Lucky at Cards hcc-28 Read online

  No reason to stay in town. No reason at all. I had found a bad girl, and she had made me do something I shouldn’t have done, made me make a big play for the money and the girl—that age-old American dream.

  I didn’t have the money and I didn’t have the girl and I didn’t even want either of them very much anymore.

  And then I’d found another girl, a good girl, and I had to run away and leave her. I didn’t want to, but I had to, because that was the only way it would play.

  Beautiful.

  There was a bottle of Cutty Sark somewhere around the apartment, but I would be alone there, and solitary drinking didn’t appeal. I found a bar on Orchard close enough to empty to be reasonably quiet. I sat as far from the jukebox as I could get and I had a couple of drinks. At first I tried to work things out in my mind, but it didn’t take me long to see I wasn’t going to get anywhere that way. I gave up and let the liquor do the job it was hired for.

  A long time ago life had been infinitely simpler.

  A long time ago, doing magic tricks in third-rate strip joints and fourth-rate hotels with an occasional birthday party or bar mitzvah thrown in. A long time ago, Maynard the Magnificent instead of Wizard the Mechanic. A long time ago.

  There was never much in the way of money in those days. There was never the big score, never the feeling of being on the inside of a swinging operation. But it was cleaner then, and fresher, and you never wound up putting yourself in a box. A person can become too hip, too much with it.

  The squares have a better time.

  Maynard the Old Philosopher. I scooped my change off the bar top and left the tavern. I drove home, parked the car. The drinks had not done their job. I was still sober, and it was a bad time to be sober. I parked the Ford and headed for the apartment.

  My key in the lock, turning. And a funny feeling, hard to describe, harder still to explain. A feeling that someone somewhere had taken the play away from me, that I wasn’t reading the backs right. Coin your own cliché? brother. An itchy, uncomfortable feeling.

  I opened the door.

  He was there, in my chair, his hands in his lap and his feet on the floor and his mouth set in a firm thin line. He should have had a gun in his hand, maybe, but he didn’t. He just sat there like a boulder and stared at me.

  Murray Rogers.

  He said, “Close the door.”

  I didn’t move. I read his poker face and I felt the grim hard brittle tension in the air and I stood in place like a statue.

  “Close the door,” he said. “Come in, close the door, sit down.”

  I came in, closed the door. I did not sit down.

  “Hello,” he said. “Hello, you rotten bastard. Hello.”

  16

  I don’t remember sitting down. I must have, because I remember being on the couch later on. And listening while Murray Rogers talked.

  “You were very damned smooth,” he said. “So polished, so clever. And such a thoroughgoing bastard every step of the way. A card cheat. That’s a very noble occupation, Maynard.”

  I didn’t say anything. I watched him take a cigar from his breast pocket, trim the end, light the cigar.

  He shook out the match and dropped it carelessly to the floor. He filled the room with cigar smoke and talked through it.

  “You stole money from me with a deck of cards. You cheated me at the poker table and you cheated me at gin rummy. You took my wife to bed. You let me get you a job and introduce you around. And then you framed me for a murder that never happened. You’re a very sweet guy, Maynard.”

  “When did you tip?”

  “You mean when did I catch on?”

  I nodded.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Maynard. I’m not up on criminal argot. I caught on a few hours before I decided to plead guilty. I knew all about it by the time you visited me in jail. I’ve known all along.” He chewed the cigar. “You seem surprised.”

  “Why did you plead guilty?”

  “Why not?” He shrugged massively. “I hired detectives the day they jailed me. I had one advantage, you know. I knew I was being framed because I knew very well I was innocent. I had the detectives check on Joyce. They turned up something to the effect that she’d been seen with you earlier. I had men run a check on your background, and I had men get a picture of you and show it round to a few people. One of the men they tried it on was the desk clerk at that hotel. He identified you as August Milani, naturally.

  That made it fairly obvious.”

