Drawing Dead (8 page)

The martini woman was back in Wicky's kitchen, holding herself up by leaning forward over the butcher-block counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. She watched Crow fill a glass from the kitchen tap, drink it, and fill it again.

“Where is everybody?” she asked.

“They're all over by the pool and in the game room. Having a good time.”

“I doubt that,” the woman said. “Look, there's that cat again.”

Crow followed her gaze. A cat was looking at them from the opposite side of the living room, a big torn with a sleek, handsome coat. Crow started toward it, needing to make contact with something sober. When he was a few steps away, the cat hissed at him and took off, clawing its way across the carpet, dragging its hindquarters, which were strapped to a tiny wheeled cart.

A gentleman is a man who will pay his gambling debts even when he knows he has been cheated.

—Leo Tolstoy

Alone, Crow reclined
on a lounger by the outdoor pool. Twenty-five stories above him, he could see Wicky's brightly lit balcony. People appeared and disappeared, leaning on the rail, looking out over the river. Crow wanted nothing more than to go home, crawl into bed, and lose consciousness, but he knew that the images from the party—the coke, the cat, Catfish, and the man standing in the pool—would keep his head buzzing for hours.

Debrowski had refused to leave. “No way, Crow. I'm hotter'n a Thai chili here. These guys just can't stop giving me their money.” Her face was pink, her eyes bright.

“You sure?”

“What's the matter, Crow, you eat some bad dip or something?”

“I've got to get out of here.”

“So take a walk. I'll have these guys cleaned out in an hour.”

He had left the party drunk on bad air and memories. He didn't like to see Debrowski like that, all wound up from her run at the craps table. It was too much like getting high. What the hell—it was getting high. He closed his eyes. The faint party sounds drifted down through the summer air like flakes of artificial snow.

“Have
you seen Cat?” Wicky asked, swaying at the edge of the lap pool.

Jack Mitchell, sitting on the lip of the pool with his feet in the water, looked up and shook his head. He had taken his shoes off but was still wearing his sodden navy-blue suit and matching socks. “Sorry, Dickie. You checked all the bedrooms?” The woman sitting beside him, her bare toes wiggling in the water, giggled. They put their heads together and laughed. Wicky staggered off toward the game room, almost colliding with a similarly inebriated man moving in the opposite direction.

“You seen my wife?” Wicky asked. The man kept walking, listing toward the pool. Wicky pushed into the game room. “Catfish?” he called. A few of the poker players looked up momentarily, returned their attention to their cards. None of the craps players seemed to hear him. Wicky approached two men who were leaning against the Ping-Pong table, talking.

“Jimmy, Dave, you seen Catfish anyplace? I can't find her.”'

Dave shrugged and looked away. Jimmy, one of Litten Securities' most junior RRs, said, “You don't look so good, Mr. Wicky. Maybe you ought to go lay down.”

Wicky shook his head and touched the side of his nose with his finger. “I just need a little blast to get my head straight. You guys want to do some lines?”

Jimmy and Dave looked at each other. Dave's eyebrows went up, and Jimmy smiled. “What the hell,” Dave said, pushing himself off the Ping-Pong table.

“Then let's get straight,” Wicky said, moving away.

Dave and Jimmy followed. “Nothing like doing a little blow with the boss,” Dave said to Jimmy. “ Especially when it's his coke.”

Debrowski
was still winning when Crow returned to the party.

“You're looking good, Debrowski,” he said.

She grinned and punched the man standing next to her on the shoulder. “A half hour ago I had a bad run and tapped out. Then Loman here loaned me a lucky tenner.”

Loman was about Crow's size, but rounder and softer. An initialed collar bar held his tie in place. He grabbed Crow's hand and gave it a sincere shake. “My name is Ron Lipke, but Laura here calls me Loman. She says I'm the perfect salesman,” he said proudly. “I'm with Centennial Life.”

Crow let his eyes go unfocused. Debrowski tugged on his sleeve. “I'm up almost five hundred bucks!” she said in a hoarse whisper. In a normal voice she added, “Loman here won't even let me give him his tenner back.”

“It was a gift,” Ron Lipke explained.

