Dragons deal gm-3

by Robert Asprin

  "Can find out, Detective," Griffen said. "Jesse had a girlfriend. It'll be in our records. She might know family."

  "Call me, not her," Harrison said. "Got that?"

  "We got it, Detective," Jerome said.

  "Get out of here," Harrison said. "I'll call you when I need something." Griffen nodded to Jerome, and they headed toward the door. "That Wednesday's fine, by the way."

  Griffen felt his mood lift just a little, but he didn't let it show. The technician was still in the room. "Whatever you say, Detective."

  Seven

  The suite in the Royal Sonesta had an excellent view of the courtyard, a gracious haven when the hustle and noise of Bourbon Street was so close by. Jordan Ma sat with the other players for the day.

  "So, what's your business, Jordan?" asked Luis Serafina, who "dabbled in a little of this and that" in Miami. He was middle-aged, sallow-skinned, small-boned, balding, with sharp-cut nostrils and lips that made him look bad-tempered, when he was anything but. He was expansive, avuncular, and, Jordan could tell, liked it when people got along.

  "Textile imports," Jordan said. "Silks for the high-end fashion industry."

  "Very nice," Luis said. He poured himself a vodka on the rocks from the selection of bottles on the open bar. A young, light-skinned black man in a tuxedo shirt and bow tie stood behind the bar. Once the game began, the players had been told, Marcel would serve them at the table. Rectangular chafing dishes hung in rows over canned heat contained savory snacks. Jordan scented ginger and scallions. He smiled. Care was given even to the catering of these private games. Luis twisted a strip of lime peel and dropped it into his drink. "How about you, Carroll?"

  The thickset bald man in the blue silk suit looked as if he were just about to fall asleep. His heavy eyelids drooped low over very light blue eyes. Jordan wondered if he was as shrewd as he looked. "Entertainment lawyer," he said. "I'm stealing a day or two away from my clients. Technically, I'm on call, but no one's suing each other over the weekend so close to Christmas."

  The others chuckled. The remaining players were a married couple from Toronto. Marion was tall, bony, and outgoing. Len was stocky, dark, and observant. None of the five had met before. Luis was the old hand, a veteran of many visits to the French Quarter for pleasure and poker. He played at the casino when he was in town, but spent a few evenings per trip at one of the games organized by Griffen McCandles. Jordan listened to the chatter, interjecting a friendly comment now and again while the dealer, a young, dark-skinned woman in her early twenties, also wearing a white tuxedo shirt, set up the table. Jordan had brought with him forty thousand dollars in cash, in neat bundles of fifty hundreds, tucked into a long billfold in his inside breast pocket. The chips being set out were in minimum denominations of fifty dollars, going up to a value of a thousand dollars, as agreed by the players as they had arrived. When all was ready, the dealer signaled them over.

  Jordan sat at the end of the table between Luis and Carroll, feeling like the Jabberwock, readying himself to strike. The dealer was at the center of the table on the long side. Her back was to the window, a seat that none of the players would have desired. Jordan sat opposite the married couple from Toronto. As soon as they sat down, they ignored each other and chatted with the players to either side instead. Jordan smiled. They had almost certainly met over a poker table. They would be his designated victims for the night.

  One at a time, the dealer traded chips for the stakes pushed toward her by the players. Jordan handed over his money and pulled the stacks of chips toward him to arrange as he liked. The dealer opened a new pack of cards, Bicycle blue diamond backs, removed the jokers, and shuffled it.

  "What game, madam and gentlemen?" the dealer asked, flashing a brilliant smile at them.

  "Texas hold 'em," Jordan said at once.

  "Oh, yeah," Luis said, eagerly. "How about it, folks?"

  "Sure," said Len, his face giving away nothing. "We play a little of that up North."

  "Very well," the dealer said. She placed the button in front of Len, and play began.

  Jordan examined his cards long enough to see that he held queen-seven, suited. Not an easy winning hand, but buildable, depending upon what the flop showed. He used the time, instead, to observe his fellow guests.

