The Cardturner (20 page)

All I got for an answer were three cold stares.

I knew Gloria didn't want me talking about Annabel in front of Trapp, but he wasn't around now, so I didn't see the harm. I pressed on. "Why has it been so long since Trapp played in a national tournament?" I asked. "Did something happen the last time? Is that why Annabel went insane?"

"Who told you she was insane?" Lucy asked sharply.

Her tone of voice caused me to shrink back. "I don't know," I said. "Just something I heard somewhere."

"What did you hear?" asked Arnold.

"She gave the milkman a thousand dollars for his clothes. And then made him wear her clothes."

Their stares grew colder.

"Maybe I heard wrong," I said. "I don't remember exactly."

"If you don't know what it is you're talking about, then you really shouldn't talk about it, should you?" asked Lucy. Her anger surprised me.

"She did not make the milkman wear her clothes," said Arnold. "Annabel gave him some of Henry's clothes."

"There was nothing untoward about it," said Gloria. "They changed in separate rooms. Annabel put on the milkman's uniform in order to sneak out of her house and play with Trapp in the nationals."

"Her husband kept her locked up like a criminal," said Arnold. "The servants were under strict orders not to let her leave the house."

"I still remember the way she looked," said Lucy, her voice softening. "In those days, people used to dress up for bridge tournaments. Women in dresses. Men in suits and ties. And there was Annabel in those white overalls, with her hair cropped short. She was absolutely radiant! Even without her hair and in those clothes, she was the most beautiful woman in the room."

"That was because she was with Trapp," said Arnold. "Whenever she was with him, her face glowed and her eyes sparkled like diamonds."

"She was in love with him?" I asked.

"And he was even more in love with her," said Lucy.

"But in the car, he said she was just his bridge partner."

"That doesn't mean he wasn't in love with her," said Lucy. "It just means he was a fool."

45
Thugs in Business Suits

The year was 1963. Trapp and Annabel were playing for the national championship. It was a two-day, four-session event. After the first day, half the field was eliminated, leaving only the best of the best.

"All the legends of the game were there," said Arnold. "Goren, Jacoby . . ."

"And Annabel and Trapp had as good a chance of winning as any of them," said Lucy. "They were in fifth place going into the final session."

About an hour into the session, a group of men entered the playing area. "Thugs in business suits," Arnold called them. The men spread out and walked up and down the aisles between the rows of tables. Lucy said there were more than twenty of them, but Arnold said there were only twelve.

Arnold and Lucy had also been playing in the event, but not with each other. Gloria hadn't been there, but she had heard all about it.

One of the thugs spotted Annabel, and then they all converged on the table.

"Two men were holding Annabel," said Lucy, "and the rest formed a wall around her. She was dragged away, kicking and screaming."

Lucy's voice cracked as she spoke. Forty-five years later, the memory still brought tears to her eyes.

"Couldn't anyone stop them?" I asked.

"Your uncle tried," said Arnold. "I drove him to the hospital. He had a busted nose and three broken ribs."

"What about the police?" I asked. "Did they have nine-one-one back then?"

"This was Chicago," said Arnold. "Those men were the police."

That was the last time Lucy or Arnold ever saw Annabel. It wasn't until almost six months later that they learned she had been locked up in an insane asylum.

"The Rolling Brook Sanitarium," said Arnold. "Trapp went there almost every single day, but they wouldn't let him see her. He demanded to speak to her doctor, but they wouldn't let him do that, either, because he wasn't family."

"But then when Nina became involved," said Lucy, "they wouldn't let her talk to Annabel either."

"Who's Nina?" I asked.

"Annabel's sister," said Gloria.

"Trapp and Nina must have filed half a dozen lawsuits on Annabel's behalf," said Arnold, "but the King family controlled the judges, too. The judge said he couldn't do anything without a signed affidavit from Annabel. But how were they supposed to get a signed affidavit if they weren't allowed to see her?"

Not even the other patients were allowed to see her. She was kept isolated for more than two years.

