Certified Male Read online

  He looked at her helplessly. She wasn’t playing a role this time. This wasn’t Nina doing the dirty work. This was Gwen in full righteous fury and there was no way to reach her. “Gwen, think about this for a second,” he said softly. “I don’t want this to be the end.”

  For a moment something utterly vulnerable looked out of her eyes and then was gone, supplanted by anger. “Just stay the hell away from me, Redmond. Stay the hell away.”

  23

  GWEN SAT AT HER DESK IN THE familiar confines of her office and lifted up a bright vermillion stamp with a pair of tongs. She didn’t inspect it, though. Mostly she stared into space.

  She’d been doing that a lot since she’d come back from Las Vegas. Ever since Kellar’s story had appeared in the metro section of the Globe. If it hadn’t been as detailed as she’d feared, it still reported the basics of the theft.

  It was missing a lot of the details of the case that would have gotten the media excited.

  And it was missing Del’s byline.

  It had been picked up by the AP wire and, she’d heard, the Los Angeles Times. Then again, Stewart’s fall was the talk of the stamp world. She’d fielded phone calls for a while, but not as many as she’d anticipated, and her grandfather hadn’t found out. Without the sensational splash, the run she’d feared hadn’t materialized. So far, so good.

  If waking every morning feeling as if she’d had her heart cut out could be called good.

  If she focused on the details, things were infinitely better than they’d been before she went to Vegas. All but one of the issues were back in their appropriate slots, the burgundy albums safely tucked away in a bank vault. Insurance now protected the store inventory. No more would they be vulnerable to theft. She was back in familiar surroundings, back in her own clothes, back in her old life. So why couldn’t she relax and be comfortable with plain old Gwen again?

  So why couldn’t she forget?

  The phone rang. It was the San Francisco police inspector assigned to her case. “I just wanted to let you know, we’re going to have to drop the investigation into the Swede.”

  “But he’s still got one of the stamps.”

  “We think that, but we don’t know it. If he does, it goes under international jurisdiction.”

  “But he’s got something worth more than a million dollars,” she said a little desperately.

  “Or someone does. This whole Swedish thing may be an invention, something Oakes cooked up to tell Messner. Maybe he just wanted them to sell himself.”

  “He wouldn’t have done that to my grandfather.”

  A world of disillusionment went into his sigh. “You’d be surprised what people will do for money.”

  Maybe he was right. Gwen wanted to think that Stewart had been desperate and frightened and grasping at the only out he could find. She didn’t want to think the theft was calculated purely for his gain.

  Just as she hadn’t wanted to think that Del had calculatedly given her up for a news story. And how gullible did that make her, since she had proof of both of their treachery?

  “What does Stewart say?”

  “He says he never met or saw the guy, just dealt with an intermediary, and he had no fixed contact information for him. We’ve got no trail. We couldn’t follow it even if we had the jurisdiction.”

  “So you don’t do anything?”

  “On the missing stamp, no. Let Interpol look into it. Maybe they’ll take it on. On Oakes, you bet. Las Vegas has got him cold on the assault and we’ve got him on the conspiracy charges—Messner’s so ticked at being double-crossed and shot that he hasn’t stopped talking yet. Oakes will definitely do time.”

  “How about Jerry?”

  “There, I’m not so sure. His shoulder will heal. He’s got a deal with the D.A., probably to plead to a lesser charge, especially since nearly all of the property has been recovered.”

  “Except for the million dollars,” she said, discouraged.

  “Except that,” he agreed. “I understand your frustration, but it’s more important to put away the guys who wave guns around than the small-timers like Messner. You can always file a civil suit against them both to try to recover damages. See if you can get some of Messner’s tournament winnings.”

  Yeah, right. Good luck. She didn’t even want to think about lawyers and lawsuits just yet. “So it’s in our laps.”

  “For a lawsuit, yes.” His voice hardened. “Don’t even think about trying to pull your detective stunt again to get the other one, though. You got lucky this time, but you could have wound up with a bullet in your brain.”

  If it hadn’t been for Del, she probably would have. Did she regret taking the chances—with Jerry, with Stewart? With Del? No, she thought. It was the living with it that was the hard part. “You’re right, Inspector,” she sighed. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. Thanks for filling me in.”

  Some things were easily cleaned up, she thought as she hung up the phone.

  And some things weren’t.

  She was doing better these days. She managed routinely to go as much as thirty seconds at a time without thinking about Del. It would get longer as time went by, and maybe someday she’d get over this hollow feeling.

  Maybe someday she’d get over him.

  It was just the contrast, she told herself, all that excitement, then going back to her quiet life. She wasn’t comfortable anymore as just Gwen, but she wasn’t Nina, either. She didn’t know who she was. She hung Nina’s clothes in her closet and found herself sprinkling the garments into her normal wardrobe. Joss did a double take the first time but didn’t say anything.

  It was the glamour, the adrenaline rush. Del was just part of what she associated with it all, that was why she couldn’t stop thinking about him. It had only been two weeks, after all. Sooner or later she’d forget.

  In the meantime it helped to be busy.

