Hold ’Em Hostage

by Jackie Chance

  “Oh, get over yourself, Ingrid. He needed to tell me something.” I looked at Shana. “Why were you calling?”

  “Moon thinks she’s finally got a good feel on where Affie is.”

  I paused. If they’d told me this earlier today I would’ve scoffed. Now, I wasn’t sure. Unless Moon was a setup too, but how could that be? “How did you find Moon?” I asked Shana.

  “In the phone book. Why does that matter?”

  “Go on with what she said.”

  “You’re being a bossy bitch,” Ingrid pouted.

  “Takes one to know one,” I shot back.

  She glared.

  “I’m a little stressed, Ingrid,” I said, backing off just a bit.

  “Freaking out isn’t going to help.”

  Well, she was right, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. She displayed the self-possession of a rock and it rubbed me the wrong way when she told me I was a basket case, even when I was.

  “Moon says Affie is north of California, but west of Nevada.”

  “She’s talking about a lot of land,” I said distractedly.

  “Hey, what did those girls say when you went to the jail?”

  “That’s the weird thing,” Shana said. “They didn’t say much, but we went straight over to Moon and that’s when she said she could get a good feel, when she touched my hand, the hand I’d used to grab the blonde’s arm when she’d tried to turn away from me.”

  “Those girls said they were going home to Oregon.”

  Ingrid turned away from the mirror where she’d been plucking her eyebrow. “I think I need to go see those chicks. Alone.”

  We didn’t exactly know what Ingrid hoped to accomplish going to the jail after visiting hours, but I wouldn’t put it past her to work a miracle. She was getting on my nerves, but she also had the ability to pull off the impossible in ways I couldn’t possibly imagine. And probably shouldn’t. I don’t know if she’d break into the jail and hold the girls’ heads in the toilet ’til they talked, sleep her way into the facility with a guard she’d later hog-tie or spread enough money around to get her in then torture the girls for information. Maybe she was a shape-shifter and turned herself into a mouse, then whispered in their ears and got them to fess up. Maybe she did voodoo and scared them into a confession. None of it would surprise me, frankly, but no matter how, I certainly expected her to come back with something that would lead us straight to Aph.

  The landline rang about ten minutes after she’d left. Shana was dressing for bed. I was contemplating the nonsensical series of events and evidence scattered through the last couple of days. The emotions surrounding Frank and his ex-wife kept trying to elbow their way into my thoughts, but I shoved them out. I’d decided how to deal with all that, and that decision was supposed to make the messiness go away. It wasn’t working.

  So I was a bit cranky when I picked up the phone. “You didn’t lose our money,” the voice said.

  “I lost fifty thousand, your guy won fifty thousand, that’s all I was asked to do.”

  “You were asked to use our money.”

  “How do you know I didn’t?”

  There was a long pause. The receiver was covered. After a few moments, he said, “You’d better not get smart on us.”

  “You’d better not get me to do something illegal because I know I can’t help my goddaughter behind bars. The cops sniff around me any more and I’ll just have to tell them what you’ve done.”

  “You do that, and Aphrodite will die.”

  “She might die anyway, isn’t that right?”

  They hung up. Shana stood in the doorway, gripping the molding like it was a lifeline, paling so quickly I thought she’d faint.

  I went into the bathroom and threw up.

  Frank arrived in the middle of the night. I heard him whisper my name at the bedroom door, but didn’t get up. I was too exhausted, too conflicted to try to face him yet.

  I heard Ingrid and him talking as I woke, showered and dressed. I felt too vulnerable for him to see me in my robe. I needed some armor and what better armor than my day-six fashion. It was double retro, as if single retro wasn’t bad enough—sixties mod pattern in bright orange, green and yellow in an eighties body-hugging style that made me look like a walking roller coaster, coupled with some of those open-toed LoPresti boots I’d been coveting. It was sure to repel most normal people on sight. Perhaps it would keep him at arm’s length until I was ready to have him closer.

