These things usually happen to my husband. At parties he always
recounted any number of tall-tale adventures. I was the staid one who chatted with
close friends in the corner. I didn’t use to be. In college I’d lived my share.
But that was before jobs and responsibility and a business ate up all my time.
Now I was content just to spend quiet evenings at home. Mostly.
Ever since the incident with the Patriot Police, my husband
had gone native. He’d started hanging out with other probationers and more than
the ordinary Eisteddfods reprobates, even a councilman. He decorated the Jeep
with a gun rack and magnetic bullet holes just to blend in. But I’d drawn the
line at the NRA bumper sticker. So he’d grown a beard that looked as forlorn in
flannel as Al Gore’s lost election.
He’d descended in despondency. Even our mayor’s mandatory
concealed carry amendment hadn’t stirred him from his funk. The only thing that
roused him was his Tuesday night poker game. Every week he skipped dinner and disappeared
until deep into the night. I only had a faint impression of exactly who he was
with. I’d never been invited even though he knew I was a better player than he
was. I just wrote it off to them not wanting a girl around cramping the boys’
fun.
Normally, I took his Tuesday absence as an opportunity for a
little me time. But I’d caught up on American Horror Story and just binge
watched the first five seasons of Pretty Little Liars. I’d seen the Game of
Thrones finale two weeks ago and the new season of House of Cards wasn’t due
out for another month. Usually, I’d settle in for anything by Jane Austin but our
streaming service had readjusted their offerings again and all they had was
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was an affront to both literature and man.
So I texted Nicci to see if she was up for an impromptu girls’
night out after work. Ariadne’s had just opened on the edge of Osceola. It was
the type of club where we could doll up and pretend we were pair of cougars for
an evening even if we really were just a couple of tame house cats. I’d heard
on the way home that our favorite darkwave band was in town for the night before
heading to more lucrative venues in Germany
and Sweden. The
place should be bouncing. If nothing else, it would be nice to cut loose for a
little while like we did back in college.
Nicci texted back that she was up for an adventure. She’d
stop by right after she got in her evening run.
That gave me time to pick out just the right outfit. Flipping
through my closet, I pulled out a clinging black neoprene dress whose front was
all brass zipper, both top and bottom. Fishnets were too tacky. So I opted for
a pair of black stockings with cat faces at the imaginary garter line that Nicci
had given me as a gag for that birthday which shall not be named.
Ariadne’s wasn’t the type of place you wanted to guard a
full purse, so I slipped my license, credit card, cell phone and a couple
twenties into a cute little black wallet with a string shoulder strap, along
with two keys, one for the house, one for the SUV.
Which left me only one option to comply with our newly
minted concealed carry ordinance. Not that I believed for an instant everyone
carrying guns made anyone safer. If that were true, Syria
and Yemen should
be safest countries on earth. I just didn’t feel like being the canary in the
coalmine who walked this case all the way up the courts. Not tonight anyway.
Besides, the custom fit garter holster I’d picked up on Etsy didn’t spoil the
look and might warn off the slower wolves if a wedding ring failed. So I
strapped a Ladysmith 9mm high inside my thigh and started working on my makeup.
Like everyone else in Osceola, I’d gone through all the
required training to obtain my concealed carry permit. Unlike the degenerates from
American Heritage Pawn with their wives or Star Spangled Strip Club
girlfriends, I actually took the training seriously. In fairness, for me it was
more of a refresher. My college dorm was nicknamed Little Sarajevo. Sorority
pledges and Art History majors can be the absolute worst.
In college I had dated an expert marksman who taught me how
to shoot. He said he’d been stationed in one of the ‘stans, but never said
which one or with which branch of service. Turned out he really wanted to
recruit me to babysit a nuclear missile silo, but thinking back, he had never
said whose. He did say I had the perfect demeanor and personality for it. The
psych major who was my freshman roommate might have disagreed. Fortunately, we
weren’t speaking much by then. In fact she wasn’t speaking complete sentences
to anyone anymore which suited me just fine.
I was just finishing up my hair when I got another text from
Nicci. One of the sub-zero freezers in the bio-lab she managed had alarmed just
as she was walking out the door. So now she was scrambling to find room
elsewhere for eight cubic feet of fetal pig tissue samples before it turned
into so much mystery meat. Give her another hour to coordinate with the lead
scientist and we’d be back on schedule. Promise.
I knew with Nicci an hour could easily turn into two. She
was ultra-competent at her job but her professional life was a complicated
mess. Which put me back to my original dilemma of what to do kill some time. Ariadne’s
wasn’t the type of place where I wanted to hang out alone.
Sigh, might as well be a responsible adult and get something
done in the meantime. Something that wouldn’t ruin my hair and makeup in case we
eventually salvaged the night. I ran through my mental to do list and decided
on a budget update.
It should only take an hour or so if my husband had rolled in
the inputs from Eisteddfods. Thankfully, I’d convinced him to hire a real
accountant to take care of those books. All I really needed was an idea of how
much we had available to spend on our annual Christmas charity. This year I
told him I wanted us to sponsor livestock in economically depressed areas of
the world from a catalog we received in the mail. Eisteddfods had started
turning a profit so we should have a reasonable sum to work with. We both
wanted to give back something that would really help the people who needed it. Between
Nepal, West
Africa and the continuing mess in the Middle East,
there was too much suffering to get caught up in the current wave of
electioneering paranoia.
So I settled in at the computer and fired up the
spreadsheet. On a good night it wasn’t much harder than balancing a checkbook,
really just double checking my husband’s math.
Tonight wasn’t one of those nights. None of the numbers
added up with the estimates in my head. Something was off. Thousands of dollars
off.
Before I knew it, I had three different spreadsheets open,
crosschecking the previous months’ archives versus the printouts I’d dug up
from the accountant. I was about ready to start pulling out my perfectly coiffed
hair. As I went to open a fourth file, something odd caught my eye. The last
modified date was only a month ago. I checked the others. Sure enough, each had
been updated on the same day. So had every other file going back to the beginning
of the year.
That’s when it hit me that my husband was hiding something.
Something to the tune of about five hundred dollars a month that he’d cleverly
hidden to make disappear. Not a small sum to us. Or at least to me.
Ok, calm down, girl. This doesn’t mean what you think. Does
it? No. Maybe he bought you something really nice for Christmas. A diamond? A Rhine
river cruise? A down payment on a car? Something big now that Eisteddfods had turned
a profit. Although none of those really sounded like him.
And the adjustment date was just a month after he’d started
playing poker. He said it was penny-ante, just a guys’ gathering that Freddie
King had roped him into when he played a few solo sets at Eisteddfods after
hours. At the time, I had thought it was great he was finally making new
friends. I hadn’t been worried; he’d never been a gambler. He’d never wanted to
go to Vegas, or even the Hard Rock casino nearby. Sure, he played the lottery
but said it was just an interesting way of paying taxes with a chance for one
hell of a return.
