Two in the Field (38 page)

“Mister Fowler … Sam,” said the French-accented voice as a soft arm linked with mine. My shift had ended and Grogan was closing up. I was on my way out. I looked down into the distressed face of Ophelia DuPree. Her perfume filled my nostrils and I felt the soft pressure of her breast against my arm. Men shot me envious looks as she steered me past them toward the door. “Please don’t do this to me.”

“Do
what
to you?”

“Don’t place me in trouble with …” Her voice lowered to a husky whisper: “with M.”

“Look, I work for Morrissey, so I don’t see how—”

“The other one.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “He’ll hurt me.”

The other M? She had to mean McDermott.

“Please trust me,” she whispered, close to my ear.

Trust was out of the question. Beguiled by her persistence, though, I let curiosity overcome caution and walked with her across the lawn beside the Club House, then back along an elm-shadowed lane where her cottage sat among the trees. Gas globes cast yellow pools outside the door. In the darkness I slipped the Schofield from its holster and carried it in my right hand.

In the doorway she suddenly put her arms around my neck and pressed her lips to my cheek.

“Look, I told you, I’m already—”

“Surely he’s watching,” she whispered. “I know your heart is taken—it’s why I trust you. Pretend you want me.”

It wasn’t a tough chore to put my hands on her corseted waist, pull her against me for a tantalizing moment, then let her lead me into the cottage.

“Okay, I’m here,” I said, “but that’s all.”

“I won’t bedevil you.” She stepped away, looking amused, her French accents suddenly less evident. “But I had to talk to you alone.”

“Why?”

“It’s expected.” She poured brandy into snifters. “Red Jim set me up here.”

“To do what?”

“I think you already know the answer.” Smiling, she handed me a snifter. “I can be very useful with men.”

Ah, I thought. Add pimp to McDermott’s sterling résumé.

“Sometimes my purpose is to gain information,” she said matter of factly. “Other times to set up a blackmail.”

“Does Morrissey know about this?”

“I think so,” she said. “Usually Red Jim is careful to keep me away from the Club House. This is my first time here in a cottage, so he must have gotten permission.”

“Why so much interest in me?”

She motioned me to cushions spread out behind a small table. “I’m supposed to find out who is backing you.”

“Backing me?”

“Red Jim believes that somebody powerful must be behind you. You were able to kill a certain Captain O’Donovan and vanish despite all efforts to find you. Now, you’ve somehow worked your way into the Club House. Jim’s sure that you’re protected, and wants to know who’s behind you before he makes a move.”

She sat across the table from me. Wary of being drugged, I waited for her to sip her brandy before I touched mine. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I was touched when you said you were committed to another. That deters very few here.” She looked at me over the
rim of her glass. “And besides, since you resisted my usual approaches, I thought honesty might work best.”

“Always a good last resort.”

“I hope we can help each other,” she said earnestly. “It was no joke about Red Jim harming me if I fail.”

“Why don’t you run off?” I asked, trying not to stare too obviously as she kicked off her shoes, stretched, and leaned back in a series of voluptuous movements. “You’d make out fine just about anywhere.”

She smiled. “I’ve never known of anyone escaping him—except you,” she said. “And soon he’ll have Henri back.”

“Henri?” A prickling sensation rippled my back and neck. “You don’t mean LeCaron.” I sat bold upright as she nodded. “But I saw him gutshot, crawling off to die.”

“He didn’t die.”

“Where is he now?” I said tensely, all my reservations about trusting her dwarfed by this new looming menace.

“I know only that Senator Morrissey arranged his release from prison.” She explained that six years ago a Mormon family had found LeCaron in the Utah desert and nursed him back to health. Whereupon LeCaron murdered the husband and raped his wives. Captured, he was sentenced to die, but Red Jim pulled strings to block his execution. Until now he hadn’t been able to get him released.

Now I understood McDermott’s smug talk of a surprise. Jesus Christ. The idea of LeCaron coming after me chilled my blood. Once he showed up here, my hours would be numbered. I couldn’t see how Ophelia’s tipoff represented any sort of trap. It might even turn out to save my life.

“Let’s try to help each other,” I told her. “What do you need?”

“Something to tell Red Jim so that I won’t fail with you.”

I thought it over. “Okay, first, report that I have a war wound.”
Stealing shamelessly from a future bestselling novel, I pointed downward. “Tell him I’m sensitive about it.”

Her eyes widened. “Is it true?”

“As far as you and he are concerned.”

She smiled slowly. “He’ll like hearing you’re not fully a man.”

“No doubt,” I said. “So even though you can’t use all your tried and tested techniques, tell him you’re making progress anyway, softening me up.”

“Softening?”
She inched closer.

I ignored the remark. “Tell him you strongly suspect he’s right: I’m not alone here but part of a network.”

“What’s a network?”

