by John Harvey
Nobody said anything.
‘Well, we will find it, you know. And I’m not going to start in here. I’m going to start out front and tear Sal’s bar to fucking pieces. Then we’ll do the same to his office. Break up every piece of furniture. Toss every drawer . . . Now, come on, boys, Sal doesn’t deserve that, does he?’
Keller sighed and nodded to Stanton, who nodded toward the cupboard above the coffee machine. One cop took out two cigar boxes.
‘Jesus our Lord,’ Fanelli said, flipping through them. ‘There’s gotta be close to a half-million here.’
He glanced at the table. ‘Those’re your chips, huh?’ he said to Tony. The boy didn’t answer but Fanelli didn’t seem to expect him to. He laughed and looked over the players. ‘And you call yourselves men – letting a boy whip your asses at poker.’
‘I’m not a boy.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ The detective turned back to the boxes one more time. He walked over to the officers. They held a brief, whispered conference, then they nodded and stepped out of the room.
‘My boys need to check on a few things,’ Fanelli said. ‘They’ve got to go corroborate some testimony or something. That’s a great word, isn’t it? “Corroborate”.’ He laughed. ‘I love to say that.’ He paced through the room, stopped at the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. ‘Why the hell doesn’t anybody ever drink booze at high-stakes games? Afraid you’ll get a queen mixed with a jack?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Keller said, ‘yeah.’
The cop sipped the coffee and said in a low voice, ‘Listen up, assholes. You especially, junior.’ He pointed a finger at Tony and continued to pace. ‘This happened at a . . . let’s say a difficult time for me. We’re concerned about some serious crimes that happen to be going down in another part of town.’
Serious crimes, Keller was thinking. Cops don’t talk that way. What the hell’s he getting at?
A smile. ‘So here’s the deal. I don’t want to spend time booking you right now. It’d take me away from those other cases, you know. Now, you’ve lost the money one way or the other. If I take you in and book you the cash goes into evidence and when you’re convicted, which you will be, every penny goes to the state. But if . . . let’s just say if there was no evidence, well, I’d have to let you off with a warning. But that’d work out okay for me because I could get on to the other cases. The important cases.’
‘That’re being corroborated right now?’ Tony asked.
‘Shut up, punk,’ the detective muttered, echoing Keller’s thought.
‘So what do you say?’
The men looked at each other.
‘Up to you,’ the cop said. ‘Now what’s it going to be?’
Keller surveyed the faces of the others around him. He glanced at Tony, who grimaced and nodded in disgust. Keller said to the detective, ‘We’d be happy to help you out here, Fanelli. Do our part to help you clean up some – what’d you call it? Serious crimes?’
Stanton muttered, ‘We have to keep Ellridge the show-place that it is.’
‘And the citizens thank you for your efforts,’ Detective Fanelli said, stuffing the money into his suit pockets.
The detective unhooked the handcuffs, stuffed them in his pockets too and walked back out into the alley without another word.
The players exchanged looks of relief – all except Tony, of course, on whose face the expression was one of pure dismay. After all, he was the big loser in all this.
Keller shook his hand. ‘You played good tonight, kid. Sorry about that.’
The boy nodded and, with an anemic wave to everyone, wandered out the back door.
The Chicago players chattered nervously for a few minutes, then nodded farewells and left the smoky room. Stanton asked Keller if he wanted another beer but the gambler shook his head and the old man walked into the bar. Keller sat down at the table, absently picked up a deck of cards, shuffled them and began to play solitaire. The shock of the bust was virtually gone now; what bothered him was losing to the boy, an okay player but not a great one.
But after a few minutes of playing, his spirits improved and he reminded himself of another one of the Rules According to Keller: smart always beats out luck in the end.
Well, the kid’d been lucky this once. But there’d be other games, other chances to make the odds work and to relieve Tony, or others like him, of their bankrolls.
There was an endless supply of cocky youngsters to bleed dry, Keller reckoned and placed the black ten on the red jack.
