"Stagger Lee'll find his own way home," Lucius said. "Let me explain about Last Deal. Everybody still back there gets fifty chips. and they play five-card draw until half of 'em arc tapped. Then everybody goes home. First player out with the biggest winner, second with second, and so on. Odd number makes a threesome in the middle. Clear on the concept?"
Danny tossed it around in his mind for a moment, then nodded.
Lucius said, "We're just here for the poker. Figured you were, too."
"Don't blame Stagger," Kitsune said. "He'd have told you if he expected you to play. He made sure you had a ride home, right?"
Danny drank his black coffee, looked from one of them to the other. "And you-and Lucius-are you-"
Lucius's eyebrows went up, and he showed a lopsided smile. Kitsune was smiling too. She touched her knee, exposed as she perched on the bar stool. "Don't let the red roses fool you, kid. Lucius only chases girls, and so do I."
It was all happening too fast. Danny thought hard about what the Fox had said. His mother would have left the room. His grandmother would have come back with a shotgun.
He thought about-a great number of things. He said, "Can I give either one of you a lift home?"
Kitsune said, "I'm covered. Lucius would probably appreciate it, though."
"Yes, I would."
In the car, driving through the uncertain streets, Danny said, "It's not like I expected. The Shade, I mean."
"Very little in the world is. I myself find that uncertainty to be one of the few things that makes the prospect of another morning endurable."
Danny looked at him. Lucius said, "Excuse me, Doc. I was talking like my typewriter."
"It's all right."
"Is it? It matters, you know."
"Well… the other night-"
"No. Wait. Hold it. I am a journalist, Doc. Anything you tell me is liable to wind up on the opinion pages of a hundred and twenty-seven newspapers syndicated through Global. If you give me your trust, I will value it. I will brood over my ethics, I will agonize, and I will use your secrets, just to get through one more column."
"I saw somebody get killed the other night."
"Friend of yours?"
"No." Danny thought about telling Robin's story. No, that was really out. "I just wondered if-a lot's happened since I got here, and I don't know what to think about most of it."
"Stop here," Lucius said. They were in the middle of an empty, half-ruined block.
"You don't live here."
"Just the fringes of my palatial estate. I want to walk the rest of it. Muse upon a couple of things. Good night, Doc. Thanks for the ride."
"Yeah. Good night, Lucius."
Danny drove the rest of the way back wondering what he had said, what he could have said.
When Danny woke late Tuesday morning there was a pot of coffee outside his door, and the Centurion.
THE CONTRARIAN FLOW
by Lucius Birdsong
What times we are living in, loyal readers, what times. Not since the days when the Powers That Clout feared the wholesale dumping of LSD into Our Fair Levee's reservoirs (for late arrivals, LSD refers to a drug of whoopee, not that road on the waterfront) has there been such a to-do over a non-alcoholic beverage.
Mere days ago one could walk into any flop, crash, or unlit basement in Our Fair Levee and crack open a bottle of the Drink that Keeps on Soaking. No grubby expeditions up to the source, no hoping the source wouldn't laugh in your slack jaws. Why, it was said that in some of the finest wicker hampers of the Gold Coast and the Way Outer I)ri\e. tucked in among the \ehi and the CanfieldY was the odd bonded flagon of Sucker Punch.
And now? Now you not only have to know to knock two longs and a short, that Louie sent you, and that the password is swordfish, you have to have brought your own, because they ain't got any. Friends, of all the un-Levee-like phrases this correspondent has ever heard, "ain't got any" is by far the un-Levee-est.
Now, I submit that Our Fair is founded on the principles of personal liberty, free enterprise, and entrepreneurship. If you want to refresh yourself from a noble friend, that is personal liberty. If you prefer to pay someone else to draw one, draw two, draw three-four units of red, that is free enterprise. And if somebody taps, and somebody tipples, and somebody in between collects from both ends, why then, one of you is an entrepreneur and Devil take the hindmost.
But does it seem, despite all that, that for the last few days Our Fair Levee has had just a little bit less Hell to pay?
Okay, Danny thought, maybe it makes sense, maybe we did something good. Thanks, Lucius.
He let out a breath. His chest had been drum-tight without his even noticing. Suddenly, a little relaxed, a little relieved, he had an idea.
Danny picked up the phone and asked the operator for Ginevra Benci's number. She made the connection for him.
"Hello?" She sounded sleepy. Danny started to apologize, then caught himself: if he didn't go straight into this he would never manage it at all.
"It's Doc, Ginny."
"Hi, Doc." A yawn. "What's going on?"
"Are you working tonight?"
"Yeah. Tuesdays to Thursdays, usually, eight at night to two."
"Would you like to…" Okay, what? "… see a movie this afternoon? Maybe have some dinner, before you go to work?"
"This afternoon? Oh! Sure, yeah, that'd be great. What movie?"
"I heard that there's a Buster Keaton show, all afternoon."
"Okay. At Laughs Lost, right? Should I just meet you there?"
"No, I'll come get you."
"Great. Give me an hour or so, okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah." He looked around wildly for the clock. ''Two o'clock?"
"See you then."
The phone nearly slipped out of his hands as he hung it up. He cleaned up, dressed, went downstairs. Fay and McCain were in the dining room.
Danny said, "Does Mr. Patrise need me this afternoon?"
McCain said, "No, I don't think so. He'll be going to the club tonight, and I think he'd like to have you there."
"I'll meet you there at eight, if that's okay."
"Just so. Mind telling me where you'll be till then? Just in case."
"I'm going to the movies. Laughs Lost. We'll probably go out to dinner after-but I don't know where. We, that is-"
"You needn't say," McCain said easily. "Your time's yours."
Fay said, "Radiant speak connect? Trupsever glow, carol, abun-daniel."
She knew, Danny thought. She had sensed something, seen something-or was it obvious? Was McCain grinning, secretlv?
He nodded to her. She nodded back. He turned to McCain, whose eyes were suddenly flat and cool and empty. "Enjoy yourself, Doc," he said.
W T hen Danny got to Ginny's building, she was waiting, dashing down the steps in a bright red cloth coat, a bag slung over her shoulder. "My work stuff," she said, tossing the bag behind the seats. "I can change at the club. So we can have a nice, slow dinner."
Laughs Lost had a big marquee out front, with half an acre of electric bulbs, and spell-fired neon tubing bent into smiling masks. The lobby was full of framed photos of movie stars; all the pictures seemed to be in black and white, and most had a kind of fogg) glow-that was glamour, Danny thought. The seats were worn, and a little creaky. As the lights started to dim, someone dressed as Chaplin's Tramp pushed a broom down the aisle. He tipped Ins hat and disappeared into the darkness.
First there was a cartoon, a Red Riding Hood and the Wolf story set in a world of nightclubs and big cars. When Little Red threw off her cloak, revealing a tiny white dress and a lot of herself, and went into a swing dance, the Wolf's eyes popped yards out of his head. He bashed himself with a mallet. Danny stared. When had they made this? It couldn't have been for kids.
The cartoon ended, and in the minute of silence Danny felt his heart banging. He looked straight ahead. The screen flickered again.