Smith's Monthly #22 Read online

  She nodded. “Who gets the honor?”

  “My ex-brother-in-law,” Harold said. “He hated me more than anything else, mostly because he is a total failure in his life and too afraid and stupid to do anything about it. He’s using his beat up old pickup, if he can keep it running long enough. I liked the symbolism of it.”

  She nodded again, obviously thinking deeply about what he had said. “Yes, that does have a nice feel to it. Failure meets success, with the winner being failure, of course, on both sides. Nice.”

  “Thank you,” Harold said, bowing slightly. “How about you?”

  “Love,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  Harold was actually puzzled. “Love?”

  She smiled and lightly touched his arm as they, and the line around them, moved up, their place on the sidewalk now less than a half block from the intersection. “I’m twenty-six, have had five boyfriends and two fiancées, all of whom were jerks. They only wanted me for this body.” She raised her arms again for a moment. “I left them all and now I can trust no man.”

  Harold nodded, thinking about what she had said. “So going out nude expresses your revulsion of every man’s inability to see beyond your body to the true you under the skin.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “It’s so nice you understand.”

  “So who is doing you?”

  “My younger sister. She has always been jealous of how I looked and how I always got the boys when she didn’t. I promised her all of my clothes and jewelry if she did the driving and she jumped at the chance. I don’t think I have ever seen her so happy.”

  The line moved forward and now there were fewer than twenty people between them and the intersection crosswalk. Up ahead a man wearing a pink bathrobe waited quietly for the walk light. When he got the green he stepped into the street, never looking to either side.

  As he neared the center of the crosswalk a huge pink Cadillac sped through the intersection and hit him right at the hood ornament. The crumbling, crunching, and thumping sound echoed down the block between the city buildings. The Cadillac did a four-wheel slide, coming to a stop near the body. The driver of the Cadillac was a woman and she was smiling and laughing.

  After a short pause, the cleanup crew ran into the street and Harold turned back to face the woman with the beautiful talking dimple on her butt.

  “Great, huh?” she asked, then turned to face the front of the line so that again Harold could stare at the indentation, the talking dent in her ass.

  But now it wasn’t saying a word.

  Two more people stepped into the intersection, were hit and killed, and the line moved up. Harold decided he couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to tell her what he was thinking. He had to clear his mind and his conscience before he could ever step into that road.

  “Excuse me,” he said again to the mass of dark hair that cascaded in perfect lines over her shoulders. She turned, this time smiling for real.

  “My name is Linda,” she said, extending her hand.

  “Harold.” Her skin felt soft and moist in his hand and she squeezed in a fondness-like way before she let go.

  Harold cleared his throat. “You know,” he said, taking his time while trying to gain his courage, “that you have a dimple on your butt.”

  She frowned at him. “I do? Where?” She tried to turn her head over her right shoulder so that she could see her own ass.

  “The other side,” Harold said. “Right there.” He pointed without touching, even though he really, really wanted to touch.

  “Wow,” she said, pulling her perfect skin on her ass around so that she could see the dimple. “I didn’t know that.”

  She and Harold both looked at the dimple on her ass for a moment, Harold expecting it to talk, but it didn’t.

  She let go of her butt and faced him. “Why did you tell me that at this moment?”

  Harold shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure. Your body is beautiful, but that indentation in your otherwise perfect skin became the focus for me earlier.” He decided he didn’t want to tell her that her dimple had talked to him. Too much to explain in such a short time.

  “Go on,” she said, looking even more puzzled.

  “I think,” Harold said, doing his best to put his deepest and most private thoughts into words, “that the dimple, a flaw in such an otherwise perfect body, symbolized to me that the world is not a perfect place. I had always strived for the world to be perfect and for me to be one hundred percent successful in everything I ever did.”

  Harold shrugged. “When I wasn’t perfect, as I saw the world to be, I could no longer live in that perfect world.” He held his hand up at the line. “Thus this decision.”

  The look on her face seemed dazed, and for a moment Harold was afraid he had made her very angry, or even worse, made a fool of himself ten minutes before he was to die.

  “So,” she said, “the dimple on my ass is a symbol that the world is not a perfect place, and that symbol, my dimple, is giving you hope again?”

  Harold thought for a moment and then realized it was doing exactly that. Her dimple was giving him hope, giving him a reason to continue living. He smiled at her. “That’s right. And I think in a moment I will get out of the line.”

  Again she looked very thoughtful, then asked, “My imperfection is giving you a reason to live?”

  Harold nodded.

  “That’s wonderful. For the first time a man wants me for something besides my perfect figure, my perfect skin, my perfect teeth. For the first time a man wants me for something besides sex. I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “It is very much true and very much possible,” Harold said. “As I have just learned, it is not a perfect world, even when you have an almost perfect body such as yours.”

  “And,” she said, “as I have now learned, a man can want me for something besides my perfection.” She smiled and pulled her butt cheek around so she could see her dimple again. “My almost perfection.”

