Smith's Monthly #22

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “Later,” I said, avoiding her question. “After the tournament, I want to talk with you more about all this. I have a hunch I’m going to need your help in a very official way.”

  She nodded. “Good. Let’s get your entry transferred back.”

  “Nope. We have a deal.”

  She looked puzzled. “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “I expect to make some money off of you.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she said. “But are you sure there’s nothing we can do on the bigger problem right now?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’ll explain everything later, I promise.”

  I bought into the tournament, then went back to her. “Two rules now that I’m playing. One, you take me out if you can. No laying down a hand.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” she said, nodding seriously.

  “Two, I’ll do the same to you if I can.”

  With that, she laughed. “Of that, I have no doubt.”

  For the next ten minutes, before the call to “Shuffle up and deal,” I pointed out a few of the players already sitting at the table she drew, and what to be careful of with them. By the time she sat down, she seemed almost calm and cold and calculating. I had no doubt she was scared to death. I still remembered my early big tournaments.

  But now these things didn’t scare me. In fact, the early rounds bored me, and that was exactly what I needed at the moment.

  Luckily, I had drawn a seat on another table clear across the tournament area from Annie. I doubted if I could have done much thinking with her close by. She had a wonderful way of distracting me. And right now, that was exactly what I didn’t need.

  I just needed to think.

  Over the next three hours and the first four forty-five minute rounds, I played exactly five hands, tossing everything else away. I had actually managed to build a few extra chips over what I had started with as we went into the dinner break.

  No one had talked to me. It had been heaven. I had had time to calm down, to go over what R.A. had said, what Verne had said, and what was happening with Heather from the FBI.

  Now I at least had the basic outline of a plan. Granted, it was a plan that was going to need a lot of help, and a lot more knowledge about what had really happened in 1982.

  But since Fleet had just come and told me that everyone had arrived safely and were headed to the hotel, I would be able to get some of that information very shortly.

  A decade or so late, but at least I was going to get it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 24

  ANNIE WAS ACTUALLY bubbling as we headed through the slots and evening tourist crowd toward the Café Bellagio for dinner. I had never expected to see a homicide detective actually act like a schoolgirl. It felt disquieting. And it made me smile. At this point, I needed a smile or two, and she was giving them to me as she talked excitedly about the first three hours.

  “I’ve just about doubled up,” she said. “I only played about twenty hands, but I took down all but one of them.”

  She looked over at me as we walked. “How are you doing?”

  “Up slightly,” I said. “David Phan was on my table, so I just stayed out of his way and let him play.”

  She nodded, understanding exactly what I had meant. David was one of the top professionals playing the game, and had an aggressive style where he often raised every other hand. He controlled a table from the first hand of any tournament, and I always just let him. I never saw any point in getting in his way early on. At this point, with about half of the entrants already knocked out, I bet he had one of the biggest stacks of chips in the tournament.

  Annie kept talking about a few of the hands she had played as we neared the restaurant. I had a hunch it would just be the two of us for the first thirty minutes of our hour-and-a-half dinner break. Fleet was to meet everyone out front when the limo pulled up, get them into their suites, and then have my mother and Ace come down to the café.

  But a tall guy with a light shirt on was standing near the entrance waiting for us. As we approached, he nodded to me, then asked Annie, “How are you doing?”

  “Long way to go yet,” Annie said. “But so far so good.” Then, like flipping a switch, she reverted to detective mode. “Doc Hill, this is my former partner, Detective Dennis Boyne.”

  I shook his hand and he said, “Nice meeting you.”

  “Find out anything on who called Brent’s widow?” Annie asked. “Get her phone records?”

  “Got them,” Detective Boyne said. “Someone made three calls to her, all from three different stolen cell phones, I’m sure long since tossed.”

  “Dead end,” Annie said, the smile now long gone from her face. “Damn it all to hell.”

  I could have told her that the people we were up against wouldn’t make stupid mistakes like talking on a phone that could be traced. My time thinking during the tournament had led me to that conclusion. We were facing a very organized and smart person who was after the keys and willing to kill to get them.

  “Verne Adkins is recovering slowly,” Detective Boyne said, “but there’s enough FBI around him to stop an army. You want to tell me what that’s all about?”

  Annie didn’t even glance at me. “Not a clue. Just work with them.”

  “We are,” he said.

  “You want to join us?” Annie asked.

  “Got to get home. Dinner is waiting and long cold.”

  “Thanks, Dennis,” Annie said, touching her old partner’s arm. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”

  “Good luck,” he said, then turned and headed for the parking garage.

  We got settled in the restaurant and the waitress took our drink orders. I looked seriously at Annie. “Would you mind doing me a favor?”

  Annie smiled. “After getting me into this tournament, sure, anything.”

  “I’d like to have a short meeting with you on what’s happening, after the tournament, after we win this thing.”

  “Good attitude,” Annie said, laughing. “After I win it, don’t you mean?”

