Aces and Eights

by Ted Thackrey, Jr.

  Meanwhile the Voice of Heaven on Earth was actually having a pretty good night.

  The first few hands had seemed to draw him back from whatever nightmare he had been living through when we first arrived, and as time passed he seemed almost able to submerge himself in the game. Three or four times he was able to milk moderate hands for respectable sums, and for almost an hour—until the colonel trapped him into a betting match he couldn’t win and nearly couldn’t get out of, either—buying three out of four pots on the second round by moving in heavily before the other players’ hands were fully developed.

  The colonel’s move broke him of that habit, and immediately afterward he made the first of what turned out to be a series of visits to the bathroom, and when he came back, the shine in his eyes told me everything I needed to know about what had happened in there.

  But the twin demons of bereavement and guilt were temporarily blocked and held at a distance, and that was probably all to the good. Or as good as he was ever going to let it be.

  Time passed.

  The dealer changed to a new deck and dumped the old one into the basket beside his foot, and play resumed.

  I waited for the colonel to make his move.

  And he waited for me to make mine.

  The gloves finally came off an hour or so after midnight.

  The colonel and I were alone in the third round of a pot that had grown to more than $200,000 before the Voice of Heaven finally dropped out, and now we were bidding for the fourth exposed card.

  He had paired fours and an ace.

  I had three clubs exposed, not in sequence, and another concealed.

  His pair had bet $50,000 and I had bumped it $10,000 to see what he wanted to do, and he came back with my $10,000 plus $40,000 more and I needed only a moment or two to decide my hand was worth the money. So I pushed in the chips and the dealer gave him an ace, for two pair showing.

  My $100,000 had bought a useless jack of hearts.

  I took it without comment and waited for him to lead off. But he took his time, and that was all right with me because I had two bits of information he didn’t: My hole cards were a four of clubs and the ace of diamonds, and the fourth ace was already gone.

  Unless he had the last four in the hole, his only chance was to catch it on the final card...which is pretty long odds. But the pot was big enough, and he was in deep enough, to make it worth thinking about. The wait went on for a minute. And then two. And then three. He still had a good stake in front of him and could buy more chips after the hand was done if he had to. But money wasn’t the object here, and we both knew it. Somehow he had to get a piece of information from me—get me to put it in the pot against the picture he had shown me before we started to play. And in the end I think that was the deciding factor.

  He pushed $50,000 into the center of the table and looked at me. I matched it, and the dealer gave us our final cards.

  His got a single glance, and then nothing. His face was still unreadable, and I had to admire the control.

  My own seventh card hadn’t been the club I needed. But it had paired one of my hole cards...and left the colonel with a tactical decision to bend the mind. I had caught the four of hearts.

  His hand was still best.

  But he didn’t know it.

  I sat still and wondered how he would handle the problem: The next few minutes would tell me more about him than I could have found out reading a private detective’s report. He riffled the chips, back-rolled one of them a couple of times, counted his total stake, looked suddenly at me and then away. And opened with $50,000.

  My turn.

  The bet he’d made was good technique. Excellent, in fact. Too high to indicate lack of confidence, but low enough to look a lot like a man trying to milk a winner. All things being equal, it should have worked—convinced me that he had a full house, and driven me out of the pot.

  But all things weren’t equal.

  I drummed my fingers, looking at his cards and at the pot and then at him again—and pushed my whole stake into the center of the table.

  Still no message from the colonel’s wa. But his hands relaxed for a moment of inner exultation and then tightened once more—ready for the big moment of the game. Ready to win.

  He had been dropping occasional hands for the past hour or so, and the pile of chips in front of him was too small to cover my bet. He counted it and looked at the pot and waited, but I wanted the words to come from him.

  “Table stakes, Preacher,” he said. “I’m forty thousand short. You’ll have to pull some back if you want to call.”

  I shook my head.

  “You’re still holding,” I said. “The picture you showed me. It’s there on the table.”

  He almost licked his lips, but now was the time to find out how I wanted to handle the bet we had come here to make. So he asked.

  “The picture’s worth more than forty,” he said. “To me, anyway.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re holding, too.”

  All right. The only thing left on my side of the table except for the seven cards was an envelope, blank–faced and sealed, that I had taken from my inside coat pocket and placed there when we sat down to play. He knew what had to be in it. But he wanted to hear it from me.

  “Nothing in the envelope but a note,” I said. “With an address on it. Your picture doesn’t have that.”

  His eyes thought it over, and his hand went into the side pocket of his jacket and brought out another blank envelope, and he wrote something on the back of the picture, shielding the writing with his hand, and put it in the envelope and sealed it.

  “Now there’s an address,” he said.

  “Then let’s do it,” I said.

  And he almost did.

  The sealed envelope went down beside the chips and the hands moved in behind the whole mass to push it into the center, and there was no way I was going to raise or call that bet. The bluff he thought he was running was really no bluff at all, whether he knew it or not. His two pair really were best. But at the last moment he hesitated. And thought it over. And backed off.

