THE HAUL
Gary Phillips
Available July 14, 2026
A professional thief takes the chance of a lifetime when he agrees to mastermind the raid of a tech billionaire’s secret bunker in this actionpacked heist thriller set in the heart of contemporary Los Angeles.
THE HAUL GARY PHILLIPS
Published by Soho Press, Inc.
227 W 17th Street
New York, NY 10011
www.sohopress.com
Copyright © 2026 by Gary Phillips
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Phillips, Gary, 1955- author
Title: The haul / Gary Phillips.
Description: New York, NY : Soho Crime, 2026.
Identifiers: LCCN 2026009011
ISBN 978-1-64129-664-9
eISBN 978-1-64129-665-6
Subjects: LCGFT: Thrillers (Fiction) | Novels
Classification: LCC PS3566.H4783 H38 2026
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2026009011
Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8
To Millard Kaufman, a true teller of tales
“ !e worst thing you can do with money is not spend it.”
—Jackie Gleason
Now
On a pleasant afternoon, on a converted tennis court in Hemet, California, O’Conner and his partner—old lady, he would say, but knew better—Gwen Gardner played a doubles game of pickleball against another couple. Gardner served. The ball was returned. O’Conner dashed and hit the ball back over the net after it bounced. The ball looped into the air, then plummeted down close to the net on the side of their opponents. But Jane Grainger-Brill was ready and with an underhanded swat of her paddle, connected. The ball once more cleared the net. This time, Gardner’s paddle whacked the ball before it could bounce. The ball rocketed between the other two on the far side of the court, where it struck the ground, unreturned.
“That’s game, dang it,” Steve Brill declared amiably.
“Nice shot, sweetie,” O’Conner said, giving Gardner a peck. They’d won best two out of three. They touched paddles all around, chatting while they put their gear away and gathered their light equipment bags. O’Conner’s phone sounded as he walked off the court. Removing it from his
bag, he regarded the screen as he turned the alert off. He’d been expecting the call.
“Business?” Jane asked. To her, O’Conner was VP of operations for his girlfriend’s chain of auto body shops.
“Just an inventory snafu I reminded myself to attend to today,” he said, tucking the phone away. “Traffic is going to be stop and go. Looks like I better get on the road now. Can you guys give Gwen a ride home?”
The couple also lived in Willow Ridge, the housing subdivision here where O’Conner and Gardner owned a townhouse.
Gardner put her arm around O’Conner’s waist. It seemed less a gesture of affection and more to reassure herself. She let go and said to the other two, “Let’s get brunch.” To O’Conner, she said, “Let me know how it goes.”
“Of course I will.”
“You have to leave now?” Steve asked. “It didn’t sound that serious.”
“It’s not,” O’Conner answered. “But what with quarterly reports due, better to see about it now than let it fester.” He grinned. “I’ve got a slave driver for a boss.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” Steve said, also smiling. He put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. They regarded each other briefly, having picked up on the shift in their friends’ mood.
Hands interlaced, O’Conner and Gardner walked a length away. After a few words to each other, they kissed again, deeper and longer.
“Make sure you charge up the Bat Phone,” O’Conner said, face close to hers.
“Does that make me Robin or Batwoman?”
“Makes you whoever you want to be.”
“You’re goddamn right it does.”
After dealing with traffic and alternate routes, O’Conner entered the restaurant amid the welcoming din of conversing diners, ice tinkling in tall glasses and layers of savory aromas. Scanning the dimly lit interior, he was aware he was backlit, exposed. Though, after all these years and having pulled down various scores, he’d mostly been out of the game since a job in Texas a few years ago, he remained keenly aware of his surroundings. An arm went up from a far booth. Tachmann. His call to O’Conner on one of his encrypted phones at pickleball had been prearranged. O’Conner had only been waiting for a time and place to meet. O’Conner walked over and sat down, joining Tachmann and another at the table.
“O’Conner, this is Mavis Joyner,” Tachmann said in lieu of a greeting.
Tachmann was white, late fifties, silver haired with a trim mustache. That Tachmann enjoyed the good life was evident given his manicured fingernails and his Hugo Boss suit. In the years O’Conner had known him, he’d wore an ostentatious ring on a crooked little finger, as if to highlight the finger’s slight deformity.
“Good to meet you,” O’Conner said as they shook hands across the table. Mavis Joyner was Black, thirtysomething, frizzed-out styled hair. Oversized glasses complemented her alert face. Along one ear were several stylish silver and gem studs. Joyner looked quite a bit like the images he’d seen of her online—maybe thinner in the face, he estimated. The
beginnings of worry lines, his grandmother would have called them, at the edges of her eyes.
“Same here.” Joyner glanced at Tachmann, then back at O’Conner. “Cocktail?”
Joyner was having a martini and Tachmann something clear in a tall glass. Back when O’Conner was moving from one takedown to the next, he wouldn’t have been as relaxed as he was now. Some things did change. “Why not.”
Joyner signaled for the waiter, who appeared at the booth.
“Vodka tonic, house vodka is fine,” O’Conner said, elbows on the table.
“Lime?”
“Sure.”
The waiter left. O’Conner took his elbows off the table, settling in the booth.
Joyner again regarded Tachmann. “Not sure how to get into this.”
“Be conversational,” the older man suggested. “We won’t speak in hushed voices, calling attention to ourselves,” he said. “And obviously we’re not going to be broadcasting either. We are what we seem, colleagues chatting about a business proposition.”
Joyner nodded curtly but remained quiet.
“You want something stolen,” O’Conner said.
“In a way. But it’ll be hard to do. I suppose I see this as a kind of consultation, Mr. O’Conner.” There was more confidence in her voice now. “I’ll lay out what it is, and you can tell me if it’s in any way feasible. No harm, no foul if it isn’t.”
O’Conner moved his jaw toward Tachmann. “You obviously told him.”
“The broad strokes,” Tachmann said. “Once I heard, though, knew you were the one for the job, O’Conner. That and the curious fact the three of us have a connection, once removed as it were.”
“I did wonder how she knows you, Tack.”
“My auntie was Charlie Mack. She pretty much raised me at one point,” Joyner answered.
“Huh, I’ll be,” O’Conner remarked. Studying her, he could see a resemblance.
“I attended her high school graduation,” Tachmann said. “We’ve kept in touch over the years.”
Clearly there was more to the ties between Tachmann and Joyner, but O’Conner kept on point. “Go ahead, Ms. Joyner.”
“Mavis, if I can call you . . . what do you like to be called?”
“Connie if you like. Just O’Conner or even OC is okay, too.”
His drink arrived and they waited while the tumbler was set down. The waiter took their food orders and left.
“I used to work for Palmer Van Noy. You know who that is?”
“Billionaire,” O’Conner said. “Though he keeps a low profile, unlike some of those other tech bros.”
“Yeah, he cultivates that image.” She had some of her drink. “To make it plain, he ripped me off.”
As if she were daring him to contradict her, Joyner’s head cocked slightly to the side, a mirthless smile on her face.
“I see.” O’Conner tasted his drink. Proportioned correctly, he concluded. “And you want revenge?”
“I surely do.”
Having some down time between talking with Tachmann and agreeing to this meet, he’d looked up info on Joyner.
“When I heard about you, I watched a couple of interviews with you online.” He knew from his brief research Joyner was a software engineer. She was involved in efforts to lend support to other women of color in tech as well as undertakings to bring girls into coding. Being Black and a woman in tech—and less than 5 percent were, he’d learned—she’d no doubt had to deal with plenty of minefields.
“I promise not to get in the weeds, but there’s been a lot written and debated about racial bias in facial recognition systems. Leading to the wrong folks being accused or arrested. To put it simply, after a hell of a lot of sweat and gray hair, I developed a generative app that reconfigures and refines such software. Millions in savings could be realized by the user not having to scrap a given facial recognition system. My program can discern and overwrite. Reducing the error rate in some cases to less than four percent.”
Frowning, O’Conner said, “You mean this program of yours self-corrects? Like they’re training AI to do?”
“My intention is my program is a tool to be wielded so as to make such apps function accurately,” she emphasized. “Like how a brother doesn’t get railroaded into prison when DNA exonerates him.”
“He took credit for this program you invented,” O’Conner surmised. “Erasing your work, essentially.”
“Like with everything he does, he was calculated,” she said. “He acknowledged my work but played it off as if I’d only achieved preliminary results. Employee ingenuity and innovation is encouraged at Magnus-Noy. My contract had economic incentives built in. There are various engineers who have benefited.”
“None of them Black women, eh?” Tachmann pointed out.
“You still work there?” O’Conner asked.
“No. I made no attempt to negotiate a new contract or be a freelancer with the firm. Though Palmer offered to sweeten the pot in terms of my percentages going forward. In the spirit of being colleagues.”
“I’m confused. If he was offering more in the way of money, why take this big step out of line? Why consider this crazy move, whatever it is you want got? Sit back and keep on being a civilian.”
“It was chump change, low-rent buy-off money.”
A hard cast took hold of her face and for a moment reminded O’Conner of her aunt.
“Nigger money if I may be so bold,” she said. “What I’m owed is white people money.” She drank more. “When I brought my breakthrough to him, he claimed he’d already been working on this kind of app.”
“That could be true,” O’Conner responded.
“For sure plenty of techies are trying to solve all sorts of problems. Everything from trying to get to Mars to doping out fusion in a bottle. But I solved this one. Documenting your technical setbacks and progress is de rigueur in software design. I recorded my efforts up the wazoo. Only he faked me out. He produced his own, not exactly mirroring what I created, as that would be sniffed out. Essentially, he stole my code, modified it, then eliminated his trail. He didn’t do this for the money, but the street cred he’ll get out.”
O’Conner’s policy was to approach each job as dispassionately as he could. You had to clinically examine the angles—the weaknesses of the target to be exploited and the deficits on
your side of the ledger. Joyner was personally invested in this; she was out for revenge. That was okay with him, but if he took this on, would her need to punish Van Noy be a detriment, tripping him up?
“I’m sure Tack told you I tend to specialize in cash. Don’t all you computer types keep your money in Bitcoin and whatnot? Ghostly cyber vapors.”
Tachmann chuckled.
She shook her head. “There’s one place I’m sure that Palmer keeps cash, and I mean a king’s ransom of it. His laid-out survival bunkers.”
“In case there’s the zombie apocalypse?” Tachmann said straight-faced.
“Given the state of our politics, more like the collapse of society. Civil war.”
“The bunkers are where you figure he keeps cash?” O’Conner said. “Not some damn device storing his cryptocurrency keys?”
“He’s thorough, I imagine he has those too,” she said. “Van Noy’s not the only one to brag about his survival shelters. It’s something of a status symbol among his crowd, including a couple of players on the Swashbucklers. These things can be blinged out with swimming pools, underground gardens and game rooms.”
Tachmann leaned forward. “To state the obvious, if society has collapsed, why do these types think having a bundle of cash will mean anything? It is after all, as comrade Lenin told us, or maybe it was Redd Foxx, merely a means of exchange.”
“Like I said, he’s going to cover the bases. Cash, gold,
diamonds . . . canned goods. Any humans left, and they will be armed, you better have something to be able to barter.”
“Okay, let’s say you’re right,” O’Conner said. “He keeps serious stacks in his expensive hidey-holes. But it’s not the money so much that matters to you, but getting back at him, ’cause you’re not the only one he’s screwed over.”
“Let’s say you’re right,” she echoed.
“Beyond such a probability, what do you know about Van Noy that could be useful?”
“Before we get into that, I want you to know I’ll be in on this. I’m not a watching-from-the-sidelines kind of gal.”
“I don’t like civilians on a crew.”
Generally speaking, civilians were the weakest links when the squeeze happened. And despite all the planning, the angles covered, damned if there wasn’t always some kind of shit coming at you from left field. O’Conner continued, “In this case we’re talking about a cat with more money than Jehovah who will pour resources into finding the thieves.”
“That doesn’t seem to worry you,” she countered.
“This isn’t a hobby,” he answered flatly. “I work with pros. They know the drill. If they get hemmed up because of the job or some other score they pulled, they don’t roll over. They don’t try and make a deal.” This wasn’t true in all cases, but he wasn’t trying to be nuanced.
“You figure Mavis will be a natural suspect,” Tachmann offered.
“Hell yes,” he answered.
Still, O’Conner wanted to hear more before he turned her down. Over a year and a half ago, when fires savaged the Southland, a billionaire real estate developer used his
two-thousand-dollar-per-hour private firefighters to protect his mansion and some of his commercial properties. As far as O’Conner was concerned, the haves protected their shit in the good times and bad. He was sure Mavis was right—a “have” like Van Noy would squirrel away cash.
And what the hell, O’Conner had a mind to enjoy the spicy chicken egg rolls he’d ordered.
“So, about Van Noy?” he asked again.
“Once I decided I wasn’t going to work for him anymore, I sought to reverse engineer his claims. I consciously didn’t go public with my assertions. I wanted him to forget about me, as if I’d moved on. Hardly,” she stated. “I set out to prove he constructed a falsehood and drag him to court.”
Their food arrived. Tachmann speared a brussels sprout with his fork and popped it in his mouth. “Going down one rabbit hole invariably leads to numerous warrens.”
Joyner said, “I intended to penetrate his computers, worm my way through back doors to strip away the camouflaged source code, the steganography, hiding files within files, to reveal my original work.”
“You mentioned not getting us deep in the weeds,” Tachmann reminded her.
“Copy that,” Joyner said, smiling. “I made progress, then hit a wall. To do what I needed to do was going to be too much exposure for me. I considered sending what I had to one of the outlets that cover tech, but even if that got an investigation going, it could be many months or years before there was a satisfying conclusion.”
O’Conner remarked, “Committing grand theft robbery was your next idea?”
“I considered and dismissed various options.”
“How do you figure he’ll react to being robbed? Aside from not liking it.”
“He’s going to want to solve the problem. How did this happen, who did it and so on. But I think, too, he’ll not want the embarrassment.”
“Among his peers, you mean,” Tachmann said.
“Right,” she said. “At their precious bro gatherings he wouldn’t want to be subjected to the ribbing and whatnot. Who would? He’s going to want to keep his responses close and on the Q.T. The fewer that know that he was vulnerable, the better.”
“Okay,” he said, assessing the information. She continued. “Palmer has two shelters here in town. One is under the family compound that was destroyed in the Palisades Fire in the Santa Monica bluffs. The other is below Del Norte arena.”
“Didn’t he have private firefighters to save his crib?” Tachmann said.
“He did,” she acknowledged. “But the road to it was clogged with Teslas and Volvos.”
“Damn,” he said, exchanging a look with O’Conner.
“The arena is the new venue he built for his team,” O’Conner declared.
Van Noy was a majority partner of the pro basketballers, the Swashbucklers.
“Yes. One of Palmer’s children has severe food allergies. He has special deliveries of prepared meals made to both shelters.”
Tachmann asked, “And you found the outfit that does the food prep?”
“Not only that, I even worked there for a spell. Palmer is always boasting about local sourcing. Enlightened,” she said. “The place he uses, supplying both shelters, is in Inglewood. Not far from the arena, in fact. It’s called Leafy Fields. It’s also a microbrewery.”
