Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife (71 page)

Richard Nixon always played seriously, not to say deviously, but he only ever seemed to go in big-time when he was sure of his cards. So far, as revealed by the call, Nixon had yet to bluff in a major way, but with his shifting eyes, sweat beading his upper lip, and the five o’clock shadow moving toward eight or nine, it was almost impossible to guess what he was thinking. Like Kali, he had been tailgating the game most of the time, sweeping up the smaller pots to keep himself solvent but avoiding any protracted showdown with Doc or Lucifer. Doc had few worries about the final player. He was a stone-faced North Korean, a former secret policeman who had been reassigned from torturer to victim in Kim II Sung’s second-to-last purge. By all accounts, he had held out through over three weeks of physical and psychological horror before being slowly garroted by some of his former subordinates. Although a master of the implacable bluff, the secret policeman was essentially out of his league in present company, and Doc suspected he would be the next to go. His stack was already running grievously low, but Doc didn’t expect him to depart easily. Dour communist tenacity might well force him to risk his entire nervous system before he was closed out and forced to join the Saber-Toothed Kid babbling mindlessly in the adjoining room.

With the Korean eliminated, Doc would be the next logical target. Lucifer and Kali would never go after each other while humans remained to be skinned and sliced. Both were extramortals and their kind tended to engage in their one-on-one combat away from the mere human witnesses. It was always possible that they would go after Nixon next, but Doc considered this unlikely. The disgraced ex-president was a professional survivor; Doc, on the other hand, survived despite himself. Doc’s reckless potential for self-destruction was well-known. Nixon, should he lose all his money, would simply bow out, maybe even demanding the courtesy car fare traditionally due the tapped. Doc would just smile coolly and toss his entire brain into the middle with little more than a second thought. Lesser mortals might have asked him why he simply didn’t rise from the table and walk away. Doc would only have shrugged. “It’s no recreation if a man doesn’t play for blood and sanity.”

The deal passed to Lucifer once more. He tapped the deck and stood up, moving to the small wet bar to pour himself a drink. On this particular night, Lucifer was drinking turquoise science-fiction concoctions from the surface of which a heavy vapor flowed. As he moved from his chair, he glanced back at the others. “Can I get anyone else a drink while I’m up?”

Kali ignored him; she imbibed nothing except the occasional nasal pinch of a dark red powder taken from an ornate enamel and silver snuffbox with a red scorpion inlaid on the lid. Doc had a nasty feeling that the powder was dried blood of some kind, but the blood of what he neither cared to know nor speculate. In response to Lucifer’s offer, the secret policeman nodded curtly. “Whiskey.” Which, for some unknown reason, actually meant vodka. Nixon turned the prow of his ski-jump nose in Lucifer’s direction and smiled his wan smile. “I’ll have a scotch and soda, my friend, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Doc stood up. “It’s okay, I’ll pour my own.”

The last thing Doc wanted was for Lucifer to pour him a drink. He wouldn’t have put it past the Dark Disco Prince to slip him a Mickey Finn, mind-numbing or worse; although it would have had to have been a pretty damned powerful Mickey to numb Doc’s mind, considering his mighty tolerance for most drugs known to this world and the last. As Doc moved to the bar, he took a discreet pull on his pocket flask of laudanum to calm himself. The very last thing he needed was to perform a blood-hacking coughing fit for this opposition. He figured he still had a couple of hours to go before he would face the combined wiles and chicanery of Kali and Lucifer working in tandem. He knew he would be best advised to just go on walking, out of the game, out of the room, maybe out of the Mephisto Hotel, and perhaps out of Hell itself. He knew, though, that his pride wouldn’t allow it. Even if it destroyed him, no one would ever be able to say that Doc Holliday ran from a challenge, even if the challenge came from the Devil himself. He would not, however, have minded in the least if some deus ex machina had come along and interrupted the game. Where was Big-Nosed Kate to burn down the saloon?

A guard had been posted outside room 1009, a sumo wrestler in a voluminous yellow plaid suit that could only have come from the
personal tailor of Nathan Detroit. As Jim and Semple approached the door, he simply shook his head. Jim and Semple halted. “No?”

The sumo wrestler again shook his head. “Not a prayer.”

“No one goes in?”

“No one. Boss’s orders.”

Semple was wondering whether the best tactic would be to bluster, bribe, or seduce their way past the guard. “So who’s the boss?”

The guard looked at her as though her naïveté quite surpassed his understanding. “This is Hell, missy. Who the fuck do you think is the boss?”

“We need to see Doc Holliday.”

“If he’s in there at all, he’ll be coming out one of these days. You can see him then.”

“We got a call.”

The sumo wrestler shook his head for a third time. It seemed to be his sole mannerism. “Nobody called out from in there.”

Semple, with great presence of mind, produced a bag of the Hell coinage. “Doc needs more money. We were supposed to bring it to him.” Semple had decided that, of her three possible options, bribery was the only practical solution. The guard seemed unbluffable; seduction was too complicated, not to mention distasteful; it would have to come down to greasing through on a cash gratuity. She hefted the bag so the coins clinked one against the other. “I have the cash right here.”

The sumo wrestler’s eyes fixed on the bag, validating Semple’s judgment. Who said Hell was without corruption? “Why don’t you give that to me and I’ll take it in to him?”

