“You bastards.”
“Pay the man, Morty,” Sport said.
“I got no more cash,” Morty said. “You come to the game, Billy, I’ll back you for what I owe you.” He turned to Sport. “He comes to the game I’ll back him for what I owe him.”
“You on the level?” asked Billy.
“Would I lie at a time like this?”
“You only lie when you move your lips. Where you playin’?”
“Tuesday eight o’clock, Win Castle’s house.”
“Win Castle, the insurance guy?”
“He asked me to run a game for him. He likes to play but he needs players. You play pretty good.”
“You’ll back me?” Billy asked.
“Up to what I owe you,” Morty said.
“Here’s the ambulance,” Sport said.
After they packed Morty off to the hospital I told Billy, “You get me into that card game and I’ll make sure you get your money from Morty.” Then I explained my talent with cards to him, the first time I ever told anybody about it. Giselle knew I gambled but she didn’t know there was no risk involved, that I could cut aces and deal anybody anything. I told Billy how I’d practiced for months in front of the mirror until I could no longer see myself dealing seconds, or bottom cards, and that now it was second nature. Billy was mesmerized. He never expected this out of me.
“They shoot guys they catch doin’ that,” Billy said.
“They shoot guys anyway. Haven’t you noticed?”
“You really good? You know I can spot cheaters.”
“Come over to the house I’ll show you. I can’t show you in public.”
When we got to Colonie Street Billy was vigorously aloof, refused to look at anything in the parlor in a way that would give the thing significance. He came here only when he was obliged to, and left as soon as possible. Now he let his gaze fall on the chandeliers, and sketches, and ancestor paintings, the framed old photos, dried flowers, the bric-a-brac on the mantel, the ancient furniture, the threadbare rugs, and the rest of the antique elegance, and it was all dead to him. He sat in the leather chair by the window where Peter always sat to watch the traffic on Colonie Street, took a sip of the beer I gave him, and then I told him, “You look like your father.”
“They always told me that,” he said.
“I met him just once, in 1934, when your grandmother died. I have some old photos of him upstairs. He’s in a baseball uniform, playing with Chattanooga in the Southern League.”
“He managed that team,” Billy said.
“I know. You want to see the pictures?”
“It don’t matter,” Billy said. “I know what he looked like.”
“He looks very young. My father did a sketch from one of them, a good sketch. In the dining room.”
“Never mind that stuff. Your father wouldn’t let him in this joint when he came home in ’34.”
“That’s not how it was,” I said.
“Just get the cards,” said Billy, and I knew we’d come back to Francis before long. Billy was intimidated by the house, by the memories of his father’s exile from it after his marriage to Annie Farrell, and by his inexact knowledge of Francis’s peculiar visit here when Kathryn died. But here he was, on deck for the family luncheon with the lawyer that would take place in another hour or so. My father, when we organized this luncheon, thought it essential that Billy be present to hear whatever was going to be said, even if he didn’t care about any of it.
The gathering had to do with money, but Peter was tight-lipped about specifics. He knew he was seriously ill and he was putting what was left of his life in order, the way I had put his Malachi Suite in order (with the Leica I’d given Giselle in Germany, and which she gave back to me when I undertook the job), numbering and photographing the hundreds of sketches, watercolors, and oils that my father was obsessively creating, and which had sprawled chaotically in all the upstairs rooms until I put everything into categories.
Peter did not consider the Malachi Suite finished, and I wasn’t sure he ever would. Two days ago he had asked me to hang one of the oils over the dining-room table, the first time he’d exhibited any of the work anywhere in the house outside his studio. It was the painting he called Banishing the Demons, and it showed Malachi and his co-conspirator, Crip Devlin, shooing invisible demons out of Malachi’s cottage, with five others, including a woman in bed, as terrorized witnesses. It is a mysterious and eerie painting, but Peter gave me no explanation of why he wanted it on the dining-room wall.
“Where’s your old man now?” Billy asked me.
“Upstairs sleeping,” I said. “He gets up at dawn, works till he drops, then goes back to bed.”
“Another screwball in the family.”
“Without a doubt. You gettin’ hungry?”
“In a while.”
“We’ll have lunch. Molly is bringing food, and Giselle’s due in on the noon train. You never met Giselle, did you?”
“I heard about her. I seen that stuff she did about your father in a magazine.”
“She’ll be here. So will Peg.”
“What’s happening?”
“A get-together.”
“I’ll get outa your hair,” Billy said.
“Not at all. You stick around. You should be here.”
“Who says I should?”
“I do.”
“You wanna show me your card tricks, is that it?”
“Right,” I said, and I found the cards in a cabinet and we went to the dining-room table, site of two notable crises in the life of Billy’s father; and I wondered if Billy knew anything about the day Francis fell into the china closet. Billy took a long look at the sketch Peter had done of Francis and then we sat down with the cards. When I started to shuffle the deck I realized Billy was the only man I trusted totally in this life. After he confessed to me that he never knew how to do nothin’, I felt bonded to him, and to his father, in a way that seemed new to me; and as I performed for him with the cards, I knew I was going to tell him about my nosedive in Germany. I dealt us both a hand of blackjack.
“Was that straight or seconds?” I asked him.
“Seconds?”
“Wrong.” And I turned up the cards to show him the ordinary cards I’d dealt. Then I dealt again, asked again.
“Straight,” he said.
“Wrong again,” and I showed him the ace and king I’d dealt myself.
“You’re good,” he said. “I can’t see anything.”
“The best ones you never see.”
“Why you doin’ this shit? You got a brain. You don’t hafta cheat cards.”
“You’re right, Billy,” I said. “I don’t have to cheat at cards. But it’s a talent I acquired early, the way you learned how to play pool when you were in short pants. We tend to use our talents, don’t we? We also tend to follow our demons. We’ll do anything to gain a little power over life, since none of us know our limits until we’re challenged — and that’s when the strangeness begins.”
Billy just stared at me. He didn’t know what I was getting at, but he’d understand. He was uneducated, but he was smart as hell.
“There I was,” I said, “a little kid backstage, watching Manfredo organize his magic, putting birds in the hat, rabbits in the armpit, cards up both sleeves. He was a whiz, and I wanted to know his secrets. He’d shoo me away so he could be alone with my mother, but I’d insist on another trick, more know-how, and he’d always give in to get rid of me. By the time I was seven I was learning the key-and-lock trick, and by nine I could deal seconds and read the marked decks Manfredo used in his act. He even taught me how to palm cup-poker dice, control two out of five dice in your hand, but I never liked the game.
“Cards were my game and look where they led me. You knew I’d gotten into trouble in Germany, but you didn’t know I was part of an international currency scam, did you?” Billy looked at me as if he’d never seen me before. I was rising in his esteem: more of a screwball than he thought.