“Of course it is. What’d you do there?” O’Conner asked.
“Line cook,” she answered proudly. “Faked my résumé, identity, and altered my appearance. I got to be buds with some of the workers, including one of the women who did the deliveries.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed you got nerve?” O’Conner asked.
“I am,” Tachmann admitted.
Joyner went into the particulars about the deliveries, including robotic carts used to ferry the containers of the fresh and freeze-dried meals. The two deliverers could only access the loading dock areas.
While he considered ordering another round of those wonderful egg rolls, O’Conner interjected, “If they weren’t allowed deeper into the bunkers, then where are you going with this?”
She beamed. “My former coworker on the line likes her rum and cokes. Especially when someone else is buying.”
“Okay,” Tachmann said. “But she didn’t get to see any of the rooms, and not a clue as to what kind of fortifications there are.”
O’Conner said, “She saw something she talked about at happy hour.”
“From the loading dock area, there was a side door. The kind with a small view window. They both looked through
this of course. They could only see part of one machine. My girl said it looked like it belonged in a Star Wars show. I was able to get a few other details from her, and my best guess was that she’d seen part of the air filtration systems.
“I determined Palmer had installed this particular model made by a Swiss concern outfit. The company in turn jobs out the manufacture of several key components it uses.” She waved a hand, realizing she was about to get into too much detail. “Anyway, I found out enough and was able to articulate a series of rough schematics.”
“You have layouts for the one in the hills and the arena?”
“Not of the arena as a whole, but where the shelter is, yes, including of course how it’s accessed. The shelter there has two separate entrances. There’s always an escape route.”
“Impressive,” Tachmann declared, smiling paternally at her.
“There could still be variations,” O’Conner said, more for his benefit, thinking aloud. “Invariably there’s going to be last-minute changes.”
“Buzzkill much?” she quipped.
“He’s thorough too,” Tachmann said.
O’Conner asked, “What do you estimate in the way of loot in one of these end-of-the-world retreats?”
“From what I know of Palmer, I’d say a minimum of twenty-one million. I have no idea why, but numbers divisible by three recur with him.”
O’Conner said with interest, “He’s superstitious?” He recalled Eddie Harper, a retired power forward for the Swashbucklers, wore number 33 when he played.
“And he gambles. He sometimes hangs out at the
Hollywood Park casino, among others. His security is always with him, of course.”
“Let’s assume too these bills didn’t come directly from the Treasury,” Tachmann said. “Your boy Palmer probably acquired an amount of them through his connections. The more black market, the better.”
“Is that important?” Joyner asked.
“Pre-circulated money,” O’Conner explained. “Makes them untraceable.”
O’Conner sipped from his glass. “It’s going to take a few weeks to line up everything properly.” For certain he would need an explosives expert and someone to handle transportation needs.
Joyner said, “So, it’s on?”
The two regarded O’Conner. He remained silent for several moments, the clamor of the restaurant prominent around him. Finally, he tapped his index finger once on the table. “Less than a month from now the arena opens, isn’t that right?”
“Wouldn’t it be more prudent to hit the shelter in the hills? The day the arena opens, Palmer will be otherwise engaged,” Joyner said. “The compound is getting rebuilt, but there’s a way in and out via the secondary emergency route.”
O’Conner replied, “What’s prudent is not taking on one of the richest men in the world. Someone with unlimited resources.”
“Which is why you need me,” Joyner stated.
“To use your skills to give him a false trail,” Tachmann said.
“That’s right,” O’Conner agreed. He would prefer an
actual target for Van Noy to go after. Maybe before all this was over, there would be one.
Leaning forward, he added, “We’re only going to get one chance at this, Mavis. Once he knows about the robbery, he’s got to discover the false lead, but he’s got to work for it. If it’s handed to him, he’ll know something’s up.”
“I understand,” she said.
“I hope you do. He’ll already be putting every aspect of the construction and maintenance of his overpriced doomsday basements under the magnifying glass. And make no mistake, those builders will also be in on trying to ascertain who knew what and who did they talk to.”
Sitting back, he spread his hands. “Maybe your drinking buddy remembers what she said and maybe she doesn’t. What is known is, whatever cover you concocted as the line cook, that person is no longer at the restaurant. What about the car you drove, your coworkers saw it?”
“The car was registered in the name of my alias. Afterward I dumped the vehicle.”
“Dumped how?”
“A scrap yard, a pick-a-part place in Wilmington.”
“Good. Me and Tack don’t exist in a lot of ways. You, on the other hand, are a known entity.”
“I’ve taken a break, but I understand that I’ll have to retreat more into the background.”
“Just the opposite,” he said. “You have to maintain your normal activities. If you’re asked about the robbery, you shouldn’t be neutral. Palmer Van Noy’s chickens have come home to roost as far as you’re concerned. That’s what happens to a mufu who takes credit for the work of others.”
“You might possibly be a bit more restrained in your language,” Tachmann advised.
“Granted,” O’Conner said. “But you get where I’m going with this. What you talk about going forward has to line up with what you’ve stated previously. Don’t go overboard, sure. But by outward appearances, everything is the same as it always was.”
“Van Noy’s been sued by any number of people he’s worked with,” Tachmann observed.
“Let’s not forget his public fights with several right-wing assholes,” Joyner said. “I also have some ideas on how we can plant a false cyber trail leading away from us on the dark web. I have an in to A Minus One.”
“Right on,” O’Conner said. He was familiar with the left-leaning hacktivist group. They’d conducted cyberattacks on various entities, including the State Department, ICE and the Kremlin.
“For sure they might come in handy.”
“No doubt,” Joyner said. “So we’re doing this?”
She did control the plans. And he wasn’t going into this blind.
“Yes,” he answered after a measure. “I’m going to have another round of egg rolls while we talk about a bunch of other stuff, including how we stay in touch, and what you need to be doing between now and then. Have you fired a gun?”
“If we do this right, there will be no need for violence,” she said.
“I wholeheartedly agree. I expect you’ve vetted me with Tack, about how I minimize gunplay—otherwise you
probably wouldn’t have asked for the meet. Be that as it may, this here is a criminal undertaking, Mavis, and there’s always extenuating circumstances. I haven’t made it to this age by not adapting to shit going sideways.”
“Charlie Mack taught me how to handle a gun,” she declared. “But isn’t your specialty to be in and out and no one’s the wiser?”
“I haven’t changed,” he said.
“I suppose you figure to get the lion’s share?” she asked.
“A percentage more than y’all, yes. You object?”
“Just getting my facts straight.”
“My end is thirty-three percent of the haul. Guess I got a thing for threes too. Anyway, the rest is divided equally among the heisters.”
“My ten percent comes out of yours and his end equally,” Tachmann told her. “The freight as it’s your idea and his overseeing the execution.”
“Understood,” she said.
“I put together the string and secure the equipment and logistics, some of that through Tack, our quartermaster. There’s going to be a lot of prep and rehearsals. I take it you’re not doing freelance work, so you can make the time if need be?”
She agreed.
“No significant other wanting time with you?”
“Sadly, at the moment, no,” she said. “You’re not asking me this ’cause I’m queer, are you?”
“No, ma’am. I’d ask this of any other square Jane citizen.” He recalled her sexuality coming up in more than one interview he’d seen with her on YouTube.
Tachmann worried his big ring back and forth on his
little finger. “Who else you have in mind for this undertaking?”
“Burgess for sure,” he said.
“He’s still around?” Tachmann asked.
To Joyner, O’Conner said, “He blows up stuff.”
They clinked glasses.
After watching Joyner drive away, O’Conner and Tachmann talked next to the older man’s car, a Jaguar F-Type.
“I know you’re taking a lot on trust with her because of me,” Tachmann said. “But I know Mavis, I vouch for her, otherwise I wouldn’t have reached out.”
“I get it, she’s got it bad to want payback on Van Noy. Of course, it’s all fun and games until—”
“You get hit in the mouth,” Tachmann finished, paraphrasing Mike Tyson.
“Aren’t you worried about her doing this?”
“Like you said, she’s got her mind made up. I for sure don’t want her working with amateurs. I know you’ll do right by her, O’Conner.”
“You mean not put a bullet in her head after the robbery to take care of a possible loose end?”
“That’s not your style. You don’t turn on a member of your crew. Unlike some we could name.”
O’Conner said, “I’ll be in touch.”
They shook hands. Tachmann got in his car and left. O’Conner noted a cardboard box of wine on the back seat. He closed in on where he’d left his Cadillac CT5 Sport and stepped between two other parked cars to cross an aisle. Turning onto the aisle at the near end came a white car with
a broad yellow stripe along the center of its hood, a lidar unit on the roof. He paused, as did the self-driving vehicle.
O’Conner stepped back between the other two cars. The whine of the electric vehicle resumed as it approached again.
O’Conner looked through the windshield, confirming no one was behind the wheel or anywhere else inside. The car stopped once more, its sensors detecting his presence. He stepped farther back. The car finally went on. He noted the insignia on the side of the autonomous vehicle as it went past: Overland. The taxi service Palmer Van Noy had bought recently. The car reached the end of the aisle and turned. O’Conner waited several beats, then got in his car and also departed.
THE HAUL
Gary Phillips
Available July 14, 2026
A professional thief takes the chance of a lifetime when he agrees to mastermind the raid of a tech billionaire’s secret bunker in this actionpacked heist thriller set in the heart of contemporary Los Angeles.
Karen Odden An
Published by Soho Press
Soho Press, Inc.
227 W 17th Street
New York, NY 10011 www.sohopress.com
Copyright © 2026 by Karen Odden All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Odden, Karen author
Title: An artful dodge / Karen Odden.
Description: New York, NY : Soho Crime, 2026. Identifiers: LCCN 2025051374
ISBN 978-1-64129-762-2
eISBN 978-1-64129-763-9
Subjects: LCGFT: Fiction | Novels
Classification: LCC PS3615.D4 A88 2026
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025051374
Interior design by Janine Agro
Interior map by Loren Ward
Printed in the United States of America
To George, Julia, and Kyle, always
“Change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?”
—William Shakespeare, King Lear
LONDON 1879
Chapter 1
The Society for the Suppression of Vice would have you believe crime doesn’t pay.
It does, of course. Thieving especially.
One glance into our second-story practice room would convince anyone. Heaps of stolen finery from pocket watches and jeweled earrings to kid gloves and lace handkerchiefs littered a long wooden table. Around it, fourteen of us rehearsed our dodges upon each other.
“I felt that, Kit,” Mary said, and my fingers stilled on the necklace I was trying to lift.
“You didn’t,” I said, pulling back.
“I did,” she insisted, touching her nape below the chignon of fair hair. “Your fingers, here.”
“Try again,” Amelia said, looking over from instructing Bea on nicking a pocket watch one-handed. “Use the side of your thumb.”
Her tone was sharpish, without its usual good humor.
“What’s wrong with Amelia?” Mary kept her face toward the window and her voice low. “You don’t think it’s because I’m going back out today, do you?”
I felt her anxiousness, pin-sharp inside my own ribs.
“I doubt it,” I replied. “She’s riled over something. But likely it’s Harriet and Elsie.”
They’d both nearly been caught by constables the previous week, which is why the air in the room was subdued, and our practice more intent than usual. While we thieves shoved our fears down far enough to step over them, we also took a warning from anyone else’s narrow escape. This was later in summer than we usually changed over to doving, but we always shifted to the theaters and music halls during election season, when city officials needed the support of the West End shopkeepers and pushed the police to reallocate uniformed constables to Mayfair and Marylebone. After the votes were tallied and the officials safely in their seats, the coppers would slink back to their usual boroughs, and we’d return to the shops.
“Why don’t you have a go,” I said to Mary, over her shoulder. “Nicking a necklace is harder than pockets.”
“It’s because your hands are cold,” Mary said.
Because this whole room is cold, I thought. The bustling taproom on the ground floor of the Elephant and Castle Inn was warm, but the practice room was two full stories up, and the heat didn’t rise through the thick old plank floors. A coal fire burned in the potbellied black corner stove, and the room held the heat of us thieves, but the unseasonable chill this August afternoon shoved in around the leaded windowpanes.
I rubbed my palms together and blew on my fingertips.
From behind one of the reproductions of wood-and-glass store cabinets, Josie called out, a sly laugh edging her voice. “Robbie downstairs’ll warm ’em up for you, Kit!”
“Robbie downstairs is an eejit,” I replied in the same singsong, curling and straightening my fingers. “It’s not fair,” I said to Mary, as I jostled her elbow lightly and undid the clasp, taking care to drop the loose end on top of her collar instead of on bare skin. “You know I’m coming.”
“I’m playing fair, I promise,” she protested. “See? I’m looking out the window, letting myself be distracted like a lady watching a show. There’s Sophie, going into the bakery . . . and Mr. Ardle heading toward his shop.”
I showed her the necklace. “There.”
Her blue eyes widened in approval. “Oh, that was bloody good.”
I grinned. “Your turn now.” I clasped the necklace around my own neck and turned to face the room.
Our chief concern today was with necklaces, bracelets, pocket watches, handkerchiefs, earrings, reticules, brooches, rings, cuff links, cameos, and pins—all objects easily nicked from the theater crowd and passed to the fences of Vine Street. We were in pairs, each working with our usual jenny, taking turns at playing the mark, as Amelia walked among us, showing us new ways to distract, directing our hands, reshaping the positions of our fingers. Fanny was showing her new jenny how to tuck a bracelet inside her hat brim. Another new girl watched carefully as Charlotte demonstrated how to palm an earring and slip it into her hairnet. They say there’s no honor among our sort, but there’s a certain thickness to us thieves.
On the other side of the room, in front of a large printed wall map of London with Amelia’s pins in it, Josie swung a silver-headed walking stick she’d nicked the day before. “Look at me, like one of the music hall toffs, singing about how the ladies love my big stick.” She swung her hips back and forth, drawling the words long, and her jenny, Bea, burst out laughing.
The necklace slid along my neck. “Felt that,” I said.
“Argh,” Mary said. “Are my fingers cold?”
“No. The chain moved.” I tapped my collarbone. “Here.”
“Ah, right.”
Here we are again, I thought, recalling the first week we practiced our tooling in this room, slipping our hands into each other’s pockets, when I was fresh to all of it and Mary only a few months along. The difference now was we knew each other, down to a darted side-eye toward a plainclothesman, a long breath to sketch a warning, a shilling-thin shoulder lift when the dodge was done. It takes time to earn that sort of knowledge. We’d been each other’s regular jennies for almost four years, and I counted myself lucky Amelia had paired us early on. I wouldn’t have done so well with any of the others. Not that they weren’t good thieves, just not the sort I’d ever truly trust, the sort who’d play every card she had to be sure I got away.
“There,” Mary said, dangling the necklace between her thumb and forefinger. “Did you truly not feel it?”
“Not a thing,” I said honestly. “You’re better at touch work.”
At the center of the room, Amelia clapped her hands crisply. “That’s enough for today, yeah?” We all broke off, and amid the chatter that burst out after several hours of intense concentration, we emptied our pockets, reticules, and hairnets of practice objects. Amelia took up four empty trays and began filling them with goods. We all started toward the stairs that led down to the first story, which consisted of the goods room, where we unloaded our poke each day, and the costumes room, where we stored our thieving clothes. Josie gave one last twirl of the walking stick before she vanished through the door.
