Lucky at Cards

8

“You’re crazy, Wizard. Insane!”

"Why?”

“Right here? In his own house? It’s not safe, Wizard.”

“He’s at the game,” I said. “He won’t be leaving. And the girls will be out for awhile yet.”

“How do you know?”

“He mentioned it during the game. Don’t worry about it, Joyce. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“But—”

“Or don’t you want me?”

“Oh, God!”

I reached for her, caught her by her shoulders. She held back for a moment, then fell against me, all warm and trembling. I ran my hands over her body and her flesh quivered.

“The bedroom—” Joyce started to say.

We never made the bedroom. There was a couch on the other side of the living room, but we didn’t reach there, either. I kissed her and she tossed her arms around my neck and clung to me like ivy to a stone wall. The stone wall melted and we sank to the floor and held each other close.

I put my hand under her skirt and touched the silky perfection of her thighs. Her legs opened and I stroked her high on the inside of one thigh until she was moaning hysterically. She pushed me aside and yanked her skirt up around her waist. I took her panties off. She fell back on the floor, her eyes rolling, her forehead dotted with perspiration.

“Now,” she moaned. “Now, now, right now, Bill, now, now”

No kisses, no sweet caresses, no little bits and pieces. I fell on her like a tree.

There was all that aching, all that need, and it exploded for us like a truckload of nitro on a cobblestone road. There was nothing soft or gentle, nothing remotely sweet about our love-making. What we had was something you couldn’t deny or postpone, something you could never push out of the way or ignore. And it was not the sort of blissful idyll that would evolve easily and naturally into a pattern of three or four pleasant bangs per week in the master bedroom of a split-level shack. Fires that burn with the Bill Maynard-Joyce Rogers type of flame don’t simmer down.

Which could have been a hint, a clue, a flashed card. But maybe I wasn’t looking.

Afterward she pulled on her panties and pulled down her skirt and we sat on the couch and talked. She had most of my story already from Murray. I gave her the rest and slipped her a quick summary of the plan of action. She liked it. Her approval showed in her eyes, bright and excited.

I lit a cigarette. “Of course,” I said, “we could forget it.”

She said nothing, and that noncommittally.

“I’m all set up in business,” I told her. “I even enjoy my work. I could just stick to my job and make enough money to keep me happy. And you could go on being Murray Rogers’ loving wife. We’ve both got it fairly soft, you know. We’re not in an especially desperate situation.”

“And keep seeing each other like this?”

“Why not?”

“And never try for the brass ring? And stay tied up like this? You like your work because it’s temporary, Wizard. It’s part of the act, not something you’d have to be doing for the rest of your life. You might not like it so much that way.”

I avoided her eyes. The whole routine had started out as a joke, but somehow or other I had been saying things I partly meant. After all, I did like the work. And the idea of jobbing Murray Rogers was becoming less attractive the better I knew him.

“It was just a gag,” I said.

“Was it?”

“Sure.”

“It’s a bad kind of joke, Wizard.” She took one of my hands in both of hers. “This is too big for me to joke about it, Wizard. I’m in this all the way. We’ve both got to be in it all the way.”

On the way back to the game I tried to concentrate on driving the Corvair. That wasn’t easy. I kept telling myself that my semi-pitch to Joyce about playing our future straight had just been a gag. I was no real estate syndicator. I was a sharp, a quick-money boy, a guy whose world spun faster than the rest of the planet Earth. I wanted the fast money and the fast action and the fast women. Hotel rooms, ashes on the floor.

Back at the game I complained about a stupid foreman who couldn’t understand anything no matter how long you hammered it into his skull. I played poker until the game broke up around two-thirty and I wound up forty-five dollars in the hole. Then I drove back to the hotel and slept.

I looked at three apartments before I found the one I wanted. It was on College Street—two rooms and a bath and kitchenette, all furnished in Early American ugliness. The wallpaper was floral and the rugs were imitation Orientals. What the hell, I was renting the place, not buying it. The apartment might not be designed to turn on an interior decorator but it was roomy and comfortable and convenient and that was all I wanted. I paid a month’s rent, talked my way out of signing a lease. I moved my stuff over from the hotel and I was in business.

By midafternoon I had given back the Corvair to the Hertz people and had put a hundred dollars down on a two-year-old Ford. It wasn’t exactly a dream car either but it was way ahead of the Corvair and the payments were only a tiny gouge per month. At three o’clock I drove downtown and parked in a lot a block from the Rand Building. I rode the elevator to the seventeenth floor.

Black Sand’s office was closed Saturdays but Carver had given me a key and had told me to use the office any time I felt like it. I unlocked the door. Nobody was around. I rearranged some junk on my desk just to show I had been there, then left to climb seven flights of stairs. It would have been easier to use the elevator, but elevator operators occasionally remember people and I didn’t want to be remembered. I was tired by the time I hit the twenty-fourth floor. I leaned against a wall and let my breathing go back to normal.