  And there, of course, was the whole hang-up in a nutshell, the whole trouble with the frame. We’d built up a house of cards—marked cards, maybe, but just as flimsy. One little push and everything went to hell in a handcar.

  “I almost blew up when I found out,” he went on. “Viper in my bosom, all of that. The old story of the newfound friend and the younger wife. I could have called the district attorney and tipped him off, and I would have been out of jail in an hour.”

  “Why didn’t you?” He eyed me carefully. “What would it get me?”

  “Freedom.”

  “Freedom,” he echoed. “Yes, I suppose so. And you and Joyce, what would the pair of you have got? A short prison sentence at the most, and even that might have been hard to arrange if you had the foresight to provide yourselves with a top-grade lawyer. I’d have had freedom, Maynard. And no more than that.”

  He smiled. “Now think that over,” he said. “You’ve played cards with me. I don’t play to get even, you know. I play to win.”

  He stopped talking and the room was still as death. Smoke hovered in the air. I wanted a cigarette but I didn’t reach for my pack, as if a false movement might cause him to shoot me. Which was plainly ridiculous—he didn’t have a gun. But the atmosphere was like that.

  “I play to win,” Murray Rogers said again. “Getting out from under a murder rap isn’t winning. It’s breaking even. Winning is a matter of turning the tables. It wouldn’t be enough to see you and Joyce in jail.”

  I took out a cigarette. I had trouble lighting the match, but I managed it, and I sucked smoke into my lungs and coughed. I blew out the match and flipped it to the floor and took another drag of the cigarette and choked again, coughing spasmodically.

  I said, “What do you want, then?”

  “I want to see you dead,” he said.

  In Chicago, in the smoky back room where they had caught me dealing seconds, there had been a moment like that one. The moment between accusation and action, between discovery and punishment. A flat, cold, brittle moment, timeless and vacant. And there had been such a moment long ago, ages ago in the second-rate magician days, when a car I was riding in went off the road and rolled twice. That time we had skidded on gravel on the shoulder of the road, and the car had gone into its spin, and I had sat nervelessly and thought I was going to die and wondered how it would feel. That moment ended when we had crashed—I had emerged unscratched, as it had turned out. The moment in Chicago had ended when the hoods had taken away the money and hauled me out into the alley. The moment now, in this town, was like those other two.

  “I was going to kill Joyce, too,” I heard Murray say. “I had that all set up. Do you remember a conversation we had a little while ago? I told you she was getting despondent, suicidal. Do you remember?”

  I remembered.

  “That was part of the plan,” he said. “I was just planting the idea in a few people’s minds. Then it would have been easy enough. All I had to do was tap her over the head with a poker, knock her cold. Then I would pry open her mouth and shovel the Demerol down her throat. It’s easy to make an unconscious person swallow something. You flip the pill to the back of the mouth and massage the throat until the person swallows. All I had to do was feed her a bottle of pills and let them carry her off.”

  “You’re not—”

  “No.”

  I closed my eyes and pictured him doing it. Knocking her cold, then popping sleeping pills down her throat. And sitting by her side, waiting wi
th his special kind of patience. Waiting for Joyce to die.

  “I decided I wanted her,” he said. “I play to win—I keep saying that, but it sums things up. I play to win. I want Joyce.” He smiled. “Joyce and I had a long talk tonight,” he said. “Joyce will think very carefully before she looks at anyone else. Joyce is going to settle back into the role of loving wife again. She makes a good wife when she puts her mind to it.”

  He had bought her and paid for her. Now he wanted to go on owning her. I looked at him and my mind searched for an out and I didn’t get anywhere. He wasn’t even pointing a gun at me. He wasn’t even threatening me. He was sitting there, calm and steady, explaining to me just how he had planned to murder his wife and just how he intended to murder me. A big-time tax lawyer, carefully summing up his case for the jury, being quite explicit, filling in all the blanks, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

  “Why tell me this?” I said.