“It’s, well, a conspiracy in this case, a group of plotters. Maybe the Pinkertons?” I looked at her hopefully. “Or another country? England? Anyway, you don’t know who yet, but if something happens to me, you’re pretty sure it’ll bring bad consequences. Not to mention the kind of publicity Morrissey doesn’t want.”

She thought it through, nodding, liking it.

I stood up, feeling exhausted. Things were happening too fast. I needed time to figure out what to do. Something forgotten nagged at my mind, then I remembered.

“Do you know who Hamilton Baker is?”

She shrugged prettily. “Everybody knows that.”

“Did he and McDermott ever have trouble?”

“Perhaps,” she answered. “Jim becomes quiet when his name comes up.”

“See what you can find out, okay?”

She brightened, seeming to relish her new role of double agent. “I’ll see you tomorrow night?” She took my hand in hers and stroked my fingers. “Here?”

“A short man,” the desk clerk said after I came back from lunch. “In appearance, not … decorous.”

Slack for sure. He must have hopped an express to get here so fast. I glanced at his note and headed for the saloon he’d named. When I arrived he jumped up to meet me, moving much easier than the last time I’d seen him.

“Got my ribs doctored,” he explained. “Breathing doesn’t pain me now.”

I gave him directions to the hotel where I’d first stayed. It was crucial that we not be seen together. An hour later I joined him there and described his part. Slack loved it that all he had to do was play poker.

“Hell, Sam, usually I’m the one who pays for
that
recreation.”

“Not this time,” I told him. “We can start you tonight, but first we gotta get you squared away for the Club House.” I handed him a tailor’s address and a list of things to buy.

Meanwhile he was giving me a once-over. “Looks like you’re making out real fine at Morrissey’s.”

“It’s okay if you survive the first interview.” I described mine.

“You whipped Old Smoke?”

“Not whipped, just sat him down.”

His eyes grew huge when I handed him five thousand dollars to stake him to his new wardrobe and a seat at that night’s game. Nine-tenths of it had come from Baker; that was the ratio of return he expected back.

“Be there by eight,” I told him. “We’ll get you to the right table.”

If it proved necessary, Slack would say he was Mr. George H. “Babe” Ruth, from Ohio. The occupation of “speculator” struck us as sufficiently vague. In any case, few questions were asked at the Club House so long as you had cash.

The queries would come later. Oh, would they come.

I explained that there would be one killer hand. It would be impossible not to recognize it. He was to bet the whole five thousand, plus anything he’d won up to then.

Under no circumstances was he to lose.

“You’re sure?” I asked Baker that evening.

“If I wasn’t
sure
, we wouldn’t do it.”

“And it’s McDermott’s money?”

“His and his accomplice’s.” He smiled. “Plus the other sports’ who happen to bet in that particular hand.”

“I don’t like that last part,” I said, “cheating innocent players.”

Baker shrugged, unconcerned. “They come here proposing to take a risk—and they’re gonna get cheated by Red Jim anyway—but if it bothers you so much, I reckon you’ll find a way to make up those poor souls’ losses.”

Unable to think of one, I decided I wasn’t bothered
that
much. “When are you going to re-fix the deck?”

“Right after our dealer takes his first break.”

“You’ll be able to spot the rigged one?”

His look suggested I was an idiot even to ask.

“Hell, why can’t we do this every night?” I was thinking I’d soon have the money I wanted.

Baker shook his head. “Only once.”

Slack showed up in a striped Prince Albert, handed his top hat, gold-headed cane, and suede gloves to a servant, and strode up the stairs past Grogan as if he owned the place. Since I’d been spending a lot of time in the poker room, Baker told me to follow the same pattern this night. Being absent might seem suspicious.

So I was there for the showdown hand.

Like most of the high-stakes action, it was played in silence except for the bets, which came fast and hard.

“I could scarce keep up with all the raises,” Slack said later. “Never seen anything like it.”

From Baker I got the inside story: Brown Hair’s fixed hand held four queens. The hand of the chosen mark—not Slack, thank the fates—held four tens. Naturally, those hands were bet to the sky. But to the surprise of both the dealer and Brown Hair, Slack met their raises with larger ones. The pot swelled in excess of fifteen thousand. Brown Hair was barely suppressing a smirk. Called, the mark turned up his tens. Brown Hair turned up his queens.

Slack turned up a nine-high straight flush.

Brown Hair and the dealer looked like they’d swallowed owl shit. It would go down as one of the great moments in Club House history.

Baker said that he’d considered using four aces. “But the dealer might have checked aces beforehand, even though the normal tendency is to pay attention only to the cards you stack. Anyhow, three players with four of a kind would have been too suspicious. And it’s
possible
—mathematically, anyway—for a hand you overlook to pull a straight flush.”

“And no suspicion on us?”

“Why would there be? Any man alive would’ve bet his fortune on that hand.” Baker laughed. “Just don’t let yourself be seen anywhere near that sawed-off Mr. Ruth.”