The Saturday after Robert died, Lucy came home to find an old man waiting in her apartment. He had a partner who stepped behind her and closed the door, a big man. The poker-player in Lucy had him summed up in a heartbeat: Greek or middle eastern, ex-military with commando training, left-handed, divorced from a woman who cared too much about appearances. He’d sit down by choice at the ten dollar table and hold his own there; he’d play his cards with methodical precision and be no threat to bluff. The habit of perception was so automatic for Lucy that her conscious mind barely registered the clues: the parade rest stance, the gun holstered on the wrong hip, the faint medicinal smell of dandruff shampoo, the pale band of skin still showing on his left ring finger, and the hundred other little tells that gave him away. What grabbed her conscious attention was that he was wearing fine-grained black leather gloves. She didn’t know for sure what the gloves meant, but they made his hands look awfully big, and she was guessing they weren’t a good sign. The soldier tapped the door knob with one gloved finger, almost apologetic. “You need better locks.” Lucy wondered if she could make it to the kitchen before he stopped her, and if the gun she kept in her mom’s old cookie jar would still be there if she did. No and no, probably. “Gee, I wasn’t expecting guests. Can I get you fellows anything? Beer? Geritol?” She’d seen the old man before, but she couldn’t place him. He was pushing eighty, nicely dressed in an expensive suit—wool, despite the ninety degree heat outside. Old men don’t like to be cold. His hands looked good, no shake to them despite his age, but his wrists were thin and his white skin had that pale, transparent quality, so his veins showed through, blue and fragile. “You left a message on my machine,” she said. Not guessing but knowing, with the same certainty she could put the beer-drinking Friday night fish on their hands. The old man nodded, crossing one leg elegantly over the other. It was the shoes that placed him for her—Italian, hand-made, size 8 or 8½ , very narrow and polished so she could see the shine of the living room lamp in them. He’d had the same Italian shoes the last time they met, as well as a straight to the jack when she’d put him on trip tens. This old man had given her the worst beat of her life. His tell was a little tilt of the chin when he went for the kill, but she only recognized it after she’d gone all in. “I don’t play anymore,” she said. “I don’t owe you a dime. And who the hell are you, anyway?” “Let’s say … a friend of the family,” he said dryly. The old man glanced at the soldier with the leather gloves, then back at her. His chin tilted up. “Tell me why Robert died,” he said. “Tell me about the gun.”
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