  Joss walked into the room. “I’ve closed everything up.”

  Gwen nodded, concentrating on her stamp.

  “That means it’s the end of the day,” Joss told her. “You know, as in quitting time? When normal people go home and have dinner and relax?”

  “I’m going to stay and finish some things up. You go along.”

  Instead Joss plunked down into a chair. “Earth to Gwen. Working yourself to death isn’t going to make it go away.”

  “What do you mean?” Gwen asked with forced casualness.

  “You’ve been at it until nine or ten at night since you got back from Vegas. It’s not like this is brain surgery. There isn’t that much work to do here.” She looked at Gwen sympathetically. “But then, it’s not about work, is it?”

  Gwen blinked. “I miss him, Joss. I shouldn’t. I know it’s stupid and I know he screwed me over, but I can’t get him out of my head.” Her eyes filled and she blinked furiously.

  “It’s okay to be upset.”

  “No, it’s not.” She wiped her eyes. “I figured being back here would help. You know, same old, same old.” Settle back into her familiar routines, pretend that whirlwind of Vegas had happened to someone else.

  She’d been wrong.

  She missed it. She missed the tournament. She missed Roxy, who she’d never even congratulated on her second tournament win.

  And she missed Del most of all.

  “I keep thinking I’m going to run into him somewhere. It makes me afraid to go out.” And it made her wonder, every street she walked down, every restaurant and store she entered, whether she’d see him, whether he’d been there. He haunted her everywhere she went.

  He was going to for a long time.

  DEL WALKED INTO THE UNION Square station of the Muni Metro, working his way around the rush-hour crowd. He walked up to the newsstand, scanning the magazines. There was a time he’d have read the Globe during his commute, but no more. All the paper was for him now was a reminder of all that had gone wrong.

  He hadn’t worked on the story after all, pleading involvement. Talking t
o Jessup hadn’t gotten the story spiked, but it had pushed it to a small item on an inside page. He’d done what he could.

  He didn’t know when or if Gwen would understand. And he couldn’t really blame her. Circumstances didn’t matter. If he hadn’t brought the original story idea to Jessup, none of this would have been put in motion. The gunshot might have wound up as a small item in the Las Vegas paper, if even that.

  No matter how you stacked it up, he was at fault.

  In the end he’d turned down the news job that Jessup had offered him. The cost, quite simply, had been too high. But it was more than that. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for hard news. He liked investigating, but he couldn’t maintain quite the remove from his subjects, he didn’t think.

  Certainly he hadn’t when it had come to Gwen.

  Regret twisted viciously in his gut. To have lost her was impossible, but to have lost her over a job that he now knew he didn’t want was worse.

  He now stared at the bright colors of the magazine covers. Vanity Fair, Esquire, Harper’s—those magazines carried the kinds of stories that interested him. News but with depth. He wanted to get to know his subjects, not to be precluded from identifying with them. He wanted his insights to be a part of the story. He picked up Vanity Fair and flipped to an article on a lynching in the 1960s South. Then he stopped.

  If these were the kinds of stories he wanted to do, why not pursue the magazines? It was all here before him, he realized, a chance to pursue the deeper, edgier stories that interested him with the depth he craved. He could keep writing for the newspaper and develop the magazine writing as a side career.

  He handed the magazine to the cashier. Time to go home and start making some phone calls. It wouldn’t be easy, he knew that, but with his track record he was confident he could get his foot in the door. Once he had a clip with one magazine, he could nudge his way into others. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be his, it would be something he’d made happen on his own.

  Now if only he could make things right with Gwen as easily.

  SUNDAYS WERE ABOUT ROUTINE, blessed routine. A long, lazy brunch at her little local café on Russian Hill that put tables outside when the weather was nice. The Sunday crossword with her orange juice. There was some small comfort in sameness, even if leisure time had become something to avoid. She’d stick grimly to her tradition and trust that eventually the pleasure would return.

  “Pass me the comics, would you?” Joss asked, a piece of toast in her hand.

  The morning sun was surprisingly warm on Gwen’s shoulders—at least, by San Francisco standards. It was nothing compared to the baking heat of Las Vegas, though. She blocked the thought almost as soon as she had it. Las Vegas meant the tournament, and the tournament meant Del.

  Gwen picked through the paper for the funnies, avoiding the sports page as she had ever since she returned from Vegas. She was having a reasonably good morning. The last thing she needed to do was see Del’s picture above his column. These were the little tricks she’d found to help her get through the day. Avoid Las Vegas, avoid the Globe, but she was damned if she was going to give up the Sunday paper.

  Joss took the comics from her with a sigh. “I missed this so much in Africa, the funnies every week.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Mom says it was the crossword puzzle for her.”

  Gwen fished out the Globe magazine that carried the puzzle. “That’s my favorite part.”

  “See, you’re more like her than you thought. You’re more like me than you thought, too.”

  Gwen looked at Joss in surprise. “How do you figure?”

  “Looks like a little of your alter ego rubbed off on you when you were out in Vegas. You’re different since you came back.”

  “I am not,” Gwen protested, but she knew it was true.

