The Living End (23 page)

“Again,” I said, harder.

Calypso nodded and waved his hand slowly across the table, gesturing to the dice. We rolled and slapped our cups down at the same time.

Two sixes and three ones. Full house. Strong hand. He went first this time, bidding a runt. I upped it to a pair.

“Think I might just roll again,” he said, scooping up his dice.

He didn’t like his old hand, but that didn’t mean his new one was any better. His cheeks tightened when he tipped back his cup. Just a little. Just enough for me to notice.

“Two pair,” he said.

I pretended to mull it over. “Three of a kind.”

“Low straight.” His voice caught on the “low,” the faintest edge of a nervous hitch.

My fingers curled against moist palms. Time to lay it on the line.

“Liar,” I said.

We lifted our cups. He ran his fingertips over his bone dice, arranging them in a neat little row. One, two, three, four, five. A low straight. If I had pushed him for one more round, he would have been in the danger zone. So he made sure I didn’t.

“Sorry, son,” he said. “Guess this just isn’t your night.”

He extended his hand. I took it firmly in mine, without flinching. I paid my debt. The sense of loss washed over me like an early winter, when you’ve lived long enough to start wondering how many summers you’ve got left. I put my hands in my lap to keep anyone from seeing them tremble.

Calypso shook his head, looking almost regretful. “That’s two years of your life gone, son. An old man can do a lot with two years if he puts his mind to it. Out of respect to your lady, I think we’d best—”

“Five years,” I blurted.

They stared at me. I wasn’t sure whether Calypso or Caitlin looked more shocked.

“Five years,” I said. “Last game, last try. Five more years of my life against the contract. Except this time we play a different game.”

Calypso quirked a smile. “Hell, son, I’ll give you points for moxie. What’s the game?”

I took the deck of cards from my hip pocket and set them down on the table.

“Three-card monte. I deal, you pick one card. You find the queen, you get five years of my life, and I go home a loser. You fail, I get the contract. Deal?”

I shot a glance at Caitlin and touched her knee under the table, gently.
Trust me
. She didn’t look too confident, but she gave me a slight nod.

Calypso ashed his cigarette and took a sip of whiskey while he thought it over. Suddenly, he rapped his knuckles on the table and stood up.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, making his way over to the crowded bar.

Caitlin squeezed my hand under the table and whispered, “What are you
doing
? He just beat you twice without even trying. Is this some sort of pride thing? Calypso’s a
legend
, Daniel. I won’t think any less of you for walking away from the table.”

I lifted her hand to my lips, and kissed the curve of her fingers. “Trust me. I think I’ve got him figured out. Besides, the monte isn’t a game, it’s a hustle.”

“You think he doesn’t know that?”

“Oh, he knows it,” I said. “In fact, I’m counting on him knowing it.”

I fiddled with my deck, idly shuffling, until Calypso returned. He held up a fresh pack of cards, still sealed in cellophane.

“We play,” he said, peeling the translucent plastic open, “but not with your cards. With
these
.”

My shoulders tensed. I forced myself to nod and smile. “Fine.”

He handed me the open pack, and I shook the cards out into my palm. Smooth, glossy, never creased, and slick as grease. I fanned out the deck on the table, so they could both see every move I made. I slid out the queen of hearts and held it up.

“Behold, the lady fair,” I said. “This is the money card. Keep your eye on her, she’s more slippery than she looks.”

The jack of spades and the jack of clubs joined the queen of hearts, and the other cards went back in the pack, set off to the side. I flipped the blue-backed cards facedown, then picked up two in my left hand and one in my right.

In any game of three-card monte, the opening throw is the most crucial. A good operator learns how to make a deal from the top of two cards look like a deal from the bottom, and vice versa. Before you even start shuffling the cards around, the mark is already looking in the wrong place. Get that right and the game is yours.

The three cards hit the table. A perfect bottom deal, undetectable and designed to throw Calypso off the trail.

His unblinking gaze darted straight to the middle card. Straight to the queen.

I
took a deep breath and laid my fingertips on the outer cards, swapping them, jumping to the middle card and sliding it around to the left, keeping them in constant motion. As I did, an old patter line spilled from my lips, words dancing to the beat of the cards.

