The Mirror Thief (21 page)

Early last September, over a Sunday poker game in the bunkhouse of a cattle ranch in New Mexico, or maybe Colorado, it occurred to him that there might be a way to apply this same idea to the shuffle of a deck of cards. So far he’s been lax about pursuing this theory, preoccupied by other concerns.

The image of the full moon bobs on the water, multiplied into a lattice of ovals and oxbows, and Stanley’s eyes gradually translate it into a neutral screen. Two hundred yards south, maybe halfway to Brooks, a shapeless patch of black emerges: the ginger-bearded man and his dog. They’re meandering, changing direction. Stanley moves to put himself between them and the boardwalk, keeping them skylit as he goes. He can’t make out the man’s features but his outline is clear. The blackjack in Stanley’s pocket is chafing his thigh; he pulls it out, returns it to the small of his back.

A thread of pipesmoke carries on the shifting wind. The man is singing to himself, or maybe to the dog, in a language Stanley can’t place. It’s not Claudio’s Spanish, nor the Italian of the neighbor lady back home, but it’s like them. The man is walking toward Stanley now, closing the distance. Stanley keeps silent, holds his ground. He can see the orange glow of the man’s pipe as he sucks on it, the trail of smoke, the quavering air above its bowl. The night seems brittle, as if held together by an invisible armature of glass. A single word could shatter everything.

When he’s about fifteen feet away, the man spots Stanley. He gasps, comes to a halt. The dog strains at its leash, snuffling, then springs as if snakebit and starts to bark.

Hello, Stanley says. Excuse me.

The man switches the leash to his left hand; his right hand goes behind his back. He wears a tweed jacket over a sweater, the textures of the fabrics barely discernable in the dark. Stanley swallows hard.

I didn’t see you there, the man says. You gave me a start.

It’s okay, mister. I don’t mean you no trouble.

The man’s voice is tight, but steady. He seems scared. His right hand remains hidden. You shouldn’t be alone on this beach at night, he says. It’s not safe.

Stanley holds his arms out, spreads his fingers, but the man isn’t relaxing. His outline is shrinking back, balling up, and Stanley is pretty sure he’s about to get shot. For so long he has thought of what to say at this moment, but now nothing comes. All words seem to flee from him. He feels his mouth opening, closing. Adrian Welles? he says.

The man is stock-still, silent, an inert blot on the ocean’s silver curtain. The two of them stand there, not breathing, for what seems like a long time. Stanley is aware of the dog as it growls and paws the sand.

Who are you? the man says.

When Stanley speaks again, the voice that rises to his throat is utterly unfamiliar. In past moments of mortal terror his voice has sometimes reverted to that of his younger self; at other moments, when he’s been sad or tired, he’s heard his voice grow suddenly older, as if presaging a person he might one day become. But the voice that speaks now is neither of these. It belongs to someone unknown, from another life. Listen to it closely. You will never hear this voice again.

Are you Adrian Welles? Stanley says.

But he already knows the answer, and he is no longer afraid.

Welles is backing up, winding and bunching the dog’s leash. Trembling a bit. An old man in the dark. Don’t come any closer, he says. I have a pistol, and I will use it.

I been looking for you, Mister Welles, Stanley says. I don’t mean you any harm. You or your dog. I just want to talk about your book.

Welles takes a shallow breath, lets it out. My book, he says.

Yes sir. Your book.
The Mirror Thief
.

Stanley has never spoken the title aloud before. It feels clumsy in his mouth, and he regrets saying it. Loosed on the air, the words seem lifeless, insufficient for what they name.

Who are you? Welles says. Who sent you here?

This strikes Stanley as an odd question. Nobody sent me, he says. I just came.

Welles adjusts his footing on the sand. Then he says something in a foreign language. It sounds like Hebrew. Pardon me? Stanley says.

Welles repeats the phrase. It’s not Hebrew.

I’m sorry, Mister Welles, but I don’t have any goddamn idea what you just said.

What is your name, son?

I’m Stanley.

Your full name. What is it?

Stanley can’t see the man’s face well enough to read his expression. His short fingers are still absently gathering his dog’s leash. His spectacles pick up the coppery glare from the boardwalk, and both lenses are split down the middle by a dark shape, like the pupil of a cat’s eye, which Stanley realizes is his own shadow.