So I started digging deeper, pulling up his credit card
bills and bank statements looking for a similar pattern. His card was
scrupulously clean, no balance carried, no suspect charges. But on the tenth of
every month, he withdrew two hundred dollars cash from his steadily shrinking
savings. Starting the same month as his creative accounting on the house budget
had begun.
Son of a bitch. He wasn’t. He was. Right under my nose. How
could I have missed it? Did I? I started looking for other signs. How would I
know? He did most of his own laundry. We kept individual bank accounts and
credit cards in addition to the joint ones. We each received an allowance so we
had our own fun money.
I was digging through his dirty laundry in the closet, going
through his pants pockets when Nicci called. The failure had cascaded to the
freezer with the bull semen samples that she now was hosing down and sanitizing
like the cheerleaders’ bathroom after homecoming. Raincheck?
Nicci was so wrapped up in her own crisis that she didn’t
notice my monotone, monosyllable replies. I was numb, oscillating between white
fog and red rage.
I next found myself in the driver’s seat of my car with it
running without remembering how I got there. I only remembered the pistol at my
thigh when I tried to engage the clutch. I shimmied the holster off my leg and
tossed it on the seat beside me.
I was out of the neighborhood before I realized I didn’t
know where I was going. I pulled over at the rail trail and tried calling my
husband. His phone went directly to voicemail. Only then did it occur to me that
I didn’t even know where this poker game was held.
Now what?
I could turn around and go home to wait for him, ambush him as
soon as he walked in the door. Or I could try to find more information to
either confirm or deny what might be going on. I channeled my inner Nicci and
decided to press forward. I had to know. But where else could I look? Where
else might he be hiding something?
Eisteddfods.
I arrived just as the evening shift was closing up. I told
the manager I needed to check some figures in the office. Not to worry, I’d set the alarm and lock up
when I was done. Only then did I realize that I didn’t have my set of keys and
had to ask her for her key to lock-box where we kept the spares in the office.
I ignored the long, speculative, somewhat scandalized look she gave my dress as
she freed the key from her chain. I gave her my resting bitch face. Honey, give
it another fifteen years and maybe you’ll understand.
As soon as I was inside, I set straight about ransacking the
office. First, I double-checked the books to make certain the inputs I’d seen
from the accountant’s report synched up. They did. Which meant he wasn’t in on
whatever my husband was up to.
Next, I riffled through the files and bookcases looking for
anything he might be hiding. Unless you counted the boxes, back orders and
invoices for Cuban, Czech and Chinese science fiction, I didn’t find anything
worth noting. Just like at home, the office was neat and orderly as if he were
incapable of hiding anything. Which only made me more suspicious.
I was about to give up when I noticed a poker chip tucked
beneath the mechanical pencils in the desk drawer. Not the small, cheap plastic
variety you see at home, a substantial, iridescent neon blue with the outline
of a curvaceous woman poised beneath the lacquer. Like I used to see on
mud-flaps of four-wheel drives around Osceola before their gender preference
switched to truck-nuts. High-end and professional. Not exactly penny-ante.
Now I had to know what was going on. So I dropped it in my
purse and dug around the records looking for contact information for Freddie
King. He would know exactly where my husband was. I remembered my husband
saying he always hitched a ride. I didn’t find a contract, just a record of a
cash payment with a P.O. Box and a phone number, the bare minimum the
accountant insisted on.
That’s when I decided that maybe I’d delved too deep down
the rabbit hole of paranoia. Up to now, I’d trusted my husband implicitly. Even
with the mild exceptions of the implausible tale of his Christmas adventure and
his ill-fated protest against the Patriot Police, he’d never disappointed me.
And those incidents were more amusing than an existential threat to our
marriage. There was probably a simple explanation. And I’d get it as soon as he
got home, one way or another. Maybe I’d overreacted. Just a bit.
So I filed Freddie’s number in my phone in case I still wanted
to talk to him when I got home. At this point I wanted nothing more than to
untruss from my outfit, and relax in a warm bath, maybe with some candles and a
glass of wine. Something to take the edge off so my confrontation didn’t turn
into a de facto castration. Too much blood and screaming. Besides, I valued
those little guys.
With that settled, I slipped the key into the lock-box to
retrieve the spares so I could lock up for the night. I pulled up the metal
cover. My heart stopped when I saw a key with a blue plastic fob hanging to the
right. Like an old motel key.
I snatched it off the hook. It read U-Storage America with a
white 13 and an address imprinted below. Not a secret rendezvous, a storage
unit. A wave of guilt washed over me, followed by curiosity.
I did a search on my phone and pulled up an address on
Google Maps. Just past the railroad tracks by the abandoned industrial park. Didn’t
ring a bell. So I clicked their site which looked like a Web Design for Dummies
boilerplate. 24/7 drive-up access. No rates, just a phone number. Your privacy
guaranteed. “Cache In at USA”
was their tag line.
That clicked. The locals called it Cache for Trash after it
was featured on an episode of Trove Traders. Guaranteed privacy translated to
no onsite security so you only stored what you could afford to lose. What in
the world would my husband be keeping there? Certainly not books or business
records, or the accountant would have written off the expense.
I thought about calling my husband again. As I pulled out my
phone, I noticed the time. It was still relatively early. I hesitated. I could
easily check out the storage unit, return the key to the lock box and get home
before he did. If need be, I could confront him then. And if I found something
reasonable in there, I could pretend it never happened.
So I locked up the store, jumped back in my SUV and headed
for the edge of town. All through the drive, I wondered what I might find. My
mind whirled through everything from the unreasonable to the downright irrational.
He’d set up a man-cave with a big screen TV, a fridge and a pool table like I’d
seen on that commercial. No, he really was having an affair and collecting
furniture before he shacked up with the blond twins half my age that he always
joked he’d trade me in for one day. No, a boat. He’d bought a boat with our
savings and needed a place to hide it while he worked up the courage to tell
me.
That last one wasn’t as improbable as it sounded. I vaguely
remembered one of his coworkers at his last office job had pulled a stunt like
that. Bruce, that was his name. He’d seen a boat tagged with a for sale sign as
he was driving home from work. He said the price was so right that he’d be losing
money if he didn’t buy it then and there. Only that brilliantine had stored it
in a friend’s driveway as he worked out how to break it to his wife that the
Mediterranean cruise they’d been saving for would actually be spent in the tiny
bow cabin of a Boston Whaler fishing in the Gulf. He still hadn’t come up with
a convincing explanation a few weeks later when his wife spotted it and he was
busted.
I couldn’t get that scenario out of my head. My husband had
always laughed at Bruce but with a subtle hint of admiration at his audacity. And
he was smart enough not to make the same mistake. So he’d found a clever way to
keep his purchase under wraps.
By the time I whipped into the U-Storage America parking lot,
I’d built an unbreakable image in my mind. A little cuddy cabin cruiser outfitted
with fishing poles, coolers and every marine gadget known to man for the guys,
plus a little sun deck and swim platform for the bikini-clad twins. The more electronics
I envisioned, the more livid I became. He and the twins were probably out there
right now on a moonlight fishing expedition.
