Gaynor waved down a cab and Mallory rolled.

She could see the pinch-faced matron in her rear-view mirror. The woman's mouth was hanging open as she stood in the street, staring after Mallory and waving the business card like a small warning flag.

Rabbi David Kaplan struggled with the legs of the card table. They were supposed to unfold from the table top, but perversely, they would not.

"My wife usually does this. She wasn't expecting anyone to come."

"Good thing I brought the beer," said Dr Edward Slope. "Anything in the fridge?"

It would have been Louis Markowitz's turn to bring the sandwiches tonight. The doctor's own wife, Donna, had set that policy, saying, "Don't you expect Anna to cook for you", knowing that Anna would never have settled for cold sandwiches. It would have been a spread worthy of the Second Coming.

"I've lived with that woman for thirty-five years," said the rabbi, "and never have I seen an empty refrigerator. That's the least of my worries." One leg of the table dropped down, but he had no way to know he had accidentally moved the latch which held it in place. When his wife did this, it took three seconds. He supposed she just willed it to unfold itself and stand up on four legs. And for all he knew, it walked to the center of the room of its own accord.

Slope wandered into the kitchen to stand at the open door of the refrigerator. Louis Markowitz's refrigerator had been much like this one, as he recalled. Not so long ago, Louis's shelves had been filled with real food, built from a woman's blueprint of shopping lists and recipes, the makings of meals past and meals to come, warm colors of fruit and cool green vegetables, condiments and mysterious, unlabeled jars of liquids. When the last woman had gone from Louis's house, the refrigerator had changed its character, becoming shabby in its accumulation of deli bags and frozen dinners. Everything to the rear of the shelves had resembled small furry animals which had sickened and then crawled back there to die.

Now Slope stared at Anna Kaplan's well stocked shelves. Food is love, said this refrigerator.

He was assessing bowls and pots and checking under the lids of Tupperware when the doorbell rang. The new arrival could only be Robin Duffy. The lawyer had a hearty voice, usually upbeat. Tonight, it sounded through the walls like a mourning bell in the low octaves. Robin had known Louis Markowitz for many years, and he would be a long time getting over the death.

Dr Slope added mustard to the tray.

Now they were three.

Two weeks had passed since the funeral. Tonight, by some connectedness of spirit, the three of them had gathered together in this place where the fourth player, Louis Markowitz, had been loved by a close circle of men.

He clutched a Tupperware container to his chest and made the contorted face of a man who would rather not cry. He set the plastic container on the tray. What was missing? he wondered as he picked up the tray. When the bell rang again, announcing a fourth person, the tray fell from his hands.

He sank to the floor and slowly reached out for the heavy mustard jar, sturdy thing, unbroken. He crawled about the tiles, blindly groping for each dropped item, finding the butter and the knife with his eyes screwed shut, watertight.

When he was again in full possession of everything he had lost, he carried the tray down the narrow hall and into the rabbi's den which was lined with four walls of books and two old friends, and one very large stranger, the fourth man, who was unfolding the last leg of the card table. He was six-four but non-threatening in his size, perhaps because his face was so wonderfully appealing. What a nose. And those eyes. Even with the heavy eyelids, the irises were so small they left a generous margin of white on all sides, giving him a look of wide-eyed astonishment at just everything in the world.

Slope liked this man immediately. He looked at the faces of his friends, and, like himself, they were unconsciously, accidentally smiling.

"Pull up a chair, Mr Butler."

"Charles."

"Edward."

"Let me give you the ground rules, Charles," said Robin Duffy, a small and compact bulldog of a man introduced as Louis's lawyer and neighbor of twenty years.

"Louis explained the rules to him," said Rabbi Kaplan, pulling his own chair up to the table. "Charles came with twelve pounds of nickel and dime rolls."

The strained silence was broken by Robin Duffy. "I like a man who comes prepared to lose big."

"So Louis invited you to join the game?" Slope dealt out the cards, and immediately went to work on building a pastrami sandwich.

"I inherited his chair." Charles eyed the tray of sandwich makings with the discrimination of a connoisseur, and passed over the Cheddar cheese for the Swiss, so as not to overpower the more delicate slices of cold chicken. He pulled the letter out of his jacket pocket and exchanged it for the jar of mayonnaise in Slope's hand.

The doctor stared down at the handwriting which had become so familiar to him over his years with the medical examiner's office. Louis's friend was pointing to the third paragraph which indeed spelled out a legacy. The letter was silently passed from man to man as the dealt cards lay where they landed. It seemed Louis's friend had been left more than the chair.

"Well, that fits," said Duffy when he folded the letter and handed it back across the table. "I always figured the poker game was just a front for raising Kathy." He popped the cap from a bottle of beer and picked up his cards. "Did Lou ever tell you where he found her?"

"No. No, he didn't."

"She was maybe eleven. He caught the little brat breaking into a Jag. Well, he's holding her out by the collar of her jacket, and she's swinging away, little fists pounding the crap out of air. So it was take the kid home with him, or spend what's left of the wife's birthday hassling with Juvenile Hall."

"But Helen didn't understand," said Slope, picking up his cards. "She thought Kathy was a present. She wouldn't let go of the kid for twelve years."

Charles smiled down at a clear space on the table where his photographic memory projected the pages of Hoyle which dealt with the rules of poker, a game he had never played. Nowhere in the rules did it list Doomsday Stud with deuces wild. "Louis must have been pleased that she turned out so well, becoming a policewoman and all."

The other three men looked up from their cards, their faces all asking the same silent question: Are you nuts?

"Helen Markowitz did teach Kathy table manners." Duffy examined the card which had been laid down faceup. "I'll bet a nickel. But the kid never really changed. She likes being a cop 'cause she can steal more interesting stuff with her computer. And she gets clean away with it."

"Yeah," said Slope, lighting a cigar and pushing his own coins to the center of the table. "I'll see that nickel and raise you a dime. Whatever Louis needed, Kathy could get for him. I guess he had a few occasions to worry about his pension. After she broke into the FBI computer, I saw him make the sign of the cross – sorry, Rabbi."

"The things she's done," said Duffy, picking at his cards and trying to give the appearance that this was not a potential world-class poker hand. His dime grudgingly pushed into the small pile of coins.

"Remember when she was a little kid," said Slope, "and Helen enrolled her in the NYU computer courses for children?"

"Yeah," said the lawyer. "Helen was so happy that day. Kathy had finally taken an interest in something legal. Do you remember the way Helen cried when the kid gave her that present? You know, the one she made at computer school?"

"That transfer from the savings and loan?" Slope pushed another nickel into the pot as the next card hit the table, faceup.