“Good for you,” Crow said to both of them. “You want to go anytime soon?” he asked Debrowski.

“You kidding me, Crow? I'm hot. Listen, why don't you hang around, play some cards or something? These guys got the runs with their money like you wouldn't believe. I been fading six-eights at even odds all night long. Imagine what you can do to that stud game over there.”

Crow looked over at the card game. Five players, all strangers. He could feel the buzz coming on, the adrenaline edge that a good card game brought out. He walked over to the table and watched them play a hand. All of the players looked as if they shopped at Brooks Brothers, except the guy who was wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. He was a tall, thin man with hair, flesh, and eyes the color of weak, milky tea. An impressive pile of cash was stacked in front of him.

“Anybody seen Catfish?” called a voice from behind Crow. Dickie Wicky was walking toward the craps table, his head twitching back and forth, his jaw pulsing. Crow knew the recipe by heart, having applied it to himself more times than he cared to remember: Take one human being, add a generous handful of dry martinis, a few hours of inane conversation, and a gram or two of good coke. From the inside, Wicky would be feeling as if he was turbocharged, running at the red line, hitting hard on all cylinders. Sometimes Crow missed that feeling. Seeing it in Wicky made him feel flat and insubstantial.

Wicky's eyes jerked back and forth and landed on Crow. A moment later, his body changed direction, following his eyes.

“Crow! Where you been? You seen Cat?”

Crow shook his head.

“Well, fuck 'er, then.” He looked at the cardplayers and weaved from side to side. “Hey, Crow, what do you say we show these guys how to play poker. What are you guys playing?”

“Seven stud, ten-buck limit,” said one of the players without looking up.

Wicky looked at Crow and winked broadly. “You guys want some of our money?” he asked.

Crow
started losing from the first hand, when his ace-high flush lost to a concealed full house held by the very drunk man sitting to his left, the guy catching the case jack on his last card. Within an hour Crow was down over four hundred dollars.

Ten hands later, he was down eight hundred. He had lost three big hands, one right after another, two of them to the tall man with the Mickey Mouse T-shirt and the other to Wicky, who was playing his usual horrible game of poker but getting lucky for once. The guy with the Mickey Mouse shirt controlled the biggest stack—he had been winning steadily all night. Crow, sitting immediately to his left, watched him take a small pot with wired aces.

“Nice hand,” said Crow as the man swept in the pot. “My name's Joe Crow.”

The man shook Crow's hand and said, “Benjamin Cartwright,” in a deep, mellifluous voice.

“You play a hell of a game of seven stud, Ben,” Crow said. “You learn that on the Ponderosa?”

“I have been fortunate this evening.”

“You guys want to kick up the limits?” asked Wicky, shuffling the deck. He nudged the man next to him. “What do you say, Mitch? Want to up it to twenty bucks?”

“Fine with me,” Mitch muttered.

“I could do that,” said Cartwright.

The other three players—a red-faced man holding a dead cigar in his mouth, an extremely drunk older man who might have been a good cardplayer had he been sober, and a dried-out-looking fellow with a frayed collar who folded every hand he was dealt—all shrugged their assent.

“Crow?”

“Fine by me, Dickie.”

On his next hand Crow got a pair of aces facedown and a deuce showing. He bet twenty dollars and got three callers. Cartwright looked at Crow's cards and folded an exposed ace. Somewhere in Crow's mind an alarm went off. He looked carefully at his down cards, the two aces. Was that a nick on the top edge? He didn't think so at first; it was so slight he was not even sure he was seeing it. But the same faint irregularity appeared on the edge of both his aces. He looked at the ace that Ben Cartwright had turned over when he folded. It had the same faint impression on the edge. Crow looked at the other cards that had been dealt, but could not find the case ace. Someone was nicking the aces, making money with his fingernails. Crow played out the rest of the hand cautiously, winning a small pot with aces and deuces. Before passing his cards to the next dealer, he nicked the two deuces with his fingernail.

Ben Cartwright dealt the next hand, giving Crow a deuce, ten down, and a queen showing. Crow dropped, nicking the deuce as he threw away the cards. Since Cartwright was winning most of the money, it was a good bet that he was the cheat. Crow watched him bet into a pair of aces, one of them concealed, held by the red-faced man, who raised back. All the others threw their hands away, Cartwright re-raised, and his opponent called. Crow thought he detected a nick on the top card of the deck and wondered if the red- faced man was about to catch an ace or a deuce.

