With the Korean eliminated, Doc would be the next logical target. Lucifer and Kali would never go after each other while humans remained to be skinned and sliced. Both were extramortals and their kind tended to engage in their one-on-one combat away from the mere human witnesses. It was always possible that they would go after Nixon next, but Doc considered this unlikely. The disgraced ex-president was a professional survivor; Doc, on the other hand, survived despite himself. Doc’s reckless potential for self-destruction was well-known. Nixon, should he lose all his money, would simply bow out, maybe even demanding the courtesy car fare traditionally due the tapped. Doc would just smile coolly and toss his entire brain into the middle with little more than a second thought. Lesser mortals might have asked him why he simply didn’t rise from the table and walk away. Doc would only have shrugged. “It’s no recreation if a man doesn’t play for blood and sanity.”
The deal passed to Lucifer once more. He tapped the deck and stood up, moving to the small wet bar to pour himself a drink. On this particular night, Lucifer was drinking turquoise science-fiction concoctions from the surface of which a heavy vapor flowed. As he moved from his chair, he glanced back at the others. “Can I get anyone else a drink while I’m up?”
Kali ignored him; she imbibed nothing except the occasional nasal pinch of a dark red powder taken from an ornate enamel and silver snuffbox with a red scorpion inlaid on the lid. Doc had a nasty feeling that the powder was dried blood of some kind, but the blood of what he neither cared to know nor speculate. In response to Lucifer’s offer, the secret policeman nodded curtly. “Whiskey.” Which, for some unknown reason, actually meant vodka. Nixon turned the prow of his ski-jump nose in Lucifer’s direction and smiled his wan smile. “I’ll have a scotch and soda, my friend, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Doc stood up. “It’s okay, I’ll pour my own.”
The last thing Doc wanted was for Lucifer to pour him a drink. He wouldn’t have put it past the Dark Disco Prince to slip him a Mickey Finn, mind-numbing or worse; although it would have had to have been a pretty damned powerful Mickey to numb Doc’s mind, considering his mighty tolerance for most drugs known to this world and the last. As Doc moved to the bar, he took a discreet pull on his pocket flask of laudanum to calm himself. The very last thing he needed was to perform a blood-hacking coughing fit for this opposition. He figured he still had a couple of hours to go before he would face the combined wiles and chicanery of Kali and Lucifer working in tandem. He knew he would be best advised to just go on walking, out of the game, out of the room, maybe out of the Mephisto Hotel, and perhaps out of Hell itself. He knew, though, that his pride wouldn’t allow it. Even if it destroyed him, no one would ever be able to say that Doc Holliday ran from a challenge, even if the challenge came from the Devil himself. He would not, however, have minded in the least if some deus ex machina had come along and interrupted the game. Where was Big-Nosed Kate to burn down the saloon?
***
A guard had been posted outside room 1009, a sumo wrestler in a voluminous yellow plaid suit that could only have come from the personal tailor of Nathan Detroit. As Jim and Semple approached the door, he simply shook his head. Jim and Semple halted. “No?”
The sumo wrestler again shook his head. “Not a prayer.”
“No one goes in?”
“No one. Boss’s orders.”
Semple was wondering whether the best tactic would be to bluster, bribe, or seduce their way past the guard. “So who’s the boss?”
The guard looked at her as though her naivete quite surpassed his understanding. “This is Hell, missy. Who the fuck do you think is the boss?”
“We need to see Doc Holliday.”
“If he’s in there at all, he’ll be coming out one of these days. You can see him then.”
“We got a call.”
The sumo wrestler shook his head for a third time. It seemed to be his sole mannerism. “Nobody called out from in there.”
Semple, with great presence of mind, produced a bag of the Hell coinage. “Doc needs more money. We were supposed to bring it to him.” Semple had decided that, of her three possible options, bribery was the only practical solution. The guard seemed unbluffable; seduction was too complicated, not to mention distasteful; it would have to come down to greasing through on a cash gratuity. She hefted the bag so the coins clinked one against the other. “I have the cash right here.”
The sumo wrestler’s eyes fixed on the bag, validating Semple’s judgment. Who said Hell was without corruption? “Why don’t you give that to me and I’ll take it in to him?”
Now it was Semple’s turn to shake her head. “I really don’t think so.”
“You don’t trust me to give it to him?”
Jim decided it was his turn to play at least a supporting role in this exercise. “It’s not that she doesn’t trust you, it’s just that she has her orders. She has to bring him the bag personally, otherwise it’s her ass.”
The guard’s eyes moved from Jim’s face to Semple’s ass. Maybe seduction might have been a better shot, but it was too late now to change trains. Semple tilted the bag and let a coin drop into the palm of her hand. The guard’s attention moved up again to where she was showing him the money. She let a second coin drop, them a third and a fourth. On five, the guard’s expression changed. He almost looked understanding. “Listen, I don’t want to see old Doc strapped for cash in a big game like this one.”
Jim smiled. “I’m sure old Doc will be very grateful.”
Semple quickly slipped half a dozen plastic coins to the sumo wrestler. Before opening the door to 1009 and easing them through, he treated them to a hard look and a quick instruction. “You’ve got five minutes and then I want you back out here. Don’t be making no noise or upsetting anyone, okay? Or your ass is mine.”
With that, he swung the door open.
***
The interior of the room was filled with an old-fashioned fug of tobacco smoke, so thick that it glowed in the areas where the light hit it. Doc and Lucifer were smoking cigars, and a hard-faced Oriental held a Turkish cigarette in a steel holder. A good many of the faceless kibitzers lined around the dark periphery of the room also had cigarettes, cigars, and cheroots burning. All focus was on the game in progress, and what light there was came from the lamp directly over the green baize poker table with the cracked, nicotine-stained Tiffany shade. It illuminated the white cards, the hands of the players, and maybe their shirt cuffs, and all the paraphernalia they had laid out on the table in front of them. As Jim and Semple entered, Lucifer was dealing a hand, and neither he nor any of the players looked up. Lucifer flipped a black ace to Doc and Jim hoped that his hole card wasn’t either of the red eights. Or maybe in Hell a dead man’s hand didn’t matter.