Chapter One B: Poker

Aaron left the Memorial Home and headed up I-69 toward Fort Wayne. As soon as he was on the highway he flipped open his phone and dialed Jack.

“Where are you boy?” the older man snapped when he answered the phone.

“Headed in from Warren, about 30 minutes from you,” Aaron replied. “What’s up?”

“There’s money on the table and a good chance this is a hand you’ll want to play.”

“I’m on my way, but I’m starving. Let me tell you, old friend, stay healthy and in your own house. You really don’t want a steady diet of retirement home food.”

“Theresa will make you a sandwich. If you want in on this you’d better come straight here so you can hear the story yourself. It’s a possible missing child sighting, 30 years later.”

“Deal my hand and ante me up. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.” Aaron snapped the phone shut and moved into the passing lane with his ’87 Fiat. It complained audibly about being pushed so hard. Friday night poker had taken on a whole new meaning when he and Jack had set up their side business.

Aaron had known Jack since college back in the ‘70s. Jack had taken a clueless freshman at Indiana University in Bloomington who happened to enroll in his U.S. Government class to fulfill a History requirement and turned him into his prize student. The friendship that developed between the two had stood Aaron’s youthful petulance, rebellion, and crushing defeats soon after college. If turning out to be a genealogical librarian at the Allen County Public Library was a bit less glamorous than Jack had hoped for his protégé, he never let it slip. And when Jack retired in ’92 and moved up to Fort Wayne, he immediately recruited Aaron for the side business he’d had in mind from the start.

The topic of the business was completely legal, and even a little boring: Research. People paid Jack to do research on various obscure topics that required more than an internet search to get the information. Jack had a couple dozen of his best students engaged in all aspects of society from politics to business to teaching who were willing to do a little research on the side for a small fee. His clients likewise came from all walks of life and had questions that took the researchers into the archives of libraries and newspapers and into the community for direct investigation. Typically the research involved finding the missing link in an ancestral chain or trying to compile a list of relatives with whom the client had lost touch. Aaron could take his pick of the projects as Jack’s junior partner. The prospect of finding a missing child after 30 years was just the type of project that the people-centered historian found irresistible.

It was other aspects of the business that were questionable in terms of their legality. There was no business license and no business record-keeping. All transactions were done in cash, at the poker table. It all started before Jack retired when he was playing poker with a few members of the faculty at IU. One of his companions off-handedly remarked one night that he’d pay a hundred dollars to know if something another colleague had said was true. Jack tossed a chip into the pot and said, “I’ll take that bet.” His friend matched the chip and the deal was closed. Two weeks later Jack presented his friend with the evidence that his colleague had indeed told the truth in the matter and was presented with a one hundred dollar bill. A new business concept was born.

Clients came to Jack only by referral, and in the company of a person who had done business before. While everyone bought in for a hundred dollars in the five dollar game, the potential client added up to $10,000 for ten black chips. After the chips were distributed, Janice (Jack’s wife of forty years) left with the cash box and the players sat to play the game. They played straight seven card stud or Texas Hold ‘em for the first two hours. During that time, the client would describe the kind of research problem that he had. Jack would respond with estimates of how much he thought that particular research would cost. When the price was agreed upon, the client would request a special variation on seven card stud. Jack would solemnly intone, “Gentlemen, the price of poker just went up.” Everyone would ante as in a normal game, but after Jack made the first bet of one black chip, everyone would fold except the client. When the right amount was in the pot, Jack checked his hand. The client would fold and the deal was closed.

All business income that was reported was reported as “gambling winnings.” Of course, Jack took considerable latitude in what he actually reported, but made regular trips to local Native American Casinos, Las Vegas, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Belize to justify the winnings that he reported (always significantly under the amount that would affect his social security income. Significant portions of this unreported income stayed in off-shore banks in Jamaica and Belize, some in Jack’s name and some in Aaron’s name. It gave them both a chuckle that they were guilty of the crime that put Al Capone away. Simple tax evasion.

Aaron recognized two of the three cars in Jack’s driveway as regulars. The third, he assumed would be the client’s vehicle. He rang the doorbell, even though he had been permitted free entry since his college days, and Theresa opened the door. She ushered him in out of the frigid January air and hung his coat.

“Now don’t rush off to the basement just yet,” she said. “I have a sandwich for you in the kitchen.” The sandwich turned out to be a hot roast beef Manhattan complete with mashed potatoes and gravy.

