Trickster (4 page)

The bet went around again, and my mind wandered like smoke. There were six of us aside from the Bank. The Bank had been the only constant in the game since we’d gotten there, an old man with deep bags under his eyes, wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt and paint-splattered work pants. He didn’t appear to be breathing. His big, spotted hands dished the cash in and out of the strongbox in front of him and he never twitched or blinked or seemed to care who won or lost.

The rest of the game had been evolving. The current slate had been steady for about three hours:

Fat Boy, who had a thick gold chain around his neck and a big gold ring on his left hand, thought he was bright because he kept ordering vodka on ice from the Bar Kid and letting it melt, untouched. Something he saw in a movie, staying sharp. He’d arrived recently, strutting about in his polo shirt and loafers, looking angry.

The old woman with her hair like a cloud of unnaturally colored blond wire rising from her head had taken
her seat at the same time I had, back in the misty past when I’d merely been dog-tired and desperate. Her lips were smeared almost purple, her eyes done up in a thick, dark blue mascara. She played with hundred-dollar bills that were crisp, unwrinkled, and uniformly dated from twenty-five years ago, extracted with ritualistic precision from what was apparently a tote bag full of them.

The twitchy kid in the shit-brown leather coat and sunglasses who was five minutes from stroking out in front of us or going bust, whichever came first, had been a resident for a few hours.

The unnaturally tan, thin gentleman in an Italian suit and a gold watch that flopped sinuously around his thin wrist, face half hidden behind huge round dark glasses, had logged six hours so far and hadn’t had a drink or taken a piss in that time. His lips were in a permanent purse, pink and wet, seemingly unaffected by the height of his stack.

And the Truck Driver, fat and black, with a belly that forced him to sit forward, elbows on the table as he sweated, growled, and moaned through every losing hand. Which was every hand. He’d been sitting there so long I’d started to recognize the different inflections and pitch of his horrified grunts, like a little language of misery. When he lost he would tug on his baseball cap and grunt, and he reminded me of my father that way.

Dad had a lot of Tells, too.

I saw the old motel again, Dad pulling the old beater into the parking lot and bringing me into the
office with him, like luggage. I remembered him paying the rent, thirty dollars, most of it crumpled singles and fives pulled laboriously from his pocket, and then the key in his hand with a green plastic tag on it. He didn’t take me to the room; we walked fifteen feet to the small, dark bar that was part of the motel’s compound, and he lifted me up onto one of the stools, bought me a Coke, and ordered a Jim Beam with a beer back. I remembered his drink order because I heard it about twenty times that night.

I startled as a roar went up around me, but it was just Fat Boy winning the hand. I smiled thinly at him as he shot me a triumphant look, became for a moment a Fat
Man
leaning forward with some effort to gather his winnings. This was on purpose; it wouldn’t do to win every hand. You paid a little tax now and then and lost one, and that supported the Glamour, gave it some structural integrity. Some of the bills in the pot were painted with a drop of blood that hadn’t burned off yet, but he wouldn’t notice until later. I glanced at my winnings and estimated maybe three or four thousand dollars. Enough to get Mags and me a roof and a meal or three, enough to rest up and recuperate a little, make a plan.

On day one, the cops showed up, always, usually about three hours in. It was a game; Heller paid off the motel manager, the desk clerk, and the cleaning staff, and then the manager, the desk clerk, and the cleaning staff turned around and sold the tip to the cops for an extra bump. Heller took the cops into
the bathroom and five minutes later they left, happy, pockets bulging. They had a system going.

By day two, Heller’s parties had become little societies. Orbital card games cropped up. People started living there, sleeping anywhere, waking up and toasting up and then passing out again. People cabbed over from the city, paying off hundred-dollar meters so they could hang out and soak up the atmosphere, just because the circus came. And we came with the circus to hustle and run little scams and pay Heller a tithe for the privilege.

Fat Boy cut the deck as someone nudged my elbow. I blinked and tossed a fifty into the pot as ante. Fat Boy was still smiling at me. “Maybe you should sit out a hand, Sleepy?”

I started to shake my head, then paused. Was I really going to let Fat Boy fuck with me? I
was
tired. Three days without sleep, bleeding myself like I enjoyed it. I nodded and plucked my fifty back. “You’re right, Magilla. Deal me out.”

