by Neil Russell
In the center of the room sat an oval, green felt table surrounded on three sides by eight padded chairs and presided over by a thin-faced dealer in white, French cuffs. I recognized him. Sydney, the Inca’s best. Slightly behind Sydney to his right sat an identically dressed man next to a tall, inlaid cabinet containing neatly racked chips and plaques. I knew him too: Prince, the game’s banker, a former Jamaican weightlifter with biceps bigger than most men’s legs.
Sydney gave me a professional, “Nice to see you, Mr. B.”
“You too, Sydney.” I nodded to the banker. “Prince.”
Prince gave me his best grin, “Welcome back, Mr. B.,” and began counting out my usual buy-in. As he did, a very leggy redhead in pink hot pants appeared and asked if I wanted a drink. I thanked her and passed.
I didn’t know the three Asian men already in the game, but Nick had briefed me on our way over. He made the introductions. Takumi Saito from Tokyo, and next to him, a Yale-educated Malaysian named Jerry Merican. Saito’s money came from automobile dealerships, and Merican, the son of a sultan, was making a career out of spending as much of his father’s fortune as he could get his hands on. They were the high rollers.
The whale was Shi Quan, owner of a construction empire, which no matter where you live operates in the same edgy soup of business, politics and organized crime. In this case, Shanghai. He looked dangerous and probably was. Nick had also mentioned that though Quan was thoroughly Anglicized in speech, there were some missing synapses in the thinking department. I was hoping that applied to cards.
I watched them take in my size. Seldom is being big a disadvantage. It takes people’s minds off things they should be concentrating on. Only Jerry Merican stood and offered his hand. So much for the rest of Far Eastern hospitality.
Seeking to establish his primary position in the testicle pecking order, Quan very deliberately eased a Dunhill Fine Cut from a box lying next to him, lit it with a platinum Colibri, and said, “I trust you don’t mind if I smoke.”
“As long as you don’t mind when I take your money.”
Saito remained impassive, but Jerry Merican let loose a cackle that showed three gold front teeth. Quan had left his sense of humor in his other pagoda. Someday, a president with a short fuse and a fast tongue will Rodney Dangerfield the wrong guy in Beijing, and it will be ICBMs at forty paces. Fortunately, this guy wasn’t in charge of the nuclear football. He simply turned and spit on the floor.
Nick ignored it, but there would be a penalty somewhere. As accommodating as the casinos are to their important guests, they have to keep those in line who have no rules anywhere else. “What’s your seating pleasure?” Nick asked.
“As far from him as possible,” I said, indicating the spitter. “In case he decides to take a piss.”
Quan’s eyes went cold. He stood, as did his two linebacker-sized bodyguards across the room. It probably didn’t help that Jerry was laughing again. I also caught a flicker of a smile cross Prince’s face. There was the possibility Shi Quan might take his bad manners and billions and leave, but I didn’t think so. He wasn’t a prissy European or gossamer-skinned Arab. He wanted a piece of me, financial or otherwise.
I decided to help him along. I turned to Jerry and indicated Quan’s thugs. “Think your guys can handle them? I don’t want to be interrupted if things get interesting.”
Jerry Merican’s crew, four pug-faced men in skintight, black shirts and wearing some kind of royal medallion around their necks, didn’t have the height Quan’s men did, but they had numbers. They also looked eager to be let loose. “Just say the word, man.” Jerry grinned.
Saito’s lone bodyguard, a pasty-faced guy no bigger than his boss, didn’t move. But as slightly built as he was, he looked like he could handle himself, and I didn’t think it would be to help the Chinese.
Ordinarily, Nick would have intervened by now. Out of sight, but only steps away, would be an army of Inca security, and a simple nod would trigger a signal from Sydney or Prince and bring them in. That nothing had happened meant our host was giving the Shanghainese construction boss that overdue lesson in decorum. Quan knew it too. And though he might have been able to snap his fingers and summon up anything else, he couldn’t replicate a high-stakes Hold ‘Em game with an adversary he wanted to make bleed. He lit another Fine Cut, puffed slowly for a few seconds and sat back down.
“Deal the fuckin’ cards,” he said.
I took my seat and saw Nick wink at Sydney as he left. It looked like it was going to be a bumpy night. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
* * * *
An hour in, we were joined by a pair of Koreans. Brothers, Iseul and Yong Pak—nonwhales—who were more interested in advancing their rum buzz than paying attention to the cards. They brought with them a collection of loud hangers-on that included several good-looking but very drunk Filipino women, mostly not wearing their dresses. The couch area was beginning to look like a map of Asia, complete with ethnic tensions. If anybody else showed up, we might have to have to call in some UN peacekeepers.
The arrival of the Pak brothers and their distractions irritated Saito but allowed Quan and me to carve them up with impunity until Prince advised the Koreans that he had to get Nick’s okay to extend more credit. While he placed the call, they wandered over to sofas, where one promptly fell asleep. Shortly afterward, the other brother made a boisterous exit with the groupies, leaving his sibling alone and snoring.
