Deadman's Bluff - James Swain [30]
Below a metal tray a Bunsen burner kept the food warm. Everyday scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, hash browns. She loaded up his plate, and as he bit into a strip of bacon, she gave him a look.
“Something wrong?”
“I was wondering about your sports jacket,” she said, serving herself half the amount of food she’d served him. “You’ve worn it every day, yet it always looks fresh. No wrinkles or stains. Do you get it dry-cleaned each night?”
“I have several,” he admitted.
“You alternate them?”
“Yes.”
“Are they all black?”
“All black. My late wife used to call them my uniform, I guess because you can only wear a black sports jacket with a white shirt and dark pants.”
“You been wearing them for a long time?”
He thought about it. “Twenty-eight years.”
Her fork landed on her plate with a jarring clang. “You’ve worn the same make of black jacket for twenty-eight years?”
He suddenly realized the deep hole he’d dug for himself. If he’d learned anything since he’d started dating, it was that women were as interested in a man’s personal habits as they were in his opinions. And he had just told her that he was a neanderthal.
“Maybe I should explain,” he said.
She leaned forward. “Please do.”
“It’s sort of a long story.”
“I like long stories.”
His mouth had become dry, and he sipped ice water.
“In the 1970s, New Jersey was going broke, so the politicians tried to convince the voters to legalize casinos, even though nobody wanted them. Our illustrious governor, a guy named Brendan Byrne, barnstormed the state, and told people that New Jersey’s casinos would be different than Las Vegas, and would feature ‘European-style’ gambling.”
“As in Monte Carlo?”
“Yes, as in Monte Carlo. Byrne made it sound like James Bond was going to be gambling, instead of some poor guy who hauled garbage.”
“How funny.”
“It was. When gambling was legalized, Byrne established a dress code. Men were supposed to wear jackets inside the casinos.”
“Classy. Did it work?”
He smiled, the memory as fresh as the day it had happened. “It was a disaster. The first casino was Resorts International. It opened on Memorial Day weekend, and the line of people was a mile long. When the doors opened, they came in like a stampede. The casino had put five hundred black sports jackets in a cloak room near the entrance, with the idea being that men who didn’t have a jacket would rent one. No one did.
“I was working inside the casino. One day, the floor manager comes up to me, and says, ‘Tony, turn around.’ I did, and I felt him run a tape measure across my back like a tailor in a clothing store. He said, ‘Perfect, you’re a size forty-two,’ and he told me to follow him.
“He led me to the room where the sports jackets were, and pointed at a rack. He said, ‘Tony, these jackets are forty-twos. Take what you want. We’re throwing them out.’ Well, they were all brand new, and my wife and I were barely scraping by, so I loaded up my car, took them home, and stored them in a spare closet. The next day, I loaded up the car again.”
“How many did you take?”
“All of them.”
“How many was that?”
He’d worn through two jackets a year for the past twenty-eight years, and still had a half dozen left.
“Sixty-two,” he said. Then added, “It saved us a lot of money.”
“Did you ever consider retiring the jackets after you left the police force?”
“Yeah, but I decided against it. The jackets were Geoffrey Beene, who’d had a boutique at Resorts. They were the best clothes I’d ever worn.”
“Your uniform,” she said.
“Yeah. My uniform.”
Gloria looked at her watch and stood up. “I need to run. I have an interview with one of the poker players in ten minutes. Stay and finish breakfast, if you like.”
She grabbed her jacket off the couch and hurried to the door. He followed her, not certain what she thought of his story. He hoped it didn’t make him sound too eccentric.
“Will I see you later?” she asked, stopping at the door.
They were the sweetest words she could have said. Valentine started