The Best of Lucius Shepard (107 page)

“Bits
and pieces.”

“Let’s
hear one!”

After
considerable persuasion, I tapped out a rhythm on the tabletop and sang in a
whispery voice:

* * * *

“I
said, Hey, hey! Devil get away!

Get
a move on, boy...

I’ll
lay the saint’s ray on ya.

Shake
a calabash skull,

Make
the sign of the jay...

Don’t
you give me no trouble, or as sure as you’re born,

I’ll
make you jump now, Satan,

‘cause
I got your shinbone.”

* * * *

“They
most of them were like that one,” I said. “The old man was a bear for religion.
He’d haul me down to the temple once or twice a week and have me anointed with
some remedy or another.”

“I
can picture you singing that when you were a little boy,” she said. “You must
have been cute.”

In
the darkened parking lot, I saw the black car I had noticed a few days earlier,
the occupants invisible behind smoked glass. The sight banished my nostalgia. I
asked Jo what she had told Pellerin the previous day when she talked to him
about Ogun Badagris.

“I
told him about Donnell,” she said.

“About
the big copper
veve
and all?”

“Yes.”
She licked the bottom of her spoon.

“How
about your theory? About the Ezawa process being an analog of possession. You
tell him about that?”

“I
couldn’t lie to him anymore.”

What’d
he say?”

“He
was depressed. I told him if we got out of this situation, he’d live a long
time. Long enough to understand everything that was happening to him. That
depressed him even more. He said that didn’t motivate him to want to live that
long. I tried to cheer him up, but...” She pinned me with a stern look. “Did
you sic those girls on me?”

“What
girls?” I asked innocently.

“You
know which ones.”

“I
was pissed at you. I’m over it now, but I was seriously pissed.”

“Then
you would have been delighted by my reaction.” She dabbed at her lips with a
napkin. “Once they came in, that was it for the conversation.”

“So
y’all had some fun, did you?”

“Maybe,”
she said, drawing out the first syllable of the word, giving it a playful
reading. “I thought the dark-haired girl was very attractive. You never know,
do you, when love will strike?”

“Is
that right?”

“Mm-hmm.
Think I should have gotten her number?”

“We
could invite her on the honeymoon, if you want.”

“Is
that what we’re having? A honeymoon?”

“It
might have to do for one,” I said.

Not
long afterward, we left the Baskin-Robbins and, as we crossed the lot, I
noticed a motorcyclist, the same one, judging by his bike, who had tailed me
the day before. He was parked about ten slots down from the black car. I
thought Billy must be getting paranoid, now that he was close to his goal, and
had doubled up on security. We walked along the shoulder through the warm black
night. Moths whirled under the arc lamps like scraps of pale ash. Jo’s shampoo
overbore the bitter scents of the roadside weeds. She slipped a hand into mine
and by that simple gesture charged me with confidence. Despite the broken paths
we had traveled to reach this night, this sorry patch of earth, I believed we
had arrived at our appointed place.

* * * *

There
was some talk that we should approach Ruddle prior to the game, but I convinced
Pellerin and Jo that the wisest course was to wait until we had a better idea
of the connection between Ruddle and Billy Pitch. We held a strategy session
before the limo picked us up, but since our strategy was basically to throw
ourselves on Ruddle’s mercy, the meeting was more or less a pep rally.
Pellerin, however, was beyond pepping up. As Jo and I led the cheers, he glumly
flipped through channels on the TV and, instead of his usual pre-game ritual of
slamming drinks, sipped bottled water.

During
the drive, Pellerin sat with a suitcase full of cash between his legs, flipping
the handle back and forth, creating a repetitive clicking noise that I found
irritating. I rested my eyes on Jo. She had on the black cocktail dress that
she’d worn the first time I saw her. Whenever she caught me looking, her smile
flickered on, but would quickly dissolve and she would return to gazing out the
window. I managed to sustain my confidence by rehearsing what I intended to say
to Ruddle. But as we pulled past the gatehouse and the lights of that enormous
house floated up against the dark, like a spaceship waiting to take on
abductees, I felt a tightness in my throat and, the second we stepped through
the door, I realized that Plan A was out the window and, probably, Plan B as
well. Standing with a group of middle-aged-to-elderly men at the entrance to
the living room, wearing what looked to be powder blue lounging pajamas, was
Billy Pitch. Clayton was not in evidence, but close by Billy’s shoulder stood a
lanky individual with a prominent Adam’s apple and close-cropped gray hair and
a cold, angular hillbilly face. I recognized him from New Orleans—Alan Goess, a
contract killer. Clayton, I assumed, was too showy an item for Billy to take on
a trip. Seven or eight young men in private security uniforms waited off to one
side, watching their elders with neutral expressions, but contempt was evident
in their body language.

Ruddle
steered Pellerin away and introduced him to the other players, who were dressed
in clothes that appeared to have been bought from the same Palm Beach
catalogue. Clad in burgundy, olive, nectarine, coral, aqua, and plum, they bore
a passing resemblance to migratory birds from different flocks gathered around
a feeder. He introduced Billy as an old friend, not a player.

“Not
a
poker
player, anyway,” said Billy, giving Pellerin’s hand a
three-fingered shake.

