Dead Man's Hand

by Steven Meehan

  Victory in hand, no matter how hallow, I took my eyes off of Patrick and searched the stands for Bella. When I found her she still had a glazed look of confusion imprinted upon her face. Now that I had won I didn’t care if people watched me follow her gaze, so I did and once more, followed it to her uncle. This time he was talking to another of his men. They seemed to be very calm and I couldn’t figure out what her uncle was doing to make her so unnerved. Truth be told, I was just a little too preoccupied with enjoying my victory—despite transforming my one card—to try and work out any kind of puzzle. I plucked a five thousand dollar chip from my stack and in one fluid motion, tossed it to the sour faced dealer. “I hope you can cash that in.”

  As the chip landed in the thug’s left hand, I thought I saw the briefest of smiles before he replied. “Thank you sir.” With a slight nod of thanks he stuffed the chip into his vest and started to collect the few cards that were on the table before shuffling them, as if he had nothing else in the world to do.

  Before I could make it a step away from the table Dempsey walked up to me and enveloping my hand with his own as he spoke with a reserved firmness. “Congratulations, Marcus. That was quite the display you put on for us. I can’t say it was sportsmanly to let Patrick think he had won, but it was a good show.”

  I had little choice but to tighten my grip on his hand and widen my smile as I replied to his comment. “Thank you, sir.” Looking past Dempsey and towards the dealer I figured I should ask if my kindness was acceptable. “By the way will he be able to keep that?”

  Without turning to look at the dealer Dempsey answered my question, “People tip my workers every year. But only those from the final table can share any real wealth. You just gave that man five thousand dollars from your winnings.”

  I thought about that for a second but just shrugged as I spoke without thinking, “I can live with that. After all if he hadn’t dealt the hand just right I wouldn’t have won.” I almost broke down right there but, for once, I managed to keep my mouth shut.

  With eyes that seemed to scream that he could see past my façade, Dempsey looked down his nose at me as he replied, “Don’t sell yourself short there Marcus. You were able to convince Patrick to march into that hand with what turned out to be inferior cards.” He broke eye contact with me in order to glance over at Patrick, who was now deep into his drink. While continuing to watch Patrick take robotic gulps from his drink, Marcus continued, “That’s not a small achievement, he was expecting to win this year.”

  “What do you mean?”

  With a slight grin Dempsey looked back at me as he answered, “He was quite upset about losing last year.” I swear the man’s smile spread with each word until I was surprised he could speak at all. “I will say he looks to be taking his defeat better this year.”

  “Last year…” I managed to utter, but was unable to say anything else because that was when I remembered the conversation I had with Bella. “He lost to your niece didn’t he?” I asked without meeting Dempsey’s eyes.

  I could feel the man’s attention acutely focus upon me before nodding, “That’s right she did beat him last year. And she managed to do it in a similar way, though she lacked your flair for the dramatic.”

  With trepidation I stated, “It’s hard to win a tournament like this year after year.”

  With a shrug Dempsey countered, “True enough. But he had managed to do it for the previous three years. He had been hoping that last year was simply an anomaly, but you managed to knock him off yet again. Ever since he started coming to my tournaments he’s managed to make his way to the final table, and more often than not he has reached the final showdown.”

  Silently Dempsey turned away from me and stared into the crowd where he instantly caught sight of Bella. She still had that look of shock on her face, only now it was focused on the two of us. I suddenly desired to use her fear as a gauge and leave, but before I could break away, Dempsey gripped my shoulder saying “Well we have to reward our victor, don’t we?” Gesturing to the man behind him, “If you would please follow my associate. He’ll make sure you get your reward.”

  Before I turned my attention away from Bella I managed to see her mouth work a single word over and over again. And if I read her lips right, she was mouthing “no.” Her fear and confusion was beginning to rub off on me, so I began to work on the puzzle that Bella had introduced me to, piece by piece. As my mind was actively trying to work through everything my subconscious instructed me to follow Dempsey’s order.

  I wordlessly turned around and followed the goon Dempsey had pointed out. As I trailed behind the slim man, I started to piece together the various things that had apparently put Bella on edge. First there was the fact that my table went three hours without getting a new player, while at the same time, we went through an extra dealer. Then there was the break that would never have normally been authorized. Not to mention the impression that, as a winner, I was being handled differently than Bella had been last year. Could there have been cameras in the tables? Was it possible that Dempsey knew what I had done with the last card? The goon opened a door and ushered me into the warehouse that I had expected to find in the first place. But before I could do anything more than register shock, the door closed and I felt two prongs pierce the back of my neck. The electricity slammed into me and forced me into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 13

  As I started to regain consciousness I began to take stock of myself and my surroundings as best I could. In the blackness I attempted to document any and all scrapes, bumps, bruises, or odd sensations, working down from my head all the way to my toes. I made a mental list of each thing I found, no matter how minor. I had been in some pretty sketchy situations before and I knew that lots of information would only help the situation. In fact, the more information I possessed, the more likely I would be to find some gems among the useless stones.