Glass, Stanley says. It’s Stanley Glass. Sir.

Welles’s right hand comes back into view. He wipes it against his jacket, rests it on his hip, lets it drop to his side. I saw you tonight, he says. In the café. Why didn’t you say something to me then?

I wasn’t sure it was you at first. I thought maybe, but I didn’t know. You, uh, probably oughta slack up on that leash a little bit, Mister Welles.

The leather braid has spooled thickly around Welles’s first two fingers, and the dog is twisting and backpedaling, thrashing the air with its forelegs, winched partway off the sand. Its growls have faded to a jowly sputter. Oh, Welles says. Yes.

Stanley looks out to sea, then down at the beach. He shuffles his feet, nervous again. He has so many questions, a labyrinth in his mind,
one that seems at no point to intersect with the realm of normal human speech. This is much harder than he expected. I read your book, he says.

Yes.

And I have some questions about it.

Yes. All right.

I’m not real sure how to ask them, though.

At Welles’s back, the waves mutter softly. Down the shore, the foghorn sounds. It must have been sounding all night, but Stanley hasn’t noticed it.

Would you mind, Welles says, if we went back to the boardwalk? There are a lot of dope addicts and juvenile delinquents on this beach at night, and it’s better not to stay too long in the dark.

Uh, sure. That’s fine.

Welles sets out on a diagonal path away from the water; the dog scurries after him. Stanley follows, then pulls forward to walk by his side. I’m sorry if we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, Welles says. Recent events have made me preoccupied, perhaps overmuch, with my own safety. Although not without some justification. At any rate, I hope you’ll forgive me. My evening stroll is generally south to Windward Avenue, at which point I turn back. But tonight, provided Pompey will oblige us, I think we should walk through town. I can give you a little tour. What say you, old chum?

Stanley’s opened his mouth to answer before he realizes that Welles is speaking to the dog. It marches on, not acknowledging the question, announcing every step with a tiny snort.

As they approach the streetlamps Welles’s broad face takes shape: tanned, small-nosed, creased around the mouth and across the forehead. Large blue eyes. Hair and beard flecked with white. Nothing about him is remarkable. Stanley figures him for about fifty.

They hit the boardwalk at the point where the storefront colonnade begins its long southward run. Welles stops, empties his pipe over an ashcan, and pulls a tobacco tin from an inside pocket. The dog pisses against the side of the can, stretching its hind leg skyward like a midway
contortionist. Its fur is lustrous red and white; its small face is bug-eyed, short-snouted, terrifically ugly. It peeks from under velvety ears like Winston Churchill in a Maureen O’Hara wig.

You say you’ve been looking for me, Welles says. I don’t think I’ve seen you in the café before. Do you live nearby?

We’re staying in a squat off Horizon Court. Me and my pal. We been here going on three weeks now. We were working the groves in Riverside before that.

But you don’t come from Riverside originally.

No sir. My partner’s a wetback Mexican, and I’m from Brooklyn.

Brooklyn! You’re a long way from home. How old are you, if I may ask?

I’m sixteen.

Do your parents know where you are?

My dad died in Korea, Mister Welles, and my mother’s pretty well lost her mind. There’s nobody back home who’s missing me.

I am very sorry to hear that. What branch of the service was your father in?

The Army. Seventh Infantry. He fought the Japs in Okinawa and the Philippines, and he reenlisted. He got killed at Heartbreak Ridge.

He must have been very brave. He must have loved his country.

He was brave. He was good at being a soldier, and he liked it. He never said too much about his country.

Welles smiles, puts the pipe in his mouth. He strikes a match, lets it burn for a second, and moves it in tight circles over the briarwood bowl. When the tobacco is smoldering, he tamps it out, packs it again. I was in the Army myself, he says. I was at Anzio, in the summer of 1944. But I was in payroll—I am by trade an accountant—so I was able to avoid the worst of the fighting. I was very glad when the war ended. It upset me profoundly.

He looks up from the pipe and narrows his eyes. I met you once before, he says. You were running a card game on the boardwalk.

Yeah. That was me.

I won a dollar from you.

Stanley looks down, bashful. You were smart to quit when you did, he says. I don’t let nobody win more than a dollar.

You’re a gambler! Welles says. You live by skill and fortune. Goddamn it, I’m intensely envious of you. That’s been one of my romantic fantasies, ever since I was a lad. To be a riverboat gambler. With a white linen suit, and a derringer in my pocket.

