Death Plays Poker

by Robin Spano

  But the safest thing wasn’t always the right thing — or the most effective. If Clare’s plan did work, they might actually catch the Choker before the Vancouver tournament ended. A lot of people planned to leave the scene after this — there was even talk about the Canadian Classic shutting down. It would be too easy for the killer to slip out into the world to kill again. It wasn’t only her own career Clare could save with this collaboration — it was the lives of future victims.

  She smiled grimly. As weak as it might be, she had her justification.

  “I think we should mix things up,” Clare said. “I think we should deliver notes around the scene — like the one you gave Fiona, only everybody gets one — we sign them ‘The Dealer,’ and gauge people’s reactions.”

  Noah cocked his head to the right. “Do you have specific notes in mind?”

  “I have a rough plan.” Clare nodded. “It would help if we had a better handle on who’s cheating. You said you had a spreadsheet. How close are you to narrowing the field?”

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  GEORGE

  George wandered into the high stakes poker room — bad move, no doubt — and gave the dealer five thousand dollars to change into chips. He was even glad when T-Bone sat down beside him.

  T-Bone changed twenty thousand and said to George, “I never seen you play these stakes. Feeling lucky?”

  George shook his head.

  “So get away from the table,” T-Bone said. “You’re a shit player anyway.”

  “I don’t care if I lose.”

  T-Bone tilted his head, peering into George’s eyes. “The fuck’s got you down?”

  “Fiona,” George said, too despondent to keep things to himself. “She panicked. She left. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again.”

  “What do you mean, she left? Where did she go?”

  George shrugged. “She won’t tell me.”

  “It’s the middle of a fucking tournament,” T-Bone said. “Does she want them to freeze the fucking game again?”

  “The cards can be dealt without a commentator,” George said.

  “Changes the fucking point. This is supposed to be television — we got names to maintain, books to promote. You should care, too — your book is newer than mine.”

  Before George could respond, Joe walked in. Or rather, Snow White walked in, and only Joe Mangan would wear such an outrageous costume at the poker table.

  “Who wants to be my dwarf?” said Joe’s voice from inside Snow White.

  T-Bone groaned. “Not me.”

  “Is Elizabeth back from dinner?” George didn’t want to be at the poker table. T-Bone was right; he’d only lose if he stayed.

  Joe shook his head. “She’s staying at her parents’ place. I can gamble ’til dawn like when I was single.” Joe rubbed his hands together. “Who wants to be my first victim?”

  “Not me.” George got up and took his chips with him. “Good luck, though.”

  “Hey, thanks,” said Joe. “You said that to me earlier, in the ice room, and I got really lucky.”

  George rolled his eyes. “I guess you won the prop bet.”

  T-Bone was still disturbed. “You hear anything about Fiona bailing?” he said to Joe.

  Snow White shook her head. “Like, bailing bailing? Never coming back?”

  “Yeah,” T-Bone said. “George here says she spooked. I wonder how that could have happened.”

  “Beats me.” Joe pulled out his phone and typed out a message to someone. “So are we going to play some poker?”

  “Fuck that.” T-Bone stood up. “This Canadian scene is going to shit. First Loni gets killed, now we’re not even going to be on TV anymore. I’ll stay because I still have chips in the tournament, but after that I’m getting the fuck out of here. I’m going back to the States as soon as this shit game is over.”

  “So go sulk,” Joe said. “You bailing too, George?”

  “Yeah.” George picked up his chips.

  “From the scene, or from the table?” Joe’s voice sounded like it held a smile, though it was impossible to tell behind the Snow White mask.

  “I don’t know,” George said. “Maybe I’ll go online and see if I can find Fiona.”

  “You think she put her location up on a website? Maybe Facebook?”

  “No.” George knew he probably shouldn’t be saying this out loud, but his head was swimming, and he’d been drinking, and . . . “Fiona has an iPhone. I can track her anywhere in North America.”

  “You need her password for that.”

  “I know.”

  Joe’s phone beeped. He picked it up and typed another message.

  T-Bone was still standing listening. “If you find her, tell her to get her ass back here for tomorrow morning.”

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  NOAH

  Noah watched Clare stretch her legs out then curl them underneath her as she leaned into the headboard.

  “Pretty close.” Noah reached into his canvas shoulder bag and pulled out a clunky-looking black laptop. It actually wasn’t clunky at all — it was supremely fast, with built-in satellite technology so he could be online anywhere on or near Earth without anyone’s wifi being able to hack into it — but the plain casing would fool most observers.

  He opened the file with players’ statistics.

  “I think Joe is cheating for sure,” Noah said.

  “Really?” Clare looked skeptical. “I thought Joe was some genius player. He even wins consistently at cash games — where there are no cameras to run scams off.”

  “Look at his historical win rate.” Noah pointed at the graph. “Joe came onto the scene four years ago. He did well right away: in his first year he cashed in one out of four tournaments, netting him an ROI — that’s return on investment in trust fund princess language — of close to 300%. But look at his win rate since Halifax. He’s been in the money every tournament but one. His ROI is up over 1000%. He might not need to cheat to be a winning player. But the stats say he almost definitely is.”

