Trouble in Paradise (4 page)

“Usually is,” the bartender said, “this time on a weekday.” He was a middle-sized young guy with a thick moustache.

“Soccer don’t help,” Macklin said.

“Some people like it,” the bartender said.

“Can’t get into it myself.”

“Whaddya like?” Macklin said.

“Football,” the bartender said.

“Now you’re talking,” Macklin said.

“You bet?”

“Sure,” the bartender said.

“Last year I was up about a bill and a half.”

He finished slicing the lemons and put them in a jar and put the jar in the refrigerator under the counter. Then he came down the bar and nodded at Macklin’s glass.

“Buy you one?” he said.

“Be a fool not to say yes,” Macklin answered.

The bartender scooped some ice into a shaker. Without measuring, he poured in vodka and a splash of vermouth.

“You must know the game,” Macklin said.

“Come out ahead.”

The bartender rattled the martini around in the shaker and then poured it through the strainer into a chilled glass.

“I played some in high school,” he said.

“And I pay attention.”

He ran a twist of lemon around the rim of the glass and then dropped it into the martini.

“Makes the game more interesting,” Macklin said, “you got something on it.”

“You got that right.”

Macklin sipped his second martini.

“Nice job,” he said to the I bartender.

The bartender grinned and went down the bar to the white-haired man. Macklin took the hundred from his pocket and put it I on the bar. The bartender poured a double shot of Jack Daniels over some ice and put it on a paper napkin in front of the man.

Then he strolled back up the bar to Macklin. He gave no indication that he saw the hundred.

“I’m from out of town,” Macklin said.

“And I’m bored. You know where I could find a card game?”

“Where you from?”

“Dannemora, New York,” Macklin said.

“And you want to play poker?”

“Yeah. Good game. Some money changing hands, you know?”

“Sure,” the bartender said.

“Lemme make a call.”

The bartender went down the bar and punched out a number I on the phone. He talked for a moment and then hung up and walked back down to Macklin.

“You know the Lincolnshire Hotel?”

Macklin shook his head.

“You can walk there. You call Tommy King from the lobby. Tell him Lennie Seltzer sent you. They’ll tell you the room number and up you go.”

“You Lennie?”

“No, Lennie’s the guy I called.”

“Excellent,” Macklin said.

“How do I get there?”

He finished his second martini while the bartender gave him directions. Then he got up, left the hundred on the bar and headed for the door.

“Wish me luck,” he said.

The bartender gave him a thumbs-up, and Macklin went out onto Huntington Avenue and walked to the Copley Place Garage where he had parked his car. He took the thousand dollars from his wallet and crumpled the bills and put them in his right-hand pants pocket. Inside the car, he unlocked the glove compartment and took out his 9-mm pistol. He undid his pants. Instead of shorts, he was wearing an oversized jock with a cup. He shoved the pistol down inside the cup. He took a roll of adhesive tape from the glove compartment, tore off some, and taped the handle of the gun against his belly, well below the navel. Then he got out and tucked in his shirt and buttoned his pants. He locked the car and cut through Copley Place on his way to the hotel. He paused outside a leather goods store and looked at himself reflected in the dark glass of the display window. The gun didn’t show, just as it hadn’t shown when he rehearsed this morning.

It was a perfect summer day in Boston as Macklin strolled through the Back Bay. He didn’t need the directions. He knew where the Lincolnshire was. Inside the ornate lobby, he called Tommy King on an ivory house phone.

“Name’s Hoyle,” Macklin said.

“Lennie Seltzer sent me.”

“Room four-eighteen.”

“I’ll be up,” Macklin said.

The elevator smelled of lilacs. The corridor was done in dark red carpet and ivory woodwork. The numbers on the doors were done in gold. At room 418 Macklin stopped. The emergency exit was two doors beyond-out the door and turn left. He rang the little illuminated bell beside the door. When the door opened, he stepped into a small foyer. Room 418 was in fact a two-bedroom suite.

In the foyer with him was a big man with thick hands.

“Mr. Hoyle?”

“That’s me,” Macklin said.

“Sorry, sir, but I’ll have to pat you down. Just routine.”

