“Bet’s to you,” the dealer reminds me.
“I check.”
By checking, or betting nothing, I acknowledge that I’m on a straight draw. The move signals that the six didn’t help me, but that I hope the river card will.
“Check,” says Dennis.
He could have bet heavily into me and taken the pot, but he knows I won’t stick around for the next card if he does. I sense from him that he wants to end this as quickly as possible. My change in behavior (putting one card atop the other) has him flustered.
Terrified. I just invested a million dollars in this hand. If I don’t get a jack, an ace, or a nine, I’m going to have to try to escape the hand without losing anymore than a million. Anger brews in my gut. Maybe I played too aggressively.
My lower lip trembles just a bit as I watch the dealer’s deft motion. Her sleeve catches the table as she flips over the card. It’s like slow motion. I can see Bradley leaning forward, trying to glimpse around the dealer’s elbow.
“Nine of diamonds,” announces the dealer at the very second I myself see the river card.
Hell yeah! The break I needed. I don’t wait five seconds before I motion to all my chips. I’m all in. I don’t have a straight, but Dennis doesn’t know this. Sure, he’s skeptical I’m bluffing, but is he willing to risk another three and half million to find out?
No. He’s not.
He mucks it, angrily tossing down his cards. His folding means I get the $2.4 million pot. Now, I’m at $5.6 million, and Dennis is at $5.4 million. I have the slight edge, but we’re basically even.
And now I will beat Dennis Cane. In. One. Hand.
Just before the dealer distributes the next hand, Dennis throws his arms up in the air. “Wait,” he says.
I look at him. He eyes me back. I’m curious what he’ll say. He can’t accuse me of being suspicious that he’s cheating. What can he say?
“I need to use the restroom.”
I know he’s not going to the bathroom. I know that little shit’s going into the other room to talk to the lady behind the camera. He’s going to tell her what I’m doing. That I’m keeping the cards together in a pair. He’s going to tell her that she no longer has a long window to sneak a peek at my cards. She’s got to catch the second card before I put it overtop my first card. And if she doesn’t catch it, then she’s got to rewind the footage and play it in slow motion.
While Dennis is gone, Bradley takes the opportunity to talk to me. “Girl, whether you win or lose at this point, you’ll have a story to tell next Thursday.”
Bradley thinks this is a story: the card game. He doesn’t know about a Las Vegas crime syndicate kidnapping my sister or how my friends and I pulled together a million dollars in a 36-hour grift bender.
“I’m hoping it has a happy ending,” I reply.
When Dennis returns, he does an awful job of hiding his renewed confidence. “Alright, let’s finish this up,” he says like it’s a friendly game of shuffleboard. He must have a new plan. Dennis expects me to repeat my process.
But when the first card comes towards me, I clamp my forearm down on top of the card at the exact moment it comes towards me. My sleeve is covered in pictures of playing cards. That bitch in the back won’t be able to tell the real card from the cards on my sleeve. When the dealer passes me my second card, I repeat the same action with my other arm.
It looks like I’m just leaning forward on the table, with my weight on my forearms. The way people sometimes sit to alleviate pressure from their ass after they’ve been sitting a while. But I’m not alleviating pressure from my ass. I’m leaning forward so that my forearms are directly on top of the two cards.
My behavior baffles the other players who have stuck around to see who will win. Whispers fill the room.
Dennis Cane stares at me. Any doubts that I knew about the camera have all been erased.
He knows I know. He knows it wasn’t a coincidence that I suddenly started putting the two cards atop one another once it was down to the two of us. And he knows it’s not a coincidence I’m wearing a long sleeve t-shirt covered in playing cards drawn to scale.
I wish I could see the look on the lady’s face in the other room. To her, through the camera, it must like the dealer spilled the cards on the table. Given enough hands, she could probably start differentiating between the real cards and those on my sleeves, but that won’t matter. Dennis can’t get up in the middle of a hand (his rules not mine), and his telling her what I’m doing after this hand won’t make a difference. Why? Because this is the last hand.
An eerie silence fills the room. The eliminated players all wondering what the hell I’m doing. The dealer actually scratches her head. And Dennis Cane takes a deep breath.
“The bet’s to you,” the dealer says to Dennis.
Dennis, flustered, mutters, “Check.”
Now the bet’s to me.
“You’re a better player than me,” I say.
“What?”
“You’re a better player than me. Right now, we’re basically even on chips, but I think you can see my cards better than I can see yours. And if you’re a better player than me, then I have less than a fifty percent chance of beating you. I’d have just as good a chance beating you in a coin flip. Maybe I’d be better off to play you blind.”
Sweat forms on Dennis’s head. He fidgets like a guilty suspect in a police interrogation. I know I’m getting to him. But I also I know I have to play this just right.
“Piper…” Among the spectators, Bradley speaks up first.
The dealer looks over at Bradley. “You’re not allowed to speak to either player while the game is in session.”
The dealer looks to me. “It’s your bet,” she says.
“I’m all in, Dennis.”
Laughter from several of the people watching. They remain in total disbelief that I have entered the tournament, gotten this far, and am willing to go all in before seeing my cards.