  Just the sight of him made my traitorous knees go weak. Clearly I had a battle ahead of me. Ingrid had just left. He walked over, handed me a steaming cup of coffee and kissed the top of my head, slipping a hank of hair I’d missed into my braid behind my ear. Damn him.

  “I missed you,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t call and had you worried.”

  “What did you expect?”

  He shrugged as he turned away. “I don’t know why you had to call Monica, though, Honey Bee. It’s just going to complicate matters.”

  “I’m not the one who complicated matters,” I returned softly. “You knew I had an ex-fiancé, a crazy twin, certifiable parents. With me what you see is what you get.”

  “Not exactly.” He smiled wryly. “And, the body count that follows you in poker tournaments wasn’t an advertised part of the bargain.”

  Frank had me there. “Those aren’t my fault.”

  “And I can’t escape my past.”

  “I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to be honest about it, and how it affects the present and the future.”

  “I told you I wasn’t good for you, Honey Bee.” He actually had, sort of, in his own way, warned me. I’m hardheaded. I didn’t listen. And I didn’t now. He looked sad, suddenly vulnerable. I went to him and gathered him in my arms.

  “Frank, why did you drink again?”

  “Serrano and I shared a lot of history, a lot of memories I didn’t want to relive. When I heard about what happened, I should have come right back to you instead of having that one drink I thought might make it easier to deal with. He was here to follow you, although I don’t know why. He arranged to be at your table.”

  “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

  “How can you ask that?”

  “I think I know you, Frank, and then you go off like you did and I realize I don’t know parts of you at all. I don’t know what to think about the story Serrano told me about the murders of the men who hurt Monica in L.A. I don’t know what you are capable of.”

  “Loving you.”

  “That part I know. A lot of the rest is still in shadow.”

  “Why didn’t you ask Monica when you talked to her on the phone?” he asked defensively.

  “Because I don’t think it’s fair to ask her to relive something that must be painful to her when it’s your place to tell me. I asked Joe, but he won’t tell me.” I held my palms up. “Ball’s back in your court.”

  “We need to call Monica and let her know I made it back to Vegas safely. I think your call might have stirred up some bad memories.”

  “No need to call. Go see her. She’s here.”

  “Here? In Vegas?”

  “She’s been playing at my table in the tournament the whole time. I knocked her out last night and that’s when she introduced herself. We had a nice visit. Met the kids, her parents.”

  Frank blinked, shell-shocked. “You met Katie? Matthew? Monica’s never played in a big poker tournament before…”

  “She came just to check me out.”

  “That’s…” He offered a small smile. “Just like her actually. Or like she was before…”

  “Go find her. Spend the day with the kids. They’re adorable.”

  “I can’t.” He regained his closed-cop face. “I have to fly to Oregon and find Affie.”

  “Why do you think she’s in Oregon?”

  “Ingrid got the two snots in jail to talk. We’re guessing they’re girls from the Medula, even though they don’t have the tattoo
. They said they live in a compound in Oregon and a fifteen-year-old girl with a python arrived there just before they were sent off to do this job.”

  “What job was that?”

  “We don’t know any more than that because Ingrid got interrupted.”

  A sharp knock sounded at the door. I expected Joe to be there when I opened it, but instead, Trankosky surprised me, by tipping his head. “Belinda, I’m sorry to bother you, but I was hoping to have a word with Mr. Gilbert at headquarters. We need a signed statement from him.”

  Frank rose, and walked away from me. “If you can’t go, I will,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No, you won’t. You don’t know where to start.”

  “Tell me.”

  “See you soon, Honey Bee.”

  Trankosky turned to pull the door shut behind them and met my gaze. His was full of questions. I looked away. He wouldn’t like the answers.

  Neither did I.

