The night we were steaming toward Plymouth, a steward came to Jack's room with a message from the captain that the British authorities had definitely proclaimed Jack persona non grata. Stay out, you bum. The message jolted him, for it suddenly put our destination in jeopardy. What would Belgium do? And Germany?
Jack came to my stateroom and said he wanted to go up on deck and talk, that he didn't trust the walls. So we walked in the sea-sweetened night along the main deck where a few night walkers took the air, most memorably a rheumatic old aristocratic woman with a belief in the curative power of voyaging that was so religious she left her deckchair only during storms and meals, and to sleep and, I presume, to pee. She chewed tobacco and had a small pewter spittoon alongside her chair which she would I pick up and spit her little bloody gobs into in a most feminine manner, that is, through taut, narrow lips. She was the only witness to my conversation with Jack, and her presence and periodic spitting were the only intrusions on our conversation, apart from the splash of the sea, as we talked and walked, up and then back, in our desolated section of deck. We talked only of Jack's rejection by England until he decided to get to the point. 'Marcus, I want you to do me a favor.'
'A legal one?'
'No.'
'I thought as much. The jewels. I told you I want no part of it, Jack.'
'Listen to me. This is a lot of money. Do you believe in money?'
'I do.'
'So do I. '
'But I don't want to go to jail to get it.'
'How many lawyers you know ever went to jail?'
'A few, and you'd have a point if we were back in Albany.'
'I told you a long time ago you were a thief in your heart.'
'No, we're still not talking about thievery.'
'Right. This is just a proposition. You don't have to take it.'
Jack then took from his inside coat pocket a long slender box, and we paused under one of the wall lights so I could view its contents: an array of gems, rings, and necklaces. Some jewel thief had stolen them, fenced them, and they'd found their way to Jack, the internationalist, who would refence them in Europe. I knew he hadn't stolen them. He wasn't above such activity, just afield of it. No longer a burglar. He'd failed at that as a teen-ager and graduated to the activity that conformed to his talent, which was not stealth but menace.
'They don't take up much space,' Jack said, and I nodded and made no answer.
'I planned to get rid of them in Brussels, but they're too hot to carry. I mean look at that'-and he held up a ruby for me to admire. 'It's kind of famous, I'm told, and where it came from is even more famous.'
'I don't think I'm interested.'
'My suitcase has special bindings for this stuff. You could get it off the boat and through customs. But not me, not now.'
I toyed with it. NOTED UPSTATE LAWYER CAUGHT WITH MRS. ASTOR'S FAVORITE RUBY, Or was it Mrs. Carnegie's? Or that tobacco-chewing lady aristocrat behind us, whoever she might be?
'If you don't handle them, I dump them. Now.'
'Dump them?'
'Overboard.'
''Christ, why do that'? Why not hide them in a chandelier and come back later for them? Isn't that how it's done?'
'Fuck 'em,' Jack said. 'I don't want anything to do with this goddamn boat again once I get off it. It's a jinx.'
'A jinx? You don't really believe in jinxes.'
'I'd be fucking well dead if I didn't. Are you game? Yes or no. '
'No.'
He walked to the railing and I trailed him, expecting the next ploy in the act. A final appeal to my greed.
'You wanna watch?' he said, and so I moved alongside him in time to see him tip the box and see, yes, jewels falling, a few, and disappearing in shadow long before they hit the water. He tipped the box further and a few more plummeted toward the deep, then he shook it empty, looked at me, and, while looking, let the box flutter toward the water. It flipped a few times, made a silent plop we could see because it was white, and was then glommed by the blackness.
Jack was in shirtsleeves, sitting alone at the card table where Classy Willie fleeced the suckers, when I came up for brunch one day. I ate and then watched Jack playing solitaire and losing. I sat across from him and said, 'I was planning to get off this tub and go home, but I think I'll stay on for the full treatment. '
'Good. What changed your mind?'
'I don't know. Maybe the jewels. But I think I decided to trust you. Is that a mistake'?'
'Trust me with anything but women and money.'
'I also want a straight answer on Charlie Northrup. Is that asking too much?'
Jack mused, then with high seriousness said, 'I think he's dead. But I'm not sure. If he's dead, it wasn't murder. That I am sure of.'
'That's straight?'
'That's as straight as I can say it.'
'Then I guess I have to believe it. Deal the cards.'
He picked them up and shuffled. 'Blackjack,' he said and, after burying a card, dealt us both a hand. I had eighteen. He had twenty, which he showed me before I could bet. I looked blank and he said only, 'Watch,' and then dealt six hands, face up. I got between thirteen and seventeen in all six. He got twenty four times and two blackjacks.
'Impressive. Are you always that lucky?'
'They're marked,' he said. 'Never play cards with a thief.' He tossed the deck on the table, leaned back, and looked at me.
'You think I killed Northrup.”'
'You say you didn't. I told you I accept that,'
'You don't convince me.'
'Maybe it's the other way around.'
He put his coat on and stood up. 'Let's go out on deck. I'll tell you a couple of stories.' I followed and we found our way back to the desolate spot where he'd dumped the jewels. The old lady was there, and it was still as private as any place on deck.
'How are you today?' Jack said to the old dame, who took the remark first as an intrusion, then looked at Jack as if he were invisible. He shrugged and we walked to the rail and looked down at the waves and at our foamy wake.
'I dumped a guy in the water once over marked cards.'
I nodded, waited. He stared out at the ocean and went on: 'A card game in a hotel. It was the first time I ever met Rothstein. I was working as a strikebreaker with Little Augie, breakin' heads, just out of jail. A bum. I was a bum. Augie says to me, 'You wanna work strongarm at a card game?' And I said all right and he sent me to this hotel room and there's Rothstein, the cocksucker, and he says to me, 'What happened to your head?' 'Nothin' happened to it,' I said. 'That haircut,' he said. 'You look like a skinned rabbit, skinned by somebody who don't know how to skin. Get a haircut for pity's sake.' Can you imagine that son of a bitch? He's got seventy-six grand in his pocket, he told me so, and he tells me get a haircut. Arrogant bastard. He was right about the haircut. A barber- school job. Awful. I tell you I was a bum on the street and I looked like one. But he made me feel like a zero.
'So the game went on and there's this high roller-let me call him Wilson-who's challenging Rothstein. There's other players, but he wants to beat A. R., who's the king. And he's doing it. Wins eleven thousand one hand, eight