“It’s a little game from Kathmandu, the black for me, the red for you. One gets you five, and five gets you ten. I don’t get mad when I lose, I get happy when I win. Hey, diddle diddle, the queen’s in the middle. Now,
sir
—”

I pulled my hands back. The three cards lay on the table between us, facedown and anonymous, waiting for Calypso’s choice.

“Tell me,” I said, “can you spot the queen? Where’s that slippery lady hiding out now?”

Calypso lifted his chin. He smiled, almost condescending, as his finger hovered over each card…then lifted to point at my arm.

“The queen,” he said, “is up your right sleeve, tucked into your watchband.”

I’d been holding my breath while he chose. I let it all out in one sigh, deflating.

“I’ll be taking my five years now,” he said.

I reached out and flipped over the middle card. Showing him the queen of hearts.

“Don’t think so,” I said. “Weird choice, too. I mean, I
told
you the queen was in the middle. Weren’t you listening?”

Caitlin flashed a sly smile, like she knew it all along, but I could see the relief in her eyes. Calypso just stared, brow furrowed, as he tried to figure out what he’d missed.

“Pull up your sleeve,” he said, wagging his finger. “I can
see
the corner of a card poking out there.”

“What, this?” I said.

I tugged out the hidden card and held it up. It was the six of diamonds. I turned it around to show him the twined red dragons on the back, not the blue back from the deck he’d chosen.

“This is one of
my
cards,” I said. “I slipped it up my sleeve while you were over at the bar, before the game even started. Then I let you see it while I was shuffling. Your assumptions did the rest of the work for me.”

Calypso quirked an eyebrow. Then he laughed, a deep and hearty rumble, lifting his glass and tossing back a swig of whiskey.

“Spirit of the game,” I said. “We both know that three-card monte is a grift. Therefore cheating
is
in the spirit of the game. You assumed I chose the monte because I thought I could pull one over on you with some simple carny tricks. I chose it because I knew I
couldn’t
. I did the one thing you didn’t expect.”

I tapped the queen.

“I played fair.”

“Well,” Calypso said, reaching into his suit coat. “That was nicely done, son. Like you said, I don’t get mad when I lose. I get happy when I win. This is yours, fair and square.”

He took a furled sheaf of papers from inside his coat, rolled up and bound with a black silk ribbon, and handed it over to me. I raised my glass to him with my free hand.

“Cheers,” I said. “And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about this.”

He laughed again, looking incredulous. “You won’t? Why you’d better, or I’m gonna have to do all the work.”

It was my turn to be baffled.

“Wait,” I said, “you
want
people to know you lost a bet? I thought the whole point with you guys is that you never lose.”

Calypso looked over at Caitlin. “M’lady fair, you need to school this boy.”

“Can’t say I don’t try,” she said, sipping her whiskey.

“I deal in stories,” Calypso said. “Stories of temptation and ruin, of damnation and repentance, risk and reward. Let me lay one on you. Once upon a time, there was a boy named Johnny. He was a fiddle player, swore he was the best there’d ever been.”

“Yeah,” I said. “‘Devil Went Down to Georgia.’ I’ve heard the song. Everybody has.”

Calypso snorted. “Don’t interrupt a storyteller. For the record, the real deal went down in Tennessee, back in the nineteen twenties. Johnny wagered his soul against a fiddle of gold, betting he could outplay the devil himself. Well, a dark and handsome stranger who he thought was the devil, anyway.”

“In the song, Johnny wins,” I said.

“And that’s just how it happened. Except for one little detail.”

Calypso beckoned us closer. Caitlin and I leaned against the table to listen as he dropped his voice low.

“That boy,” he said with a grin, “couldn’t fiddle for
shit
. Sounded like beating a sackful of cats with a hickory stick.”

“You…let him win?” I said.

“Mm-hmm. I’d been in a slump. Then there’s good old Johnny, holding aloft his golden fiddle—which he never did learn to play worth a lick—and bragging to everyone from Appalachia to the Florida shore that he beat the devil and won a prize. Put a lot of bad ideas in people’s heads. Bad for them, anyway. Good for my business. And as for good old Johnny, well…pride’s a terrible sin.”