  “Welcome to the second to the last day of the largest poker tournament in history!” The anchorman paused in the middle of his stand-up, flashing his fake teeth. Ick. I tried not to grimace as I snuck by as far away as possible from the bad reverend who was shepherding his band of followers into the view of the cameras. “The 2008 World Series of Poker starring some of the most talented, lucky and scrappy players braving the game of Texas Hold ’Em is upping the ante today. Just a week ago, ten thousand people from all over the world began with high hopes of winning the millions at stake, each with an even chance to win the grand prize of fourteen million dollars. Today, the field has been whittled to just twenty-seven players. Tomorrow only nine will remain.” He paused and sucked in a dramatic breath. “This year, however they play under a cloud of controversy. The Reverend Phineas Paul of the Church of the Believers has been staging protests against the morality of this particular gambling game—currently the most popular in the world. Picketers carry signs denouncing the poker tournament as the devil’s work. Paul has even challenged a player to give her winnings to charity, most specifically, his church.”

  I suppose they were now showing my sound bite. I was glad I couldn’t hear or see it a second time. Once was one time too many.

  “Now, the World Series of Poker has made a historical decision. They are issuing an invitation. Here to explain it is President of the Main Event, Walker Whitting.”

  “Mr. Paul, in the interest of free speech, we would like to provide a forum for you to have your say,” the WSOP president announced. “A debate of sorts. With a member of our final table to support our position that Texas Hold ’Em is a valid, healthy form of entertainment.”

  I almost groaned out loud. I didn’t need an advertising degree to know that the WSOP was making a PR play—trying to boost their already out-of-sight ratings with a Rosie/Donald knock-down, drag-out. How popular was too popular, I wondered, as I reached the door.

  “On behalf of the church and the holy interest of society in general, we accept, only if we can choose the player I will spar with.”

  “Fair enough, Reverend,” Whitting hollered.

  “There,” I heard Paul boom behind me. “We want her.”

  The bouncer at the door put his hand on my shoulder to stop me. Oh no. No way. I couldn’t be unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time again, could I?

  “Belinda Cooley, Bee Cool, the epitome of the seductive evil of the game—glamorous on the outside and rotten inside—a microcosm of what greed and gambling do to beauty.”

  “How do you know Miss Cooley will make the final table? Do you have an alternate choice?”

  “She’ll make it.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “I want no one else.”

  “Okay. It’s a deal, Reverend.”

  The PR director was rubbing her hands together in excitement. Reporters, photographers, cameramen began running around like fire ants whose bed had been disturbed. I looked at the bouncer. “Please, please if you have an ounce of decency, let me in so I can hide.”

  “Come on, face the cameras, think of the fame, think of the endorsements. Think of the money.”

  “I don’t want any of that. I just want to be left alone.”

  “You came to the wrong place for that, lady.”

  Twenty-five

  As I entered the ballroom, I sensed the still electricity of an impending thunderstorm. When a thousand tables had been reduced to three, it changed the atmosphere. When what was effectively at stake went from losing a ten-thousand-dollar seat to winning fourteen million dollars, it changed the universe.

  We’d all win something of course. But perhaps Paul was right about one thing. Greed did play a factor. Who wanted to settle for the twenty-seventh-place winnings when you could smell enough to buy you a medium-size island in the Caribbean?

  Having said all that, I was truly the aberration. I didn’t want to win. I just wanted my brother and my goddaughter back. I wanted a minute to myself to think about Frank. I wanted to never know of a gang that tattooed parts of snakes, dragons and sharks on their necks. I wanted to never hear of a Phineas Paul and the Church of the Believers. I wanted to rewind life and not do all this again.

  My dad has always told me that life is all journey. There is no destination. Relish each step along your trip. But, couldn’t I wish I’d taken a different fork in the road?

  We redrew for tables. One of the players at my table introduced himself as Drew Terry. Clean-cut, well dressed and ordinary as your next-door neighbor, he made my skin crawl. Thank goodness he drew the seat across from me. I couldn’t bear footsies with him.

