Nobody's Fool

I’ve got to lose all my money,” Carl continued, going back to his cards now. “I have to lose the last of it to the dumbest man in Bath.”
    â€œI
said
this was Sully’s lucky day,” Ollie Quinn reminded them. He stared dully at the collection of items at the center of the table, including Wirf’s prosthesis. “Whose gun is that?”
    â€œYours,” said Carl, who had disarmed the police chief in his sleep just before Ralph and the boy entered. “It’s your ante.”
    Ollie Quinn checked his empty holster and saw that this was true. “I should have busted this game two hours ago,” he observed.
    â€œIf we could ever finish
this
fucking hand, there’d be no need,” Carl pointed out, then, to Sully, “Tell your lawyer to shit or get off the pot.”
    Wirf, who looked half asleep himself, tossed his cards into the center of the table. “I play better poker drunk,” he said, taking a sip of his club soda.
    â€œNot much better,” Sully told him, raising the bet.
    â€œWe just come to tell you Peter’s over at the flat,” Ralph said. “He said he was going to start unloading.”
    â€œOkay, I’ll go over,” Sully said. “Hang around for a minute, why don’t you. I’ll be done here real quick.”
    â€œWe’ll wait outside,” Ralph said, motioning for Will to join him. “Don’t take too long.”
    Out in the bar, Ralph, wishing he could escape with Will out into the street and its clean cold air, helped Will up onto a stool and ordered sodas. “Can’t let the boy sit at the bar,” the fat bartender told him. “Sorry. It’s the law.”
    â€œThat’s okay,” Ralph said guiltily. Vera, who was staying the night in the hospital for further observation, would have wanted to know what was wrong with him for putting the boy on a bar stool to begin with, and he would have had to say he wasn’t thinking. He was glad that at least Vera had been spared the sight of the goings-on in the next room. She’d have had a week’s worth of opinions on such degradation, and she’d be right. Ralph made a mental note to warn the boy not to tell her what he’d seen. “You stand down there,” he told Will, “until the man brings us our sodas.”
    A roar went up in the next room and there was the sound of scraping chairs. Ollie Quinn, returning his revolver to his holster, was first to emerge from the room, then Sully, who had a wad of money in one hand and Wirf’s leg in the other. He planted the leg upright on the bar, stuffed the money into his front pants pockets and helped Will back up onto a bar stool just as Tiny returned with the sodas. “He can’t sit at the bar, Sully.”
    Sully frowned. “Why not?”
    â€œIt’s against the law.”
    â€œBullshit.”
    â€œIt’s against the goddamn law, Sully.”
    â€œSo’s poker,” Sully said. “You saying you didn’t know there was a poker game going on back there?”
    â€œDon’t start with me, Sully,” Tiny warned. “You’re on thin ice tonight. You’ve already punched one of my customers. Jeff should have run your ass then. This is thin fucking ice you’re skating on here.”
    Sully nodded at him, “Well,” he said to Ralph, who had already gotten off his stool and had the boy under the arms, “maybe we
better
go over there to one of those tables. Because if this is thin ice we’re on, we don’t want this fat fuck anywhere near us.”
    Carl Roebuck and the girl Didi, both fully clothed again, emerged from the room. “Let me take another one of those magic pills,” Carl Roebuck said. “I think you broke my jaw.”
    Sully handed him the vial of Jocko’s pills. “I hate to say it,” he said, studying Carl’s face. The jaw had gradually ballooned all afternoon until now it looked as though it had grown a tumor. “But you may be right.”
    Carl swallowed the pill with the last of his Jack Daniel’s and set the glass in the center of the table Sully and Ralph and the boy had selected. Then Carl collapsed into a chair, pulling the girl onto his knee. “What a day,” he said. In fact, he said it with such conviction that Sully was on the verge of feeling sorry for him, when he turned the girl toward him, buried his face between her