Quarry's Deal (5 page)

8

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IT WAS A
room full of tables. The walls were that same barn red with white trim, but there was a noticeable absence of decoration. Only at the far end, which was given over to the bar, was the mock western motif of the upper floor continued: horse-collar mirrors; some western paintings; chairs made from the same rough wood as the picket fence booths upstairs; tables that were glass-covered wagon wheels. But that was just in the bar area. Throughout the rest of the room the walls were bare, the tables were cardtables, round, the chairs metal folding type with padded backs and seats.

It was also a room full of people. The cars in the parking lot now seemed justified, and then some. There wasn’t an empty seat in the house, though I felt sure one would be found, and room made, at any table I might care to join.

There was one small area of the room that was unlit, with several long tables which were covered. This, I learned from a waitress, was where the roulette and craps was played, on the weekends. Week nights, only the card tables were open.

This wasn’t Las Vegas, but for a place stuck between a couple of Iowa cornfields it was close enough. It certainly lacked the trappings of Las Vegas, excluding the showgirl-pretty waitresses, who went around keeping the customers well-lubricated, but all of it went on the bill, none of your free drinks stuff here, and instead of chips, the players used money, stacks of it littered each table, paper money, and not that multicolor stuff they use in Monopoly, either: the real, green thing.

To be in this room you had to be a member. I was a member. I had just paid ten dollars for an out-of-town membership. Des Moines area members paid ten dollars, too. Membership was lifetime. The little brown card, which I was required to sign, said so. Considering the kind of stakes in question here, ten bucks was a drop in a bucket so deep you wouldn’t hear the drop.

I played blackjack for a while. For half an hour. I lost fifty bucks without trying. I went from there to a table where they were playing five-card stud and lasted five hands, throwing away twenty-five bucks on nothing but anteing up.

I shouldn’t have chosen blackjack, which is my worst game, or five-card stud either, my second worst. I shouldn’t have been playing cards at all, coming off of two days of solid driving, which had left me sluggish to say the least, and one thing I didn’t need to spend any more time in was a sitting position. What I did need was a bed. I was getting sleepy just thinking about it.

But this place, this Red Barn Club with its hokey decor and mediocre restaurant and high stakes gambling set-up, was where my dragon lady, Glenna Cole, had gone. Or anyway, where simple reasoning said she’d gone, considering the Barn’s phone number was the one she’d left for her (late) lover.

So I needed to get the feel of the place, find out what it was about, find out what was going on here that could require the specialized talents of the beautiful Ms. Cole.

By the time I’d settled in at a table where three-card draw poker (jacks or better to open, progressive ante) was being played, I had traversed the room and pretty well convinced myself Glenna Cole was not around, not anywhere where I could see her, anyway.

I was beginning to think I’d beat her here. I hadn’t made great time on my way up from Florida, but not terrible time, either, and maybe she’d made a side trip or something.

If she
was
here, she’d be easy enough to spot. The oriental eyes, the awesome breasts, how could you miss her? Even if the room were full of women.

Which it wasn’t. There were a few ladies mixed in at the blackjack tables, several others playing casino, just one or two playing at a poker table where a handsome young house dealer was offering seven-card stud. The week nights at the Barn, it would seem, belonged primarily to area businessmen having a night out; the weekends apparently attracted more couples, from the area and outside of it too, probably, with the craps and roulette tables being better suited to the needs of a mixed crowd.

At any rate, if Glenna Cole was among the few females present, she was wearing a hell of a disguise. Outside of the waitresses, these were women in their forties, wives, divorcees, maybe a mistress or two. Too much make-up. Expensive, ugly pants suits. A hell of a disguise.

The men were dressed more casually, country club casual, sports shirts, knit slacks, occasionally a sport coat, seldom a tie. This included the house dealers, who, unlike the waitresses, wore no specific uniform.

The house dealer at the draw poker table was a guy in his early twenties with short black hair, glasses, and a worried expression. He was the weakest dealer in the room, easy, and I started winning off him right away. Most of the dealers were making cheerful, if terse, conversation with the patrons, but this kid was tightlipped, bordering on sullen.