Standing on the overpass, watching a train disappear into the night, Tony Stigler tried not to think about the money he’d just won – and then had stolen away from him.
Nearly a half-million.
Papers and dust swirled along the road bed behind the train. Tony watched it absently and replayed something that Keller had said to him.
It’s knowing everything about the game – even the little shit – that separates the men from the boys in poker.
But that wasn’t right, Tony reflected. You only had to know one thing. That no matter how good you are, poker’s always a game of chance.
And that’s not as good as a sure thing.
He looked around, making sure he was alone, then reached into his pocket and extracted the Starbucks cup lid. He lifted off the false plastic disk on the bottom and shut off a tiny switch. He then wrapped it carefully in a bubble-wrap envelope and replaced it in his pocket. The device was his own invention. A miniature camera in the sipping hole of the lid had scanned each card whenever Tony’d been dealing and the tiny processor had sent the suit and rank to the computer in Tony’s car. All he had to do was tap the lid in a certain place to tell the computer how many people were in the game, so the program he’d written would know everyone’s hand. It determined how many cards he should draw and whether to bet or fold on each round. The computer then broadcast its instructions to the earpiece of his glasses, which vibrated according to a code, and Tony acted accordingly.
‘Cheating for Dummies’, he called the program.
A perfect plan, perfectly executed – the only flaw being that he hadn’t thought about the goddamn police stealing his winnings.
Tony looked at his watch. Nearly 1 a.m. No hurry to get back; his uncle was out of town on another one of his business trips. What to do? he wondered. Marconi Pizza was still open and he decided he’d stop by and see his buddy, the one who’d tipped him to Keller’s game. Have a slice and a Coke.
Gritting footsteps sounded behind him and he turned, seeing Larry Stanton walking stiffly down the alley, heading for the bus stop.
‘Hey,’ the old guy called, noticing him and walking over. ‘Licking your wounds? Or thinking of jumping?’ He nodded toward the train tracks.
Tony gave a sour laugh. ‘Can you believe that? Fucking bad luck.’
‘Ah, raids’re a part of the game, if you’re playing illegal,’ Stanton said. ‘You got to build ’em into the equation.’
‘A half-million dollar part of the equation?’ Tony muttered.
‘That part’s gotta sting, true,’ Stanton said, nodding. ‘But it’s better than a year in jail.’
‘I suppose.’
The old man yawned. ‘Better get on home and pack. I’m going back to Florida tomorrow. Who’d spend the winter in Ellridge if they didn’t have to?’
‘You have anything left?’ Tony asked.
‘Money? . . . A little.’ A scowl. ‘But a hell of a lot less than I did, thanks to you and Keller.’
‘Hold on.’ The boy took out his wallet and handed the man a hundred dollars.
‘I don’t take charity.’
‘Call it a loan.’
Stanton debated for a moment. Then, embarrassed, he took the bill and pocketed it. ‘Thanks . . .’ He shoved the cash away fast. ‘Better get going. Buses stop running soon. Well, good playing with you, son. You’ve got potential. You’ll go places.’
Yeah, the boy thought, I sure as hell will go places. The smart on
es, the innovators, the young . . . we’ll always beat people like you and Keller in the end. It’s the way of the world. He watched Grandpa limp away, old and broke. Pathetic, the boy thought. Shoot me before I become him.
Tony pulled his stocking cap on, stepped away from the railing and walked toward his car, his mind already thinking of who the next mark should be.
Twenty minutes later the gassy municipal bus vehicle eased to the curb and Larry Stanton climbed off.
He walked down the street until he came to a dark intersection, the yellow caution light blinking for traffic on the main street, the red blinking for that on the cross. He turned the corner and stopped. In front of him was a navy-blue Crown Victoria. On the trunk were words: Police Interceptor.
And leaning against that trunk was the lean figure of Detective George Fanelli.
The cop pushed away from the car and walked up to Stanton. The two other officers from the bust early that night were standing nearby. Both Fanelli and Stanton looked around and then shook hands. The detective took an envelope out of his pocket. Handed it to Stanton. ‘Your half – two hundred and twenty two thousand.’