Goess’s
eyes licked Jo head to toe. She didn’t seem as anxious as I would have thought,
or else she kept her anxiety contained. With Goess in the picture, my best
guess was that Billy planned to humiliate Ruddle, then kill him. Whatever his
plans, the odds against our surviving the evening had lengthened. I tried to
think of an out, but nothing came to me. Ruddle shepherded us across the living
room, a considerable acreage with a high ceiling, carpeted in a swirly blue
pattern that was interrupted now and again by a sofa grouping or a stainless
steel abstract sculpture—it reminded me of the showroom of an upscale car
dealer, minus the cars. I wanted to cut Pellerin out of the herd and tell him
about Goess, but the opportunity did not arise.

A
dealer had been brought in for the occasion, a motherly brunette carrying some
extra pounds, dressed in a tuxedo shirt and slacks; a thin, sleek Cubano was behind
the bar, dispensing drinks with minimal comment. Some of the men seemed to have
a prior relationship with the dealer; they cracked jokes at her expense,
addressing her as Kim. Goess and Billy took chairs on opposite sides of the
central trophy case, separating themselves from each other, and from Jo and I,
who sat in the corner, with Pellerin facing us at the table. Once everyone was
settled and a few last pleasantries observed, Kim said, “The game is Texas Hold
‘Em, gentlemen. No Limit. The buy-in is five hundred thousand. Play will run
until eight AM, unless an extension is agreed upon. If you go bust, you can
make a second buy-in, but not a third.”

The
buy-ins commenced, cash being traded for chips. The cash was placed in a
lockbox and then wheeled off on a luggage cart by two of Ruddle’s employees.
This done, Kim dealt the first hand.

For
the better part of an hour, some chips passed back and forth, but no serious
damage was done and the men bantered amiably between hands, telling dumb
stories about one another and chortling, huh huh huh, like apes at a grunt
festival. As best I could judge, there were two dangerous players apart from
Ruddle and Pellerin—a portly man with heavy bags under his eyes by the name of
Carl, who rarely spoke other than to raise or check or call, and an ex-jock
type with an Alabama accent, his muscles running to fat, whom everybody called
Buster and treated with great deference, laughing loudly and long at his
anecdotes, though they were none too funny. The remaining four were dead money,
working their cards without discernable stratagem or skill.

“We
can gossip and trade antes all night,” said Ruddle, “but I call that a ladies’
bridge tournament, not a poker game.”

“I
didn’t notice you stepping up, Frank,” said Pellerin. “You been betting like
you playing with your mama’s pin money.”

The
table shared a chuckle.

Ruddle
took it good-naturedly, but there was an edge to his smile and I knew he
couldn’t wait to hurt Pellerin.

Truthfully,
my mind was not on the game, but on Billy and Goess. The transfer of the
lockbox to the vault made it clear that Billy’s true interest did not lie in
that direction. My uneasiness intensified and it must have showed, because Jo
gave my hand a squeeze. The play remained less than aggressive until, several
hands later, Pellerin check-raised Ruddle’s bet after the flop by twenty
thousand.

“I
bid five clubs,” he said, causing another outburst of laughter.

Having
watched him play every day at the Seminole Paradise, I knew this was a move he
had been setting up ever since he’d arrived in Florida. He’d backed off a lot
of players with it in the casino and it usually signified a bluff, something of
which Ruddle would be aware. Now, I thought, he might have a hand. The flop was
the four of spades, the seven of spades, and the seven of clubs. Pellerin bet
another twenty thousand. From the way Ruddle had bet before the flop, I figured
him to be holding a second pair, probably queens or better. If Pellerin wasn’t
bluffing, he might have a third seven. Ruddle, after thinking it over, called
the raise. Everyone else got out of the way. The turn card was the queen of
hearts. Pellerin pushed out thirty thousand in chips.

“You
got the nuts?” Ruddle asked him.

“There’s
one way to find out,” said Pellerin.

Ruddle
riffled a stack of chips and finally called. “Now we’re playing poker,” he
said.

The
river card was the eight of spades. With four spades face up, both men had the
possibility of a flush draw.

“I
hate to do this to our gracious host, but I’m all in,” Pellerin said.

“Call,”
said Ruddle. He didn’t wait for Pellerin to show his hand—he slapped his hole
cards down on the table. Ace of diamonds and ace of spades. He had made an
ace-high flush.

“You
got the high flush, all right.” Pellerin turned over his cards. “But mine’s all
in a row.”

His
hole cards were the five and six of spades, filling an eight-high straight
flush.

The
other players responded with shocked “Damns!” and “Holy craps!” Having lost
close to half a million on the turn of cards, when there were only a couple of
hands that could have beaten him, four sevens or a gutshot straight flush,
Ruddle was speechless. Pellerin had been lucky, but he had played the hand so
that if the cards were friendly, he was in position to take advantage.

“If
you’d re-raised on the turn, I would have folded. Shit, all I had was a draw.”
Pellerin began to stack his winnings. “Who was it said Hold ‘Em’s a science,
but No Limit is an art? I must be one hell of an artist.” He waved at the
bartender. “Jack Black on the rocks. A double.”

I
expected Billy to be angry that Pellerin had moved on Ruddle so early in the
evening, and I scrunched down so I could see him through the glass of the
trophy case. He was sitting placidly, as if watching an episode of
The
Amazing Race,
but I detected a little steam in the way his neck was bowed.
Jo caught my eye and we exchanged a disconcerted vibe.