“Do you understand that you are pleading to a second-degree manslaughter charge with jail time of three to five years?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Did anyone force you to make this plea?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Are you doing this of your own free will?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Are you happy with your lawyer’s services?”
“Very happy, Your Honor.”
Lydia squeezes my hand tight.
The judge clears his throat.
“Then it is the judgment of this court that you be sentenced to a total of three years in prison counting time served.”
When he utters these words, the courtroom explodes in a collective gasp of amazement. I hear Burt Sklar’s angry voice above the din. I turn around to see his face distorted with fury as he points his finger at me and screams at the judge:
“Three years! That’s outrageous, Your Honor! The woman is a murderer! My best friend is dead because of her!”
The judge bangs his gavel and orders silence in the court. Sklar calms down. Vance Packer rises from his chair as Detective Chen marches down the aisle accompanied by two beefy bailiffs. They stop at Sklar’s row. Chen says: “Burt Sklar, I’m arresting you for Murder in the First Degree. Stand up.”
Sklar doesn’t appear to understand what’s happening. Turning to Mona Lickel, he says, “Is this a joke?”
Lickel, on the other hand, seemed to grasp the seriousness of this charge, given the way she leapt up like a jumping bean and rushed over to Vance Packer. They have a brief consultation. How I relish seeing Lickel’s angry face turn to stone as Packer tells her what’s going on. She shakes her head in utter disbelief. Packer is nodding smugly, like he’s saying, “Sorry, lady, we have proof.”
Sklar cries out to Lickel as a bailiff is slapping handcuffs on him.
“Mona! What the fuck…?!”
Lickel walks back to him like she’s in a trance.
“Maud Warner is accusing you of hiring her to kill Sun Sunderland. They have proof.”
“What?! Are you fuckin’ nuts? WHAT?!”
The bailiffs have to restrain him as Lickel whispers in his ear. I can’t hear what she’s saying. But as she’s speaking, Sklar’s face turns, as they say, a whiter shade of pale.
“No! No! NO! What gun? What contract? What defense? What the FUCK!?”
His head snaps around. He glares at me with an expression I once saw in a horror movie where this guy’s prom date morphed into a life-size insect just as he was about to kiss her.
I look back at Sklar with my innocent doe eyes, and say, sadly, “I’m sorry, Burt. It was time for me to fold and tell the truth.”
Chapter Fifty-six
I served three years in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in New York. Bedford is the alma mater of Jean Harris, another infamous socialite who murdered a famous man. It wasn’t exactly cushy, but it could have been worse. I liked a lot of the women I met there. I taught some of them to play poker. I told them the importance of bluffing, adding that I, myself, have never been very good at it.
“It’s the part of my game I’ll definitely have to work on when I get out,” I said.
I lied, of course. The bluff was my specialty, in poker and in life. But then, all poker players lie—just to keep in practice.
When I finally did get out in 2018, much had changed in the three plus years I’d been incarcerated. The original Four Seasons had closed, sailing off into New York history like a great ghost galleon, until someone got the bright idea to re-open it in another location. I wish it well, though I doubt I’d ever get a good table there.
F.A.O. Schwartz is gone. No more live Santas for kids to tell what they want for Christmas. The Internet is Santa now. Click and get. Who knows? Maybe there will be reindeer drones one day.
The Gypsy’s game was held up at gunpoint and closed down. Its demise marks the end of the longest running illegal poker game in D.C. The Gypsy started another game in a sterile and far less dangerous locale. Players say it’s not the same. It seems that dicey back alley venue added a certain piquancy to the poker that was played there. They all miss it.
Magma and Brent Hobbs are married, living in sexy bliss in Magma’s apartment. Magma looks younger than ever. Brent’s book on the whole Sunderland-Sklar-Warner affair, titled Hell Hath Fury: Bigamy, Larceny, and Murder for Hire, is on the bestseller list and climbing.
