Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

Frank Ruddle looked like an empty leather gym bag. He had recently lost a great deal of weight, something he proclaimed loudly and often, and his skin had not tightened sufficiently to compensate. Forty-something; with thinning blond hair and a store-bought orange tan and a salesman’s jaunty manner; these attributes—if attributes they were—had been counterbalanced by dewlaps, jowls, and an overall lack of muscle tone. His outfits always included some cranberry article of clothing. A tie, a pair of slacks, a shirt. I assumed this was his lucky color, for it was not a flattering one, serving to accent his unhealthiness. At the tables, prior to making a bold play, he was in the habit of kissing a large diamond signet ring. He appeared to have taken a shine to Pellerin, perhaps in part because Pellerin was an even unhealthier specimen than he, and, when sitting at the same table, he would applaud Pellerin’s victories, including those won at his expense, with enthusiasm.

“Damn!” he would say, and give an admiring shake of the head. “I didn’t see that coming.”

Pellerin, in heads-up play, let Ruddle win the lion’s share of the pots and took his losses with poor grace. Watching him hustle Ruddle was like watching a wolf toy with a house pet, and I might have felt sorry for the man if I had been in a position to be sympathetic.

We had been at Seminole Paradise ten days before Ruddle baited his hook. As Pellerin and I were entering the casino in the early afternoon, he intercepted us and invited us for lunch at the hotel’s fake Irish pub, McSorely’s, a place with sawdust on the floor, something of an anomaly, as I understood it, among fake Irish pubs. Pellerin was in a foul mood, but when he saw the waiter approaching, a freckly, redheaded college-age kid costumed as a leprechaun, he busted out laughing and thereafter made sport of him throughout the meal. The delight he took from baiting the kid perplexed Ruddle, but he didn’t let it stand in the way of his agenda. He buttered Pellerin up and down both sides, telling him what a marvelous player he was, revisiting a hand he had won the night before, remarking on its brilliant disposition. Then he said, “You know, I’m having some people over this weekend for a game. I’d be proud if you could join us.”

Pellerin knocked back the dregs of his third margarita. “We’re going to head on to Miami, I think. See what I can shake loose from the casinos down there.”

Ruddle looked annoyed by this rebuff, but he pressed on. “I sure wish you’d change your mind. There’ll be a ton of dead money in the game.”

“Yeah?” Pellerin winked at me. “Some of it yours, no doubt.”

Ruddle laughed politely. “I’ll try not to disappoint you,” he said.

“How much money we talking here?”

“There’s a five hundred thousand dollar buy-in.”

Pellerin sucked on a tooth. “You trying to hustle me, Frank? I mean, you seen me play. You know I’m good, but you must think you’re better.”

“I’m confident I can play with you,” Ruddle said.

Pellerin guffawed.

“I beg your pardon?” said Ruddle.

“I once knew a rooster thought it could run for president ’til it met up with a hatchet.”

Ruddle’s smile quivered at the corners.

“Shit, Frank! I’m just joshing you.” Pellerin lifted his empty glass to summon the leprechaun. “This is a cash game, right?”

“Of course.”

“What sort of security you got? I’m not about to bring a wad of cash to a game that doesn’t have adequate security.”

“I can assure you my security’s more than adequate,” said Ruddle tensely.

“Yeah, well. Going by how security’s run at the Seminole, your idea of adequate might be a piggybank with a busted lock. I’ll send Jack over to check things out. If he says it’s cool, we’ll gamble.”

I sent Ruddle a silent message that said, See what I have to put up with, but he didn’t respond and dug into his steak viciously, as if it were the liver of his ancient enemy.

Somehow we made it through lunch. I pushed the small talk. Movies, the weather. Ruddle offered curt responses and Pellerin sucked down margaritas, stared out the window, and doodled on a napkin. After Ruddle had paid the check, I steered Pellerin outside and, to punish him, dragged him on a brisk walk about the pool. He complained that his legs were hurting and I said, “We need to get you in shape. That game could go all night.”

I walked him until he had sweated out his liquid lunch, then allowed him to collapse at a poolside table not far from the lifeguard’s chair. They must have treated the water earlier that day, because the chlorine reek was strong. In the pool, a huge sun-dazzled aquamarine with a waterfall slide at its nether end, packs of kids cavorted under their parents’ less-than-watchful eyes, bikini girls and Speedo boys preened for one another. Close at hand, an elderly woman in a one-piece glumly paddled along the edge, her upper body supported by a flotation device in the form of a polka-dotted snail. The atmosphere was of amiable chatter, shrieks, and splashings. A honey-blonde waitress in shorts and an overstrained tank top ambled over from the service bar, but I brushed her off.

“You got a plan?” Pellerin asked out of the blue.

“A plan? Sure,” I said. “First Poland, then the world.”

“If you don’t, we need to start thinking about one.”

I cocked an eye toward him, then looked away.

“That’s why I played Ruddle like I did,” Pellerin said. “So you could get a line on his security.”

“We do what Billy tells us,” I said. “That’s our safest bet.”

Three boys ran past, one trying to snap the others with a towel; the lifeguard whistled them down.

“I did have a thought,” I said. “I thought we could tell Ruddle what Billy’s up to and hope he can protect us. But that’s a short-term solution at best. Billy’s still going to be a problem.”

“I like it. It buys us time.”

“If Ruddle goes for it. He might not. I’m not sure how well he knows Billy. He might be tight with him, and he might decide to give him a call.”

A plump, pale, middle-aged man wearing a fishing hat and bathing trunks, holding a parasol drink, negotiated the stairs at the shallow end of the pool, stood and sipped in thigh-deep water.

“I’ll check out Ruddle’s security. It may give me an idea.” I put my hands flat on the table and prepared to stand. “We should look in on Jo before you start playing.”

Pellerin’s lips thinned. “To hell with her.”

“You two got a problem?”

“She lied to me.”

“Everyone fibs now and again.”

“She lied about something pretty crucial.”

I suspected that Jo had told him he hadn’t always been Josey Pellerin. “Mind if I ask what?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I mind.”

I watched him out of the corner of my eye. His features relaxed from their belligerent expression and he appeared to be tracking the progress of something through the air. I asked what he was looking at, half-expecting him to claim that he had discovered a microscopic planet with an erratic orbit, but he said, “A gnat.” Then he laughed. “A gnat with a fucking aura.”

“You see that shit all the time?”

“Auras? Yeah. Weirder stuff than that.”

“Like what?”

“Shadows.” He fumbled in his pocket and fished out a wad of bills, napkins, gum wrappers—there must have been thirty or forty hundreds mixed in with the debris; he selected a twenty, tossed the rest on the table and hailed the blond waitress. “Margarita rocks,” he told her. “Salt.”

“Better slow down,” I said. “If you’re going to play poker, that is.”

“You kidding me? I need a handicap to play with those old ladies.”