes swore at me silently for a moment. But finally he went on.

  “In the event,” he said, “the attack on the penthouse was not rational, because it came before the ransom had been paid or the location of the bomb disclosed.”

  That made sense. Pots had run high in the game—higher even than I had expected—but certainly not the ransom for an atomic weapon. And nothing but chips had changed hands.

  “All right,” I said. “It wasn’t rational. But what has that to do with me?”

  The black eyes sharpened.

  “You,” the reflected head said, “are a wild card. The only player in that game not handpicked and approved by me, and the only one with any known connection to the gunmen. Yes, I know that Jorge Martinez was your sergeant in Vietnam. More, you dealt the poker hand—aces and eights—that was found on Danny DiMarco’s body and that seems to keep turning up in connection with all the subsequent murders.

  “And that is particularly intriguing, since it is the factor that causes other people to believe the killings were planned or ordered by me...”

  He had lost me again. So he explained.

  “James Butler Hickok,” he said, explaining, “was the true name of a US marshal and gunfighter known in legend as Wild Bill. He was a sharpshooter, scout, and spy for the Union army during the Civil War and later worked as a lawman in Hays City, Abilene, and other places. Aces and eights are known as the dead man’s hand because that was the combination of poker cards he was holding when he was shot to death in a saloon at Deadwood, Dakota Territory, on August 2, 1876.”

  Still lost.

  “Western lore,” he said, “is my hobby, and I am considered something of an expert in the field. Especially on the subject of Wild Bill Hickok, whose life has always been a particular interest. Memorabilia: I have handwritten accounts of that last encounter, the reported words of the man who killed him, and the statements of witnesses, not to mention the boots Hickok was wearing when he died, the guns said to have been cocked and in his hands. His badge. A photograph, taken with his friend Calamity Jane, who bore what is believed to be his only child.”

  “But...aces and eights?” I prompted.

  The head colored again.

  “I call it a hobby,” Shaw said. “But obsession would be a better word. And more accurate. I raised the subject only in order to make my point—that the recurrent appearance of aces and eights would tend to implicate me in all the killings.”

  “And it did that,” I said, remembering Manny’s reaction, and what the Voice of Heaven had said about his erstwhile backer a few minutes before his wife was killed.

  “Yes,” he said. “But now we come to the heart of the matter. You were there by invitation. Sam Goines had telephoned you. Personally. And taken certain measures to make sure you would accept. Can you think of any reason why he might d
o that?”

  I couldn’t.

  Or at least, only one...

  “No,” I said. “Not really. Unless you count the chance that he was behind the machine-gun attack and wanted me dead along with the rest.”

  “Unlikely. In view of the fact that he himself was one of the victims.”

  “Yes...”

  It was an opportunity to tell him that Sam hadn’t really been killed at the penthouse or anywhere else. But it wouldn’t have made anything any clearer—and besides, I was just beginning to notice the first stirring of what might be an idea in the back of my mind, and wanted a chance to nurture the puny little thing in private before telling the world.

  “Nothing else?”

  “No,” I said. “Nothing but some questions. If you want to answer them.”

  The ghost of a smile. “And if I don’t?”

  “Your privilege. I buy myself a ticket back to the Sierra just as soon as I can get to the hotel and check out.”

  The smile widened.

  “In your words, sir, fair enough.”

  “All right, then. First question: Who was your player in the game? The one you trusted to get the bomb back in return for your money?”

  “Goines. Of course.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  “Because I had bought it from him in the first place, and because we had been doing business for years. That first arms deal of his, when he bought the Belgian rifles and sold them to two other governments? The Caribbean bank where he deposited the money he had won just after getting out of the army, the one that then financed the whole transaction...that bank belonged to me, and still does. Didn’t you know?”

  I shook my head.

  Wheels within wheels. I wondered how many other people—how many governments, for that matter—would have been surprised to hear of that particular connection. But Francis Carrington Shaw seemed to treat it as no secret at all. I filed it as one more piece from the puzzle box with his name on it.

  “Second question,” I said. “Who was the player on the other side? The one representing the kidnapper?”

  The eyes blinked. “Colonel Connor.”

  I think that was supposed to get some sort of reaction from me. But it didn’t, and after a moment he went on.

  “David Patrick Connor, if that’s his real name—and it could be—claims to be Irish-born. From County Tyrone. And to have gained his initial military experience and American citizenship from service in the early stages of Vietnam.”

  “Green Berets?”

  “Marines, I believe. There is a record of a man by that name. A sergeant.”

  “But not a colonel.”

  “The military title appears, however, to be at least semi-legitimate. From a time when he was an instructor–tactical officer in Biafra.”

  “Professional mere?”

  The invisible shoulders seemed to shrug.

  “Whatever that may mean. The term has come upon hard times.”

  “Yes.”

  No need for discussion on that point, and there was a silence while I waited for him to go on. But the eyes were closed and I thought for a moment that I was witnessing one of the impromptu sleep sessions he had warned me about.

  “Forgive me,” he said, the eyes snapping open again. “I was searching for more information concerning the colonel, but all I can find is the fact that he is wanted in one or two places around the African continent.”

  “Nigeria, for one?”

  “For one. And elsewhere—among the Arab states.”

