Page 49 of The Furies

“Oh, I heard you fine, but just because you’re unfamiliar with the rules doesn’t mean you’re excused from the game. The game goes on. The game always goes on. The only issue to be decided is if you’re a player or a pawn.”

He shook the dice again. Once more they returned a double six.

“Has Mr. Raum Buker been a regular here since his return?” he said.

“Get out.”

Shake. Throw. Double six.

“Or his women?”

Dave dearly wanted to eject this man personally, and with considerable prejudice, but so far he had done nothing more threatening than to ask questions. Close by, the Fulci brothers were hovering, because trouble recognizes trouble.

The dice were thrown once more. Double six: either this man was very lucky, or the dice were weighted.

“What about a man named Parker, a detective? Does he run with Mr. Raum Buker?”

“How about this?” said Dave. “I could remove you forcibly from that chair and deposit you in the parking lot, but it would be undignified for you and disruptive for our other customers.”

“Or?” The dice were back in his hand.

“Or we could let the cops sort it out,” said Dave. “As it happens, I think we might have a few in tonight, if you’d like to be introduced. But it’s my conviction that you’d probably prefer to adopt an alternative strategy, which would be to walk away and never show your face in my bar again.”

The stranger rolled the dice loosely in the palm of his hand.

“That’s a sharp move,” he said. “I hope you won’t come to regret it.”

Then, in a feat of legerdemain that Dave would remember until his dying day, he simultaneously moved the dice over and under the fingers of each hand, so that they appeared to float across the knuckles and adhere to the pads of the fingers in defiance of gravity. When he was done, he let them drop to the table before pressing the bottom of his glass against them in turn, until finally they split, each revealing a tiny piece of metal.

“They’re all deteriorating.” He spoke softly and sorrowfully, but not to Dave. “My Dutch and High Germans, my bristles and fulhams, my high and low men. What manner of rook am I now? None worth the name.”

He finished his drink, dropped the empty glass into one of his misshapen pockets, and scooped up the fragments of dice, where they vanished in an instant, leaving only an empty palm.

“You were right not to play,” he told Dave. “You have to be able to trust the dice, and the only dice you can trust are your own.” He slipped a dollar bill under the beer mat. “If you see Mr. Raum Buker, or the hawkshaw named Mr. Charlie Parker, you can inform them that Kepler sends his regards. I’ll be in touch with one or the other of them by and by.”

With that he left, trailing the scent of roses and decay. The Fulcis monitored his progress gravely as one of the servers arrived to clean the table.

“What a creep,” she said. She moved to dispose of the empty ampule, but Dave stopped her.

“I’ll keep that,” he said.

She shrugged and handed it to him, before picking up the dollar bill.

“Big tipper, too,” she said, before examining the bill more closely. “Wait, is this even real?”

Dave took it from her. It was an old Blue Seal Silver Certificate bill in perfect condition, a type that had ceased to be produced in the 1960s. The series date was 1923.

“It’s real,” he said, “but old. Might even be worth a few bucks, if you ask around.”

He returned the bill to the server.

“I misjudged him,” she said.

“No,” said Dave, as the door closed behind Kepler, “I think you were right on the money.”

CHAPTER LVI

Will Quinn knocked on the door of Dolors Strange’s home but received no reply. He had already tried Strange Brews, but Dolors had not been seen at the coffee shop. According to Erin, the assistant manager, Dolors had phoned to say that she still wasn’t feeling great and would be staying home. Now here was Will, flowers in hand, come to check on her, only to find the house empty. Neither was Dolors answering her cell phone.

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