Step to the Graveyard Easy (12 page)

“You tell anyone?”

“No. He cried afterward, said he was sorry and begged me not to tell anybody. Cry, apologize, beg—he did that every time. Nice as pie when he was sober, a slobbering pig when he was drunk. And he drank a lot, Pops did.”

“How long did it go on?”

“Until I was twelve.”

“What ended it?”

“He did. With his army forty-five. I guess he hated himself as much as I hated him. I still remember that day—happiest day of my life. If he hadn’t done it, I would have myself when I got older. I used to think about killing him all the time, when he was crying and apologizing and begging.”

Cape said nothing.

“I don’t know if he went after Stacy, too,” Lacy said. “Probably, but she won’t talk about it. Flat-out refuses.”

Still silent.

“Uh-oh, I’m turning you off. Up and now down again.”

“Not exactly erotic conversation we’re having here,” Cape said. “I thought you didn’t want any more heavy stuff tonight. Or sex talk in bed.”

“Right. Beats me why I told you the deep, dark family secret.” Her fingers continued their rhythmic movements, gentle but insistent now. “I’ll shut up,” she said. “We’ll both shut up.”

Didn’t take her long to make him ready again. She knew plenty of little tricks, only needed a couple of them. She mounted him this time, and she was even noisier, more demanding, almost frenzied. As if she were trying to prove something to herself—that she really did enjoy sex, really did like men, in spite of her father and Joe the Rabbit and the sadomasochist and all the others she’d known and been screwed by and had cause to hate.

Cape left her shortly past midnight. He didn’t ask to spend the night, Lacy didn’t issue an invitation. She lay naked on the bed, watching him dress, not saying anything until he was ready to go.

“So when do you leave Tahoe?” she asked then.

“Sunday morning.”

“You could come over again tomorrow night.”

“Mahannah’s poker game. Or didn’t I mention that?”

“You mentioned it. I hope you come up winners, but if they take your money early, I’ll be here.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“You do that.”

He said, “I hope you come up winners, too. In the long run, I mean.”

“I will,” she said.

“Easy does it?”

“Right. Easy does it, and you make your own luck.”

“Not always.”

“Often enough.” Sleepy cat stretch. “So long, salesman. If I don’t see you again, it’s been fun.”

Lacy was right about Vanowen and Mahannah. They didn’t want anything to do with the law. Voice-mail from Mahannah when Cape got back to the Lakeside Grand. The pair of them had talked it over and they were in agreement: no cops. Don’t tell anybody else what happened, Cape. We’ll discuss it tomorrow night before the poker game. Get to my place by seven-thirty.

People. But it was their problem; let them handle it their way. He’d done all he could. Come Sunday, he’d be out of it for good.

Quiet Saturday morning in South Lake Tahoe. Cape drove all around the Pioneer Trail/Black Bart Road area, covering an eight-block radius. No blue Mitsubishi. No Tanya, no Boone.

Waste of time. He wasn’t even sure why he’d bothered to go over there again. Another encounter with Tanya and her little automatic? Answers to questions that really had nothing much to do with him?

Give it up, Cape. Get on with the rest of your life.

Day trip around the lake. Fallen Leaf Lake, Emerald Bay, Sugar Pine Point, Pine Beach, Homewood, tourist-clogged Tahoe City, Carnelian Bay. Back across the Nevada line and a late lunch in Incline
Village. Nevada State Park, a place called Whittell’s Castle that sounded interesting but wasn’t, Skunk Harbor, Glenwood Bay. Pretty country, but not much different from what he’d already seen coming through the Sierras and driving along the south shore. Restlessness in him now. And the craving for new sights, new experiences, stronger than ever.

He almost regretted accepting Vince Mahannah’s invitation to poker tonight. Almost, but not quite.

Mahannah’s home in Glenwood north of Cave Rock, like the property of everybody with money in the Tahoe Basin, was big, rustic-styled, lakefront, and private. Cut pine logs, redwood shakes, railed redwood deck, covered walkway leading to a T-shaped concrete pier. Inside, just what you’d expect: redwood paneling, native-stone fireplace, mounted dead-animal heads, Native American rugs and wall hangings, a glass-front gun rack loaded with expensive-looking rifles and shotguns. Forty-foot-square game room overlooking the deck and lake: another stone fireplace, dark brown leather couches and chairs, a wet bar, and in the middle under a green-shaded droplight, an antique poker table, hexagonal, with faded green felt and wells to hold each player’s chips.

