The Chalk Girl

and that got their attention. So it came as no surprise to the other players when he announced, ‘Tonight we play cutthroat. The name of the game is five-card stud.’ Mallory’s favorite. Back in her puppy days, she had walked in on a game in the station-house lunchroom, and not Lou’s kinder, gentler brand of poker. That day, Riker, with an eye for raw talent, had staked the child to a seat at the table with men who carried real cash and guns. Now he reiterated little Kathy’s rule. ‘No stupid wild cards.’

No mercy.

The first bets were made on the two cards dealt to each of them, one faceup and the hole card facedown. Nickel chips clicked into a pile at the center of the table. When the doctor’s turn came round, he raised them all by a dime. What a shark. The detective finished off the deal with three more cards to every player, and they all wanted in, perhaps forgetting that weather conditions and moon cycles no longer improved their chances.

Riker liked his hand, and he was standing pat. ‘Cards? Anybody?’ He dealt them to takers with discards all around the clockwise circle. The last one he dealt to the doctor, and he leaned toward the man, lowering his voice to say, ‘Just so you know – Mallory’s the one who wants to keep Toby Wilder alive. But she won’t ask you for help. I guess she figures you don’t owe her any favors.’

For a moment, it seemed as though even Dr Slope’s cigar smoke was frozen.

No one despised junkies more than Mallory did. The doctor must find it curious that she would want one for a pet. Riker had also wondered about that. He could not always follow the plays of his partner’s old game with Slope, one that had begun in her childhood – scorched-earth warfare.

With the next raise of the bet, Robin Duffy folded his cards to bow out of this round, and he did it with a smile. ‘Is Kathy coming tonight?’

‘No,’ said Riker, ‘she’s pissed off at you guys. I’m just keeping her seat warm till she gets over it.’

The retired lawyer was stunned. ‘Why would Kathy be mad at us?’

‘Well, maybe not you.’ Who could be mad at Duffy? Riker turned to Charles Butler. ‘But you did your best to sabotage her case.’ And when the man could make no sense of this, the detective gave him a hint. ‘Coco? Mallory’s material witness?’ With a nod to the rabbi, he said, ‘And I hear you did your part. Talking to a judge behind her back? That was—’

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’ David Kaplan had a wounded look as he pressed one hand to his breast, his heart. ‘Kathy ratted on me?’ And when the man smiled and raised the bet, that was Riker’s clue that the rabbi would run the best bluff in the game. But that was not saying much – not in this crew.

‘David’s not to blame,’ said Charles Butler. ‘It was all my doing. That child has special needs. She—’

‘The kid needed protection, and she got it – from Mallory.’ This dropped bomb was a reminder that his partner had risked her badge to keep Rolland Mann away from Coco. And now for the kill shot, Riker reached out and flicked Charles’s cards with one finger. ‘You got nothin’.’

A deep blush confirmed this, and the psychologist laid down his cards, saying, ‘I’m out.’

Two players down – two to go.

Riker looked at his own cards and grinned like a winner, the same grin he wore when aiming his gun, a fair warning for hardened felons to give up or else. And the rabbi folded.

Only the doctor would not back down. And that had been predictable. Edward Slope was known to be reckless and daring with nickels and dimes.

The bet was raised again as Riker pushed all his chips to the center of the table. ‘I can guess why Mallory’s pissed off at you, Doc. You had to jerk her around on those autopsies.’ The detective stared at his cards, head shaking. ‘Naw, that’s not it. Sniper shots across dead bodies – that’s just business as usual with you two. Maybe I missed something?’ He smiled at the doctor. ‘What did you do to her?’

Edward Slope was all in to the last nickel chip when the cards were called. He laid down a pair of tens – and lost everything. Riker turned up his hole card to show the man three of a kind. And now the detective finally understood what Lou had meant when the old man once said that he had to cheat to lose to these guys.