“Kit,” Amelia said as I reached the threshold. I stepped back. Mary shot me a meaningful look that I
returned—Don’t worry—and Mary departed with the rest, shutting the heavy door behind her.
The afternoon sun coming through the window caught the silver threads in Amelia’s dark hair, the fine lines around her mouth. She laid the last of the bracelets on the third tray and tucked it into the hidden wall safe before she met my gaze. Her blue-gray eyes were steady. “Well? Is Mary ready?”
“Aye,” I said. “It’s been four months, and she says she’ll go stark raving if she’s kept out much longer. She’s used to working.”
“I know.” Amelia transferred the fourth tray, handkerchiefs and reticules, into the safe, spun the lock, and shut the wooden panel. “But it won’t do her or you any good, if her nerves aren’t steady.”
The thought of Mary’s mother knifed twice under the ribs and left to die in an alley still unsteadied my nerves, if I let myself think on it.
“You can skip today, if you want,” Amelia said. “Given the constables.”
“We’re fine,” I said. Even if Mary wasn’t quite ready, she was a skilled thief, and I wanted to let her return in the shops, where we’d succeeded a hundred times. Besides, I’d be the lead today; Mary was the decoy. Even if she was caught, they’d find nothing on her.
“I don’t want you covering for her, Kit,” Amelia added. “And they’ve just stationed a plainclothes at Bradley’s, so take Pickford’s instead, yeah?”
Amelia had a source at the Yard.
“When will we begin doving?” I asked.
“Soon,” she said. “After tomorrow, I’m pulling you all out of the West End.”
Recalling her sharp tone during our practice, I asked, “Is something the matter? Besides the extra constables?”
A flicker in her eyes came and went. “No.” She tucked a dark lock of hair back into her hairnet. “Just being cautious. Elsie had to run for it, and Harriet would’ve been caught if not for Gus.”
That hair tuck was Amelia’s tell. But the set of her jaw told me I’d get nothing more, so I said only, “That’s what I heard. Gus set his dog on the constable.” Harriet had told the story for a laugh in the pub room, but her voice had held a shrill note.
“Aye.” Amelia glanced up at the clock, and I followed her gaze. Half past one. Three hours before people headed home for tea, the crowds thinned, and thieving was harder. “All right, then,” she said.
I took it as a dismissal and started for the door.
“Wait, Kit. How’s Sarah? Is she doing better?”
I turned back, feeling a warm glow of gratitude at her concern. Amelia knew my younger sister had just taken a position as a scullery maid, where the work was hard. “I think so, but—well, she hasn’t sent her usual letter, though she’s home tomorrow.”
Amelia saw my worry. “No doubt she’s busy working,” she said reassuringly. “And knowing her, she’s likely making friends with any time left over.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Amelia.”
“Ádh mór ort,” she replied with a wave of her fingers.
The ring’s founder, Patty Wirth, had been Irish, and though she’d been dead these fourteen years, this phrase was still how we wished each other luck.
Downstairs in the taproom, I found Mary sitting at a
corner table with Josie and Bea, who were drinking pots of golden ale with a thin layer of froth, drawn fresh from the taps. Mary was not; we never drank before a dodge, not even ale. As I approached, Mary rose and stepped away from the table.
“She asked about me?” Mary murmured.
“She did, but there’s something else troubling her,” I replied, my voice low. “She wouldn’t say.”
“Hm. Well.” Mary turned to beckon to her nephew Sid, her palm up, her quick fingers folding in twice. He slouched away from the table where he sat with other boys.
“What?” he asked.
She rumpled his hair, and he ducked away.
“Pickford’s at half past three,” I said. “Don’t be late.”
“Yah.” He sniffed and turned away and went back to his friends.
Mary turned to me, rolling her eyes, half annoyed, half amused. “Let’s get ready.” We went upstairs to the costume room, where racks held dresses with thieving pockets that reached to the bottom of the crinolines, coats lined with fisherman’s netting that easily caught jewelry, trousers with adjustable turnups, two-sided cloaks, paste jewelry good enough to pass for genuine, hats, spectacles, paste-on moles, and such. Mary carefully braided my brown hair tight to my scalp to fit under the wheat-colored wig. We each chose a cloak, a reticule, gloves, and a hat, then set out for the West End.
Chapter 2
From the far street corner, I eyed our mark for the day.
The roofline of Pickford’s rose against low, scudding clouds. Like every other building on this street, the department store had a white façade interrupted by arched windows, like high-and-mighty eyebrows. If our borough of Southwark was the pickpocket of London, Kensington was the bride, regal and fair.
Ahead of me, Mary reached the door and vanished inside at twenty past three. I dallied on the pavement, holding my cloak closed against the breeze, watching the horses, omnibuses, and cabs pass, and counting out three full minutes so no clerk would think, even looking back, that we’d entered together. Approaching Pickford’s, I cast one final look for a uniformed constable before I crossed the street. Usually I smiled at sweeps, even offered a coin, but this boy I ignored, to prevent him from taking notice of me, and upon reaching the opposite curb, laid my hand on the shining brass doorknob, stepped in, and drew in a breath. People say that dry goods are pretty to look at, but I liked the smell of these brightly lit shops, with the leather, silk, linen, felt, feathers, and ribbons, and the waxy linseed oil used to polish the wooden cabinets. We timed the dodge for midafternoon, so the shop would be busy. There were five—no, six—men and nine women,
some with their maids in attendance, making selections at the various counters. Mary was one of three looking at men’s neckwear, and the clerk had taken out half a dozen cravats, laying them on the wooden counter to be examined. Mary was very pretty, taller than I, with a creamy complexion, fair hair, and blue eyes; I was plainer, with brown eyes, which I dimmed behind spectacles, and though we always traded off as decoy—Mary wanting to divide the risk fairly—the role fell more naturally to her. I worked my way along the counter on the opposite side of the store, gazing at the women’s hats for three minutes, and then halting by the gloves case. The clerk obligingly pulled several pairs from behind the counter, along with different silk ribbons to match. The tall case clock in the corner chimed once for half past three.
We have rules for thieving, and one of them is to never, ever look at one’s jenny. So I kept my attention focused on the gloves, hiding my annoyance that Sid was now late. The longer Mary and I stayed, the more risk we’d be recognized later. Ideally, this dodge took less than a quarter of an hour. The clerk’s mouth twitched with impatience as I peered through my spectacles and tried on this pair of gloves, then that one, fidgeting with my gold band—the mark of a husband’s ability to purchase—all the while.
From across the room, Mary’s anxiety came like heat on my own back. When I saw Sid tonight, I was going to smack the bloody little bugger. Another minute or two, and we’d have to call it off. It had been years since I’d given in to those early lurches between fear and frustration, but wanting this to go well for Mary, I felt them now.
Damn it, where is he?
The front door swung open and closed. I had positioned
myself so I could see the entrance in the looking glass behind the clerk, and my nerves eased. With his cap pulled low, Sid appeared and vanished out of its gilded frame. His darkcoated figure would be strolling toward Mary—ten seconds, then five—and then came Mary’s scream.
Like everyone else, I spun to see her hands up—“My reticule! It’s been stolen!” she cried, whirling about and peering around the shop desperately before she put her hand to her side, shrieked “Oh,” as if in sudden pain, and slumped to the ground in a spectacular fashion.
It was exactly the way she’d always done it, and relief rolled over me.
The gloves clerk edged around the counter and pushed past me, rustling my skirts. Together with other clerks, he crouched down, bending over Mary’s limp form as the customers gathered around.
“A glass of water! Smelling salts!” cried the cravat clerk. “And catch that rascal! He went out there!” The gloves clerk leapt up from Mary’s side and headed for the side door to give chase.
With all eyes on Mary, no one paid me a whit of attention. My hands were already slipping gloves and wooden spools of ribbon into my thieving pockets, the bulky shapes vanishing into my crinoline.
I was stashing the fourth pair of gloves when a man in a brown suit stepped out from behind a pillar. His eyes weren’t on Mary; they darted around the shop. Even as I noted his features—medium height, a bit thick around the middle, dark wavy hair, clean-shaven, a rounded chin, forty years of age or thereabouts—I clasped my empty hands before me and peered worriedly at Mary, like everyone else.
A few moments later, the gloves clerk burst back into the shop, breathless. I wasn’t worried he’d catch Sid, who would have already handed Mary’s purse to Harry, who would stash it inside his waistcoat and stroll on. Even if Sid was nabbed— which was unlikely, as he’d have stuffed his cap into a pocket and slowed to an amble immediately after fleeing the shop— he wouldn’t have the reticule. No evidence, no arrest.
I longed to snatch one more look at the brown-suited man, to determine whether he was a Yard plainclothes detective or a shop-hired privy. But I wouldn’t have risked meeting his eyes for the world. As I kept my gaze on Mary and the cravat clerk, her would-be rescuer—who was running his hand over her breast, pretending to feel for her heartbeat, the filthy git—a woman who had been trying on hats approached me. Her jowly chin shook with indignation. “It’s dreadful! London’s full of devils these days, vicious wretches who will steal anything!”
“Devils and wretches,” I murmured in agreement. I was, after all, one of them.
Chapter 3
Outside, I rounded the corner, flipping my cloak from blue silk to black for good measure. It had been a narrower escape than I liked. My heart beat out of time until the next street, where I forced it back into order.
I strolled south and east, the weight in my thieving pocket lying heavy along the crinoline. We were all used to being offkilter, accustomed to hiding the limp it gave us. Better to have a limp from the pocket than to be a man and limp between the pockets, as Josie would say.
I reached the west end of the Charing Cross rail footbridge and started across the Thames, knowing Mary would have taken the Waterloo. I paused, resting my hands on the parapet, and looked east, for it was one of the rare afternoons when the sun slipped the clouds, laid the bridge’s shadow across the river, and dusted gold across the boats’ chop. From below rose the rank smells of rotting fish and tangy brine, of filthy old stone and molding green muck crawling up the pillars.
From behind me came the distant blare of a locomotive whistle followed by a screech of brakes as a train drew into the London and South Western station. The sound was lost in the grind of a motor as a tugboat avoided ramming a lighter not fifty yards from me. I shaded my eyes to watch as a coal carrier plowed its way along, its flaring blast overwhelming
the sound of the tug. That’s the way London was, one sound drowning another. I walked on and waited for Mary at our usual corner on Waterloo Road. As she appeared, I was gratified to see lightness in her step and a quietly confident smile on her face.
I felt a moment of misgiving at the thought of deflating her spirits by telling her about the brown-suited man who’d escaped her notice. But Mary and I told each other the truth.
“That was neat,” I said as she looped her hand through my elbow.
“Except for Sid, the little wretch. Another few minutes and I was going to call it off.”
“We’ll box his ears tonight,” I said.
She let out a groan. “It’s the bloody dice, Kit. He’s running a game on Water Street. He probably lost track of time.”
My steps slowed. “What? He’s running a game? Here?”
Southwark was Silas Pike’s patch, not just for gaming but for gambling, extortion, and receiving stolen goods. For Silas Pike, Sid running a game meant he was old enough to be punished for it, no matter if he was only twelve.
“I’ve tried warning him, believe me,” Mary said.
“How much is he bringing in?”
Her eyebrows rose. “Two or three pounds a week. Now he won’t leave off it, and with my ma gone, he doesn’t mind me.”
It gladdened me to catch Mary slipping in the mention of her ma. She’d done it several times lately, as if testing her ability to say that syllable without her voice breaking. The first month after her mother died, Mary had folded in on herself with grief, sobbing so hard in my arms that I begged her to breathe. Eventually, her grief had softened, along with her need to know why her mother was killed. A murdered woman
from this part of London didn’t hold the attention of detectives for long.
Not like us thieves.
I drew Mary into the alcove doorway of an abandoned shop with the glass panes broken, the empty window frames covered by splintered wooden planks. “Mary, there was a detective in Pickford’s.”
Her jaw sagged in dismay. “What? I didn’t see—”
“There’s no way you could’ve,” I interrupted. “He was in plainclothes and out of sight until you fell.”
Her eyes darted as she retraced the shop in her head. “The wide pillar in the back corner, by the table linens.”
I nodded.
“Damn.” She bit her lower lip white. “How did you see him?”
“He stepped in front of the pillar. He wasn’t watching you. He was looking for me.”
Mary drew a breath. “You’re sure he didn’t make you?”
“I was staring at you by the time he turned in my direction.”
“Bloody hell,” she whispered, and her gaze drifted across the muddy rutted road toward the Three Boars pub, with its crooked shutters and a two-bit boardinghouse on the upper floor. I kept silent until she nodded, slowly at first then more firmly. Her eyes returned to mine. “You didn’t keep it from me.”
“You said you were ready. That means I tell you, like we always do.”
Her look of gratitude pinched at my heart.
“I am not, however, telling Amelia,” I added. “There was no harm done, and I don’t want her wondering if you should’ve seen him.”
“Thanks for that.” She looped her hand through my arm, and we walked on to the corner. We paused, waiting for two carriages to pass, and she gave a little shake of her head, as if to put the detective out of her mind. “Sarah’s home tomorrow night, isn’t she?”
The sudden shriek of a railway engine made us press our hands to our ears.
As the noise subsided, Mary spoke over it. “We could have tea together before she goes back, with Sid.” Sid and Sarah had grown up together, and they got on. He never mocked her for the wine-colored birthmark by her temple like other boys did. “I could make a cake for us, special,” she added as we paused at the corner of Granby Street. “Mrs. Jonas has me baking pound—”
The screech of railway brakes drowned the rest of her sentence. Again, we covered our ears, I nodded agreement, and we hurried south to leave the noise of the station behind. To St. George’s Circus and onto London Road; past Marshall Street, with Seamus Ardle’s pawn shop where I worked, and the Trunk Lodging House in York Street, where Mary and I roomed together since Sarah went out in service two months ago.
At the end of London Road sprawled the cobblestoned quadrangle where six old stagecoach roads coming from as far as Dover and Canterbury met in front of the Elephant and Castle. Together Mary and I approached the square front of the inn with the famous motif above the door: a left-facing elephant with the crenellated tower on its back.
Dusk had fallen, and the light from the windows feathered onto the cobbles. To the side of the inn lurked a few Castle men—Billy, Tommy, Jake, and Nick—in a rough scrum,
talking in low voices. If the Castle men were dogs, always scavenging for more, these were the four most dangerous, the sort who would maul a mark half to death if he fought back. Some of the younger ones, standing slightly apart, were friendlier with us, more like pups, all horseplay and boasting talk. Although even pups could cause trouble, as any woman knows.
Fanny’s brother Caleb, a card sharp who ran a spieler of vingt-et-un in rooms nearby, called out to Mary, “Good take today?”
“Aye,” she called back noncommittally. To the Castle men, anything more might sound smug.