  “Okay,” Clare said. “Who else? T-Bone?”

  “T-Bone’s on my maybe list,” Noah said. “His win rate took a dive a few years back, when new players came on the scene. It stayed low until . . .” He pulled up T-Bone’s stats and looked at them. “Yeah, okay, until Halifax.”

  “What’s his ROI now?” Clare slid down the bed so she was lying on her back. It was just past three a.m., but Noah was nowhere near ready to sleep.

  “It’s up there. Maybe 500%.”

  “T-Bone knew what I had.” A realization seemed to be hitting Clare. “That hand in Niagara Falls when I doubled through him. I think he wanted to push me off the hand — and for all I know, I probably should have folded — but he knew before the cards were flipped over that I had him beaten.”

  “You sure?” Noah said.

  “No. I’m sure I need to sleep, though. My mind is shutting down hard.”

  “We don’t have time to sleep. We have to solve this case.” Noah was wired. Since Clare had left his room that afternoon, he’d drunk about ten gallons of coffee while staring at his computer and trying not to think about what Clare was saying to her handler.

  “Okay.” Clare pulled off her jeans and tossed them onto the floor. Noah must have been staring at her legs in an obvious way, because she said, “I’m not taking my clothes off to turn you on. I’m getting under the covers. Keep working if you want. I’m going to sleep.”

  “If you weren’t planning on getting any work done tonight, why did you invite me over?”

  “I didn’t know I was going to crash so hard. Joe has a gorgeous cock; too bad it’s circumcised.” Clare yawned widely and stretched her arms behind her.

  Noah walked to the window and looked down at the boats in False Creek. “What’s wrong with circumcised? I thought women preferr
ed that.”

  “Maybe women who don’t like cock.” Clare slid out of bed and moved, bare-legged, to the coffee maker. “It might have been the beer that knocked me out. I’ll try making coffee. So do you think Joe’s the cheating ring’s instigator, or just some guy who’s been profiting?”

  Noah wasn’t sure. “My guess is some guy who’s been profiting.”

  “Doesn’t Joe fit the psychopath stereotype perfectly?”

  “Because he’s charming?” Noah snorted. “There’s a little more than that to profiling a serial killer.”

  “Not only because he’s charming,” Clare said. “I felt more guilty than he did for cheating on Elizabeth. And P.S.: just because you’re with the big-time American FBI doesn’t mean you’re smarter at profiling than your Canadian counterpart.”

  “Right,” Noah said. “We don’t even get assigned a horse.”

  “A horse?”

  “You’re a Mountie, aren’t you?”

  “I’m on loan.”

  “Oh, so you only get a pony?”

  “Are you stupid?” Clare turned and stared at him. “We don’t ride horses, we’re not from the backwater, and the average Canadian IQ is twelve points higher than the American one.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “I’m sure it’s true.”

  Noah laughed. “Just because you wish it was true doesn’t mean you get to say it like a statistic.”

  “Oh.” Clare poured water into the coffee maker. “Does the FBI get to tell me how to speak now?”

  “Clare!” He wanted to pull off his own jeans, toss her back into bed, and see where things went from there. But he fought the urge — he had to respect her monogamous mindset — he actually, grudgingly, respected her for it.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing. Sorry I thought you got a horse with your job.”

  “You didn’t really think that.”

  “I really did.”

  “Do you also think I grew up in an igloo?”

  “No. You’re from Toronto. They have buildings there — running water and such.”

  “I’m from Orillia. It’s Tiffany who’s from Toronto.”

  “Where’s Orillia?”

  “About an hour and a half north of Toronto.” Clare put the coffee bag into the machine, but she didn’t press On. She sat back down on the bed, instead.

  “An hour and a half by horse, or by dogsled?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “I guess I’ll have to.” Noah closed his computer. He could see Clare was tired. He zipped his hoodie back up and steeled himself for the cold night ahead. He didn’t plan on sleeping.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  ELIZABETH

  Elizabeth had aces. Which would be great if she could concentrate on poker, but her mind was somewhere else — somewhere back in her old bedroom at her parents’ house, where she’d been coerced into spending the night. Her mother always wanted more. Give her a smile, she wanted a hug. Give her dinner, she wanted a goddamn sleepover. And she made Elizabeth feel like a cold, selfish bitch if she didn’t oblige. Elizabeth had vaguely heard of families who enjoyed spending time together, but she was pretty sure they were all on Prozac.

  She looked at her opponents. A raise and a call from players she didn’t know. What was so difficult? She had aces. It was a clear re-raise, but she couldn’t summon the minimal brain power required to calculate how many chips to put in.

  “Call,” Elizabeth said. Stupid move, but who cared? She was trying to ignore the imagined rumbling from her stomach, the tiny voice inside asking if she really knew she wanted to get rid of it. Fucking thing was only cells. Elizabeth fought the urge to punch it.

  The sound of static came over the loudspeaker. It was followed by a voice: “Dealers and players, at the end of this hand, the Canadian Classic Vancouver will be on break for the rest of the day to mourn this morning’s death of Fiona Gallagher. Play will resume tomorrow at one p.m.”