The lights were off in Murray’s office. The door was locked. I waited until the hallway was empty and silent, then used the duplicate key. The door opened. Once inside, I closed the door. The same key opened Murray’s private office, next on the agenda. I didn’t turn the light on. There was enough light to see by, and it was no time to attract any attention at all. I sat behind his desk. There was a typewriter in a well to the left of me. I swung it out, took onionskin and letterhead and carbon paper from the center drawer, made a sandwich out of them and put it in the typewriter. A cigarette would have been nice. I didn’t light one.

I put Monday’s date on the top of the page. Then I typed—

Jack:

What do you know about a man named August

Milani? He called me in reference to the Whitlock

matter and demanded payment. Have you any idea

who he is? Please let me know immediately as to the

best course of action.Murray Rogers

I rolled the sandwich out of the typewriter and slipped the carbon paper between a fresh sheet of letterhead and a fresh piece of onionskin. I read the letter through again and nodded. It had the right tone.

The second letter was dated four days later. It read—

Jack:

Milani seems to have us over a barrel. He says

he’s fully prepared to go to the IRS boys, since the

department will pay a percentage of recovered

funds to informers in cases of this nature. I’ve

decided to agree to his terms in the hope that this is

the last we’ll hear from him.Murray

The third letter was dated the following Monday. It was the hardest to write, and I gave it three tries before I got the phrasing just the way I wanted it. It wound up like this—Jack:

Don’t worry about A.M. The man’s not willing to

settle for what I’ve given him thus far, and seems

to possess an insatiable appetite. By the time you

receive this letter he’ll have been accommodated in

the only manner possible.M.R.

I put away the typewriter and straightened up the desk. I took the carbons and the letterheads and the onionskins with me and slipped out of the office, locking it behind me. I walked down seven fights of stairs—it was easier going down than up. The elevator came. I rode to the lobby and walked out to my car. I ran the Ford to my new apartment, stuck the car in a parking place. The apartment felt like home already. I had a cigarette then and smoked it all the way down.

I re-examined the letters. They were on his stationery and were worded just as he would write them. The letters had been typed on his typewriter. They didn’t have his signature, but nobody signs carbons. And I was interested in the copies, not the originals. I shredded the sheets of letterhead and flushed them down the toilet. I did the same with the carbons.

Then I put the onionskin copies away in a bureau drawer. They would be useful, but for the time being I didn’t need them. They were props. When the rest of the stage was set I could put the props to use.

I drove across Main Street just before the shops closed for the day. I turned off, parked in a store lot and visited a few shops and bought a few things. The neighborhood was one of those marginal areas you find near the downtown business section of any good-sized city. Main Street was a few blocks to the west. Skid Row was around the corner. The Negro neighborhood ran north and east. In the middle was a snatch of surplus stores and hockshops and numbers drops and cheap bars. I didn’t figure to run into any business friends around there.

I bought a third-hand valise and a second-hand Broadway suit. I stuffed the valise with the suit and added a few shirts and a pair of beat-up shoes. I bought a new hat, black with a very short brim, which I crammed into the valise. The more beat-up the hat looked, the better. I added a flashy half-dollar tie, a showy and cheap signet ring. I stuffed everything into the valise and tossed it into the Ford and drove home.

From a drugstore phone booth I called the telephone company and asked them to install a phone in my apartment on Monday. Then I dropped another dime in the slot and called the Panmore to find out if there were any messages for me. There was one—I was supposed to call Seymour Daniels as soon as possible. I did. Mary Daniels answered and said hello very happily when she found out who was calling.

“Just a minute,” she said. “I’ll let you talk to Sy.”

I waited, started a cigarette. Then Sy was on, cheerful and noisy.

“Good to talk to you,” he said. “Got stung a little last night, didn’t you?”

“I gave a little money back.”

Sy laughed. “Pretty good game,” he said. “Say, I was wondering. Do you play bridge or is poker your only game?”

“I’ve played bridge,” I said. “Why?”

“Well, this girl Mary’s friendly with is dropping over tonight, see, and I thought you might like to make a fourth. It won’t be a very exciting evening, just cards and drinks and conversation. But the girl’s nice. You might enjoy yourself.”

It was the old conspiracy of the married against the single. There was a friend of Mary’s and there was me, and why not get the two of us together? I don’t need your friend, I thought. I’m busy making it with Murray’s wife.

“Sounds fine,” I said.

“We’ll expect you around nine?”

“Right. I don’t know how good my game will be, though. I haven’t played in a hell of a while.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said heartily. “It doesn’t make much difference how you play.”

I managed to slip off the line before he could realize how funny his last statement was. It was true—it didn’t make a hell of a difference whether I played like Charlie Goren or the North Park Every-Other-Tuesday Ladies’ Bridge League. Bridge wasn’t the important part of the evening. I was being fixed up with somebody, and that was more important than a deck of cards.

My bridge game turned out to be lousy. This didn’t surprise me. I had never played the game honestly in my life. Bridge happens to be the easiest game in the world for a cheater if only because communication between partners is a significant element in the play. You can cheat with a million various signals, and you don’t have to rely on card manipulation or anything of the sort. I would have played the game more often if there hadn’t been such difficulties in arranging a stakes game. Anyone who plays money bridge with strangers deserves whatever happens to him. You can be cheated forever and never know it.

