Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 11/01/10 Page 13

  Wilson glanced across and considered the words.

  “Is that how you always play?” he asked, at last. “The way you did tonight? All that talking, I mean? You hardly shut up from the moment you sat down. Or is that just part of the gag too?”

  “Depends. Some guys like to talk a lot, thinking that it’ll mask any flutters. It doesn’t. Not when you know where to look. Others, like our man Kimble, prefer to concentrate. In such cases, talk rattles them hard. If I can get a player spitting bullets at me then I know he’ll be an easy mark. The talk tonight kept him off balance and gave me a chance to see what kind of stuff he had.”

  “He was plenty mad, I can tell you. But even so—”

  “If you are worried about the hands he won, then don’t. They were so that he wouldn’t smell a rat. If I had gone in there and cleared the table, you think I could have walked out so easily? And if I did make it out, you think they’d ever welcome me back? I dare to show my face again, I’d wake up in an alley with my knees broken. That’s if I ever woke up at all. Those hands he won were nothing pots, more or less, but it gave the game a balanced look. When it comes to cards, doubt can be a dangerous thing. The way I played it tonight, there were no problems. He was pissed that he lost, of course he was, but he didn’t feel like he was being torn apart. It’s good to stir him up a little bit, but you won’t survive if you don’t recognize where the limits lie. When a man is angry he’ll have his mind tied up on unimportant details. But there’s a difference between anger and blind rage. That’s how you get yourself shot, and that, from my perspective, is something to be avoided at all costs.”

  “So you’re telling me that everything went according to plan. Is that it?”

  “My plan was to study his game and to see what moves would produce mistakes. The talking angered him, and then the fact that he was losing angered him even more, but I had to be careful. Like I said, there was no point in playing hard when the money wasn’t in the house. The important thing is that I got what I wanted. Within two hands I’d sussed out his moves. Within ten, I knew him better than he probably even knew himself. Now I know what he does when the deal is friendly to him, a little thing with his eyes, a gesture so slight and seemingly insignificant that ninety-nine people out of a hundred won’t even bother to notice, and I know what he does when he’s out to try a bluff. The bluff hands are always the best ones to throw. With them the pot will never get too far out of control, so they are usually okay to give up. And they taste as sweet as the best malt liquor. Win a bluffed hand and you really feel like you’ve put a big one over on your opponent. Your confidence will be sky high. And that’s when you’re ready to be plucked.”

  The Honda cut across another junction. Up ahead, a late bar was spilling yellow light out onto the street. Wilson pulled in to the curb and let the engine idle. Another tune had started up, but to Jake’s ears it seemed like the same mess as before. Same heartbeat bass line, same squawking horn flurries. Some of the barroom light fell across the car’s hood and they both stared at it for a moment, as if it meant something.

  “All that talk, though,” said Wilson. “Where did it all come from? I mean, have you really got a kid, or was that just another line?”

  “It’s a game of confidence. Don’t you understand that yet, Wilson? When I was a boy, I got so that I became a wiz at monte. All the other boys would be out playing stickball or trying to steal hubcaps. I’d sit on a stoop and practice. Before age got into my bones there was no one on the planet could switch ’em like me. What you see is what you get only if I want it to be that way. Tonight I talked a lot, and I’ve got a hundred thousand stories.”

  “You mentioned a girl named Molly? Does she exist?”

  Jake shrugged. “Can’t for the life of me see why you’d want to know, but yeah, as it happens, she does exist. Or did. Can’t really say for sure now. She was the daughter of a woman I used to know, back in Detroit. Well, that was a long time ago. A lifetime ago. Sweet girl. A real peach. Molly wasn’t my kid, though for a while I was like a father to her.”

  “But why mention her? I mean, what was the point?”

