Sam's Legacy (56 page)

It didn't matter to Sam, though. What they wanted, he supposed, was his swan song, but he didn't figure he was ready for that yet. He had brains. He could, if he had enough time, figure a way out—he believed that. The hands went around, but the pattern remained the same. Every time he raised, one of them would go out—and every time he went out, one of them would stay in. He chipped away at the small pots, and whittled Norman's stack of chips down. When he was under two hundred, though, Norman fooled Sam, and bought into the game for a thousand more, taking the bills from under his nylon jacket. Sam put them in the envelope. He heard somebody approaching, and felt himself tense. He looked at his hand: four cards of an inside straight, jack high. He looked up.

“I was only coming for some water—” Andy said.

Sam realized that he had been glaring at Andy; Sol chipped, asked for one card. Andy slid behind Norman's chair, to Sam's right, and smiled, but his lips trembled. Sol turned his body sideways and Sam saw a ring of sweat under his arm, through the jacket. Norman folded. Sam looked at his card—a queen: he had drawn the straight. “One and chip,” he said.

“I'll see your one, and raise you five,” Sol said. Andy came back from the kitchen—he was dressed in a flowered silk shirt. Sam felt his anger pass. Let the guy linger if he wanted to. It wasn't costing Sam anything. “I'll see your five,” Sam said, and Andy coughed. Sol's eyes fixed Andy momentarily, against the white dining room wall. Andy coughed again, but it didn't matter to Sam. If the guy wanted to use him to transfer some funds, even from his own brother, that was okay with him. Since, thanks to Ben, Sam had never had a brother, he figured there were some things he would never know. “And I raise you plate,” he added.

Sol turned his cards over, face down. “But you should relax, son,” he said.

Sam took in the pot, and said nothing. Andy had not moved. “I'm sorry,” Andy began. “I didn't—”

“That's right,” Sol said quickly.

Andy hurried out, carrying a pitcher of water in front of him. All Andy had wanted, Sam realized, was to get some of Ben's money without having to ask for it. Even kicking off, he wanted to stay the big spender in his brother's eyes. Sam wondered if Ben suspected why Andy had set up the game. It didn't matter, though, because Sam would fool him too, as smart as he thought he'd been. “If anything happens to my uncle,” Sam found himself saying, “I'll personally take it out of your skin.”

“Don't talk big,” Norman said. “You could be in the bay like that.” He snapped his fingers.

Sam turned the cards over, showing the straight. “That's for free,” he said. “Nobody told me anything.” It was, he believed, something more than chance which had given him a hand like that at that moment, and he was pleased.

Sol would not return the steady look Sam was giving him. “Of course,” he said. “Why should you think—?”

“Let's play,” Sam said.

Sol ran through the deck with his thumb. “I don't figure it, though,” he said. “A nice young boy like yourself.” He set the deck down. “Look. You're almost back even. You play a good game. I respect it, if you know what I mean. Maybe with”—he licked his lips—“maybe we should call it quits for tonight—Norman willing, of course. Then, you think it over, we can play again in a week or so, if you want. You'll call me—”

“Deal,” Norman said.

“Well?” Sol asked.

“Deal,” Sam said.

Sol shrugged, the cards went around the table, nobody talked. A few minutes later, the voices in the other room became louder, and Sam realized that Andy and Ben and their two women were walking along the hallway corridor. He heard the front door close. Andy was a head taller than Ben—five-eleven, Sam figured—with large brown eyes, a straight nose, a squarish chin; his voice was high-pitched—still, Sam believed that they had come from the same mother. That did not mean, though, that he had to like listening to the guy, to all his sayings, to the stories he told about his women and how they went for him even more when they knew about his illness. Sam saw that Sol and Norman were getting tired. He could wait. Not to win—he would not, he now understood, win with the cards—but to figure the way out.

The pots stayed small: thirty, forty, fifty, sixty—the pattern remained the same, more obviously so. Norman asked for a fresh deck of cards, and Sam passed one to him. Norman checked it, handed it back to Sam, and Sam liked the feel of the new cards, he liked the sound they made whizzing on top of each other, he liked the easy way they fanned apart. And, touching the new deck, he liked it for another reason, which hadn't occurred to him until the deck had been in his hands. Silently, he thanked Norman.