  Shock traveled fast through Elizabeth as she pictured Fiona lying dead on a hotel room floor. Bizarrely — though she and Fiona had squabbled more than they’d gotten along — Fiona’s was the first death since Josie’s that made Elizabeth feel a massive sense of loss. And fear — Fiona and Josie were also in their late twenties, also in the public spotlight, also in the same crowd, also . . . well, Elizabeth hoped that was all they’d had in common, but she suspected both had also slept with Joe.

  The loudspeaker made it that much more surreal. She understood that players had to be looped in, but a loudspeaker? That’s how you announced sports scores and school assemblies, not the murder of someone you’ve been working with for years.

  It seemed insane to even play the hand out. Elizabeth saw Joe two tables away. He frowned and put his magic wand down (today’s costume was the wand and a Merlin cap) before tapping the table to check.

  She scanned the stands for George, who saw her looking and waved. It was a subdued wave — one hand opening and closing, then falling back into his lap — but of course George would be gutted. He stood up and slumped off the stands toward the exit. He looked like he had no idea where he was going.

  The flop came and Elizabeth said, “All in.” She was out of turn, but who cared? The other players folded and she took the tiny pot.

  She stood up and walked toward Joe.

  “I’m going home,” Elizabeth told him. “I’m going to stay with my parents. This is crazy.” Because as awful as it was at home, with her mother fretting over her lifestyle and constantly trying to feed her Hong Kong delicacies she loathed, the alternative was to stay in this emotionally vacuous scene and hold her throat out for the killer if he decided she was next.

  “You sure?” Joe gripped her shoulder in a light massaging motion. “Why don’t you come for a boat ride? We can stay out as long as we like. Drop anchor, chat, whatever.”

  “Yeah?” Elizabeth liked the warmth of his touch. The massage felt nice, too. “No poker game?”

  Joe shook his head. “You were right. I should have canceled the game when Loni died, too.”

  Elizabeth didn’t want to go back to her parents’ house. And alone with Joe on the boat — away from the casino — she’d be just as safe, if not safer. “I’d love to hang out, just you and me.”

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  NOAH

  Noah closed his eyes and held them shut so hard his jaw hurt. He opened them and said to Clare, “I fucking got her killed.”

  “How can you say that?” Clare took Noah’s hand. They were at Clare’s hotel, sitting on her bed, getting the letters ready that they planned to deliver that day. They’d printed them on Noah’s sleek travel printer, and they’d divided the notes between them for delivery.

  Noah felt like his head could explode. He wished it would. “I shouldn’t have taken all the letters from Fiona’s suitcase. I could have taken one, from the middle of the pack, one she wouldn’t have missed. I could have copied the font and format from that — I didn’t need them all.”

  “They were evidence,” Clare said. “You couldn’t leave them behind.”

  Noah looked at Clare, trying to figure her out. Sometimes she seemed beyond brilliant, and other times it was like she’d pressed Off on her brain. “The FBI didn’t send me here to gather evidence.”

  Clare’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t get it.”

  “No. Clearly.” Noah pulled his hand from hers, and wished he hadn’t.

  Clare rolled over and pulled two smokes from her pack on the bedside table. “I’m going outside. Are you coming?”

  Noah nodded. They rode the elevator down in silence and took the back door to the alley instead of the street. From the poker world’s perspective, they were supposed to be not talking to each other.

  When they were outside, Clare said, “So where were we? Right. You were calling me a moron f
or not knowing the detailed specs of your assignment.”

  Noah frowned. He didn’t like this alley. The walls were too close and large garbage bins made the exit route awkward. He stepped a few feet away from Clare while they lit their cigarettes separately.

  “I don’t think you’re a moron,” he said. “I think — well, don’t you feel like you’re a bit over your head in this job?”

  “No.”

  “Fuck. I do.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Clare walked a few paces further away. She turned her back on him and faced the narrow entrance to the street.

  Noah squeezed around to her other side to face her. He tried to ignore the claustrophobic feeling. “I feel like I’m over my head. And then I look at you, and you’re so much younger. And newer. Look, what I’m saying is, okay, so my dumb actions made Fiona bolt — which is probably what got her killed.”

  Clare didn’t say anything. But she didn’t turn away again.

  “I don’t like that she’s dead, but Fiona knew what she was playing with — or she should have. But you look like you’re barely out of high school. How can I justify including you in some harebrained disinformation scheme that may or may not work? I could get killed, fine — I’m old enough; I’m trained for this. But you? I couldn’t live with myself if our antics got you killed.”

  “First,” she said, “these aren’t antics; they’re a strategy to do our job. Second, I do not need another fucking watchdog. Third, I am so trained — a year in the police academy and a year on the job have taught me a hell of a lot. Fourth, you’re only five years older than me. Fifth, I’ve chosen this life. And I love it. Sixth, this so-called harebrained disinformation scheme was my idea. I’m the one including you. Not vice versa.”

  Noah studied her face and decided she was telling the truth: she might be scared, but Clare was exactly where she wanted to be.

  “Aren’t you going to say something?” Clare asked.

  “I was waiting for number seven,” Noah said. “That was a pretty good streak you had going.”