Two and a half hours later by Bert’s Rolex, a new dealer and banker arrived to relieve Sydney and Prince. The dealer, Floyd, looked like a small Woody Allen, and the banker, an expressionless blonde named Dagmar, was built like she could handle anybody in the room.
I estimated Saito as even. He played as tight as a widow on Social Security, which made him easy to manipulate but difficult to get into. Very Japanese, and one of the reasons there are no casinos in that country. It’s tough for the house to make its nut when you can knit a sweater between bets.
By contrast, Jerry had flashes of brilliance but was reckless, which meant that if you were willing to absorb some bruising, over time, you could eat him alive. As it was, he was down $800,000, which we knew because he made regular announcements.
I estimated the Paks had dropped a million, and since I was up about that, Jerry’s money was in front of Quan. The Chinese was a solid player, and his system wasn’t as rigid as most. He had a couple of “tells,” the most significant of which was that he bet kings harder than aces. This probably meant he had a history of luck with cowboys. It happens. My father almost never won with queens, and neither do I. It’s just the way certain cards chase certain players—or don’t. The difference is I stagger the way I bet my nemesis. I didn’t think Quan was advertising, but we hadn’t gotten into it yet.
That was about to change.
Sydney was dealing the last hand before the changeover, and the flop was K-A-7. Quan immediately bet the maximum, $10,000. Saito dithered, then dropped. I hadn’t looked at my cards yet, but I called.
Quan smiled at me. “How about we up the stakes?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“No limit...unless you don’t have the stomach to match your mouth.”
“What was it Mao said? ‘When life deals you barbed wire, make lemonade.’”
“Fuck you.”
I still wasn’t making any points.
Saito stood. “I go to bed now.”
“I hope you’re more exciting between the sheets than you were here,” Quan said. “I’ve had better action from a corpse.”
Saito ignored him, and Quan turned to the Malaysian. “How about you, laughing boy? You fuck up bad enough, maybe your old man can adopt me.”
This wasn’t a game for the Malaysian, and he knew it. Even so, he took a long time before he pushed back from the table. “Too many assholes in the family already.” He grinned. To me, he said, “You want me to leave a couple of my guys?”
I thanked him but passed, and
Prince began cashing both men out.
I smiled at Quan. “Since it’s just us Chinese, you want to rethink your bet?”
Like the spider to the fly, “Glad you asked.” He pulled back his ten grand, counted out a million dollars in chips and pushed them forward.
I looked at Prince. “What am I good for?”
“Anything you like, Mr. B.”
“Raise ten,” I said.
Quan’s head snapped up. “What the fuck?”
“You’re right,” I said. “What the fuck. Make it twenty.”
Like it always does when big action begins, the room went quiet, replaced by an electricity that shortened everyone’s breathing to only what was necessary. The bodyguards stood and moved closer to the table.
Quan watched Prince carefully fan twenty-one black and gold, mother-of-pearl plaques onto the green felt. A little smaller than a pack of Marlboros, the rectangular tiles were individually hand-engraved with the Inca logo, a unique, seven-digit serial number and the numeric designation, $1,000,000. Before Prince withdrew his hand, he looked at me for final confirmation, a courtesy extended to whales for an extraordinary wager. I nodded, and Prince pulled away.
Quan exploded. “How the fuck can you bet? You haven’t even looked at your cards.”
“Really? I’ll remember to do that next time. You in or out?”
He was stuck. This was beyond cards—or money. I’d embarrassed him earlier. Now I had his nut sack nailed to a board and was sharpening a knife. He grunted, “Call.”
As soon as the pot was right, Sydney turned the fourth card. Another king.
“Twenty million,” Quan said with a mixture of relief and swagger. He might as well have hired a skywriter. Trip cowboys.
“Raise fifty.”
I thought he was going to levitate out of his seat. Now, he knew I had to have a pair of bullets down, so filling his kings did no good because I would fill too—or catch the fourth ace. There was only one card that could do him any good: the case king.
While Quan wrestled with that ugly thought, I reached across the table, took one of his Fine Cuts and lit it. It distracted him and irritated him in equal measure, so I added to it by blowing smoke at him. “I figure these are about to be mine anyway. So tell me something. Why is half of Asia in town? Other than to hope you show up in one of their games?”
There was a long pause while he worked his mouth around his teeth. When he didn’t answer, I asked the question again.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Jerry snorted. “Bullshit. Ever hear of a seventeen-year locust? What we have here is the seventy-year variety. The difference is what these pricks lay waste to never comes back.” He stared hard at Quan. “Isn’t that right, you mother-fucking rapist?”
Without warning, Saito backhanded Jerry across the face. The Malaysian grabbed his mouth, and blood ran between his fingers. Saito spit something in rapid Japanese and raised his hand again. Dagmar moved toward them, but Saito relaxed, and the moment passed.
