Stuart Kaminsky - Bright Futures

“You all right with that?” I asked.

“Ames has partnered up with you since he met you. I’d like him to put in some hours here, too, in exchange for his room, providing you don’t have too much work for him to do.”

“I don’t expect to overwhelm him with work.”

“Good,” said Big Ed after calling back to the tiny kitchen for two half-pound burgers.

He poured two mugs of beer from the tap and clunked them down in front of him.

“Work on your beer. I’ll go back and tell Ames that you’re here.”

When Ames came out, tall, hair shampooed and white, he was dressed in his usual freshly washed jeans and a loose-fitting long-sleeved white flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

We moved to a table next to two guys speaking in Spanish and sounding like they were having an argument half the time and telling each other jokes the other half.

“You play poker?” I asked Ames.

“I do.”

“How good are you at it?”

“Middling good,” he said. “But then most I’ve played think they’re middling good.”

“I’m less than middling bad,” I said. “Remember Corkle saying he had something on Ronnie Gerall?”

“I do.”

“We’re going to try to find it.”

We listened to the guys speaking Spanish and drank our beers until Big Ed motioned and Ames moved around the tables to pick up our burgers.

“You good enough in a seven-card stud game to help someone else win?” I asked.

“Depends on who’s watching and playing.”

We ate as we talked. More people, including the two Spanish speakers at the next table, left and a few others came in. Big Ed handled them all, nodding just right at each new customer as if he had known them all his life.

“Players are multimillionaires…”

“Corkle,” said Ames.

“Yes, and four others. They have a game every other week at Corkle’s house. Stakes are fifty and a hundred. You need four thousand to sit down.”

“I’ve got two thousand,” he said.

“I’ve got another two,” I said. “We’ll borrow a few thousand more from Flo in case we run out.”

“Not like you to be beholding.”

“Little by little, day by day, I’m trying to change,” I said.

“How’s it going?”

“Not too good,” I said, taking a bite of burger.

The grilled burger was handmade by Big Ed from extra-lean meat and cooked to greasy perfection by the kitchen cook. I was hungry. The slightly burnt beef reminded me of a taste from the past that I couldn’t quite place.

“How you gonna get in this game?”

“Kidnap one of the players,” I said.

Ames gave me a slight nod and worked at chewing the large bite of burger in his mouth.

“Only way?” he said.

“Only one I can think of,” I said. “You in?”

“We’re partners,” he said. “When we doing this?”

“Tonight,” I said. “It’s game night. Wednesday.”

“What’ll I be doing while you’re playing poker?”

“Searching through Corkle’s office.”

“Corkle carries a handgun,” Ames said.

“I know. I’ll be careful,” I said, pushing the now-empty plate away.

“I trust you,” he said.

“I know.”

“What time?”

“Midnight,” I said.

“You planning to win?”

“No,” I said. “Just to fold a lot, hang in as long as possible and not lose everything.”

“If they catch us?” Ames asked. “They’d have to own up to gambling for big stakes.”

“Yes, and it’ll be in the newspapers and on television,” I went on. “The fines won’t mean anything to them, but the fact that they’ll have to close down their game for good will mean something. And Corkle might have to leave the house and go downtown.”

The bar in the Texas was a small one. Not much space behind it and only six high, wooden swivel stools. At that moment a man and a woman were arguing at the bar and getting louder-loud enough for us to hear the drunken slur.

The couple were probably in their fifties and looked like they had spent their days behind desks taking and giving orders.

She slapped the man hard, a slap that stopped conversation and echoed around the room. The man was exhausting his vituperative vocabulary now, and quickly worked his way up toward a punch. Before he could throw it Big Ed reached over his arm and grabbed his wrist. That gave the woman an opening to attack again. This time she punched. The man slipped from the stool and fell flat on his back, his head thumping on the hardwood floor.

“You want to help Big Ed?” I asked.

“No,” said Ames. “He’s happy. Genteel barroom brawl.”

“See what the boys in the back room will have,” I said, watching the woman dropping to her knees on the floor and touching the fallen man’s cheek.

“Warren,” she whimpered, “I’m so, so, so, so sorry.”

The bar noise level in the room went back to prebrawl level. It was then that I noticed Ed Viviase, alone at a table near the window. He must have come in while the man and woman were doing battle.

When he saw that he had our attention, he got up and sat between me and Ames.

“See the fight?” I asked.

“Yeah. Over in one minute of the first round. You’re easy to find, Fonesca. You only go to five places regularly. I found you at the third one on my list.”

“A beer?” asked Big Ed.

“On the clock,” said Viviase.

We sat at a table, Viviase, Ames, and me. The detective watched as the woman helped the fallen man to his feet and then out the door, an arm draped over her shoulder.

“Love,” Viviase said with enough sarcasm so we wouldn’t think he was genuinely moved. “Always a bad call for a cop, couple fighting. They don’t want a man or woman of the law stepping between them. Sometimes a cop will get hurt more than the battlers. I once got a steak pounding mallet on the side of the head-you know the kind with the nubs?”

“Yes,” I said.

Viviase shook his head, remembering.

“She was a chef,” he said. “I was lucky she didn’t have something even more lethal in her hand, like whatever it was that killed Blue Berrigan. The chef and her husband were divorced a few months after I met and arrested them. Neither of them did time. I had headaches for more than a year.”

“Tough,” I said.

“There are tougher things,” Viviase said. “Like finding out your daughter went behind your back to involve a process server in a murder case.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Of course you are. People who commit crimes are always sorry when they get caught.”

“She didn’t hire me,” I said.

“I know. The hell with it. I’ll have a beer.

A beer ain’t drinking.”

It was Edmond O’Brien’s line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, forever to be honored by alcoholics.

Ames rose to get the beer.

“I’ll get the tape back to you,” Viviase said.

“No hurry,” I said. “You ground her?”

“For what? Disappointing me?”

“Guess not.”

“You really think Gerall didn’t kill Horvecki?”

“Yes. And he couldn’t have killed Blue Berrigan. He was in jail.”

“Who says he killed Berrigan?” asked Viviase as Ames came back with three beers.

“The angel of common sense,” I said.

“Only thing holds the two murders together is you,” Viviase said, drinking the beer directly from the bottle. “And I’m reasonably confident that you didn’t kill either one of them, unless you’ve gone Jekyll and Hyde on me.”

“The Gerall boy’s a bad apple, but he didn’t kill anybody,” said Ames.

“Ames and I are partners now,” I explained.

“Partners in what?” asked Viviase, shaking his head. “Operating an illegal office of private investigation.”