Лоуренс Блок: Catch and Release

Krale caught a ten on fifth street, filling his hand, while Taggert paired his king and made a medium-size bet. He had kings and queens, Krale decided, and didn’t want to chase Krale out of the pot. Krale thought it over and called.

Taggert’s next card was a queen. Two pair on board, and Krale read him for a boat.

His own card was a ten, giving him two pair showing.

“Maybe you’re not full yet,” Taggert said, and bet into him.

Maybe you’re not full yet. Like it mattered to Taggert, who clearly was full himself, with a boat that would swamp tens full or sevens full or anything Krale might have.

Krale just called.

And Tina dealt the river cards. Krale looked at his, for form’s sake, and it was a queen, which meant that Taggert couldn’t have four of them. He could still have four kings, though.

Taggert made a show of looking at his river card, squeezing it out between his other two down cards. Nothing showed on his face. He sat there considering, and pushed chips into the pot.

“Here’s your chance to double up,” he said. “My bet’s whatever you’ve got in front of you.”

“Oh, what the hell,” Krale said. “Let’s get this over with.” And he shoved his chips to the middle of the table. “I call, Mark. What have you got?”

Big surprise — Taggert showed a king and a queen, giving him the full house Krale had read him for all along.

“Kings full,” Krale said. He felt the blood in his veins, felt energy pulsing through his body. He noted the way Taggert was trying not to look at Tina, and the way Tina was allowing herself to look at Taggert. And then he turned over one of the two tens he had in the hole.

“Tens full,” he announced. “I just didn’t believe you had it, Mark.” He dropped his other two hole cards face-down on the table, mixed them in with the pack Tina had been dealing from.

He stood up. “That’s it,” he said. “Enjoy yourself, kids. You deserve it.”

He poured himself a brandy, and held the glass to the light while he listened to their footsteps on the staircase.

Now they’re at the top of the stairs , he thought. Now they’re in the bedroom, our bedroom. Now he’s kissing her, now he’s got his hand on her ass, now she’s pressing herself into him the way she does.

He sipped the brandy.

Suppose Taggert had caught a fourth king. Then he could have shown the fourth ten, and he’d still be sipping brandy and they’d still be up in the bedroom.

He thought about them up there, and he took another small sip of brandy.

Better this way, he decided. Better that he’d had the winning hand and refrained from showing it. This way he had a secret, and he liked that.

Noble of him. Self-sacrificing.

He finished the brandy, went to his desk, opened the upper left-hand drawer, took out the gun. Assured himself once again that all the chambers were loaded.

Another brandy?

No, he didn’t need it.

He was quiet on the stairs, avoiding the one that creaked. Not that they’d be likely to hear him, not that they’d be paying attention to anything but each other.

He walked the length of the hall. They hadn’t bothered to close the door. He saw their clothes, scattered here and there, and then he saw them, looking for all the world like internet porn.

He approached to within ten feet of the bed. He was within Tina’s peripheral vision, and he could tell when she registered his presence. She froze, and then so did Taggert.

“Nice,” Krale said.

They looked at him, and saw his face, his poker face, and then they saw the gun.

God, the looks on their faces!

“I had four tens,” Krale said. “So you both lose.”

The game changed over time. Technology made change inevitable: racquets were larger and lighter and stronger, and even shoes got a little better every few years. And human technology had much the same effect; each generation of tennis players was taller and rangier than the one before it, and players improved on genetics by getting stronger through weight training and more durable through nutrition. So of course the game changed. It had to change.

But the players still — with rare exception — wore the traditional white clothing, and that was one thing he hoped would never change. Oh, some of them sported logos, and maybe that was inevitable, too, with all the money the corporations were throwing around. And you saw colored stripes on some of the white shirts and shorts, and periodically the self-appointed Brat of the Year would turn up in plaid shorts and a scarlet top, but by and large white prevailed.

And he liked it that way. For the women, especially. He didn’t really care what the men wore, and, truth to tell, found it difficult to work up much enthusiasm for the men’s game. Service played too great a role, and the top players scored too many aces. It was the long drawn-out points that most engaged him, with both players drawing on unsuspected reserves of strength and tenacity to reach impossible balls and make impossible returns. That was tennis, not a handful of 120-mile-an-hour serves and a round of applause.

And there was something about a girl dressed entirely in white, shifting her weight nervously as she waited for her opponent to serve, bouncing the ball before her own serve. Something pure and innocent and remarkably courageous, something that touched your heart as you watched, and wasn’t that what spectator sports were about? Yes, you admired the technique, you applauded the skill, but it was an emotional response of the viewer to some quality in the participant that made the game genuinely engaging, and even important.

Interesting how some of them engaged you and others did not.

The one who grunted, for example. Grunted like a little pig every time she hit the ball. Maybe she couldn’t help it, maybe it was some Eastern breathing technique that added energy to her stroke. He didn’t care. All he knew was that it put him right off Miss Piglet. Whenever he watched her play, he rooted for her opponent.

With others it was something subtler. The stance, the walk, the attitude. One responded or one didn’t.

And, of course, the game the woman played was paramount. Not just the raw ability but the heart, the soul, the inner strength that enabled one player to reach and return shots that drew no more than a futile wave from another.

He sat in his chair, drew on his cigarette, watched the television set.

This one, this Miranda DiStefano. Sixteen years old, her blond hair hanging in a ponytail, her face a perfect oval, her nose the slightest bit retroussé. She had a slight overbite, and one close-up revealed braces on her teeth.

How charming...

He’d seen her before, and now he watched her play a match she was not likely to win, a quarterfinal that pitted her with one of the sisters who seemed to win everything these days. He liked both sisters well enough, respected them as the dominant players of their generation, but they didn’t engage him the way Miranda did. She didn’t have to win, he just wanted to watch her play, and do the best she could.

A vision in white. Perfectly delightful and charming. He wished only the best for her.

There were sports you could see better on television. Boxing, certainly. Even if you sat at ringside, you didn’t get nearly as good a view of the action as the TV camera provided. Football was a toss-up; at home you had the benefit of good close-up camera work and instant replay, while from a good stadium seat you could watch a play develop and see the whole of a pass pattern. Basketball was better in person, and hockey (if you could endure it at all) was only worth watching in person; on TV, you could never find the bloody puck.