I’d struck a nerve, but with Jerry swallowing blood, I wasn’t going to get anything else, so I turned my attention back to Quan. “In case you lost your place, I raised. Your move is call or reraise You could also drop, but you won’t. You set this trap, and you wouldn’t sleep for a month if you walked away.” I took a beat, then added. “But from where I sit, there’s not much sleep in your future either way.”
I had him, and he knew it. So did everybody in the room. He couldn’t win, he couldn’t save face, and he couldn’t kill me. At least, I didn’t think so.
He gave it all he had. “You must have checked your cards when I wasn’t looking.”
“I really don’t remember.”
He then did something I had never seen in Vegas. He tore his cards in half and threw them violently at Sydney. The pieces hit the dealer in the face and landed on the table faceup, confirming the three kings. Sydney, pro that he was, didn’t react.
I didn’t have to maintain the Inca’s honor, so to commemorate the occasion, I threw my hole cards over. Pair of queens. Jerry whooped so loud, they might have heard him in Kuala Lumpur. Quan sat silent, his face ashen.
“You were right,” I said. “I didn’t look.” I pulled in the plaques. I handed a one-million-dollar tile to Sydney and one to Prince, then gave Floyd and Dagmar $50,000 each. Even the unflappable Sydney’s hand shook as he took the plaque. That’s what I love most about having money. Giving it away.
I saw Quan’s right arm disappear, and I shifted my weight slightly. When he launched himself across the table, swinging and snarling and swearing in multiple languages, I let myself slide off the right side of my chair. I saw something flash past my nose, but it missed, and I hit Mr. Shanghai in the back of the head as he went by.
At first, I thought he was just wearing brass knuckles, but it also looked like a blade. As it turned out, it was both. An Ophidian Shuriken is a razor-sharp, four-pointed, steel star about the diameter of a hockey puck. It can be thrown, but it usually isn’t. There are three finger holes in its center, and the bottom point swivels out of the way so it can be gripped in a man’s palm with the remaining three points protruding outward. The ordinary gangbanger usually cuts himself before he gets to the main event, but in the right hands, an OS slices wide, deep and frequent, and unleashes so much blood the opponent usually flees in terror. I’ve also seen eyes punctured and one driven through a carotid. It’s an ugly weapon with ugly results.
I hit the floor rolling, but before I could get my feet under me, one of Quan’s bodyguards threw himself on my back and knocked my wind to Poughkeepsie. While I was deciding if I was going to die, the other clown kicked me in the side of the head.
I used my larger frame to leverage the guy on my back over, and suddenly, Dagmar loomed up and brought a sap down on his forehead. Sheathed or not, lead on bone is not something you want to be on the receiving end of, and the guy immediately let go of me and grabbed what was almost certainly a fractured skull.
My eyesight was blurred and red from lack of oxygen, but I kicked a foot out and caught the second bodyguard on the ankle. I felt it give, and he went down, screaming. I kept moving because Quan had to be close. As I got to my feet, he came from my blind side, and the star cut through my suit coat down to my biceps. I swiveled and banged him twice in the face, hard. He wasn’t used to being hit and went out on his feet.
But before he could fall, an Inca security team, along with Jerry’s bodyguards, gathered him and his cronies in three scrums and ran them out the door and into what was about to be a sunrise. I saw a couple of the Malaysians get in some licks along the way.
While I settled up with Prince, the villa emptied into a slew of waiting SUVs. On my way out, I looked back and saw the sleeping Pak brother right where he’d been from the outset. He’d be hungover and broke, and he wouldn’t have even seen the floor show.
Outside, Jerry had disappeared. Saito was probably responsible for that. Nobody liked the Chinese, but at the end of the day, I wasn’t Asian. It was just as well. Right now, all I wanted was a hot shower and a bed. However, as I climbed into one of the Inca’s black Escalades to be driven back to my place, I made an appointment with myself to review my distrust of queens.
I fished my phone out of my suit coat and clicked it on to check messages. It rang almost immediately, and Jake’s number flashed up. I answered it and heard a woman giggling in the background. “You’re up early, Counselor.”
“Fuck early, I’m half in the bag and on my way to bed. Judge Cavalcante just called. He chased down Kingdom’s conviction. Hold on to your shorts. Elephant trafficking.”
“You mean ivory?”
“I mean elephants. Ivory was part of it, but that didn’t become illegal until ‘89. Markus-baby was moving whole fucking heads, feet, bones, even dicks. The penalty for that shit back then was like five grand and have-a-nice-day, but Markus ran into an ambitious prosecutor without enough to do. The guy indicted him for
falsifying an international cargo manifest, which takes up about fifty pages of the U.S. Code. Hello fun showers.”
“That was pretty rarefied air in those days. How’d he get caught?”
“That’s almost the best part. His partner turned him in because he’d been cheated out of a million dollars. And if that wasn’t enough, Markus fucked the guy’s wife and left a kid for him to raise. This is so fucking great, I might start going to temple.”
“I thought you were Catholic.”
“I pick and choose.”
“Call me if you need directions.”
“Good night, asshole.”