Out of Aces (Betting Blind #2)

by Stephanie Guerra

  “Come on, man. You can’t just watch. Here.” I passed him the bill I’d promised, and it disappeared in his pocket.

  “I like Keno,” he said.

  “Fine, play Keno, then. I’m playing poker.” Berto disappeared and I bought into the game. Cowboy number one had enough chips to fill a suitcase. He was an old dude with long iron-gray hair under a Stetson and yellow chewing-tobacco teeth. Cowboy number two looked like less of a threat. He was younger, with grizzly black stubble, but he was down to his last ten chips and acting edgy. The waitress brought me my free drink, I won a round . . . and I started to cheer up.

  I had a sweet job. I was seeing my girlfriend in less than two weeks. The GED thing would never quit bothering me, but other than that, life was okay.

  “Your action, sir,” the dealer said, and I looked up. For some reason—maybe because I was thinking about Irina and the GED—I wasn’t playing as sharp as I should have been. Stetson was winning this round. I decided to go big. It was Christmas, not a time to hold back. I pushed half my chips in the pot, and he chuckled.

  “Something funny?” I asked.

  “No, son. Just looking forward to taking your money,” he said, tugging at his Stetson.

  I frowned at him. He wanted to play? We’d play. I focused on the cards in my hand and tried to concentrate. Not an ace in my hand and not a heart on the board.

  Fifth street came and I got nothing better than a three of a kind.

  Black Stubble was blowing smoke rings. He smiled and set down a straight. My gut bottomed out. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not on Christmas.

  Like he read my mind, he said, “Merry Christmas.”

  “Whatever,” I muttered. I didn’t have enough chips to keep playing. I wanted back into that game so bad I could taste it. Just one more round. Lady Luck couldn’t stay permanently with this freaking boozehound; she never stayed long with anybody.

  “Excuse me, sir, would you like me to call a chip runner?” asked the dealer.

  Was I going to keep playing, or cut my losses now? “Yeah,” I said, before I could think too hard about it.

  The chip runner was a cute girl, of course—all part of the house strategy. She smiled encouragingly at me, but I felt panicky handing her my last bills. I had to win now.

  Stetson played cold and focused, and Black Stubble played like a psycho. He was rash, backing us into corners, bluffing big. But he didn’t seem to mind that Stetson was raking in every pot. That’s what got me suspicious.

  Then I caught a look between them—it wasn’t much, just a glance—but after dealing with Tony and Marquis, my gambling buddies in Washington, I had a sensor for that stuff. Black Stubble was playing like a lion to mask the fact that they were working for Stetson’s win.

  As soon as I figured that out, I asked for a reshuffle. I knew some tricks myself. Like making irrational plays, bluffing for weird cards. Confusing them. But I still needed the right cards. You can’t win on deuces and treys, no matter how slick you are.

  I was building a little bit of my stack back when Lady Luck decided to give me a Christmas present of some aces.

  As their pile got a dent in it, Black Stubble started giving Stetson questioning, angry looks. That’s the thing with cheaters. They can’t trust anybody, not even each other.

  I decided it was time to cash in. I’d won my own back plus a good chunk of theirs, and these guys weren’t the kind I wanted to keep playing with. I’d caught on to their game and gotten lucky with some good cards, but if I stayed in, it was only a matter of time before they got back on top. First rule in gambling: you have to know when to walk.

  Black Stubble, who was on his fourth beer that I’d seen—which meant he was probably on more like his eighth—sucked in his breath. “Don’t tell me you’re walking,” he said in a low voice. “You weak son of a—”

  Stetson touched his arm and Black Stubble shut up. But I felt their eyes on me as I went to the cage and cashed in. I looked over my shoulder. Yeah, they were staring. Black Stubble had a dark look on his face, and I realized it might not be healthy to hang around this place much longer.

  I bailed on the Poker Room and went to find Berto. He wasn’t in the Keno Lounge. He wasn’t in the Sports Book. He wasn’t at the blackjack tables. I finally ran into him coming out of one of the hotel clothing stores, holding a bag with tissue paper spilling over the sides.