  Harold held out his hand for her. “I think we need to step out of line.”

  She glanced around and realized the cleanup crew was just finishing sweeping up a mechanic who had died with his tools in front of a plumbing truck. The only person left in line ahead of her was an older woman in a housedress and an apron.

  “Come,” Harold said. “How could you deprive me of looking at my symbol of imperfection?”

  She laughed. “I couldn’t, of course.”

  She took his hand and he instantly knew they would be together for a long, long time. He had found his soul mate.

  Laughing and talking all the way, the man who had always desired perfection, but had learned he could never attain it, walked up the hot sidewalk with the naked woman, who had always thought she was perfect, but had suddenly understood she had a flaw.

  Danny Evans needs a good grade in creative writing.

  His assignment? He must write about any person he sees in a public place, and really get inside that person’s head. He must make up a character.

  It seemed like such a simple assignment.

  But sometimes some stories don’t end well.

  IT’S A STORY ABOUT A GUY WHO…

  THE FIRST START

  Mr. Harold Herman Screws sat silently in the crowded old train station, his back straight against the hard wooden bench.

  The sounds of fifty other people talking and a few children playing seemed to only bounce off Mr. Screws like raindrops off a yellow police slicker. The large room of the historical station seemed filled with life, the high ceiling and wooden rafters softened the sound, making even the loudest cry from a newborn baby seem like a distant sound of joy.

  Mr. Screws wanted no part of the life around him. His disdain for all other members of humanity radiated from him like a bad smell, keeping anyone from sitting within ten feet. He wore a dark brown suit with matching slacks, a white shirt, and a simple white bow tie. His brown hat sat on the bench beside him guarding his brown plaid suitcase on the flo
or beside him.

  His attire had clearly been chosen carefully to draw no undue attention and his five-foot-four-inch height also kept him well hidden in crowds.

  Yet Mr. Harold Herman Screws stood out, sitting alone on the wooden bench, a sea of emptiness around him like there were walls holding back the rest of humanity.

  Mr. Screws did not notice the distance, but there was little doubt he secretly felt glad for it.

  Pretty much everyone else in the room noticed Mr. Screws, at least enough to hope that he would not sit beside them on the outgoing train from Boise, Idaho, headed east.

  REALITY

  I tucked the pen into the notebook I had been writing in and reread what I had put down about the strange man sitting on the bench two rows in front and to the right of me. Even though I had no idea what his real name was, I liked the name I had called him. Harold Herman Screws. A distinctive name for a man who was impossible to miss in a crowd.

  The assignment for the creative writing class I was taking at Boise State University was to go to a public place, observe, and then write a character sketch about a person we saw there.

  Mrs. Wilson, my instructor and published author of six literary short stories in university presses, had told us we should try to get inside the head of the person we were observing.

  I had no idea how to do that.

  Once again I reread what I had written.

  Damn.

  Not one word from inside the guy’s head. That wasn’t going to up my grade. And I needed to get the “B” I had at the moment up to an “A” if I had a decent chance at getting into a good law school in two years. Otherwise I would be stuck up in Northern Idaho going to law school there.

  And somehow I needed to get into the first part that the air in the terminal was cool compared to the unusually hot, sticky April day outside. Mrs. Wilson really liked setting and feeling details.

  I glanced over at the big board on the wall showing the arrival time for the train. It was fifteen minutes delayed and wouldn’t arrive for almost another forty-five minutes. I had time to get more from the guy.

  In an hour I had to be downtown to meet Barb, my girlfriend, for dinner.

  Perfect.

  I took a deep breath and tried to get myself to relax.

  “Come on, Danny, this writing thing isn’t rocket science.”

  No one was close enough to me to hear me talking to myself in the noise of the train station.

  I stared around at the people in the terminal reading or trying to nap. A couple men to one side were actually reading paper newspapers just like this was 1960 or something.

  There was a dark area in one corner of the old terminal. I could make this character sketch into a Rod Serling description. Barb and I had done a marathon of old Twilight Zone episodes. I loved that old show.

  That might work.

  I went back to writing in my notebook. I hated writing by hand, but Mrs. Wilson thought it would get us more in touch with what we were writing.

  SECOND DRAFT

  The short, handsome man with the cigarette stepped from the shadows into a spotlight as Mr. Harold Herman Screws sat staring ahead at the windows leading out to the train platform.

  “For your consideration,” the man said, his voice deep and distinctive, “one Mr. Harold Herman Screws. A man waiting calmly and patiently for a train to take him away from the body of the elderly mother he has just killed, the dull job at the accounting office, the daily ritual of sameness that can drive a man to the brink and beyond.”

  The handsome man half smiled, the smoke from his cigarette curling up around him.

  Then he went on. “But Mr. Harold Herman Screws isn’t just waiting to escape from his dull life and his recent crime. He is waiting for a train that will carry him, luggage and all, directly into…”

  (Pause, wait for it…)

  “…The Twilight Zone.”