When Mahannah ushered Cape in there, the man sitting on one of the couches came to his feet as if he were spring-loaded. Andrew Vanowen. Cream-colored cashmere sweater, pearl gray slacks, Gucci loafers—the image of casual elegance. Mahannah’s clothes were equally expensive: tailored chinos, a hand-knit shirt. Cape’s off-the-rack slacks and pullover seemed tawdry by comparison. Once he would have been a little intimidated in the presence of men like these, surroundings like these. No more.

He acknowledged Vanowen, received a curt nod in return. The drink in Vanowen’s hand might have been laced with lemon juice, as tightly puckered as his mouth looked.

Mahannah said to Cape, “Help yourself at the bar.”

“No, thanks. I don’t drink before I play cards. Or during.”

“Is that right? Neither do I.”

“I can hold my liquor,” Vanowen said argumentatively.

“Sure you can, Andy,” Mahannah agreed. “Nothing against you.”

Vanowen’s narrowed eyes were fixed on Cape. From the flush on his cheeks, he was holding plenty of liquor already. “Enough small talk,” he said. “Tell us about the woman, Cape. This Tanya.”

“I put the gist of it in my message last night.”

“I want to hear you tell it. In detail.”

Mahannah said, “Go ahead, humor us.”

Cape related the incident, all of it from start to finish. The name Rollo meant nothing to either of them, or so they claimed. “Sounds like a phony name to me,” Vanowen said. He was still argumentative; Cape’s answers to his questions, more or less the same ones Lacy had asked, didn’t seem to satisfy him. He kept digging, kept repeating the same damn questions.

“Now, look,” Cape said when he’d had enough. “How many times do I have to say it? I don’t have any more idea of what’s going on than either of you.”

“Don’t you?” Vanowen said.

“I just said I didn’t.”

“Bullshit, Cape. You think we’re stupid?”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning enough game playing.” He waved his glass, yanked at his lower lip, shifted his feet, flapped his arms; it was like watching a marionette being manipulated by invisible strings. “Why don’t you just go ahead and make your pitch, get it over with.”

“What
pitch?”

Mahannah said in neutral tones, “Andy thinks you’re not the good Samaritan you pretend to be. He thinks you have an agenda.”

“I think you’re looking to shake us down,” Vanowen said, “that’s what I think.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“Look at it from our point of view,” Mahannah said reasonably. “You show up in Tahoe with a batch of photographs that no stranger should have in his possession. You tell us an unlikely story about a pair of grifters that can’t be corroborated, people we’ve never seen or heard from even though you say they’re now in our backyard. Then you tell us another story that also can’t be corroborated about the woman showing up in your hotel room and taking a potshot at you. Wouldn’t
you
be suspicious if you were us?”

Cape said, thin and tight, “Come over to the Grand with me, and I’ll show you the bullet hole in the carpet.”

Pig snort from Vanowen. “That doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. You could’ve put it there yourself.”

“For what reason? How is that supposed to help me shake you down?”

“You tell us.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything else because there isn’t anything else. I don’t give a damn what you think or what the Judsons’ game is or if one of them walks up someday and shoves you in front of a bus. I’ve had it. I’m out of here.”

He spun on his heel and went.

Mahannah caught up with him as he was pulling the front door open, gripped his arm. Cape fought loose and started out.

“Hold on, will you?”

“Why should I? I’m all through talking to you people.”

“Even if I say I don’t share Andy’s opinions?”

“I don’t care if you do or not.”

Cape headed across the gravel turnaround to where he’d parked the Corvette. Mahannah hurried after him, swung around between him and the car.

“Cool down, man,” he said in his caviar voice. “I mean it—I don’t agree with Andy. I think you’ve been straight with us, down the line.”

“Then why side with him in there?”

“I didn’t side with him. Just played devil’s advocate. You have to admit, it all sounds far-fetched, and there’s nothing to back up any of it.”

