The Fourth Ace
Nathan Mohr
It was the fourth ace that did me in.Three aces might have been accepted luck, but when the fourth chose to insert itself, it tipped the scales and destroyed the balance that I had worked so carefully to establish. It was an unnecessary addition sure to bring nothing but trouble, a blight upon what had been, to that moment, a prosperous and fortuitous period. Under any normal circumstances, a gambler who draws a fourth ace might consider that at last, Lady Luck had smiled upon his personage with her dazzling charms, and Fortune had shined forth its countenance upon him. But in the particular hand I was playing, and considering my opponent in this game, it seemed to me that rather than Lady Luck, the fourth ace was the work of the Grim Reaper, who sat just beyond the poker table, behind the scuffed oak bar in the smoky and dimly lit card room of the Queen of Sheba. The Queen was one of the few steamboats left on the Amazon in the rainy season, and in addition to carrying her usual cargo, it seemed to me as if it was also carrying my death.
I, Shanahan Brady, had never had much luck, and so it was only befitting my ill fortunes that the one hand of cards in which I was able to draw a fourth ace was the one hand in which I had no desire to do so. You see, across the table from me was a man who had tracked me from Morocco to Bombay, from London to New York. His name was Regan, and it was five years prior to our hand of cards that I had shot and killed his brother over a similar incident in a small tavern in Morocco. The fight was fair, and was forced upon me by the hot-headed youngster who had neither skill with cards nor skill with guns, and it was only my luck that he chose that night to exhibit his deficiencies in both. Unfortunately for him, I possessed some degree of skill with the latter, and I was able to demonstrate it with efficient and deadly results. Young Regan had drawn a losing hand in more ways than one, and he chose that night to cash in his chips.
It was only after the shooting that I learned that this Regan was the younger brother of a much more skilled operator, a man with a name for trouble and an uncanny ability to use a pistol in the blink of an eye. Indeed, it was said that this elder Regan’s speed with a gun was only exceeded by the quickness of his temper, and the unlucky fellows who dared to engage either found that he excelled in filling the coffers of heaven with souls in much the same way a politician fills his purse with money. The story was relayed to me that Regan had established his ability on a dark night in the French quarter of New Orleans, when he was set upon by three ne’er do wells who thought him an easy mark. Two of them were buried the next day, and the third lingered for a week before he died. From there, Regan drifted to Europe, where he killed a man in Liverpool over a game of cards, and another in Madrid over a woman. And then, much to my dismay and chagrin, I had the misfortune to cross paths with his younger and much less deadly sibling.
After the night of the shooting, I was warned by various friends (I use that term loosely) that the elder Regan would follow me to the ends of the earth, for he had two younger brothers, and he loved both of them dearly. What became of the middle brother I did not know, but several months after the unhappy incident in Morocco, I learned that the elder had expressed a very keen desire to meet with me, and it was my earnest intention to avoid that meeting at all costs. I perceived that if we were to meet, that rendezvous would be followed by another one in which I was greeted by Peter and all the saints of heaven. Therefore, I continued to travel, from city to city, continent to continent, until, as time passed, thoughts of the elder Regan died from my mind, and I became much more lax in covering the traces of my existence.
It was the height of the rainy season in the Amazon River basin, and only a few steamboats were still traveling on the river due to the strong currents and frequent flooding that occurred during that time. One of these was the Queen of Sheba, captained by an old acquaintance of mine, Patrick Flannigan. Patrick was born in County Cork in the old country, and we occasionally swapped drinks and stories when our paths crossed. I decided, out of boredom and because my funds were running low, to travel with him on his latest sojourn to see if I could pick up some money from the few passengers who were braving the powerful currents of the Amazon. We were only a day out of port, and I was sitting at a table with a fat little medicine drummer and a husky fellow from San Francisco playing five-card draw when a shadow fell across our small corner of the room. I didn’t look up; I only removed the stubby, greasy cigar that was clenched in my teeth and remarked, “Friend, the light in here is rather dim without the impediment of your shadow. ‘Twould be a favor to me if you could remove this eclipse and let the sun shine upon us.”
