some thick apple cake thing.
The room had a bar fire. Books lined the walls. A globe and worn rugs lent a medieval air. It could have been any century, except for his electric kettle and the water problem.
“You wondering why I have only one table lamp?”
“You have a question nobody answers, that’s suffering. So I’ll tell you. I have only one table lamp because electric’s had it good too long. I could afford two, three, a dozen. Count the lights in this house. I could have them on every minute every day, but why should I? The electric company’s better than the water company? Don’t insult my intelligence, Lovejoy. Eat. You’ve a way to go.”
“Thanks, Mr Sokolowsky.” It was good, a sort of thick apple pie. Was it the famous strudel they mention in pictures?
“You got killed in New Orleans, Lovejoy. I for one don’t believe it. I didn’t then, I don’t now.” He spoke with a grandfather’s comforting gravity, everything debatable whatever the evidence of your senses.
“No. I made it.” Somebody had reported I’d got topped. Hirschman wouldn’t have, so it must have been the goons themselves. Perhaps they’d have copped it from their bosses if they’d reported a failure? To them I was only a stranger passing through, my killing a job to be paid for and forgotten.
“I thought as much.” He was in a rocking chair. He plucked occasionally at his shawl, the habit of age. “You see this street, Lovejoy? The notices, what they write?”
“There were lots of posters —”
“And such posters,” he said severely. “You read them? Karate lessons? Chinese contemplation? Gays, lesbians? Macrobiotic cooking? This is civilization they learn Chinese think, can’t think American a’ready?”
“Well, I suppose change is everywhere —”
“Run, Lovejoy,” the old man said sadly. “Run.”
I’d lost the thread. “Eh?” He’d just been talking about cooking.
“Run.” He reached and closed the book on his small table. “Lovejoy. They’ll know you’re alive sooner or later. My advice is run, run till you’ve no need. Then you can stop. It’s life. I’m telling you because I know.”
“I don’t know what I’m running from, Mr Sokolowsky.”
He removed his spectacles, replaced them. “That’s something I don’t know, Lovejoy.”
“Run where?” He knew I was honestly asking.
“My advice isn’t good, Lovejoy. So tell me what you’ve done since you didn’t die.”
More or less, I told. He poured more tea, holding up his kettle to condemn the water company. I worried it was all some delaying tactic to keep me here while he secretly signalled Tye and Al and Shelt.
“The California Game’s a legend, Lovejoy,” he said at last. “I’ve lived a lifetime and can tell you legends are nothing but trouble. Like New York’s water supply,” he interposed bitterly. “Legends you’ve got to handle like bombs. Cover them up, hide from their effects. The rest of the time, ignore them. But their fame spreads. People want to walk with legends. See the problem?”
“Publicity would prevent the California Game.”
He sighed as only old Sokolowskys can sigh.
“You’re teaching me, Lovejoy? Oy vey. You know so much, you’re running from you don’t know with nothing in a strange land?”
“I apologize.”
“No hard feelings. Manners I remember.” I had a sudden image of him elsewhere, fumbling for a fire tiger to poke some nonexistent fire. “The California Game’s the biggest and most illegal. Take a fraction of every business in America, that’s the stake. It’s always simple faro—you know faro? Your win, my win. Nothing simpler, the one game nobody can cheat, no skill required.”
“Faro?” I’d had visions of some exotic protracted gambling game lasting through nights of smoke and drinks.
“One card’s chosen as marker. Everybody sees it. You deal a new deck into two separate piles, one your win pile, one your loser. Whichever pile the marker card falls into, so you’ve won or lost.”
“Is it worth it?” I’d heard of the great poker championship in Las Vegas, with fans saving a lifetime to enter. “You might as well do it by phone.”
“It’s a secure way of passing power, Lovejoy. Handing over power’s where all trouble starts.”
“Whoever wins gets the hacks?”
“And decides who can play next time. Nicko won last year.” His gaze was the saddest gaze I’d ever seen. “This hurts me to say, Lovejoy. Go from here. I’ve to phone or they kill me. I’ll give you time. But go now.”
I thought I’d misheard, reluctantly decided I hadn’t. I finished my tea, thanked him.
“You need a loan, Lovejoy, speak this side of the door.”
“No, thanks.” I paused in the dimly lit corridor. “If you were me, where would you go until daylight?”
“There’s all-nighters. Tell jokes until dawn. Here in America there’s so much to laugh at.” His expression was sobriety itself.
“Thanks, Mr Sokolowsky. Maybe there’ll be a time…”
“Maybe, Lovejoy,” he agreed, and I was out and on my own.
THAT night I walked, was accosted intermittently by figures and shapes that frightened me. I lurked in all-night