  Luis was expansive during play, talking about his business, his three children and seven grandchildren, and how much Florida was changing.

  "There are shopping malls everywhere," he said. "And the snowbirds, they don't go to the beaches when they come down--they go shopping! It's good for the economy, but why bother to come to Florida and spend your whole day in the air-conditioning? The sun and the sea, baby! That's what's great about Florida."

  The chatter, Jordan quickly discovered, was to cover up the number of nervous tells that Luis displayed. If his hand was bad, he darted his eyes back and forth. If it was good, he kept drumming his fingers on the back of his cards. If it was marginal, he played with the edges of the cards. It was a marvel no one had cleaned him out based on reading him alone. But unconscious tics aside, Luis was a careful player. He did not overbet. In fact, he underbet so badly on good hands that Jordan wanted to take his money just to teach him a lesson. But he was not there to teach them to play cards; on the contrary, the better they thought they were, the fewer defenses they had against him.

  Carroll had the fewest tells. He kept himself very still except when drinking a sip of white wine or eating a canape. Jordan would not have been able to tell what he held simply by reading his body language. He could glimpse reflections of the hand in the man's corneas, but only occasionally. Carroll kept his eyes slitted. It would take a psychic, not a dragon, to get more information from him.

  But the Canadian couple was easy. Len led with his left hand when his hole cards were good.

  As he had predicted, Jordan had to fold the queen-seven. His next two hands were also unremarkable. He tossed in a three-two unsuited as soon as it appeared. The pair of sevens he kept until he knew by the avid look on Marion's face that she was holding something solid. She and Luis ended up in a modest series of raises until Luis finally dropped out. Jordan saw that he had been holding a trio of tens against Marion's three twos. He closed his eyes to shut out the pathetic sight. All the more reason, therefore, to continue with his plan.

  The dealer expertly shot him two new cards. He knew by the residual energy on the first that it was the queen of hearts he had held before. Once he had touched the thin pasteboards, he could identify them anywhere in the room. The other card, at which he had to look, was the ace of hearts. Good enough. When it was his turn to bet, he pushed fifteen hundred into the pot. Luis's eyebrows went up. The Miami native launched into another story.

  "Did I tell you about my daughter-in-law?" Luis asked. "She bought one of those laptops, but she didn't understand about the CD drive that pops out of the side?"

  "Don't tell me she used it for a drinks holder," Marion shouted jovially.

  "No, no, not that bad," Luis said. "She put a program CD in it and wondered what happened to the music!"

  Jordan chuckled. Luis was going to be nothing for him to worry about. He won the hand.

  The group settled down to watch one another and make the most of advantages as they arose. They were all fairly experienced, so no one had to learn as it went along. Texas hold 'em was not Jordan's game of choice, but it had become so popular that it was almost certain that any group would have a majority of aficionados or at least players who had watched one of the televised series. As it was so much newer than five-card or seven-card draw or stud, many of the older players had not completely adjusted their playing style to conceal their feelings about the hands they held. That was changing rapidly. Jordan's usual task for the elders was to monitor human behavior and report its progress according to region.

  After ten or twelve hands, the young dealer gathered up the deck of cards and dropped it into a plastic bucket at her side.

  "New cards," she said, brightly. She
reached into a basket lined with a chintz cloth that contained rows of boxed decks of cards still in their cellophane. She stripped the wrapper off with expert fingers, opened the deck, fanned it, removed the jokers, and shuffled. The crisp sound was satisfying to the ear. "The old ones were getting a little tired, madam and gentlemen."

  "I'm the one who's tired," Luis joked. "Can you get a new one of me out, too?"

  Len laughed. "Me, too, miss," he said. The dealer smiled at them and sent cards flying around the table.

  Jordan understood the necessity of changing decks. An expert card mechanic could mark a deck after a short time, by notching the sides or backs of the cards with a fingernail, or bending the corners slightly. When a cheat could cause thousands of dollars to be lost in a single hand, it was simpler and cheaper to open another deck and make the cheat start over. He deplored the fact that he was the one who must begin again, but the stakes were high.