Cartwright dealt his opponent an eight; Crow could hear a faint hist, the sound signature of a deuce dealer, as Cartwright thumbed the card off the deck. The sound of the second card from the top of the deck being pulled from between the first and third card was distinctive, and Crow realized with some embarrassment that he had been hearing it all along, every time Cartwright dealt, without consciously identifying it. The guy had been dealing seconds all night. He heard the hoarse voice of his father.
You catch a deuce dealer with your ears, not your eyes, son.

Cartwright gave himself the nicked ace. A card nicker
and
a deuce dealer, Crow thought, wondering how he was going to recover his eight hundred dollars. Cartwright won the hand with kings full of aces.

“What do you do for a living, Ben?” Crow asked, gathering the cards for the next deal. “You still in the cattle business?”

Cartwright squared up his pile of cash and said, “I am an investment counselor. I specialize in collectibles. Investment-quality ephemera. What do you do, Mr. Crow?”

“Odd jobs.”

Ben Cartwright smiled. “I used to do that,” he said. “A difficult way to make a living.”

“You doing better in ephemera?”

“Much better, thank you.”

Crow shuffled the deck and dealt. Using his peripheral vision, he watched Cartwright pick up his down cards, both of which were nicked. The ace of spades was his up card. Cartwright looked quickly at Crow, who appeared not to notice.

“Ace bets,” said Crow. Cartwright reached for his stack, hesitated, bet ten dollars. Crow, with a jack of clubs showing, raised twenty. The man to his left folded, the red-faced man called, the other two players folded. Cartwright hesitated, then called the raise.

On the next round, Crow dealt the red-faced man a rag, gave Cartwright the case ace and himself an eight of clubs. “Pair of aces bets.”

Cartwright was looking at him suspiciously. “I check.”

Crow shrugged and bet twenty dollars. The red-faced man folded. Cartwright glared at Crow, his weak-tea eyes quivering.

“You in or out?” Crow asked. The other players, sensing something between the two but uncertain what it was, were watching carefully. Cartwright looked again at his down cards and called the bet.

“You're not raising?”

“I am not.”

Crow shrugged and dealt a fifth round—a nicked deuce to Cartwright, the seven of clubs for himself. “Possible straight flush for the dealer. You're still high,” he said to Cartwright. “You gonna bet those aces this time?”

Cartwright chewed his lip before answering. “I think not.”

Debrowski came up behind Crow. The craps game was breaking up. “I lost it all, Crow. How are you doing?”

“Not bad.” He bet twenty dollars.

Cartwright picked up his down cards and threw them faceup on the table: ace, deuce.

“I fold,” he said.

“You're folding a full house?” said Wicky.

Cartwright was staring at Crow, his pale eyes quivering. “He has a straight flush,” he said in his big voice. “Show them your hand, Mr. Crow.”

Crow raked in the little pot with one hand and flipped over his down cards with the other. The three of hearts, the five of spades.

“Rags!” the red-faced man said, laughing around his cigar. Ben Cartwright sat back as though he had been chest-punched. He reached for the deck and turned over the top four cards, the cards they would have received had they played out the entire hand: three of diamonds, eight and nine of hearts, queen of spades. No clubs, no possibility of a straight flush.

“Excuse me, gentlemen. I have to be going.” Ben Cartwright stood, folded the pile of money in front of him, pushed it into his hip pocket, and headed for the door.

“What was that about?” Debrowski asked.

Crow stood up. “You want to play my stack? I have to go see a man about a debt.”

“Sure,” she said, sliding into his seat. She watched him follow Ben Cartwright out of the room.

“There go two of the three weirdest guys I ever met,” Dickie said. He picked up the deck and started shuffling.

Ben
Cartwright entered the elevator and pressed the ground-floor button. The doors had almost closed when a hand appeared and tripped the safety bar. The doors slid open and Crow stepped into the elevator. “How you doing?” he asked. The doors hissed shut and the elevator began its descent.