Stacked Deck

by Tracy Watkins

  Giambi, highly agitated, got up and walked over to the window to ponder his situation.

  “Talk to me,” Beth said.

  “There’s not much, apparently, that you don’t already know. There’s no real quid pro quo here.”

  “I’ve told you all you need to know. I’m after your blackmailer. She’s a threat to me and to the people I work for. We’re going to hunt her down.”

  “And your father’s killer?”

  “I know you have information on him as well. That’s why I’m here and not someone else.”

  His voice grew somber. “Two birds with one shot. Tell me about your father, what happened to him.”

  “Like I said, it happened when I was twelve. One minute my world was just fine as I knew it, and the next it was wiped out like a bomb hit it. Boom, gone. He was a gambler and worked for a cheating crew. He wanted out. That, apparently, wasn’t acceptable. Too big a threat to the crew’s anonymity.”

  Giambi turned around and walked back to her, eyes tight, shoulders drawn in. “Let’s say I decide that you’re right about my options. And it appears you may well be. But you don’t know everything. If I give you the name you’re looking for, assuming you tell me some more about your father and I can check and see what crew he was working for, then you have to do something for me before you hand me over to the feds.”

  “What?”

  He sat down across from Beth. In a confessional voice, a man revealing a secret that pained him, he said, “I have a daughter, a daughter I didn’t know I had until fifteen years ago. I did everything I could to keep her out of my world. I thought it was the right thing to do. That my world wasn’t good for her. But things change. I changed, and I wanted to get to know her. I sent her a note several times suggesting we meet. She would have nothing to do with me. She’s here in France and I want to see her before I go anywhere. Her mother was a dancer. In Paris. I met her many years ago. She’s from Africa. She had a daughter that I didn’t…Well, circumstances…I was in my fifties and, well, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Your daughter lives in Paris?”

  “No. Actually she lives in the countryside. About forty miles from here in a small French village. Her mother passed away some years ago. I want to see her one more time. And I want to be certain when I leave Europe that she’s not going to want for anything. She was doing well up until recently. I want to help her financially. And I want to talk to her.”

  “Why did you keep her such a the big secret.”

  Giambi smiled sadly. “Circumstances, and enemies. It’s better for her not to be connected to me. Safer.”

  He was silent for a time. Nowhere in any of Beth’s investigation of him was a daughter mentioned.

  She waited. In some ways she felt sorry for him. Not that, given the life he lived, he deserved sympathy, but she liked the guy. He was, after all, from her world. Casinos and casino operators were the same everywhere. Disguise them with glitter, entertainment and great restaurants, but underneath the disguises, it was all about extracting money from fools and protecting that money from skilled highwaymen. It’s about robbing without being robbed. Nothing was “produced” in a casino but illusions. It was all about the flow of money. How much comes in and how much gets away. The rest was bait.

  Giambi said, “I’m being forced to sell the casino, give it away actually, to the Greek. Within hours. Once I’m out of here I’m fair game. You are right. I’m a target and I need protection. But there are other things more important than that. You get me to her before you bring the feds in, I’ll help you if I can with this other thing. But I have to know more about exactly who your father was. Starting with his name.”

  “All right,” Beth said. “Make your deal with your Greek friend, and we’ll visit your daughter. I’ll make arrangements with the feds to come here and take you back to the states. My real name is Bethany James. My father was Lew ‘Jesse’ James.”

  She knew by the rapidly changing expressions on his face that he knew who she was talking about. Her heart skipped a beat.

  The answer to her question now sat a few feet from her.

  Chapter 26

  G iambi studied her intently for a moment, his eyes narrowed almost to a squint. “Your father, he’s the one they called the gunslinger for his style of play?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lew Jesse James.”

  “Yes. You knew of him?”

  “I never met the man, but various pictures of him were in every casino’s file, you can be sure of that. When he stayed sober, he was one of the best. He played against guys like Amarillo Slim Preston, Doyle Brunson, Stu Ungar, maybe the greatest of the great, along with Johnny Moss.”

  Beth said, “You know how Hollywood brats, the sons and daughters of movie stars, grow up around all the great stars of the day and just take that as normal. That’s how I grew up in the poker world. Stuey and my dad played some poker together, drank and did some drugs together. I knew all of them.”

  “A poker brat. Yes, that is definitely a different kind of childhood.”

  “Binion died in ninety-eight. Stu died the next November and in some ways an era ended. He was forty-five. He had cocaine, meth and Percodan in his system. Died in a lousy adult motel on

  Las Vegas Boulevard

  . This was the same guy who won the World Series of Poker three times. In ninety-seven he won over a million in that tournament alone. My dad was killed five years earlier. Do you know anything about why he was killed and who was behind it?”

  Giambi frowned, a look of surprise and shock on his face. “I can’t believe that I’m looking at the daughter of Lew Jesse James. I heard about you. The rumor had it you were playing poker in your highchair.”

  “That is, in fact, true. You know something about what happened?”