You got me pegged wrong, Mister Welles. That boardwalk game is a straight con. I play cards a little bit, sure, but I’m no gambler.

Oh, of course you are, Welles says. Of course you are. At any given moment, you may be certain of the cards, but the other man—your opponent, your mark—you can never be certain of what he perceives, what he thinks, what he will do. You still place yourself, more or less reverently, at Fortune’s behest. And that’s all gambling amounts to. Isn’t it?

Stanley furrows his brow. I guess so, he says.

Welles lights his pipe again, puffs to get it going, slowly shakes out the match. He drops the blackened curl of the matchstick in the ashcan, stares at the space where it fell, smoking intently. Then he takes the pipe from his teeth and points its stem toward the arches and columns of the penny arcade on the corner.

This may be of interest to you, he says. These buildings along the boardwalk all date from 1905. Abbot Kinney’s original construction. They’ve changed quite a bit over the years—fallen into disrepair, as one says—but you can still get a sense of how it was. Notice the quaint approximation of Byzantine-Gothic architecture in the loggia. Done, if I’m not mistaken, in the style of Bartolomeo Bon. Shall we walk to Windward?

The dog lurches ahead as if it knows the route. Fog rings the streetlamps with aureoles; a few figures huddle beneath them. Two blocks up, a group of five bored Shoreline Dogs is playing mumbledypeg in the sand. Some look familiar: from the Fox theater, or maybe from the chase through the neighborhood, Stanley can’t be sure. They sneer and glare at Stanley as he and Welles pass, but Welles seems not to notice.

The Fortune Bridgo parlor is coming up on the left, and Welles gestures toward its boarded-up windows. You picked a good spot to run your game,
he says. An historic spot, even. That was Bill Harrah’s old place. At one time—this would have been the 1930s—Bridgo was a big draw around here. Bridgo, Budgo, Tango. All those bingo games. Are you familiar with bingo?

Not really. I heard of it. I never played.

I thought not. You don’t seem the type, frankly. It’s an odd game. Unusually authoritarian, as games of chance go. You pay your money, you take your cards, you sit and listen and await revelation. You accept what is given to you. Since the game’s origins are intertwined so closely with those of the Italian state, I suppose this shouldn’t be surprising. In any event, despite this strict assertion of authority—or maybe because of it, who can say?—the municipal apparatus here in Los Angeles has been rather hostile to it, which is why Bill Harrah eventually moved his operation to Nevada, where he met with quite a lot of success. This is a pattern that recurs. Tony Cornero, the mobster who operated gambling boats just off the coast here, also in the 1930s, went on to found one of the largest casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Have you ever visited Nevada, Stanley?

I’m not sure. I maybe passed through it.

I used to go there quite often. On business, after the war. Its present territory used to be covered by great lakes. Did you know that? Inland seas, really. This would have been during the Pleistocene Epoch, which is fairly recent in geological terms. Nevada is quite dry now. A desert, in fact. Where did those lakes go? Might they return one day? Let’s turn left here.

They cut through the portico of the St. Mark’s Hotel and head inland, passing department stores, the Forty-Niner restaurant, a hotdog vendor, a Tee Pop stand. Everything is closed down, dark, and has been so for several hours. The illuminated clock on the hardware shop gives the time as nearly one a.m. Down the block, in the shadows cast by the
JESUS SAVES
sign, a figure is moving: a very large dog, or a person crawling on all fours. Before Stanley can decide which, it’s gone.

So, Welles is saying, what brought you to Los Angeles?

Stanley guesses it would be unwise to tell the truth, at least until he’s figured out how to ask Welles what he wants to ask. Just drifting, he says. Seeing the country. I happened to be in L.A., so I figured I oughta track you down.

Well, I’m very flattered that you did. Where did you come across my book?

I picked it up from a guy I knew on the Lower East Side.

Manhattan? Welles says. That’s remarkable. We only printed three hundred copies, you know. A hundred of those are still sitting in my attic. How on earth did it find its way to New York, I wonder?

I got it from a pile of books that belonged to a fellow who’d just started a hitch at Rikers Island. There was a bunch of poetry books in the batch. But this fellow was getting sent up for trafficking stolen goods, so it’s hard to say where he might’ve got it.