by Grant Mccrea
I know I do. I’ve thought this through. Is it a deal?
Rick, said Butch.
Ye s, Detective?
I know what you’re doing.
You do?
Sure. And so do you.
Just what might that be, Detective Butch?
You’re going to play poker. And use this outfit shit to pretend you’re doing something productive.
Damn, Butch, I said. Now I know why they promoted you.
He gave me a small bow.
So anyway, I said. Say that’s true. Anything wrong with it?
Nope.
So is it a deal?
Butch put his elbows on his knees. Lowered his head. I watched his scalp twitch.
Well? I said.
I got some vacation coming, he said, his head still down.
That’s a yes, I said.
Yeah, that’s a yes, he said, lifting his head and smiling his big Butch smile. You crazy bastard.
Deal, Brendan?
For sure, he said.
It was a deal.
3.
I CALLED MY SHRINK. I needed her permission for the Vegas trip.
She was sitting on her recliner, as always. I sprawled facing her on the matching leather couch, also as always. She was wearing some kind of loose neo-hippie pantaloon item. Clunky sandals. And a billowy blouse thing of indeterminate but definite ethnicity. Her hair was graying, in that nice Upper East Side way. Made you feel comfortable.
What she lacked in style, she made up in compassion.
Which is what I was paying for.
Sheila, I said.
I liked to call her by her first name. I knew it bugged her. She liked to keep the proverbial professional distance. It was the only liberty I took with her, though. She was the best. And I needed all the help I could get. I couldn’t afford to alienate her.
Yes? she said without a trace of disapprobation.
I’m going to Vegas.
You’re going to Vegas.
Yes. I need your permission.
You don’t need my permission.
Yes I do.
You don’t. You’re an adult. You don’t need anyone’s permission.
My daughter’s?
Kelley? She’s in college. You don’t need her permission.
Maybe not. But I need yours.
No, you do not.
Yes I do, I insisted. I mean, do you think it’s all right?
Is what all right?
I explained The Outfit thing. My new life. The World Series of Poker.
I do have some concerns, she admitted.
That’s more like it, I said.
I thought we were making some progress.
I agree.
How long will you be gone?
Just a week or two. Maybe. It depends. We need to qualify for the Main Event first. The entry fee is ten thousand bucks. Ridiculous. But they have these mini-tournaments, satellites, they’re called. You can buy in small, a hundred bucks. Work your way up to a thousand-dollar table. Win that one, you have your entry fee. Or they have these mega-satellites. Small buy-in, huge field. You go there early, before all the pros get there. It’s all tourists. Easy. I did it last year.
Perhaps we can talk by phone while you’re there.
Sure. I like that. You can’t see me twitch.
She laughed softly.
But, she said.
But.
But the obvious. We’ve made some progress. You’ve been moderating some of your self-destructive behavior. You know the drill. You’re supposed to avoid temptation. New stresses. Big changes. It sounds like this is all of those.
I can handle it, I said. It’s only a couple of weeks, probably. Listen, I’m different, you know. I can do anything I put my mind to. I can do this.
Of course you can. Everything is possible. I don’t want to deny you that. But why take the chance?
Because I love to take chances?
You’re doing it again.
Yes, I know, I know. Using humor to evade dealing with the real issues. With reality. Yes. Of course. But I really can do this.
You’re an adult, Rick, she said.
I knew that wasn’t true.
But I took it as permission anyway.
If she was going to call me an adult, she’d just have to live with the consequences.
4.
TWO WEEKS BEFORE VEGAS. We decided to bone up, play the toughest games in town. Brendan and I went to Fast Vinnie’s. Vinnie—that wasn’t his real name, of course—was a short, scrawny guy with a thick accent of some indeterminate kind, a pockmarked face, greasy receding hair. Always in motion. He talked up a streak. Half the time you couldn’t understand a thing. That’s why they called him Fast.
The game was in a two-story apartment in a brownstone on the Upper East Side. The place was pretty nice, as illegal poker joints go. There were only two tables, one downstairs and one up. And they weren’t the usual cheesy articles that guys who run games in New York City always seem to have—shaky aluminum-tube things with felt that comes off in clumps under your fingernails. They were good solid oak tables. And Vinnie always had a couple hot ladies there to serve drinks, order in food or run to the corner store for smokes. And good dealers. Fast and efficient.
The only problem with Vinnie’s game was there was usually a bunch of Russians there. Now, I’ve got nothing against Russians in general. But these guys, I don’t know. You hear about the Russian mafia. If these guys weren’t the Russian mafia, there isn’t any Russian mafia.
There was Vitaly. Mr. Dumpling. Razor-cut hair with a bald spot, shaved up too far in the back, every part of his face—nose, chin, cheeks, ears—looking like another pair of chubby ass-cheeks. Never saw the guy smile, or say a word in English other than raise, check, fold. This was the guy, you figured, did the dirty work. And there were these two guys, Anatoly and Andrei. Always seemed to be there. Anatoly was tall and thin. Wore leather vests and a soul patch. Andrei was short and round. Smoked small cigars. His fingernails bitten to the bone. They were always sitting next to each other at the table, nudging and mugging and talking in Russian between hands.