“Art,” Caitlin told me. She left it at that.

“You beat me fair and square today,” Calypso said, “and that’s something that has to happen once in a while, just every once in a while, to spice up the story. It’s the reward to the risk, the pot of gold everyone who buys a lottery ticket dreams about even though they’ll never, ever win. Every once in a while, some clever son of a gun has to beat the devil. That’s what makes everyone else think
they
can do it, too.”

Calypso finished his drink and laced his fingers together, cracking his knuckles.

“Besides,” he said, “I’m walking away with two years of your life tucked in my back pocket. That’s not bad for a lazy night. Best of luck to both of you, and I hope that paper helps you out some. Remember, you can play with Roth all you want, just make sure he lives through it. Don’t step on my toes, and I won’t step on yours.”

“He’s not the person we’re after,” I said. “He’s just going to help us get to her.”

Calypso reached down and tugged up the strap of a big black guitar case. He slung it over his shoulder and stood, pushing his chair back.

“Now, I know you’re on a tight schedule,” he told us, “but I’m just about to go up on stage and do a little set. Keeps me from getting rusty. If you’ve got any love in your heart for the Delta blues, I’d be honored to have you stay a while.”

“We’d love to!” Caitlin gushed, squeezing my knee hard enough to make my leg ache. She beamed like a teenager in the sixties who had just been offered front-row tickets to a Beatles concert.

“Sure,” I said, nodding slowly. “Sounds good.”

I could have used another drink, and besides, I got the feeling I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

• • •

I had to admit, it was worth the time we lost. Calypso’s hands played that guitar like it was a lover’s body, like they only had one night left in the world together and every second, every aching, wailing note, had to make up for a lost lifetime. This was the real blues, down-home raw and ragged, drenched with sweat and sex and the bloodied edge of a switchblade. Out on the dark and silent street, his music still echoed in the back of my mind, floating and fading like a dream that slips away on waking.

Caitlin’s arm was wrapped in mine, and she wobbled against me a little, higher than a kite even though she’d only drunk two fingers of whiskey. I was feeling it too. I felt confused in all the right ways, basking in the afterglow.

“Now you get it,” she said.

“Rock star,” I said. “Right. I hate to say it, but we should find a motel or something. It’s another seven hours back home, and between the lack of sleep and the booze and the…
that
, I’m in no shape to drive.”

“I am,” she said. “And I don’t need to sleep. I’ll drive us back, and you can nap.”

I gave her a dubious look. Maybe because she was a little too giddy. Maybe because I was a little protective of my car. Still, she held out her open palm in a way that brooked no argument.

“Keys,” she said.

While she adjusted the driver’s seat, I tugged the ribbon on the copy of Roth’s contract. The dense text read just like the real thing, down to the tiniest detail, but it was magically inert. I traced my finger over tight lines of perfect calligraphy, feeling like a medieval monk. The streetlight outside the car window cast a pale glow, giving me enough light to read by if I squinted.

I slid past lines of preamble and jargon, down to the meat of the contract. My finger froze on the page. “Holy shit.”

“What?” Caitlin said, glancing over as she revved the Barracuda’s engine.

“Calypso wasn’t kidding when he said Roth was bound for greater things, or that this was his most ambitious project in centuries. Cait…Roth didn’t sell his soul for the Senate. He wants to be the president.”

“Ambitious is right. Still, wouldn’t be the first time we’ve put a man in the Oval Office.”

I looked over at her.

“No, not
that
one,” she said. “And not that one, either.”

“Since when can you read minds?”

She smiled and pulled out of the parking spot, gliding onto the open road and aiming for the highway on-ramp.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can just read
you
.”

“Can Calypso actually pull it off?”

“He wouldn’t have taken the contract if he didn’t think he could. The more pressing question is what this means for us. He was deadly serious, Daniel. We can’t do anything that puts Roth in mortal danger or jeopardizes his chances of success.”

“In other words,” I said, “we can’t expose him. If he gets implicated along with Carmichael and Ausar or worse yet, arrested—”

“Bye-bye, White House,” Caitlin said, finishing my thought.