It was a gravelly, low voice that responded, the kind of voice that sounded like sandpaper on a smooth surface, and it held none of the warmth of human kindness, despite the words of friendliness that it uttered. “It would be a pleasure to me, gentlemen, if you could see your way clear to include me in this little game.”
I looked up and felt a chill despite the relative warmth and humidity of the day. For staring down at me, with a heavy brow, deep-set eyes, and a Roman nose that protruded above rubbery, thick lips, was the one man in all the world whom I had desired most to avoid. I had never laid eyes on him, but the dark features and jutting brow were so very similar to the man I had killed five years prior, that there could be no doubt that this was the elder Regan. Both the Regans had a hawkish look about them, but this one bore the features so prominently that he looked more like a giant eagle, a vicious creature of prey, than a man. I sat for a moment, mute, the cigar still clutched in my fingers, while the drummer and San Francisco both responded affirmatively to Regan’s request. He then continued to look at me, no mark of recognition on his face, but he must have known who I was. What else could he be doing on a steamboat in the middle of the Amazon River during the rainy season if not to end my existence?
“Friend, it appears that yours is the only vote left. What shall it be? Shall I be given the pleasure of good company, or will I be turned away destitute of friendship and forced to seek my entertainment elsewhere?”
I swallowed, and it felt as if my fear was a cancerous lump, which had arisen from my breast and had now lodged in my throat. I only nodded, giving a brief grunt, so as not to let my fear betray itself through vocalization. He smiled, took that as assent, and removed his coat, sitting down with obvious relish.
As time passed and the game went on, my confidence slowly returned. Regan betrayed no knowledge of my identity, so it was possible, however unlikely, that he did not know who I was solely from appearance. Furthermore, he seemed to be in relatively good spirits, not at all possessing the kind of temperament his reputation had afforded him. He was genial, laughing with the drummer over some minor remark and commenting on the beauty of California with the husky fellow from San Francisco. Indeed, if one had not been aware of the events of the previous five years, one would have thought that this was nothing more than a game of cards between old friends. I, knowing the ferocious and bloodthirsty savagery of my foe, understood instinctively that this was truly a game of chance in which fortunes could turn at any moment.
Chance was kind to me at the table, however, and despite my growing pile of winnings, none of my three companions seem to begrudge me the winds of luck which were blowing my way. Yet however fortunate the final hand may have been to another, it was unfortunate for me, because the pot was the largest, and the winds of luck blew strongly, a bit too strongly. I had in my hand a single ace, and felt that if I could leave the game now, having won a bit, I might yet escape, not only with my life, but also with a bit of cash in my pocket. I discarded four cards, and that’s when I found that luck had favored me at a time when I did not desire her favor. For when I lifted the corner of the cards to study them, I found that I had drawn not one, not two, but three aces. It was that fourth ace which felt like a stake that had been driven through my heart. Drawing two aces in one hand might be considered a moment of fortuitous blessing, but I had very little hope that my comrades would believe that chance had favored me with a fourth ace, particularly on the largest pot of the night. Further, when Regan saw that I had acquired four aces, he would likely put the pieces together, if he hadn’t already, regarding my history with his family in games of chance. After all, it was unlikely anyone had been as lucky at the card table against the Regan family as I had been….and Regan wasn’t likely to see this as luck.
I considered folding, but a streak of the devil rose in me. There are only a few moments in a gambler’s life when Lady Luck smiles upon him in the manner in which she had done in this game, and I was not willing to throw the Fates to the wind to deter that which was likely already determined. So when the time came to call, I spread my cards upon the table and let destiny run her course.
“Gentlemen,” I said as I spread the aces on the table, “I believe that tonight, my years of wooing the fair Lady have paid off, for she has seen fit to bring me a gift which I have never before seen and will likely never see again. Count them and weep, boys, for it’s not likely that this is a sight you are often going to see.”