Stanton didn’t bother to count it. He put the cash away.
‘This was a good one,’ the cop said.
‘That it was,’ Stanton agreed.
He and the vice cop ran one of these scams every year when Stanton was up from Florida. Stanton’d work his way into somebody’s confidence, losing money in a couple of private games and then, on high-stakes night, tip the cops off ahead of time. Fanelli’d blame the bust on some anonymous snitch, take the bank as a bribe and release everybody; poker players were so happy to be able to stay out of jail and keep playing that they never complained.
As for Stanton, the gaff like this had always suited him better than gambling.
I play all right but the odds’re still against you. Anything serious I do with money? I make sure the odds’re on my side.
‘Hey, Larry,’ one of the cops called to Stanton. ‘Didn’t mean to be an asshole when I collared you. Just thought it’d be more, you know, realistic.’
‘Handled it just right, Moscawitz. You’re a born actor.’
Stanton and the detective walked past the unmarked squad car and continued down the dirty sidewalk. They’d known each other for years, ever since Stanton had worked as head of security at Midwest Metal Products.
‘You okay?’ Fanelli glanced down at Stanton’s limp.
‘I was racing somebody on a jet ski up at Lake Geneva. Hit a wake. It’s nothing.’
‘So when’re you going back to Tampa?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘You flying down?’
‘Nope. Driving. He pulled keys out of his pocket and opened the door of a new BMW sports car.
Fanelli looked it over admiringly. ‘Sold the Lexus?’
‘Decided to keep it.’ A nod toward the sleek silver wheels. ‘I just wanted something sexier, you know. The ladies in my golf club love a man in a sports car. Even if he’s got knobby knees.’
Fanelli shook his head. ‘Felt bad about that kid. Where’d he get the money to sit in on a high-stakes game?’
‘Tuition money or something. He inherited it from his folks.’
‘You mean we just dipped an orphan? I’ll be in confession for a month.’
‘He’s an orphan who cheated the pants off Keller and everybody else.’
‘What?’
Stanton laughed. ‘Took me a while to tip to it. Finally figured it out. He must’ve had some kind of electronic shiner or camera or something in his coffee cup lid. He was always playing with it on the table, moving it close to the cards when he dealt – and the only time he won big was on the deal. Then after the bust I checked out his car – there was a computer and some kind of antenna in the back seat.’
‘Damn,’ Fanelli said. ‘That was stupid. He’ll end up dead, he’s not careful. I’m surprised Keller didn’t spot it.’
‘Keller was too busy running his own scam, trying to take the kid.’ Stanton told him the pro’s set-up of Tony.
The detective laughed. ‘He tried to take the boy, the boy tried to take the table and it was us old guys who took ’em both. There’s a lesson there someplace.’ The men shook hands in farewell. ‘See you next spring, my friend. Let’s try Greenpoint. I hear they’ve got some good high-stakes games over there.’
‘We’ll do that.’ Stanton nodded and fired up the sports car. He drove to the intersection, carefully checked for cross traffic and turned on to the main street that would take him to the expressway.
CHANCE
John Harvey
The second or third time Kiley went out with Kate Keenan, it had been to the theatre, an opening at the Royal Court. Her idea. A journalist with a column in the Independent and a wide brief, she was on most people’s B list at least.
The play was set in a Brick Lane squat, two shiftless young men and a meant-to-be fifteen-year-old girl: razors, belt buckles, crack cocaine. Simulated sex and pain. One of the men seemed to be under the illusion, much of the time, that he was a dog. At the interval, they elbowed their way o the bar through louche suits and little black dresses with tasteful cleavage, New Labour voters to the core. ‘Challenging,’ said a voice on Kiley’s left. ‘A bit full on,’ said another. ‘But relevant. Absolutely relevant.’
‘So what do you think?’ Kate asked.
‘I think I’ll meet you outside.’
‘What do you mean?’
She knew what he meant.