Bradley can’t resist chiming in again. “Piper, come on, girl. What are you –”
“Sir, one more time, and you’ll be excused from the game,” says the dealer.
“I’m all in,” I repeat. “Bet’s to you, Dennis.”
Dennis takes another peek at his cards. He glances at our respective chips. I have a few thousand more than him, so he’ll have to go all in to see me.
I haven’t seen my own two cards, and it’s hard to get a read on Dennis’s two cards because his emotions are dominated by my behavior, not by the cards he’s holding. We haven’t seen the flop, turn, or river. So five cards still haven’t been played yet. All in all there will be nine cards on the table, and I’m putting everything on the line based on seeing none of them. What are my chances of winning? Fifty percent. So it might seem like I’m putting everything on a 50/50 bet. It might seem like I’m risking getting my sister Sophie back on the flip of a coin. Or the spin of a roulette wheel.
But I’m not.
While Dennis ponders his next move, Bradley and I make eye contact.
“Don’t look at me like that Bradley,” I say.
I’m allowed to talk. Bradley’s just not allowed to say anything back to me.
“I can beat him,” I continue. “I’m going to win this money, get up, and walk out of here without another word.”
Dennis looks up from his cards. Bradley has no idea, but I just played my real hand. My words were for Dennis. I just told him that if I win, he’s paying for my silence. But if I lose, he risks my making a scene. My telling everyone watching the game about the cameras.
I couldn’t possibly have made this play if six of the players hadn’t stuck around to watch. If I sat here alone, I’d worry Dennis would have me killed and buried out in the middle of the desert by his henchmen – it’d be the equivalent of Rob’s suggestion of trying to blackmail Dennis. But this differs from blackmailing him with a letter or a phone call. There are six other people here watching the game come to a finale. It gives the black
mail a public element.
He nervously chews on his lip, contemplating his move.
Dennis Cane deceives like a con artist. He only succeeds when he has the confidence of his marks. If word gets out that he rigs the games, then no one will play anymore. The poker community is huge. Global. But the network of people who play poker for millions is tiny. Only a couple hundred people in the world play poker for millions of dollars. Six of them sit right here. If they believed that Dennis rigs his games, word would spread like VD in a whorehouse, and no rounder would set foot in his restaurant again. And all those he’d ever conned would come for revenge.
Dennis looks down at his cards, then pushes his chips towards the middle. The dealer then flips over our five communal cards on the table. An eight of spades, six of hearts, jack of diamonds, two of clubs, and lastly an ace of hearts.
Dennis looks to me. “Go ahead.” He’s telling me to reveal my cards first.
I flip over my cards: a three of spades and a jack of hearts, which gives me two jacks, a mediocre hand at best. But Dennis curses aloud.
“Damn it!” he screams. “Screw your mind games, girlie!”
He doesn’t even flip over his cards. And because he doesn’t flip his cards over, I know he actually beat me.
“Fuck your fucking mind games!” I know he’s acting. He overplays it, but everyone in the room buys his anger. Believes that he lost. Believes that his hand – that they never saw – was worse than my pair of jacks.
“What’d you have?” Bradley asks Dennis.
But Dennis doesn’t offer to show the cards. The rules don’t require him to show his cards if he loses the hand. If I’d actually beaten him, he probably would have shown us his exact actual losing hand. But if he flipped over the cards, everyone would see that he actually won. And this is a hand he couldn’t win if he did win. Not unless he wants me telling everyone about the cameras in the table.
Dennis stands up from the table and extends his hand. I stand up and shake it. He looks at me with wide eyes. Eyes of fury.
The first time I played Dennis I lost to him with three jacks, and now I’ve beaten him with two jacks.
The Jamaican security guard enters the room. “Get her the goddam money,” Dennis seethes.
When Dennis says “her,” the Jamaican sees him pointing to me. He stares at me with a puzzled look. Now realizing he wished the wrong person luck.
He nods to Dennis, then leaves the room.
Bradley comes over and gives me a hug. Picking me up and twirling me around in a circle – a maneuver reserved for boyfriends or husbands unless you’ve just won eleven million dollars.
“Girl, you just won! You won! How about a goddam reaction?”
“I… I know.” It’s all I can say.
“You’re in shock,” he says with a smile.
Partly correct. I am in shock. But I’m also contemplating everything. I still have to get out of here with the money. Still have to get Sophie back.
The Jamaican brings Dennis a big green duffel bag, which he hands to me.
“Go ahead,” Dennis says. “Open it.”
I open it up. Sure enough, cash fills the bag. I don’t have the time to count it, but it looks about eleven times the amount I brought.
Then Dennis extends his hand a second time. “Congratulations, kid.” His look doesn’t say congratulations though. His look says, “You’re dead, you stupid kid.”
Whatever.
Then Dennis rests a hand on my shoulder.
“You’ve got a long life ahead of you,” he says. “Spend it wisely.”
A threat? Most definitely.
The other six players stare at me with wonder and jealousy. Only Bradley appears happy for me. Why should the others? Each of them lost a million dollars today, and I hold it all in a duffel bag.