  “I always wondered if you were really as quiet as you’ve always acted. About time you let that side of you out.”

  But what had been the cost, Gwen wondered as she flipped through the magazine, looking for the crossword.

  And found instead a photo that dragged her back to the final table at the tournament. It was a picture during play, a picture of all of them—Jerry sulking in his best poker-brat style, Roxy peeking at her hole cards, Gwen tossing forward a stack of chips. And Del.

  And Del.

  All In, read the headline. Life, Love and Tournament Play in Vegas. The author was Del Redmond.

  His jaw was set, his face sober. His hair poked up in spiky disorder. And the silver lenses of his sunglasses reflected Gwen’s face.

  “She said her name was Nina,” the article began. Palms damp, Gwen read on. When she reached the end, she blinked. The article had not, as she’d feared, been about the stamps. It hadn’t even identified her, only mentioned Nina.

  In the end poker is a little like life and a lot like love. You never know what’s in the pocket cards of the person you’re facing. Not unless you go all in. And when you do that, you hope to god you haven’t totally misjudged the situation and lost everything. Because it can happen. I’m here to tell you it can happen. But sometimes, sometimes, you get it just right and the big risk gets you the big win.

  The ones that haunt you, though, are the big losses. Those are the hands you play over and over in your head in the wee, wee hours when everything around you is still. Those are the hands you’d do anything in the world to have a chance to play again.

  She said her name was Nina. I never got a chance to tell her I was sorry.

  Gwen laid the magazine down on the table. “My god,” she said faintly. “I’ve got to find him.”

  “SPORTS SECTION,” ANSWERED A clipped man’s voice.

  “I’m looking for Del Redmond,” Gwen said.

  “He doesn’t work on Sundays.”

  “Do you happen to know where I might find him? This is a friend of his from the tournament.”

  “Who from the tournament?” the guy asked suspiciously.

  “Nina.”

  “Well.” The voice was freighted with speculation. “I wish I could give you his number, but I can’t.”

  “Could you call him and give him mine?”

  The guy thought a moment. “Tell you what. He’s doing his weekend radio show today. You could go down to the studio, maybe catch him afterward.”

  It was all she needed. Just a chance and a chance now. She couldn’t wait.

  GWEN SAT IN THE LOBBY OF THE radio station, watching the receptionist file her nails and listening to the current host trading badinage with a caller. Del’s show was long over. Now she just waited patiently and tried not to scream.

  The studio door opened and Del came out, laughing with another guy. There was that grin that had first stolen her heart, that devilment in his eyes. For a minute her heart just swelled. Then he caught sight of her and stopped. For a moment all he did was look, hope flickering over his face. He turned to his companion. “Hey, I’ll see you later, man.” They shook and he walked toward Gwen.

  She rose. “Hello,” she said stiffly. Now that she was here, all the words had dried up in her throat. When she’d been reading the article, she’d known what came next. Now she hadn’t a clue.

  “Hey.” There was an awkward pause. “Big fan of sports radio?”

  “I knew you were here. I saw the article in the Sunday magazine,” she blurted. “I had to talk with you.”

  He nodded at that. “Talk works.” As though remembering they had an audience, he looked around. “How ’bout we get out of here, then grab a cup of coffee?”

  Outside on the street she felt as if she could breathe again.

  Del sighed and thrust his hands in his pockets. “So, Kellar’s article wasn’t bad enough, you wanted to know why I wrote another one?”

  “No, that’s not it,” she replied. “It was a nice article.”

  He looked at her, eyes direct. “I screwed up, Gwen, plain and simple. I know apologies don’t mean much, but I wish there was some way to let you truly understand h
ow sorry I am about the way things worked out.”

  “I’m sorry about the way I acted, too. I’m sorry about how all of it came out.”

  “I didn’t work with Kellar on the story.”

  She nodded. “I saw.”

  “I tried to get them not to do it, but the best I could manage was convincing the editor it wasn’t worth the full treatment.”

  “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. I think I have you to thank for that.”

  “It wasn’t enough, but it was all I could do.”

  “It was more than I deserved.” She paused. “Did you get the job?”

  “I told Jessup I didn’t want it.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “I’m looking for magazine work. I think that’s going to be a better fit for me.”

  She couldn’t stop the smile from coming. “After reading your article, I bet you’ll do a great job.”

  “Look.” He stared into her eyes. “I meant what I said about the mistakes that keep me up at night. I fell in love with you in Las Vegas, Gwen.” She caught her breath, but he pushed on. “I screwed it up and it’s all I’ve been able to think about. I should never have said all those things to you about Nina. You’re perfect just the way you are and I have missed you so much.”

  She moistened her lips. “I changed in Las Vegas.”

  “Maybe we both did.” He reached out and brushed his fingers along her jaw. “I’m just sorry. And I’m sorry about the news story. It was a bad hand. I should have just gone out rather than play it the way I did.”

  “Well—” she gave an awkward laugh “—that game’s over.”

  “Maybe we should open another,” he said, watching her closely. “Start with a fresh deck, deal out a new hand.”