  “It was random chat, that’s all, though maybe a psychiatrist would argue differently. The truth of it is, I could just as easily have talked about an old schoolteacher or an old sweetheart from my childhood. Or I could have gone chasing down some twisted figment of my imagination. The point you should take out of all this is that sometimes the people I’ll mention are real and sometimes they’re not. That mixture confuses everything. If no one can tell the difference between the truth and a lie then surely one is just as good as the other.” He considered the bar for a few seconds. There were dozens of bars like this one across the city, nondescript and rundown, that provided easy shelters for the deeply lost. As far as Jake was concerned, it was places like this that made a city just as much as its skyscrapers and traffic jams. “I like this place,” he said, and a smile cracked his mouth. “At least, I think I like it. It’s a good place to sit and blow the suds off a beer, maybe swap a little chat with the bartender. As long as I’ve been coming here, I’ve never seen the place busy. Maybe that’s what I like best about it. That and the fact that they show ball games.”

  Wilson couldn’t help but laugh. “So that was true, then? That stuff about the Giants?”

  “You’ve just proved my point, Wilson,” said Jake. “Muddy the waters enough and truth can be just as good as fiction.” He nodded to himself, then turned to open the car door.

  Wilson lay a restraining hand on his shoulder. “I’ll take the winnings, Jake.”

  “What?”

  “The winnings. The two grand. The money you won with my money. Give it to me. I’ll add it to the stake money for tomorrow night.”

  Jake cleared his throat. “Look, Wilson, can’t you give me a break, just for tonight? I thought that maybe . . . that is, I guess I was sort of hoping I could do a little bit of business. You know what I mean? And you don’t have to worry. I won’t be losing. It’s just that I can’t get into a decent game with anything less than two grand. If you could just let me hold on to it. Tomorrow night you’ll get every cent back. Every single cent of it. In fact, how about this? You give me the two grand now and I guarantee you’ll get three grand back. That’s a promise. You have my word on it.”

  Wilson’s face was masked by the shadows of the night, but added a dreadful sense of menace to his voice. “That’s the trouble with you, Jake. I never know when you’re telling me the truth or spinning me some fancy lie. No, on the whole I think it’s best that I take the money. After all, these are dangerous streets. A man could very easily get mugged in a neighbourhood like this, and I’d hate to see you put in the way of danger. So, come on. Hand it over.”

  And just like that, the night had gone to pot. Knowing he was beaten, Jake slipped a hand inside his jacket and withdrew the wad of won cash. He held it in his fingers, feeling its small heft and thinking of all that it could have done, all that it could have bought him. Then he dropped it into Wilson’s waiting hand, opened the car door and stepped out into the street.

  He walked around the back of the Honda, keeping his hands out of his pockets so that he would not have to acknowledge their emptiness. He was almost to the barroom’s front door when Wilson cranked the car window and called him back.

  “Hey Jake,” he said, “wait a minute. Look, I’m not a hard case.” He fumbled at the roll of notes. “I know how it is to be on the skids. So, here.”

  Jake took the offered bill and glared at it, barely able to hold back his disgust. “What the hell am I supposed to do with fifty bucks?”

  “Have a drink on me,” said Wilson, through a terrible, mocking grin. “And make sure you have yourself a good time.”

  Back in the club, a night later, and it was clear around the table that playtime was over. Some three hours’ worth of hands had already been dealt, and there was no toying around with stakes now. This was a no-limits game.

  Kimble eased back
in his chair, considered the pot and then his opponent.

  “Another five hundred? Mister, you don’t look to me like you can afford to lose that sort of cash.”

  Jake smiled his most winning smile. With his face so etched in fatigue, the effect was pathetic. “Oh, that’s all right, sport,” he said, softly. “I’m not planning on losing.”

  “Well,” Kimble sighed. “It makes no difference to me, you understand. But you’re already in quite a hole tonight. Bet you wish you’d stayed in some bar now and watched the Giants game. By the way, that was pretty bad luck, them going down the pan like that last night.”

  Across the table, Wilson lowered his own hand. “What? The Giants lost?”

