I'll Take Manhattan (30 page)

There was a rustle of interest as the croupier took the next bets but the man next to Maxi never moved. Finally, the croupier said, “Still on zero, sir?”

“Yep.”

He was going to let the money ride, Maxi realized in horror. The odds that the zero would come up twice in a row were beyond reckoning. Was he mad, drunk, doped, or didn’t he understand the game?

Maxi forgot to bet as she fought not to say something and when the croupier barked “
Rien ne va plus
” she realized
that it was too late to give advice. She sighed and waited for the inevitable as the wheel spun, as the ball hopped and skipped, as the wheel slowed and the ball fell. On the zero. A gasp rose from the crowd that stood around the table. The scarecrow had won thirty-five times one hundred and seventy-five thousand francs. Even Maxi’s rusty multiplication table told her that it was over a million American dollars. Considerably over. This should make him open his eyes, this should make him look a little less hopeless, she thought, turning toward him and meeting his glance for a second. Was that a smile on his lips? Was that a raising of his lids? Was there a flush of color in his cheeks? No. Absolutely not. He was still slumped on one elbow, he hadn’t reached for his chips, he didn’t look any less removed or detached than when the attendant had refused him credit. Clearly a mental case.

“Take those chips
off
the board,” she commanded him in a low voice.

“Why?” he asked mildly.

“Because otherwise you’ll lose the lot, you damn fool. Don’t argue. It’s the chance of a lifetime,” Maxi hissed at him furiously.

“And play it safe?” he asked, almost sounding faintly amused.

Action at the table had been stopped as the croupier waited for a casino official to permit him to accept the bet. The official arrived, looked at the scarecrow with an indefinable expression and reluctantly nodded at the croupier to go ahead. As a big, buzzing crowd immediately gathered around the table, Maxi, in her agitation, again forgot to bet. The man was clearly insane. Criminally insane. The law of averages hadn’t been suspended for his sake and there was no possibility that the ball would come back to zero a third time. The Casino knew that as well as she did or they would never have allowed the game to continue. How many men had really been given a chance to break the bank at Monte Carlo? The croupier busied himself with the other players and only when they had all placed their bets did he look again at the scarecrow.

“Will you stay on the zero, sir?”

“Why not?” he asked with a hint of a yawn.

Maxi watched in outrage as the croupier began to set the wheel in motion. There wasn’t a sound from the crowd. The croupier’s lips opened to say the words “
Rien ne va plus
,” and in that split second Maxi catapulted herself wildly onto the pile of chips on the zero. She scooped them all off the table, scattering them around the man at her side before the bet could be finalized and the chips lost forever.

A roar of scandalized disbelief rose from the crowd. Her breach of casino etiquette was so unthinkable that their attention was switched from the wheel to Maxi. Indignantly she glared at the watchers. Barbarians, she fumed to herself, just waiting to see someone thrown to the lions. Well this isn’t going to be your day, you bastards, even if I do look silly. She stared down the jabbering mob in righteous certainty until she realized that the scarecrow was still watching the wheel, not touching a single one of the chips that she had saved for him. Cold sweat covered her in a flash. She had just remembered something else about the law of averages. Each spin of the wheel was a fresh start, as if it had never spun before. Oh no, she prayed, no,
please
. In the sudden utter silence of the Casino only the wheel could be heard. Maxi closed her eyes. A wild incredulous sound came from the bystanders. Zero. Again. Maxi sat frozen, waiting to die. She deserved it. Murder was too good for her. A hand reached out and closed on her upper arm. He was going to break it. Yes, bone by bone, every bone in her body. He had every right. She wouldn’t defend herself.

“Nobody will ever call you a cheap date,” the scarecrow commented mildly as he rose from his seat, lifting her with him, leaving the chips Maxi had swept off the table to be gathered up by an attendant.

Maxi opened her eyes and burst into tears. She was going to live. He was even more insane than she had realized but not
criminally
insane.

“I don’t like to see a woman cry,” he remarked kindly.

Maxi stopped immediately. She didn’t dare not to. He gave her a surprisingly clean handkerchief and helped her blow her nose and dry her eyes.

“It’s only money,” he said, smiling for the first time.

“
Only money
! Over forty million dollars?”