The new cards moved around the table, Sam winning his share of hands. He felt ready for anything. He heard the front door open, the sound of Andy's laughter. The two brothers said good night to each other, and Sam heard the door to a bedroom close. Sam thought of Tidewater again, and heard Ben's voice, in his head, telling him that what mattered in this life wasn't what you knew but who you knew. He had slightly over twelve hundred in his stack, Sol had more than four thousand, Norman had a bit more than Sam had. He sensed that they would make their move soon, and found that he was relaxed. Norman bet three and chip. Sam looked at a pair of kings and saw Norman's bet. Norman bet plate, Sam saw plate, and then saw Norman's pair of queens. He showed his kings.

Norman bet heavily on the next hand, Sam went out, as did Sol. Norman's eye was twitching again. He wondered if Norman would let himself get wiped out a second time, but he did not want to be there if he did. He heard shoes drop to the floor in the living room. Norman anted with a blue chip and Sam saw two lovely ladies in his own hand, robed in tiny segments of yellow and red velvet, a yellow flower in each of their hands. Mirror-images, one in hearts, one in spades, with a pair of sevens guarding them. “Twenty more,” Sol said, and smiled. Sam and Norman saw the twenty.

“How many?” Sam asked.

“I'll stick with what I have,” Sol said.

“Gimme two,” Norman said.

They would, this time, have to go all the way with him. Sam could hear his father, in the other room, wheezing, snoring slightly. He gave Norman his two cards, dealt one to himself, but did not pick it up.

“Your bet,” he said to Sol, and found that he was smiling.

“So it is,” Sol said. He did not look at his cards. “Plate again, my friend—and chip.”

Sam was almost ready to bet, having assumed that Norman would fold, when Norman surprised him. “Me too, smart boy,” Norman said.

Sam tried not to show anything. Sol looked puzzled. Sam picked up his last card, and waited. Again, he told himself to pay attention, to go slow and easy. He knew they were going to make their move but this wasn't the way he had thought it would be. He calculated: he needed at least two grand to do what he planned to do, and he did not want to let them steal it away before he was ready. He relaxed, turned his card over and saw that it was the one he thought it would be: his third lady. “Plate and plate again,” he said, and he stopped himself from thinking about what Sol might have been holding. Play what's there, don't bet on air. Norman was in, he knew, to fatten him up—if not for this hand, then for the next—but there wouldn't be a next one if Sam raked this one in, and he figured that Norman didn't know that. “And chip,” he added.

“This I must see,” Sol said, and put his money in—five red chips—and took twenty in change.

“Yeah,” Norman said. “We'll see who—” He stopped, laughed at Sam, and did what Sam wanted him to do. “And I raise plate again to the big shots,” he added.

Norman put his chips in the middle, one at a time, but he was shy by more than half the amount, and he stacked the amount of the loan next to his right hand.

“No,” Sam said, and Norman went for the chips, thinking that Sam had gone out; Sam put his hand on top of Norman's—it was like ice. “No—I mean, no, I want to see the money. You counted right—nineteen-twenty. You put in eight-ten. I want to see one thousand one hundred and ten dollars, in the envelope.”

“What gives—you don't trust me?”

Sam smiled. “That's right.”

Norman's chair moved backward. Sam kept his eye on Sol, let go of Norman's hand, and let his own hand drop to his pocket. “If you don't have it,” Sam said, “you can borrow it from your partner here—” Norman stood, his eye banging up and down. Sol wheezed. “—who is still in the game, for your information.”

“You watch your goddamned mouth,” Norman said. “What the fuck do you—”

“Sit down and play, son,” Sol said to him quietly. “You were very hasty. He's right: I'm still in. You shouldn't bet what you don't have.”

“I got it, I got it,” Norman said, sitting. He unzipped his jacket, reached inside. “But I wanna know what he meant—nobody calls me—”

“They've called you worse,” Sol said with weariness.

Norman unfolded a pack of bills, bought the exact number of chips he needed. Sam looked at Sol. “I'm out,” Sol said. Sam smiled at their system—who could go against such odds, after all: you bet five, you win twenty.