  A rumble of laughter shook Kimble by the shoulders. “Sure as hell did. A single run, bottom of the ninth. From what I caught on the news, it was a truly deplorable thing to see Bonds choking like that at such an important moment. I mean, who could have seen that one coming? The Angels must have made some kind of a pact, or something. These days there are turncoats everywhere. No bet is safe anymore.” He shook his head ruefully. “But hey, that’s the way it goes sometimes. I just thank my lucky stars that I didn’t have currency riding on that one. A heart can take only so much squeezing.”

  Jake met the knowing smile with a snide leer of his own. “We playing, or what? Price is five to stay in. So how about you get to it, sport?”

  This was too much for Kimble. He rolled back his head and laughed, loudly and with thorough delight. “Oh,” he said, when he could regain his composure once more. “I’m in. I’m all the way in.” His right hand worked the large pile of chips. “Your five and . . . let’s see now . . . I got, what, two, three, four . . . five grand. How about we see if the pot’s for sale tonight. Five thousand in good, clean note of the realm. I’d say that’s a fair price.” He glanced at Wilson, drawing him into the equation. “Wouldn’t you agree, Wilson?”

  Wilson stared at the center of the table, his eyes showing all their bloodshot whites and his mouth hanging open in the agog manner of those shell-shocked by war. “Five grand,” he whispered. “Jesus. That puts me on my ass. I can’t do it.” The legs of his chair scraped backwards along the floor. He rose and tossed his cards facedown onto the table. “I fold,” he whispered. Then, a little more loudly: “I’m out.” He met Kimble’s stare and then Jake’s. If he was looking for reassurance then he found none. Finally, he staggered away across the room in search of something strong to drink.

  Kimble watched him go. “Fold, huh? Well, that’s a shame. A real damn shame. But, it’s true what they say, the show must go on. So, old man. I guess it’s down to you and me. So, how about it, hmm? Do you fancy an early night? They’re probably still swinging in Candlestick, what with the time difference and all. The odds on a repeat of last night must be pretty high. I’m sure if you left now you could probably make the last few pitches. See whether Bonds can redeem himself or take another bust. Two in a row might prove fatal.” He smiled and leaned in. “Or have you come here to play some proper cards? It’s going to cost you five big ones to see my hand. You got the stomach for that, old man?”

  For a long moment, nothing happened. The world seemed to have lost its spin. Jake’s cards were fanned open before him, shielded from all viewpoints but his own, and yet he hardly even registered their story. He looked beat. Tiredness clung to him like a coat. His mouth was dry and it hurt to swallow. Finally, his hands squeezed the cards together and he laid them facedown on the baize.

  “You know,” he said, and the softness of deep reflection made feathers of the words. “I saw a terrible thing once. I mean, in my life I’ve seen a whole stack of bad stuff, just the same as you or Mr. Wilson there, or anyone else, for that matter. But this one thing was truly terrible, the sort of horror that gets you right in the gut and, once you’ve seen it, never goes away. It happened in ’Nam, of course. Quang Tri province, October the twelfth, 1967. I was about a third of the way through my tour and even then I’d taken to counting down the days, marking them off every night on a little sweat-stained pocket calendar that my sister had sent me. You quickly learn to get along the only way you can, and that little calendar was my way of dealing with it all. I kept telling myself with every passing day that it couldn’t possibly get any worse than the way it had already been, but then I’d wade into some putrid new degree of shit and I’d have to reassess the whole goddamn situation entirely from scratch. You know, Vietnam showed me a lot of things, but mostly what it showed me was that it really was possible to have a hell on earth. Wouldn’t expect you boys to understand, of course, you being as young as you both are, but you can take my word on it, even if you never believe another word I say. Honest to God, there really can be such a thing as hell on earth.”

  “My old man was over there,” muttered Kimble. “’69.”

  “It’s a funny thing, but there are times now when I remember that calendar better than I remember my sister’s face. She was a few years older than me, had married while I was still a kid and moved out to Abilene. Her husband was Texan, and a nice enough guy, but he could never swear farther than the panhandle dirt and the smell of cow shit. Well, to each their own, I guess. Anyway, getting back to what I was saying, it was a stinking hot day and we were out on the trail when we came upon a temple that looked as if it had been forgotten by time. I swear to God, it was as if the jungle had parted for us and there it was.”