The room was hushed as my three companions studied my hand. A stillness lay in the air, the calm before the storm, and outside you could hear the gurgling of the river and the slap of the paddles as the Queen fought bitterly against the forces of nature which were holding her back. The first drops of rain were beginning to fall, and I felt the storm outside was a foreshadowing of the events which were happening at this very tabl. At last, my adversary spoke, in that same low, gravelly voice as before. “Brady.” It was not a question, rather a statement of fact. Whether he had recognized me now or had already determined my identity earlier but kept his silence regarding it, was not known to me. I had not, during the course of the game nor any time prior, given my true name, only introducing myself, as I so often did, as “Shan.” Yet now it was clear that he knew exactly who I was and all cards were on the table, both literally and metaphorically speaking. I waited, trying hard to swallow down the bulging fear that stuck in my throat and made each breath a torturous affair.
“I believe you met my brother Kelly in Morocco some time ago, did you not? Under similar circumstances?” His eyes betrayed no emotion, but dark as they were and placed under that deep-set, craggy brow and just above the massive, hooked nose, it seemed for all the world as if he was measuring me to see how difficult killing me would be. I passed a hand over my forehead and found to my dismay that a thin sheen of sweat had formed, and felt, at that moment, closer to death than I had ever been. That fourth ace was not a mark of luck, but a grim omen.
“Kelly Regan? Y-yes…I believe I did. He was a good lad, but a trifle impetuous. It was a full house that night, one of the few times in my life I’ve held such a good hand. Your brother seemed to think that such luck didn’t suit me, and it was to my shame that night that my luck extended beyond the card table into the use of firearms. He was a good boy, and it was a sorrow to me in many ways that my aim was better than his.”
Regan sat silent for a moment. His hands, on the table, were chapped and scarred, and there was a good amount of stubble on his chin. His eyes, dark as they were, were also red rimmed, and there were deep circles under them. It came to me then that Regan looked himself very close to death, albeit in a different manner.
At last, he spoke, but this time, behind the gravelly rough voice of a killer, I detected a trace of sorrow and loss. His voice cracked as he spoke, and his eyes were wet. “Did he say anything before he died? Any words to remember him by?”
I thought back to that night, five years ago, when I had so abruptly ended the life of young Kelly Regan. It had been a moment of passion on his part, a moment of cowardice on mine, that rather than talking to him rationally regarding his allegations, I had allowed his blustering to goad me, believing that the gun could defend my honor better than my words. After the shooting, as he lay dying on the dusty floor of the Moroccan saloon, I knelt beside him as the blood pooled underneath his body. He looked up at me with fading eyes, and muttered a few lines, which I recognized as Shakespeare. Sitting across from the older brother, five years later, expecting to receive a quick death at any moment, I heard the echo of those words in my ears, and thought with whimsical amusement how ironic it must seem.
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.”
The words seemed to carry a weight which infused new life into the elder Regan. A smile touched his lips, and the dark eyes seemed to glow, for one instant, with a special pride and passion of his own. “Shakespeare? He quoted Shakespeare?”
I dried my sweating palms on the cotton fabric of my pants. The humidity in the room was as thick as butter, and I felt trickles of sweat running down my sides, although I didn’t know whether it was from the heat or from fear. I touched my tongue to my lips and nodded. “Yes, I believe that’s so. Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene II. I thought it a rather strange utterance, but perhaps it has some special significance for you.”
“Indeed.” He smiled fully this time, and it seemed to soften his solemn features somewhat. He reached back for his coat, and I stiffened, pushing myself away from the table in preparation to defend myself, but he withdrew not a gun, but a picture, a faded tintype in a wooden frame, and slid it across the table towards me. It was a picture of three men, and I recognized two of them right away. This picture could not have been taken many years prior to Kelly Regan’s demise, for he looked the same in the tintype as he had when I had ended his life. All three were dressed in Roman togas, all three were attuned to the others in the photograph. The oldest stood with his hand on a sword, the very representation in the photograph of his nature in life, the symbol of power and proficiency with the weapon. The younger stood apart from the other two, his hand outstretched, but his dark eyes flashed with the fire of passion. The middle brother stood in between, a soft look of kindness on his face and it seemed as if he was the mediator between the elder and the younger. Elder and younger seemed separated by space, and the middle brother stood as a bridge to bring them together.