"She wasn't insane when she entered Rolling Brook," said Gloria, "but after two years . . ."

The only way Trapp could find out any information about Annabel was to wait in the parking lot, and then bribe the orderlies and janitors when they got off work. Most had never seen her, but they had heard rumors about her. And they heard her screams.

She wasn't being beaten. Her screams were screams for attention.

At some point, Annabel managed to obtain a bottle of bleach from a janitor's cart.

When Arnold first mentioned the bottle of bleach, I actually felt hopeful. I thought that maybe she threw bleach in a doctor's face, then escaped out a window into Trapp's waiting arms.

I watch too much TV.

She committed suicide by drinking the bleach. It took her several tries, because she kept vomiting it back up.

We walked out of the restaurant. I ran my fingers over the cold, hard bricks of the cement factory.

A heart like a brick, my father had said. Whose heart wouldn't turn cold and hard?

I thought of my mother as a little girl, hearing all those stupid, dirty stories about Annabel King.

I thought of all the stupid things I had said to my uncle.

Did you ever work as a milkman?

When you first met Annabel, how old was her daughter?

I always make the biggest fool of myself just when I think I'm being the most clever.

46
Nixon

In their grief, Trapp and Nina turned to each other.

"They each loved Annabel," said Lucy, "and for a while, they confused that with thinking they loved one another."

We were in the car, driving back to the hotel.

"I was the best man at their wedding," said Arnold, "but I knew the marriage wouldn't last. Everyone put on happy faces, but it was the saddest wedding I'd ever witnessed."

They were divorced within the year. Trapp quit playing bridge and started the Yarborough Investment Group.

"It was just another game to him," said Arnold. "Except, instead of masterpoints, now he was accumulating money. You want to know what he once told me? He said he preferred masterpoints to money because masterpoints were worthless."

Twenty years later, Gloria happened to run into him at a shoe repair shop.

"I needed a strap fixed on my purse. Trapp was worth millions, but he still got his shoes resoled."

She asked him if he would like to play bridge sometime. She mentioned that there was a sectional the following weekend, and she was looking for a partner.

"His face turned white," Gloria told us. "He started trembling."

He told her no, he couldn't, then hurried out of the shop.

"But then at three o'clock in the morning my telephone rang," Gloria said. "It was Trapp. All he said was ‘I might be a little rusty.' We played a week later and had a seventy percent game."

Richard Nixon was Eisenhower's vice president. In 1960 he ran for president and lost to John F. Kennedy, and according to Arnold, most people thought that would be the last they'd ever hear of Richard M. Nixon. By 1967, Henry King, who had been in the Senate for more than a decade, was expected to be the next Republican presidential candidate.

But Nixon wasn't finished.

"I'd always hated Nixon," said Arnold. "But one thing I've got to give him credit for: he was good at destroying his enemies. And to him, Henry King was the enemy."

Nixon tried to dig up dirt on Henry King and came across all the court documents Trapp and Nina had filed. That was more than just dirt. He hit a gold mine. He initiated a well-publicized investigation into the care and treatment of the mentally ill, and into the suicide of Annabel King, his "dear friend's wife."

Rolling Brook Sanitarium was shut down, and two of the doctors went to prison.

"What about Henry King?" I asked.

"He and Nixon made some kind of secret deal," said Arnold.

Arnold didn't know what the deal was, but Henry King abruptly resigned his Senate seat and lived the rest of his life in relative seclusion. Nixon was elected president in 1968.

When Sophie King turned eighteen she changed her last name to Finnick (Annabel's maiden name) and never spoke to her father again. She never allowed him to see Toni, his only granddaughter.

47
Teodora's Tea

I almost felt like crying when I knocked on the door to my uncle's suite. I couldn't stop thinking about Annabel, and had to remind myself that her death had occurred more than forty years ago. He had gotten over it, or, if not over it, at least he'd learned to live with it. He certainly didn't need me to open up old wounds. I'd already asked too many stupid questions.