  Across the room, Wilson slammed down his empty shot glass on the counter of the small bar. “Jesus, old man,” he snarled. “Can’t you just give it up? No more damn stories. You talk way the hell too much, you know that? We’ve all heard enough from you to last us a hundred lifetimes.”

  Kimble didn’t look up from his cards.

  “No,” he said, “I want to hear this one.”

  “Feel free to take a walk if you don’t want to listen, sport,” said Jake. “You folded your hand, didn’t you? I reckon that about concludes your business here for tonight. But if you decide to stay, I would appreciate it if you’d stop interrupting.” He took a long, slow breath then, bracing himself against some sort of reprisal, but a few seconds passed and then he heard the sound of a bottle’s neck chiming against the rim of a glass. “So,” he continued, “as I was saying. Finding that temple spooked us all pretty bad. It stood there in the clearing, you know, and after the darkness of the jungle I remember that the glare of sunlight was blinding. But worst of all was the silence. Everything was perfectly still, as if all time had stopped around us. We fanned out, worried about traps or the possibility of an ambush. All we found at first were bones, bones and skulls bleached white and picked completely clean. We tried to convince ourselves first that they were the remains of monkeys, and then, when that didn’t work, that we were looking at bodies of people wiped out in a napalm blast. Napalm cooks you right down, so that was possible. Except that the trees showed no trace of scorching. Then twenty minutes or so later, we found two monks. They were way in at the back of the temple, eating lunch.”

  Kimble looked up, comprehension breaking like weather across his face. “What? You don’t mean . . . Oh, Christ.”

  “They probably had no other choice. When the food runs out it’s survival of the fittest, isn’t it? I guess when it comes right down to it, a man will do what he has to in order to survive. When we found them they were down to two. It was difficult to tell how many there may originally have been but it was a pretty big temple. They didn’t speak, not a single word, just looked at us and then went on with their business.”

  “What happened?”

  Jake’s mouth trembled. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Five grand, huh? Well, I’ve come this far. I guess I’ll see your five . . . and I’ll raise you . . . let’s see now . . . How does ten sound to you?”

  “Ten grand?” Kimble couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice and didn’t even bother to try.

  “That’s right. I fell pretty hard last night on the Giants and I’ve got to do somethin
g to balance the books.” He pushed his remaining chips out into the center of the table. “Ten thousand. Your move, sport. Ten to stay in, otherwise I’ll be saying goodnight to you.”

  A smile broke slowly across Kimble’s face. “You’re bluffing.” He stared hard at Jake, looking for clues. “You are. You’re bluffing.”

  Jake shrugged. “Ten bigs to stay in, sport. Otherwise you’ll never know.”

  “I know,” said Kimble. “You’re bluffing. You’ve got this thing you do. I’ve been watching you. A little pinching of your nose. You think I didn’t see but I did. Maybe you don’t even realize that you’re doing it. Ten, huh? Well, let’s see, I’ve got maybe three in cash. But I’m good for the rest. You can’t doubt that, surely.”

  “I don’t doubt it at all,” Jake said. “But I have a rule. I only play for what’s on the table. It’s been my experience that promises, even those made with the very best of intentions, tend to disappear like smoke on a breeze once all the shooting’s done.” He rubbed his chin. A day’s worth of stubble whispered against his fingers. “Still, I’m nothing if not reasonable. Maybe we can come to some arrangement. Have you got something else to bet?”

  “All right. My car. It’s out front. A Mercedes, two years old. Sports model.” He held up the keys and tossed them forward into the pile of chips. “There’s not even forty thousand on the clock. It’s worth maybe fifteen grand, maybe even more. You’ll be getting the deal of a lifetime, or at least you will if what you’re holding happens to be any good.”

  Jake considered the matter. “You know, I only have your word on the value. But, as a gesture, I’ll let the car cover the bet, in addition to the three grand you mentioned.”

  Kimble began to laugh, then seemed to think better of it. “You’ve got to be yanking my chain.”