"One left," Boone said. "Interested, Matt?"
"Depends. Where and when?"
"My suite at the Conover Arms. That"s a couple of blocks away, on Geary-we couldn"t get in here at the Drake. Nine o"clock."
"What kind of poker?"
"Stud and draw. Keep it simple, that"s my motto."
"Wild cards?"
Boone looked offended. "No way. I hate wild-card games."
"So do I. Stakes?"
"Table stakes. Five-dollar ante, twenty-dollar limit, no limit on raises."
"How many players?"
"A full seven, if you"ll join us."
Cape asked Tanya, "Will you be playing?"
"Me? G.o.d, no. Boone"s the only gambler in our family."
"That"s too bad."
"I"m sure you think so." Her smile held mock sympathy.
"The others are all conventioneers like me," Boone said. "Dilettantes bit by the gambling bug, you might say." He paused, measuring Cape again with his liquidy gaze. "Strictly a friendly game."
"No sharks allowed."
"No, sir, no sharks allowed."
"Suits me. I like swimming in safe waters myself."
Boone beamed at him. "Count you in for the last seat, then?"
"Count me in."
6.
Boone Judson"s two-room suite at the Conover Arms was on the small side-just enough s.p.a.ce in the sitting room for an oblong table and eight chairs provided by the hotel staff. The lighting was weak, two lamps and a ceiling globe. On the table: wheel carrier of red, white, and blue chips and four sealed decks of blue-backed Bicycle cards. On a sideboard: plenty of liquor, ice, snack food.
"Only thing we haven"t got," Boone said through his sunny smile, "is naked babes. You gents"ll have to make those arrangements for yourselves."
Everybody laughed, Cape included. Five of them there now, just before nine o"clock, cl.u.s.tered around the sideboard waiting for the last two players to show up. Drinks in hand, chattering, eager to get started. The conventioneers drank Scotch or bourbon; Cape drank plain soda over ice. They accepted him anyway. He knew how to blend in with salesmen; he"d been one himself for too many years, gone to his share of conventions. Memorize names and hometowns, use them often. Joke, glad-hand, pretend interest in dull banter. Drop names like Emerson Manufacturing into the conversation.
The last two insurance agents trooped in twenty minutes later, half in the bag and spouting excuses. Everybody got acquainted, freshened drinks. Then they took seats at random around the table.
"Virgin decks, boys," Boone said. "Matt, you do the honors. Pick one and pop its cherry."
Cape slit the cellophane, broke the seal, shook the cards free, and removed the jokers. He gave the deck seven or eight hard shuffles to take out some of the stiff newness. Dealt one card to everybody, face up. Scott from Cleveland caught a deuce and grumbled about it; banking would interfere with his concentration, he said, as if the liquor he was knocking back wouldn"t. He was one of the latecomers.
Buy-in was five hundred. Cape took the minimum. Most of the others took a thousand, and Joe from St. Louis laid out fifteen crisp hundred-dollar bills. Fat wallets, all the way around the table.
The play started off slow, on the conservative side, the way the bigger-money games among strangers usually do. Feeling one another out. Cape paid particular attention to a different man through each of the first six hands-faces, eyes, body language, the way he held his cards, when he bet and how much and how often, if and when he folded. Mitch from East Rutherford looked to be the strongest player. Scott from Cleveland and Charley from Seattle were scatterguns, more interested in drinking and yacking than working at their games. Boone was the hardest to read-loose but casual, not drinking much, folding quickly unless he had the cards to back up a bet, raising only once. The sandbagging, check-and-raise type.
It was forty minutes before Cape won a small pot. Another thirty minutes before he won a second. Bad cards again, the kind of streak you had to just ride out. The play had picked up by then-larger bets, a couple of pots that exceeded three hundred each. Winners so far were Mitch from East Rutherford and Boone, who claimed both of the three-hundred-plus pots: kings full in a hand of draw dealt by Charley from Seattle, trip aces in five-card stud dealt by Joe from St. Louis.
Cape lost slowly but steadily. His buy-in five hundred was gone in less than two hours; another five hundred went even faster. Scott from Cleveland, Charley from Seattle, and Perry from Sarasota were even bigger losers. Mitch from East Rutherford kept winning. So did Boone. Four or five medium-size pots, another fat one that Cape dropped out of halfway through the betting. He figured his three queens wouldn"t be enough, and he was right. Boone had an ace-high spade flush to Charley-from-Seattle"s small straight.
"Boone," Charley said, "you"re just plain-a.s.s lucky. Drop-dead gorgeous woman like Tanya for a sister, and here you win all the big pots."
Perry from Sarasota said dreamily, "Amen on both counts."
Boone said, grinning, "h.e.l.l, if I was really lucky, I"d win every pot and Tanya"d be my wife instead of my sister."
Everybody laughed except Cape.
Not long after midnight, Charley from Seattle quit the game. He was sloppy drunk by then and down better than twenty-four hundred, by Cape"s count. Forty minutes later there were just five of them; Perry from Sarasota cashed out at around nineteen hundred in the hole. Mitch from East Rutherford began to lose a little; Joe from St. Louis began to win a little. Scott from Cleveland kept throwing good money after bad, drinking Scotch and b.i.t.c.hing the whole time; he was into the game for four thousand by then. Cape"s losses were close to fifteen hundred. Boone remained the heavy winner.
Biggest pot of the night came at one-thirty, on a hand of seven-card stud dealt by Joe from St. Louis. Cape caught wired aces in the hole, a pair of sevens faceup and a third seven on his last down card. Mitch from East Rutherford had three hearts showing, and the way he bet after his last down card, he had two more hearts buried. Scott from Cleveland stayed in for a while with what was probably trips. Boone was the fourth man in; he had a pair of fours showing, nothing else.