I cruised along the front of the building, searching the
rollup doors for number thirteen. U-Storage was a converted roadside hotel just
off the federal highway. For a while after the bypass went in, it survived as a
no-tell motel the locals fondly referred to as Foreclosure Inn before the
internet ate into their business model and small town adultery alone could no
longer keep it afloat. During the real estate boom, a New
York developer snatched up it with the surrounding
parcels, but only got as far as laying road patterns for a high-end gated
community and an industrial park before the Great Recession fallowed both
projects into weed-infested bankruptcy. Eventually, an outfit from the Caribbean
converted the main drag to a single strip, small plane airpark after the county
tax sale. That’s when a private equity group out of North
Dakota had gutted the hotel’s room interiors, ripped
out the Holiday Inn style windows and replaced them with aluminum rollup doors
then marketed it as drive-up self-storage.
Looking out across the ill-lit, forlorn landscape, I
wondered why the DEA hadn’t just set up a field office next door. Oh, my god,
that was it. He wasn’t hiding something as pedestrian as a boat. He’d fallen in
with some local trailer trash entrepreneurs running Redneck cocaine out to the
islands in exchange for marijuana they could mark and resell as medical, probably
paid in duty-free rum he pawned off on the bikini twins to keep them quiet. Or
maybe they were the masterminds behind the whole operation.
I screeched the SUV to a halt. There it was, bathed in
pinkish light, a dingy white thirteen painted in a red bull’s-eye on the door. By
now I had worked myself up into full furor. I slammed the door of the SUV,
slapped the key into the lock and swept up the reinforced door.
Then I stared blankly at fully packed interior. Nothing in
my paranoid rantings had prepared me for the shock. I couldn’t even comprehend
the meaning of what I’d found.
Confused, I stumbled back to SUV and slumped sideways onto
the driver’s seat, still staring into the open door. Slowly, I withdrew my phone
and dialed up my husband’s number. Straight to voicemail. Again. His cheery
message lifted me from my haze.
I ripped off a quick text message, “Call me ASAP. 911.” I fumed
as I awaited his reply. None came.
Even my imaginative internal seether couldn’t construct a
credible scenario. I think she’d curled up and was shuddering in toxic shock. I
couldn’t make sense of the individual pieces of his cache never mind the
collection as a whole. What earthly use would he have for what had to be a
four-hundred square foot storage unit filled with wholesale sized boxes of
disposable diapers, dried baby formula and tampons?
I looked from my phone to the storage unit and back again. I
knew I had to find him now, knew I couldn’t wait for an explanation until he
got home. That’s when I remembered Freddie King.
Quickly, I scrolled through my contacts until his number
came up. He would know exactly where my husband was. Hell, he could be sitting right
beside him. With the right motivation, I knew I could get him to put him on the
line. I pressed call before I could think through the consequences.
The line rang once, twice. By three times, I was convinced
it would also flip over to a message.
Just before the fourth ring, a female voice answered. “Hello?”
I could hear music pounding in the background. It sounded
like she was at Ariadne’s. That made no sense. From her voice I pictured a pert
little goth chick dressed just like me only still able to pull it off.
My mind spun through the implications but some professional
part of my brain kicked in and said, “I’m sorry, I was looking for Freddie
King. It’s kind of an emergency.”
“Girl, everything with Freddie is ‘kind of an emergency.’ How’d
you get my number anyway?”
I told her the truth. “He listed it as his contact for a
gig.”
“Son of a bitch. I told him I’m not pretending to be his
manager anymore. Let me guess, he’s a no-show?”
“Something like that.” I stretched the truth but just a
little. “Look, I really need to talk to him.”
The other woman went silent. I knew the line was still open
because I could still hear my favorite song echoing in the background. It
almost sounded like she was backstage. Suddenly, I grew insanely jealous.
“This isn’t about a gig at all, is it?” she finally asked.
“You two banging boots?”
“What? No!” I protested. “I’m married! He’s playing poker with
my husband and I need to find him.”
Now she laughed. “If your husband’s playing poker with
Freddie King, then you definitely need to find him, girl.”
I seized on the sisterhood angle. “Any idea where they might
be?” A slight pleading crept into my voice, not completely feigned.
She paused as if evaluating me again but not as long. “He tends
to run his life pretty dark. But ever since his wife found out about us, she
has him on a short leash, with a curfew and everything.” She emphasized “wife”
with bitterness that said she hadn’t known.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. Freddie King sounded like a
piece of work.
If she’d heard, I didn’t notice. “On a school night, he
turns into a pumpkin by midnight. I’m
texting you his address and his wife’s number. But I wouldn’t call her unless
you’re looking to star in a live-run episode of Cops. That bitch is unstable
even on her meds.”
Her incoming text registered with a ding. Relief flooded
over me. “Thank you,” I said, allowing some of it to leak through.
“Don’t thank me, girl.” She laughed again. “Anything that
adds a little family drama to that prick’s life is just karma come back to bite
him in the ass. I should thank you for landing it in my lap. When you talk to
him, tell him Chastity sends her love.”
This time I laughed.
“You take care now, girl,” she added warmly. “And good luck
with your husband.”
With that, she hung up.
I glanced at the time as I plugged Freddie’s address into
Google Maps. Just about enough for me to get over there and ambush him on his
way in. I closed up the storage unit and headed that way. I thought about going
home to change, but decided that if things went bad, I wanted my husband to
know exactly what he’d be missing when I found him.
Freddie’s place was in a sketchy, low-rent neighborhood
tucked behind a pair of strip malls, one anchored by a branch of Lexington
Green Payday Loans, the other with a struggling Indian restaurant. It was a
maze of tiny two-bedroom cinder block houses built in the early sixties.
First I did a drive-by. No lights were on. I decided I
didn’t have the courage to knock after Chastity’s warning. Thankfully, most people
parked on the street. So I found a spot around the corner shadowed by a
spreading oak where I could keep an eye on the house.
It was the kind of neighborhood that made me reconsider my
wardrobe choices this late at night. So when I spotted the Ladysmith lying on
the seat beside me, I reached over, strapped it on my thigh and smoothed my
skirt back over it. Feeling more confident, I settled in to wait, not quite
sure what I was waiting for. I guess I’d see come midnight.
Midnight came and
went with no sign of Freddie. I checked my phone again to make sure this was
the place. The GPS confirmed it was, if Google Maps could be trusted which I
knew it couldn’t.
Just then, a cab pulled up one corner down and quickly
doused its lights. A man got out and paid driver then casually strode toward
the house after the cab turned around and pulled away. Even as he tried to
skirt the light from the lone streetlight at the center of the block, I knew it
was my man Freddie. I’d only seen him a couple times at Eisteddfods but I
recognized his swinging ponytail and the distinctive swagger that he just
couldn’t hide. He absently flipped something like a large coin through the
fingers of his left hand.
I started the SUV and pulled around the corner. As my
headlights played across him, he furtively turned away and bent down as if he’d
dropped the coin he’d been playing with. Awkwardly, he stayed in that position
as I slow-rolled up beside him.
“Freddie King,” I called through the open window. “Just the
man I need to talk to.”