Now it was Semple’s turn to shake her head. “I really don’t think so.”

“You don’t trust me to give it to him?”

Jim decided it was his turn to play at least a supporting role in this exercise. “It’s not that she doesn’t trust you, it’s just that she has her orders. She has to bring him the bag personally, otherwise it’s her ass.”

The guard’s eyes moved from Jim’s face to Semple’s ass. Maybe seduction might have been a better shot, but it was too late now to change trains. Semple tilted the bag and let a coin drop into the palm of her hand. The guard’s attention moved up again to where she was showing him the money. She let a second coin drop, them a third and a fourth. On five, the guard’s expression changed. He almost
looked understanding. “Listen, I don’t want to see old Doc strapped for cash in a big game like this one.”

Jim smiled. “I’m sure old Doc will be very grateful.”

Semple quickly slipped half a dozen plastic coins to the sumo wrestler. Before opening the door to 1009 and easing them through, he treated them to a hard look and a quick instruction. “You’ve got five minutes and then I want you back out here. Don’t be making no noise or upsetting anyone, okay? Or your ass is mine.”

With that, he swung the door open.

The interior of the room was filled with an old-fashioned fug of tobacco smoke, so thick that it glowed in the areas where the light hit it. Doc and Lucifer were smoking cigars, and a hard-faced Oriental held a Turkish cigarette in a steel holder. A good many of the faceless kibitzers lined around the dark periphery of the room also had cigarettes, cigars, and cheroots burning. All focus was on the game in progress, and what light there was came from the lamp directly over the green baize poker table with the cracked, nicotine-stained Tiffany shade. It illuminated the white cards, the hands of the players, and maybe their shirt cuffs, and all the paraphernalia they had laid out on the table in front of them. As Jim and Semple entered, Lucifer was dealing a hand, and neither he nor any of the players looked up. Lucifer flipped a black ace to Doc and Jim hoped that his hole card wasn’t either of the red eights. Or maybe in Hell a dead man’s hand didn’t matter.

As quietly as they could, Jim and Semple merged with the spectators. They were inside, and if the guard outside was as good as his word, they had five minutes to figure a way to get Doc out of there. Jim spotted the small bar and decided that it was as good a spot as any to set up a vantage point—and a shot of something would certainly help him think on his feet. It was only as, with Semple right behind him, he eased toward the booze that he spotted Nixon as one of the players. In the same instant, Nixon saw him and frowned slightly, as though not quite recognizing him. Suddenly Jim knew he wasn’t going to keep his mouth shut, despite what the guard outside might have told him. He stepped forward into the light and glared at Nixon. “You may well frown, you son of a bitch.”

Semple grabbed him by the arm. “Jim!”

Jim shook his head. He wasn’t going be silenced or deflected. “I may have let Hoover slide, but I’m going to have my say with this bastard.”

Doc looked up and recognized Jim. “Hello there, young Morrison.”

“Hi, Doc.”

Lucifer looked at Doc. “You know this guy?”

Doc nodded. “Sure, I know this guy. It’s Jim Morrison. A little confused and headstrong, but basically he’s all right.”

Two large men in back of Lucifer moved forward. They looked to be at least kissing cousins to the sumo wrestler outside, with very much the same taste in clothes. They waited on Lucifer for the word to remove Jim and Semple. Lucifer frowned at Doc and pointed to Semple. “And the broad?”

“Semple McPherson.”

“As in Aimee Semple McPherson?”

Doc nodded again. “The very same—at least, half of her. She’s going to be the love of young Morrison’s life.”

Semple started to protest. “Who says I’m going to be the love of his life?”

Everyone ignored her. Lucifer was studying Jim. “And what do you want here, Jim Morrison?”

“I came here to get Doc out of this game . . . ”

Lucifer shook his head. “Doc can’t leave this game. He’s still ahead. It’d be more than his reputation is worth.”

Jim gestured to Nixon. “ . . . but now that I find him here, I may have to change my plans.”

Lucifer raised an eyebrow. “You have a beef with Tricky Dick?”

“My whole generation has a beef with Tricky Dick.”

Nixon’s face twisted into a familiar sour scowl. “Are we here to play poker or listen to this hippie bum run off at the mouth?”

Lucifer smoothed his pencil mustache while he considered the situation. Kali and the Korean carefully placed their hands flat on the table. Their faces showed no easily read expression, but later Jim would swear that Kali was amused. Finally Lucifer made up his mind. “Let him say his piece. We’ve got free speech here in Hell.”

Nixon looked outraged. “I’m sorry. I really have to protest. Since when was there free speech in Hell? I never heard that. Where is that written? Particularly for long-haired troublemakers who come barging into a private card game.”

Lucifer grinned, apparently enjoying baiting the onetime president. “There’s been free speech in Hell since I said there was free speech in Hell. And besides, my boys are probably going to beat the shit out of him afterward for his temerity.”

Nixon quickly picked up on the nearest available red-herring detail. “Extreme. That’s the word. On the lifeside, I was forced to deal with these kinds of extremists all through my career.”

“You mean like your goddamned enemies list?”

“I did what was needed to protect the national security and the office of the president.”