  The chemistry of our table was slightly off. A handful of players had gotten this far by chipping away slowly and patiently at other’s stacks—the most often recommended tournament strategy—and the rest had lucked into it, both in cards and in timing of their bluffs. It made for a rather bipolar group. And then there was me, who alternately played both ways, depending on the tells around me and environmental factors like how many bodies had been slashed to death around me in the last twenty-four hours. I had a suspicion that affected the quality of my strategy.

  I heard one of the commentators call me “patient and methodical” while the other argued I was a loose cannon. I guess it depended on which hand they watched me play. The third commentator settled on comparing my play to the behavior of his manic-depressive aunt who was completely unpredictable off her medication—sane one minute and crazed the next. “But throughout, she’s got alligator blood. You never see her rattled.”

  I had to smile at that. That’s exactly the way I wanted to play because no one would be able to beat me with anything but better cards.

  The first level of the night was a bust for me. I didn’t get one decent pocket, failed one bluff and sat back and let everyone steal my blinds for the rest of the two-hour block. I could see myself doomed to twenty-seventh place and was almost welcoming it when, the last deal before the break, I got cowboys.

  A pair of Kings in the pocket guarantees nothing except a beatable hand, but for some reason, I love this deal. It makes me warm and hopeful. Go figure. Sometimes feeling good is all you have in life. I called in late position to see The Flop.

  Another King, and two spades fell—a seven and a deuce. I forced myself to check-raise so I wouldn’t scare off the conservatives at the table. There were two guys at our table—one a major pro—who were carefully plotting their ways to a win, never making a mistake, surely checking their poker manual under the table, and I was pretty sure check-raising a three-of-a-kind nuts with two blanks on the board wasn’t in there.

  I had been full-house poor the whole tournament so when another seven fell on The Turn, I tried not to even breathe harder. Nobody but someone holding pocket rockets or double sevens could best me right now. I reconfigured the odds and liked them. Still, I check-raised again, drawing the mice in, hoping I could salvage this level well enough to stay in. When blinds are nearing a half million, you had to pay attention.


  Drew Terry, the skin crawler, had been tapping the table oddly off and on during the night. He was a bit of a Nervous Nelly. It reminded me of something but I couldn’t place it offhand. Besides, I was busy now trying to negotiate a win and didn’t have time to rack my brain.

  I had to push when we got to the 3 of diamonds on The River. I know a couple of players were tempted to force me to show my hand but none of them felt rich enough. They all folded—no one would see my nuts. And that was okay, because they also wouldn’t be able to say whether or not I’d been bluffing. My play had not been linear. The pro to my right gave me a sidelong look that I knew said, “Can you even count? And how lucky are you?”

  Those were the kind of guys I was dying to show my hand to, but also the kind I was dying to bust out of the game. Patience was not my strong suit, but poker was a great game to teach me that quality. I knew I could bust this know-it-all pro out, but I had to watch and wait.

  I giggled, winked at him and gathered my chips, just solidifying his impression of me as a lucky airhead. I’d use that later.

  I was on the way to the restroom at the break when Drew Terry walked up next to me, leaned in and whispered: “I can help you win.”

  I drew back, shocked. “I don’t need help, thanks.”

  “Everybody needs help. Watch my fingers. I’ll tell you when we can squeeze the table.”

  Watch my fingers. That was it! That was what had been bothering me. His weird tapping was similar to what Emerald Ear had done at Neptune’s. Poker players did all sorts of things with their hands and I guess their appearances had been so dissimilar I hadn’t easily made the connection. Was he a member of the Medula? It seemed unlikely, but then the Happy Ending guy running around Neptune’s with Dragsnashark had been a surprisingly a clean-cut preppy type too. Maybe it was part of their cover.

  I narrowed my eyes at the choir boy. “Where is my goddaughter?”

  He blinked innocently. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know your people have Affie. I want her released.”