He snapped up like a meerkat caught out in the open looking
for a place to hide. He shot a glance toward the house then spun and walked the
other way.
I paced him in the SUV. “Unless you want to hear an improv rendition
of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on my horn that’s guaranteed to wake the dead, I suggest
you get inside. I just want to know where my husband is.”
“Lady,” he hissed just above a whisper without looking up as
he started walking faster. “I don’t know who you are and I sure as hell don’t
know your husband. Now leave me be before you bring a world of pain down on
both our heads. Go on, now. Scat!”
“Would you rather I called your wife and asked for you?” I
held up my glowing phone. “Chastity gave me the number.”
He finally looked up, and promptly deflated as he recognized
me. “Aw, shit.”
He scurried around the hood and hopped in the passenger
seat. Slouching down with a hand shielding his face, he pointed the way I’d
come in. “Pull up around the corner and kill the lights. We can talk there.”
I did as he asked. The engine began ticking as it cooled.
“Where is he?” I demanded when Freddie showed no sign of
breaking the silence between us.
“I don’t know.” He wouldn’t meet my eye. “I figured he was
home with you.”
“Don’t try my patience, Freddie,” I shot back. “It’s Tuesday
night. You always catch a ride with him.”
Freddie sighed. “Last I saw, he was sitting across from some
very serious dudes at a high stakes table.”
I felt blood flush my neck. So much for penny-ante.
“Where?” I insisted in the voice I used with delinquent nieces
and nephews before I threatened to tell their mother.
“Oh, come on,” he whined. “These aren’t the type of guys you
just rat out.”
My eyes narrowed. “Do these serious dudes have something to
do with a storage unit full of tampons, baby formula and diapers out by the
airpark?”
His eyes darted left then right. He licked his lips. I knew
the next words out of his mouth would be a lie.
“Forget it,” I said. I started the car. “You’re taking me to
him.”
Freddie’s eyes went wide as he finally looked up at me. “I…”
he started, but struggled with what else to say.
“The next words out of your mouth better be, ‘I can do that’
or,” I held up my phone, “I swear to god I’ll call your wife and tell her how you
stood up Chastity and me for a threesome at Ariadne’s. So buckle up, One-Eyed
Jack, and tell me where we’re going.”
He stared at me open mouthed. I could see he was still
trying to decide if he could talk his way past this somehow. I pressed the buttons
that brought up his wife’s number and angled the phone so he could see it. I
hovered a thumb over call as I looked him in the eye.
He folded inward like an errant child. “Head across the
bridge,” he mumbled as he crumpled against the door. “Shocking Blue.”
“The strip club?!” What in the hell had he gotten my husband
into?
Mutely, Freddie nodded, like a kid caught red-handed in the
cookie jar. “Please, I’ll do anything,” he begged. “Just don’t call my wife.”
“Oh, I know you will,” I said as I pulled out of his neighborhood
and raced toward the highway. I couldn’t get my hands on my husband soon
enough.
I banked my anger to something glowing as we drove in
silence. Freddie just slouched against the window, staring out at the passing
streetlights like a carsick kid.
But once we hit the causeway at the bay, he kept sneaking glimpses
over at me. Then he started tapping out a rhythm against the glass. Slowly it
grew more upbeat until he was sitting up, flicking his fingers along the dash.
When I glanced over as we crested the bridge, I saw the coin flipping through
the fingers of one hand. It flashed in the passing streetlights with the same
iridescent blue as the one I’ll pulled from the desk at Eisteddfods. Shocking
Blue. I could tell Freddie was working on some angle, I just didn’t know what.
It was one in the morning by the time we pulled into the
parking lot. The place wasn’t packed but for a Tuesday the lot wasn’t exactly
empty.
Atop the crest of the roof knelt a giant Aphrodite with her
arms outstretched like a goddess on a mountaintop which had earned the place
the nickname Mount Venus.
Twin neon blue spotlights played up and down her figure. The marquee below her scrolled:
Sweet, Sweet Connie on a one night stand from Little Rock.
Apparently, that was a draw.
“Pull around to the VIP entrance,” Freddie instructed as he
pointed toward the back of the building.
“VIP entrance?” I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“They put it in during the Republican National Convention a
few years ago,” he explained. “Couldn’t have the upstanding delegates of the
GOP caught with their elephants hanging out. Now it’s mostly valet parking.”
Sure enough around the back corner was an entrance roped off
in blue velvet and shielded from prying eyes by a series of cinderblock walls
that looked like they belonged at the US Capitol or the Green Zone in Iraq.
Until I noticed the valet stand manned by three young women in short,
diaphanous togas. None of them so much as blinked as two opened our doors and
the third exchanged my keys for a blue, numbered ticket dominated by the same
female line drawing. I tucked the claim into my purse. One of them held open
the door inside. Freddie smiled at each of them in turn.
Flashing lights and pounding music assaulted us as soon as
we stepped in. Straight ahead, beyond a blue velvet rope monitored by a pair of
beefeater security types in tight corporate logo-ed tee-shirts, lay the main
club floor. From the VIP area we had a prime view of the stage where Sweet,
Sweet Connie was doing her act for an enraptured audience of perhaps a dozen men.
Something Cirque du Soleil on a pole, descending like a goddess from summit of
beauty and lust. Is that what men really wanted? Was she why her husband was
here?
Amazingly, any number of men were accompanied by equally
enamored if slightly green-eyed women, none of whom appeared to be working for
the club. At least half a dozen more men watched distractedly from the bar staffed
by young women whose togas had somehow slipped from their shoulders.
Between the laser light show and the thumping bass, I felt
dizzy like I might be on the verge of a seizure. When I had taken a class in
jazz dance in high school, my mother had always been afraid I’d end up in a
place like this. I closed my eyes as I steeled myself to enter.
Freddie laced his arm through mine and steered me away from
the sound and fury. When I opened my eyes, I found we were in a dimly lit hall
that led to a pair of bathrooms with an ATM parked in an alcove between. Beyond
the ladies room, another shadowed hallway jogged off to the right.
“Hold up a second,” Freddie said as he firmly held my arm
before I could round the corner. “I can get you in here, but there are some
things you need to understand.”
I waited. Now I’d hear what he’d been cooking up.
“First rule is there are no observers in there, everybody
plays. Which means once you’re inside, I’m not going to be able to stick
around. I’m giving you my seat. It won’t mean much but it gets you in the door
without paying the initial stake.”
“If you’d told me, I would have stopped by the bank.” I
glanced at the ATM.
“Unless you’ve got a cool fifty five hundred hiding in that
dress, or your withdrawal limit is a lot higher than mine, it wouldn’t help.
Besides, the cash is only to cover shipping. The real entry fee is a standard
container full of goods.”
“You mean like…” I started but didn’t finish my thought.
He nodded. “Yeah, what you found out by the airpark. That’s
your husband’s stake.”
Now I was really confused. “So then where’s it all going?”
“That’s what we’re playing to decide. Winner takes all, and
he gets to fill up a container with goods of his choice and direct it to his
favorite destination. Syria,
Ukraine, Sudan,
Myanmar,
anywhere he wants. He can stock the excess for another round or sell back what
he doesn’t like.”