Still, Jake’s eyes had latched on to us, his face sour, his mouth twisted. Two years ago, our ring was clearing three times what the men were from dead lurking and dragging luggage off cabs, and Amelia had taken the inn’s upper stories for our own. Jake had been the one who’d resented it most, throwing a brick through our goods room window one night when he was in his cups. Amelia had a word with Silas Pike, who ran the Vine Street fences that received most of our take, and from then on Jake only growled; he didn’t bite.
I pulled open the door. As we stepped inside, the warmth of the room and the tang of ale from the taps came at us in a wave.
I started up the stairs to the goods room, while Mary, with nothing in her pockets, stayed below to have a pint. I pushed open the door to find Amelia seated at the desk, recording the day’s take in her neat hand, with the bottle of ink and an open ledger before her. Nell was loading boxes of goods into the dumbwaiter, which would be lowered to the ground floor, where the goods would be retrieved by one of Pike’s
henchmen. For secrecy, this occurred on different nights each week.
Before the drawn curtains stood other thieves—Josie and Bea, Fanny and her new jenny, Cathy—in various states of undress, having doffed their thieving garb. Here in this room, the danger that kept us keenly watching our backs dropped away. Wordlessly, I turned so Nell could undo the buttons at my nape.
“How are you?” I murmured over my shoulder.
Nell’s fingers paused, and I felt a stab of regret. I was never sure if I should ask, in case I recalled her grief at a moment when she wasn’t thinking on it. Mary’s mother, Rose, had been Nell’s cousin and dear friend, and Rose’s murder had hit her hard.
Nell’s fingers restarted on my buttons. “Some days I can’t stop thinking about her.”
The cool air chilled my shoulder blades. “Sorry.”
“Mary all right?”
“Perfect.”
Nell’s hands continued down my back as I watched Cathy roll the long stem of a silver hatpin between her thumb and forefinger, her eyes fixed on its sparkle in the lamplight. My mouth twitched in sympathy. We’d all felt longings like that when we started, some fancying the pretty trinkets, others hoping someday to be the sort of woman who could wear one in public without anyone wondering if she’d stolen it.
Well, we all want things, I thought.
I’d never longed to keep the items I stole, even the pretty ones. They were just fripperies that turned into money for necessities—the extra rent so Sarah could stay in my room without having to work for Amelia, food, tea, a full scuttle
of coal, warm clothes, boots because Sarah’s feet grew a size every six months, a rag rug for warmth, a new feather pillow. Between my take from thieving and wages I’d earned, I had some money put by, a collection of coins in a small pouch under a floorboard in my room, a decoy for a larger pouch hidden in yet another compartment beneath the first. But no matter how heavy those pouches, my fears were heavier. Sarah depended on me, and we had no one else. What would happen if I got sick for a spell? If, God forbid, I was caught? Or if she needed a doctor for weeks on end, like when she had whooping cough? When Ma lay dying, our money had dwindled until we’d scrounged for halfpennies. I took to visiting the butcher at day’s end for scraps, and Sarah fixed her eyes on the pavement to avoid seeing the bread loaves in the bakery windows. I never wanted to return to that. No, I wanted enough money that I needn’t worry ever again, though I wasn’t sure if there was such an amount.
Nell’s hands finished unbuttoning and shifted the fabric over my shoulders, and I shimmied out of the dress.
“Cor, look at the filigree work,” Josie said, eyeing the hatpin Cathy held. “That bit o’ peridot is gorgeous, ain’t it?”
“Aye,” Cathy agreed, setting it on the table with reluctant fingers.
Amelia paused in her writing and her mouth tightened; some of the girls tried her patience. Her gaze shifted to me. “Ready?”
“Yes.” I laid the dress on the table, like a corpse in a casket, and Bea’s hands slid below the hand-sized false pocket into the large thieving one.
“Four sets of gloves, fine kid,” she said as she withdrew them, and Amelia noted it. “Satin ribbons, six. And . . .”
Bea’s eyebrows rose as she examined the coins. “And two pounds, ten?”
“The clerk’s pocket.” I grinned and laid the back of my hand theatrically to my forehead. “He was overcome with distress over Mary. Easy mark as he pushed by me.”
Bea laughed.
“Hmm,” Josie said, leaning over with a sly look. “Anything else worth grabbin’ in his pocket?”
“Ach,” I replied with a shrug. “’Twas too small, couldn’t find it.”
Josie threw back her head, giving her bright laugh, and continued chuckling as she headed downstairs. Fanny and Cathy grinned as they followed, but Bea’s face was pinched as she left the room. Clear as day, there was something amiss between Josie and Bea. I looked to see if Amelia had caught it, but she was writing down my poke. Well, it wasn’t for me to say anything. Amelia turned up the wick on the lamp and slid the ledger toward me so I could put my initials beside each item for tallying at month’s end. I handed back the pen, wondering how many times I’d scribbled KJ on these pages in the last few years.
I stepped into my own dress, and Nell buttoned me and slipped away as I sat to put on my boots. Knowing Amelia would ask about my afternoon, I took my time fastening them.
Amelia was giving one final look over the goods book. The corners of her mouth were tucked in concentration; her left forefinger slid down the side of the page as her right hand made quick notations in the margins.
Fourteen years ago, when I was six and Sarah wasn’t even born, Patty Wirth, on her deathbed, had passed the ring to
Amelia Lyle, her niece, who had only improved it. She made sure her thieves knew how to read and do simple ciphering, how to add grace to their walks, soften their expressions, and tuck their vowels up their noses when the occasion required. Now, over a dozen of us lived in rooms near the inn, paid for by the ring. Amelia was a good mistress, practical and unexcitable, who gave us a fair cut, so even after paying for our board and other necessities, most of us earned a nice amount each month.
Amelia blotted her last few handwritten lines, closed the ledger, and stowed it on the shelf, then gestured for me to take the chair across the large wooden desk. From a cupboard concealed in the wall’s panels, she took out a bottle of wine, poured a crimson inch into two glasses, and set one in front of me.
Her hands moved with their usual steadiness. Still, her expression made me ask, “What’s the matter?”
“Mary was good?”
“She was fine,” I said. “A fainting spell worthy of Drury Lane.”
Amelia sipped her wine. “Anything unusual at the shop?”
I studied her. Her tone told me that this second question was why she’d held me back.
I drank the wine—bitter to my tongue—and thumbed the corners of my mouth to remove any purplish stain. Mary and I would deal with Sid, so there was no need to mention him being late. And if I told Amelia about the detective, Amelia might wonder if Mary was fit to work. “No,” I lied.
“Did you see more constables than usual?”
I answered, honestly, “We didn’t see any.”
“Good.” Amelia’s face relaxed into a smile. In silence, we
finished our wine, and she corked the wine bottle, putting it back inside the cupboard along with our glasses after wiping them with a towel. It was supper hour, and the jolly rowdiness rose through the floorboards. Amelia flapped her hand toward the door. “Get on with you, now. Have some fun, yeah?”
I made my way downstairs, pausing at the landing to observe the pub room below. A bright fire threw light fitfully, forming and dissipating shadows upon the beamed ceiling, the tattered chairs closest to the hearth, and the three long wooden tables that crossed the room, where men, women, and children crowded the benches. Card players sat at the square tables along the far wall. We thieves gathered by the fireplace. Sid watched worshipfully as Caleb drew a grand arc in the air with his glass of ale, telling a story that brought shouts of laughter. Mary watched him from the bar, her expression amused. He caught her eye and winked. Caleb flirted relentlessly with Mary, who was friendly with everyone, but she saw him for what he was—a fine-looking bloke, but shiftless, like most of the Castle men.
I started toward Mary and the bar, where people stood two deep. The barkeep, Pat Hollings, passed glasses of ale across the high wooden plank to open hands, the tattoos on his forearms rippling as he worked the taps, his thick fingers quick but not sloppy. While I waited my turn, I surveyed the room. It wasn’t family, but it was familiar to me.
Except at one of the tables sat a striking woman, new to the inn. She was about forty years of age, decently dressed in blue wool, her thick dark hair threaded with gray but still lustrous. Her countenance was lined around the mouth and at the brow, as if her life had been hard, but even so it was evident she’d once
been a beauty, with large dark eyes under well-shaped brows, high cheekbones, a firm chin, and a full mouth. It was an arresting face, handsome rather than merely pretty. I might not recall people’s names, but I have a peculiar memory for faces, and I’d seen hers once before. Not here, and only briefly, some months ago, somewhere dim, as if I’d passed her on a bridge in the late afternoon or observed her in a market.
She sat at the end of a long table with a group of four women who gathered there daily, joining the conversation, laughing at their remarks, leaning in with her chin in her palm, as if she’d done it every Friday night since forever.
Her pretense of belonging made me wary.
I’m not one to ignore that feeling. I attend to it, for more than once it has kept me from choosing a poor mark or showing too much of my hand. Having the mother I did, I’m quick to detect when folks are acting a part or passing lies.
Perhaps the woman felt my stare, for suddenly she returned it. Her gaze sharpened, held, shifted away for a moment, then settled back on me, hardened, as if she recognized me somehow, or at least knew a good bit about me.
It set a chill like a cold finger at my neck.
Then she gave a bland, indifferent smile and turned back to her new friends, making me wonder if I’d imagined it.
Beside me, Mary nudged my arm. “What’s the matter?”
I started. “Ah, nothing.” I looked pointedly at Mary’s halfempty pot. “None for me?” I teased.
“I didn’t know how long Amelia would keep you. She asked about me?”
“Of course,” I said. “But she was more concerned about constables.”
“Constables?” She drew back. “I didn’t see any.”
“I didn’t, either. That’s what I told her.”
“Ah.” She raised her pot with a smile. “Well, get yours and come on.”
“I will.” I turned toward the bar. Like a tide, people shifted forward and back to make room for others, and I nudged in between old Connors, who raised a sloshy pint and belched his greeting, and Mrs. Wiggins, whose upper lip with its dark hairs held droplets of ale. Connors flung an arm around me, but I was ready and slithered away before he could squeeze my arse. Pat winked at me with his one good eye—the other having been put out years before in a ship’s brawl—and passed me a glass of ale, hoppy and bitter at once, which I drank down thirstily until it was half gone. Mrs. Wiggins stepped away and James Kinnon materialized beside me, his hazel eyes bright with laughter. “Hullo, Kit.”
“Hullo,” I replied. “Haven’t seen you in weeks.”
“I’ve been working extra.” He set his empty glass on the bar. “Took the afternoon off to help Emma fetch a shipment from the wharf.” He leaned in close with a show of sharing a confidence, though he had to speak up to make himself heard over the clamor. “Josie says you’re sticking your hands in men’s pockets now. It has Robbie all excited.” One side of his mouth curved up, and his voice was sly with teasing.
I rolled my eyes. “You can tell Robbie I won’t be sticking my hand in his pocket. I’m sure I’d be disappointed.”
He laughed and set his elbows beside mine, avoiding the spots sticky with spills. “How’ve you been? How’s Sarah?” He’d always had a soft spot for my sister. “Is she getting along?”
“From what I can tell, the work is hard, but she doesn’t complain. I think she’s afraid I might make her quit.”
“She probably likes earning a wage,” James replied. “Makes
her feel like she’s grown, and she’s helping you, after all you’ve done.”
“I haven’t done much,” I said dismissively.
He left that alone, caught Pat’s eye, and pointed at his glass. “Another?” he asked me, and I nodded.
As our full glasses appeared, Pat leaned over the bar toward James, raising his voice to be heard. “You’re staying with Emma tonight? I’ve some chairs that need mending.”
“Aye, I’ll come by in the morning,” James replied and put down coins for our glasses. Pat made to wave them off, the drinks part of an easy exchange of favors, but James shook his head and shoved them toward the till.
We backed away from the bar to make space for others, and James gave me an inquiring look and raised his glass toward a small round table in the corner. I nodded and followed in his wake as he threaded his way between tables, greeting people he knew. James was one of the few Castle men who’d left and found legitimate work—at the Custom House, in his case, after being in prison for smuggling. I asked Emma once how he’d wrangled that, and she’d shrugged and said she had no idea. Rumor was he’d ratted out other smugglers, but I never believed it. James might be a rogue, but he was no copper’s nark.
Though he lived north of the river now, James came around to the inn most Fridays, joining the group of us by the fire. I wondered why he was pulling me aside. As I sat in one slatted wooden chair, James turned his sideways so he could rest his forearm along the top rail. “Emma says you’ve been helping her a good deal.”
“Well, someone had to. She had two trousseaus to finish last week,” I replied. “Needed by some West Ender in a hurry, as usual.”
One eyebrow rose. “She told me about some woman who changed her train three times.”
I snorted. “It wasn’t just her train—she couldn’t decide if she wanted her flounces gathered, box pleated, or fluted. She drove Emma half distracted.” I sipped my ale. “How is the Custom House?”
“Good,” he said. “Busy.”
“You miss smuggling? The dodges?”
He spun his glass on the table. “Nae. Clerking’s easier.”
I eyed his hand. The thick calluses along his thumb and forefinger weren’t from clerking.
“I thought you were on weights and measures,” I said.
“Started there, but I’m on records now,” he said. “Most days it’s like trying to catch a runaway train. We work till after dark—and there’s still ships lined up to be unloaded and counted the next morning, with the captains cussing at the delay. But they come from all over, Kit. The East Indies, Egypt, Spain, France.” He reached into his pocket. “Look here.” He chose a coin from the half dozen in his palm and held it out. “It’s from Greece.”
I took it, peering at the circle of silver with a young, straight-nosed man in profile on one side and on the other wheat sheaves encircling a word. “AERTON,” I puzzled out. “What is it?”
“One lepton,” he said. “Their letters are close but not the same.”
“Does it make you want to go places?” To my surprise, a note of envy crept into my voice.
“Sure,” he said. “Though some of the stories they tell of pirates make me happy to be right here.” I made to give the coin back, and he waved it back toward me. “Keep it. It’s a
curiosity. Can’t spend it.” He drained his glass and smiled at me. “What would you say to a proper night out? We could go to a music hall, see a show.”
I drew back. “With you?”
“Aye, why not?” he asked, unperturbed. “We’ve been friends a good while.”
I was silent.
James raked his dark curls back from his forehead. “Stop it, Kit. You’re looking at me like I’m running a confidence game.”
I laughed. “Do you know how to do anything else?”
He gave me a mock-wounded look and laid a hand across his chest as if I’d stabbed him. “Humor me. What’s the harm in a night at Wilton’s?”
“There was a man murdered there last year,” I reminded him. It had been in all the papers. A violinist had leapt into the crowd, fists flying, and landed a blow that sent the spectator down, his head smacking the floor, with blood everywhere, and the performer had been tried and thrown in prison.
He laughed. “You’re right. Tell you what,” he said, drawing a pack of cards from his pocket. “We’ll play. If I win, you have dinner with me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Everything is a game with you.”
He shrugged and dealt the cards.
Five hands later, I laid down rummy with two left over.
He laid down his cards, played the eight of spades on my run and had only an ace left over. His eyes brightened with triumph. “Saturday night, then.”
“I can’t. Sarah’s here.”
“Sunday?”
“I walk Sarah back to work.”
“What time?”
“Around five o’clock.”
“So, we could have dinner on the north shore.”