  I chuckled. “You go shopping, man?”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything. I figured he hadn’t played Keno after all. Whatever. It was Christmas, and he could do what he wanted with his money.

  “We should split. I won some money and pissed off a couple cowboys,” I said.

  “You want to go eat somewhere?” said Berto.

  “Yeah. You like steak?”

  “Okay. Hang on.” Berto wheeled into a men’s room. I followed him, because I had to take a leak, too. We did our business, and I was zipping up when I heard the door swing open and fast footsteps—too fast. I turned, already knowing who I’d see.

  This was no accident. It couldn’t be. I didn’t make eye contact. Just stuck to Berto like a burr. Maybe since he was with me, they’d let us through.

  No chance. Black Stubble stepped in front of the door, blocking our way. I could smell the booze from three feet away. “You can go, but not him,” he said to Berto, not taking his eyes off me.

  Berto’s body tensed like a cat. “Let us by, man,” he said in a soft voice.

  “I guess he wants to stay,” Black Stubble said to Stetson.

  “Why don’t you just pay us back our money, and go have a nice Christmas?” Stetson said quietly to me. His hat sat low on his forehead. His eyes were steady. I didn’t think he was drunk at all.

  Berto looked at him, taking in the situation. “You’re on camera, bro,” he said suddenly, pointing at the ceiling.

  We all looked up. There was nothing on the ceiling. At least, nothing that I could see.

  “You’re full of shit,” said Stetson. “This place ain’t wired.” But his voice trailed off and his eyes popped.

  Berto had snaked his arm inside his jacket and the sleeve was dangling. There was a bulge poking out of the side, the shape of a gun. “Move,” he said softly.

  Without a word, Stetson and Black Stubble stepped back.

  “Open the door,” Berto told me. He was walking backward, the gun staying straight inside his jacket, covering the cowboys.

  My mouth was dry, my chest squeezing. Berto wasn’t playing. I opened the door and darted into the lobby. Berto was right behind me. “Be cool. Walk to the door,” he said.

  We walked past the ugly tree in the lobby and out the big glass doors to the lot. Then we hauled ass. Berto tore open the doors of his ride and jumped in. We screamed out of there, the car belly catching the asphalt hard as we turned onto Boulder Highway.

  Finally I started to breathe again. “Oh, shit!” I managed. “I didn’t know you were packing!”

  Berto chuckled. “I wasn’t.” He twisted up the volume until the music was so loud, the beat was slamming through my whole body.

  “What are you talking about?” I yelled.

  “It was just my hand, man.” He lifted his hand and stuck up two fingers. “Looks like a gun when you push it through your jacket.”

  “What? What?” I howled with laughter. “No way! That was amazing! I can’t believe you even did that!”

  Berto looked pleased. But all he said was “We going to eat or what?”

  “Yeah.” I wiped tears out of my eyes. “Let’s get Christmas dinner.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Merry Christmas, baby.” Irina’s voice was soft and excited. “I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

  “Merry Christmas.” I rolled over and raked my fingers through my pile of cash. “What are you wearing right now?”

  �
�Ummm . . . a Rudolph sweater with light-up eyes. What about you?”

  “Hundred dolla bills, baby,” I said in a silky voice.

  She giggled. “I’m sure they look good on you.”

  “They do.” I wished I could tell her that there really were hundred dollar bills all over my bed, but then I’d have to explain my adventure at Boulder Station, and I wasn’t sure Irina was ready for that. “Only ten days . . .”

  “And five hours,” she finished.

  “I can’t wait to take you clubbing,” I told her. “I wish you could be here for New Year’s. It’s going to be off the hook.”

  “You don’t have to work?”

  “Well, yeah, but I’m working at the biggest party in town. If you were here, I’d put you at the best seat in my bar and take care of you. And after I got off, we’d go to an after-party.”

  “That’d be cool.”

  “What are you doing on New Year’s? Do you have plans yet?” There was a silence. I frowned and started scraping the bills into a pile. “Hello?”

  “I’m going to the opera.” There was a strange sound in her voice, and I got a bad feeling.