  “So you know what’s coming. So you can work up a sweat.”

  “Suppose I go to the police?”

  “Go ahead.”

  At first they would think I was lying. I could prove my story easily enough. And then they would clap me in a cell and leave me there to rot.

  “You won’t go to the police,” he said. “And it wouldn’t do you any good if you did. I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t broken a single law. I’ll break one when I kill you, but it will be a little late for you to go to the police by then.”

  “How are you going to kill me from a jail cell?”

  He laughed. “I’ll never be in jail again. A respectable man who killed a nonentity who was blackmailing him. My plea is temporary insanity. The prosecution has a weak case without a corpse anyway. Don’t you think I’ll beat the rap?”

  He would. Easy.

  Silence in a smoky room. I got another cigarette going. My hands were surprisingly steady. I asked him how and when he was going to kill me. Murray smiled. He was enjoying this. It was his show, and he was having fun.

  “I haven’t decided yet. I’m in no hurry. I’ve nothing to gain by rushing things. Besides, I want to give you plenty of time to sweat.”

  “I may be tough to kill.”

  “I don’t think so. You may be tough to find, but I’ll manage it. You’ll be leaving town, of course. I wonder where you’ll run to. Do you remember what Joe Louis used to say? They can run but they can’t hide. I’ll find you.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “Possibly. I’ve got all the time in the world. I think I’ll give up my law practice, Maynard. The disgrace and all—an understandable move. I don’t have to worry about earning a living. And I have a feeling I’ll enjoy hunting you down. If the problem becomes too tough I can always hire detectives. Or professional killers. What do you think a couple of pros would charge to murder you, Maynard? Think I could afford it?”

  I didn’t say anything. He gazed at me, no smile, no frown. Then, slowly, he got to his feet.

  “I don’t envy you,” he said.

  I stood up.

  “I don’t envy you at all. Wherever you go, you’ll be waiting for me. Wherever you are, you’ll know I’m after you. It will be a temptation for me to prolong it. Except for the fact that I’ll never be entirely satisfied until you are dead.”

  He used that for an exit line. He walked to the door and opened it. I didn’t see him out.

  I had to wait until morning. Waiting was hell, but there were things that had to be done. I needed money—money from Perry Carver, money from my bank account. I had to give up a few hours for the dough, which didn’t mean much in the long run. But it was hell trying to stay in that apartment, trying to sleep, trying to survive until it was time to run.

  I had one drink after he left, then left the bottle strictly alone. I packed my suitcases and loaded them into the trunk of the Ford. I took a bath and smoked a lot of cigarettes and tried to sleep and saw right away that it wasn’t going to work. I made a cup of coffee, drank it, smoked some more, left the apartment to go to an all-night beanery for a hamburger and more coffee, returned to the apartment and, somehow, God knows how, made it through the night.

  Murray was running a bluff, I kept telling myself. He had tipped to everything and wanted me to leave town and work up a sweat. But he wasn’t a killer and he wouldn’t kill me. It was nothing but a bluff. Except that I couldn’t make myself believe the bluff. I knew the man. I’d spent hours talking with him. I’d played plenty of cards with him. If he were bluffing, I was Marie of Romania.

  I appeared at the Black Sand office first thing in the morning. I told Perry as much as I had to tell him. Just that I was leaving town, and leaving right away.

  “I just don’t get it,” Perry Carver said. “If somebody made you a better offer, let me know about it. I’ll top it.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Wanderlust,” I said. “I’ve got itchy feet, I guess.

  I’ve spent my whole life on the move. I thought I could change my style, but it hasn’t been working.”

  “You’re making good money,” Perry said.

  “I know.”

  “And you’ll make better money. Don’t you like the city?”

  “I like it well enough. I just want to get on the move again.”

  “Where to?”

  “The West Coast,” I lied. “San Francisco, probably.”