He shrugged. “I’d inevitably have lost it back to the house another day. You don’t imagine that they’d have let me bet if they didn’t know that for sure, did you? You’re not working for the house by any chance? No, I didn’t think so. But they do owe you a free drink. Come on, sit down here and I’ll order. Champagne?”

“Something much stronger,” Maxi begged.

“Good girl. Tequila then, Buffalo Grass tequila.” He motioned to a waiter. “My usual, Jean-Jacques, and one for the lady. A double.”

“Bad luck, Monsieur Brady,” the waiter said sympathetically.

The scarecrow looked closely at Maxi. “Not necessarily, Jean-Jacques, not necessarily.” He turned to Maxi. “Drink up and I’ll take you home.”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to do that,” she protested.

“Might as well. After all, I
own
you now. Forty million dollars worth anyway.”

“Oh.”

“You
do
agree?” he asked politely.

“Yes. Of course. It’s only … fair.” And Maxi thought, there could be worse fates. Far far worse. But she’d absolutely have to do something about his clothes.

Dennis Brady was the first remittance man that Australia had sent back to the old country. A century earlier his ancestor, Black Dan Brady, emigrated to Australia from Dublin and struck it rich when he discovered an enormous silver deposit at Wasted Valley in the New South Wales Outback. In the decades that followed, the Wasted Valley Proprietary Company found vast amounts of iron ore, coal and manganese. By 1972, in addition to the mine operations, its assets included huge steel mills and oil ventures which accounted for three percent of Australia’s gross domestic product, and a cash flow of close to a billion dollars a year. Its chief liability was its rebellious chief stockholder and orphaned only heir to the Brady fortune, Bad Dennis Brady, who was bored, bored,
bored
with Melbourne; bored, bored,
bored
with being the richest man in Australia; bored, bored,
bored
with discussions about drilling
for oil off the coast of China, finding copper in Chile, or mining gold in South Africa. Dennis Brady had not the slightest interest in extracting another ounce or gram or droplet of anything whatsoever out of this planet. On the other hand he dearly loved a wager. But gambling is not permitted in Australia and the closest casino in Tasmania had lost so much money to him that they had barred him from play forever.

They couldn’t call him a black sheep, he told the board of directors meeting of Wasted Valley that he had convened, because a black sheep doesn’t pay his debts, nor could they call him a wastrel because he often ended up winning, and, over the long haul, was almost even, although he knew perfectly well that the odds would always be with the house, but no one could call him an asset to the company either. And there was no need to take a vote on that, gentlemen, thank you very much indeed. He’d tried, God knows he’d tried, for twenty-nine miserable years, to be a credit to the Brady dynasty but it just wasn’t going to work out. Too bloody
boring
by half. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if he cleared out, went back to wherever it was that Bradys had come from in the first place and left them to get on with the family business? All those in favor say aye—no never mind the formalities—he’d just remembered that he owned more than enough stock to cast the deciding vote. Could he buy anyone a farewell drink?

“What happened next?” Maxi asked, fascinated with his story.

“They said it was too early in the day for a drink but they rather thought I had the right idea and they all shook hands. Good chaps. They’re undoubtedly still drilling and smelting and forging away and looking for new companies to buy. They’re as industrious as a bunch of giant Santa’s helpers … motivated, businesslike, patriotic, good to their mothers—useful but all so terribly tedious.”

“Did you go back to Ireland?”

“Good Lord, no. Never cared for racing or breeding the beasts—I’m allergic to horses and I can’t endure rain. Came straight here and bought this lovely yacht and I’ve been here ever since. It’s not quite the biggest one in the
port but it’s nothing to be ashamed of and it’s the happiest ship in the harbor.”

“But what do you
do
, Dennis?”

“Do? Well … I just … live, you know? A little here, another bit there. Water ski, drink a little, drink a lot, listen to music, sail, fly my helicopter—sometimes we even take the ship out for a day or two. It’s a full life. Occasionally I’m so busy I don’t even get to the Casino before midnight. I’ve put myself on a strict credit limit there … it might get boring otherwise.”

“Are you never bored anymore?”

“Let’s say that I’m not bored
now
. I’ve never owned a forty-million-dollar girl before. I wonder what I should do with you first?”