  “Yes, I do know something about his death. A man in his business had plenty of enemies. The crew he worked for not only hit casinos, they hit private games. I know the name of the man behind that crew. If Lew was killed because he was trying to get out, that would be the man you’re looking for. He would give the order.”

  Beth tried to control the beat of her heart. Fifteen years she’d been waiting for this moment. “This man, is he still alive?”

  “He’s still alive the last I heard.”

  JD, having returned but gone into his room so as not to interrupt them, walked out at that moment.

  Giambi glanced up at him. “She turned you easily enough.” He shook his head. “I knew setting you up with him was a damn mistake. In the end, no matter how hard you work, what you accomplish, how much wealth you accumulate, it all goes to the young.”

  “Would you take it with you if you could?” JD asked.

  “No. I got a kid can make use of it. She’s fighting the French government over this policy of destroying small vineyards to keep the prices up. Kills the little growers and helps the big boys.”

  “The way of the world,” JD said.

  “Yeah, well with some serious money she can put up a fight.”

  “I’ll take you to your daughter,” Beth said. “But we’re going to have to get out of here very soon.”

  “All I have to do is sign some papers.”

  Beth followed Giambi back to his office, where he said he had something he wanted her to see.

  She was excited. This man had her in the palm of his hand and she would do everything in her power to protect him. He was the most important person in the world to her right now.

  Giambi opened his safe and took out a large red leather case. He sat it on the desk.

  “I have had, for almost as long as I’ve been in this business, what I call my relocation package.”

  Beth remembered a similar package. Only her father called it their getaway pack. He’d had pictures, cash, a few gold coins, birth certificates, other papers. He’d never used it. Never had the chance, as Giambi did now.

  He showed her bearer bonds, jewelry, cash, and fake IDs. “My daughter gets the bonds, je
welry, cash. I’ll keep the fake IDs.”

  He’d pulled out an envelope from his red leather case and was looking at some photos.

  “This is my daughter. Kaya. Somebody told me that in one of the African dialects is means ‘don’t go back,’ or ‘don’t die.’”

  “It’s a beautiful name,” Beth said as she took the picture. The girl had those great African features, high cheekbones, broad, exquisite face. “She’s stunning. How old is she now?”

  “She would be thirty-four now. That was taken when she was twenty-four. I didn’t even know she existed until her mother got sick and sent me a letter and these pictures. I didn’t believe it at first. I sent some men to get a sample of her DNA.”

  “You sent some men?”

  He shrugged. “I guess that wasn’t the best way to do things. They got some hair samples. They didn’t do anything to her, just got in the house in Paris and took some from her hairbrush.”

  “Broke in to her house.”

  “Well, yes. Anyway, they proved out. I tried to help her mother but it was too late for that. She died from cancer. I wrote a letter to Kaya with money in it to cover the expenses. I told her who I was and that I’d make sure she didn’t have financial problems. I’ve been sending money every month for the past fifteen years. But she doesn’t take it. She sends it to some foundation for kids with AIDS in Africa. Now she’s in a fight to keep her small vineyard and she needs help herself. I just don’t want her to continue to reject me.”

  “She can’t reject what she never knew.”

  Giambi glanced over at her. That seemed to sting him.

  “You’re a stranger,” Beth said. “Nothing more than the sperm donor.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. She owes me nothing.”

  “Is Kaya married?”

  “She was married for a while to this Frenchman who ran a restaurant in Paris. He died in a small plane crash two years before the mother died.”

  “You call her ‘the mother.’ That’s kind of cold. She didn’t have a name?”

  “Iniko. It’s Nigerian. She was a beautiful woman. I only knew her over a couple of weeks in Paris. She was a singer and dancer. One of those flings.”

  Giambi put the picture of his daughter in his case.

  “You’ve never seen your daughter in person?”

  “Once. From a distance. She owns land worked by a vintner. She sells their wines in a shop in town. One day I drove into town, stopped and had breakfast at this restaurant across the street from her shop. She came outside once to talk to a woman. Very tall girl. Beautiful.”

  “You didn’t try and talk to her?”

  “No.”

  “So, why now?”

  “I may not get a chance again. I guess I just want to give her a chance to ask me whatever she might want to ask. Or not. I want to see who she is, for her to know I wanted to make a connection even if she doesn’t want to know me. No reason she would, except to see her genes are good.”

  Beth thought he looked a little nervous just talking about it, like a man facing the guilt of having made a big—and at the time, self-serving—mistake.

  He had a pile of pill bottles on the table. When he saw her looking at them he said, “My fountain of youth. Vitamins, testosterone, DHEA. You name it, I take it. My joie de vivre.”

  “Seems to be working.”

  “So far.”

  He packed his pills in the case along with jewelry, several stacks of hundred-dollar bills, personal papers. He cleaned out his office, shredding paperwork he didn’t want to go with him. He had some notebooks in the safe that he put in his case.

  She said, “As a precaution, it’s best that nobody on your staff knows what you’re doing, or where you’re going. Especially anyone who might have had access to your office and computer.”