“A smuggling operation?” How had my husband ever gotten
involved in this?
Freddie had the sense to look abashed. “Some of us prefer to
think of it as humanitarian aid. Kind of a Goodwill drop for abandoned refugees.”
Slowly, the pieces began to click together, the creative
accounting, the storage unit, even the contents suddenly made sense. In a
backhanded way, my husband was trying to help people like we’d talked about. I
didn’t know whether to be proud or appalled.
My suspicious nature re-exerted itself. “So why are you
telling me this?”
“Because I want you to go in there and kick some ass,” he
said, rubbing his hands together.
“Uh-uh, no way,” I said. “I’m only here to haul his stupid
ass out.”
He shook his head like I was sadly naïve. “That’s not the
way it works. I told you these dudes are totally XM-Sirius. One’s a retired
colonel or something. Another’s a politician who’s looking to get back in the
game. A third’s some kind of spook. Plus that crazy Swedish dwarf.”
“I think they like to be called ‘little people,’” I
corrected.
Freddie rolled his eyes. “Not this one. Trust me. Plus, they’ve
got this whole sworn to secrecy thing down.”
“What did you get him into?” I sighed.
“Me?” he sputtered. “Your husband and that little Swede
brought me in then pushed me out in traffic. Tonight I got run over in both
directions just trying to keep to the middle of the road.”
I tried a different tack. “Poker’s your thing, not mine,
Freddie.”
“Just please, please, please, tell me you know how to play.”
He put his hands together, rocking them back and forth as if in prayer.
“Of course I do. I’m just a little out of practice since
college.” Back then there was nothing more fun than luring a couple of rich,
entitled MBAs with the promise of strip poker that somehow turned into real
stakes once they had nothing else to lose. Their first real business lesson. I must
have paid for half of my degree just by showing off my bra. “So what?”
“So you can take these guys,” he said excitedly. “I know
it.”
I gave him my coldest, hardest resting bitch face.
Freddie slapped out a quick rhythm against his thighs then
pointed. “See, that’s it. That’s the look. No one can read you. Everyone’s
afraid of you. You’re the only reason no one at Eisteddfods steals your husband
blind. And I’ve never seen anyone call your bluff even when they know you are.
After that run-in with you husband, Lisa Waters issued the Patriot Police a
secret memo about you. You are untouchable now.”
He cut himself off there as if he’d said too much, then just
stared at me with a wide, sad-eyed look of anticipation like an overeager puppy
waiting for adoption at the pound.
Against my better instincts, I reluctantly agreed. Something
told me he was unlikely to get me in otherwise, no matter what I held over him
with his wife. I figure he’d been playing that instrument for a long, long time
and knew exactly how to get it back in tune. “Ok, if this is the only way to
get him out.”
Freddie did a little dance. He almost whooped but covered
him mouth. He looked like that same puppy who might pee on the carpet from all
the excitement of a new home. I didn’t know how he’d gotten a reputation for
playing poker. He didn’t seem to be able to bluff. He must be good at counting
cards.
“Now, be careful once we’re in there.” He leaned in and
whispered conspiratorially. “Like I said, these dudes are completely Apple
iSerious.”
“I get it,” I reassured him. “I’m sure I’ve dealt with
worse.”
I could see there was something Freddie wasn’t telling me.
But it didn’t matter. I’d say whatever it took to get inside so I could drag my
husband out.
I straightened my dress and checked my lines. I always knew
my college cosplay days would come in handy. I hadn’t attended all those
fantasy conventions with another guy I dated for nothing. I had usually dressed
up like a cross between a Disney princess and an R-rated Scheherazade but had
no desire to become some geek’s One Thousand and One Nights. If I could handle
the windowless van creepy photographers on the floor after midnight by myself, these guys should be a piece of cake.
At least I had dressed the part.
Freddie led me around the shadowed corner. At the end of the
hall stood a door marked “Private.” Freddie rapped out a rhythm and winked at
me as we waited.
A vacant-eyed goon cracked the door. Even in the dim light I
recognized him though I wasn’t sure he knew me. He was a nasty looking piece of
work, brutish and short. Tom Hobbes. I’d never seen him without his flag pin. He
must have been moonlighting on his night off from the Patriot Police. He gave me
a quick up and down.
“Amateur auditions aren’t until Thursdays,” he said stonily,
his face splitting into a troll-like smile.
I fixed a glare on him I’ve been told usually melted lead.
Freddie just flashed a smile and then that blue chip
appeared between his fingers. “She’s with me.” Maybe his stage presence made him
better at bluffing than I thought.
Slowly Hobbes swung open the door, giving me another once
over, his eyes dismissive. I seethed inside but turned my stare past him as if
he didn’t exist.
Ever in keeping with his lady’s man persona, Freddie swept
his arm forward inviting me to enter. As much as part of me would have rather
followed him through, another part understood he was giving me the opportunity
to make an entrance.
I settled my expression to neutral like I had already
claimed the room beyond then strode in before him. A short, dark hallway led to
a brighter room. As my eyes struggled to adjust, a cobalt blue flash at the
threshold dragged my attention to the floor. Another chip.
And that’s where whatever plan I had started to unravel.
I don’t know exactly what happened. I could only piece it
together from what Freddie and my husband told me on the ride home.
As soon as I recognized the chip, I took another step and bent
down to pick it up. That was both my first and second mistake. First, I should
have stayed focused on the room. Second, I shouldn’t have bent straight over to
pick it up. But you can’t exactly do a bunny squat with a pistol strapped to
your inner thigh.
I’m told that at this point, Hobbes took in the full
panoramic view of my ass then shot a look at my husband that said, watch this.
He may or may not have mouthed those same words. Either way, he reach out and
gave it what he thought was an ample pinch. Definitely a few rounds short on
mental ammunition.
He must have only gotten the neoprene of the dress because I
never felt a thing. I just began to straighten like nothing had happened,
because for me, nothing had.
Before I even looked up, I heard my husband’s voice roar
like I’d never heard before.
“That’s my WIFE!” He exclamated the last word with a
resounding thud of his fist, sending drinks and stacks of chips hopping before
they crashed or sloshed back down.
I froze as I looked up to find a felt-top gaming table
bathed in a pool of light, a thick layer of bluish smoke hanging above it. Five
pairs of eyes were focused firmly on me.
Of the men at that table, I recognized only my husband who
was cradling his hand.
First, there was a tall, brush-cut blond with smolderingly
intense dark eyes that seemed to reject my presence outright. He had the look
of a lifer from the Air Force base down the road that housed the special ops
and intelligence command. In my head I called him Blondie.
Continuing around the table led me to a man in a grey sports
jacket whose hair could have been dark or dirty blond, and whose eyes were
either green or grey or Atlantic blue depending on the angle, which concealed
his remaining features that almost defined nondescript. The Chameleon.
The third man I recognized from his appearances on Coyote
News, a rabid, rightwing analyst who hoped to become our local representative
after a failed senatorial run. He made O’Really sound like a moderate. The
Politician.