  “Even better attitude,” I said. “But it could get late. On these first three tournaments, they’re playing it all the way out in one day instead of going to a final table tomorrow.”

  “Not a problem. But any hints?”

  “I have some new information,” I said, “and I need help getting more. But right now, you need to focus on the tournament. One thing at a time.”

  Our drinks came just as my mother and Ace walked in. Fleet must have stayed with his family. I didn’t blame him.

  My mother looked almost out of place in the hotel. Her face, her walk, her posture looked extremely tired. Normally she was a solid woman with graying hair, who always dressed in pants suits and looked like nothing was every out of place in her makeup or her jewelry. Now, it was clear, she didn’t have any makeup on and looked drained.

  I understood why. Even though I was very angry at her for all the years of hiding so much from me, I was still very glad to see her here and safe for the moment.

  I gave her a hug, shook Ace’s hand as we always did as a greeting, then I did the introduction of Annie as Detective Annie Lott.

  Annie was completely starstruck with meeting Ace. Sometimes I forgot just how much of a legend he was in the poker world.

  My mother sat next to Annie, and by the time we were served dinner, they were talking like old friends. I was starting to like more and more things about Annie every minute. My mother had seldom taken an interest in anyone I had been with over the years. Yet, in ten minutes, Annie had charmed and relaxed her, brought a little life back into my mother’s face.

  I just tried to stay silent, only contribute to small talk about how hot it was outside compared to the weather in Boise, and how this was the first time Ace had been in Las Vegas in August in twenty years.

  Every so often, Ace would look up at me, and I would look away. Now, at dinner, wasn’t the time to talk.
And I certainly didn’t want my anger coming out now. Not here. And I was so angry, I wasn’t sure I could control it.

  Tomorrow would be soon enough to get everything in the open, when they were refreshed and I had a night to calm down even more.

  Then we would have a very long talk about a lot of years of secrets.

  Very deadly secrets that just might end up getting us all killed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 25

  IT WAS ONE in the morning by the time I reached a turning-point hand in the tournament. Just twelve players left, six on each table.

  I had been sitting back so much, sometimes watching the other players, sometimes just thinking about the plan that was forming in my head, that I was short-chipped. Fantastically short-chipped, actually. Or a better way of putting it would be stupidly short-chipped.

  Under any of my normal tournament plans, I would have never allowed myself at this point to be this low. I would either be out of the tournament or have a decent amount of chips.

  Now, because of not paying a lot of attention, I was going to have to make a move or just get blinded out very shortly. I couldn’t remember the last time I had allowed myself to get blinded out in a tournament.

  This clearly had not been one of my normal tournaments, but I hadn’t expected it to be. But it had done what I wanted it to do, which was give me some time to just sit and think and plan. That I had accomplished.

  Annie was on the other table of six, and doing fine, looking calm and collected behind a very large pile of chips. The woman could clearly play cards.

  We were all in the decent money at this point, since they paid down to thirtieth place. I had never expected to make it this far as distracted as I was.

  After dinner, my mother had gone to her room and Ace had gone to play in a ring game in the poker room. About two hours ago, he had waved goodnight, heading for his room.

  They were under strict orders to not leave the hotel for any reason, and three guards that Fleet had hired were outside our doors, working directly with hotel security.

  We had set up a time to talk in my suite at ten tomorrow, over a room-service breakfast. I had no doubt that was going to be an interesting conversation in all definitions of the word interesting.

  I glanced down at my new hand to see ace-ten off-suit. I was one off the button and had two players fold to me at that point, with three players to follow. I only had one play as short-chipped as I was.

  “All in,” I said, pushing my chips slightly forward.

  The button folded, the little blind folded, and I thought I might win the blinds when the big blind, a good player from Southern California, called.

  I flipped over my ace-ten and he flipped over a pair of sixes. We had what was called a race, or a coin flip. Either hand had about the same odds of winning going into the flop.

  Only problem was that if I didn’t win, I stood up and sat in the bleachers. He still had a lot of chips left.

  I hit the ten on the flop and no six came and I doubled up. I was still short-stacked, but not as bad.

  The next hand I looked down at pocket tens, with a player with a big stack limping in under the gun. I was on the button now, so again I said, “All in.”

  Everyone at the table could cover me. But if someone called me and I won this one, I would become a factor again.

  Both blinds folded. The limper, who was the big stack at the table, thought for a full minute, looked at me, then shrugged and called, flipping over ace-nine of diamonds. It was the right call for him to make since he had a lot of chips. My pocket tens had a decent advantage, which was better than a race like the last hand. If this tournament was being broadcast, which it wasn’t, some broadcaster would have put up my exact odds of winning on the screen down to two decimal points.

  I knew what my advantage was. Now if the pesky cards would just follow the odds.

  They did. No ace or diamond flush hit the board and my pocket tens held. I had doubled through again.