  “With who?”

  “I don’t want you to be mad.”

  “Why would I be mad?” But even as I asked, I was realizing what she meant. “No way. You’re going with Micah.”

  “There’ll be other people there, too.”

  I closed my eyes and took a breath. I didn’t want to fight with her again.

  “My dad got this box at the opera for me on New Year’s and he said I could invite my friends and Micah was there and I couldn’t exactly not invite him,” Irina said in one rushed sentence.

  Now it was my turn to go quiet for a second. “So Micah was hanging out with your dad?”

  “It wasn’t only Micah! It was a bunch of us studying at my house. Can’t you just be happy that I’m making friends? Why don’t you trust me?” She sounded as if she was about to cry. Irina never cried.

  “Sorry,” I managed to say. “I do trust you. So your dad got you a box for New Year’s?”

  She sniffed. “Yeah, for Carmen. It’s my favorite opera.”

  I stared at the brown nasty carpet covered with my pathetic handfuls of money and felt like a complete idiot. A grand had me excited—and that was probably what just one of Micah’s suits cost. I’d never break into the universe he and Irina lived in, no matter how many poker games I won.

  “Gabe? Are you there?”

  “Yeah.” I had to stop myself from saying more. If I blew up, I’d lose points—which was the same as Micah gaining them. “Who else is going?”

  “A couple of other people from UW.” Irina sounded relieved. “This new tenor is singing.”

  “Listen, I have to go.” I was too upset to keep talking right then. I knew I’d say something I’d regret.

  “Baby, please don’t be mad about this.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you later.”

  “I can’t wait to see you,” Irina said. “January fourth.” She sounded as if she was forcing herself to be cheerful.

  As I clicked off, an idea burst in my brain like a firecracker. Forget January fourth. How about December thirty-first? What if I surprised her, like she surprised me?

  I may have been stupid in a lot of ways, but I knew better than to leave my girlfriend to hang out on New Year’s with a quarterback, drinking champagne, listening to her favorite music at the stroke of midnight.

  Nick’s eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead when I told him on Thursday that I needed some days off. “You’re kidding me. You want to leave me hanging on the biggest night of the year?”

  I took a breath. “I’ll work doubles tonight through Sunday, and if you let me take off the thirty-first and the first, I’ll work another month straight. I’ll do whatever you want. This guy is after my woman, and . . .” I stopped midsentence. You don’t show your belly to people like Nick.

  But actually, he looked a little less angry. He ran his hand through his hair. “When you get to be my age, you’ll stop getting so wound up about women. So, you said you’ll take doubles tonight through Sunday? And when you’re back, no days off for a month? I’m going to hold you to that.”

  I nodded.

  “Fine. We have support staff coming in, anyway.”

  “Thank you! I’ll make up for this, I swear.”

  Nick held up a hand. “Okay, okay.” He walked away.

  That night I worked like a bartender robot on speed. Dirties stayed dirty one second or less. Glasses got stacked still hot from the washer. Drinks—forget it. I was flying. While my body was going a hundred miles an hour, my brain was in Seattle, walking into the opera box, seeing the surprised smile on Irina’s face.

  When I finished my shift, I was still wound up. I wanted to fast-forward to the moment I’d see Irina. I didn’t think I’d feel calm again until then. I pushed out the door and waved good-bye to April, who was counting down her register.

  “Hang on a second,” she said, snapping a rubber band around a stack of twenties.

  I stood in the wind, stretching to loosen up my muscles. Bartending works the crap out of wrists, forearms, back, and feet. By the end of a shift, I usually felt like I’d boxed a few rounds. A glow was starting in the sky to the east, more a suggestion of light than the real thing.

  There was a click behind me and April came out of her cage, pulling on a long white coat. “You want to go for a drink?” she asked. “Frank and Liz and Kari and I are going to the Crown and Anchor.” Frank was security, and the other two were waitresses.

  I shrugged. “Sure.” I usually didn’t hang out after work with the others—I’d never understood burning up all your tips after a shift—but I was way too wound up to sleep. “Where is it?”

