Have I succeeded in my aim to not only write seven different varieties of crime story, but to write each of them well? You’re the final judge of that. If you give thumbs-up to at least four of the selections, I’ll be happy. And relieved. Fiction writers, unlike multi-millionaire baseball players, have to maintain an above — .500 batting average to stay in the major leagues.
— Bill Pronzini
Sonoma, California
April 1991
Stacked Deck
1
From where he stood in the shadow of a split-bole Douglas fir, Deighan had a clear view of the cabin down below. Big harvest moon tonight, and only a few streaky clouds scudding past now and then to dim its hard yellow shine. The hard yellow glistened off the surface of Lake Tahoe beyond, softened into a long silverish stripe out toward the middle. The rest of the water shone like polished black metal. All of it was empty as far as he could see, except for the red-and-green running lights of a boat well away to the south, pointed toward the neon shimmer that marked the South Shore gambling casinos.
The cabin was big, made of cut pine logs and redwood shakes. It had a railed redwood deck that overlooked the lake, mostly invisible from where Deighan was. A flat concrete pier jutted out into the moonstruck water, a pair of short wooden floats making a T at its outer end. The boat tied up there was a thirty-foot Chris-Craft with sleeping accommodations for four. Nothing but the finer things for the Shooter.
Deighan watched the cabin. He’d been watching it for three hours now, from this same vantage point. His legs bothered him a little, standing around like this, and his eyes hurt from squinting. Time was, he’d had the night vision of an owl. Not anymore. What he had now, that he hadn’t had when he was younger, was patience. He’d learned that in the last three years, along with a lot of other things — patience most of all.
On all sides the cabin was dark, but that was because they’d put the blackout curtains up. The six of them had been inside for better than two hours now, the same five-man nucleus as on every Thursday night except during the winter months, plus the one newcomer. The Shooter went to Hawaii when it started to snow. Or Florida or the Bahamas — someplace warm. Mannlicher and Brandt stayed home in the winter. Deighan didn’t know what the others did, and he didn’t care.
A match flared in the darkness between the carport, where the Shooter’s Caddy Eldorado was slotted, and the parking area back among the trees. That was the lookout — Mannlicher’s boy. Some lookout: he smoked a cigarette every five minutes, like clockwork, so you always knew where he was. Deighan watched him smoke this one. When he was done, he threw the butt away in a shower of sparks, and then seemed to remember that he was surrounded by dry timber and went after it and stamped it out with his shoe. Some lookout.
Deighan held his watch up close to his eyes, pushed the little button that lighted its dial. Ten-nineteen. Just about time. The lookout was moving again, down toward the lake. Pretty soon he would walk out on the pier and smoke another cigarette and admire the view for a few minutes. He apparently did that at least twice every Thursday night — that had been his pattern on each of the last two — and he hadn’t gone through the ritual yet tonight. He was bored, that was the thing. He’d been at his job a long time and it was always the same; there wasn’t anything for him to do except walk around and smoke cigarettes and look at three hundred square miles of lake. Nothing ever happened. In three years nothing had ever happened.
Tonight something was going to happen.
Deighan took the gun out of the clamshell holster at his belt. It was a Smith & Wesson .38, light-weight, compact — a good piece, one of the best he’d ever owned. He held it in his hand, watching as the lookout performed as if on cue — walked to the pier, stopped, then moved out along its flat surface. When the guy had gone halfway, Deighan came out of the shadows and went down the slope at an angle across the driveway, to the rear of the cabin. His shoes made little sliding sounds on the needled ground, but they weren’t sounds that carried.
He’d been over this ground three times before, dry runs the last two Thursday nights and once during the day when nobody was around; he knew just where and how to go. The lookout was lighting up again, his back to the cabin, when Deighan reached the rear wall. He eased along it to the spare-bedroom window. The sash went up easily, noiselessly. He could hear them then, in the rec room — voices, ice against glass, the click and rattle of the chips. He got the ski mask from his jacket pocket, slipped it over his head, snugged it down. Then he climbed through the window, put his penlight on just long enough to orient himself, went straight across to the door that led into the rec room.
It didn’t make a sound, either, when he opened it. He went in with the revolver extended, elbow locked. Sturgess saw him first. He said, “Jesus Christ!” and his body went as stiff as if he were suffering a stroke. The others turned in their chairs, gawking. The Shooter started up out of his.
Deighan said, fast and hard, “Sit still if you don’t want to die. Hands on the table where I can see them — all of you. Do it!”
They weren’t stupid; they did what they were told. Deighan watched them through a thin haze of tobacco smoke. Six men around the hexagonal poker table, hands flat on its green baize, heads lifted or twisted to stare at him. He knew five of them. Mannlicher, the fat owner of the Nevornia Club; he had Family ties, even though he was a Prussian, because he’d once done some favors for an east-coast capo. Brandt, Mannlicher’s cousin and private enforcer, who doubled as the Nevornia’s floor boss. Bellah, the quasi-legitimate real-estate developer and high roller. Sturgess, the bankroll behind the Jackpot Lounge up at North Shore. And the Shooter — hired muscle, hired gun, part-time coke runner, whose real name was Dennis D’Allesandro. The sixth man was the pigeon they’d lured in for this particular game, a lean guy in his fifties with Texas oil money written all over him and his fancy clothes — Donley or Donavan, something like that.
Mannlicher was the bank tonight; the table behind his chair was covered with stacks of dead presidents — fifties and hundreds, mostly. Deighan took out the folded-up flour sack, tossed it on top of the poker chips that littered the baize in front of Mannlicher. “All right. Fill it.”
The fat man didn’t move. He was no pushover; he was hard, tough, mean. And he didn’t like being ripped off. Veins bulged in his neck, throbbed in his temples. The violence in him was close to the surface now, held thinly in check.
“You know who we are?” he said. “Who I am?”
“Fill it.”
“You dumb bastard. You’ll never live to spend it.”
“Fill the sack. Now.”
Deighan’s eyes, more than his gun, made up Mannlicher’s mind for him. He picked up the sack, pushed around in his chair, began to savagely feed in the stacks of bills.
“The rest of you,” Deighan said, “put your wallets, watches, jewelry on the table. Everything of value. Hurry it up.”
The Texan said, “Listen heah—” and Deighan pointed the .38 at his head and said, “One more word, you’re a dead man.” The Texan made an effort to stare him down, but it was just to save face; after two or three seconds he lowered his gaze and began stripping the rings off his fingers.
The rest of them didn’t make any fuss. Bellah was sweating; he kept swiping it out of his eyes, his hands moving in little jerks and twitches. Brandt’s eyes were like dull knives, cutting away at Deighan’s masked face. D’Allesandro showed no emotion of any kind. That was his trademark; he was your original iceman. They might have called him that, maybe, if he’d been like one of those old-timers who used an ice pick or a blade. As it was, with his preferences, the Shooter was the right name for him.