He’d been told about the Travis by the redhaired man. Experience had taught him and Russell to spot smalltimers pretty easily and they’d made the redhead for one the minute they saw him. Buck had introduced himself as John Ansel, a car salesman out of Schulenburg. The redhead said his name was Dickson. Buck told him he was in town visiting his sister, who was expecting her first kid in the next week or two. He said we were his in-laws. He told Dickson he played in a weekly poker game in Schulenburg and always came out pretty good, if he did say so himself, but he’d always hankered to sit in on one of the high-stakes San Antonio games he’d heard about. Now here he was, with wifey at sis’ baby shower and the evening to himself. How about it, he asked Dickson, did he know where a fella could get some action? Dickson said he did know of a game close by but was having trouble recollecting exactly where. His memory cleared when Buck ponied up a fin. He went in the back room to make a phone call and a minute later the matter was settled. He told Buck about the Travis and said they were expecting him in room 312. Just say Claude sent him.
“They’re all of them businessmen,” Buck said, “or so the man says. Not a pro among them. But we best play it safe.”
Plan A was this. During the small talk at the table, he would mention to the other players that his wife had been feeling poorly in recent weeks and never would’ve been able to make this trip to San Antone except she started taking some new kind of goatmilk treatment which seemed to be helping her a good bit. He would also let drop that his nephew was a dishwasher at Dickson’s place. That was where I came in. At ten-thirty—after he’d been up there about two hours—I’d go to room 312 with an urgent message for my Uncle John. I’d announce that his wife had collapsed and was in the hospital.
The fiction was intended to get him out of there without any ruckus. Without some sorehead loser insisting too strongly on the chance to win his money back. But if it didn’t work? If somebody refused to let his losses leave so soon in Buck’s pocket? Or worse, made a nasty accusation about Buck’s awfully good luck in his brief two hours at the table?
Then plan B. We’d pull our pieces to give them something to think about while we hustled the hell out of there and down to the car and got ourselves gone.
I didn’t have to ask what we’d do if one of them pulled a piece too. Whatever we had to hat was always understood.
Standing there on the sidewalk, I felt like everything had picked up speed—the passing cars and people, the flashings of the neon lights, my heartbeat. I could see Charlie wasn’t pleased by this innovation in the evening’s activities but she knew to keep her mouth shut. All Russell said was he wished it was a dice game and he was the one going up to room 312.
I took a walk with Russell and Charlie in the cottonwood shadows along the river. We stopped to buy cones in an ice cream shop but Russell and I took only a few licks off ours before pitching them away. Everything was moving fast but the minutes. When Russell wasn’t checking his watch I was consulting mine. Charlie tried to make conversation but soon gave it up. With an hour to go, we made our way to the Travis and went into the speakeasy and ordered drinks at the bar. Russell and I barely touched ours but Charlie was soon sipping on her second. We watched the couples on the dance floor but nobody suggested taking a turn.
At twenty after ten Russell slapped my shoulder and said, “See you at the car, bud. Don’t you all keep us waiting.”
I went out to the elevator. The operator was an old man with a face as gray as his uniform and purple bags under his eyes. “Three,” I told him.
“Private floor, Mac,” he said. “Unless you got business.”
My first impulse was to head for the stairs, wherever they were. But the old guy had likely been through this routine a hundred times before and he knew what I was thinking. “Stairwell door’s closed off on three,” he said.
For a second I almost spooked, thinking the plan was already in trouble. I had a vision of myself sticking the snubnose in this old guy’s ribs. I told him about my stricken aunt and my uncle in the game in 312. Knowing about the game must’ve been what did the trick. He didn’t say okay, didn’t nod, nothing—just pulled the folding lattice door closed and worked the lever and we slowly rose in a clank and whine of machinery.
I stepped out at one end of a hallway with a big grimy window under a faded sign saying “Fire Escape.” “All the way the other end,” the old guy said. He pulled the door to and the elevator groaned and descended.
The hall was musty and dimly lighted, the runner worn along its center. Whatever businesses operated up here weren’t the sort to worry much about workplace appearance. The rooms were on my right, beginning with 301. I heard faint music from behind some of the doors as I went by them, the drone of voices behind others. I thought I heard somebody crying in 307. Between 309 and 310 was a door with a sign saying “Exit” over it. Of course I had to try it and of course it was locked.
Just before I got to 312, I did a dozen fast deep-knee bends to help effect a mild breathlessness befitting a bringer of critical news. It’d be no trouble at all to look worried. I adjusted the bulldog at my back, then stepped up to the door and rapped hard.
The door guy was big, in shirtsleeves and apparently unarmed, which I was glad to see. A Japanese screen directly behind him blocked my view of the room but not the heavy waft of cigarette smoke or the drone of voices. I gave him the bit, expecting to see at least a squint of doubt, but he only nodded and let me in.
There were two round tables with a game going at each. A long narrow table against the wall held bottles of bonded whiskey and plates of bread and cold cuts and cheese. I spotted Buck with his back to me and started for him but the door guy put a hand on my shoulder and said softly, “After the hand.”
Buck was dealing seven-card stud. Last card going around, facedown. Two other guys still holding. A guy with a goatee bet big and Buck raised him big and the third guy cursed and folded. The goatee raised Buck back and Buck raised him even bigger. The goatee was showing a pair of kings, a ten, a three. Probably had a king down, maybe another ten or trey. I took a sidestep to get a look at Buck’s up cards—pair of jacks and one of them a heart, nine of hearts, eight of hearts. Possible straight flush.
“You ain’t buying it, buddy,” the goatee said with a cocksure grin. “Not from me.”
He called. Full house, kings over tens, and the hole ten was a heart—so no straight flush for Buck.
He didn’t need it. He turned up all the other eights. The goatee’s grin fell off. “Shit!” he said. “You believe this?”
As Buck pulled in the fat pot the door guy stepped up and whispered in his ear. Buck turned around and looked so truly surprised I was almost thrown off. “Tommy!” he said. “What you doing here?”
I delivered the bad news. He stared at me a moment, a man taking it in, then said low, “Oh Jesus”—then jumped up so fast he nearly upset his chair and began stuffing his winnings in his pockets.
“Got to go, boys, I got to…” He was so “rattled” he dropped some bills and affected not to notice—a perfect touch—and the guy next to him fetched the money up for him.
Buck was the very picture of a shaken man. “Sorry, boys, sorry,” he said. “Gotta go.”
“Hey now, what the hell…?” the goatee said.
“Christ’s sake, Parham, it’s the man’s wife,” another guy said.
“I’m really sorry, fellas,” Buck said. He tossed a twenty on the table. “You all have a few on me. Jesus, guys, I wish…ah, hell. Tommy, get me to that damn hospital. Let’s go!”