Mulholland Dive

I see the others nod their approval but I’m not so sure about this plan. I’m not even sure there is a plan.

I win the next deal with jacks trips but the pot is barely more than the ante. Only Swain and Anderson stay in and I only get in two raises before being called. I need someone like McMillan to help it along like he did with Boyd but I’m not the one he’s in cahoots with.

Swain recoups on the next deal and then Anderson wins his own deal. That might have raised eyebrows but the pot was threadbare. Nothing to get excited by. And nobody looked sideways at Anderson.

I’m halfway through my deal when Boyd yells to Vera to bring him a shot of whiskey. I knew he would do this. Whiskey or coffee. I knew he’d ask for something.

Wearing a bathrobe that needs a quick visit to the washer, Vera comes out of the back room and goes into the kitchen for the bottle. She brings it over to the table and grabs Boyd’s empty shot glass. She holds it out away from the table and fills it until the dark amber liquid laps over the side of the glass and drips to the floor.

“Jesus, what are you doing?” Boyd yells. “You’re wasting good whiskey, you stupid cunt.”

“Sorry.”

But I see through this. It is part of the cheat. He is not angry and she is not sorry. I think it is clever that he called her a cunt. It helps sell it.

Boyd puts the shot glass down in front of his money. He glances at me while picking up his cards, then he looks at what he’s been dealt. McMillan holds his cards with one hand while he’s playing with his stack of halves. Ching, ching, ching.

Swain wins again on my deal. Two pairs, kings over tens. But it’s another small pot and he’s still way down, the wife and kids haven’t come back home yet.

Now it’s Boyd’s deal. He shuffles and shuffles again, making a show of it. He puts the deck down in front of me and I cut it from the middle. He starts to deal, holding his hands chest high so he can deal over his money and his booze. I have a pair of tens. Not bad so I stay in through the first round and draw three. No help. I bail out and just watch. Anderson is out, everybody else is still in.

McMillan opens the second round big and Swain and Harrington call. But Boyd raises and McMillan raises again. Swain calls and Harrington folds rather than meet the price. It goes around the final time. Boyd, McMillan, and Swain. Then it is time to show.

Ching, ching, ching.

Swain has aces over deuces, a solid hand. Boyd shoves his cards into the pile, acknowledging defeat. McMillan puts his best look of I-can’t-believe-it surprise on his face and turns over three fives. Swain throws his cards down on the table. He’s had a bad go of it.

“I just can’t win this fucking game.”

I look at him. That is our signal. Now is the time to make the play.

“Of course, you can’t,” I say. “Not with them cheating you all the time.”

“Cheating? Who, goddamnit?”

I turn and nod toward McMillan and Boyd.

Everything happens real quick after that. Neither one bothers with the Who, me? look. They both start to rise at the same time that their hands drop below the table. But I’m ahead of their game and so is Swain.

I take McMillan, and Swain has Boyd. Swain gets off two shots from his revolver before Boyd has his gun out of his pants. I hit McMillan with one shot neat in the forehead and he goes over his chair and right down the wall.

Harrington and Anderson jump up at the same time Vera screams from the kitchen. Gunpowder burns in the air.

I come around the table to check the dead. Boyd is on the floor gurgling, hit twice in the neck. He’s got a few minutes tops. I pull the gun from his pants and put it on the table. I go to McMillan. Somehow he has fallen so that his hat is pushed down over his face, I squat down and lift the hat. His eyes are open and dead calm. The bullet hole is so clean that it doesn’t even bleed. I like that. I check his hands, both are empty. I check his pockets and find his money roll and a little derringer with pearl-inlay grips. It’s a two-shot pussy gun. I shove it back in his pocket. I look at the hat now and notice that it is a nice hat. Silk lining. Expensive. Made in Chicago. I put it on and stand up.

Harrington and Anderson stand with their arms away from their bodies, their hands open.

“Easy now,” I say.

I nod to Swain so that he knows to watch them. I turn my attention to McMillan’s place at the table. I talk as I lean down and spill the stack of half dollars.

“They were cheating. In cahoots. Didn’t you notice that when McMillan dealt, Boyd usually won? Same thing worked in reverse. Boyd deals, McMillan wins.”

I look over at Harrington and Anderson but they shake their heads. They don’t get it.

“How?” Harrington asks.

I turn over the bottom half-dollar from the stack. It’s been sanded and polished as smooth as a spoon. Like a mirror. I hold it in my palm and move it. I look up at the ceiling and see the butterfly again. The glimmer reflection flits across the yellowed plaster.

“He was using a shiner,” I say as I take a card off the table and hold it so I can see the reflection of the 9 on the polished surface of the half. “He knew every card he was dealing. He also knew what was on the bottom of the deck, if he needed it.”

I drop the coin and the card on the table like they’re poison.

“He and Boyd had signals. I think it was McMillan clicking his silver.”

“What about him?” Harrington asks, nodding down at Boyd on the floor.

“The ashtray. He’d put his smoke on different edges.”

“How did he know what he was dealing us?”

I look at Swain and then into the kitchen at Vera.

“You tell him, Vera.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know a thing about it.”

“That’s bull. What did he tell you about the bourbon?”

She hesitates but knows she has one hope. To come clean.

“He told me to fill it to the top. Whenever he asked for a shot I was to fill it to the brim and he didn’t care if it poured over the edge.”

I look at them and they look at the table. Anderson comes over, picks up a card, and holds it over the shot glass. Ace of diamonds. Reads it in the dark amber reflection.

“Son of a bitch!” Anderson yells.

He picks up the shot, takes a hit off it, and then pours the rest down on Boyd’s open-eyed face. He then turns to Vera.

“Leave her alone,” Swain says quietly. “She was only doing what she was told.”

I start collecting the money from the table. I tell Anderson and Harrington to take what they had at their places on the table. They want to negotiate for the money they already lost to the cheaters but Swain uses his gun to point them toward the front door. They take the money they are entitled to and leave. At the door Harrington looks back at us.

“What about the plan? The Olympic medals.”

“There was no plan,” I tell him. “He was just keeping you busy, hoping you were thinking about gold and silver and not the cards.”

Harrington nods—he finally gets it—and leaves. Swain closes the door behind him.

I open McMillan’s roll on the table. It’s two hundred and forty dollars. More than I thought he would be carrying. Swain and I split that and then we cut up the ninety-three dollars in cash from the table. Swain keeps the odd dollar because I took the hat. We give Vera all the silver—almost fifty bucks—and she gets to keep McMillan’s shiner. She puts it all in a flour sack that she then hides in a cabinet. If she’s lucky, the cops won’t find it when they come about the bodies.

On our way out the back door, Vera says, “You think those other two will ever figure out that you two kept wi

Swain and I stop and look at her.

“You think they’ll figure out that you gave McMillan the shiner and taught his partner the whiskey trick? You think they’ll figure out that you then told us all about it?”