Lydia Fairley got her own TV show. Her first guest was Joyce Kiner Braden. They discussed the trial and the E.E.D. defense.
Vance Packer and Detective Chen received good reviews on how they handled the case, particularly because I didn’t totally escape doing time.
Jean prevailed in her lawsuit against Sklar and Sunderland’s estate. Sunderland’s Durable Power of Attorney was ruled a forgery by four out of five forensic handwriting experts. The probate judge threw it out of court and awarded her Sunderland’s entire estate. The assets in the tontine were gradually recovered. Jean reached a deal with Danya, to whom she was publicly grateful. The lawyers made out like bandits, but my gals are both happy.
Danya married the handsome guy she was with at the trial. They opened a luxury fitness center in Boca Raton.
Jean is back in the advertising business. She won a Cleo Award for an ad she created for AARP. She tells people she’s no longer bitter about the bigamy, or Sun’s betrayal. She’s embracing life as a stronger and wiser woman. She watches her fortune closely.
Burt Sklar is now serving twenty to life. They found the note I exchanged with him in his office, adding to the evidence against him. They didn’t believe him when he said he’d never seen that gun. His dramatic arrest made headlines all over the country, which prompted Mrs. Lurlene Meers of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to come forward. October 10th, 2014, was the day Lurlene was having an illicit lunch at The Four Seasons with a man who was not her husband. It was her very first trip to New York and she was thrilled her paramour had taken her to the famous restaurant. While they were waiting for a table in the Pool Room, Lurlene took a cell phone video of the Grill Room and happened to catch the crime on camera. Her husband eventually found the video on her phone. After he called his divorce lawyer, he made her call the D.A. But that’s another story.
The video clearly showed Sklar pulling Sunderland in front of him to avoid what he knew was coming. Detective Chen testified to all of this in court. He said that video erased any doubts he had about my accusation that Sklar had hired me to do the job. He totally believed me now. I was let out of jail to testify. I can still see Sklar’s eyes boring into me as I tearfully recounted how manipulative he was in recruiting me to carry out his heinous plan to get the money and the girl. The jury found him guilty.
Sklar’s in Attica now, appealing his conviction, continuing to protest his innocence, along with almost every prisoner there. Only, in his case, it’s true—at least the murder for hire part.
Jean and Danya and I may all meet again one day. But probably not. The Vagina Vigilantes vs. the Viagra Villains tournament is over.
We won.
I’m back in D.C., playing poker with my old pals. Billy Jakes gave me a welcome home poker game. I never did recoup any of the money Sklar stole from my mother. But Jean’s secretly backing me in all the poker tournaments my little heart desires.
One thing that hasn’t changed since I’ve been in prison: A woman has yet to win the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. You need luck and a lion’s courage to win that tournament. You also need to be great at bluffing. If you bluff, you can’t falter. You must tell a story your opponent can believe, and make him believe it. In an odd way, you must believe the story yourself. And you can only do that if you believe in yourself.
I’m going to Las Vegas this July. I plan to enter the Main Event. And who knows? With a lot of bluff and a little l
uck, I might win.
Showdown
Fiction is the greatest bluff there is. Writers are abetted by imagination, our own, and that of the reader. Imagination is the most powerful deck of cards the universe. It has no limits.
If you are reading this, it means you have played the entire hand with me. If you have enjoyed the book, I thank you as a writer and a poker player. If not, I can only say: Next book, next hand.
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks to my dear friend, Linda Fairstein, and my “poker sista,” Linda Kenney Baden, for their invaluable guidance and support. Thanks to Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, a wonderful friend and editor. Thanks to my great poker buddies Ken Adams, Billy Jacobini, and Ken Oberle, who taught me No Limit Hold’em and introduced me to the poker world. Thanks to my beloved husband, Jim, who read endless drafts of this book and spurred me on through the many occasions I wanted to fold. And, finally, a special thanks to Chloe, my little “alien from the Planet Adorable,” a furry little ace of hearts at my feet.
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