All of which is intended to explain the fact I played a lousy game at Sy’s house. We played in the living room with soft music in the background, and Sy and Mary partners against Barb and me. That was my partner—Barbara Lambert, thirty-two, high school English teacher, married once and divorced now, no children.

She was a pretty blonde with a settled look to her. At the outset of the evening she seemed every bit as uncomfortable as she had every right to be, given her situation. She was an unmarried gal who was being fixed up by a friend, and this is not exactly a position of strength. But she warmed up and relaxed as the evening went on. Maybe my lousy playing encouraged her.

We played three rubbers of bridge, and in each one Sy and Mary beat us silly. They seemed a little embarrassed by the time they polished us off for the third straight time, so we put the cards away and sat around playing conversation. That wasn’t difficult. Barb was a sweet kid, intelligent if not especially hip, and we managed to keep the verbal ball going. Sy and I locked into a long discussion about the relative merits of mutual funds and syndications, and at the end of all this Mary poured coffee. We drank up and called it an evening. Mary had driven over to pick up Barb, a clever move designed to leave me with the chore of trucking her home again. I didn’t mind.

I drove slowly. She was quiet, sitting with her head back and the wind playing with her hair. I switched on the radio and we listened to rock and roll for a horrible moment. Then I switched off the radio.

She said, “Bill?”

I waited.

“I had a nice time,” she said.

“So did I.”

“It was a strange evening.”

“How?”

“Staged. All set up and arranged. At first I had the feeling that we were all reading dialogue that somebody else had written out for us ages ago.”

She stopped talking. I turned at the corner and she told me when we were at her house. I stopped the Ford and took her to the door and she didn’t say anything until we were standing on the steps.

Then she said, “Married couples do that all the time. They think they have to take people like us and bring us together so that we can get married and make babies and live fuller lives. Even if—if it worked, well, it would make a person feel as though someone else were arranging his life for him.”

I didn’t say anything. Her eyes were directed at me but she was staring past me, off into space. Her lips parted slightly. She looked as though she wanted to be kissed and it seemed like a good idea, so I kissed her. She was stiff at first. Then she relaxed slightly and then I let go of her. Her cheeks were slightly flushed. Barb said, “That was—nice, Bill.”

“I’ll call you soon.”

“You don’t have to, you know.”

“I know. I’ll want to.”

“I think I’d like that,” she said.

I turned away and drove home. I would call Barb, of course. The action would be a good cover. If I were dating a girl, people would be less likely to imagine anything between Joyce and myself. So I would call Barb Lambert, and I would go out with her.

In another world I would have married her, and we would have sold beautiful syndications together, and she’d be the beneficiary of my life insurance policy. She was living in that world. I wasn’t.

I slept late on Sunday. It was past noon when I awoke and I was hungry. I made it around the corner and bought breakfast food at a deli, lox and bagel and instant coffee. I ate, showered, and fancied a different set of clothes.

The second-hand Broadway suit was a little tight on me. That was fine. I took off the jacket, dropped it and walked on it. I picked up the jacket, then, and brushed it off and slipped it on again. I tossed the hat down and stepped on it, grinding some dirt into the felt. I straightened the hat out again, wiped it fairly clean. When I was finished, the chapeau looked as though I had owned it for ages.

I knotted the loud tie and toned it down with coffee stains. I stuffed my feet into the broken-down shoes and tied them. I checked myself in the mirror, tugged the hat down over my eyes. I looked shabby and seedy and not at all like me.

In a drugstore I bought a pair of glasses with plain lenses. They added a final touch. I carried my valise a few blocks south and a few blocks east. There were six hotels in a row on the cheap street and all looked appropriate for the second-hand suit and the battered hat. I tried three hotels before I found just what I wanted.

The third one was the charm. It was called the Glade, and the rooms rented for two bucks a night or ten bucks a week. I walked through what passed for a lobby with my head tossed back and my shoulders hunched forward. I leaned a shoulder against the desk and looked at the desk clerk. When I talked to him my voice sounded like all the wrong parts of Brooklyn, and my lips didn’t move much.

“I need a room,” I said. “Only I got no use for stairs. You got anything on the first floor?”

The other hotels hadn’t. The Glade did. The clerk showed me to a room in the back. There was a cigarette-scarred dresser, an army cot, a washbowl, a cracked hunk of linoleum on the floor.

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

Out front the clerk said the room would run me two dollars a day or ten a week, payable in advance. I reached into a pants pocket and came up with two worn dollar bills. He wanted a dollar deposit for the key. “You think I’m gonna run off with your key?” I said. “Hell—”

I gave him the deposit, but not before I had haggled with him for a few minutes to preserve appearances. He passed me a registration card and gave me a ball-point pen. I leaned on the counter, studied the card, tapped the pen on the counter, glanced up at him.

“A few days,” I said, “I won’t have to stay in dumps like this one. A few days and I pull out of this town in a Cadillac. You believe that, Charlie?”

He started to tell me his name wasn’t Charlie, then decided not to bother.

“You better believe it,” I said. “You just better believe it. Little Augie is going to do fine.”

Then I took the pen and filled out the card. August Milani, I wrote. New York City.