Stanley doesn’t play poker.
He did back then. He was never any good at it, so he quit. To play poker you have to understand people. Stanley doesn’t. It took him a while to figure that out. So. He’s in this poker game in Pasadena. Underground casino, very exclusive. And he’s not doing so great. The pots are bigger than he counted on. So he asks the house for a marker. And they just laugh at him. Come back when you can afford to play here, kid. Okay. Stanley gets up, walks over to the roulette wheel. Roulette’s a pure game of chance, right? No skill involved. Stanley takes a hundred bucks—four green chips, lot of money for a young kid in those days—and as soon as the ball drops, he puts them on four numbers. Bam-bam-bam-bam. So fast you can hardly see his hands move. The numbers are all over the board—but on the wheel, they’re consecutive. Right? One of his numbers hits. Now he’s got eight black chips. Then, right after the croupier drops the ball again, Stanley splits that stack across four more numbers. Also consecutive on the wheel. And one of those numbers comes up. Seven thousand dollars. He asks them to double the table limit. They call the boss. Boss says okay, but we’re switching croupiers. They bring in the new guy, new guy turns the ball loose, Stanley does it again. He’s sitting on twenty-one grand, and he asks them again to double the limit. Don’t you want your money back? Sure they do. And all of a sudden he’s got over fifty thousand dollars in front of him. By this point the place is shut down. Nobody is playing but Stanley. Everybody in the casino—bartenders, musicians—is gathered around that table. Stanley says he wants the limit upped again, he wants to bet twenty grand. Boss thinks about it, and says okay, but you gotta move to a different table. New table, new croupier. The ball drops. Stanley puts down his four stacks of big nickels. These stacks, he can barely fit his hands around them. The place is like a church. Dead silent, except for that clicking wheel. And then it explodes. Stanley Glass has just won a little over two hundred thousand dollars in five consecutive spins. The dealers are all looking at each other, wondering if they’re gonna have jobs tomorrow. It’s obvious that if Stanley keeps playing he’ll wind up owning the joint. Stanley collects his take, he looks up at the boss, and he says, Do you want to keep playing here, or do you want to let me back into your fucking poker game? This happens, I believe, in 1961. Stanley is nineteen years old.
The waitress comes back. Kagami waves away his change. He puts his elbows on the table, looks out the window.
How did he do it? Curtis says.
What do you mean?
I mean, what was the trick?
Kagami gives Curtis a smug smile, lowers his voice, leans closer. The trick was, he says, there was no trick. Stanley saw where the ball was going to go.
Curtis blinks. How is that possible? he says.
With an open-palmed shrug, Kagami sags back into his chair. All Stanley’s abracadabra gobbledygook, he says. I used to think it was misdirection. Then I thought, maybe it’s real magic—like he was trying to make impossible things happen. Now I think it’s something else. Impossible stuff happens in Stanley’s world all the time. It’s no big deal to him. I think the magic is him trying to make sense of his world. Which is a very different place from the world you and I live in. And which is maybe some pretty lonely territory for a sick old man.
Curtis nods, then knocks back the last of his ginger ale. The combo is back on: Sleepy John Estes, barely recognizable. Lord, I never will forget that floating bridge. The piano and the bass are barely playing, setting soft suspended sevenths adrift over the clatter and murmur of the tabletops. They tell me five minutes’ time underwater I was hid. Beneath the music, the big windows shiver with a distant afterburner growl.
It’s getting late, Kagami says. Let me give you a lift back to your hotel.
38
Curtis’s sleep feels nothing like sleep, only a rapid and jittery dream-ridden wakefulness. He’s on a narrow cobblestone street, moonlit and shadowed, Stanley at one end, Damon at the other. There’s an explosion, a pillow-muffled boom, and Curtis is in midair, suspended like one of the fake-fresco angels on the ceiling of the hotel lobby, jumping in front of the bullet. He jolts awake before it hits, not sure if he got to it in time, not sure who was shooting whom.
Still dark outside. He’s pressed every button on the bedside clock-radio before he recognizes the sound of his cellphone. Throwing off the tangled sheets, he reaches for the little well of pale blue light on the dresser, picks it up before the voicemail kicks in, glances at the display—Whistler—and answers. Yeah, he says.
Good morning, Curtis. Hope I didn’t wake you.
Curtis unplugs the charger, stumbles to the wall, finds a lightswitch. Rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand. What’s up? he says.
I want to meet.