Still, I hesitated. He was a Castle man, born and raised, who’d been in prison. If those calluses on his hands were to be believed, he was still rowing at least a few nights a week, which meant he was back to smuggling.
He leaned forward, his dark eyebrows raised. “It’s just dinner, Kit.”
“All right. I’ll meet you around seven,” I said.
He opened his mouth to protest, then shrugged. “As you like.” He rose from his chair and pulled on his coat. “The Silver Plover.” He gave me the address and took up his empty glass to return it to the bar. “I’ve something to do for Emma. See you Sunday.”
He gave a cheerful grin, and I watched him leave, the burly shoulders under his rough brown coat, the dark hair that curled over the collar. He paused at a table, where a cluster of men urged him to stay for another drink. With a mix of familiarity and deference, he rested a hand on old Dick Yellen’s shoulder, one of the men who had known him since he was “Jimmy” and “boy.”
I couldn’t help but think of the last badger scheme we’d pulled together, the week before Amelia invited me into the ring.
The mark that night was married, which I knew not just because of the ring he wore, a gold band I could fence easily at Mr. Ardle’s. I’d seen him at the inn before with his wife on his arm. This time he was alone and blinked rapidly when I asked if he wanted company. I could tell he was a safe mark; there were some who were flat-out dangerous, the ones who stared bold as brass, smirking as if they expected your attentions all
along. This bloke was about thirty or so, with weepy mustaches and a shy, uncertain manner. He finished his supper hastily, and I brought him to Mrs. Donnelly’s lodging house next door, up the stairs to the room James and I rented for a shilling for the hour we needed it.
I eased the mark out of his coat—a bit worn, four shillings— and undid his cravat—another two—and came close, letting him peck me a bit as I shook out my hair. Like most men, he took it as an invitation to run his fingers into it, kissing my neck. I flinched and pulled back.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Oh, no matter,” I said. “Just your ring caught my hair. Here, let’s put it in your pocket, and you can play with my hair all you like.”
He hurriedly slid the ring off and tucked it away, and we went back to kissing, which gave me ample time to transfer the items in his pocket into my own. His hands ran over my back and down to my arse—
“Take off your trousers,” I whispered. “Let me sit on your lap a bit.”
He was out of them faster than a greyhound coursing a rabbit, dropping them in a heap on the carpet.
Trousers nice, almost new, a neat label inside. Six shillings.
I sat down on his lap, put my arms around his neck, held my breath against the scent of Macassar oil in his hair, and kissed him again.
Suddenly there were heavy footsteps in the hallway outside— the knob turned—and James flung open the door, slamming it into the wall behind.
“Who the devil are you?” James bellowed, his eyes blazing, his cheeks red. “And what are you doing with my wife?”
The man leapt up, dumping me unceremoniously onto the floor. James took a step toward me, his hands reaching, leaving the path to the door clear. This mark had the presence of mind to snatch up his trousers and boots before he raced off, his bare feet pounding down the hall.
Damn it, I thought. There went six shillings and four more for the boots.
James closed the door, grinning. “That was an easy one.” I put out a hand for him to pull me up, rubbing my hip where I’d landed. “Easy for you,” I grumbled.
“What’d you get?”
I drew the poke from my pocket—the gold ring, six pounds and a few shillings in coins and notes, and a silver pocket watch. I examined it closely. There was a monogram, SRB, but that could be churched. Plate, not real silver, but Mr. Ardle would take it.
James picked up the gold ring. “I can’t believe these fools fall for you saying it gets tangled in your hair.”
“They’re not thinking with their brains,” I reminded him. “A few kisses and you’re all fools.”
He had thrown back his head and laughed. “You’re right, we are.”
It was the same laugh James was giving now, with Dick Yellen and the other men. Unreserved and buoyant and easy. Nearly everyone liked James, perhaps because he genuinely liked most people. He had more faith in them than I did. Then again, he didn’t grow up with a ma who made a fussy show of locking the door carefully at night, as if she wouldn’t open it later for Jack McShane. Who topped up the gin bottle with water, to make it appear she hadn’t been drinking all afternoon. Who looked shocked at coins missing
from the tin cup, as if she hadn’t filched my meager wages for herself.
One last loud guffaw from the men and James turned away and pulled open the door. Unexpectedly, he turned and caught me looking. A roguish grin creased the skin at the corners of his eyes. With a quick lift of his chin in farewell, he closed the door behind him, leaving me rolling my eyes. He might work away from the Castle now, but he was the same as ever.
StripRules
Martin Limón
SOHO CRIME
Published by Soho Press, Inc.
227 W 17th Street
New York, NY 10011
www.sohopress.com
Copyright © 2026 by Martin Limón All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training arti!cial intelligence technologies or systems. is is a work of f iction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used f ictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Limón, Martin, 1948- author Title: Strip rules / Martin Limón.
Description: New York, NY : Soho Crime, 2026. Identi!ers: LCCN 2026006710
ISBN 978-1-64129-830-8
eISBN 978-1-64129-831-5
Subjects: LCGFT: rillers (Fiction) | Novels
Classi!cation: LCC PS3562.I465 S77 2026
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2026006710
Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Maria
Las Vegas Strip Blackjack Rules (circa 1995):
Dealer hits 16 and below.
Dealer stands on 17 and above.
Blackjack pays 3 to 2.
Player may double down on any two cards.
Player may split any two cards of equal value.
Insurance pays 2 to 1.
H A P T E R C
Spl ing Tens
“Splitting tens!” the dealer shouted over her le! shoulder, then in a lilting voice, “White plays.”
e pit boss looked up from his cash inventory sheet, raised his right eyebrow, and sauntered toward the blackjack table.
Chips spangled the green felt crescent, interspersed by playing cards dealt face up. e canted wooden card holder, called a shoe, was about half depleted and the plastic discard rack to the right of the dealer was proportionately half full.
“Well,” Cora said, “you gonna give me a card or what?” When the dealer hesitated, she said, “You waitin’ for permission?” She glanced at the skinny pit boss. “From him?” e pit boss surveyed the table, trying to act like the wise old man that he de nitely was not. Cora had bet two white
chips worth $500 each and received a pair of ladies—that is, a queen of hearts and a queen of diamonds. In blackjack, all face cards are worth ten points, which gave her a total of twenty. !e dealer was showing a six of spades with her hole card still face down.
!e goal of the game is to come as close to twenty-one as possible without going over, so a total of twenty is generally an excellent hand. But because of the sky-high true count, and the wealth of aces and tens remaining in the shoe, Cora had followed the math and split the red queens, sliding another cool $1,000 beside the betting circle.
!e pit boss’s store of wisdom was quickly being depleted but he also must’ve known that there really was no decision to make. Splitting tens might be unusual, even absurd in the minds of most players, but it certainly wasn’t against the rules. Finally, he nodded his consent.
!e rst card to hit Cora’s split queen was a jack. “Looks like she just had a baby,” Cora chortled. She slid another two white chips—totaling $1,000—forward. “Split again.”
Cora was now playing three hands, with $1,000 riding on each. Gawkers started to gather, gasping. Murmuring about the value of the rarely seen white chips. When the dealer separated the queen and the jack, she immediately hit the jack with a nine.
Cora waved her hand palm down and said, “Stay.”
Without hesitation, the dealer slapped another up card on the queen. An ace. An intake of breath from the growing crowd. “Stay,” Cora said once again. When you catch an ace on split tens you don’t get paid three-to-two like a blackjack.
!at’s only for the rst two cards dealt. Rather, you get paid even money, if it wins.
!e dealer slapped a card on the nal queen. A deuce.
According to the signs I’d ashed Cora just seconds before, the running count was eighteen. It was a four-deck game, half depleted, there were two decks le$ in the shoe and that made the count per deck, that is, the true count, nine. An advantage to the player of about 4 percent. Cora knew what to do. “Stay,” she said, waving once again.
Finished with Cora, the dealer proceeded to the next player at the table, keeping a jaundiced eye on the $3,000 in white chips sitting in piles of two each beside the split ladies and the baby jack.
When she came to me, I had only one lone green chip sitting on the felt before me. Twenty- ve dollars. !e two cards originally dealt to me were a six and a ve. “Double,” I said and slid out another green chip. !e dealer dealt the hit card face down and proceeded to her own hand. She turned over her hole card. A ve. !at, coupled with her six, gave her a total of eleven. Bad news for Cora. Bad news for me. If she hit herself with a ten, of which there was an abundance in the deck, the dealer would reach twenty-one and beat every hand that Cora was holding except for the ace-ten, which would be a “push.” !at is, neither the dealer nor the player would win or lose that particular hand but rather they’d both keep their money. Out of her three thousand bet, Cara could easily lose two thousand and retain one thousand.
!e dealer reached for the hit card, slid it out of the shoe and across the felt, and slapped it atop her ve-six.
An ace.
!is wasn’t too surprising since both Cora and I knew that the remaining cards in the shoe were chock-full of not only tens but also aces, which is why the running count was so high. And not coincidentally, why she’d been betting so much. And why she’d been splitting tens; hoping to catch more aces and tens on top of them.
In the routine play of the game of blackjack, the ace has an optional value of either eleven or one. Eleven wouldn’t have helped, so the obvious choice was one. !e dealer now had a total of twelve.
Angrily, she reached for the next card, slid it out, and ipped it atop her total.
A king. Twenty-two. She’d busted.
All players were paid, including Cora, who collected a short stack of six creamy white $500 chips.
His teeth set in a grimace, the pit boss barked at the dealer, “Shu e.”
She did, hanging her head as if she’d done something wrong.
I glanced around at the gawking crowd. Some of them were congratulating Cora, who nodded and acknowledged them like the conquering royalty that she was. One guy stood toward the back of the crowd, arms crossed, knobby elbows pointing askew of his bony frame. Incongruously, his cheeks were pu$ y, pushed out above a smiling mouth. Eyes smirking.
He knew me. I knew him and I didn’t like him. Not in the least.
I !ashed the emergency abort signal to Cora. Without visibly acknowledging my order, she calmly asked the dealer for a plastic chip tray and then proceeded to load it with her miniature Chinese wall of white ve-hundred-dollar chips, black one-hundred-dollar chips, and a handful of green twenty- ve-dollar chips. Before she rose from the table, I’d already !ed toward the parking lot.
Just outside the front entrance, a posse was waiting, badges hanging from lanyards around their necks. Agents of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. ey were led by the skinny guy with the pu$ y cheeks who I’d seen inside. I didn’t know his name but the counters in town called him Oscar, as in Oscar Mayer, since he was such a wienie.
Neither Cora nor I had done anything wrong. Counting cards isn’t a crime, it is in fact merely a form of thinking. And even in a casino, thinking isn’t illegal, no matter how much the bosses would love to make it so. However, it is greatly frowned upon. e Nevada court system has ruled, repeatedly, that card counting by itself is not illegal. But this is Las Vegas, and in the eyes of the people who run the casino industry, i.e. the mob, counting cards is a capital crime that should be punishable by death.
Oscar ordered his minions to shackle me, hand and foot. at was all it took. As they stepped toward me, I ran.
I dodged two of them and shoved aside another, then leapt down the curved terrace of about six steps. Tra c was not a worry at this time of night and I sprinted into the maze of parked cars, dodging this way and that, trying to put distance between myself and my pursuers. Exactly where I was
going, I didn’t know. I had only a vague idea of escaping down some dark alley or !nding some fence to climb or diving into some irrigation ditch to swim across to safety. I had just reached the far limit of the parking lot when a crouching shadow thrust itself toward me, aiming for my crotch—a broad-shouldered guy in a rent-a-cop out!t, tackling me in a way he must’ve learned in high school. I twisted away from the impact but this time to no avail.
I found out later that he’d just gotten o duty. Hearing the commotion at the front entrance, he’d stopped to gawk, then waited while the panicked pinball that was me bounced its way toward him. For heroic action, above and beyond the call of duty, they probably gave him a commendation, or some other damn useless piece of paper. Anything but money.
H A P T E R
C SinC y Law 2
!e attorney entered the closet-like conference room, sat at the single table across from me, and snapped open his briefcase. “Are you Ronnie Red eld?” he asked.
I told him I was, and he o ered his hand and said, “I’m Fred Raymond of Raymond and Raymond and Raymond.” We shook hands. He was a dapper man, slender, and couldn’t have been over thirty. Casually he said, “So you’re a counter.”
When I didn’t answer, he grinned. “Oh yes, I shouldn’t ask.”
I’d called his law rm because I’d heard of them from other card counters. Not that they were so great, but so many of the law rms in the city represented the casino industry in various matters and Raymond and Ramond and Raymond was one of the few that would take on card counters as clients.
He handed me a form in triplicate, already !lled out. “Read it and sign,” he said. “Our representation agreement.”
It was one page, single-spaced; all tight legalese. I scanned it, saw a few fat percentages, like 30, and the number $10,000 for their upfront retainer. My daughter, Margot, had already taken that to them. Without asking questions, I signed.
“ ey treatin’ you all right in here?” he asked, indicating with a cant of his head the Clark County Jail.
“So far,” I said. Having been in the army, I knew that complaining about the small stu never did any good.
“Good. ey’re charging you and the other person. What’s her name?”
“Cora,” I told him.
“Yes, Cora. ey’re going a$er something a little unusual.” He pulled a document out of his briefcase and read it. “‘Conspiracy to commit deceptive practices knowingly engaged in with the intent of securing winnings under false pretenses.’”
“Conspiracy?” I asked. “How can it be a ‘conspiracy’ to do something that isn’t illegal in the !rst place?”
“Good,” he replied. “You should’ve gone to law school.”
“Didn’t they?” I asked.
He smiled but didn’t respond.
Cora had been arrested, and in addition, her chips were con!scated. Supposedly held as “evidence.” is treatment was a gross overreaction. Nevada casinos have the right to deny service to anyone they don’t like; and, believe me, they despise card counters. But usually, they just kick you o the blackjack table, tell you they don’t like your play and let you
leave the casino, warning that if you come back, they will press charges for trespassing. All permissible under state law. But keeping your chips is never permissible. It is, in fact, the!. Still, sometimes casinos do it, daring the overmatched card counter to hire an attorney and try to get his or her money back. Too o!en, the counter decides it isn’t worth the time, trouble, and expense, and lets it go.
Although Fred Raymond promised me that he’d do his best to cut a deal with the prosecution, I ended up spending almost a month as a guest at Clark County Jail. Cora was out in less than a week. She turned state’s evidence against me. I didn’t blame her. She had been accepted at the Caltech grad school in a program having to do with quantum mechanics or something like that. She couldn’t risk losing her scholarship just to save a lowlife like me. And anyway, she probably rationalized that I’d get o . Normally, I would have.
At the blackjack table, Cora did anything but pay attention to the cards. at was my job. When the count favored the player, I’d $ash her a hand signal. She’d bet the big money that we had pooled together with three other investors. It worked because the misogyny of the casino bosses ran so deep that they couldn’t conceive of a woman smart enough to beat the casinos. Especially not a Black woman; Cora played up her brashness, so in their eyes she’d be as obnoxious as they come. It hurt their pride that they, the wisest of the wise guys, could be so easily played for fools. e conspiracy charge wouldn’t hold up in the courtroom,
Fred told me. He thought that Gaming Control was just taking a chance; if it did stick, they’d have a new legal tool to use against card counters. Especially those working in teams, which most of us were.