  “That’s a long way to go for nothing in particular. You’ve grown close to Murray, haven’t you? His troubles on your mind?”

  I shrugged.

  “Nothing I can do to change your mind, Bill?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said.

  Perry Carver sighed. My prospect file was on his desk where I had put it. He pulled out a stack of cards and riffled through them unseeingly. For a minute I thought he was going to shuffle them and deal them out. He stuffed them back into the file and regarded me.

  “It’s the damnedest thing,” he said. “You turned out to be the best man to work out in my office in I don’t know how long. You’ve got a real future if you’ll stay in one place long enough to become established. Going to stick with the investment business?”

  “Probably.”

  “If you ever want work—”

  “Thanks.”

  Another sigh. “Some day you’ll be tired of moving around. Meet the right girl, that sort of thing. It’s just a shame it couldn’t have happened in this city.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

  Afterward, I sat down with an official at the bank and the two of us subtracted my uncashed checks from my bank balance and figured out what I had coming. He asked me if I wanted a cashier’s check for the amount, or traveler’s checks, or what. I told him cash would do fine. He stared at me as though I were a throwback to pioneer days and told me what teller to see. I saw the teller and took the cash and left. I stopped at the car place and paid the balance due on the Ford. Then I headed out Main Street toward the river, picked up the highway, pointed the car eastward and shoved the gas pedal to the floor. I had to force myself not to speed, especially after I reached the Thruway. There you can do five miles an hour over the limit with total impunity, but the red column on the Ford’s speedometer kept edging up around seventy-five and I had trouble easing up. I kept telling myself an extra five or ten miles an hour wouldn’t do any good. My foot wouldn’t listen.

  New York would do for a starter, I assured myself. Only for a starter—New York would be the first place Murray Rogers would look and, large as the city is, you can never completely disappear there. But New York was a good place to make a preliminary connection and put some wheels into motion. After that, I could go anywhere.

  And Murray could follow me. He had the time and the money and the patience and the incentive. With those four components you can find anyone anywhere. Don’t take my word for it. Ask Eichmann.

  It had been a pretty little frame while it had lasted. Very neat, very clever. But t
he frame had been a gamble that had caved in little by little until less than nothing had remained. First the reward had lost its glitter, then the machinery of the frame had lost a few wheels, and finally Murray Rogers had tipped all the way and the whole house of marked cards had fallen in on itself.

  Now I was marked for murder.

  Somewhere, there was a moral. Not the Golden Rule bit—you can’t apply that to life in the shadow world because the Golden Rule cancels out everything. No, the charm here was a sharper, hipper, dirtier moral.

  Like, Don’t gamble. Stick to your trade—cheat and steal but never take a genuine chance. Don’t cheat in a game with professional gamblers—that can result in your teeth being chipped and your thumbs torn out of joint. And don’t set a man up for a murder rap. That can kill you.

  So I thought about these things for around two hundred miles. At the service area outside of Syracuse I stopped for gas and coffee. I gulped coffee and the Ford gulped Esso and we hit the road again.

  It was dark by the time I pulled into New York. I took the Saw Mill exit off the Thruway, picked up the West Side Drive, wound up driving a little too fast through midtown Manhattan. I stuck the Ford into a lot on Ninth Avenue and lugged the bags a block east and two blocks uptown to a third-rate hotel. I signed in as Mr. Floyd Collins of Barnum, Kentucky. I paid cash in advance, undertipped the bellhop, and wound up in a shabby windowless room.

  I had bad dreams.

  In the morning I washed and shaved and dressed and grabbed breakfast. I made my calls from the restaurant, not through the hotel switchboard. I used up six dimes before I reached the man I wanted. His name was Marty Dreyer.

  “This is Maynard,” I said.

  “Wizard?”

  “Right.”

  “You just hit town? Hey, I heard stories about you, kid. Something about Chicago.”

  “That was a while ago,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. What happened?”

  “I was stupid,” I said.