  “Nobody had access when I wasn’t there. Until you came along.”

  “That’s not true. JD knew what to do and if he’d had motive he would’ve had access. How about Vincenzio? If I got in here as easily as I did, he could have as well. And he knows the business of security even better than I do.”

  Giambi bit his lip as he considered that. Then he shrugged. He seemed ready to believe the worst about everyone at this point.

  He began going through the drawers of his desk, taking out things that mattered to him. “I made the stupid assumption that it’s a lot easier to keep secrets from the outside than from the inside, that I could control those around me by what I knew about them. I may have been wrong.”

  “You may have been outbid in that department.”

  He gave her a look, and a knowing nod. “I knew you were somebody special, but I didn’t know what that meant. Now I do. It’s funny, but you, the stranger with the agenda, the one who destroyed my world when you broke in to it, are the one I’m forced to trust.”

  “I’m sorry it has to work out like that. I had no way of knowing that my penetration of your computer files would be picked up by somebody else lurking on your system, watching your every move.”

  “If you had known you’d be detected, would that have stopped you?”

  “No. But I would have approached it differently. In the end, I had to track down your blackmailer and if there was no way to avoid detection, then it had to be.”

  “You think that’s where the attacks are coming from?”

  “I don’t know. Could be from any of your three biggest enemies. Or, as you suggested, from someone who is going to take over your little empire. You’ve lived a long life. Plenty of time to produce a plethora of benefactors to your demise.”

  He laughed. “You’re right about that. Have a drink with me.”

  They walked out onto the balcony. Beth glanced around at any buildings that might have a view.

  Giambi said, “What are you looking for? Snipers?”

  “Certainly. People want you dead. If they’re willing to go after you in your car or your chopper, they’ll do it here. Maybe we should stand over there where nobody has a shot. You’re in a good spot. The prince could probably get you from his place, but I don’t think he’d use a sniper.”

  “My keeper.”

  “That’s what I am now. I’m not leaving you alone for a minute. From this point on, they’ll have to go through me to get to you.”

  Giambi made drinks at the small bar.

  He sat down and they clinked glasses. “To better days,” she said.

  “I think my better days are back there in the dust. I’ll drink to you finding your father’s killer and getting on with your life.”

  She thanked him for that, then said, “Where exactly does your daughter live?”

  “Between Lorgues and Draguignan. Really pretty country there.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Beth said, “I’m going to take you to see her, no matter what.”

  They drank in silence for a few minutes, just looking at the view.

  “I was in Vegas a lot in the sixties,” Giambi said, breaking the quiet. “I knew Benny Binion when he regained control of the Horseshoe Casino. Had to have his kids run it because he was a convicted criminal. Tax evasion. Strange to think that the poker tournament he started is what it is today. Your father was involved in the Horseshoe’s poker tournaments before you were born.”

  “He loved those days. He talked about them a lot.”

  “It was basic and real then. Ted ran things. Math genius. But he got into women and drugs and let it all slip away. Got himself barred from the casino forever. You go to the trial?”

  “No. It was all over the news at the time, though. You couldn’t avoid it.”

  “Yeah. When Ted Binion died, like Stu, they put it down as an overdose. In his case, Xanax and heroin. Of course that was before the police caught his partner trying to dig up Binion’s buried treasure, something like six tons of silver Horseshoe casino chips.”

  “And rare coins.”

  “Stacks of money and over a hundred grand in rare coins.”

  She remembered
it had kicked off one of the most famous murder trials in Vegas history. It involved Binion’s girlfriend and her lover, the former partner. They were convicted. Then the conviction for murder was overturned and they got sent up on burglary charges. It went on for years.

  She enjoyed listening to Salvatore talk about those early years and the great poker tournaments long before the rest of the country knew about Texas Hold ’Em. It had been a more innocent time for her dad as well.

  “About the only guy from that time still playing on the world tour is Doyle Brunson.”

  “My dad called him the Babe Ruth of the game. He made a table with him once and got beat by him. He said it was the best loss he ever had.”

  Giambi laughed. “If you’re gonna get beat, get beat by the best.”

  “That was the year he won the tournament with the Brunson ten two.”

  Giambi studied her. “So, when you’re not out here doing whatever you’re doing, you still a rounder?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll be going the rounds ’til I can’t get around. It’s my passion. And I intend to see the ladies rise to the top.”

  “Maybe you.”

  “No. I stay out of the limelight. I’ll leave that up to Annie Duke and Lynette Chan.”

  They were silent for a long moment. It occurred to her that he might not know anything and was just using that as a means to guarantee that he would get to see his daughter. She needed to probe a little deeper, find out if he was actually trying to bluff her.

  “Look. I don’t like being disappointed. I know the information I want is your hole card, but I’m good to my word. You can lie, but you have to look me in the eye when you do. I’m really good at being able to find the truth. I know you didn’t come out of Vegas, and haven’t been there much. Maybe you don’t really know anything.”