Six years ago, I buried my wife, Anne. She died of breast cancer. Margot, our daughter, had been twelve years old. Like a brave soldier, she gripped a handful of earth in her little hand, stepped forward, and tossed it atop her mother’s co!n. Later, as we walked toward the funeral home’s limousine, she looked up and asked, “Dad, why did you make Mom so sad all the time?”
I swallowed all the counterarguments I could’ve made, about how I was making more money as a card counter than I possibly could’ve made holding down a nine-to- ve job. How we’d bought a house in an upscale section of Las Vegas and could’ve paid for it in cash but didn’t, because that might’ve tipped o the IRS about the thousands of dollars in gambling proceeds that weren’t appearing on my annual income tax return. I had to work odd hours, when the crowds were big and the casino personnel were preoccupied, or when we spotted a unique advantage. $e money, I thought, was worth the sacri ce. Anne and I had argued a lot. She thought that never having a dad at home to tuck Margot in at night and maybe read her a bedtime story was bad for her. I realized she was probably right, and I promised her I’d retire soon. But the siren call of burning the casinos, of working with other counters who were constantly
coming up with creative ways to pro!t o each casino misstep, was more than I could resist. e promised retirement never happened.
I stopped, held her by the shoulders, and stared into Margot’s eyes, deciding not to defend myself. “I was wrong, honey,” I told her. “Your mom was right. I was worried about making money and she was worried about the short time you and me and her had together. I should’ve listened to her. And I should’ve listened to you.” I remember bowing my head for a moment before I could look back at her. “I’m sorry, honey.”
She stared me directly in the eye and said, “ at’s okay, Dad. I forgive you.”
A$er seemingly endless haggling, all of it for nought, we were still awaiting trial. I had no choice but to sell our house to help pay for my ever-increasing legal expenses. Margot was now only two weeks away from starting high school. As we were packing, she helped me sort through her mom’s things: old dresses, jewelry, the photo album Anne kept close by the nightstand.
She was quiet while we worked. Finally, she said, “You killed her, Dad.”
Slowly, I turned to look at her.
“She worried all the time,” Margot said. “Worried about what you were doing out there. Worried about you getting in trouble. Getting beat up by the mob, or worse.” She stared directly at me. “ at’s what killed her.”
I steadied my voice, speaking slowly. “She died of breast cancer, Margot.”
Margot’s blue eyes had !lled with tears. “I don’t care,” she said, shaking her sandy blonde hair. “You’re what killed her. You!” And then she was hitting me, pounding on my chest. A er a few seconds she stopped, exhausted, and then she was hugging me.
I stroked the back of her head.
Most of our belongings we stored in Aunt Tillie’s barn a few miles outside of Ogden, Utah. Back in Las Vegas, Margot and I moved into the Crescent Arms Trailer Park. Margot had the bed in the rear of the trailer, since I was apt to come in at all hours. I’d curl up on the tiny, vinyl-covered booth wrapped around the Formica-topped table that was our “dining area.”
She was taciturn during those !rst years of high school, talking to me only to convey mandatory information. Like, “I’ll be coming in late this Saturday.” Or, “I’m going to the football game Friday night, and I’ll be sleeping over at Charlotte’s house a erwards.”
I le her mostly alone, !guring she was old enough to make her own decisions. Another of my many mistakes.
Meanwhile, I was frantically trying to earn enough money playing blackjack to keep up with our living expenses and trying not to fall too far behind the ever-ballooning bill from Raymond and Raymond and Raymond. e prosecution never o$ered a plea deal. ey had Cora’s testimony
against me and were asking for twenty years in the state prison. !ey wanted a win, and a big win. Finally, the trial came.
!e case made the newspapers in a big way. My mugshot even appeared on local TV. Some of the kids at school started taunting Margot for having a card counter as a father. !eir parents worked in the gambling industry: executives, hosts, sales reps, accountants, concierges, bellhops, cashiers, dealers, pit bosses, oor managers, bartenders, cocktail waitresses, waiters, sommeliers, chefs, cooks, dishwashers, janitors, maids; even entertainers like singers, musicians, showgirls and comics. Most of them considered card counters to be threats to their livelihoods, like rats gnawing at the foundation of a great building.
I did what I could, telling her that one day high school would be but a eeting dream. A nightmare maybe, but still just a dream. Despite my e orts, Margot took the bullying to heart.
When the trial came, Margot surprised me by appearing in her best dress, sitting in the $rst row behind me. School be damned.
I had repeatedly expressed to Fred Raymond that in my non-expert legal opinion, this case should’ve been summarily dismissed by the judge long ago. When Fred didn’t answer, I told him that I’d heard the judge had received a lot of pressure from the powers that be to let the case go to trial. And that’s what he’d done, apparently unwilling to stick his neck out and displease the vast army of workers who made their livings in the casino industry or, more importantly, the
big money interests who bankrolled the casinos and, along with them, the state of Nevada and every politician and o!cer of the court in it.
Fred snorted but didn’t reply, which I took to be agreement.
He put up a ery defense. In his closing argument, he told the jury that common sense dictated that thinking could never be considered a crime. e jury, I believe reluctantly, agreed with the argument and found me not guilty. I bowed my head in thanks for a moment, praying either to God or the laws of probability, I’m not sure which. When I turned to look at Margot, I saw her exiting the courtroom, pushing her way through the big double wooden doors. Not looking back.
One day, just as she was about to nish her junior year, Margot packed a bag and bought a Greyhound bus ticket to LA. Her mother had bequeathed her a few hundred dollars, which she had withdrawn from her now closed bank account. She le$ me a note saying she couldn’t take another year of high school in Las Vegas, promising she’d earn her GED, and wishing me good luck.
Where exactly she went, I didn’t know.
A$er that, I spent a lot of time in downtown Las Vegas, wandering from casino to casino with no money in my pocket; totally defeated by the combined power of the casino bosses and the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
Soon enough I hit on an idea. I’d show ’em. I’d become the best rug ranger the city had ever seen. I’d build up my bankroll so I could get back in the game on a serious level. I’d beat these bastards. Earn enough to pay o! my attorney, nd another team who’d be happy to welcome a sharp card counter with experience. And then, with my pro ts, I’d hire a private investigator to nd Margot.
But somehow that day never came. Scouring casino oors for dropped silver dollars and lost chips—that is, riding the rug range—did garner me some working capital. Capital I immediately bet back into hot decks. Slowly, painfully, I made a pro t. But Las Vegas has more than one way to beat you. In fact, it sometimes seems it has no end of devilish plots to keep a good man down.
My downfall was booze. Speci cally, the $y-cent drinks at Binion’s Horseshoe, served all day and all night around a horseshoe-shaped bar constantly populated with an ensemble of degenerates that only Las Vegas can provide. e craps, the roulette, the loose women, the cheap entertainment, the tigers clawing their trainers into hamburger to the delight of massive crowds; none of that held any fascination for me. But liquor did.
I found perverse solace in the idea that I was the lowest casino bum in town—but unbeknownst to my enemies, I was still sharp of mind and cool in a pinch. And still able to take advantage of blackjack games with good rules and deep penetration. Using my itinerant status as camou age, I bet only when a clear player advantage presented itself.
In the name of righteousness, I struck mighty blows
16
martin limón against Babylon. In between, I drank. Occasionally I even paid the rent on my trailer. And managed from time to time to catch the ninety-nine-cent breakfast o!ered to long lines of tourists at the co!ee shop at the Mint Hotel. But I never built up the bankroll I longed for. And my wife never rose from the dead and my daughter never returned.
At night, alone in my trailer, I wrestled with sweaty sheets and wished forlornly that I’d been smart enough to get myself killed in Vietnam. I could’ve been a hero. My pink-cheeked military photo sitting atop somebody’s mantelpiece, waiting for someone, anyone, to ask a er my fate.
StrictlySawdust 3 H A E R C
!e crapshooter threw his hands up in a cheer. One of his red chips tumbled to the wood-slat oor and rolled about $een feet until it hit the casino wall and spun its way into a ridge of sawdust. He glanced around, sensing that something had gone awry, but not seeing anything, ran his ngers over his row of neatly aligned chips, grabbed the dice, and shot again. A groan went up from the crowd as he sevened out.
I turned my attention away from the crapshooter and back to the blackjack table, where I was keeping the running count as the dealer pulled the un-played cards out of the shoe. I made a mental note of the placement of the red chip, hoping the sawdust kept it hidden long enough for me to nish counting this round of cards.
“Better me than the janitor,” I said under my breath.
One of the blackjack players glanced at me furtively but quickly turned away. It was all part of my master plan. I found that disheveled hair, an unkempt beard and constantly talking to myself greatly extended my longevity at the blackjack tables. Casino security saw me as a pest but not worth bothering about. Unless I caused trouble. But that was rare. Only when I’d had a snootful.
!e dealer had already dealt about three decks deep into the four-deck shoe when a parade of small cards raised the true count to eight and thus an advantage to the player of about three and a half percent. As the dealer squabbled with a player over a payment, I hurried o and quickly acquired the almost hidden red chip. Brushing o tiny akes of sawdust, I paired it with another chip I’d found behind a commode in the men’s room and returned to the red-hot shoe. Just before the dealer started sliding out the cards for the next round, I placed the two chips on an empty betting circle, forced air out of my whiskey-ravaged throat and said, “Red plays!”
For a golden moment, I felt alive again, a true player. A man with an advantage over the casino and ten bucks on the table. !e Vegas bosses quaked in their imported Italian boots.
!e dealer glanced at me as if to say, “Take a bath, already,” but shrugged and dealt. He slapped one card and then another in front of each player at the table. Clapping my hands, I performed a merry little jig as I caught a ten and then an ace.
“Blackjack,” I shouted, jabbing my fore$nger into the felt.
“Pay me!” I pointed at the center of my chest. “Fi!een big ones.”
“No dice, Ronnie,” the dealer said. “I’m showing a jack. See?”
I wondered how the dealer knew my name. Probably I’d been coming in here too o!en.
If the dealer had an ace hidden beneath his ten, we’d both have a blackjack and we’d “push.” Gently, the dealer twisted back the edge of his hole card and peered at the verdict. No blackjack. Letting the card ip back down, he de!ly plucked three red chips out of his neatly aligned chip tray and paid me !een dollars. He pushed two chips up against the two red that I’d placed in the betting circle and plopped the third chip, representing the three-to-two payout for a “natural,” squarely in the middle on top, forming a tiny pyramid. As I reached for my winnings, a small herd of heavy leather boots pounded on the creaking slats of the hardwood oors, getting closer.
Security!
I dropped the ve red chips into my jacket pocket and ran. Before I reached freedom, a uniformed arm poleaxed me across my throat. I went down in a heap, tried to get up, but a barrage of sts like giant pig’s knuckles cracked my head back to the oor and sawdust slid beneath my skull. And then I felt nothing.
A limo cruising through the Crescent Arms Trailer Park isn’t exactly an everyday sight. I’d just nished taking a leak
when I heard the commotion outside. Zipping up my pants, I peered through the slats of the venetian blinds. A stretch limousine, followed by a coterie of bounding and jeering youngsters, glistened in the mid-morning sun. !e expensive nish had been polished lovingly. Finally, the massive conveyance stopped in front of my trailer.
Cops! !ey’ve come to arrest me. A er the treatment I’d received last night, I was still paranoid. But the Las Vegas Police Department doesn’t travel in limousines. Neither does the FBI. Besides, I hadn’t done anything. Still, what’s legal under the law and what’s legal in the efdom known as the City of Las Vegas are two di$erent things.
A driver wearing a black suit and tie emerged from the limo. He paced around the rear of the car, shooing away children—Black, white, and various and sundry ethnicities. He was a big man, with curly black hair and a massive chest which stretched the material of his suit to the breaking point. He walked like a mountain gorilla; a silverback taking yoga lessons in hopes of improving his posture. He opened the back door of the limo and out popped a dapper little man pu ng on a thick cigar. He shaded his eyes against the sun and peered at my trailer. He seemed to be chuckling to himself. I knew who he was. Wild Bill Grimsley, in the &esh. Without bothering to throw on a shirt, I slid open a metal door, emerged from my hovel, and stood on the tiny cement patio, arms akimbo, staring at my old friend and gambling partner.
“Even from here,” I said, “that smells like a Havana.”
“How sweet it is,” Wild Bill replied. He stepped forward,
grabbed my shoulders, and looked up at me. “Ronnie Red!eld,” he said. “You old scudder, you.” I’m not sure what that meant but it was what he always said.
We’d met at Camp Alpha, the R&R Processing Center in Vietnam. He’d been a senior sergeant in the cadre there, and I’d just been wiped out of six months of saved-up pay in a crooked poker game. A group of sharpies had been dealing seconds and cleaning up on the GIs, including me, on their way to Bangkok or Hong Kong or Manila or Sydney for !ve days of well-earned bliss. Sometimes the last days of bliss they’d ever know.
Bill decided to put a stop to the cheating—in his own way, keeping the army brass out of it. He’d observed my play and decided that I was a good enough tactician for him to provide the bankroll and give me a chance to take my revenge. He brought in an honest dealer, someone beyond reproach.
A Colonel Duong of the North Vietnamese Army. He was a prisoner of war at the nearby South Vietnamese torture chamber, also known as a prison. Bill must’ve bribed someone to get Colonel Duong out for a couple of days. He taught him how to shu e the cards and how to deal them around the table. Duong was so frightened, and his hands shook so badly, that even the most suspicious player knew that he couldn’t possibly be dealing seconds or performing any other fancy tricks. Our constant scrutiny, and the amount of money involved, must’ve ratcheted up the pressure for the hapless colonel, but he did his job conscientiously. He was being fed well, and Bill had a lady wash his uniform for him. All in all, being a poker dealer beat the hell out of being
locked up twenty-four hours a day in what the Vietnamese called a “monkey cage.”
In a fair game, I taught these guys a lesson. I managed to get all my money back and then some. We’d wiped out the cheaters and Bill put them on notice; they either knocked o! the cheating and kept their mouths shut about their losses, or he’d sic the commanding o cer on them. ey decided to take their lumps and keep quiet about it.
I had a couple more days on my $ve days of R&R and Bill insisted we catch a hop on a C-130 to Da Nang. From there we hitched a ride to My Khe, the place GIs called China Beach. We drank beer, smoked pot, and swapped gambling stories. Bill even introduced me to the friend of a nurse he knew who worked at the local dispensary.
A er that, we lost touch. But the gambling gods are a funloving bunch. A decade or two later, a er we were both out of the army and the war in Vietnam could only be found in history books and nightmares, I ran into him in Las Vegas. Back then he had a job escorting busloads of elderly tourists out to one of the new casinos that were popping up in nearby Henderson, Nevada. at was before he moved up in status, and in pay, to chaperoning the mega-players from Asia at the massive Bacchanal Casino on the Strip. Bill had a talent for entertaining the Asian players. He’d pass cigars around, light them up, and regale them with stories of back on the farm in Tennessee, sitting on the porch and watching the ’backer grow. When he escorted them around town showing them the sights, they’d imitate his country accent and ask him questions and laugh at his every oddball facial expression.