  With nothing to give away what he held or what he was thinking, Carroll took an early lead. He smiled at the jokes, nodded acknowledgment of Luis's stories, and exchanged brief pleasantries with everyone else, but he was there to play poker. Jordan appreciated his application. In fact, he would have enjoyed the game very much if he had not been there to lose spectacularly.

  The second time the young woman collected the cards, Marion let out a noise of protest.

  "But that looks so wasteful just to toss them out!" she exclaimed.

  "Oh, don't worry, ma'am," the dealer explained. "We used to just throw them out, but now we take the bucket down to the men's shelter about once a week. They separate out the decks again."

  "For sale?"

  "No, ma'am, they play with them. Gives them something to do. They donate some to the VA hospital and the long-term wards at the hospitals."

  "I've never heard of that being done before," Marion said. "That is very generous of you."

  "I am impressed," Carroll said, letting a rare expression of pleasure show on his broad face. Jordan's first thought was that going to such an effort was needless, then realized it was a stroke of genius. Why shouldn't someone else benefit from the castoffs of the well-to-do? Also, in the depths of his manipulative soul, he knew it was good for publicity. Griffen McCandles could not help but see his halo polished for a gesture of generosity that really cost him nothing.

  "So am I," Jordan agreed.

  The third time the cards thumped into the bucket, Luis kicked his chair back. The sun had gone down sometime before, and the lights around the swimming pool in the courtyard had come on.

  "I need a break," he said, stretching his arms high over his head. "Anyone else?" He went over to the bar and fished a beer out of the tub of ice beside it.

  "Absolutely," Marion said. She made for the room's only lavatory. When she came out, the dealer excused herself and went in. Jordan took that opportunity to examine the wrapped decks of cards in the basket. He sent his consciousness deep inside the first one, a deck with two red-spoked wheels on the back, letting each individual card impress upon his psyche until he could see the spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds pressed up against one another. He would be now able to read them as they were used. He put it down and concentrated upon the next, a blue deck with the image of a leering joker riding a bicycle.

  The sounds of water rushing and a door opening caused him to glance up as he was reading the third deck. The young black woman came toward him, alarm on her face.

  "Sir, don't touch that!" she insisted. She hurried to take the basket away and set it down.

  "I'm sorry," Jordan said, evincing contrition. He handed back the third deck. She replaced it at the left side. "I didn't realize they were off-limits."

  "Yes, sir, I'm afraid so," she said, allowing herself to be slightly mollified. "It's . . . I must be the only one to handle these cards."

  "I apologize. I only wanted to see the backs. There is a large variety, isn't there?"

  "Well, there is," she said. "There are more than fifty designs. I don't have to repeat a design during the entire evening, so there's no question . . ." She let the sentence tail off.

  "I understand," Jordan said. "You have to be careful to prevent cheating. I was just curious."

  She looked reluctant but did not want to seem inhospitable to a guest. "If I handle them, you may see them all, sir. Just please, don't touch."

  "I won't," Jordan said. She showed him deck after deck. He hoped she would not change the order, but she put them back in the basket the same way they had been before. Now he had to finish the situation before she used up the three he had touched and went on to one he could not read.

  He glanced up. The others were finished with their break-time activities. Luis whispered to them until Jordan met his eyes. He broke off, looking uncomfortable. They had been talking about him. It did not matter. Jordan was not there to make friends.

  It was easy going from then on. The others clearly suspected him a little of wanting to cheat, so they kept an eye on him. Jordan moved his hands in an open and ostentatious manner so there was no question that he was handling only his own cards and for as brief a time as possible. He let three promising hands go, to the benefit of Len and Marion, especially Len, so that their piles of chips grew. Seeing him lose made the others relax a little. Luis told stories. Marion laughed at them in her loud, easygoing way. Len and Carroll peered noncommittally at their cards and pushed chips in.

  Carroll let out a soft exhalation of breath as the dealer passed him cards. Jordan did not look up. It was the first such noise he had heard the bald player make. Was this a tell, at last? Then Carroll burped and grunted. He left his cards where they lay on the table. Jordan was frustrated. He must get that man out of the game so he could concentrate on players he could read. Jordan checked his own cards. A pair of kings. A good start. He began to concentrate energies upon Carroll, urging him to take action.