The edge had smoothed off Cape’s anger. “Maybe.”

“He was the one who was aggressive about it, not me.”

“Aggressive, arrogant, offensive. He’s a prick.”

“I won’t give you an argument on that assessment. But I can make him listen to reason, if you’ll give me the chance. Let’s go back inside, and we’ll start over again.”

“Give me one good reason why I should.”

“I’ll give you four,” Mahannah said. “The main one is that you’d like to find out what’s going on almost as much as we would. If we put our heads together, we might be able to come up with an explanation that makes sense.”

“I doubt it.”

“Worth a try, just the same.”

“Maybe,” Cape said again. “The other three reasons?”

“You’re already here, you like to gamble, and you don’t have anything better to do tonight or you wouldn’t have come in the first place.”

Cape thought about it. “All right. But if Vanowen gets in my face again, I’m gone for good.”

The other players began to arrive at a quarter past eight, were all there by eight-forty. J. T. Sturgess, real-estate developer from South Lake Tahoe. Jack Wineberg, assistant manager of a North Shore casino. Sherman Bellah, owner of one of the local ski resorts. Wayman Jones, freelance writer from Tahoe Keys. All personable types with an obvious passion for poker. Moderate drinkers, nonsmokers—Mahannah evidently had a thing about tobacco, wouldn’t allow it in the house—and easy to get along with. The only sour apple in the mix was Vanowen.

But Mahannah had talked to him, and whatever he’d said had had an effect. Vanowen kept his suspicions to himself after that. Nothing came out of their brainstorming except that Vanowen and Mahannah were both adamant about not bringing in the law unless circumstances made it unavoidable.

Cape had relaxed again by the time the six of them grouped around the poker table. It was a warmish night, and Mahannah had the doors to the deck open; Cape’s chair faced that way, so that he could see the hard yellow shine of the moon reflected off the lake. Mahannah sat on his right, Bellah on his left, Vanowen across from him.

His kind of game, his kind of players. Very little chatter, no nonsense of any sort. Just good old-fashioned, hard-nosed poker, and the kind of gamesmanship that is mostly friendly but with an edge. That was something else they all shared, a passion for winning. Not a loser in the bunch. Even Vanowen played his cards close, with complete concentration.

Two large pots in the first half-dozen hands. Cape stayed in both, lost both. Sturgess and Mahannah pushed him, testing his mettle, trying to read his game. He didn’t show them any more
than they showed him. Wineberg tried to bluff him on another hand; Cape won it with a pair of sixes to Wineberg’s treys. They treated him as an equal after that.

Fast game, intense but not cutthroat, high-stakes betting but not the variety that would have driven Cape out unless he hit an early streak. He didn’t hit a streak; he lost sixteen hundred in the first hour. He didn’t change his game, continuing to bet aggressively when a hand warranted it, and finally he began to draw better cards. He won two hands of five-stud in a row, lost one, then claimed a twenty-eight-hundred-dollar pot with an ace-high spade flush over Wineberg’s trip kings and Vanowen’s small straight. That earned him a laser glare across the table. Vanowen hated to lose, and so far it wasn’t his night.

Three hours in, Mahannah and Jones were the big winners, and Cape had edged up to twenty-one hundred ahead. Vanowen had won just one small pot, was down close to five thousand and letting it get to him. Every time he lost or folded now, he turned his glare on Cape as if holding him personally responsible. He took to getting up every few minutes and refilling his glass at the wet bar. The others noted it, but nobody said anything except Mahannah.

“Night’s young, Andy. Why not go easy on that stuff?”

“I don’t need any lectures on drinking.”

“I wasn’t delivering one. Just making a comment.”

“Well, keep your comments to yourself.”

Vanowen finally won another pot, a good-size one, but it didn’t seem to improve his mood. He was still glowering, still drinking. The deal passed to him, and he slapped out a hand of seven-stud. Cape’s hole cards were a king and a jack, his first up card another jack. Promising. He bet the pair, caught a third jack on the next round, bet accordingly. Vanowen, with a pair of tens, raised him a hundred; Cape upped that another hundred, got a call and another glare in return.