“I don’t know why you don’t get that old man to buy you a restaurant,” Aaron said around a mouthful of the hot, steamy potatoes. “You cook all these wonderful meals. You should get paid for your labors.”

“Now what would I want with a business to run?” she asked back. “I have enough trouble just keeping up with you boys. And then I’d have to have employees and never be able to take a vacation. It’s cheaper for me to just cook and give it away!”

Aaron laughed. For as long as he could remember she had been feeding anyone who came to her house. In college she had a non-stop trail of hungry students, both men and women, trooping through her kitchen while working on one research project or another with Dr. Diggory. Aaron looked at her fondly. She was like a mother to him. In fact, more real than his biological mother who died when he was a preteen. She had been looking after him and others like him for over thirty years.

Aaron cleared and washed his dishes as Theresa took them from him, dried them and put them in the cabinet.

“Well, I’d better get down there before Jack flunks me,” Aaron said.

“Wait. Don’t forget your chips, dear.” Theresa pushed a tray of poker chips at him and smiled. Aaron and Jack played from the same collective pot and Theresa kept track of what was won and lost. “Run along and play now, dear,” she said. They looked at each other and both burst out laughing.

“Thanks, Mom,” Aaron waved as he went down the stairs.

The room had a thin haze of smoke from cigars and pipes that were lit. Jack had an air filtration system installed that kept the smoke from becoming too dense. In fact, he no longer lit the cigar that he clenched in his teeth. But what was poker without cigars, he always said.

“Well, it’s about time you dragged your butt in here,” he said. “You almost missed the good part.” Jack pointed to the only stranger at the table. Mike Monroe, this is Aaron Case. Aaron, meet Mike.”

“Nice to meet you,” Aaron said cordially.

“Likewise, Mr. Case,” the newcomer answered stiffly.

“Please, just Aaron. We can’t play poker with a lot of Misters. And Mses,” he added glancing over at Adele Cunningham who was a regular at the Friday night games and often cleaned Aaron out of his stake before an evening was over. Jack accused them of teaming up to take his money at times.

“The name Monroe sounds familiar to me,” Aaron mentioned casually.

“Well it should,” Jack snapped at Aaron. “Mike owns the Subaru dealership out by Northtown Mall.

“Of course,” Aaron said. “I wasn’t sure that you were the same Monroe.”

“Ante up boys and girls,” Jack said. “Mike, why don’t you fill Aaron in on what you’ve been telling us while we play a little Hold ‘em?” Jack flipped each of the players two cards and dealt the flop as Mike began his story.

“Well, I think I’ve just seen my daughter. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it. I hired a private investigator to get some photos, but I don’t want any gumshoe handling an actual approach. Adele and I have been going to the same church for some time now and when I brought up in a prayers and concerns what I thought, she suggested that I might be able to find an answer here. I have to say, I didn’t know the cigar-chewing Adele that I’ve met here tonight from any prayer meeting we’ve attended.” Adele laughed and the atmosphere lightened up some.

“Come on, Mike. We all have our little secrets. Mine just happens to be a penchant for poker and cigars. You don’t really seem a stranger to the game yourself,” Adele smiled.

“Well, I confess it’s not the first time I’ve played,” Mike mused. “So, anyway,” he said into the ensuing silence that surrounded the game, “I haven’t seen my daughter in 30 years, which would make her 39 now. Her mother ran away with her when she was 9 years old. I didn’t try to find them at first because… well I wasn’t much of a father back then. I didn’t blame my wife for running off. And I guess I couldn’t think well enough at the time to put together an investigation. Not that anyone would have given me the time of day.”

“Why do you think she left,” Aaron asked into the silence.

“I was a drunk,” Mike answered hanging his head. “There is no question about it. She had every right to leave. I don’t think I was ever violent toward them, but I wasn’t really there. I couldn’t hold down a job and I was spending what little money we did have. If it weren’t for food stamps that I couldn’t spend on liquor, we’d have starved. I nearly did anyway.”

The room was quiet until Adele broke in. “Go ahead, Mike. There’s no sense wallowing in the past. You cleaned up your life, right?”

“Yeah. You see it wasn’t always like that. Patsy and me were high school sweethearts. I’d have given the world for her. We were married right out of school and she was pregnant before our first anniversary. But by our first anniversary I was drafted and I spent two years in Viet Nam. I’d like to tell you that it was the horrors of war that caused me to turn to drink. But the truth is I was nineteen years old, alone in a foreign country where alcohol was freely available. I acquired a taste for hard liquor. I barely kept it under control while I was in Nam, and when I got out of the service, I went completely out of control. I was a total alcoholic.