  But I also needed to note any lacking sensations, for example, I didn’t feel anything wrapped around my head. And that lack of feeling frightened me. My memory was more than a little hazy at the moment, but I was fairly certain I had been shocked into unconsciousness. That being the case, then in all probability the shock was the reason for my current inability to see. I wasn’t blindfolded, so I hoped my sight would return as I pulled myself further out of unconsciousness.

  Lack of vision explained away, I returned to the examination of my injuries. As I got to my waist, I sighed in relief as I began to distinguish the different shades of grey that were dancing in front of my eyes. It wasn’t much, but the promised return of my sight gave me a little hope. This was fortunate because I had little enough hope as it was. I didn’t wake up to a mass of bruises, in fact I couldn’t locate a single injury anywhere. While, normally, coming to and not feeling like you’ve been beaten might be considered a good thing, I feared it was nothing more than a promise of future violence. And the thought that Dempsey seemed to have arranged my current predicament simply terrified me.

  I may not have been used as a punching bag, but there are other ways to subdue people. My chest felt so securely attached to the back of the chair that I thought it might have been welded onto it. I couldn’t tell much about the rope that had been lashed across my chest. Since my jacket had been removed my forearms were uncovered and also secured to the chair’s arms. I was able to get a look at the rope there, unfortunately all I could tell was it was course and about a half an inch thick. Whoever had secured me obviously thought rope alone wouldn’t be enough. In addition to the rope securing me to the chair, I could feel what felt like handcuffs around both of my wrists, and I could only assume that the other end was firmly attached to arms of the chair.

  But wait, it got even better. Between the lashings of my upper and lower arms I was acutely aware of the shunts that had been inserted into the veins just inside of my elbows. Great! I had an IV running into each arm. I had always hated that particular placement of IVs, they pinched whenever you moved. Fortunately since my a
rms were reasonably well secured any possible pain from arm movement was, for the most part, mitigated. Though, as I managed to wiggle my right arm just a little bit the shunt did its job and sent a painful reminder of its existence up my arm. I seriously doubted that the shunts had been inserted as a torture mechanism. More than likely they were in place so I could be pumped full of whatever my captors wanted flowing through me.

  Despite how securely my upper body was fastened to the chair, I still attempted to stand up and found out just how careful these people were. Working my way up from my feet, both ankles were threatening to go numb from a loss of circulation due to another pair of handcuffs firmly attached to the chair. Like my arms, my legs were bound to the chair as well. And to top it all off I was tied down to the actual seat. Someone obviously took his work Very seriously. I was not going anywhere anytime soon.

  In summary; I was relatively uninjured, secured, and at the complete mercy of Dempsey’s men. Not to mention that I was more than likely being drugged with something. Knowing that I could do nothing about my bonds, I shifted my search to my surroundings, which started out being just about as useful as my body search, as my eyes were still seeing in shadows. I decided to hunker down and listen. Before I could calm myself well enough my very upset mind ambushed me with a single question. How in the world could I have been so completely stupid not to have seen this coming?

  I should have paid more attention to just how freaked out Bella was by all of the inconsistencies. Isolating the mysterious new player who had ungodly luck, flooding his starting table with fresh dealers, these were quite well engineered first steps. All of this fit with Dempsey’s reputation, he would have wanted to get as many different opinions as possible before making a decision. But there had to have been something more concrete than a player with a monster run of luck. Not even Dempsey would do something this severe on a simple hunch. Or would he?

  And of course the puzzle fell into place, or at least one version of it did, the break. Bella had told me that her uncle had never before taken a break during one of his tournaments. He must have had cameras installed in the final table. And with those cameras he would have been able to see my cards heading into the last hand and what they were on their way out. That change would have been all the proof he required. Well it looked like Matt had been right to worry, I was never going to live this down. If I lived.

  I could feel a rising sense of panic flood through me like a raging river No, no, no thoughts like that weren’t helping. I needed to figure out a way to escape this mess and letting panic get the better of me wasn’t going to help. I forced myself to count to ten while taking deep, slow breaths.

  One. Calm down, clear your head. Two. Think about how you are going to get out of this mess. Three. What do you have to work with? Four. You’re still missing something. Five. What is it? Six. It’s something painfully obvious. Seven. But what is it? Eight. Does it matter? Nine. Could I deal without it? Ten.

  I held my breath for a five count before I went back to chiding myself for losing control. I knew panic wasn’t going to help the situation. But then, neither was second guessing my own decisions. I would be a millionaire a million times over if I were able discover a way to alter my choices based on hindsight. But since that was never going to happen, I was just going to have to learn from this mistake and move on. First step in moving on? Finding a way to protect myself from any kind of projectile weapon. Doing that would ensure that something like this would never happen again. I would figure something out no matter the cost, presuming I found a way out of this mess to begin with.

  For now, all I knew was that my situation was bad. I was tied up with no idea where I was or who was with me. I took another deep breath as I forced myself to listen to my surroundings. I needed anything that could help me to survive, so I catalogued everything. Unfortunately there just wasn’t a lot of noise in the immediate vicinity. While my eyes slowly came back to life all I had to rely upon were my ears and nose. So I stretched my ears to their limits and waited. I was rewarded with the hints of a conversation, though it only came in bits and pieces. But once I found it, I focused on the scraps and listened like never before. Even then it was difficult, something was making it more difficult than it should have been. The IVs must have been pumping something into my system that clouded my mind, and that meant this difficulty was unlikely to change any time soon.

