Grifter's Game Read Online Free PDF Page B

wanted to.
    “I’ll … I’ll get in touch with you. Somehow. But I have to go back now.”
    “To Keith.”
    “To Keith,” she echoed. “To being his wife. To being Mrs. L. Keith Brassard.”
    I barely heard her. I watched her go, watched that perfect, half-whore, half-lady walk of hers carry her up the beach alongside the pier. I watched her and thought about her and thought about myself, and I wondered what had happened to the two of us, and what was going to happen from here on in.
    She was almost to the Boardwalk before I remembered her final words and realized hysterically just who her husband was.
    L. Keith Brassard.

3
    I folded the blanket very methodically until it was a little cushion two feet square. I planted my rump on it and sat at the edge of the shore looking out on the water. I wanted to run out into the water and swim like a maniac until I wound up in some place that was not Atlantic City.
    He’s a businessman. An office downtown on Chambers Street. I don’t even know what he does.
    She would be back by now, taking the elevator up to her room. I wondered where her room was. Maybe it was on the same floor as mine.
    He goes downtown a few times a week. He never talks about the business, never gets mail at the house or brings work home. He says he buys things and he sells them. That’s all he says.
    I wondered whether or not he had told her about the missing suitcases. It was pretty obvious she didn’t know anything about the heroin. If his suitcases were stolen, that wouldn’t mean a thing to her. A man who bought her a sable coat, an ermine coat and a chinchilla stole undoubtedly could replace the contents of two suitcases without taxing his budget. A man who lived in Cheshire Point luxury could afford to buy himself a few more suits and a new batch of underwear.
    I thought about him and I thought about her and I thought about me. We were each pretty special. L. Keith Brassard—an import-export man with a new slant on life, a tall man in narcotics with a pretty wife and a perfect front. Mona Brassard—a dryness in the throat and a moistness in the palm of the hand, a sweetness that caught at you and strangled you. She wanted me and she wanted money and I don’t know how in hell she could have us both.
    And Joe Marlin. That was my name, before it was David Gavilan, before it was Leonard K. Blake, before a lot of names. Do names matter? They never did.
    But for some damned reason I wanted her to call me Joe.
    We were cuties, Dave and Lennie and I. We had the white powder and we had the warm woman. We were riding free and loose. We had everything but a future.
    I smoked a cigarette all the way down and threw the butt in the ocean. Then I stuffed the hotel’s blanket under the pier and walked back to the Boardwalk.
    I picked up the phone in my room and asked room service for a bottle of Jack Daniels and a pail of ice and a glass. I sat down in a chair then and waited for something to happen. The air conditioning was turned all the way up and the room was well on its way to becoming a refrigerator.
    There was a knock at the door. The bellhop was there, a wiry kid with quick eyes. He put the bottle of bourbon and the bucket of ice on the dresser, then gave me the tab. I signed for it and handed him a dollar.
    Except for the eyes he was a college boy on summer vacation. The eyes knew too much.
    “Thanks,” he said. Then, “Anything you want, I can get it for you. The name is Ralph.”
    He left and I settled down with the Jack Daniels.
    I put a pair of ice cubes in a water tumbler and poured three ounces of bourbon over them. While the ice cooled the liquor I sat back in a chair and thought about things. Then I started my drink. The liquor was smooth as silk. The label on the bottle said they filtered it through charcoal or something. Whatever they did to it, it worked.
    I drank some more and smoked a little. The liquor loosened me up until my mind started working again, fishing around for answers,