  “On second thought,” he said, relaxing and taking his hands away from the chips, “maybe not. Maybe you’ve really got some cards over there...”

  He shook his head. “You’re a good player, Preacher. Better than I remembered. Better than they told me. And lucky. Thanks, but no thanks. I think that’s as far as I want to go this time.”

  He favored me with a broad smile and leaned back, stretching and clasping his hands behind his head.

  And suddenly I could see him.

  Clearly.

  The way a man plays poker is individual, unique to him alone, and does not change with time. It can grow and it can be honed and refined and sharpened. But, like handwriting or fingerprints, the basic pattern remains.

  In that instant, the elements of the cards and the betting and the intelligence behind them had finally merged and showed me the face that had been hidden behind the beard across the table. Told me what kind of game I had been playing ever since I got to Las Vegas.

  And who had been playing the other hand.

  The Voice of Heaven had made another of his regular visits to the bathroom and returned bright-eyed, but his grasp of ongoing events was getting closer and closer to zero. I could understand—dimly—why Francis Carrington Shaw had wanted him in the first game. But why had he put him in this one?

  Corner Pocket, however, was something else again.

  As a poker player he was about amateur-average, just right for Friday nights in the neighborhood. But he knew exactly what was going on around him and I was sure he had heard and understood most of what had passed between the colonel and me. Except for the most important part...and that was still mine alone.

  I hugged the knowledge to me and tried to keep my face composed and my emotions under control, playing cards with the front of my mind while fitting all the pieces together in the back room.

  F
ull understanding is a luxury, though. It could wait. The chance to use what I knew—at once and with real effect—came just a few hands later.

  Corner Pocket’s luck had seemed to be changing and he was still in the pot after the third round, showing three sevens against the colonel’s five-six-nine of hearts and the paired kings and lone queen that had kept me in the pot. He offered $5,000 for a look at the sixth card, caught the eight of hearts. And folded.

  I winced, and the colonel favored me with what might have been a wry smile.

  “Takes all kinds,” he said.

  I didn’t reply. My pair was next and I paid to find out if I could improve; worth the money, since one of my hole cards was another queen and I hadn’t seen either of the others fall as yet. I pushed my checks in and the card I had bought was a trey, which was just dandy because I had another one in the hole beside the concealed queen. But all it did was give me three pair. No improvement.

  The colonel paid and caught a deuce. Of hearts.

  That’s why they call it gambling.

  My kings were still technically best, no matter what the realities of the situation, which left me facing an immediate crunch. The chances of improvement were excellent. No doubt about that. Any one of three cards would give me a winning hand; Corner Pocket’s eight of hearts had removed any chance that the colonel could pick up a straight flush. But the colonel’s chance of improvement was still just as good as mine. Several hearts were gone, to be sure. But several were left, too.

  I counted $50,000 and pushed it into the center of the table.

  The colonel looked at it.

  And at me.

  And grinned.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s boogie!”

  He counted a hundred of the dove-gray $500 chips, pushed them into the pot, and waited for the dealer to do his thing. The final cards arrived before us, facedown.

  Mine was another trey.

  I concentrated on breathing, taking over manual control for a moment or two until saika was in control of the tanden reflex center.

  His face told me nothing and his wa was, as before, too deeply layered to touch. But for the moment it didn’t matter.

  For now, the problem was to see how far the hand could be milked. Perfect cards rarely present perfect opportunities, even in draw poker; I have caught the occasional royal flush in my time but never yet made any real money on one. In fact, the highest single score I ever racked—in the millions, believe it—was on a stingy little two pair that wouldn’t ordinarily have been worth a first-round bet. Hell of a game.

  I stacked up another $50,000 and pushed it forward.

  The colonel’s face didn’t change.

  But his hands were ready, and I could see that he had made all the decisions he needed to make. He didn’t believe the cards and he didn’t believe my bet, and he wanted to take full advantage. The only question was whether I was more likely to bite on a low bet or a high one—raise me enough to keep me coming, or go for broke and take a chance on scaring me off?

  He went for a $50,000 raise.

  My turn.

  Poker table dramatics are an art in their own right. Less is usually best, and interpretation depends more on small gestures than on spoken lines or facial expression. In this case, I was doing an impression of a man caught bluffing and trying to bluster his way out of it. So I spent nearly a minute studying a pot I had already counted and taking another peek at hole cards I could have recited in my sleep. And fiddled with a button on my coat. And riffled a double stack of chips and merged them with one hand.

  And bumped the action another $50,000.

  He looked at the money and at me. He was still short. Meeting my raise would cost the rest of his chips—and bring us back to the point we’d almost reached the last time we’d bumped heads. But this time he had the cards. He grinned at me and pushed the whole pile into the pot, dropping the envelope that contained the picture on top.

  “Guts, Preacher?” he said.

