The Mirror Thief(105)

That may be so, kid. But we want it for completely different reasons.

I don’t see how that matters.

I know you don’t, Kagami snaps. That’s the whole problem. At this point, Curtis, it’s about the only thing that still matters.

Curtis can feel tightness in his neck and temples: the beginnings of a headache. He can taste it on the back of his tongue. He’s about ninety-eight percent sure that he’s wasting his time here, but that other two percent keeps winking at him, lifting up its skirts. The jazz combo is taking a break, and somebody’s forgotten to turn the piped-in music back on; it’s strangely quiet in the room.

I’m sick of this shit, Curtis says. I’ve been jerked around now in just about every direction. I am ready to go home. There’s only one thing keeping me from getting on a plane. If I leave, and later I find out that I brought something bad onto Stanley by coming out here, something that I had the power to stop, then I’m gonna feel real sorry about that. And I got enough stuff in my life to feel sorry about. So I guess what I want to hear from you is whether you think Stanley’s gonna be okay.

Kagami shoots him an incredulous look. No, he says. No, Stanley’s not gonna be okay. The man is dying, Curtis. Get it? It doesn’t matter what you do or you don’t do.

It does matter, Curtis says. It matters to me.

Kagami doesn’t respond. He’s staring at the night, looking very sad and very tired. Smoke rises from the ash of his cigar in a solid wavering column, like the ghost-white proboscis of butterfly, until the HVAC whisks it away. Curtis is watching it snake toward the ceiling when he notices a low rumble of turbofans outside. He looks out the window, searching the sky for moving lights.

Recognize that? Kagami says.

Curtis listens hard, then shakes his head.

New stealth fighter. I’m pretty sure. Haven’t seen it yet.

The sound of the engines fades. Heard any news about the war? Curtis asks.

Kagami shifts in his chair, leans forward. Curtis can see him getting comfortable, shuffling facts in his head, winding himself up for another practiced run of summary and analysis. Then he stops, like he’s tapped out, like he just doesn’t have it in him. Curtis, he says, when’s the last time you talked to Damon?

I got a fax from him this morning. I haven’t talked to him since I been out here. He’s not returning my calls.

The waitress passes, and Kagami signals for the check, scribbling on an imaginary pad with the cigar. Then he lifts the panatela to his lips, takes a series of quick puffs, and crushes the stub in the cutglass tray.

Listen, kid, he says. Stanley’s gone. He left town this morning, before dawn. I dropped him at McCarran myself. He didn’t say where he was going, and I didn’t ask, but my guess is that he went back to AC to settle with Damon. I think he’s done about all the hiding out he can stand.

Veronica’s still here. I just saw her.

Well, she would be, right? If Veronica and Stanley both have the goods on Damon, then they’re gonna split up. They become each other’s insurance.

I figured they’d be watching each other’s back.

Kagami shakes his head. You got this all wrong, he says. You’re still talking about Stanley and Veronica like they’re regular people. They’re not. Different set of rules, different set of concerns. You’ve put yourself in a bad spot here. You want me to believe that you’re a stand-up guy, that you’re not some kind of thug? Okay. Be a stand-up guy. Go home to your wife. You can’t help Stanley, kid. You don’t have the juice. Not here, not anywhere. And that’s not something to be ashamed of, believe me. The best thing you can do for him is to forget about all of this. We’re not talking about your old Uncle Stanley who used to do magic tricks. You’re not in that scene anymore. I could tell you some stories. But I won’t. Because he wouldn’t want me to.

The check comes. Kagami lays a crisp bill in the plastic tray.

I will tell you this, he says. I heard this one maybe a year or two before I even met Stanley. Back when he was still a very young guy, he was in this poker game in Pasadena—

Stanley doesn’t play poker.

He did back then. He was never any good at it, so he quit. To play poker you have to understand people. Stanley doesn’t. It took him a while to figure that out. So. He’s in this poker game in Pasadena. Underground casino, very exclusive. And he’s not doing so great. The pots are bigger than he counted on. So he asks the house for a marker. And they just laugh at him. Come back when you can afford to play here, kid. Okay. Stanley gets up, walks over to the roulette wheel. Roulette’s a pure game of chance, right? No skill involved. Stanley takes a hundred bucks—four green chips, lot of money for a young kid in those days—and as soon as the ball drops, he puts them on four numbers. Bam-bam-bam-bam. So fast you can hardly see his hands move. The numbers are all over the board—but on the wheel, they’re consecutive. Right? One of his numbers hits. Now he’s got eight black chips. Then, right after the croupier drops the ball again, Stanley splits that stack across four more numbers. Also consecutive on the wheel. And one of those numbers comes up. Seven thousand dollars. He asks them to double the table limit. They call the boss. Boss says okay, but we’re switching croupiers. They bring in the new guy, new guy turns the ball loose, Stanley does it again. He’s sitting on twenty-one grand, and he asks them again to double the limit. Don’t you want your money back? Sure they do. And all of a sudden he’s got over fifty thousand dollars in front of him. By this point the place is shut down. Nobody is playing but Stanley. Everybody in the casino—bartenders, musicians—is gathered around that table. Stanley says he wants the limit upped again, he wants to bet twenty grand. Boss thinks about it, and says okay, but you gotta move to a different table. New table, new croupier. The ball drops. Stanley puts down his four stacks of big nickels. These stacks, he can barely fit his hands around them. The place is like a church. Dead silent, except for that clicking wheel. And then it explodes. Stanley Glass has just won a little over two hundred thousand dollars in five consecutive spins. The dealers are all looking at each other, wondering if they’re gonna have jobs tomorrow. It’s obvious that if Stanley keeps playing he’ll wind up owning the joint. Stanley collects his take, he looks up at the boss, and he says, Do you want to keep playing here, or do you want to let me back into your f*cking poker game? This happens, I believe, in 1961. Stanley is nineteen years old.