Finally there was a very small man in a suit who I might
have mistaken for a boy had he not been smoking a cigar and leering openly at
me, alternating between the point where the top zipper of my dress and the
bottom one rested. This had to be Freddie’s Swedish dwarf.
Before I could decide how to react, Freddie snatched the
chip from my upheld hand and beelined for the only empty seat.
“Deal me in, boys.” He slapped down two blue chips in front
of him and leaned back in his chair. “Freddie’s back.”
“You left the game, jotunn-breath,” the little guy piped up
in a booming baritone that carried. “No take-backs.”
“Yeah, but you vultures haven’t completely picked me clean.”
Freddie smiled. “Consider it an extended bathroom break.”
Amazingly they all looked at Hobbes, who only shrugged. “All
or nothing. It’s in the rules. As long as he can make ante.”
Of all the low-end moves. What was all Freddie’s pleading about?
Knowing him, he’d just seized his first opportunity to get back in the game.
Now I was pissed. Since I had no way to take it out on
Freddie, I directed it at my husband.
“Ok, Maverick, let’s go.” I crooked a finger at him with
that come hither motion. It had been a long night and I was ready for it to be
over. My hose were starting to chafe.
“I can’t…” he started then winced as he rubbed his hand.
I cut him off in the tone I usually reserved for Eisteddfods
employees I caught sampling the wine. “I found your secret stash out by the
airpark. Freddie told me all about the container.” The blonde with the brush
cut shot a glare at Freddie who slinked down in his chair. Served the weasel
right.
“I’ll figure out a way to eat the loss,” I continued, making
sure my heels clicked authoritatively as I strode over and grabbed his good wrist,
fully prepared to bodily drag him out of there if that’s what it took.
“Playtime’s over. Time to go home and pretend to be an adult again tomorrow
morning. That’s IF you survive tonight.”
“You don’t understand…” he shook his head, growing paler by
the second.
“Oh, I understand just fine.” I lowered my voice to an icy
whisper, which he knew was his final warning. “You’re the one who seems to be
having a problem with language comprehension. You’re coming with me, Rain
Man.”
“No one’s going anywhere until we finish this,” said one of
the other men sitting at the table.
I turned to respond with whip-like sarcasm only to find Blondie
pointing a pistol at my husband. That fact only dimly registered when the
Chameleon also drew a gun.
“This was supposed to be a private game,” he added.
“Hey, guys, I thought we agreed no guns,” Freddie protested
even as his hands shot up. Both barrels immediately swung toward him. Freddie’s
eyes went wide as he was suddenly at a loss for words.
With everyone turned the other way, the little guy used the
distraction to draw a pistol of his own. But instead of pointing it at Freddie
like the other two, he trained it on the Chameleon.
“Why don’t we all set down our weapons and play like adults.”
he said. When Blondie started to turn, the little man added. “Uh-uh. Don’t you
ettins test me.” He motioned with his gun. “Set ‘em down and our man Hobbes
will collect them for safekeeping so we can get back this friendly game.”
Blondie laid his pistol on the table. The Chameleon did the
same.
I about fainted from relief. I slowly turned back at my
husband. “What have you done?”
“We’re no longer playing for what goes into the container,”
he said in a small, resigned voice like a child who found himself trapped into telling
the truth. “We’re playing for who comes out. I put up the house…”
“You what?!”
“… and Eisteddfods.” At least he managed to sound sheepish.
“I thought I could do something good.”
All the implications slowly sank in. I released his wrist.
Hobbes went to take the dwarf’s pistol. “Hands off,
Sasquatch, unless you want to play the pan-pipes left-handed. Search the others
first.”
Hobbes frisked the Politician then my husband. When he came
to me, my husband protested, “You already copped a feel. If you didn’t find something
then, where the hell do you think she’d hide it?”
I fixed Hobbes with a glare that could cut ice. The dwarf
shot another leer my way then waved him off. Hobbes shrugged and moved on to
Freddie.
“All clean,” he finally said.
The dwarf surrendered his pistol. “Put the hardware in the
house safe with the collateral.”
Hobbes keyed open a floor safe tucked between a pair of leather
club chairs, locked the guns inside then collapsed into one of the chairs.
I nodded toward my husband’s hand, the side of which had
begun to turn a lovely shade of reddish purple. “He can’t play like that.”
“Probably just a boxer’s break,” the dwarf growled. “A
little ice and he’ll be fine.”
“He can’t even hold his cards, never mind bet,” I protested.
Freddie seemed to rediscover his stage footing and strode up
behind me, resting a hand lightly on my shoulder as if anointing my like a
knight. My husband scowled. I’d never seen him so possessive.
“I say we give her his seat as the proxy for his stake.”
Blondie’s eyes narrowed, but then he slowly smiled. “Anybody
have a problem?” No one did. To my husband he said, “You go sit beside the safe.”
Then, “Hobbes, send in a girl with some ice and two more rounds of drinks.
After that no one in or out until this thing’s finished. Understood?”
“You got it, boss,” Hobbes said as he hustled out the door.
“Keep an eye on Carl, the dwarf,” Freddie whispered in my
ear. “When he’s bluffing, he’ll always touch a white chip before he goes for
blue. Good luck.” He headed back to his seat.
Now I couldn’t tell who was playing who. I slipped into my
husband’s chair after he abandoned it.
When a girl in a sheer satin toga came in, she asked the
others whether they were sticking with their usuals, the typical collection of
scotches and cognacs. The Chameleon changed his up to club soda after an
evaluating look at me. I knew the trick Blondie was playing. Guys always think
they can out iron bladder a girl. Except when the girl didn’t drink. I had no
intention of starting but loved the relief I saw at their corners of their eyes
when I gave her my order. Coffee with cream and sugar.
While the girl distributed the drinks to their respective
players and handed my husband a Ziploc full of ice, I focused on a strategy. My
initial thought was to take out Freddie first. He was obviously the weakest
player. But after his whispered suggestion, I hoped to keep him alive so I
could use him to tag team the others even if he didn’t realize it. I wanted to
test out his tell before I tried to bite off Carl. Blondie had too many chips
to attack right away. I suspected I needed more than my husband had left me to
take him or the Chameleon down. So I focused on Politician.
“Ante stands at one blue,” Blondie said as he tossed a chip
to the center of the table.
Before he was relegated to the sidelines, my husband
explained the chip hierarchy was standard: white worth less than red, red less
than blue. But the exact values were complex and fungible. Whites could be
anything from locally banned books to baking supplies. Reds could be everything
from Bibles bound for N. Korea to condoms headed to Venezuela.
Blues ran from military equipment to morning after pills. Carl seemed to keep a
running exchange rate in his head. It scared me to think that all this stuff might
lay concealed in unmarked storage units sprinkled through the tri-city area.
I slid in one blue that I was told represented half a dozen
thumb drives of state-sponsored pharmaceutical research smuggled out of China.
“What’s the game?”
Carl had the deal and decided to play cautious to see what I
was made of. He called Soko, a Scandinavian variant of five-card stud with the
addition of mini-straights and flushes. All the others groaned.