I looked up then, and to my amazement, I found that a trickle of moisture was slowly sliding down the face of the elder Regan. When I looked at the eyes, I saw not death, but now a deep sorrow, mingled with some measure of relief. There was naught but silence in the card room, and my fellow companions seemed as astounded as I was, that this grim harbinger of death was so moved emotionally at the meeting of the man who had ended the life of his kinsman. Regan extracted a large kerchief from his pocket and blew his nose, wiped his eyes, and then spoke. It was almost as if he were not speaking to us, but rather as a penitent man to his confessor, unloading a lifetime of guilt from off his shoulders in the hope that his sin could be absolved.
“We were born into a family of actors, and we three were destined for the stage. It was in our blood, and our parents, God rest their souls, desired us to be the best at our craft. From an early age, we were memorizing Shakespeare and entering worlds beyond our own, and they were wonderful times indeed. We were joined in our love of Shakespeare and the stage, and many a day passed where we would act to no other audience than our own, quoting lines and taking parts. It seemed there was no limit to our future happiness and shared glory upon the stage.
“Only Kelly, he had grander ambitions than our little troupe, and when he was nineteen, he left the company to make his own way in the world. That photograph was taken before our last performance, a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, where we played to a packed out audience on the waterfront in San Francisco’s finest district. Our parents were gone by then, and I was left in charge of the troupe. We had words, Kelly and I, over his future, and I see now that I was in the wrong. A man’s got to follow his own path, and throw caution to the wind. It’s not for another man to determine his destiny, but his future belongs to him alone.
“Our brother Michael had tried to intervene. Pled with me to show patience, to give Kelly a chance to prove himself, but I was bullheaded and thought I was in the right. After the show, Kelly slipped out the backdoor and that was the last I saw of him. I left Michael in charge of the troupe and followed Kelly as far as New Orleans, but he gave me the slip, and I ended up in hot water of my own when I was set upon by three hoodlums and forced to defend myself with a gun. I returned to California, only to find that Michael had fallen ill of cholera, and the troupe had gone bankrupt and dissolved. While nursing Michael back to health, I realized then what a fool I had made of myself, and greatly desired for one more chance to speak to Kelly and tell him how sorry I was, but our last words were bitter ones and he never wrote to me. Though I later tried to follow him, he was always a step or two ahead of me wherever I went. Until at last, on the Barbary Coast, I learned he had been killed in a Moroccan saloon by a gambler named Shanahan Brady, an Irishman who had been the last person alive to hear my brother speak.”
By this time, the trickle of moisture had turned into a torrential downpour of tears to match the rains that were falling outside, and the elder Regan let them fall unabated. The grief that he had saving for five years was loose, and there was no stopping the dam of pain and mourning which had broken open.
“I’ve often wondered what might have been if I’d been able to see Kelly just once more before he died. I’ve wondered if his last thoughts of me were the bitter words that we spoke, or the happy times we shared with each other, memorizing Shakespeare and acting out as boys so often do. To know that his final remarks concerned the words which brought us together, rather than the words I spoke which had divided us, brings me a peace I never thought I’d find. I’ve followed you for five years, wanting to know…and at last I can rest my head tonight knowing that whatever my brother’s grievances against me, his last words remind me of what we loved, not what we hated.”
He pushed back from the table, stood up, and picked up his coat. I sat numbly, not believing the turn of events that had transpired, and all thoughts of my own self-preservation had fled. Regan looked once more at me. “Brady, I’ve no idea whether that last ace was luck or not. Frankly, I don’t care. The price I’ve paid at this hand of poker was small enough for the peace I’ve gained today.” He nodded once, and without another word, left the room.
We sat there then, without another utterance, the little medicine drummer, San Francisco, and me. The rain fell outside like a bleak, gloomy curtain, and I stared out the open door into the steamy night. After a time, my comrades left the table to return to their cabins, and I was left alone to dwell upon my thoughts. The pot was mine, but there was no sweetness to my victory. Regardless of the peace Regan might have found, his brother had been forever taken from him. I looked down at the photograph he had left upon the table. Three brothers bound by blood, but parted by a fourth man who had tipped the scales and destroyed the natural balance, rendering a reconciliation impossible.
As I finally pushed away from the table, I picked up that fourth ace and tucked it in my pocket, a grim reminder that in cards as it is in life, not everything is as it appears to be.
