The Best American Noir of the Century

I helped her pick out a pair of black leather gloves for her brother, who lived in some town in Maine whose name I could never remember. I wasn’t the type to move fast when it came to women, but I knew in my heart if I didn’t connect with Dottie on that day, then I would for sure never see her again. There have been few moments in my life when I’ve been able to manage to put the pieces together and not muck up the works, and that early afternoon was top-of-the-list one of them. I offered to buy her a cup of coffee at a nearby luncheonette that if it were anywhere else other than on the Upper East Side of Manhattan would be called a diner, and she smiled and nodded. I fell in love that day and have been ever since.

“Cards don’t look to be falling your way tonight, Ike,” Steve said, dropping a three of hearts next to my six of spades. “But then, why should tonight be different from any other game?”

“I used up my run of luck looking for love; there wasn’t any left over for cards,” I said with a slight, shrug, my words sounding much meeker than I intended

“So things between you and Dottie are good now?” Tony asked.

“Did I ever give you a hint that they weren’t?” I didn’t bother to disguise my annoyance at the question.

“How about we just play the hand?” Joe advised. “You ‘want to talk about unhappy marriages, let’s talk about Isiah Thomas and Stephon Marbury. Not only are they mucking it up with each other, they’re destroying any remote chance the Knicks have at ever sneaking into the playoffs.”

“Dottie and I are not unhappy,” I said with as much vigor as I could muster. “And if I did or said anything to give you that impression, it was wrong and unintentional.”

“And there it shall end,” Jeffrey said with a nod and a smile. “To be quite honest, I never realized how much men loved to gossip until I started playing poker. Unless it’s just this particular group that happens to be so chatty.”

“I can only imagine what you and your crew talked about back in your rectory days,” Steve said. “I would bet a full load it covered nastier terrain than who was swigging too much of the communion wine.”

I sat back, smiled, and listened as the kidding and ribbing continued around me, holding my anger in check, knowing that the moment was at hand, the killer soon to be revealed. It was all very easy in some way to piece it together, deciding who in the group sitting around my table would bear the responsibility that had led to my Dottie’s sudden and unexpected death.

It was his fingers that were wrapped around the thick black handle of the carving knife as much as mine. It was his hand along with mine that plunged that blade into Dottie’s frail and tender body again and again and again until she fell to the floor of the back bedroom, her head slumped to one side, blood oozing out of the deep, severe wounds and staining the thick Persian rug she had bought with the proceeds from my first-and-only Christmas bonus back during that first year of wedded bliss.

I was a forty-four-year-old man, alone and in debt, out of shape and mentally drained, my hair thinner than it had any right to be and my stomach rounder than anyone my age would prefer. I had a past that was filled mostly with dark and gloomy days and empty nights, touched only on rare occasions by the light and tender glare of happiness. I had a future that promised to be even bleaker, doomed to live out what was left of my time alone and in a constant struggle to survive.

So I needed to keep my focus on the present.

In one room, staring up at a chipped and stained white ceiling, an overhead fan on low, circulating warm air in gusts, was the body of a woman who had shared twenty-two years of my life.

And in this room, surrounded by poker chips, two decks of playing cards, near-empty bowls of nuts and salsa, drinks waiting to be finished, sat the man who had forced my hand and directed it toward murder.

“Looks like it’s your deal, Ike,” Adam said. “And your call. What’s it going to be?”

“Let’s make this the final hand,” I said.

“It’s not even ten,” Joe protested. “We usually go to eleven, sometimes an hour or two later. Why make it such an early call?”

“If it’s the last one, can we at least make it interesting?” Steve asked.

“I intend to,” I said. “Midnight baseball, no peak, threes and nines are wild. You draw a four and you can buy yourself an extra card.”

“How about we double the ante, then?” Joe asked. “And let’s put no limits on the raises. That square with everybody?”

“You go that route and the pot can start to get a little steep,” Jerry said. “It’s always been a friendly game. This will take it out of that ballpark, no doubt.”

“What, you afraid of losing something off the heavy pile of dough you got stashed?” Joe asked.

“I’m afraid of sitting here and watching you lose money I know you don’t have,” Jerry said. “Nothing more.”

“You should all be afraid,” I said. “This is the one hand none of you can hide from and not one of you can afford to lose.”