Soon, he had a following from Macau and Hong Kong and Singapore, and it included not only millionaires but also billionaires. He negotiated perks and a fat percentage of the win from the Bacchanal, and got it. !ey couldn’t a ord to let him go—and take his players with him.
!e limo driver retreated into the car, the engine still idling to keep the air conditioning running. As per usual, the temperature today was expected to rise above one hundred before noon and was almost there already.
I pointed to the two benches attached to a picnic table that was chained to a metal ring anchored in cement. “Clean o the bird shit and have a seat.”
!e two of us sat beneath a sagging canvas awning and studied each other. Wild Bill pu ed contentedly on his cigar. I broke the ice. “How are you, you old reprobate? I never see you anymore.”
“All you have to do is come up to the Bacchanal and ask for me.”
“On the Strip?” I gu awed. “ !ey’d as soon throw me out as look at me.”
“It’s you,” Bill said. “You’ve let your act deteriorate. Don’t take it personally, Ronnie. Shave, get yourself a haircut and some nice clothes, and you could be back on top again. ‘ !e Technician,’” he said, waving his cigar grandly in the air. “ !e most feared card counter between here and Reno.”
“Shit,” I said. “ !ey never feared me. !ey just kicked me out as soon as they saw me.”
“Because they feared you,” Bill said. “ !ey couldn’t a ord to let you play. Anyway, that’s ancient history. And Vegas has
the historical memory of a fruit !y. All the personnel have turned over three or four times since then. Tighten up your act and you could be back in business in no time.”
“With my paltry bankroll?”
Bill lowered his cigar. “I heard about that,” he said. “ ey con scated your chips, eh?”
“Five of them.” en I grinned. “All red.” Twenty- ve dollars.
“You’re that broke?”
I shrugged. “My expenses are low.”
Bill glanced around. “I see.”
“ ey claimed I stole them.”
“ at’s not like you. Mister Honest John. You who never wanted to end up in the Nevada State Prison.”
“I didn’t steal anything,” I told Bill. “I found one chip behind the shitter in the men’s room and the other was dropped when a guy shooting craps got excited.”
“Finders keepers,” Bill said, nodding slowly. “At the El Borracho?”
“ at’s the casino.”
“Sawdust,” Bill said. “Strictly sawdust.” He pu$ed on his Havana, studied me further and said, “Looks like they worked you over a little.”
“A little,” I replied, caressing the bruises around my le eye.
Bill tapped ash o$ his cigar. “You shouldn’t be playing downtown at these sawdust joints. You should be out on the Strip, with the wall-to-wall carpeting and the women in evening gowns. But mostly, where the money is.”
“ ey’ll work you over out there too.”
“Unless you have friends.” He pulled a business card from the inside pocket of his jacket, placed it !at, and slid it across the lthy picnic table. “ is guy,” Bill said. “Talk to him.”
I picked up the card. “ e Blue Parrot? What is it, a nightclub?”
“No, no. A pet store.”
“A pet store? What do I want with a pet store? I can barely feed myself. If it wasn’t for the ninety-nine-cent breakfast at the Mint, I’d starve to death.”
Bill eyed me. “You have lost a little weight.”
“Back in the army,” I said, “we got three hots and a cot. I never had it so good.”
“Me neither. But now I have responsibilities.”
“You? For what?”
“For all those high rollers who want to be pampered and powdered and have their diapers changed every ve minutes.” He checked his watch. “As a matter of fact, I have to get back to one of them now.”
“What does he want?
“A hog.”
“A what?”
“A hog. You know, one of those huge motorcycles. He wants to ride it back and forth on the Strip and pretend he’s a Hell’s Angel. And the lady of loose virtue we’re paying to stay with him gets to play the part of his ‘Mama.’ We’re getting them wigs, leather vests, beat up old boots with silver chains, the works.”
“ is guy’s a grown man?”
“In his ! ies. Not a millionaire, but a freaking billionaire. Comes to the Bacchanal at least once a year. It’s my job to make sure he keeps coming back.”
“How much money does he drop?”
“More than you or I will ever see.” Bill winked at me and pointed at the card on the table. “You might as well get some of that money. Go see the man. Shower, shave, and be there standing tall at high noon today.”
I fondled the card. “Urgent, huh?”
“Urgent.”
I studied Bill. “Nothing illegal?”
“No. Nothing illegal.” Bill laughed. “I told him that you’re weird that way.” He rose from the table. “Talk to Signor Ferrari. He’ll explain everything.” e mountain gorilla held the door open as Wild Bill climbed back into the air-conditioned limo. e ragamu$n kids backed o , disappointed looks on their faces as the limo rolled slowly forward, turned right at the exit, and another unattainable dream disappeared from their lives.
THE LONGEST DEATH
Kevin Jagernauth
Published by Soho Press, Inc.
227 W 17th Street
New York, NY 10011 www.sohopress.com
Copyright © 2026 by Kevin Jagernauth
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-1-64129-855-1 eISBN 978-1-64129-856-8
Interior design by Janine Agro
Printed in the United States of America
For all my orphans, sneak thieves, drifters, and vagabonds
CHAPTER ONE
It all started with Richard Cobson stealing a couple dollars out of the petty cash at Eddy & Dowd Safe Deposit Company. He just wanted to see if he could do it. If he would get caught. Richard waited for the right moment, walked the short distance from his desk, calmly pocketed four quarters and a crumpled dollar bill, and quietly sat back down. At the end of the day, he took the cash to his room at the boarding house and placed it in a ceramic mug on his dresser. The one that once belonged to Grandmother, the one he kept for good luck. It was the only thing the bank didn’t take from Father. This was a Tuesday. Richard waited to see if there would be any fuss. Come Friday, nobody gave a damn. Not the office manager, not nobody. It wasn’t relief Richard felt, it was the stirrings of excitement.
On Sunday, Richard put on a clean pair of trousers and a pressed shirt, emptied the ceramic mug, walked to the other side of town, and sat for dinner at the counter of the Covered Wagon. T-bone steak, shoestring potatoes, vanilla ice cream, and a cup of coffee, hot and black. $1.50. Plus a ten-cent tip. A good meal, and forty cents left over.
A few weeks later, Richard did it again, adding fifty cents more to his haul out of the cash box. $2.50. This time he spent the hard ones at Terry’s Dinette, treating himself to another steak. After, he found a quiet bar where he could sit at a table by himself, where no one would try a conversation. His glass of beer sweated onto the coaster, and Richard thought about his shabby room, his lousy clothes, and the fact he had to steal to buy a decent steak and a watery drink. Richard turned over possibilities that began to take the shape of an idea. One that he couldn’t shake, one that would crush the world as he knew it into dust.
CHAPTER TWO
Frank Todd spread the photographs on the beat-up desk like he was laying out a week-old newspaper for the cat. Once a flatfoot with a badge, now a private dick, he knew that nobody actually wanted answers to the questions they asked. They gave him money to confirm what they already knew.
“There he is, Mrs. Davies. With the lady two blocks down, just like you thought. This was last week, Tuesday and Thursday,” Todd said.
The woman sitting across from him had red hair that fell neatly below the straight line of her chin and wore a plain dress with a simple pattern. Todd almost felt sorry for her, and spared her the other pictures he’d snapped of her husband entangled in the arms of another man. She didn’t need to know that. What he had was enough for what she’d said she was going to do—divorce—though in Todd’s experience, his clients didn’t give up their deadbeats. And the deadbeats always swore up and down they’d never do it again. Having been down that road before, Todd considered marriage an institution fit for a straitjacket.
“You’re sure it’s him?” she asked, moving her hands above the photographs, afraid to touch them, as if they’d scorch her fingertips.
Todd sighed and leaned back in his chair. It squealed in protest. Since the years he’d paraded around as Johnny Law, he’d grown a little more swollen and sweaty. The pockmarks on his face were more prominent, cigarette smoke had wrinkled his brow, and alcohol had done the rest. A full head of greasy brown hair was all he had left to remind him of his halcyon days on the force.
“It’s him alright. I tailed him all last week, even when you two went to the movies.” He paused before saying it again. “It’s him, ma’am.”
Be polite, he reminded himself. It kept them calm and made them certain. Todd pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack in his breast pocket, had second thoughts, and stuck it behind his ear.
One of two things usually happened at this moment—tears or money. It was a gamble which he’d get first. Mrs. Davies— they always tried a fake name, as if he wasn’t a shamus—kept her composure and asked what she owed. Todd scribbled a figure in pencil on a yellow legal pad and pushed it across the desk. She grabbed some bills out of her purse and tossed them in front of him. Then she got up to leave, pulling a cornflower blue sweater across her shoulders. She was nearly out the door when Todd called out with his sawdust-dry voice.
“You want the pictures?” he asked, not unkindly. “You paid for ’em.”
She paused, pulled on her gloves, grabbed the snapshots off the desk, and slung them into her purse, firmly snapping it shut. She slipped out the door without so much as a thank-you.
It hadn’t always been like this for Todd, but if you asked anybody, he’d dug his own ditch. The facts were simple: when he wore a uniform, a Jane had gone missing in his patch of Riverton’s paradise—pulled right off the street—and Todd was nowhere to be found. A wide-eyed rookie finally tracked him down in the back of a hooch joint, stewed to the ears, propped up between a pool table and a garbage can, spilling tall tales to the cheers of his fellow alkies. By the time Todd could make himself vertical again, the Jane had been found dead and violated, and he was off the force.
Scorn and stares followed Todd around Riverton after that, and while most people would’ve had the good sense to leave town and never look back, he didn’t find it worth the bother. Todd had never been much for friends, so he didn’t have any to lose. He just stuck his hands in his pockets, tucked his chin into his chest, and toughed it out. And after a season or two, the unpleasantness passed. Time is a convenient sieve for inconvenient memories, and most people will hold their nose if someone else will get their hands dirty for them. So now Todd laundered Riverton’s secrets and made them come out clean. He’d earned a reputation for working fast and cheap and keeping his trap shut. As far as Todd was concerned, if he could keep his mouthwash stocked and his gat loaded, that was enough.
When Todd had set up his office in the back of Becker’s
grocery store, he didn’t trouble himself with a secretary. Word traveled fast. Anyone who needed him knew where to knock, and his number was shared like a secret password.
Todd kept the furniture simple. Just a desk and two scarred wooden chairs for whoever came along. On the desk was a dusty lamp and a black Western Electric telephone. The bottom drawer was occupied by a bottle of hooch. Todd had considered giving it up, but it was the only partner he was ever going to have. One that he knew would always be loyal. Still, he’d promised himself to always work clear. And some days, he even tried.
Becker also let him rent the dump above the store. It was just as shabby as the office, but it was quiet at night. Todd would hang up his hat, pour himself a drink, and sitting in his chipped chair at his chipped table he’d wonder who it was that got a laugh naming this parched town in the middle of nowhere Riverton.
Gazing out from his window he could see the amber lights glowing across the train tracks, where all the hands who cooked and cleaned for the people who hired him lived. Todd was no crusader, but during his days with the bulls, the fists that went down on them just for daring to be on this side after dark, looking for a decent time, hadn’t sat right with him. “They have their place. We have ours. They have their own dives and picture houses. Let them stay over there,” said Riverton’s finest. Every now and then, one of them would get ginned up, step over the tracks into a hash house, order some pie and a drink. The proprietors would serve them, take their money, and then call the blues. “Public nuisance,” they’d announce as the official
charge before dragging the unwelcome guest back where he came from. For those who tried to get smart, arms were broken and teeth were smashed.
Todd felt sick when he thought about the things he’d done while in uniform. Drinking had helped for a while, until it didn’t. Far as Todd was concerned, he wasn’t paid to have an opinion, so he’d joined the ruckus with the rest of them. He’d come home with his fists bruised and cut to ribbons, the size of cantaloupes. But what was he supposed to do? His wife, before his drinking chased her away, said he was the law, and that was that. He guessed that was one way of seeing things. Keeping a buzz on helped him not to think about it too much.
Sometimes a flickering idea passed through his mind that he could be brass again. Maybe even decent this time. Todd still knew the beat and had a sense of Riverton’s air and electricity. An understanding of its balance. This sensation raised the hairs on his neck. He’d never told anyone about this juju, he didn’t need the hassle, but call it what you want—cop’s instinct, sixth sense—he had it. Things had been quiet awhile, and right now his bones were saying this town was due for a shakeup.
Todd left his office and made the short trip home, up the back staircase of Becker’s. He pulled the cigarette from his ear, lit it, and through the smoky haze, he wondered what was going on in all those windows up and down the street. Wondered about how soft the soil was that held up this goddamned town and who was gonna run it for silt. Wondered what the hell he was gonna do about it.
CHAPTER THREE
“Pardon me, could you show me to my desk?”
Richard lifted his head. Everything was even on the face of the man standing in front of him. Evenly spaced green eyes, evenly spaced white teeth. He had a shock of thick, black hair slicked to the side, and the playful smile of scapegrace. Only a small, signpost-shaped birthmark below his right eye was out of balance. Richard thought it was wonderful.
“Name’s Marlon Montgomery. I’m starting today, joining the number crunchers, but it seems I’m not the star attraction,” the new arrival said, tilting his head toward Gloria Lamarne, the cover girl of Eddy & Dowd. Men and women overran her desk bragging about their weekends, squawking about her outfit, and trading stories that would be worth a few column inches if Riverton had a scandal sheet. Richard couldn’t tell if Marlon’s remark came from amusement or contempt, so he stuck out his hand. The handshake was firm, the skin soft. Marlon’s voice was mannered, eloquent. Expensive. Something must’ve gone wrong for him to wind up here.
Richard led Marlon through the warren of desks into the
corner of Eddy & Dowd where a trio of accountants marked their territory with ledgers and lamps. They sat with their sleeves rolled up and kept their pinched faces down, tobaccostained fingers worrying back and forth across messes of paper in front of them. At a slightly larger desk off to the side was the man they were looking for. They listened to him wheeze, waiting as he flipped pages in a folder.
Richard had neatly cut sandy hair, brown eyes, and a nose that was slightly too small for his face, and ears that were slightly too big for his head. Faint freckles showed on his cheeks, underneath a light tan that made his skin appear to glow bronze. On anyone else he would’ve seemed ordinary, except for the jagged line of a scar on his chin that pulled everything together into a subdued, rugged handsomeness.
The man at the desk got up and lurched toward Richard and Marlon with a nearly finished cigarette clinging for dear life on his bottom lip. His left eye hung with a droop.
“Marlon,” he said, introducing himself. “I heard you guys needed someone to keep the books in shape, so here I am.”
“They never tell us nuthin’,” said the man as he spat out one chewed-up cigarette and started working another around his mouth like an apple. “But they ain’t wrong.”
He paused to cough, pulling a soiled rag across his mouth to collect the various fluids that tried to escape. “Travis,” he said hoarsely, offering a hand and using the other to pound his shuddering chest. “Grab a seat and one of these numbskulls will bring you up to speed.”