I was up a hundred and a half after less than an hour, and a guy across from me at the table (there were five of us in) was up maybe two hundred. He was a fat guy in a striped shirt with a string tie that had a little calf’s head choker; whether or not he’d dressed to suit the decor, or was just an asshole, I can’t say. I’d guess the latter.

We were up to aces or better to open, second time around. The ante was five bucks, so there was a hundred seventy-five bucks in the pot before any betting started. I opened with aces, betting ten bucks. Everybody stayed. I drew three cards, picked up another ace. Everybody drew three except the fat guy, who drew to either a four-card flush or four-card straight; whichever it was, he didn’t make it, and folded before the second round of betting could begin.

I threw another ten in and everybody dropped but the dealer. He raised me twenty-five, which was the limit. I raised him another twenty-five, and he swallowed, and called.

“Bullets,” I said, and showed him the aces, two red ones and a spade.

He swallowed again, and his cards tumbled out of his fingers and I caught a glimpse of a king, and he raked the cards back in.

“Three kings, huh,” I said. “A rough one.”

“I just had two,” the kid said defensively.

“Why the hell did you stay in, then? I had to have aces to open.” I didn’t mention that he’d raised me: why rub it in?

“I didn’t think you had them,” he said, and shuffled.

So he was calling me a liar. Big fucking deal. But I found myself wondering, back in the back of my head someplace, why a house dealer would be playing so stupid, and why a guy working for the house would be carrying desperation around in his watery eyes.’

Then again, my eyes were watery, too, and I wasn’t desperate. I was just reacting to the layer of smoke created by all the gamblers in the room whose penchant for games of chance extended to lung cancer roulette.

I stayed a few more hands, not wanting to leave the table at a point where doing so might cause a scene, and came away with three hundred and eighty-some bucks, and that didn’t include what I spent on the four or five Cokes I drank while at the table.

In spite of which, I was still thirsty, and I went over to the bar area, which was the least busy part of the room, except for the trio of waitresses hustling back and forth with trays of booze for the members at the gaming tables.

In fact, when I crawled up on a padded stool at the bar, I was alone. Except for the bartender, or rather barmaid, whose shapely back was to me at the moment, though I didn’t have much doubt the front would be just as nice. Another in the parade of beautiful female employees here at the Barn.

She was on the tall side, with shoulder-length dark blond hair, and she turned and gave me a wide, earthy smile and said, “What’s your pleasure?”

I laughed.

Now that wasn’t the most original line I ever heard, nor the wittiest, but I laughed.

It was a nervous laugh, a laugh to cover any of the surprise that might have shown through when I found out who she was.

For one thing, she had a name tag on her red sweater that said “Lucille,” meaning she was the pleasant voice on the telephone who had directed me here.

For another thing, she was Glenna Cole.

9

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SHE DIDN’T RECOGNIZE ME.

At least I didn’t think she did. Nothing showed in her eyes, or anywhere else. Maybe I’d managed to watch her all that while back in Florida without her noticing, after all. Maybe my trick of shaving off the beard had worked. Maybe my efforts to complete my half-face tan had been worth the bother.

Or maybe she was just better than me. Maybe she could be surprised without registering it one iota. Maybe she could recognize somebody without having to cover with a silly nervous laugh. Maybe a lot of things.

Right now she was waiting.

And it took me a beat to remember what it was she was waiting for, which was the answer to the musical question, “What’s your pleasure?”

“Coke,” I said.

“Don’t tell me you’re the guy,” she said.

I managed not to do my famous nervous laugh this time.

“What guy?” I said.

“The guy who’s been ordering the straight Cokes all night long. Don’t you know that stuff’s not good for you?”

I’d said Coke only to be saying something. Simple reflex. Truth was, all that caffeine-loaded cola had helped make me feel jumpy, and left me with a lousy taste in my mouth as a bonus.

But it was an opening, a place to start a conversation, so I followed up.

“I suppose booze’d be better for me?”

“Sure. Ever see what a nail looks like when you leave it in Coke over night?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“Eats the sucker up. Like acid.”

“You convinced me.”