Teodora answered and told me that Trapp was still in the process of waking up, whatever that meant. She told me to go ahead and shovel and she'd take him down in a few minutes.

She must have said shuffle, not shovel.

Lucy and Arnold were sitting East-West at B-2, and Gloria was North at A-2. Before joining her, I decided to research the competition. The lists of teams and matches were posted on the wall beside the directors' table.

I was hoping to play the team with more than 110,000 masterpoints. I was looking forward to knocking out the big shots. Instead, I saw that our next opponents were the lowest-ranked team in our bracket. However, I also saw that they had defeated the team with 87,000 in the afternoon session, so maybe they shouldn't be taken lightly.

I joined Gloria, took the cards out of board seven, and started shoveling. I reported that Trapp was still resting and would be down shortly.

The two men sitting East-West were a lot closer to my age than to Gloria's. They were probably in their late twenties or early thirties. I think West had a tattoo, but it might have just been a birthmark. I could only glimpse a small portion of it, underneath his shirt collar.

"It's got to take its toll," he said. "Memorizing every card."

Fifteen minutes later, Trapp and Teodora still had not come down. At the other table, Lucy and Arnold were already playing.

"I guess you're going to have to fill in, Alton," said Gloria. "Until he gets here."

For a moment I was stunned, or maybe for several moments, but then I thought,
Okay, I can do this
. It probably would only be for one hand, so even if I screwed up, Trapp could overcome it. But just imagine his surprise if I got us a good board.

I'd sat on the sidelines long enough. It was time for me to get into the game!

Gloria laughed. "Don't worry, I'm only kidding," she said.

"You should have seen the look on your face!" laughed West.

I smiled, pretending relief.

A minute later, Trapp and Teodora entered the Grand Ballroom. To save time, I removed the South hand from board seven and met them before they reached the table. "Spades: queen, jack. Hearts: eight, seven, five, three, two. Diamonds: jack, ten—"

"Whoa, slow down," said Trapp. "Let me get my bearings."

Teodora handed me a thermos bottle. "Make sure he drinks this," she told me. "A little bit at a time."

I held the thermos in one hand and the fan of cards in the other, and once again told him his hand. "Spades: queen, jack. Hearts: eight, seven, five, three, two. Diamonds: jack, ten, six . . ."

We started with boards seven through twelve. The other table had one through six.

On board seven, Gloria bid and made four spades, for a score of 620.

"Sorry, I guess my diamond lead gave it to her," said West, the one with the maybe-tattoo.

"You had to lead something," said East. "It was the normal lead."

"I considered the eight of clubs," said West.

"That would have worked."

I tried to get Trapp to drink some of Teodora's tea, but he refused, saying it wasn't necessary since he had been dummy, so he didn't exert any energy. He groaned as he stood up, and I led him away from the table.

Once again he told me to slow down when I recited his hand. I admit I had been feeling rushed because of our late start, but I don't think I was speaking any faster than normal. Usually he got impatient with me because I didn't go fast enough.

East bid and made three no-trump. Trapp hadn't been dummy, but he still wouldn't drink Teodora's tea.

On board nine, he had me repeat the diamonds.

On board ten, he was down one in four-hearts. Gloria said there was nothing he could have done about it, but he seemed disappointed in himself.

The caddy came by with the six boards from the other table, and we gave her the four boards we had played so far.

When I tried to get him to take a sip of tea, he snapped at me. "You drink it!"

It smelled like rotten cantaloupe.

Some time later, I noticed that Arnold and Lucy had finished. We still had four boards to go. True, they had started before us, but it seemed to me that Trapp was playing extremely slowly. More than once, when it was his turn to play, I'd make my guess as to what card he'd call for, but then I'd wait for what seemed like forever until he finally called a card. It was usually the card I had anticipated, which was either good for me or bad for him.

We finished the first twelve boards. Arnold and Lucy came over and we compared results.

On board seven, Arnold had led the eight of clubs and they set four spades. That gave us 12 IMPs.