“I see you,” he said to Norman, and started, methodically, moving chips forward. Sam was seven hundred shy, and he counted on Norman being too excited to make him do what he had just made Norman do. “Read 'em and weep,” Norman said, and before Sam was done counting, and before Sol could stop him, Norman had turned over his cards. One king, one ten, another king, another ten, and then—Sam felt his heart bump—a third ten. He saw Stella smile. She told him that she'd never doubted him.

“Good,” Sam said matter-of-factly, and showed his hand. Sol's eyes widened. Sam took in the money: twelve twenty of his own, thirty-eight forty of theirs.

“You play very well, son,” Sol said. “You're ahead of me for the first time—we seem to be sharing Norman Noname's bank account.”

“Gimme another grand,” Norman said. “I ain't dead yet.”

“It seems to me,” Sol said, leaning forward, “that the game has just begun to be interesting.”

“Gimme my grand,” Norman said to Sam again.

Sam took the deck in. “That's all,” he said. “No more poker.”

“What do you mean?” Norman cried. “I'm losing—I got a right—”

“You and me, Sol,” Sam said. “We'll see how much of a sport you are, right? You got a little over three grand there. One split of the deck, high card wins.”

“I ain't shitting you,” Norman said. “You guys don't cut me out. Gimme my grand.”

“Quiet,” Sol said, turning to him. He looked at Sam, closed his heavy lids, then smiled. “You're a nice young boy,” he began. “Why—?”

“One cut, three grand, and we all get to sleep tonight,” Sam said.

Norman reached toward Sam, grabbing his shirt sleeve. Sam pulled his hand away. “Stop,” Sol said. “I can't think when—stop, stop—” His belly swelled, then collapsed; he ran his finger around the inside of his shirt collar. “All right,” he said. “Sure. I can afford it.”

“I don't like it,” Norman said. “Nobody dickshits me, you hear?”

“You first,” Sam said to Sol. Sam shuffled. Norman leaned forward, breathing through his thin nose. Sol wheezed. Sam could not hear Ben. Sol lifted two-thirds of the deck straight up, turned his wrist over: ten of clubs. “Well,” he said. “The odds are with me.”

“Shuffle,” Sam said.

“No,” Sol said, as if he had caught him. “As is.”

“Sure,” Sam said, and without hesitating, he split the deck, knew what he would find, and did: a king of hearts.

“Well,” Sol said, and shifted his enormous weight in his chair.

“I don't like it,” Norman said, and when he moved his chair backward, Sam was ready, the point of his knife at Norman's chin.

“That makes two of us,” Sam said. “Now you'll get up slowly and let everything sit where it is—the cash and the cards—and you'll get out quietly, so you don't wake my old man, who's asleep in the living room.”

Sol waved a hand at Sam. “You don't got to do that—you won fair and square. Why—?”

“No words,” Sam said. “Just move it. I'll go to the door with you.”

“You ain't gonna get away with this,” Norman muttered.

“I told you before—around Sol Pinkus you don't got to—”

“Shut up,” Sam said. “And move it, quietly.” He jabbed the point of his knife into the sleeve of Norman's arm, slicing the nylon.

“What a way to make a living,” Sol said to himself, and laughed.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Sam said, and moved behind them, through the living room, into the hallway. “Get his coat,” he said to Norman. “The big dark one. Open the closet for him, Sol.”

“I did enough running in my life,” Sol said. “I'm entitled also.”

“We'll get you, wiseass. Yeah. You ain't gonna—” Norman began, but Sol grabbed him at the back of the neck, between thumb and forefinger and squeezed slowly, ferociously.

“Out the door,” Sam said. They moved to the door, Sol's hand on Norman's neck. “Open it.”

“You played well,” Sol said, letting go of Norman and offering his hand to Sam. Sam did not move; he kept his eyes on them, the blade pointed forward, the handle balanced perfectly across his palm. “I didn't always…” Sol began, then shook his head up and down. “With money so tight—it's hard times, if you know what I mean. Come. We'll shake and be friends. No hard feelings, all right?”

“Out the door,” Sam said.

“Well. You played well,” he said, as they stepped outside. “You…”

Sam closed the door, locked it, and walked back along the corridor. His knees were, he noticed for the first time, actually shaking inside his trousers, as if the knobs were disconnected, swinging from strings like the legs of marionettes. He snapped the knife closed, and when he did he felt himself shudder, from his toes.