Dennis looks at me. “Do you need help getting home safely?” He motions to his Jamaican bodyguard as he says it.
“No, that’s okay.” I wouldn’t trust them anyway. That’s the fastest way for me to end up buried between two cacti in the middle of the Mojave. Besides, we already planned a way to get the money safely back to TI. I pull out my phone and text Max.
***
“See, I knew you’d win! I knew it!”
Max already has the armored car waiting at the curb when I walk out of the restaurant. The armored car and the two guards that come with it cost $2,500. That seems like a pricey amount just to move the money four football fields down The Strip, but we’re not about to risk walking eleven million dollars back to our hotel. Not only because of the vagabonds and thieves lurking among the tourists outside, but also out of fear that Dennis Cane’s henchmen would follow me and attempt to reverse their boss’s misfortune.
When I climb in the truck, Max throws himself on me in a celebratory hug.
“You did it! You did it, Piper,” Max says.
“Yup,” is all I can muster. I want to cheer. I want to celebrate. But I know I can’t. Not until we actually have Sophie back. This fear that something will go wrong still hovers in the back of my mind.
Yet, while the armored car sits in traffic, my ego can’t help relish in the satisfaction of outwitting Dennis Cane.
I bet Dennis suspects he’s been played by a long con. Dennis doesn’t let just anyone play in his million-dollar entry game. He’s much more liberal about letting newcomers play in his daily game. Thus Dennis probably thinks the game I played nearly a year and a half ago was just to gain his confidence, so that he’d let me play in the big game, all so I could hustle him for eight figures.
That’s not how it went down, but I still wonder if that’s what Dennis believes.
I snap out of my thought process, realizing Max said something to me.
“What?”
“I’m proud of you, kid.”
Whatever. Fuck you, Max.
--Darkness. There’s darkness in him. That darkness seeps into his desires and even his decisions. I guess I’ve always known that. But with all the highs and lows, and everything we’ve just been through together, I can’t believe he would con me. I can’t believe he would take everything and run.--
CHAPTER FOURTEEN – F U, Max
“You did it!”
“Pi? You won!”
“Holy… she did it.”
“Hells yeah!”
Jesse, Kim, Mars, and Rob know we succeeded when they spot us being escorted by the armored truck guards. When they see Max carrying a huge duffel bag.
My simple nod responds to all four of them. They encircle me in a giant dog-pile-like hug while Max ushers the security guards back to the elevator and thanks them for their help.
“Someone count out the extra million,” says Max as he closes the door.
As Jesse opens the bag and starts sorting through the giant heap of cash, the rest of us follow Max into the next room.
“What’s next then, Max?” Rob asks.
Max holds up the prepaid phone left when Sophie was kidnapped. “I call them. Tell ‘em we’re ready for the swap.”
Swap. Like we’re trading baseball cards or something.
Max raises his eyebrows at me as if asking my permission to proceed. “Do it. Let’s get her back.”
Max paces in a small semicircle as he talks into the phone.
“It’s Max. I have the money. All of it.”
Thirty long seconds go by.
“I understand. Yes, I understand.”
Another pause. What are they saying?
“I’ll be there.”
Max pockets the phone.
“What’d they say?” I blurt out.
“They want me to bring the money to the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace.”
Kim and Mars respond simultaneously:
“The Forum Shops?”
“Which shop?”
“They just said to walk to the Forum Shops. They said once they see me arrive, they’ll call me and tell me where to go from there.”
“And they’re going to gi
ve you Sophie there?” I ask. “What in the middle of some store? A goddamn Banana Republic or Gucci?”
“Piper, calm down. They said once they have the money, they’d give us Sophie. I have to go. I have to be there in ten minutes.”
We all follow Max back to the main room. There, Jesse points to a stack of money on the kitchen table. “That’s the extra million. The other ten’s still in the bag.” Jesse hands the duffel bag to Max.
“I want to go with you.”
“Piper, he said for me to come alone. That if I don’t follow that mandate, the deal’s off. We can’t risk something happening to Sophie. We play by their rules.”
Deep down, below the pulsing adrenaline-filled desire to go with him, I know Max is right.
“Bring her back to me,” I plead before he walks out of the penthouse, duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
***
Sitting and waiting. Seems easy especially compared to working a 36-hour conning spree and winning an $11 million dollar rigged poker game. Yet nothing in my life has ever felt more difficult. A proactive role gave me something to do. Now? There’s nothing to do but sit and hope. And conjure all the things that could go wrong.
Kim rubs my shoulders. Rob keeps asking me details about the poker game until Mars tells him to knock it off. Jesse paces nearby.
I try to convince myself that we’re definitely going to get her back. That I’m definitely going to see my little sister soon. But definitely feels phony each time I say it in my head.
What do they have to gain by keeping her at this stage? From their perspective, I suppose there exists some risk Sophie could identify one of the kidnappers. But back when Max tried to convince us not to go to the police and instead pay the ransom, he said the mob operates through reputation. If they killed a 14-year-old girl after the ransom was paid, no one would ever pay them a ransom again. To protect their rep, they have to give her back alive. Don’t they?
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