I scooped up my cash and stood up. I went light-headed for a moment, but took a deep breath and headed for the door, staggering a little. The music and voices swirled, and then Mags was there, putting his arm around my shoulders buddy-style so he could steady me without embarrassing me.

“You okay, Lem?”

I nodded. From behind us, Heller’s voice, deep and booming, cut through the noise.

“Lem fucking Vonnegan,” he shouted. “You ain’t
walkin’ out with a pocket fulla kosh without kissing me good night?”

I turned and managed a smile at Heller, sitting there at the kitchen table, a glass of water and a closed briefcase in front of him. He was maybe fifty years old, tall and lanky, with a huge belly—the body of a big, strong man allowed to eat and drink whatever he wanted for forty years. He wore huge Elvis sunglasses and his head was shaved to a nice round ball, red and peeling. I raised a hand.

“Never in life, Mr. Heller!” I shouted, trying hard to make it sound hearty. “Just taking the air. I’m right outside, you need me to give you a hand job.”

Heller laughed, his teeth green and yellow pebbles. He was, I knew from unfortunate experience, covered from his ankles to his neck in black and blue tattoos. Heller was shit as a Trickster, marble-mouthed and slow with the Words, but he ran his movable feast as tight as anyone I’d ever known. I turned away and let Mags help me.

There were too many people. Everything blurred together, the music slowing down while the crowd sped up, moshing this way and that. There was no air. It was just exhalation, just carbon dioxide and smoke. I hung off Mags and let him lead me. People put their hands on me as we staggered, slipping them into my pockets and feeling me up for whatever they could find.

I looked up and squinted around. We were in the kitchen.

“Jesus, Mags,” I breathed, “wrong way.”

A skinny boy in full makeup and skintight, low-riding leather pants, his long, silky black hair tied into a thick rope, held a red plastic cup out to me. “Drink this, beautiful,” he said. Behind him people were leaning over the countertops, straws in hand. A brick-shaped woman in a red jumpsuit was hunched over the sink, vomiting so loudly I imagined lungs and spleen clogging the drain.

I smiled at the kid. “What is it?”

He grinned, jerking his chin at the red jumpsuit. “Ask her.”

Mags reached out and put a shovel-like palm against the kid’s chest. Pushed with what appeared to be a tenth of his innate strength, sending the kid sprawling back into the stove, cup and thick brown liquid flying. Then I was in the air as Mags scooped me up and carried me, barreling through the crowd without a word of apology. People dived this way and that, cursing and shouting, but all you could do against an unstoppable force was get out of the way.

And then we were out in the parking lot. The noise was halved and the smoke and smell gone. Mags set me down and I sat on the curb of the paved walkway that circled inside the motel’s rooms, right next to a gleaming black BMW, brand-new, a gem. I breathed hard, sweating freely.

“Fuck him,” Mags said, lighting a cigarette and pacing in and out of my peripheral vision. “That little fuck. I’m fresh, Lem, I’ll give you the gas and we teach them all a fucking lesson.”

I froze and reached up to grab him hard by the arm, pulling him down to my level. Mags squawked but let me do it. “Don’t ever fucking say that again, Mags. I don’t use anyone’s blood but mine.” My heart was pounding.

“C’mon, Lem,” he whined, wide-eyed. “I didn’t—”

I looked up at him. Wanted to cut him some slack, but couldn’t do it. I gave his arm a yank, making him lose balance and stumble away as I let go. “
Ever
. That goes for you, too, or you can go fuck yourself.”

His face suddenly opened up, a flower blooming, and instead of the perpetually angry big bastard people avoided on instinct, I got that rare glimpse of what a little Pitr Mags had looked like: almost handsome, innocent, eager. “Jesus, Lem, I didn’t—I mean, I wasn’t—” His expression changed again and he was in agony, heartbreaking. “Oh, shit, Lem, I’m
sorry,
I didn’t mean it. Honest. I’m just tired.”

I felt bad. His desperation to be forgiven ate at me, and I gave him a smile and a nod. “I know you didn’t, Maggie,” I said. “I know. I’m tired, too.”

His relief made him handsome again for a moment, jovial and happy. “Ah, thanks, Lem. I’m sorry, I just get
mad
.” His face darkened as he returned to the source of his current mood, and he was Mags again, the sort of man who punched walls on a regular basis. “They think they’re so fucking
smart,
but
we’re
the smart ones, and they don’t even know it.”