“You’re swearing off Coke.”

“No. But I won’t go leaving nails in it.”

She laughed, just a little. Not a nervous one, either. Not covering up anything. I didn’t think.

“Somehow you don’t seem the type,” I said.

“Which type is that?”

“Bartender type.”

“Is that it? You don’t trust lady bartenders?”

“Can you make a gimlet?”

“Can I make a gimlet? Gin or vodka?”

“Gin. Make yourself something, too.”

She went away and made a gin gimlet for me and something for herself and I sat wondering how I could ever have failed to recognize that voice on the phone earlier today. Sometimes the full timbre of a voice is lost over the wires. On the phone hers had seemed pleasant, sultry, but that’s all. Here, now, in person, I was reminded of how haunting that baritone but in no way masculine voice of hers had seemed to me when I was first hearing it, memorizing it, learning to pick it out from the giggly crowd down round the pool at the Beach Shore. It was a voice I should have recognized, even though tonight was my first conversation with her.

She brought me the gimlet and I sipped it and nodded approval.

She sipped the Manhattan she’d made herself and said, “I know you from someplace.”

Well, now.

“Shouldn’t that be my line?” I said.

She gave me that earthy smile again, the gums showing, but attractive as hell. “Maybe so. You a regular here?”

“No. I’m from out of town. Why? Are you new?”

“New? Not exactly. This is my first night on the job at the Barn, if that’s what you mean. But new I’m definitely not. Hey, I do know you from someplace. Really. “

“I talked to you on the phone this afternoon.”

“Oh, yes! I gave you directions.”

“Pretty damn good ones, too, for a first-nighter.”

“Well. I just got here this morning myself, came by way of Des Moines like you did, so it was all pretty fresh in my mind.”

A waitress with short blond hair, an attractive pout, and perky little breasts that poked at her barn red sweater came up alongside me and said to Lucille (as Glenna Cole was calling herself here), “I hate to bust up this budding romance, but I got a couple dozen booze-happy cardplayers who’d be happy to get the couple dozen drinks you’re supposed to be making.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Lucille said. But those oriental eyes said Go fuck yourself.

Which didn’t in the least bother the pouty blond waitress, who parked herself on the stool next to me while the drinks were getting made.

“You got a smoke?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“I’ll do you a favor sometime,” she said, and moved over a stool.

I nursed my gimlet.

“Hey,” I said, after a while.

The pouty blonde, not looking, said, “You talking to me?”

“Yeah. Tell me something.”

“Such as.”

“Who’s that big guy that’s been circulating all evening?”

A guy about fifty, a young-looking and healthy fifty at that, several inches over six foot, shortcropped white hair, modest pot belly, craggy good looks, had been winding through the tables incessantly as long as I’d been there, though he never would butt in, never made conversation unless a player at a table began it, a constant presence in the room without being obnoxious about it. And though he wore a conservative but well-tailored suit with a solid-color blue tie, he had a rugged look that fit right in with the image the Barn sought.

“Why don’t you take a great big guess and see if you just can’t figure it out yourself?”

“He runs the place.”

“He owns it, too.”

“What’s his name?”

“Tree.”

“What?”

“Tree, I said. Frank Tree.”

“Is that a real name?”

“How should I know? Ask Mr. Tree.”

“You still want a smoke?”

“Sure.”

I got a buck out and wadded it up and tossed it down the counter in front of her.

“Buy yourself a couple packs,” I said.

She turned her nose up at the wadded-up buck. Then she put it in her denims.

Meanwhile, Lucille was on her way back with a tray full of drinks. One of the drinks was another gimlet for me; the rest of the tray went with the pouty waitress out into the room of cardtables.

I tasted the fresh drink and said, “I may give up Coke completely.”

“Oh shit,” Lucille said. “Here comes another empty tray to fill. Listen. We close in an hour and a half. I’ll be out of here fifteen minutes after that. Let’s do something.”

“Fine,” I said.

While I was waiting I went back out to the tables. By closing I’d lost half of my winnings from draw poker at seven-card stud.

I wasn’t sure yet whether I was winning or losing tonight.