  I looked at him for a long minute and tried to feel something and was surprised to discover that I couldn’t. Too much had happened. Too many years and too many decisions and too much money and too much power. And too many deaths.

  There was nothing to say as I picked up my own envelope and placed it on top of his. And waited for him to turn the only one of his hole cards that mattered.

  His seventh card was the king of hearts, which filled up his flush, and he favored me with the widest smile he’d allowed himself all night.

  “No bluff this time, Preacher,” he said.

  I didn’t smile back.

  “You’re still not out of here,” I said. “And the place is crawling with security types who look like a SWAT team. How do you figure to get past them?”

  His smile never wavered.

  “No problem,” he said. “You’ll walk me out. That’s why I told the Man I wanted you to play his hand in this game—because I could trust you not to welsh. You’re a man of honor, Preacher.”

  It was a nice speech, and it might even have been true. But I shook my head.

  “You take a lot for granted,” I said. “Too much...”

  I turned my own seventh card to show the full house—kings and treys—that it had built for me and let him look at it for a minute. His face froze and so did the hand he had moved into position to rake in the pot.

  “And you’re still a bluffer,” I said when I was sure he was listening again. “You were bluffing when you came here, because you and I both know you didn’t have an atom bomb to bet with. Someone stole it last night. And you were bluffing about Maxey, too, weren’t you?”

  Corner Pocket suddenly came to life and started to ask a question of his own, but what he saw in my face seemed to stop him.

  The colonel shrugged. “She’s safe,” he said, “in her suite at the Scheherazade.”

  I nodded.

  “Always bet into a known bluffer,” I said. “Nick the Greek called that the Third Commandment of Poker. But until a few minutes ago, I thought I was playing against someone called Colonel Connor, so I guess I can be forgiven for taking so long to obey it. And in a way I’m kind of grateful.

  “It’s not every day a man gets to be present for an honest-to-God resurrection. Maybe we ought to have a moment of prayer.

  “Or maybe not.

  “Gentlemen, won’t you all say hello to our old friend, Samuel Clemens Goines...back from the dead, and still bluffing.”

  A SERMON

  (CONCLUDED)

  Accept reality! And...have a nice eternity.

  THIRTY-ONE

  There was a moment of silence. And then everyone tried to talk at once. And then more silence.

  And then the colonel laughed.

  “Sam Goines is dead,” he said. “You saw him, and so did Corner Pocket, here. Both of you were at the hospital when he—”

  “Terry McDuff is dead,” I said, cutting him off in midlie. “Terrence Lyle McDuff, a poor little road-company actor who never had any luck in his whole life.”

  Corner Pocket was boiling over, ready to explode in my face, and I turned to him with the first real apology of the day.

  “I played cards against McDuff all night and all morning and never knew he wasn’t really Sam until he was dead,” I said. “And even then I didn’t know who he really was or what was going on. Saying I’m sorry isn’t much—”

  “No, it’s not,” Corner Pocket said.

  “—but it’s all I have to offer.”

  The colonel wasn’t done. “No apologies needed on either side,” he said. “I’ll lay it out for you again, and I want you to know I can prove every word I say: Sam Goines is dead. And he is going to stay that way.”

  I turned back to face him and waited for him to go on.

  “Identity, in the part of the world where we live,” he said, “is vestigial. You carry it with you, in your wallet. Or get it out of a file somewhere. Documents and forms, tenuous enough back in the days when it was all on
paper. But at least the paper was real. Now even that much reality is gone, and the bits of data that say who is who are all on magnetic tape or disks, waiting for the program user to make them real again.”

  Corner Pocket shook his head emphatically.

  “It won’t fly, Colonel,” he said. “Somewhere there’s a record still on paper. Something...”

  The colonel nodded, no longer smiling but still confident. “Of course some of it’s still on paper,” he said. “The original birth certificate. Some school records. Pictures in an old high school annual. Things like that. But they don’t count.”

  “They—”

  “They show faces and achievements,” the colonel went on. “But not identity. Those records are different—fingerprints and dental X rays. All on microfiche. And therefore vulnerable.”

  “Your foot,” I said. “The toes you lost in Vietnam. That’s how I knew the man who died in the hospital wasn’t Sam Goines.”

  The colonel smiled again.

  “Sure it was,” he said. “Check those records today, and they’ll show Sam Goines was in that hospital for an appendectomy. And you’ll find the scar to prove it on his body.”

  “While David Connor—”

  “—was in a naval hospital at San Diego recovering from several bullet wounds, one of which resulted in the loss of a couple of toes. No, Preacher. No, no. Sam Goines is dead, just as he was intended to be.”

  I looked at the man who had been my friend and wondered how he had gone so far. Had it always been there inside him, hidden and waiting? Or had it come later? Seven people, seven human beings with lives and friends and hopes and memories, had died in two days and if he hadn’t pulled their chains personally, he had given the orders. And it was nothing to him, just a plan carried out. A matter of efficiency.

  So maybe he was right after all.