  That surprised me a little, but for the moment I was less interested in the colonel’s background than in his more recent activities.

  “He is the one who stole the bomb?” I asked.

  Shaw seemed surprised.

  “Certainly not,” he said. “As Sam Goines was my nominee in the game, the colonel was put forward as surrogate for those holding the stolen weapon. And has been nominated again, in the same role.”

  “Again?”

  “Oh, yes. You see, it seems that I am back in contact with the extortionists, and they want to try the exchange again. Another game. That’s why you’re here. This time I want you to play my hand.”

  Ask and ye shall receive...

  For the second time in less than a week, I found myself freely invited into a game I’d thought I would have to arrange for myself or even elbow my way into. And it was a little unnerving.

  The last serendipitous invitation had turned out to be a booby trap I still didn’t fully understand, and the man staring at me in the mirror now was an even chancier proposition. Byzantine to the core. Absolutely no credentials as an altruist.

  A schemer.

  A user.

  A main-chance, self-aggrandizing son of a bitch that nobody in his right mind would trust for a moment.

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Where do they want to play this time, and how soon do they want to do it...?”

  Corner Pocket drove me back to the Scheherazade in his own car and he didn’t have much to say on the way. Which was just as well. I was busy with my own thoughts. They were mostly interrogatives, and one or two of them centered on him. I wondered how much he knew of what had gone on in the white-painted room.

  Surely the Mormon Mafia had been able to plant a bug in there.

  And if not, Corner Pocket would have supplied the need.

  Yet Francis Carrington Shaw seemed to inspire a peculiar devotion and compliancy in those who worked closely with him, and thinking about it in retrospect I had to admit the bare possibility that my conversation with the man in the iron lung had been as private as he had seemed to think it would be.

  “Don’t want the front entrance,” Corner Pocket said, turning off the main highway toward the Paradise Road entrance to the Scheherazade’s grounds.

  “No,” I said.

  We angled through the sunken rear parking lot, and I thought for a moment he was going to take the ramp to the VIP garage, but instead we drifted around to the side entrance near the place where Jorge Martinez’s body had landed. A lifetime ago.

  “None of my business,” he said, when we had come to a stop, “but you want to be kind of careful where you put your feet, dealing with the Man.”

  I looked at him and waited. There had to be more.

  “He’s always been straight with me,” Corner Pocket said. “And that’s one of several reasons why I still run his errands and answer his questions. Aside from everything else, it’s an experience just to watch him decide how to handle a problem. That is one double-tough, brilliant old mother...and being sick the way he is hasn’t damaged his brains one little bit.”

  Still nothing to say.

  “But he can only be smart for himself. You got to play your own hand, Preacher. And don’t you ever forget it.”

  I waited again, but he didn’t seem to have anything else to say so I got out and he drove away without a word, and I went inside and took an elevator to my room.

  No one was waiting inside this time—experience had made me doubly wary, and I took time to sense the surroundings after opening the door—but the red light on the telephone was blinking away in the darkness, and I went over to pick it up without turning on the lights.

  It was the desk.

  Several calls for me in the box, the clerk said, but all of them from just two numbers. Both of them inside numbers at the hotel.

  The first I recognized as Maxey’s.

  I’d canceled our dinner date by phone before leaving the room with Chick and Lancelot. But I hadn’t told her where I was going or why, and unless she’d changed a lot over the years she was going to want to know a lot of answers. I turned a few of them over in my mind, trying to decide which information was safe for both of us, but her phone didn’t answer and I gave up after ten rings and flashed the hotel operator to leave a message that I’d tried to return her call. Maxey would be furious.

  The other number was a stranger to me.

  I punched its digits into th
e hotel telephone-computer system and waited. It rang five times without result, and I was about to hang up and leave a second message with the operator when the other instrument was picked up and someone with a flat Western accent said, “Yes?”

  Happy Apodaca.

  “Operator says you wanted to talk to me.”

  A snort. “And she said right.” The judge’s voice contained an asperity that he didn’t trouble to conceal. “Thought we had a kind of an appointment, like, to talk things over. In private.”

  I thought about it and he was right and had an apology coming. Not that he would be interested.

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “Where and when?”

  “Now, goddammit!” No doubt about the peevishness this time. The judge was not the type to bide his time willingly. “I been waiting half the day, you Bible-thumping bastid!”

  I couldn’t help grinning. It was just about the first totally honest reaction I’d heard since I hit town.

  “You got it,” I said. “Where? My room? Yours? On the phone, right now?”

  “Don’t be a damn fool.”

  The words were still acidulous, but the tone was back to the outer limits of civility.

  “You name the place.”

  He thought it over. But only for a moment.

  “Garage,” he said.

  “Which one?”

  “Which one you think, you crossroading son of a bitch! My car’ll be parked next to yours.”

  The receiver banged and went dead, and I put it back in its cradle.

  One way and another, the VIP garage of the Scheherazade was getting to be popular in a way the architects had never intended. I wondered how long it would be before the management decided to put up a grandstand for spectators and start selling tickets.

  Thinking about it en route to the garage, I realized that the judge had good reason for being upset.

  Of all the people I’d been talking to since the shoot-up in the penthouse—and it suddenly occurred to me that there had been a remarkable number, all things considered—the top name on the list should have been Judge Happy Apodaca’s.