Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(37)



Well, Duke could use that.

Toward the back, a conglomeration of tables and chairs of every fashion served the customers, with a scattering of tables visible in the loft. Cattycorner, across a dance floor, the stage seized her attention immediately. Or rather, the unusual music taking place on it.

“That’s one red-hot electric guitar,” Johnson said, drawing up a seat for her near the stage.

“Electric?” she murmured, all the while acting as if his display of gallantry were her due. She seated herself royally, much as the newsreel had shown the Duchess of Windsor when she had visited Adolf Hitler the year before. “So, that is the reason for what I be hearing – a grand thing, that music is.”

She plopped Irina’s purse in front of her on the round table and out from it shot the Bicycle card package. She had forgotten where last she had stashed it. She groaned, but no louder than did Duke who sat opposite her.

“Romy,” he said, his voice a tumbling boulder, “I warned you.”

On her left, Johnson’s brows shot up like chute gates. “You play poker?”

To her right, Gideon said, “She tells fortunes, Congressman.”

Moe crossed his short arms on the table and leaned forward, eyes squinched on Romy with officiousness. “You are doing that without a work permit?”

She tried to swallow down the panic that seemed to be choking her. She had not wanted to come along, not with Moe. She did not know how far she could push her luck with the scumbag.

“Oh, we can afford to bend the rules a little,” Johnson said, his earthy smile of camaraderie taking in the four of them. “After all, Operation Texas has bended the rules like a horseshoe.”

He looped an arm around the waist of a gum-chewing young waitress who appeared with pad and pencil. “A round of Cutty Sark and soda, little darlin’,” he said, with a crude charm that included a sweeping hand of the table and a casual disregard for drinking preferences.

“I’ll have a Lone Star,” Duke corrected.

Johnson turned his attention back to Romy. “Give me a demonstration of your fortune telling, gal.”

Holy Fookin’ Moses. Mess this up, and it could land her arse back in Sachsenhausen.

Moe flashed a jack-o-lantern’s malevolent grin.

With four pair of men’s expectant gazes upon her, she riffled the deck and passed it into Johnson’s hands, as large as Duke’s but squarer and without their lengthy elegance. “Shuffle it and cut it into three,” she told Johnson, while her mind raked through plausible scenarios of which she could make use.

He was a politician. Politicians thrived on power. Cash in on that. He liked the women. Play upon that. A strong woman it would have to be, she mentally added.

Wondering what tale she could possibly weave, she turned over the bottom card of each pile.

Curiously, all three top cards were trump ones – and all spades. the King of Spades, the Jack of Spades, and the Ace of Spades, which was the Death card. Well, that would not serve her well to inform Johnson he was about to belly up. How to spin out a fanciful story?

She waited until the waitress had dropped off the drinks with a departing sultry smile for Johnson and a sidelong, meaningful look for Duke and Gideon.

Romy downed her drink like it was iced water. Tears pooled. She coughed, cleared her throat. She tapped the King. “As a man of authority, tis a great future ye have, Congressman Johnson.”

He brightened. “Lyndon to you, little lady.”

She manufactured a smile. “Lyndon.” Underneath the table, saddle oxfords that she longed to kick off tapped in time to the electric guitar’s sliding notes coming from the stage.

Studying the Jack of Spades, she said, “However, there is a knight, a young rival of intellectual ability and polished charm, who could cause ye much bitterness.”

Johnson in turn, tapped the Ace of Spades. “And this? I know about Aces and Eights. The Dead Man’s hand. So, who wins? The Jack or the King?”

Delaying, she tap-danced her fingers over the card grouping, while she sought something plausible and commendable. “Between the two of ye, ye might say it is a duel to the death as to who wins in the political showdown. But ultimately the King always wins, doesn’t it?”

His wide mouth stretched from ear to ear in a pleased grin

One by one, she turned over one handful after another of the remaining cards, positioning them before her randomly, as if she were painting a picture.

What? What? What? What could she devise out of the meaningless spread? The guitar’s unusual music distracted her. She took another fortifying sip of the fiery drink.

At last, noting the rare clump of three queens in one corner, with another off to the side, she improvised, “Many women will influence your life, but one, more so than the others, will steal yuir thunder. She will not be a part of yuir family, ye understand,” she expounded, “but she will rule alone, on her own power and charm.”

He frowned, and she hastily searched for something with which she could wrap up the reading on a positive note.

She studied the enormous number of low-end cards that predominated the rest of the spread, and, feeling it wiser not to mention he was among the bottom feeders that were politicians, she fabricated, “But it is the common people ye shall elevate. And by which make yuir mark in history,” she capped off with one of her congratulatory smiles, as if the man would, indeed, achieve all that she had predicted.

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