  "Two thousand," the bald man said.

  "Raise," Jordan said, adding another five thousand to the pot. Carroll's eyebrows rose a fraction.

  "Too rich for me," Luis said, with a laugh. He passed his cards to the dealer. Len and Marion followed suit. The flop was revealed; none of them were face cards. Carroll checked. Jordan raised a thousand. Carroll threw his cards in. Jordan felt a twinge of annoyance, but at least he had created some movement in the silent man's psyche.

  It took four hands to lure Carroll in so that he was betting on each hand. By then, the dinner hour had passed. The server behind the bar brought selections of one-bite hot snacks to each of the players. The food was delicious but not meant to interrupt concentration. Jordan needed every erg of it he had. He held the first pair of aces in the entire game in his hand, spades and diamonds. He kept as still as a snake prepared to strike. No matter. Even if Carroll had an ace, it was not in suit. Marion was on the button, so Jordan bet first.

  "Five thousand," he said.

  "Raise one," Luis said. Jordan was unconcerned about the Miamian. He had seven-eight suited.

  Marion folded, and Len added his chips to the pot.

  "See you," Carroll said.

  Jordan saw Luis's raise.

  They all watched the dealer avidly as she peeled three cards off the top, then turned up the next three cards. Two nines and a queen. Jordan added another six thousand. Luis and Len held on. Carroll's broad face broke out in pinpoints of perspiration.

  "Hey, you hear of that sting that the Feds played at the Miami Port Authority?" Luis asked.

  "I saw it on the news," Jordan said. Luis beamed at him. He loved it when people got involved in his stories. Jordan kept up the conversation, but his attention was on Carroll. The bald man pushed three stacks of chips into the center. Everyone, including Luis, stopped talking.

  "All in," Carroll said.

  "Call," Jordan said immediately.

  They turned up their hands.

  "Very nice," Marion said, as they saw the three nines. Carroll smiled at her. Luis had a queen and a seven. Len had another queen and a six.
They glanced at one another, each sizing the others up. Jordan hoped his count was accurate. Three cards below the deck remaining in the dealer's hand was a queen. Three cards below that was an ace. He turned his attention from Carroll, taking a great risk, and put it on the young woman. She winced as she felt his subconscious push, but said nothing.

  The players leaned toward the center of the table. Jordan felt her will bend to his. One, two, three. The queen was revealed on the turn.

  "Oh, ho!" Luis chortled. "Is there another pretty lady in there?" Len pushed his cards in. Even if the last queen did appear, his hand would fall on the six. Carroll looked smug. The chances of two in the bush was low compared with the one in the hand.

  One, two, three. Everyone held their breath. The dealer must have sensed the tension. She paused a moment before turning up the river card. Jordan, even though he knew it, felt his heart pounding with anticipation.

  Ace.

  "Ooooh!" Luis moaned. "Rocket ship!" He flicked his cards in.

  Carroll's eyes went from the cards to Jordan's face and back again. There was no way that Jordan could have engineered a cheat. Carroll had simply lost.

  "Bad luck," he said. He extended a neat, hairless hand to Jordan, who shook it politely.

  "Bad luck," Jordan agreed. He almost wiped his forehead in relief. Carroll pulled his chair back from the table and went to the bar. The server poured him a stiff drink. Carroll returned and sat with his back to the window to watch the others play.

  Jordan steeled himself. One last deck that he had touched lay in the basket. He must not go beyond that. He needed a big finish.

  He won moderately, allowed himself to be bid up, then dropped out of a hand Luis won. Luis had just enough chips remaining to stay at the table. Carroll was in a good position to see everything except the dealer's hands and Marion's. Now was the time for Jordan to strike.

  He used a tiny trickle of power to cause the ace of hearts to be ignored, then to stick to the underside of Marion's arm as she leaned over the table to watch. She never noticed. It was prepared.