  What am I forgetting? I knew it was something and I knew it was simplistic. But what was it? It was something as common to me as breathing. So why can’t I put my finger on it? I… wait a second… my gift, that was what I was having difficulty remembering. But why? Could whatever was in the IVs be some form of drug? Wait, I had already figured that out, could that explain the trouble I was having concentrating. But that didn’t matter, I had remembered my gift, so I rushed to try and transform away my bonds. Nothing happened.

  Why is nothing happening? I once again mentally examined my body did but this time it was as an internal gauge and for the first time I realized that I was cold. Once I started to notice the constant coldness enveloping me I couldn’t help but shake from it. Where am I being kept? Wherever I was it was obviously someplace cold. And with my slightly increasing eyesight I could tell that wherever I was had an industrial look to it. Coupling that with the cold factor I figured I had to be inside of an industrial freezer of some kind.

  There was nothing I could use to heat myself with, which forced me to rely on my own body heat. This made me realize that the purpose of the IVs was twofold. They were drugging me, but they were also taking away the very thing that I used to power my transformations, my body heat. Either Dempsey had gotten really lucky with his methods of holding people or he knew enough about people like me to know how to contain me. But are there other people like me? Well, this was Dempsey so I was going to lean towards the probability that he had the necessary experience to contain someone like me. Perfect, this was just what I needed.

  The conversation I was trying to hear was still only a jumble in my hazy mind. I was able to pick out the occasional word, but nothing made any kind of sense. So, I turned my attention away from this source of frustration and focused on my bonds. These were rapidly turning into just another nightmare. I didn’t have enough body heat to make my bonds disappear, but then I didn’t need to make them disappear; I just needed them to be slightly loosened. But, I was unable to focus on the necessary mental image of the loosened ropes or handcuffs and apply them to the real world as I was used to doing. Even with the limited body heat I had, I wasn’t in any real danger of killing myself in the attempt. But the drugs were more than likely interfering with my ability.

  Angered by the impotence of my gift, I quickly turned my attention towards physically testing my bonds. I knew it was going to be futile but I had to try. After all it was either a little pain now or probable death later. Right on cue, as soon as I tried to inch my arm in any direction I received twin pinches emanating from the shunts in my arms. Knowing I wasn’t going to get out of my bonds, I forced myself to concentrate once again on the nearby conversation. Who knew, maybe I would get lucky and be able to hear something helpful.

  I kept my eyes closed and tried to stretch my hearing beyond its normal limits. Surprisingly I was able to isolate one of the voices and managed to pluck out a couple of words, “…cameras were…” It was nice to be proven right, even if it was too late to help. But hey, better late than never. But all this knowledge did was dredge up more questions, and one of them I was happy to be able to ask myself. Why am I still breathing?

  Dempsey didn’t look kindly upon cheaters, period. So as I sat there in the chill air and attempted to listen to the faint echo of conversation, the stories about the man’s ruthlessness started running through my mind. Of all the ones that I had heard, the most horrific was from the tournament six years ago. The poor fool who had been caught…I shook my head in an attempt to dislodge the thought, there was no need to depress myself any further. I was in enough troub
le without thinking about other idiots who had fallen afoul of Dempsey… though, to be completely fair, I now needed to lump myself into that group.

  As I thought about my situation some more, I realized that if I was right and the cameras had been installed in the final table, then that meant my original information that the tables had no cameras had been correct. Therefore, armed with nothing more than suspicion, Dempsey forced an unintended break so as to rig a table with cameras. The fact that he normally had the tables removed when no longer needed just played into the man’s favor. It wouldn’t have taken much effort on Dempsey’s part to obtain the cameras and modify the table just to catch me playing honestly. Had I really been that lucky? Or, was it the manner in which I had revealed my winning hands, the production involved, that had motivated Dempsey’s actions?

  As I replayed highlights from the tournament in my head I could see how some of my winning hands might seem very suspicious, especially to a man like Dempsey. The fact that Dempsey’s actions were based off a false assumption disgusted me. Yes, he had managed to catch me in the act of cheating, but it had only been honest play that had brought me under his scrutiny, which ultimately exposed my sole misstep. If I had simply taken what I had been dealt I would have honestly taken second place. While not the jackpot, it still would have been good money, but, for some reason, I had convinced myself that I had to win it all. The worst part was that now, as I looked back at all of the little inconsistencies, they made an unfortunate amount of sense.

  As I started to grow more and more depressed I decided to once again turn my attention back to my confinement. There was always a way out, you just needed the willpower to pay the cost. Now, I just needed to figure out what the cost of my escape would be. From my previous failed attempts I knew that there was no heat source available and I didn’t have enough warmth inside of me to power even a simple transformation. The metal of my chair must have been pre-chilled because it was simply another source of cold leaching away precious body heat. I started to worry about freezing to death. But then, since I was most likely dead anyway, maybe I could tap just a little more of my heat and risk lapsing back into unconsciousness or death.