  “On Trop. It’s close. You can come in my car, if you want, and I’ll drop you back here when we’re done.” April pointed to a sweet silver Benz.

  For half a second, my heart sped up. She wasn’t hitting on me, was she? I didn’t think she was. And I wasn’t doing anything wrong—not if we were allowed to have “friends.” But I had this feeling that if Irina saw me getting in a Benz with Marilyn Monroe, she might not appreciate it.

  “Are you coming?” April asked impatiently.

  I mentally stuck out my tongue at Irina. “Okay,” I said, and followed April to her car. We climbed in and I sank into the silk-smooth black leather. Benz doesn’t mess around with quality.

  April looked into the rearview and began to pull little black pins from her hair and drop them into the cup holder. “Don’t freak out,” she said mischievously, reaching behind her neck—and she lifted off her hair!

  I did freak out a little. I mean, she looked completely different without the platinum curls.

  April laughed, patting the short, straight, light brown stuff that was apparently her real hair. “Did you not realize that was a wig?”

  “Ahhh . . .” I said.

  “You probably think this is real, too.” She grabbed a Kleenex from her glove box and wiped off her beauty mark.

  “No, I figured that was fake.” I couldn’t stop staring. She looked like a totally different person. Less elegant, more hip. Still hot, though. Maybe even hotter this way. Her face seemed cleaner and younger without the blond hair. I wondered what she’d look like without the black eyeliner and red lipstick.

  “Stop staring.” April started her car and we pulled out of the lot. It was such a smooth ride, I couldn’t even feel the road. I snuck a few glances at the new April, but she frowned and said, “Stop!” so I rolled down the window and watched the 5:00 a.m. crew instead: homeless people, tired partiers straggling home, and the occasional tourist who had just woken up from a Rip Van Winkle spell and realized he’d been gambling for a hundred years.

  “Told you it was close,” said April, as sh
e swung into a gravel lot in front of a dirty white building. At the door, a big British flag rolled in the wind. We parked and headed inside. It was surprisingly crowded for five in the morning. I’d gotten pretty good at telling locals from tourists, and this spot seemed pure locals, mostly bar staff who’d just gotten off work, like us. We each got a pint of Guinness and settled down on a couple of stools to wait for the others. I had the strangest feeling that I was on the wrong side of the bar. The bartender, a ponytailed girl with a filthy apron, mixed up a drink and I kept mentally critiquing her. Less grenadine. Don’t shake so hard.

  “I still can’t believe you have brown hair,” I said, with a sideways glance at April.

  She touched it self-consciously. “Do you think it’s ugly?”

  “What? No! Actually, I like it better,” I said. “It’s more real. How’d you get into being Marilyn, anyway?”

  “It was my ex-husband’s idea.” April wiped some foam off her Guinness and wrinkled her nose. “He was great at coming up with ways for me to make money while he sat around and did nothing.”

  “He sounds like a real prize.” I looked at her curiously. “How’d you hook up with a guy like that?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  I shrugged. “We have time.”

  “Here’s the short version. Idiot girl falls in love with a loser and gets married at eighteen. He cheats on her and she finally leaves him. The end.”

  “You got married at eighteen?”

  “Shut your jaw,” she said irritably. “I said it was a mistake.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Almost twenty-two.” She slurped her Guinness.

  “That was the really short version,” I said. “Give me a little longer version.” I was enjoying myself. April reminded me of my friend Missy back in Seattle: tough and honest.

  She rolled her eyes a little. “All right. The longer version. We grew up in Bakersfield.” She held up a hand. “Don’t say it. I know it’s a pit. We got married right out of high school, and we were doing property management for this shady apartment complex. Then our friend Tom went to Vegas and started parking cars at Harrah’s, and he was always bragging about how you can make cash in Vegas by opening your pockets and just letting it fall in. So we moved here. But Bobby couldn’t get work. I was so dumb, I actually believed he was trying.” She went quiet for a moment. “Anyway, we were out of cash, so I started dancing. It was easy money. But I hated it. So many perverts.”