  REALITY…PART TWO

  I looked at what I had written and had no idea how I would include it in the assignment. And it still wouldn’t help. Once again it didn’t do what Mrs. Wilson wanted.

  She had said that if we couldn’t get into a person’s head by making it up, we might need to talk to them.

  I looked at the guy in the brown suit staring silently ahead at the windows. Why had I picked him, anyway? Of all the people in the train station to pick, he looked like the last guy who might want to talk to me.

  “You want the grade?” I asked myself. “And a good law school or you want to be stuck in northern Idaho for three years?”

  I took a deep breath and stood.

  “Good law school.”

  I headed over to the bench with the guy in the brown suit staring ahead at the windows. To one side a couple of kids played with a red rubber ball, kicking it back and forth, laughing.

  I could do this. Any kind of response from the guy with the bow tie would help me and I could make up the rest.

  I stopped a step from him and cleared my throat.

  He looked up at me, the dark, brown eyes boring through me like I was tissue.

  He said nothing.

  “I’m very sorry to bother you,” I said.

  He just stared at me and I could feel my heart beating like the first time I had kissed Barb. Or the first time I had tried to learn how to ski.

  Fear.

  Just plain old fear, like talking to a guy was going to kill me or something.

  Stupid.

  There was nothing to be afraid of. The guy could be rude, ignore me, and it would make no difference to me.

  “My name is Danny Evans,” I said to him and thankfully my voice didn’t crack. “I’m a student at Boise State and I have an assignment from one of my teachers to talk to a perfect stranger to help me learn how to write a story.”

  He kept staring at me.

  Then he blinked and a slight smile cracked the corners of his mouth like concrete being hammered into dust.

  Then he nodded and indicated I should sit on the bench beside him.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I won’t take up much of your time. This is only for a character sketch.”

  “It is no issue,” the man said, his voice high as I would have expected of a man wearing a bow tie waiting to ride a train. “I seem to have more time than I need.”

  I nodded, not really understanding that statement at all. But I could use it in the story.

  I flipped to a clean page in my notebook. “Would you mind telling me anything you would feel comfortable telling me about yourself?”

  He nodded. “I suppose I could do that.”

  “Good,” I said. “Are you from here in Boise?”

  He nodded. “Born and raised. Until today. Today I am moving on.”

  Then he seemed to pause and catch himself. “Please pardon my bad manners. I am preoccupied.”

  He stuck out his hand.

  I took it as he said, “My name is Harold Herman Screws. Former accountant.”

  Then he smiled.

  Not Possible!

  I wanted to pull away, but couldn’t.

  Around me the room seemed to darken.

  The voices of the other people in the room seemed to fade and just vanish.

  A short, well-dressed man in a gray suit stepped from the shadows in the corner of the station and into a spotlight that had not existed a moment before.

  The smoke from the man’s cigarette drifted up and around him in the bright light.

  I couldn’t move. It was as if my body was frozen in place.

  Frozen by fear, by disbelief of what I was seeing.

  The man started talking in that very familiar voice.

  “Meet one Danny Evans, student and hopeful law student, tasked with interviewing a character who has come a little too close to reality for comfort. Little does Danny know that with one stroke of the pen, a writer can open doors into new worlds of the imagination.”

  The man with the cigarette in the spotlight paused.

  Then he went on. “
Danny Evans is about to step through one of those doors he has created. Only this door leads directly into…”

  The man paused.

  The smoke swirled in the spotlight.

  I shouted, “Don’t say it!”

  He didn’t hear me.

  Poker: a high-stakes, deadly serious professional sport. Doc Hill knows all too well the risks involved with the sport. Or so he thinks. But when one of the greatest poker players of all time dies, the stakes rise even higher. Doc must solve an increasingly frightening series of murders—and win the biggest tournament of his career—before he finds himself forced to fold his cards for good.

  A fast-paced thriller that delves deep into the enticing world of high-stakes poker, Dead Money raises the risk of the political thriller to create an exciting new genre—political poker thriller.

  DEAD MONEY

  A Doc Hill Thriller

  For Kris

  Who never should have been forced to go through this book with me.

  Thank you.

  Dead Money:

  A poker term referring to a player who has paid an entry fee into a tournament in which he has no real chance of winning.

  SECTION ONE

  THE GAME BEGINS

  Poker is not a game of cards. It is a game of people.

  PROLOGUE

  Central Idaho Mountains. August 17, 2009

  SILENCE.

  Silence, the absolute worst thing a pilot can experience at seven thousand feet in a single-engine Piper 6XT. A moment before, the engine had filled the cockpit with a solid rumbling, a vibration-filled sound that Carson Hill knew from hundreds of hours of flight time.

  The engine-monitoring system panel hadn’t given him a warning. The plane had shaken with what had felt like a small explosion. Then everything on the control board had just snapped down to zero. Black smoke had poured out of the engine compartment, covering the front windows with a thin, black film.