“OH, I AM TERRIBLY sorry, Mr. Bell. We skipped your turn to fold your cards.”
“That’s all right, Senator. I saw you just barely catch the train at Ogden. You’re probably still in a rush.”
“I thought I saw a detective hanging off the side. Dangerous work, Mr. Bell.”
“Not until a criminal hammers on one’s fingers.”
“The bet,” growled Judge Congdon impatiently, “is my three thousand six hundred dollars plus Senator Kincaid’s ten thousand eight hundred dollars, which makes the bet to Mr. Bell fourteen thousand four hundred dollars.”
Payne interrupted to intone, “The pot, which includes Senator Kincaid’s call, is now twenty-one thousand six hundred dollars.”
Payne’s calculations were hardly necessary. Even the richest, most carefree men at the table were aware that twenty-one thousand six hundred dollars was enough money to purchase the locomotive hauling their train and maybe one of the Pullmans.
“Mr. Bell,” said Judge Congdon. “We await your response.”
“I call your bet, Judge, and Senator Kincaid’s ten-thousand-eight-hundred-dollar raise,” said Bell, “making the pot thirty-six thousand dollars, which I raise.”
“You
“Thirty-six thousand dollars.”
Bell’s reward was the pleasure of seeing the jaws of a United States senator and the richest steel baron in America drop in unison.
“The pot is now seventy-two thousand dollars,” calculated Mr. Payne.
A deep silence pervaded the stateroom. All that could be heard was the muffled clatter of the wheels. Judge Congdon’s wrinkled hand crept into his breast pocket and emerged with a bank check. He took a gold fountain pen from another pocket, uncapped it, and slowly wrote a number on his check. Then he signed his name, blew on the paper to dry the ink, and smiled.
“I call your thirty-six-thousand-dollar raise, Mr. Bell, and the Senator’s ten thousand eight hundred, which by now seems a paltry sum, and I raise one hundred eighteen thousand eight hundred dollars … Senator Kincaid, it’s to you. My raise and Mr. Bell’s raise means it will cost you one hundred fifty-four thousand eight hundred dollars to stay in the hand.”
“Good God,” said Payne.
“Whatcha gonna do, Charlie?” asked Congdon. “One hundred fifty-four thousand eight hundred dollars if you want to play.”
“Call,” Kincaid said stiffly, scribbling the number on his calling card and tossing it on the heap of gold.
“No raise?” Congdon mocked.
“You heard me.”
Congdon turned his dry smile on Bell. “Mr. Bell, my raise was one hundred eighteen thousand eight hundred dollars.”
Bell smiled back, concealing the thought that merely to call would put a deep dent in his personal fortune. To raise would deepen it dangerously.
Judge James Congdon was one of the richest men in America. If Bell did raise, there was nothing to stop the man from raising him back and wiping him out.
17
“MR. PAYNE,” ASKED ISAAC BELL. “HOW MUCH MONEY IS IN the pot?”
“Well, let me see … The pot now contains two hundred thirty-seven thousand six hundred dollars.”
Bell mentally counted steelworkers. Four hundred men together could earn that pot in a good year. Ten men, if they were fortunate enough to survive long working lives uninterrupted by injury and lay-off, might together earn that amount between boyhood and old age.
Congdon asked innocently, “Mr. Payne, what will the pot contain if Mr. Bell continues to believe that his two- card draw improved him sufficiently to call?”
“Umm, the pot would contain four hundred seventy-five thousand two hundred dollars.”
“Nearly half a million dollars,” said the judge. “This is turning into real money.”
Bell decided that Congdon was talking too much. The hard old steel baron actually sounded nervous. Like a man holding a straight, which, in pat-hand terms, was at the bottom of the barrel. “May I presume, sir, that you will accept my check on the American States Bank of Boston?”
“Of course, son. We’re all gentlemen here.”
“I call, and I raise four hundred seventy-five thousand two hundred dollars.”
“I’m skunked,” said Congdon, throwing his cards on the table.
Kincaid smiled, obviously relieved that Congdon was out of the hand.
“How many cards did you take, Mr. Bell?”
“Two.”
Kincaid stared for a long time at the cards Bell cupped in his hand. When Bell looked up, he let his mind stray, which made it easier to appear unconcerned whether Kincaid called or folded.
The Pullman car was swaying due to an increase in speed. The muffling effect of the rugs and furniture in the palatial stateroom tended to mask the fact that they had accelerated to eighty miles an hour on the flats of Wyoming’s Great Divide Basin. Bell knew this arid, windblown high country well, having spent months on horseback tracking the Wild Bunch.
Kincaid’s fingers strayed toward the vest pocket where he kept his calling cards. The man had large hands, Bell noticed. And powerful wrists.
“That is a lot of money,” the Senator said.
“A lot for a public servant,” Congdon agreed. Annoyed that he had been forced out of the hand, he added another unpleasant reference to the Senator’s railroad stocks. “Even one with ‘interests’ on the side.”
Payne repeated Congdon’s estimate. “Nearly half a million dollars.”
“Serious money in these days of panic, with the markets falling,” Congdon added.
“Mr. Bell,” asked Kincaid, “what does a detective hanging off the side of a train do when a criminal starts hammering on his fingers?”
“Depends,” said Bell.
“On what?”
“On whether he’s been trained to fly.”
Kenny Bloom laughed.
Kincaid’s eyes never left Bell’s face. “Have you been trained to fly?”
“Not yet.”
“So what do you do?”
“I hammer back,” said Bell.
“I believe you do,” said Kincaid. “I fold.”
Still expressionless, Bell laid his cards facedown on the table and raked in nine hundred fifty thousand four hundred dollars in gold, markers, and checks, including his own. Kincaid reached for Bell’s cards. Bell placed his hand firmly on top of them.
“Curious what you had under there,” said Kincaid.
“So am I,” said Congdon. “Surely you weren’t bluffing against two pat hands.”
“It crossed my mind that the pat hands were bluffing, Judge.”
“I sure as hell wasn’t bluffing,” said Kincaid. “I had a very pretty heart flush.”
He turned his cards over and spread them faceup so all could see.
“God Almighty, Senator!” said Payne, “Eight, nine, ten, jack, king. Just one short of a straight flush. You’d sure as hell have raised back with that.”