A short plump man in a white silk shirt was standing behind the big man. He had thin black hair plastered against his balding skull.

“Sergeant Voss is an off-duty police officer,” the plump man said.

“Just to make sure everything’s on the up and up.”

“Excellent,” Macklin said.

“Makes me feel safe.”

He spread his arms and stood straight while Sergeant Voss ran his hands under each arm, down each side, around Macklin’s belt line, and down each leg. Sergeant Voss was assiduous, as Macklin knew he would be, in avoiding Macklin’s crotch. When he was through, Sergeant Voss stepped back and nodded at the plump man.

“I’m Tommy King,” the plump man said.

“Come on in.”

The game was in the living room. Five men at a round table, with a sixth chair waiting for Macklin at the sixth spot. A blond woman with prominent breasts and a short black dress was overseeing the buffet and bar that was set up at the far end of the living room.

“Drink?” King said.

“I’ll just take a beer,” Macklin said.

“Maybe a shrimp cocktail.”

“Fine. Tiffany will get it for you.”

Macklin sat down. He took the thousand out of his pants pocket and put it on the table beside him without making much attempt to smooth them out.

“The gentleman with the five-o’clock shadow is Tony, my dealer.”

Macklin nodded at him.

“The rest will introduce themselves,” King said.

“Bill,” the first player said, and they went around the table.

“Chuck.”

“Mel.”

“John.”

“Sully.”

Macklin smiled and nodded. Tiffany brought him beer and shrimp cocktail and managed to rub one of her breasts against him as she did so.

“Five-card draw,” Tony said.

“Jacks or better. Hundred-dollar minimum.”

Macklin nodded and put his hundred in the pot. Tony began to deal. He was thin with dense black hair that waved straight back.

The cards seemed to move about in his thin hands as if they were alive. Macklin got a pair of threes. Chuck opened. Macklin drew three cards. It didn’t improve his threes. He dropped out. Chuck won with three queens. Tiffany made sure everyone had what they needed in food and drink. And she made sure that she rubbed her chest against all the players but Tony. Tony neither ate nor drank.

Sergeant Voss leaned on the wall in the foyer. Occasionally Tommy King sat in for Tony. Macklin was a competent card player, but it didn’t interest him. Gambling was for losers. There were better ways to get money. And there were better ways to lose it… like women. Macklin played hard enough to make it seem he was trying and kept close track of the amount of money that was moving Iv across the table.

After an hour and a half, Macklin was down $200.

“Excuse me a minute,” he said.

“Damn beer, you don’t drink it, : you just rent it.”

He stood and walked through a bedroom into the bath and ’t closed the door and locked it. Then he unbuttoned his pants, pulled the tape off the gun butt and took the pistol out of his protector. He put the pistol down on the top of the toilet tank and took the occasion to urinate. Make it authentic. Then he zipped up.

Washed his hands, dried them on a towel, picked up the pistol, cocked it, and went back through the bedroom. He took a pillows off the bed and shook the pillowcase loose. Carrying it in his left hand, with the 9-mm in his right, he went into the poker room. The first thing he did as he stepped through the bedroom door was to shoot Sergeant Voss in the middle of the chest. Voss grunted and fell on his left side and twitched a couple of times and was still. It took the starch out of everyone else in the room. Macklin waved the gun gently toward the poker players. Tiffany began to cry softly.

Macklin ignored her.

“Any one of you can be next,” Macklin said.

“Unless I get all the money.”

Nobody spoke.

“Everybody clasp their hands behind their head.”

They did as they were told.

“No problem,” Tommy King said.

“You’ll get your money.”

“This is true,” Macklin said.

“Now, one by one, starting with you, Tommy, get up, empty your pockets into the pillowcase. And then lie facedown on the floor,” he gestured with the gun barrel, “right there.”

They did as they were told. After all the men had done as they were told, Macklin picked up the money on the table and handed it to Tiffany.

“Hold that,” he said.

Then he surveyed the room.

“In a minute I’m going to search you, one at a time. If I find you held out on me, I’m going to shoot you in the back of the head.”

He paused a moment.

“Anybody got anything to declare?”

Nobody moved. Macklin grinned.