No one was with me to appreciate the joke of Mags calling himself
smart,
so I kept my smile private.

I looked around the parking lot. I remembered walking out of the bar, my father sleeping soundly on his stool, the bartender satisfied to leave him there for eternity. I’d wandered into the parking lot in my Cub Scout uniform, and the old man was standing there in a white suit, white hair, white shoes. Oldest man I’d ever seen.

I would never, I reflected, know that old man’s name, but I would never forget him. I could still see him, pulling out the ornate knife with the pearl handle and slicing his hand open with a sudden, practiced jerk. I remembered stopping in shock as he smiled at me, and I remembered how he’d made a fist, blood dripping onto the asphalt, and I remembered how he’d risen up, an inch at a time, as he muttered something I couldn’t quite hear. When he was floating a foot or so off the ground, he grinned at me, toothless. And I’d run back into the bar.

“Lem?”

I startled again. I was falling asleep where I sat. “Sorry, Mags.”

“You hear that?”

I paused and listened. A rhythmic pounding noise, and a muffled . . . voice. I stared up at the black car right next to me.

With a groan I pushed myself up to my feet, Mags there instantly to steady me, and walked around to the back of the car. I paused to look around the parking lot, trying to be sure no one was around, and then I pulled the handkerchief from the infected wound
on my left hand. Infections were constant. More than one of us had died from blood poisoning over the years. You had to let the wounds heal naturally, because healing spells on open wounds usually backfired gruesomely. Something to do with burning blood to cast on blood—it just never worked.

I took a dab of blood on my right index finger and flicked it at the trunk, muttering three syllables my master had taught me years ago.

The trunk popped open, rising up on hydraulic hinges. Mags and I leaned forward and looked down into the trunk and found a girl, hands and ankles tied tightly together. She stared up at us for a moment, eyes wide and shining. I blinked, and she surged up against her bonds, thrashing and bucking. Screaming against the very effective ball gag. Her eyes were locked on me, and stared at me unblinkingly.

Then she went still, but her eyes remained on me. She still didn’t blink. Her eyelids twitched and quivered, her whole body tense.

“Fuck,” Mags whispered, making it a modifier suggesting wonderment. Mags’s sole talents were an indifference to pain, strength beyond normal men, and the ability to conduct entire conversations using one word. He could have recited the entire works of Shakespeare using just
fuck
with subtle alterations of volume, stress, and accent. Assuming he could read, which I was not entirely certain of, having never seen him do it.

With a muffled howl, the girl began struggling
again, twisting and rocking violently in the trunk, making the whole car sway.

I put my hands up, all my tiny wounds smarting, and smiled tiredly down at her. “Hey, hey,” I said. “Calm down. I’m going to cut you loose, okay, but I’d like to not be smacked in the head for the effort, okay?”

She paused suddenly, sweaty, her nostrils flaring with each labored breath. Her eyes, green and big, flicked from me to Mags and back. She was tall, folded cruelly in the trunk, and had short dark hair, tan skin that looked creamy and perfect, like she’d never had a zit or a scratch in her life. She was a kid, and I felt old and perverted suddenly, thinking this girl was cute even as she was tied up, kidnapped.

She nodded, once, curtly, and lay still. I got the switchblade from my pocket and flicked it open.

“Don’t.”

I paused. The voice behind us was shaky, thin. It had a pleading tone to it. Mags whirled, and when he didn’t launch into Mags Smash All mode, I sighed and looked down at the girl, whose eyes had gotten impossibly wider and were locked on me, jittering this way and that as she resumed screaming deep into the gag again.

“Sorry, love,” I said. “Be right back.”

I turned slowly, hands up, and found a ghost standing behind me. He was older than me. Not by much, but he’d seen some hard times. He was tall and thin, thin,
thin
. His suit was a beauty, and had cost him
several thousand dollars, but it had been cut for a much healthier man, a man with an extra fifty pounds everywhere. He was white and pale, balding, his face a gaunt skeletal remnant, his eyes sunken and shadowed, like he didn’t
have
eyes, just empty spots on his face. The gun in his hand was one of those light newer automatics, so light they looked fake. I didn’t think it was fake, though.