“What chips you buy, Herm?” Cam asked.
“I got some nice ones. One mother-of-pearl, a real pretty purple one, and I bought a new ivory. With scrimshaw.”
“Like with a boat on it?”
“Nah, got a fleur-de-lis in the middle.”
“Floor-da-what?” Sal asked.
Herman rolled his eyes. “Like a design, Sal. A French design. It’s from 1870, like you.”
My father laughed. “How much you pay for this French chip, Herman?”
“Like it’s your business?”
My father smiled. “They’re robbin’ you blind, you know that.” The plastic chips he’d been playing with fell to the table with a clatter I recalled from my childhood, when I’d go to sleep in the tiny back bedroom. They didn’t let me join the game officially until I was thirteen and had paid my dues fetching beer and pepperoni.
“They’re an investment,” Herman said. “They’re antique.”
“Hah! They’re used.”
I pitched a card at my father and it sailed like a whirligig across the table. “Dad, play nice. He’s got a hobby. You got a hobby?”
“Yeah, I read the obits, that’s my hobby. I drink coffee, that’s my hobby, too. Did you hear about Lou, Miss Fresh?”
“Lou who?”
“Terazzi, from Daly Street. Had a heart attack in the middle of dinner. Dead before his face hit the spaghetti.”
“You’re a poet, Dad.”
Cam shook his head.
“No kiddin’,” Herman said, surprised. “Lou, huh?”
Uncle Sal patted his bony forehead with a paper napkin. “It’s hot in here. The cards are gonna be sticky. I hate that, when the cards are sticky.”
“Everybody’s complainin’ tonight,” my father said.
Cam rose and got a box of Reynolds Wrap from the drawer. Not that he wanted to wrap anything, he used the box to hold his cards, in the slit behind the metal strip. “Stop your complainin’, everybody. You’re upsettin’ Vito.”
Sal looked down, examining his arthritic fingers. “I’m not complainin’, I’m just sayin’. We should get air condition.”
Herman rubbed his tummy through his T-shirt. “Vito Morrone, an air conditioner? You have to spend money.”
“Hah! I spend money, I spend plenty of money. I just don’t like air condition. I got enough time to be cold after I’m dead.”
“It’s the humidity,” Uncle Sal said quietly. “The humidity, it makes the cards sticky.”
My father frowned at him. “It’s ’cause the windows are closed, we don’t have the cross-ventilation. Every other time, we have the cross-ventilation. So stop your complainin’, Sallie.”
“I was just sayin’. It’s humid, to me, is all.”
Cam took his seat. “Stop fightin’, both of you. We’re okay without air condition. It’s not that hot, just stop talkin’ about it. So how’s the meat business, Herm?”
“Lousy. Couldn’t be worse. There used to be four hundred kosher butchers in this city. Now there’s only a handful. A handful.”
“Gotta make more Jews,” Cam said.
Herman laughed. “Don’t look at me, I did my part.” He had three daughters he loved to the marrow. It was the middle one, Mindy, who’d painted the casino chip on his yarmulke. I’d met her at her son’s bris, then later at a custody trial for the same child. She was a smart brunette, clever, and feisty enough to take on her lawyer husband, and win.
“How’s Mindy and the baby?” I asked him.
“Real good, real good. And she’s makin’ good money with the court reporting. Good money, Rita.”
“Terrific. Tell her to send me more of her business cards. Now, what are we gonna play? Seven-card? No high-low?”
Herman and Cam nodded, but my father said, “That’s all you ever want to play.”
“Sue me. Mindy will do the transcripts.”
“Seven-card it is,” Cam said. He was the best player at the table, he liked to say he beat us with one hand tied behind his back. “If my Rita wants seven-card, it’s seven-card.”
“Thanks, handsome,” I said, and he grinned.
Seven-card stud was my game. Four of the cards are showing, three are dealt facedown. It was harder than knowing none of the cards at all. Imagination, speculation, and fear rushed in to fill the gaps; the trick was to keep your illusions and reality straight. If I’d been losing my touch away from the table, I felt at home here, with Cam’s stump and Herman’s chips and Sal’s complaints. I was glad I came.
There was a buzz from the door downstairs. “That’s David,” Uncle Sal said.
“No, I thought it was Santa Claus,” my father said, getting up and shuffling downstairs.
Herman snorted. “Let him wait in the rain. I’m not going through this every week.”
“They take advantage,” Sal said again.
In a minute I could hear my father climbing the creaky stairs with David, then a clang as David dropped his umbrella into the metal can by the apartment door. I knew my father would like taking David in from the rain, I remembered him doing the same for me as a child. Unbuttoning my red boots, popping the loop of elastic around the button, then tugging off my damp socks. Laying them out on the radiator in the living room, where they dried into cottony arched backs, with a ridge down the middle like a spine.
“Sorry, I’m late,” David said as he came into the room in a damp polo shirt and unstructured sport jacket. He looked at me in surprise. “What are you doing here, Rita?”
“Waiting to kick some wrinkly butts.”
Cam laughed. “Oh yeah?”
“Hah!” my father said. “I got an ass like a baby.”
But David kept looking at me. “I thought with the harassment suit, you’d be-”
“I took the night off.”
“I just heard about that woman, the plaintiff.”
“Siddown, kid,” Herman said. “I’m waiting for the shoe to drop here.”
“What’d you hear?” I asked. “That she was a Girl Scout, a budding Cassatt, or-”
“You don’t know?” David pulled out his vinyl chair.
“Know what?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead?” I said, stunned.
“She was murdered. I heard it on the radio in the car.”
“Patricia Sullivan, murdered?”
David wiped rain-soaked bangs from his forehead. “They said her throat was cut. They found her at home.”
It seemed impossible. Patricia, dead? My father’s eyes met mine. They looked worried, which worried me almost as much as what I was hearing. “I have to go,” I said, feeling a warm hand on mine.
It was Cam. “You all right, Rita?”
I would have answered him, but for the second time that day, I had no idea what to say.
6
Maybe it was because I had just left a poker game, but when I spotted the Hamiltons they struck me as the king, queen, and jack of diamonds. Satisfied and privileged, face cards all, nestled in a corner of this exclusive Main Line restaurant. They looked surprised as I dripped my way to their table, so I gathered they hadn’t heard about Patricia’s murder. The news had galvanized the city, but the staff wouldn’t disturb their entrees. That was my job.
“Honey!” Paul said, and both he and his father stood up. “I’m so glad you’re here. Did you leave the game early?”
Are you kidding? The game is just starting.
“Hello, Rita,” said Kate warmly. Her face, though lined from the sun, was a handsome one, with high cheekbones and an almost mannish chin. Her hair, a polished silver, fell softly to her shoulders and her wide-set eyes were an unusual shade of gray, with dark eyebrows. Tortoiseshell half-glasses hung from a scarab lorgnette around her neck, for reading the menu. Everything so orderly, about to be disordered. I felt sick for her.
“Won’t you join us?” Fiske asked. He was still standing, in a dark suit with his napkin in hand, and Paul was, too. I sat down and the men followed. “What would you like for dinner, Rita? The rack of lamb was wonderful, but we can get you a vegetable platter.”