How much longer, he wondered, can it go on?
A voice behind him asked, “Is that it for tonight, Mr. Harvard?”
James Harvard turned from the window. He was in a large, luxuriously appointed living room, in one corner of which was a custom-built octagonal poker table with an array of leather chips and playing cards on the green felt top. Four men, in various stages of weariness, sat at the table. Three of the men looked, respectively, incredulous, victorious, and embarrassed. The fourth, a professional gambler, was merely inscrutable. It was this man who had asked the question.
“Yes, I think that’s it for tonight,” Harvard answered. “What’s my tab?”
“One hundred fifty-six thousand,” said the gambler.
Harvard gestured to one of two room stewards who worked for the professional gambler, and the steward brought him his suit coat and held it for Harvard to put on. From an inside pocket, Harvard produced a checkbook and a Mont Blanc and stepped over to the room’s serving bar to write the check. As usual, he left the payee line blank.
“I’ve never seen a run of bad luck like that in my life,” he heard the incredulous player say from the table. You don’t know the half of it, Harvard thought wryly.
“We never should have let the betting get so high,” said the embarrassed player.
“Forget it,” said Harvard, turning from the bar with the check. “In every game of chance, there has to be at least one loser. It just so happens that in this particular game, I was the only loser. Fortunes of poker.”
“That’s the spirit, Jim,” said the third player, who had the most chips in front of him. He laughed a little too loudly, adding, “Hell, if I had your money, I’d throw mine away!”
Harvard handed the check to the gambler, who ran the game and would be paying off the winners. The gambler studied it for a moment with pursed lips. “I hope there won’t be any problem with this, Mr. Harvard,” he said quietly. “It’s a rather large check—”
“Would you like me to write you a dozen small ones?” Harvard asked drily.
“That’s what I like about you, Jim,” said the victorious player. “No matter how much you lose, you can still joke about it.”
“Next to my ability at cards, I’m most noted for my sense of humor,” Harvard replied with a slight, sardonic smile. He slipped his arms into a tan London Fog the steward was holding. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, and left.
On the way down in the elevator, Harvard said to the uniformed operator, “I’ll bet you twenty dollars that we stop at least twice before we reach the garage.”
The operator, a black man with processed hair and knowing eyes, glanced at his wrist watch and said, “All right, sir, I’ll take that bet.” Smiling, he added, “There’ll be a blond hooker leaving about now, on fifty. After that, it should be nonstop to the garage.”
At fifty, the car stopped and the blonde got on. She was one of those soft blondes, smart-looking in an Antonio Fusco cashmere suit, carrying a Prada shoulder bag. She smiled briefly at Harvard but did not flirt.
After the elevator reached the parking garage without another stop, Harvard waited until the blonde got off, then peeled a twenty from the money-clipped fold of currency in his pocket and handed it to the operator, saying, “Thanks for the action.”
“My pleasure, sir,” the operator replied.
By the time Harvard got to his gun-metal gray Jaguar, the blonde was already driving out in a white Mercedes. Harvard got into the Jag, but before starting the engine, he took a moment to rest his head back against the cold leather seat and wondered, How did it get this bad? How did it go this far? He thought of the racetracks, the billiard matches, the lottery tickets, the trips to Atlantic City, the football and baseball and basketball and hockey games, the boxing matches that the wrong fighter won. And the illegal poker and dice games played in plush apartments high above the city. Four million, he thought, in less than a year. Almost his entire inheritance. It was unreal.
Finally starting the car, he drove up to street level, exited into a misting rain, and turned onto Lake Shore Drive, heading north toward the wealthy suburbs.
James Harvard’s background was wealthy upper class: the North Shore old money of Wilmette, Winnetka, and Glencoe. His family had been in textiles for four generations; there were branches of Harvard Mills throughout the Midwest and South. His education had been premium: Mason Foster Prep School, a bachelor’s in business administration from Notre Dame, a master’s in the same field from Northwestern, never once abandoning solid Midwestern values for Eastern pomposity.
In school, Harvard’s grades had never fallen below B. He had belonged to all the right clubs while politely declining fraternity invitations. He had been a very good tennis player, thanks to an excellent backhand; a fair boxer, because he was fast on his feet; and a poor soccer player, due to his tendency to forget and grab the ball with both hands. He spoke fluent Spanish and French, the former learned in school, the latter from a family maid twelve years his senior who taught him many other things as well.
All in all, James Harvard’s manners were cultivated, his tastes impeccable, his social demeanor flawless, his family credentials enviable, and his future thought to be as solid as Gibraltar. At the age of thirty, he should already have taken his place alongside his two older brothers at the executive offices of Harvard Mills. He had not done so because of a single flaw in his character.
James Harvard was an obsessive gambler.
Harvard arrived at the palatial family mansion, which occupied a large promontory on the North Shore of Lake Michigan, just before eight, with the misting rain breaking and a morning sun lighting up the first new greenery of the year. He could have left his Jag at the front door and a servant would have moved it for him, but he chose to drive around to the rear ten-car garage and enter through the grand kitchen that served four separate family wings of the mansion. Andre, the French chef, was at a long grill, about to begin cracking eggs from a bowl on the counter.
“Hold it,” said Harvard. “I’ll bet you twenty that the yolk of the first egg you crack is smaller than a half dollar.”
André glanced around cautiously; there was a household rule that domestic and culinary staff were not allowed to gamble with the youngest Harvard brother. But after examining the egg with a critical eye, André said, “It’s a bet.”
The egg was cracked onto the grill and Harvard held a half-dollar over its yolk. The yolk was discernibly larger. Harvard slipped the chef a twenty. Just then, Marie, André’s wife and the head housekeeper, emerged from the pantry. “What are you two doing?” she asked suspiciously. This would not be the first time she had caught them gambling.
“We are discussing eggs,” André replied innocently.
Harvard winked at Andre, patted Marie on a plump cheek, and left the kitchen.
In the mansion’s sunny breakfast room, overlooking the lake, Harvard found his two older brothers, John and William. John was now chairman of the board and president of Harvard Mills, and William was executive vice president and chief executive officer. Each of them was at his own end of the table, sipping orange juice and reading the Wall Street Journal, while their respective wives got their respective children ready for school in their respective wings of the mansion.
“Good morning, brothers,” said Harvard. He poured himself a cup of coffee from a nearby serving table. “How’s the price on Harvard Mills this morning?”
The brothers exchanged quick glances. “Up an eighth,” said John. “Why?”