They went back and forth, raising, Boone b.u.mping every time. Scott from Cleveland dropped out. Mitch from East Rutherford showed less and less confidence in his heart flush, finally dropped out too.
"Just you and me, Matt," Boone said cheerfully. "Raise you another twenty."
Cape raised him back, got another raise in return. "All right," he said. He slid his last white chip into the pot. "Call."
Boone flipped over two of his hole cards. "Four times four."
"Yeah. What I figured."
"Your pot if you got more sevens hidden there."
"Just a boat full of losers. It"s yours."
"Whoo-ee." Boone grinned all over his chubby face, began raking in the chips. "This really is my night. I haven"t had the cards run this hot for me in years."
Cape slid his hand together, picked it up, made as if to toss it onto the fan of other discards. Instead, leaning back slightly, he let his elbow bang against the edge of the table and the cards slide from his fingers into his lap, off onto the floor. He said as if he were annoyed with himself, "Dammit, I can"t do anything right tonight," and sc.r.a.ped his chair back.
When he hunched over and leaned down, he did two things. The ace of diamonds was still in his lap; he palmed it with his left hand. With his right he picked up one of the sevens and bent it nearly in half. "s.h.i.t!" he said as he straightened. "Now look what I did." He tossed the bent seven onto the table a couple of seconds before he dropped the remaining five cards onto the discard pile. The others looked at the damaged seven; their faces said they didn"t notice the missing ace.
"Hey, don"t worry about it," Boone said. "No harm done. We still got one more virgin deck."
Cape played two hands with the new deck, losing both. On the third deal he folded a pair of jacks and said, "I"ve got to take a leak. Deal me out of the next one."
In the bathroom, with the door locked, he took the diamond ace out of his pocket and held it up to the bright fluorescent light above the sink. He studied the front, turned it over, and studied the back. Then he tucked the card into his wallet, went back out to the table.
The five of them played for another ten minutes, Cape folding all but the last hand. He had just enough chips to make one bet, one raise, on his pair of kings. When Boone b.u.mped him, he folded again. He was down exactly seventeen hundred.
"That"s it for me," he said.
A few seconds later Joe from St. Louis lost yet another pot to Boone. He threw his cards down in disgust. "I"m done, too. Just not my night."
"Same here," Scott from Cleveland said. "Christ, I gotta be close to four thousand in the c.r.a.pper."
"Get it back tomorrow night," Boone said. "My run of luck can"t hold, and yours is bound to change."
"Uh-uh. Wife finds out how much I lost already..."
"You win it back, sh.e.l.l never know, right?" Boone looked at Cape. "How about you, Matt? You want to try goosing Lady Luck again tomorrow night?"
"I"ll keep it in mind."
"Do that. If you decide to play, give me a ring and I"ll make sure you have a seat. If not... well, it"s been a pleasure."
"Has it?"
"Sure. For me so far." He laughed. "No kidding, I hope you can make it. Really like to see you again."
"You will," Cape said. "You can bet on it."
7.
Cape rattled knuckles on the door marked 407. Not loud-it was close to 3:00 A.M. by his watch-but steadily, in a low staccato beat. In less than a minute he got a wary response.
"Who is it?"
He said, "Hotel security," in a voice pitched differently than his own.
No response for a time. Then, "It"s the middle of the night. What do you want?"
"Security matter. Open the door, please."
"Not until you tell me what you want."
"In private, Miss Judson. Don"t make me use my pa.s.skey. Or call the city police."
After that, she didn"t have much choice. The chain jangled, and she released the deadbolt.
As soon as the door cracked inward, Cape laid his shoulder against it and shoved. She backpedaled, off balance, cursing. He went in and shut the door behind him.
"You," she said, spitting the word as she recognized him. "You son of a b.i.t.c.h, what"s the idea?"
This room was a large single, with a shallow entrance foyer. The bedside lamp was lit, and the TV was on low volume, some movie with sappy music and a woman weeping. Tanya wore a lime-green silk robe, knee-length and gap-necked. With her makeup scrubbed off and her blond hair rumpled, she looked about nineteen.
She backed up near the bed, saying, "Come near me, and I"ll scream the house down. You won"t have enough time to yank it out, much less get it up."
"Don"t flatter yourself. That"s not why I"m here."
"Then what the h.e.l.l do you want?"
"Seventeen hundred dollars."
"... What?"
"You heard me. That"s how much I lost tonight. Correction-that"s how much you and Boone stole from me tonight."
"I don"t have a clue what you"re talking about."
"Sure you do. The poker con the two of you are running."
"Con? What do you mean, con?"
"He"s the jolly mechanic, you"re the s.e.xpot roper and steerer. Insurance agent and graphic artist, h.e.l.l. Couple of grifters working the convention circuit."
"You"re crazy. Or high on something."
"I"ll bet the local cops won"t think so."
Nothing changed in her expression. Poker face as practiced as Boone"s. She wasn"t new at the game; seasoned veteran at twenty-five or so. "If you think you"ve been cheated, why didn"t you call the police?"
"Too much ha.s.sle. I don"t have the time for it."
"Don"t tell me you"re wanted?"
"I won"t, because I"m not."
"You say anything to Boone, the other players?"
"No. Same reason I didn"t notify hotel security or the city law. My freedom"s more important to me than putting a couple of scam artists out of commission."
"Why come here, then? I suppose the night clerk told you where to find me."