The doctor’s cache was gone, and he could buy no more chips. This was the most sacred rule of the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game, and no man would break it. So now Dr Slope must sit out the rest of an evening that had just begun.

‘Doc?’ Riker gathered up the deck and shuffled it. ‘How about a side bet? Fast game of high card.’ He tapped the admission form for Toby Wilder. ‘This against everything I got.’

Slope, who saw himself as a reincarnated riverboat gambler – yeah, right – would not be able to resist a play like that one. He looked to his friends, and there were nods all around the table. The other players had no problem with this loophole in the old rule.

Riker cut the deck and palmed a queen so that he could play a lowly three of hearts, though he had been told he could draw a worse card and still win. When Slope cut the deck, the detective could see, by the tell of flickered eyes, that the doctor’s card was way higher.

‘You win,’ said Edward Slope to the detective who had surely lost. The doctor covered his unshown card with the rest of the deck and shuffled twice. After signing the junkie’s admission form, he crumpled up the voucher. ‘No charge to the city. I have rules. The boy’s on scholarship.’

Charles Butler leaned toward his friend. ‘Edward, I could write a check to cover the—’

‘No, you couldn’t.’ The doctor, a gentleman who paid his own debts – whether he owed them or not – handed the admission form to Riker.

The detective had what he came for, and now he took his leave.

Well played.

Charles Butler could only speculate on Edward’s reason for throwing the game of high card. The good doctor fancied that he was born with a poker face that gave away no tells, but Charles could tell. What had his friend done to Mallory to account for such a guilty present? He might wager that even Riker would have no idea.

Ah, but just now, Charles was feeling his own remorse in matters of fireflies and shoelaces. On the following evening, he would go to Mallory’s apartment with flowers in hand, his tokens of regret, and she would not be at home to him. But one night, the tenth or a twelfth night, she would open the door, and they would begin again as strangers, for he would not presume to know her.

He stood by the window, watching Riker slouch down the Brooklyn sidewalk, no doubt heading for a subway station. In this modern world, what the detective had done tonight might be called quaint and courtly. The man had avenged fair lady and won her a prize, and he had done this in a way that Mallory never could have managed. For one thing, the event was bloodless. And shame was not a word in her lexicon, nor a weapon in her arsenal.

Riker came to the end of the rabbi’s tree-lined block and turned a corner. He bowed down to the open window of his partner’s personal car. ‘It worked – play for play.’ Climbing into the passenger seat, he handed over his winnings, the admission form for Toby Wilder’s drug program. ‘So now will you tell me? Why did Dr Slope have to win – so he could lose?’

Mallory lowered the silver convertible’s ragtop and turned up the radio, killing the idea of more conversation as they rolled through the neighborhood of lighted windows and green lawns.

He had run a game on the doctor with absolute faith in Mallory’s script, but he had no clue why it had to end with Edward Slope’s own beau geste. The detective was forced to reach into his store of old Gary Cooper movie titles to find those foreign words for the handsome gesture that would not abide any thanks. Though the idea of blackmail worked much better. Did Mallory have something on the doctor? No. It was too hard to imagine the chief medical examiner making a single misstep. Maybe the man did owe her a favor.

There was no point in asking; she would never say. He only turned his head in her direction, and the volume of the radio was jacked up higher.

Blasting tunes of rock ’n’ roll, they sailed across the Brooklyn Bridge decked out in strings of light running all the way to Manhattan. A beautiful night. Wasted on him. His thoughts were still on the game of high card. Blackmail or payback – why not call in her own damn chips? Had she sent in a proxy to save the doctor’s face? No. Their whole game, Slope’s and Mallory’s, was one protracted round of dodging knives and bullets; any show of civility would cost her points. So what was tonight all about? Only one thing was certain: The junkie’s welfare was incidental. Mallory cared nothing about Toby Wilder now that her case was wrapped. She placed all his kind just below the level of a bug’s kneecaps.