Free Hillerman, Tony by The Fly on the Wall (v4) [html]

next one was the ace of hearts, which gave House Speaker Bruce Ulrich an ace, trey and king up.
    “Fours bet,” Hall said.
    Garcia put his cigar in the ashtray and tossed four white chips into the pot. “Four dollars,” he said.
    Ulrich folded. Hall had already dropped. Cotton considered the odds. If Garcia had another pair it was probably jacks, and he had one of Garcia’s jacks. There was about eleven dollars in the pot. “Call,” he said.
    Ulrich relit his cigar butt and blew a heavy blue cloud across the table. “You know,” he said, “if Roark really has got some running money lined up he might beat Gene Clark. He’s been the best Governor this state’s had.”
    “You’ve just damned the man with faint praise,” Hall said. “That’s like saying he’s the world’s tallest runt.”
    Kendall was studying his hole cards, his expression foreboding. “Or the world’s most moral grandma raper,” he said. “Like saying as lively as a three-toed sloth. Lovely as a bucket of guts. Honest as . . .”
    “Kendall’s on a simile kick again,” Hall said. “You see his story on the abortion bill yesterday? He said Senator Wheelwright opened debate like a lioness opening an antelope.”
    “I wish I’d said that,” Garcia said.
    “You will,” Kendall said. “Lacking the quota of spades required for a flush, I fold.”
    “Kendall learned that fancy stuff on the Corpus Christi Caller,” Hall said. “They even write sports like that in Texas. ‘The forward wall of the Longhorn defense was in hideous disarray.’ Stuff like that.”
    “I once wrote that the Southern Methodist passing attack, like sweet corn, traveled poorly, losing flavor with each mile from the Cotton Bowl corn patch. And got it past the desk.” Kendall’s expression changed from morose to merely grim with the remembered triumph. “Stole that one from A. J. Liebling,” he said. “Deal the cards. It’s like playing with a bunch of Brownies.”
    “Pot’s right,” Hall said. He dealt Cotton the jack of spades and Garcia the seven of clubs. “Pair of jacks,” Hall said. “Jacks are tall.”
    “Let’s not change the bet,” Cotton said. He pushed four white chips into the center.
    “What the hell happened to Whitey?” Kendall said. “He’s been gone an hour.” Garcia was studying Cotton’s cards.
    “What’d he say he was going to do?” Kendall said. “Wasn’t he just going to call something in to his desk?”
    “He said the Gazette wanted some information about the Health Department funding,” Ulrich said. “But he had to drive back out to the newsroom to get it.”
    “It’s just six or eight blocks,” Kendall said. “If he wants to play poker he ought not screw us around like this. I don’t like a five-handed game.”
    “You don’t like losing,” Hall said. “You know that quotation from Shakespeare: ‘When the city desk calleth one, one goeth.’”
    “Come on, Junior,” Ulrich said. “Call or fold.”
    Garcia put the cigar between his teeth. “My mother told me not to call unless I could raise. I’m going to raise the son-of-a-bitch a little.” He added three blue five-dollar chips to the pot.
    “Just to get the shoe clerks out,” Hall said.
    Three fours, Cotton thought. Or maybe a club flush. He felt a sudden hunch that his seventh card would be a queen, giving him a winning full house. Cotton had learned years ago to resist hunches in poker.
    “You bought a pot,” he said, folding the hand. “What did you have?”
    “Knock off all the talking and deal the cards,” Kendall said.
    Cotton won his own deal, a five-card stud hand, with a pair of tens, and then folded the next two hands of draw. While Ulrich shuffled he got up and made himself a bourbon and water. As he dropped in the ice cubes the telephone on the kitchen wall rang.
    “Get the phone,” Hall said. “If it’s for my wife, tell ’em she’s out playing bridge.”
    “Hall residence,” Cotton said.
    “This is the Gazette.