The small stack of chips my husband left didn’t leave me
with much room to bet, but then I was used to thin margins from my strip poker
days. A girl couldn’t afford to lose as much as the guys in those games. I snatched
a win with a lucky draw.
The Chameleon then tried for a quick knock-out strike with
what I learned was the table standard of seven-card stud, kind of a throwback
after the popularity of Texas Hold’em from poker tournaments on TV. Easy enough
to work. I tested out a flirtation angle with him during a bluff but only the
Politician and Carl struck the line. Valuable information I filed to use later.
I still collected a moderate pot after the Politician’s inside straight fell
apart.
That gave me just enough cushion to start working the table,
sometimes bluffing, sometimes folding, sometimes sticking even with a losing
hand. I supported Freddie when I could but he seemed distracted. Either that or
he figured out what I was up to and was just biding his time.
Pretty soon the game settled into a quiet intensity.
Conversation was limited to things like, “I’ll open with a dozen beehives on
pickup trucks waiting to cross the Rio Grande … I see your case of insulin and
raise you three hundred pounds of heirloom Bhutanese red rice seed… Let me
sweeten the pot with four apartheid-era Krugerrands… I call with two cases
AR-15 full-auto conversion kits and ten thousand rounds body-armor-piercing
ammo…”
We cycled through hand after hand, my individual chips
waxing and waning but my stacks increasing on average. Pretty soon, I had the
Politician on the ropes but I let Freddie deal the final blow. I focused on
Carl next which wasn’t hard with Freddie’s tip. He must of figured out I was
after him as he withdrew while he still had a hefty stack of chips. Which left
me in a lurch since I still hadn’t figured out a strategy for the Chameleon or
Blondie yet. I suspected they were sharing signals.
Before I could figure out how, Blondie struck a death blow
to Freddie. I almost got caught in the crossfire before I realized trying to
prop him up would be a temporary victory at best. So I let him fall.
Now, Blondie and the Chameleon focused on me like a pair of
piranhas on an Amazon child who had waded too far out into the channel. The
next several hands were like a death of a thousand nibbles. They just kept
playing the odds with one holding and one folding while Carl kept fiddling with
his chips while he chomped on his cigar.
That’s when I noticed he was signaling me with his tell.
White then blue for a bluff. I don’t know why he did it, but it allowed me to stage
a comeback.
I’d barely clawed back to even when Blondie set me up for a
knockout blow. By now I was eyeing my cold cup of coffee longingly. It had to
be four in the morning, later than I’d been awake in a long time. My
concentration had began to fray. The Chameleon seized on it by suckering me
all-in by standing on a three card flush with me holding aces and eights he couldn’t
see. After Blondie folded but before the final card was laid, Carl slid his
remaining chips across the table to me, a collection representing five crates
of English primers bound for Gaza, a case of experimental Marburg virus
vaccines, one gross of cell phone SIM chips with a multi-region burner, and
four vials of fertilized Siberian tiger eggs.
That meant I could more than cover the Chameleon’s bet.
Which was good because he turned the flush after I drew what would have been
Blondie’s Queen of Spades. The bitch. Dead Man’s hand. The Chameleon drew what
would have been my eight.
That tore it. Blondie was counting cards. The Chameleon was
taking his signals from whether he raised or folded. I’d seen this strategy
once before from a couple overly ambitious MBAs who knew my reputation and
tried to take me down. Once I’d figured it out, I opted for revenge over money.
I’d slipped a couple discreetly snapped pictures under their girlfriends’ doors.
Which I later learned had been their initial plan for me only with a much wider
distribution. After that, I’d focused on scholarships as my primary source of funding.
Unfortunately, I was pretty sure the Chameleon had a signal
of his own. He was a keen observer which probably meant I had a tick. If the
odds were in the Chameleon’s favor, Blondie would fold to improve them. If the
Chameleon saw my tell for a bluff, he’d do the same. They could afford to trade
off pots as long as I was whittled down or until they knocked me out with an all-in
bet. I suspected after I was out they didn’t really care who won. They’d
probably set it up from the beginning.
So I waited for the moment when I could reuse my first ploy against
the Chameleon. Since I didn’t know my tell, I opted to substitute one he’d seen
before. And I got lucky.
We’d settled into seven-card stud. I was showing a ten-queen
run with a suicide king sitting in the hole when an ace came down with two
cards to go. I couldn’t ask for a better if more unlikely hand.
Blondie folded as expected, revealing the odds favored the
Chameleon’s hand. But the Chameleon hesitated, perhaps having seen my tell. So I
glanced at him sidelong as I considered my next bet, making sure I just caught
his eye before I coquettishly looked away. I scratched an imaginary itch on my sternum,
inadvertently pushing the top zipper of my dress just a fraction lower as I
studied my cards. Then I bet all-in. Sure enough the Chameleon took the bait. I
didn’t have enough to take him out, but I damaged him to where he couldn’t
afford to lose another pot.
Two hands later, the Chameleon was gone. And I was sitting
on the highest stack of chips.
“It looks like it’s just me and you, Blondie,” I said,
winking at him flirtatiously. “Your boyfriend can’t help you now.”
Blondie set his face in stone. Gotcha.
Every time I dealt, I switched to five-card stud to take a
bite out of his card counting strategy. On his deal, he would switch back to
seven-card stud to improve his odds. To neutralize it, on his turn I took to
going all-in early if I was sitting on anything royal in the hole. It only
worked a couple rounds but it chiseled him down and seemed to rattle him.
Then he went on a streak of three hands that ended with us
evened out. I was tired and losing concentration again. My hose were too tight.
The hem of my dress was digging into the backs of my legs. I reeked of cigar
smoke. Time to finish him.
So I stacked my chips by color in front of me while he
shuffled then I downed the cup of cold coffee still sitting on the table to
sharpen my edge.
Blondie started snapping down cards for what I was certain
would be the final deal. Seven-card stud.
My hand started with a pair of sixes, only one of which was
revealed, against his ace to show. This hand had promise. I tried to see if I
could rattle him again with a theory I’d been piecing together all night.
“So how much are you skimming from this operation?” I asked
as I studied my cards.
Blondie gave me a stone cold look. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do,” I replied, sweetly. “As Freddie
explained it, you started by playing to determine where a relief container full
of cargo got sent. Which doesn’t make any sense. Why gamble over a destination?
Even that seems to be a bit much to write off to testosterone poisoning. Or was
it just the setup for a bigger game?”
Blondie didn’t answer. Carl perked up. Even my husband
looked interested again.
We both bet cautiously. My six was joined by a partner
showing, plus a couple fill-ins for a straight. Three of a kind. The Number of
the Beast. Blondie was showing AK47. I took it as an omen and laid a heavy bet,
my last of dose of lethal injection drugs just to make sure he’d bite.
“The way I figure it,” I continued, “you thought you’d get
us to finance some little overseas adventure. You were probably thinking once
we lost we’d never know what actually happened to the goods. Even if we won, what
would we get, a couple snapshots from some overseas station that showed
everything arrived? Pictures that could have been faked from anywhere in the
world.”