“Maybe if you thought of me as just a girl …” Maxi murmured, trying to make out his face in the darkness of the deck. Most of the other yachts in the port had put out all but their running lights while they talked, and Bad Dennis Brady had almost disappeared in the moonless night. She missed being able to watch his half-tragic, half-fey face, she realized, rather more than she’d expected.

“But if you were ‘just’ a girl I’d never have told you all this,” he protested.

“What do you talk about with girls you don’t own?”

“Not much,” he said wistfully.

“You’re shy,” Maxi diagnosed.

“No, basically just Australian. Australian men prefer action to talk when it comes to women. At least that’s the general notion.”

“But according to you, no one was ever a less typical Australian.”

“Well I can’t be can I? Poor eye-to-hand coordination, you know. I never was any good at games, particularly soccer. My guardians, when my parents died, sent me to England for quite a while so I don’t even sound right. A half-assed Australian and an all-around total misfit, I’m afraid.” He sighed pathetically in the darkness and reached out and took Maxi’s hand in both of his. The minute she felt his touch she knew that there was at least one sport in which Dennis Brady had won high marks. Feckless, whimsical,
admittedly fit only for loafing, but not, oh no decidedly not harmless. Every warning bell in her system went off.

“Ah, poor Bad Dennis, that’s a sad story and no mistake,” she crooned. “But as much as it pains me to have to remind you—the meter’s running.”

“The meter? Oh, of course … I’d almost forgotten. How much?”

“One million dollars.”

“Per week?” he asked hopefully.

“No, Dennis,” she said patiently.

“Per day?” He tried to sound incredulous.

“Per hour … and you’ve just spent two of them talking.”

“Good Lord! I think that’s a bit high. On the other hand, it is slower than roulette. Or should be, if done properly. Well, if you’re sure?”

“I am,” Maxi answered crisply.

“In that case, perhaps you might … care to go below?” he said, springing to his feet.

“I’m yours to command,” Maxi answered.

“I like this game,” Dennis Brady announced happily. “Even if you can’t bet on it.”

“Would you consider marrying someone like me, Maxi?” Dennis Brady asked humbly. Startled, Maxi turned toward him as he lay, long, lean and unexpectedly strong, beside her on the bed of the main cabin of the yacht. Without his deplorable garments he was a superlatively well-made man and all the energy he had been too bored to turn toward mineral rights had apparently been saved just for her, to judge by the last day and a half.

“Someone
‘like’
you?… there isn’t anyone like you, Dennis, or the world would be a different place—no aggression, no ambition, just sex and casinos … maybe paradise is like that.” She ached exquisitely in every major and most minor muscles and her mind was so blissfully unhinged that it was almost impossible to speak, much less think.

“Well, actually, to come right down to it, I meant me in particular, yes, just me, Maxi.”

“Would I? Marry you?”

“That’s the general idea, yes.”

“What time is it, Dennis?” Maxi mumbled, remembering.

“It’s ten in the morning.”

“How long have we been on board?” she asked, yawning hugely.

“Exactly thirty-four hours. Oh, Maxi darling, come on and answer me,” he pleaded.

Maxi made an effort to consider. This seemed important. “Let’s see. Thirty-four hours plus the two hours you spent talking makes thirty-six so that leaves you four more hours … so … if you can manage to arrange it before the time’s up, what choice do I have?”

“I aid hope you’d see it that way,” Dennis Brady said joyfully, wrapping a towel around his middle and grabbing the phone at the side of the bed. “Captain, how long will it take you to get out into international waters? What? No, I don’t give a damn about the harbor master.
How
many of the crew went ashore? Well, make do, man, make do. By the way, you are a real captain aren’t you? I know, I know, of course I’ve seen your Master’s Certificate—have you ever performed a wedding? Just a burial at sea? Well if you can do one you can do the other. Break out your Bible, Captain, and let’s get under way.”

“I don’t have anything to wear,” Maxi said automatically, choking with laughter. Mrs. Bad Dennis Brady. What would people think? What did it matter? What a dear he was. What
fun
they would have! She simply wasn’t responsible. Everyone understood that a debt of honor had to be paid or you lost your good reputation.