  Two of my friends at the table, top professionals in their own rights, just shook their heads. As someone once said about me in an article in Card Player Magazine, “Never give Doc Hill chips. He’s dangerous when he has chips.”

  I now had chips.

  I raised three of the next four hands with marginal starting hands and got no callers, building my stack with the blinds into the second biggest at the table. The big stack knocked out one player, and at Annie’s table, one person took out two others in a huge hand that luckily Annie was only watching.

  And then suddenly there were nine.

  Final table.

  We took a short break while the tournament folks moved everything to the main final table in front of the grandstands. If I thought Annie had been bubbling at dinner, she was on full artesian-well setting now as we moved away from the table to get a snack. It was great being around her. I had forgotten just how exciting and how much fun poker was.

  With every sentence, she was reminding me.

  She kept repeating, “Wow, only nine of us left.”

  And every time she said that, all I could think about was nine keys. Only in that real-life game, as far as I knew, there were still seven players left since I had stepped into Carson’s spot when I inherited his key.

  By the time we got back to the table, she had calmed down some, and I had decided I wouldn’t think about what was going on with Carson’s death and the keys until after the tournament. I had a pretty decent plan formed. I had stumbled along and somehow got into this position in the tournament, so it was time to take care of the business at hand.

  Nine players, last man standing took the big prize.

  I had a tournament to win.

  As we started the final table in front of a half-filled set of bleachers, my mother came down from her suite and sat down in the bleachers. It was nice to see her there, no matter how angry I was at her.

  Two hotel security and one of the hired guards had followed her in and taken up positions around her. That made me feel really good. I also could see at least two FBI types from Heather’s people watching from other places around me. Right now, I was about as safe as I could be.

  One hour later, there were only four of us left, and I was the big stack. I had turned on the attack mode and just gone after anyone who looked like they showed the slightest weakness in any hand. Pot after pot, I raised and just took down the blinds. I got called twice, once I folded after the flop, another time I took out two players with my pocket jacks against two smaller pairs.

  Annie hadn’t made many plays at all, seemingly content to just let her stacks of chips slowly dwindle while her position in the tournament went up with others going out. She was now the short stack.

  What she had done was one strategy, and considering the level of players at the table and her inexperience, it had been a good choice. She had made a lot of money by doing nothing, but had put herself out of position to win the entire thing. Now, with only four left, she had to switch gears and she didn’t seem to be doing that. If I survived all the craziness with the keys, I’d have to have a talk with her about that.

  Finally, three hands later, with large blinds coming at her again, she pushed all in with only a glance at her cards. She had an ace, that much I could count on. She was good enough to know that at this point, in her short-stack position, with only four players, just about anything with an ace was a good enough hand to go with.

  Heck, in her position, anything with a face card was good enough, but I bet she had been patient enough to wait for an ace.

  The player between us folded and I looked down to see ace-jack off-suit. I called her and the other player folded to get out of the way.

  She rolled over ace-six and no six hit the board and my jack played, so I took her out in fourth place.

  She beamed, shook all of our hands, then almost skipping, headed for the tournament cashier to sign all the tax forms and get her cash.

  Twenty-four thousan
d in cash.

  I had a hunch that this success had just unleashed a monster, and would soon signal the retirement of a fine Las Vegas Police detective.

  A couple hands later, when she joined my mother in the stands, she gave her a hug and then just sat there smiling, a lot of money in her hands. When she saw me looking at her, she raised the money and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

  All I could do was smile. It always felt good helping a younger player.

  I focused back on the task at hand. I had two top players to deal with, both experts from the live games in Southern California, both very aggressive.

  Three handed no-limit poker. I was going to take advantage of their aggressiveness.

  I was big stack by a long ways, so I had the luxury to be a little more patient.

  I laid down the next two hands to raises, then raised the next two and got them to lay down their cards.

  Five hands after Annie went out, the two of them got into an all-in fight and I folded my pocket threes and let them battle. One man crippled the other, and my king-ten in the next hand took him out.

  Now it was just the two of us, and I had a decent chip lead, enough that if I got him all in and lost, I would still be in decent shape.

  I was on the button and first to act on the next hand, and I looked down at ten-six off-suit. I just called, he checked, meaning his hand was bad or he was trying to trap me. He was good enough to make that play and I had no read on what he actually had. It could be anything.

  The flop came ten, eight, seven, with two hearts to match my six of hearts. I had top pair with a gut-shot straight draw and a runner-runner flush draw.

  He checked, I shoved all in, and he called, smiling.

  So it had been a trap.

  He rolled over pocket jacks.

  It was going to take a little luck for me to pull this off, although, with two cards left, I wasn’t that bad of an underdog. Any of the four nines or two tens would win it for me. Or two hearts, since he didn’t have a heart in his hand.

  A five of hearts hit the turn and suddenly my odds of winning went up a lot higher. I now had an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw, not counting the other ten that would give me a set. I had sixteen cards, or outs, to win this.