The Man Who Risked His Partner

  She practically gaped at him. “Maybe you weren’t listening,” she started to say.

  “I was listening.” His confidence was so strong that I could almost smell it. “I understand the situation. But there will be a number of people at the club tonight. Jousters has good security and plenty of light.” He smiled. “It even has valet parking. I’ll be perfectly safe.

  “But that’s not all,” he went on, sounding like the sort of salesman who specializes in Eiffel Towers. “I’m not suggesting this simply because I can’t bear to sit still. Isn’t it better to be a moving target than a stationary one? A moving target attracts attention, but it’s harder to hit.”

  “A moving target,” Ginny cut in roughly, “is also harder to protect. In case you’ve lost count, there are only two of us on this job.”

  “I understand that.” He was actively sparkling. “But if we do this your way, and you do it well enough, it could take weeks. I can’t afford that. I want to attract attention. I want to get this over with, so I can go back to leading a normal life. I don’t mind taking a few chances.”

  He fascinated me. I’d never met anybody brave or lunatic enough to call exposing himself to el Señor’s goons “taking a few chances.” What did he call “leading a normal life,” standing in front of freight trains to see if they could stop in time?

  Naturally, Ginny was less thrilled. I could see her getting ready to roast him in his socks. So I decided to share the fun. Cheerfully I said, “That sounds like a terrible idea.”

  Like a piece of steel, she said, “It is a terrible idea.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  She snapped her glare at me so hard that I almost lost an appendage. But I wasn’t just being perverse. Haskell didn’t make sense to me, and that made him dangerous. I wanted to find out what kind of game he was really playing.

  And I felt too savage to just sit still for the rest of the night. If I did, I was going to start hurting things.

  Carefully I said, “There’s one other advantage. If Haskell and I go out, whoever is out there might go after us. Or they might try to get in here.” I wanted to look at anything except the hot dismay in her eyes. Nevertheless, I forced myself. This case was too important. “If they try that, you’ll be waiting for them. We’ll double our chances to get what we want tonight.”

  She didn’t look away. I thought she might take her stump out of her pocket and wave it around to show me what was wrong with my idea. But she didn’t. Bitterly she said, “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you.”

  I was gripping the arm of the sofa hard. Any minute now it would come off in my hands.

  “Tell you what,” Haskell said. “We’ll flip for it.” He fished a half-dollar out of his pocket. “Heads we all stay here. Tails Axbrewder and I go play bridge.”

  Ginny and I opened our mouths at him, like hooked fish. We couldn’t help ourselves. He wasn’t living in the real world.

  He didn’t wait for an answer. With a flick of his thumb, he made the coin dance and flash in the lights of the game room. It was just an ordinary coin toss, but the way he did it made it look like magic.

  The half-dollar bounced on the carpet, rolled toward Ginny’s feet—and came up tails.

  She looked at the coin, at Haskell, at me. Softly she said, “Oh, go to hell. Try to come back in one piece.”

  I had to admire the way he’d maneuvered us into giving him what he wanted.

  8

  “I’ll get my coat.” Haskell left the room before I could ask him if he had any idea—any idea at all—what he was doing. As he ran up the stairs, I noticed unhappily that they didn’t make a sound.

  I should’ve gone with him. Even in his own house, I shouldn’t have left him alone. But I couldn’t stand to see Ginny looking like that.

  “Is he out of his mind?” I asked. “Or is he just that eager to get out of the house?”

  She didn’t answer—or look at me, either. I got the distinct impression that she was fighting back a desire to flay the skin off my bones.

  I was too miserable and furious to think of anything better, so I said, “You’ve always used that .357 with one hand. You’ll be all right.”

  She’d had all she could take. “If somebody gets hurt tonight,” she said suddenly, aiming each word at me like a piece of broken glass, “make sure it’s you.”

  Swearing at myself and her and everyone else I could think of, I turned my back and went after Haskell.

