I was having trouble concentrating on the game.
“Two hundred more,” Keith the Kid said.
He hadn’t been doing badly. At least not in the game. He was a little over even. He winced in periodic pain or regret and gulped down diet ginger ale.
We were down to three players in the hand. I saw the bet and, for one of the few times during the game, Corkle folded. When the next cards were dealt to Keith and me by Kaufmann, Corkle got up and headed for the restroom. I watched him walk past it. I pressed the durable and easy-to-clean replaceable white glow-in-the-dark button on the pager in my pocket.
“Your bet, Lewie,” said Kaufmann.
“What’s the bet?” I asked.
“Three hundred,” said Kaufmann. “Keep your eyes on the prize.”
Period Waysock from Out of Town had waddled to the snack table.
I was holding two fours down and a third four showing on the table with one card to go, a set of three in a five-card-nothing wild game. The Kid could have had three sevens, eights, or jacks or just a pair of each. He wasn’t betting like a player with a set. I reluctantly folded, got up from the table and hurried after Corkle.
I caught up with Corkle in the foyer where he was pacing and talking on a cordless phone in front of the front door.
“No, D. Elliot Corkle is not sorry that he woke you. There are more important things than sleep. I did not make my money by sleeping. I made it by staying awake. You can sleep later.”
He looked around at the three closed doors and the elevator and kept pacing as he listened.
“Not everyone who goes to jail gets raped,” he said. “D. Elliot Corkle will put up the bail in the morning. Watch him all the time. Do not let him run away… All right. Let me know.”
Corkle pushed a button on his phone and I ducked into the bathroom and closed the door. I heard him walk past, come out, pushed the button on the pager twice and watched while Ames stepped out of Corkle’s office. He headed for the front door holding up an eight-by-eleven brown envelope for me to see. Then he went through the front door and closed it as I turned to return to the game.
Keith the Kid was standing across the foyer looking at me. He didn’t say anything, but he did give me a look of slight perplexity.
“Stretching my legs,” I said. “Bad knee.”
“What’d you have?” he asked. “That last hand.”
“Queen high,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Not the way you bet.”
“I figured from the way you were betting that you had a set. The odds were against me.”
“You gave me the hand,” he said. “I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I didn’t.”
He touched his cheek nervously.
“I thought I could make back some of the money I lost here last time,” he said. “My father was a regular in this stupid game. He’s not well enough to play again. Heart. I took his place. I don’t want to lose, but I don’t want any gifts either. Besides the ones Corkle gives out in boxes as we leave.”
“Kaufmann won’t play a hand unless he’s holding an initial pair,” I said. “Period bluffs half the time, no pattern. Corkle never folds unless he’s beaten on the table.”
“And me?”
“You shouldn’t be playing poker.”
“You?”
“I don’t like to gamble,” I said.
“Then…”
“Hey, you two,” Corkle called. “Clock is moving and a quorum and your money are needed.”
I moved past Keith and took my place at the table. Keith came behind me and sat.
“Question,” Period Waysock From Out of Town said. “You wearing that Cubs cap for luck or because you’re going bald.”
“Yes, in that order,” I said.
“Let’s play some poker,” Corkle said, and we did.
At two in the morning, the last hand was played, the cash was pocketed and the lies about winning and losing were told. I estimated that Ames and I had come out about five hundred dollars ahead.
On the way out, Corkle handed each of us a small box about the length of a pen.
“See Forever Pocket Telescope with built-in sky map,” he said. “Specially designed lenses. You can clearly see the mountains of the moon or the party your neighbors are having a mile away, providing trees or buildings aren’t in the way.”
We thanked him. I was the last one at the door. Corkle stopped me with a hand on my arm and said in a low voice, “D. Elliot Corkle knows what you did here.”
I didn’t answer.
“You did some losing on purpose,” he said. “You’re a good player. You’re setting us up for next time.”
I didn’t tell him that I was sure I had come out ahead and not behind.
“Well,” he went on. “I don’t think that opportunity will be afforded to you. You’re a decent enough guy, but not a good fit here.”
I agreed with him.
“One more thing,” he said. “My daughter has bailed out Ronnie Gerall.”
He looked for a reaction from me. I gave him none.
“She stands to lose a quarter of a million if he skips,” said Corkle. “I’ll be grateful with a cash bonus of four thousand dollars if he doesn’t skip.”
He didn’t tell me why Alana Legerman would bail Ronnie out, but I could see from his face that we were both thinking the same thing.
I took my See Forever Pocket Telescope with sky map and went out the door.
Ames, leaning over so he couldn’t be seen from the door, was in the backseat of the Saturn. He didn’t sit up until we hit Tamiami Trail.
“What’d you find?” I asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror.
“Our chief suspect has a lot of explaining to do,” he said.
Victor wasn’t around when we got to my place.
Ames waited for me to sit behind my desk, and then produced the envelope he had taken from Corkle’s office. He opened it and placed the first two sheets next to each other in front of me.
They were birth certificates. The one on my left was Ronald Gerall’s. It said that he was born in Palo Alto, California, on December 18, 1990. The birth certificate on the right gave his date of birth as December 18, 1978. If the certificate on the right was correct, Ronnie Gerall was 29 years old.
“I’m betting that one,” Ames said pointing at the certificate on my right, “is the right one and the other one’s the fake.”
“We’ll find out,” I said. “You know what this means?”
“Gerall started high school here when he was twenty-five or twenty-six years old,” said Ames.
He reached back into the envelope and came out with two more pieces of paper. He handed them to me and I discovered that our Ronnie had graduated from Templeton High School in Redwood City, California, and California State University in Hayward, California.
“Best for last,” Ames said, pulling one more sheet of paper out of the envelope.
It was a marriage certificate, issued a year ago in the State of California to Ronald Owen Gerall and Rachel Beck Horvecki. Ronnie was married to Horvecki’s missing daughter.
We had more questions now. Why had Ronnie Gerall posed as a high school student? Where was his wife? What was Corkle planning to do with the documents that were now on my desk?
It was three in the morning. We said good night and Ames said he would be back “an hour or two past daybreak.” I told him nine in the morning would be fine.
I handed the papers back to Ames and said, “You keep them. If Corkle finds that they’re gone, he might think I’m a logical suspect.”
Ames nodded and put the documents back in the envelope.
When Ames left I went to my room and closed the door. The night-light, a small lamp with an iron base and a glass bowl over the bulb, was on. I had been leaving it on more and more when night came. I put on my black Venice Beach workout shorts and went back through my office to the cramped bathroom. I showered, shaved, shampooed my minor outcropping of hair; I did not sing. Catherine used to say I had a good voice. Singing in the shower had been almost mandatory-old standards from the 1940s had been my favorites and Catherine’s. “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree,” “To Each His Own,” “Johnny Got a Zero,” “Wing and a Prayer.” I had not sung or considered it after Catherine died. When I turned off the shower, I heard someone moving around in the office.