“Okay, I believe you. Come on, Tiffany.”

He took hold of her wrist and led her past the dead man in the foyer and out the front door. Turn left. Two doors down. Into the emergency stairwell. Tiffany was still crying. He let go of her.

“I left you behind, they’d have taken the money away from you,” he said.

“Now you’re on your own.”

And he left her clutching the table stakes and sniveling, and he ran down the four flights. At the bottom he took the gun off cock, dropped it in the pillowcase, and went out the emergency door onto the street.

NINE

“So now you’re a weather weenie,” Jesse said.

He sat at the counter in Jenn’s kitchen in a newly remodeled third-floor condominium on Beacon Street. Jenn had shown him around. From her bedroom window, you could see the Charles River. He had felt uneasy in her bedroom, but he was more comfortable now, sipping a scotch and soda, while Jenn transferred supper from the take-out boxes to the plates.

“Only the guys have to be weenies,” Jenn said.

“The weather girls have to look,” she stuck out her chest and wiggled her hips, “goooood.”

Jesse smiled.

“What about ‘having a film career’?”

Jenn shook her head.

“Have to ball too many toads,” she said.

“Like Elliot?” Jesse said.

“Yeah, and the worst part is after you ball them, they’re still toads.”

She had bought chicken salad at the take-out, and cold sesame noodles, and a loaf of sourdough bread. She went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Chardonnay and handed it to Jesse.

“Opener’s right there beside the wine bucket,” she said.

Jesse finished his scotch, opened the wine, and poured two glasses. He handed one to Jenn as she came around the counter to sit beside him. She touched his glass with hers.

“I don’t know what to drink to,” Jesse said.

“We could drink to each other.”

“Okay,” Jesse said. They drank.

“So,” Jesse said.

“Here we are.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t quite know where here is.”

“Other than three thousand miles from Los Angeles?” She served a spoonful of chicken salad onto his plate.

“It’s got grapes in it,” Jesse said.

“That makes it chicken salad Veronique.”

Jenn served him some sesame noodles and took some for herself. She liked to eat, and she was careful about what she ate. But she put together some very odd combinations, Jesse thought.

Sesame noodles and chicken salad? Veronique? She was sitting beside him eating neatly. She seemed calm. He could smell her perfume, and he could brush her arm if he leaned slightly left. He remembered exactly what she looked like with her clothes off.

He felt as if he might come apart and scatter on her kitchen floor.

He sipped some Chardonnay. He didn’t like wine that much. He particularly didn’t like Chardonnay. But he knew she always had ordered it when they were married, and this had been the most expensive bottle of Chardonnay in the Cove Liquor Store, which was the nearest liquor store to the police station.

“You doing good with your drinking, Jesse?”

“I’m all right, Jenn. I slip occasionally, but never in public.”

“Drinking alone?”

“Yep. But not often.”

“I worry about you drinking alone.”

“Hell, I’ve always liked drinking alone, Jenn. I hate being drunk where people can see me.”

“I know. You’re a very inward person.”

Jenn was eating her noodles with chopsticks. He admired how clever she was with the chopsticks. He always used a fork. She ate some noodles, put down the chopsticks, drank some wine.

“Well,” she said.

“The question is where are we.”

Jesse nodded. He wasn’t hungry. He drank some wine.

“I’ve had quite a lot of therapy since we broke up,” she said.

“We didn’t break up,” Jesse said.

“You left me for Elliot the producer.”

Jenn nodded carefully.

“I’ve had quite a bit of therapy since I took up with Elliot Krueger and you divorced me,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Jesse said.

“I guess I’m quibbling over language.”

“You’re mad,” Jenn said.

“And why wouldn’t you be?”

“You did what you had to do.”

“I guess so,” Jenn said.

“But all the therapy I’ve had hasn’t solved my problem.”

“Which is?”

“I want to be with you and I don’t.”

“And what’s the shrink say about that?”

“She says I’m ambivalent.”

“For this she gets a hundred dollars an hour?”

“Two hundred. And she’s worth it. She helped me see that I really feel both ways at the same time, that it’s really quite human to feel conflicting things.”

“So what do you do about it?”