  He was waiting in the atrium, all decked out in his camel’s hair coat. He gave me a smile, but I didn’t give it back. Roughly I pushed past him, went to the switch panel, and flipped them all, turning off the entryway lights outside and inside.

  “I’m going first,” I muttered, “Stay close.” Then I unlocked the front door and eased it open.

  I was in no mood to be cautious, but I did it anyway. Fortunately, the aisle and the street lights on Cactus Blossom Court made it easy. All I really had to worry about was the walk from the cover of the cedars to the car.

  I relocked the front door, then led Haskell to the end of the aisle. From there, I scanned the cul-de-sac. Several cars were parked around the curb, and the wind seemed to be getting stronger, but nothing set off any alarms in my head. I wrapped one fist around Haskell’s upper arm and marched him between me and the wall of the house toward the driveway. That was my job, after all. But I didn’t like it much.

  When we got into the Buick, I felt safer.

  “Why not take my car?” he asked.

  “This clunker is harder to follow. Less recognizable.” The Buick must’ve liked cold and wind. It started as soon as I touched the ignition. “And we can always hope that someone will see that showboat of yours and think you’re still at home.”

  I backed out of the driveway and started up the steep slope toward Foothill Drive. I didn’t turn on my headlights. None of the parked cars started moving behind me. But at the intersection I had to hit the lights so that the oncoming traffic wouldn’t plow into us. While my eyes adjusted, I couldn’t see the road behind me. I didn’t know what—if anything—was happening there as I pulled out onto Foothill and began following Haskell’s directions toward his private club.

  I could’ve stood the strain if he’d kept his mouth shut and let me concentrate. But he didn’t have it in him. Halfway to the end of Foothill, he said conversationally, “One thing bothers me, Axbrewder.” No Mr. now. We were becoming buddies. “Your partner doesn’t want this job. I mean, she really doesn’t want this job. I think she’s afraid of it.” I heard an implied contempt in his tone. “Why do you work for her?”

  My self-control snapped. I stomped down on the brake, wrenched the Buick onto the shoulder, slapped it into park. My arm swung toward him. With my index finger, I pointed out the spot in the center of his face where I wanted to hit him. My voice shook, but my arm and hand were steady.

  “If you have any complaints, you take them to her. She’s the boss. I’m perfectly capable of breaking both your legs myself.”

  For a long minute, he measured me in the glow of the dashboard lights. His eyes didn’t waver. I don’t think he even blinked. Then, quietly, he said, “Understood.”

  Damn right. Pulling the shift back into drive, I made the Buick spit dirt like a hotrod back onto the road. Damn fucking right. If anything happened to Ginny while I was away, I’d have to do something really drastic to myself.

  On the other hand, Haskell still didn’t act like he was in any kind of danger. That was some consolation, anyway. I just hoped that Ginny and I weren’t going out on a limb to protect a man who’d already thrown away all his marbles.

  For a while I watched a pair of headlights in the rearview mirror. But I couldn’t tell if they were following us.

  Jousters turned out to be on the far side of the Canyon del Oro golf course. Money being no object to the people who recreated in this part of the Heights, the course was lit all night—even in the dead of winter—and I saw several duffers beating irid
escent orange balls up and down the fairways.

  The club was everything Haskell said it was. It looked like a colonial mansion, and it was lit like a national monument. In Puerta del Sol, of all places. Go figure that out. Each blade of winter-brown grass in the lawns sweeping around it had been individually manicured. Its parking lot lay opposite the building’s colonnaded portico, on the other side of the road beyond the wide arc of the driveway. It looked as safe as a bank.

  Approaching the driveway, the traffic nearly stopped, blocked by cars waiting their turn for valet parking. The car behind us came right up on our bumper. Instinctively I loosened the .45 again, but nothing happened.

  “By the way,” Haskell said, “I should tell you. This is a private club. Quite a bit of money can change hands.”

  It took me a minute to absorb that. “Let me get this straight. You’re planning to risk money on my bridge playing?”

  He smiled.

