Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [38]
I could see from the expressions around me that the others would have gone on till either hell froze over or they’d won their money back. Neither seemed likely, and our host knew it.
“Once more,” he said.
He dealt a simple game of five card stud. I’ll cut to the finish, which may be of interest. I had an ace of diamonds up and otherwise bupkus. Jerry had two kings up. We each had two cards down, Jerry having dealt the first and last cards that way. The others had dropped out, and along the way, not a single other ace had been on the board.
Time to bluff.
I had the bet, and tossed out a blue chip.
Jerry G gave me the snort laugh. “You want me to think you’ve got an ace down, Jack? I don’t think you do.”
He raised me a blue chip.
So I raised him another blue chip. “It’s only five hundred to find out.”
He was frowning. I didn’t think it was unfriendly, just a deep, thoughtful frown. He was losing. Down maybe three grand.
“Fucker doesn’t bluff, Jerry G,” the surgeon said.
Jerry G snorted another laugh and threw in his cards. Because it was the last round, though, he gathered all the cards, and I noted him discreetly checking my hand, to see what I’d had. He flinched, but resisted the urge to let everybody know I had indeed, finally, been bluffing. He hadn’t bought the right to see those cards, after all, and that was bad manners indeed.
Jerry G cashed everybody in. I was up six thousand and change above the five thousand I’d brought along. Hands were shaken all around, the little barmaid provided everybody with coffee and sweet rolls (the coffee in Styrofoam to-go cups to prevent the group from lingering), and soon Jerry G and I were by ourselves.
“Let’s talk outside,” he said.
I followed him, and two guys grabbed me. One was the big bald black bastard and the other was the limpnose prick from the dance club. They dragged me out of the lot and into an alleyway between the Lucky Devil and some other dive, and Jerry G followed along. I have no idea how he set it up, other than maybe enlisting his goons by way of a whispered command he’d given the barmaid. He’d risen from the table to do this more than once, and she’d slipped out several times, presumably for supplies, and now I was up against a brick wall, the black guy holding onto my one arm, the noseless guy onto the other, doing my Jesus on the cross impression.
“You’re working for Cornell,” Jerry G said, grinning at me, and it was a vicious thing, a horsey look worthy of a stallion getting ready to kick your head in. “You were seen there, you were heard there, and I gave you a chance to play it straight, but you thought you’d fuck me, didn’t you?”
“I did talk to Cornell! I hadn’t finishing tell you—”
“No, you are finished.”
And Jerry G walked away, into the dawning day, while in the darkness, the two bouncers took turns. I felt a fist rattle my teeth, and another bash my nose, then my belly played punching bag first for one, then the other, while I coughed and gurgled on blood. I wish I could tell you this is where I came roaring back, but the truth is, I fell to my knees and then my face found the filthy brick floor of the alley and I got used to the taste of blood while they kicked me in the ass and the ribs, and finally the toe of a shoe caught the side of my head.
My last thought was, Shouldn’t have bluffed the fucker…
Chapter Eight
Somebody was asking me a question.
A woman. A girl. Some kind of female…
I couldn’t make it out, but I felt hands on me, small, struggling to get hold of me, trying to lift me, but I just wanted to sleep.
“Come on…come on…get to your feet. They might come back…”
As those words came into aural focus, so did the pain, starting with a blinding headache. I opened my eyes, saw a blur, and shut them again. I was on my side, on something hard, but moving only made it worse. My instinct was to stay put.
“Get up…”
The hands pulled on me, and I