“Patsy put up with it for a long time as it got worse and worse. She tried, bless her heart. She tried to get me straight. But finally she couldn’t see anyway out. And it must have been horrible on that little girl. They left in the middle of the night while I was passed out. She left a simple note that I’ve carried around with me ever since.”

Mike pulled a crumpled slip of notepaper from his wallet. The pencil marks on it were almost illegible. But the message was clear. “We love you, but we can’t live with you. Don’t ever try to find us; I don’t want to have to run all my life. Your loving wife and daughter, Patsy and Annabelle.”

Aaron wondered if the tear-smudges he could see on the paper were created in the writing or in the reading. Mike seemed like a nice guy, and he certainly ran a reputable business. But would either wife or daughter ever want to see him again? This could be a tough project.

“What makes you think you’ve seen her and could recognize her at this age?” Aaron asked. “Thirty years is going to make a lot of difference to a nine-year-old.”

“After I got saved and dried out, I started to realize what I’d lost. I spent some pretty remorseful time, but I thought that if I became a real success and had my name up someplace prominent, eventually she might see it and come home. I took the photos that I could dig up around the house and went to an artist who specialized in missing people. She drew pictures of what the little girl would possibly look like at different ages based on the pictures of Annabelle, her mom, and me. I usually have these hung in my condo, but I took them down to show you tonight.” Mike pulled five pencil sketches from his briefcase and pushed them toward Aaron. They looked like sketches done at different periods of a person’s life, one for each decade. There was the photo of Annabelle when she was nine, a rendition of what she would look like at nineteen, twenty-nine, thirty-nine, forty-nine, and fifty-nine. The hairdos had been doctored after the fact on the first three to bring them up-to-date. But the renderings were uncanny.

“I spotted a woman in a store three weeks ago as I was shopping for a new shirt out at L.S. Ayres at Northtown Mall. I pulled a shirt of a rack and looked up and she was pulling one off the other side. She must have thought me a proper idiot because I was so dumbstruck that I couldn’t talk at all. I stood there making that fish face you get when you keep trying to say something and nothing comes out. She smiled and took her purchase to the register and left the store.” Mike paused and pointed to the middle picture. “She looks so much like that it took my breath away. I followed her at a discreet distance and she went into Walgreen’s. She didn’t come back out, and when I peeked in about half an hour later, she was working behind a cash register.”

“So what did you do then? Did you try to talk to her?” Aaron asked.

“No. If it’s really her, I don’t know if she ever wants to talk to me again, or if she’d even know who I was if I told her. Her mother may have changed their names. All kinds of things.” Mike paused a moment and looked at Jack. “I hired an investigator to get basic information and a couple photographs. I didn’t tell him why I wanted them, just gave him the money and got these in return.” Again Mike reached into the briefcase and pulled out two 8x10 glossies and a typewritten sheet. The pictures were sharp and clear. The investigator was obviously no amateur photographer. They were taken from a distance, but with good equipment and a high quality lens. There was no doubting what Mike was telling them. The photo and the woman in the sketch looked like twins. No wonder seeing her had shaken him so much.
“What is it you want to have happen here?” Aaron asked.

“I have to separate my fantasies from reality here,” Mike said. “I’ve changed. I really have. But that little girl and her mother will only remember the drunk they ran away from. I just want to know that it’s really my little girl and that she’s okay. I… I’m…” Mike paused. “I want to make her my heir. She doesn’t need to see me, or even know I exist, but if it’s her, I want to do the only thing that I can to make amends. I want to give her what I’ve acquired.”

Aaron and Jack both put their hands flat on the table. “You are sure you want to know the answer to your questions?” Aaron asked looking into Mike’s eyes and holding them. Mike didn’t see eight of Aaron’s fingers curl under as he answered steadily, “Absolutely certain.” Jack curled seven of his fingers under and Aaron took his hands off the table.

“Okay. Let’s play poker,” Aaron said.

“Seven Card Stud Black Bottom Split,” Jack intoned. “Ladies and Gentlemen, the price of poker just went up.” Everyone anted then immediately dropped out when Jack tossed in a black chip. Mike matched him. It went three hands before Jack checked. Three thousand dollars from Mike in the pot. Mike folded and the deal was sealed.

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