Blondie shot a glance at the Chameleon who studiously
ignored it. That told me I was on the right track.
Then Blondie smiled and went all in. I smelled a trap. I
wanted to know exactly where we stood, so we counted chips. And came up dead
even. I slid in everything I had.
“How many games a week are you running anyway?” I asked him.
“Must be a lot to make this little Ollie North operation work. If that type of
scandal broke, it would even make Coyote News.”
Now I had the Politician’s undivided attention. Carl looked
like he was flicking through an abacus in his head. My husband adopted a
wide-eyed expression I associated with him silently begging please don’t.
Still Blondie neither confirmed nor denied my conjecture. He
dealt the remaining cards in silence. My sixes never completed the set. His
Kalashnikov was joined by another four. I wasn’t worried. With sixes to fours,
I still had him. He threw me the Ace of Spades as my final card, wrecking any
chance of a straight but lengthening his odds. I smiled and revealed my hole
card. 666.
Blondie responded by flipping over his own concealed card. Another
ace for two pair. It all came down to the last draw. He needed the final ace,
pretty long odds in a tall deck. He licked his thumb and flipped over the top
card with a flourish and a smile. The Ace of Hearts. A full house.
My hands collapsed into my lap. I was stunned. No one gets
that lucky on a draw.
As Blondie reached to rake in the chips from the center of
the table, Freddie grabbed his wrist. “How about we separate those cards you just
stuck together so we can see if you really won.” Freddie picked up the ace and
twisted it between his thumb and fingers, revealing a two beneath.
For an instant everyone froze. From nowhere a small pistol
appeared in Blondie’s other hand, pointed straight at Freddie’s face. Freddie
dropped his wrist.
“I don’t know what double dealing card trick you just
pulled, Freddie,” Blondie said levelly, “but I won that hand fair.”
With nimble fingers, I found the hem of my skirt and started
inching it up.
Blondie motioned Hobbes toward the safe. “Open it. We’ll
take our winnings and go.”
By then my right hand clutched my Ladysmith. A quick pull
and lift saw it out of its holster and rising toward the table’s edge.
That was my third mistake of the night. Before my hand
cleared the table, the Chameleon called out. I found myself staring down the
barrel of the Blondie’s pistol as it whipped across to cover me. I stopped
moving. So much for the good guy theory of concealed carry.
Carl slammed something onto the table. It looked like an
olive green apple with a lever attached where the stem should be. Oh, shit, a
grenade. I about strained used coffee through my hose.
“I thought we had an agreement earlier that we shouldn’t
play with guns,” Carl said indolently as he spun the pin around his index
finger.
Slowly, Blondie lifted his aim and laid the pistol gently on
the table. The Chameleon’s eyes turned as cold and hard as agates.
“I think we’ll call that the lady’s hand,” Carl said as he
retrieved Blondie’s pistol. He motioned me to put mine back away. “As I see it,
that’s game, set and match.”
“So here’s how this plays out,” he continued. “Hobbes is
going to very carefully open the safe and give everyone back their collateral.
Then the three of you,” he motioned to Freddie, my husband and me, “are going
to disappear while I explain to these jokers how much my partners dislike being
played.” He turned toward the Politician. “Just ask your boss what happens when
you cross the Fenris brothers.”
Wait, the Fenris brothers? My husband’s merry band of
dwarves were real? I thought they were just a story he told to cover up another
of his mistimed misadventures.
“What about the bet?” I asked against my better sense. But this
whole night couldn’t be for nothing. Not with the promise of actually helping
people who needed it on the line.
“Don’t worry,” Carl smiled evilly. “I’ll see that everything’s
taken care of before you can say Nibelungenlied.”
I didn’t even know what that meant. But at that point I
didn’t have time to worry about it.
So we left the club through the back entrance, and waited as
the valet retrieved my car. When girl swung around with the SUV and held the
door open for me, I unsnapped my purse and tossed her the blue chip I’d been
carrying all night.
Her face fell like I’d handed her a worthless piece of
plastic.
“My good luck charm,” I told her. “Cash it in with the dwarf
in the VIP lounge. I won’t be needing it anymore.”
She smiled as she slipped it somewhere beneath her toga.
With a hangdog look, Freddie asked if he could hitch a ride
with us. He didn’t really want to hang around waiting for a cab.
I felt generous after his last-minute heroics. “We’ll drop
you off right after we stop at an immediate care clinic.”
The sun had just begun to lighten the cityscape behind us as
I drove back across the bridge.
---
My husband shaved left-handed the next morning then cleared
Tuesdays from his calendar. The next weekend, while he stripped the last traces
of faux redneck from the Jeep, I donated the contents of the storage unit to a
local women’s shelter.
Whatever deal Carl had negotiated with the poker ring must
have stuck. The DEA raided Cache for Trash a week later then seized both it and
the airpark. The next day, the Politician withdrew from his race unexpectedly
and terminated his contract with Coyote News. Blondie and the Chameleon never
resurfaced. Though I did run across news of a diplomatic incident involving a
pair of former US
military and intelligence personnel caught in a counter-terrorism sting holding
a herd of cattle awaiting a passage to India
at a Bangladeshi customs warehouse. I couldn’t help but think of them.
My husband heard through the after hours grapevine at
Eisteddfods that Hobbes had quit his job with the Patriot Police. Rumor had it
he was headed to Kathmandu on a
spiritual retreat. Soon after, Freddie also disappeared from a long-awaited comeback
tour of Texas, Oklahoma
and Arkansas. Perhaps he’d
shacked up with Sweet, Sweet Connie for the holidays somewhere in Little
Rock.
After that, I tried to block the incident from my mind. I
wanted to forget that night. I knew he did, too. We never talked about what had
happened. And it wasn’t like we could brag about the bet in our annual
Christmas letter anyway. I expected it had all been in vain.
Until, on Christmas Eve, a FedEx truck rolled up with an
overnight envelope. International delivery, the return address the same as the
destination, no signature required.
Inside I found a printout of an article from an Oslo
paper translated by Google into English. It seemed Fenris Brothers LLC had sponsored
a dozen miracle families, refugees from ISIS. They were
providing them a fresh start with housing and jobs in a newly constructed
hamlet along the Norwegian-Swedish border.
An enclosed card read “Thank you” in various languages of
the world. Inside was a cashier’s check drawn on a Swiss account that more than
covered our losses. The card was signed with a single word: Nibelungenlied.
This time I Wiki’ed it. It was the name of the German Iliad,
a story that began with the hero Siegfried slaying a dragon whose treasure he then
left in charge of a dwarf. It served as the basis for Wagner’s Ring Cycle. When
I showed it to my husband, he said it was a compliment. But that if I ever saw
Carl again, it was best not to mention the Wagner part.
I next caught up with Nicci at the Eisteddfods New Year’s
Eve party. She apologized for having to cancel our girl’s night out at
Ariadne’s then asked if she’d missed anything fun.
“Nah.” I shrugged then smile enigmatically. “Just another
slow Tuesday night.”
© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III