They took the tube, barely talking, to Highbury and Islington, a stone’s throw from where Kate lived. Across the road she turned towards him, a hand upon his arm. ‘I don’t think this is going to work out, do you?’
Kiley shrugged and thought probably not.
Between Highbury Corner and the Archway, almost the entire length of the Holloway Road, there were only three fights in progress, one between two women in slit skirts and halter tops, who clawed and swore at each other, rolling on the broad pavement outside the Rocket while a crowd bayed them on. Propped inside a telephone box close by the railway bridge, a man stared out frozen-eyed, a hypodermic needle sticking out of the scabbed flesh of his bare leg. Who needs theatre, Kiley asked himself?
His evenings free, Kiley was at liberty to take his usual seat in the Lord Nelson, a couple of pints of Marston’s Pedigree before closing, then a slow stroll home through the back-doubles to his second-floor flat in a shabby terraced house among other shabby houses, too far from a decent primary school for the upwardly mobile middle-class professionals to have appropriated in any numbers.
Days, he sat and waited for the telephone to ring, the fax machine to chatter into life; the floor was dotted with books he’d started to read and would never finish, pages from yesterday’s paper were spread out across the table haphazardly. Afternoons, if he wasn’t watching a film at the local Odeon, he’d follow the racing on TV – Kempton, Doncaster, Haydock Park. Investigations, read the ad in the local press, Private and Confidential. All kinds of security work undertaken. Ex-Metropolitan Police. Kiley was never certain whether that last put off as many potential clients as it impressed.
Seven years in the Met, two seasons in professional soccer and then freelance: Kiley’s CV so far.
The last paid work he’d done had been for Adrian Costain, a sports agent and PR consultant Kiley knew from one of his earlier lives. Kiley’s task: babysitting an irascible yet charming American movie actor in London on a brief promotional visit. After several years of mayhem and marriages to Meg or Jennifer or Julia, he was rebuilding his career as a serious performer with a yearning to play Chekhov or Shakespeare.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Costain had said, ‘keep him away from the cocaine and out of the tabloids.’
It was fine until the last evening, a celebrity binge at a Members Only watering hole in Soho. What exactly went down in the small men’s toilet between the second and third floors was difficult to ascertain for certain, but the res
ulting black eye and bloodied lip were front-page juice to every picture editor between Wapping and Faringdon. Today the UK, tomorrow the world.
Costain was incandescent.
‘What did you expect me to do,’ Kiley asked, ‘go in there and hold his dick?’
‘If necessary, yes.’
‘You’re not paying me enough, Adrian.’
He thought it would be a while before Costain put work his way again.
He put through a call to Maggie Hambling, a solicitor in Kentish Town for whom he sometimes did a little investigating, either straining his eyes at the local land registry or long hours hunkered down behind the wheel of his car, waiting for evidence of some small near-lethal indiscretion.
But Maggie was in court and her secretary dismissed him with a cold promise to tell her he’d called. The connection was broken almost before the words were out of her mouth. Kiley pulled on his coat and went out on to the street; for early December it was almost mild, the sky opaque and indecipherable. There was a route he took when he wanted to put some distance beneath his feet: north up Highgate Hill, past the spot where Dick Whittington was supposed to have turned again, and through Waterlow Park, down alongside the cemetery and into the Heath, striking out past the ponds to Kenwood House, a loop then that took him round the side of Parliament Hill and down towards the tennis courts, the streets that would eventually bring him home.
Tommy Duggan was waiting for him, sitting on the low wall outside the house, checking off winners in the Racing Post.
‘How are you, Tommy?’
‘Pretty fine.’
Duggan, deceptively slight and sandy-haired, had been one of the best midfielders Kiley had ever encountered in his footballing days, Kiley on his way up through the semi-pro ranks when Duggan was slipping down. During Kiley’s brace of years with Charlton Athletic, Duggan had come and gone within the space of two months. Bought in and sold on.
‘Still like a flutter,’ Kiley said, eyeing the paper at Duggan’s side.
‘Academic interest only nowadays.’ Duggan smiled. ‘Isn’t that what they say?’