“Welcome aboard. I’ll leave you to it,” Richard said to
Marlon, and as he walked back to his desk, he wished had come up with something more clever to add.
MARLON KNEW IT was best to stay out of the way when joining an office that had its own customs and routines that he’d need to learn. He’d hang back and let people come to him when they were ready. Not much different than a grift, really.
Marlon settled behind a small metal desk with a square top and drawers that were dented but still did the job they were supposed to do. After he got his things arranged, Travis tossed some simple calculations his way. Marlon had lunch with his team, listened to their stories, and laughed at their jokes. It wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. But Marlon had learned long ago there’s no sense getting comfortable enough with a place to give a damn about it.
Marlon would never admit it, but there was once a blueprint made just for him. All apple pie and America. Father lived by the stock ticker, and Mother stayed at home. Marlon was their only child, fussed over and spoiled. The best schools, the best tutors, the whole city lay at his young feet. When he approached the age of responsibility, Father started hinting about a job in his office. Mother started bringing home girls for him to meet. Soon there was an engagement ring and invitations, and Marlon found himself hurtling toward marriage and a future, all arranged and wrapped in a bow. Father and Mother had even started looking at a brownstone to get the newlyweds established. Marlon would be the next pillar of the community.
Then, one night a few weeks before the wedding, Marlon
went on a mission: a drink at every bar, gin joint, backroom shipwreck, blind pig, and diving bell he could find. It surprised Marlon how many turned up just when he needed them. As the sun rubbed its eyes, he was three sheets to the wind and raising the mast on a fourth, but miraculously remained steady on his feet. Marlon returned home, deposited himself on his parents’ couch, a torch of courage keeping him alert. He was quiet, careful not to wake the house, resolute about what had to be done.
The argument that morning with Father and Mother didn’t feel like it started so much as they were joining one already in progress. They had never seen him that furious. That clear-headed. About the office job and the wedding and the brownstone. About everything. They argued and Marlon argued back, and—spirited, tired, drunk, never more alive—he finally told them exactly what he wanted and what he didn’t. Exactly who he was and who he was always going to be.
Shock and tears followed by silence. Father hastily gathered cash from around the house, stuffed it into an envelope, and shoved it into Marlon’s hands. Mother dropped a bag at his feet packed with his clothes. Then they showed him the door. Marlon pocketed the envelope, picked up the bag, and never looked back. Never said a word to Suzanne, his fiancée, figuring his parents would shortly be on the buzzer and the entire sordid business would be out in the open. When Suzanne found out she wouldn’t want to speak with him, and Marlon wouldn’t know what to say anyway.
Marlon left the only city he’d ever known that day, choosing
a leisurely route toward the station, walking through the shadows of the sun-dappled trees along the avenues and boulevards he was already beginning to mourn. By the time the sky started to glow orange, Marlon was on a train bound for points south and felt a weight lift from his shoulders. A confidence stirred in him that he could now steer his own life, submit the world to his demands and stake his place in it.
At first, Marlon tried a few stints as Johnny Citizen, but keeping upright wasn’t his specialty, and he soon fell into a new trade as a clip-artist. Whether it was taking a stack legit through the bulls and the bears like Father or playing it underhanded, Marlon didn’t see much difference. During his years at prep, he’d pulled some razzle on students, and even some staff, and already had a practiced hand. Marlon was good at it. And got even better. His craft evolved, from light finger work to small con operations. It suited Marlon that this enterprise didn’t allow him to stay in one place too long and didn’t require anybody else if he didn’t want it to. The only problem was the work wasn’t steady. Hit a bad patch and you could find yourself beat for the yolk.
That was how Marlon had blown into Riverton. The town was zoned like a half dozen other places he’d been, and he quickly got the lay of the land. Marlon discovered he could walk from one end, across the tracks to the other side, and halfway back between breakfast and dinner. It didn’t take much looking around for him to realize he wouldn’t find the resources he’d need for a big-time frammis. And small grifts in a town like this wouldn’t be worth the play either. Even the
simplest come-on needed room for a misdirect, and Riverton just didn’t have the space. You’d be likely to turn around and bump into your mark’s mother. So Marlon decided to go straight for a while and turned himself in at the offices of Eddy & Dowd Safe Deposit Company.
“Alright, kid, you can knock off for today,” Travis barked. Marlon came out of his tumble down memory lane. He always got this way when he fixed up in a new place.
“G’night, Travis,” he said, and waved to the others. “See you tomorrow.”
Marlon walked home that evening feeling that he had something decent that would let him build up a reserve. Enough to fuel the next score. Marlon mulled over what that might be, but his thoughts kept being interrupted by the image of a man with a scar on his chin named Richard.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I got married for the same reason the other girls did. It was something to do and it was the only way to get with a boy respectably,” Gloria told Judy. “You can only have blanket parties in the dark for so long until people think it’s being sold by the yard. So I fell in love, or thought I did, and got married off to a right fellow. It was fun for a while, and he was a nice bit of beef, but I was bored out of my skull playing respectable.”
Gloria wished Judy would dim those saucers just a little bit. She forgot how it had come up, how she was having to explain why she wasn’t making roast on Sundays like the other girls in their typing pool. She had Judy on the edge of her seat.
“Bradford was alright—harmless, nice. In the end, we had nothing against each other. And maybe that was the problem. Sometimes a relationship needs something to battle over,” Gloria continued. “So I tried to provoke him. I let the house go to hell, kept the dishes piled in the sink, stopped fixing meals or dolling myself up. I refused to play the perfect wife. One time, I made sure he came home to find me having a close little chat with a neighbor who’d made no secret that he
wanted his paws all over me. I wanted Brad to react. To do something. To give me a little bit of fight. Hell, hit me if he wanted. Maybe if he gave a damn, then I would have too, but the more everything fell to pieces, the happier we were.”
Judy let out a gasp and brought her hand up to cover her mouth. Gloria rolled her eyes. Judy didn’t notice. Wouldn’t matter if she did.
“Once we’d been around the block and seen everything it had to offer, there wasn’t much else cooking,” Gloria added. “We acted like models in a Norman Rockwell picture until we couldn’t stand it anymore.”
She left it there and Judy fluttered away to chirp this new bit of information to the others on their perch at Eddy & Dowd. Of course, there was more to the story that a small-town girl like Judy, who’d never been anywhere, still lived with her mother, and hadn’t touched a boy, couldn’t understand. Gloria had met plenty of clatter-brained girls like Judy. Nothing in her world would ever get bigger than Eddy & Dowd. Or better. She’d never know deep hurt or crazed desire, would never understand the everyday pain of trying to get by with some dignity. It almost made her envious.
Gloria had left out the part where she and Bradford packed up a car and told everyone they were moving west. Explained how they were going to explore fresh opportunities, new horizons, all that sort of guff. Between them they’d agreed to split, all cordial, quiet, and sort it out later. They hocked their rings to keep them going a while until they got settled.
Riverton felt far enough from home that no one would
think to look for her there. Decent enough she could start over with no chance of running into someone who might come looking. Bradford kept going all the way to the coast. Gloria sometimes thought maybe she should’ve stuck with him. He wasn’t half bad, but he also wasn’t half good enough either. Their arrangement might’ve turned sour somewhere along the way. No sense testing it, getting their balls of yarn all tangled again. Even if it had been fun while it lasted.
So here she was, with Riverton starting to lose the little luster it had to offer. Gloria had been new merchandise when she got here and didn’t mind the role at first. The attention was nice, so was the free chow. She shacked up with a few guys who were eager for a fresh conquest. Gloria let them pretend that they had put one over on her. What she hadn’t factored was that these small fry operators were wet matchbooks. One spark before they fizzled out. Some would cry on her shoulder, swearing they loved their wives. Some would get angry, accuse her of being a pro skirt, and smack her around. One minute to finish, then they’d either cry or beat the hell out of you. Gloria preferred a fist to tears, thought it a more honest reflection of how low they felt about themselves. After they left, Gloria would sit on the vinegary bed sheets and run her fingers over the gold cross that hung down the middle of her chest. It was a relic from a time when she’d thought it might offer her some protection. She didn’t fool herself with faith anymore, but she kept it clasped, just in case the rapture arrived after all.
If she wanted to get dizzy over a man, Gloria would’ve done it by now. She knew what she really wanted wasn’t in
Riverton. It was silly how much she still dreamed like a little girl, listening to the radio at night. Broadway Bandbox and Your Hit Parade. Flipping the pages of Movieland and Photoplay. Cigarettes, songs, tuxedos, dancing. To be somewhere that had some real life in it with a chance to be more than just a pair of gams, that was the dream. Men didn’t figure into it. Gloria believed she could find it all in the Big City. She’d be able to write her own ticket, and punch it herself too. To get there, and do it right, she’d need cash. And for that, she needed a job. Honeysuckle and rosewood. When the men talked about it later, that was the scent they couldn’t put a finger on when she first walked into the offices of Eddy & Dowd, silencing the room until the click of her heels was all you could hear. She wore a turquoise dress that made no mistake of the chassis holding it up. Gloria’s teeth gleamed; the red lipstick around her mouth was a shade above sinful and set off her glittering slate-blue eyes. Her butterscotch blond hair fell past her shoulders, loose and radiant with curves all its own. The men smoothed out their shirts, straightened their ties, strode over to her desk. All confidence. Welcome aboard, offers of assistance, invitations to lunch. Gloria’s gravitational pull was likely to send some planets out of orbit if she wasn’t careful.
Eddy & Dowd played in the safe deposit sandbox, with a big vault in the basement, behind a big door, where people felt secure stowing their shiny stuff that was too good to leave lying around at home. Keeping it running was a lot of men, mostly married, definitely shameless. After looking Gloria up and down, they started calculating the odds.
Nothing could wear down a woman’s good looks more than a man. It was the one piece of advice Mother had given her that proved true. Gloria was no stranger to louses like these. She knew when she laughed it sounded like a champagne bottle opening, and the men laughed right along with her, stealing glances at one another, thinking they could outsmart Gloria. Thinking they were charming. Thinking they could get her undressed. Thinking Gloria couldn’t push the wind and rooster in any damn direction she wanted.
CHAPTER FIVE
Faint trails of violet cigarette smoke hung in the air. Richard watched the cowboy picture flickering on the giant screen in front of him. Mean talk and gunshots echoed in the theatre, but his thoughts drifted back to the birthmark on the face that had walked into Eddy & Dowd earlier that week. Marlon’s face.
Richard had learned from the prattle he usually stayed away from that Marlon had just rolled into town. It was a fact he had trouble squaring. Why would anyone come to Riverton and not move along after seeing it for what it was? It was an alright place, he supposed, but its charms were dog-eared as far as he was concerned. With fresh eyes, maybe there was something to it. Richard hadn’t reckoned that before.
The lights came on and Richard shuffled out not knowing how the new sheriff on the frontier succeeded in sweeping the bandits back to the countryside. The icy air of the theatre gave way to the unexpected warmth of a late spring evening. Richard tilted his hat back, took off his jacket, and folded it across his arm.
“Hey, mister!”
Richard turned. A teenage boy bent and picked up the plastic comb that had fallen out of his inside jacket pocket and handed it to him. Richard nodded thanks, and the young man beamed and then threw his arm around the waist of a blushing girl. As they disappeared into the night, Richard could hear their laughter ring out.
Down the street, the last bands of a rosy sunset stretched through the treetops. Maple and elm and basswood lined the sidewalks, and couples walked arm in arm to their cars. Others paired off on leisurely strolls to their homes, safe under the leafy canopies. Richard closed his eyes and took a breath. When he opened them again, he imagined himself a stranger.
He strolled past the small crowd gathered outside the cinema for the late show toward the center of town. Even in its core, which housed the daily bustle and thrum of Riverton’s business and society, the buildings didn’t stretch higher than ten storeys. Many retained their original cornices and limestone gargoyles that stood watch from rooftops.
Riverton’s beating heart, the image they’d put on postcards if anyone bothered to make any, was Liberty Park. It covered five square blocks, and at its center was a large, white granite fountain, where in the summer months clear, cool streams of water shot into the air around a carved sandstone statue of Flora. The park’s lawns and hedges were carefully maintained, lush and green in the months when it mattered. A wide, circular path ringed the fountain, with gravel tributaries shooting off in all directions, winding under trees that were nearly as old as the town itself. Liberty Park was Riverton’s pride and joy,
a place for picnics and holiday fireworks, and in the winter, a tall pine tree was carted in and strung with lights. It was a meeting spot, the starting point for directions—Just go three blocks west off the park, you can’t miss it.
Richard made his way through the park onto a narrow street where a string of small shops were locked up for the day. He stopped in front of the window of Fiona’s Bakery and watched its namesake pull the last of the pastries from the display and place them in a basket at her feet. Behind her, a young man swept the floor.
“Do you need anything?” the woman asked, in a lilting brogue, poking her head outside. She had a bundle of greying red hair, piled and pinned, and she wore flour-dusted navy blue overalls with a large pocket on the front.
Richard smiled and shook his head, and Fiona disappeared back inside. A few moments later the door opened again, and she thrust a loaf of bread in his direction.
“Take it,” Fiona offered. Richard put up his hands to protest, but she pressed him. “If you don’t, it’ll just go in the bin.”
She pushed it into his chest with a motherly insistence and called out, “Good night!” before closing the door and turning the lock.
Richard pondered moments like these, the kindnesses that keep you in a place, that make you believe there’s nowhere else that could be better. The goodwill of Riverton served as a point of pride, along with its welcoming, old-world stateliness. As he turned to make his way home, he listened to the melodies of conversations tumbling out of drinkeries, and
to the homes echoing with mothers and fathers calling their children inside. Richard saw how easily someone could fall under Riverton’s spell.
The night turned dark and cool. Stars pinpricked the sky and Riverton grew quiet. The porch lights of his boarding house were shut, and Richard quietly made his way inside, careful of any noise. He stuck the key in his lock, jiggled it, and with a little push of his shoulder, the door to his apartment gave way. Inside the air felt hot and stale, even with the windows open. Richard put the bread on the counter and frowned, feeling a sourness rise inside him, the uneasiness that returned most nights. Out there, he could pretend Riverton’s munificence was enough, he could pretend he was just like the rest of them, stroll and wave and give the performance of the easygoing neighbor, the gracious local. But in here, the stage makeup came off, and the stranger’s disguise fell away. In here was every reminder that staying in Riverton meant he couldn’t truly live the way he wanted. Not really.
Richard went to the bathroom, splashed some water on his face and neck, and stared at himself in the mirror. Marlon returned to his thoughts. He didn’t have a full read on him just yet, but Marlon struck him as someone who wouldn’t be snookered by Riverton, who’d see through its courtesies and hospitalities for the phony town it was.
Richard switched off the lights and climbed into bed. He turned onto his side and thought about the teenagers and the baker and how if he hadn’t dropped the comb or looked in the window he would’ve just passed through the night, unnoticed
and unremarkable. He thought about how even if they had got to talking and become familiar, they would never truly know him. They couldn’t know him because they would never understand him. It made him feel small to the point of suffocation. As sleep started to come for Richard, he thought again about what he wanted to do, and it excited him that Riverton would never see it coming.