  Terrific, I muttered. That’s just peachy-keen. This is going to be such fun. “Are you out of your mind?” I asked him. “Do you like to throw money away?”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself.” He chuckled. “I anticipate a profitable evening.”

  I didn’t like the attitude of the car behind me. On impulse, I turned left into the parking lot instead of right up the driveway. Maybe whoever it was would do something stupid. But the car just revved angrily and roared on past. All I got out of the experience was a chance to park the Buick myself, instead of having to bother with the convenience and luxury of the valets.

  Haskell had the decency not to say anything, but he looked amused.

  Walking briskly in the cold, we crossed the road and hiked up the arc to the club. On the marble steps under the high span of the portico, we were greeted by a man who dressed like a butler and looked like a bouncer. He knew Haskell by name. Haskell told him who I was, and he let us through the tall white doors into the club.

  Inside the place was all gilt and crystal and burgundy—and ceilings so far away you couldn’t hit them with a slingshot. Another butler-bouncer type took our coats, and Haskell guided me up a long curving stairway toward the second floor. As we climbed, I murmured, “Tell me one more time about how you can’t afford to pay us very long. Membership in this place must cost half the national debt.”

  He chuckled again. “That’s true. But I didn’t pay for it myself. I came here once as a guest. My partner thought I wasn’t very good, so he told me not to worry about winning. I bet him we would come in first. If we did, he had to buy me a membership.”

  I wanted to ask him how a man who did well risking money on bridge managed to lose his head and welsh at El Machismo, but I didn’t get the chance. At the top of the stairs, we went through another set of high white doors and entered the playing area.

  It was a huge round room with the kind of decor you’d expect to see in a high-priced cathouse in San Francisco a hundred years ago. At least two dozen mahogany card tables were set in a wide circle around the director’s table in the center, all of them square to the points of the compass. Most of them were already occupied. A large screen to display the scores hung on one wall.

  Haskell got a table assignment from the director, and I found myself sitting South opposite his North. It was a duplicate game, which meant that the same hands were played over and over again around the room. The cards were dealt into holders called boards, and for each round the boards moved counterclockwise while the East-West teams moved clockwise. The final scoring was comparative, North-South against North-South, East-West against East-West.

  After twenty years, that was just about all I remembered about bridge. The only thing I had going for me was that I made the table and most of the players look small.

  Our first opponents were a white-haired man with a Colonel Coot mustache and a woman dressed like a front for a diamond-smuggling operation. They both knew Haskell. “New partner?” the man asked him casually. “Any good?”

  Haskell was in his element. I swear to God, he looked even handsomer than he did at the bank. Shuffling the first hand of the night, he winked at me and replied, “Let’s find out.”

  “Stakes?”

  Haskell smiled. “I feel lucky. How about a hundred dollars a point?”

  The woman snatched up her cards like a swooping vulture. “Luck won’t do you the least bit of good,” she said severely.

  For a minute I couldn’t look at my cards. I was fighting too hard to hold off a coughing fit.

  By the time I had my hand sorted, the bidding was over—I just passed whenever it was my turn to say anything—and Colonel Coot on my right was playing a spade slam. Disaster filled my throat, and I could hardy swallow. A hundred dollars a point! For one thing, I had to make the opening lead. For another, I only had twelve cards. I was supposed to have thirteen.

  Somewhere in my hand, I located a solitary diamond and a lone king of spades, so I led the diamond. Colonel Coot won in dummy and led another diamond. I didn’t know what else to do, so I ruffed with my king of spades. Then I led something else.

  By the time Colonel Coot got around to drawing trump, I found my thirteenth card. The jack of spades was hiding behind the clubs. Having seen my king and drawn the obvious conclusion, Colonel Coot took a deep finesse against Haskell, and my jack won. The slam failed.

  Colonel Coot muttered imprecations through his mustache. “If you’d ruffed with your jack, I could have dropped your king.” The diamond smuggler glared at the ceiling.

  Haskell didn’t say anything. He didn’t even smile. He just glowed like an incandescent shark.

  A few hands and a couple of opponents later, I trumped one of my partner’s aces and ended up blocking the declarer away from four good tricks in dummy. And a few hands later, I pulled the wrong card from my hand and accidentally end-played the woman on my right. The rest of the time, I didn’t have the faintest idea what was happening. My bidding didn’t bear any resemblance to the cards in my hand, and I was playing off the wall. Under my jacket, sweat soaked my shirt. We were halfway through the game before I figured out what was going on.

  Haskell was using my ignorance. Counting on my mistakes. He played like he knew exactly what I would do wrong. Which gave him a tremendous advantage over our opponents. None of them knew what the hell I was doing.

  Three times during the game, he offered the opposition the same bet he had with Colonel Coot and the diamond smuggler. It would’ve been more honest if he’d brought in a professional and not told anybody. I didn’t know whether to congratulate him or call the cops.

  By eleven the game was over. I felt like I’d spent the night in a gravel factory. When I stood up, my legs cramped, and I almost lost my balance. If someone offered me just one more hand of bridge, I was going to run screaming into the night.

  But Haskell won all his bets. We didn’t win the game. We were second North-South, however, and second overall. Which meant that we beat all the East-West teams.

  I was dying to get out of there and hide my head under a pillow. But Haskell stood around the room for a while and graciously let people pay him his winnings.

  Colonel Coot was bitter about it. He gave me a glare and muttered, “Be watching for you next time,” then marched away to vent his spleen on some hapless subaltern.

  I read the scores off the screen, did a little rough math in my head, and realized that Haskell had taken in over four thousand dollars.

  He didn’t smile the whole time. He didn’t have to. His entire body did it for him.

  On the way down the stairs, I made my brains stop rattling long enough to ask him, quietly, “How did you do that?”

  If I hadn’t towered over him, he would’ve looked like a conquering hero. At my question, he cocked an eyebrow and thought for a few steps. Then he said, “It’s difficult to explain. I don’t really play cards. I play people. You gave me a lot to work with.”

  What a nice compliment, I growled to myself. I’m so proud I could just shit. But he was still the
client, so I kept a civil tongue in my head.

  Together we collected our coats from the butler-bouncer and went out through the portico.

  Outside all the wind was gone. Behind the noises of the cars as valets brought them up the driveway and bridge players drove them away, the night was still. Poised and quiet, like your first kiss. On the other hand, it was cold as a meat locker. I had to hug my coat to keep my bones from falling out on the ground.

  People stood in knots around the columns as if they were trying to share warmth. Over on the golf course, a few hardy souls still played. What few stars shone through the lights of the city looked like chips of ice.

  I gave the Buick’s keys to the next valet, a kid with hopeful eyes and an unsuccessful mustache, and told him what it looked like. He sprinted away toward the parking lot, working for a good tip.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Haskell said. He’d already proved that he was more observant than I gave him credit for. “I play that way because it works. It’s the only way to win.”

  I didn’t really listen. For some reason I kept watching that kid. The way his coat flapped behind him as he ran made him look like a valiant child, too full of energy to be cold-and trying too hard to please. He reached the lot and dodged between the cars toward the back row.

  “Tell the truth, now,” Haskell went on. Deep in his heart, he probably wanted me to admit how brilliant he was. “You enjoyed yourself. Didn’t you?”

  “Give me a choice next time,” I said absently. Still watching the kid. “I’d rather have my kneecaps dislocated.”

  The kid reached the Buick—I could see it between two other cars. He unlocked the door and jumped into the driver’s seat. Before he closed the door, he reached for the ignition.

  I wasn’t ready for it. In all my grubby and sometimes violent life, I’ve never been ready for such things. With a special crumpling noise that you never forget once you’ve heard it, the rear of the Buick turned into a fireball.

  I should’ve stayed with Haskell. That was my job. I was supposed to protect him. But I didn’t.