You wanted to complain about it, but you couldn’t. An English-only rule applies when you’re involved in a hand. Standard practice, to prevent collusion. But when you’re not in the hand, you can speak Esperanto if you want.
Of course, guys don’t have to talk to each other to cheat. You can spot it, sometimes, when it’s badly done. Hand signals: place your fingers on the left side of your face, you have an Ace in your hand, like that. Or series of coded signals. Like the baseball manager signaling the third-base coach to signal the hitter. But that kind of stuff’s not easy to get away with, in a good game. Good players, they’re always watching you for the slightest tell, the smallest change in your regular pattern. More effective, you can shuffle your chips in a certain way, place them on your cards in precoded patterns. Upper left, you’ve got a pocket pair. Lower right, you’ve got rags. Whatever. Endless variations.
There are those who say that two guys colluding once in a while at a full table can’t really change your results that much. But tell that to the guy who gets soaked out of a couple grand when his big bluff doesn’t work, because Anatoly knows from Andrei that the scare card the guy’s representing—the Ace of hearts on a four-heart board, say—was in Andrei’s since-mucked hand. It doesn’t have to happen that often to put a serious dent in your profit rate. Not to mention your mood.
I watched Anatoly and Andrei, behind my wraparound shades. But if they were doing something, they were doing it well. There was nothing I could pin on them. They just had that air about them. They found each other very amusing. But only in Russian. In English they were stone-faced.
They bugged my ass.
Brendan got along fine with the Russkies, though. Brendan got along fine with everybody. That innocent air of his made everybody want to like him. It helped that it also made them think he couldn’t play poker.
The savvy guys figured out soon enough he could play pretty damn good. But the fish would put it down to luck. And you want to be nice to the fish. Don’t tap the aquarium.
Evgeny was another Russian guy in the game. A different kind of Russian. Evgeny was a fish. And he wasn’t just another fish, another guppy or goldfish. Not even a tuna. Evgeny was a big, special kind of fish. The biggest, best kind of fish. A whale. A fish with a lot of money. Dead money, you called it. You could latch on to a whale, buddy up to him, get him to play your table regular, you could live off the guy for years.
Everybody loves a whale. The casinos have a whole troupe of whale handlers. Guys paid to make the whales feel comfortable, wanted, loved, respected. Keep them coming back.
Evgeny embodied the role. He weighed maybe four hundred pounds. Had to extend his arms straight out over his belly to reach his chips. Drank vodka ostentatiously from a silver flask that never seemed to be empty. Loved to splash his chips around. Talked with a magnificent Yiddish-Russian accent.
Loveable, really. He was a loveable Yiddish-Russian fat rogue whale kind of guy.
So Brendan and I sit down. Brendan’s in the four seat, four to the left of the dealer, next to Anatoly and Andrei in two and three. I’m in seven. I like the seven seat. It’s right where the table curves back around to form the short side. You get a good view of all the players, but you’re not right in the center of things. You can lay low there, without missing any of the action.
First hand, Vinnie makes a huge raise preflop. Evgeny re-raises five times Vinnie’s bet. Vinnie laughs, tosses in three stacks of black chips. Six thousand dollars.
The flop comes Queen, Eight, Three rainbow—three different suits, widely spaced; no need to worry about flush draws. No open-ended straight draws out there either.
Evgeny instantly announces a pot-sized bet, gets up from his chair. Which is not as simple as it sounds. His arms barely reaching beyond his belly, he can only push his chair back a few inches. Then he executes a practiced wriggle or two to get back far enough to release the rest of his paunch from beneath the table. Once he’s up, he teeters there for a second or two. Like a lot of fat men, he has small feet. Or maybe they just looked small at the bottom of those tree stump legs. There’s that small dick thing, too, isn’t there? Fat man, small dick? But maybe it’s just a perceptual thing. A camel looks tiny next to a mastodon. I’m guessing. Never seen that.
All in, says Vinnie, without pausing a second. Evgeny leans over, braces himself against the table, says Call, and turns over Seven, Three off suit, with a big cheerful laugh. Nothing but a pair of Threes. Vinnie looks at him, mouth open, slowly turns over a Jack, Nine off suit for … nothing. No pair. Not even a draw. But a Jack hits the turn, and Vinnie suddenly has a better pair than Evgeny’s. Vinnie leaps, turns a circle, cackling. Evgeny smiles in his good-natured way, shrugs his massive shoulders. A Seven hits the river. Oops. Two pair for Evgeny. Vinnie stops, stares, looks at Evgeny, who’s laughing so hard we’re all worried he’s going to bust open like a split fish.
I can’t believe you did that, says Vinnie.
Me? You got to be kiddink, Veenie, says Evgeny as the dealer pushes the massive mound of chips his way. I know you, Evgeny says. You can so every time have nothink.
That’s it, says Vinnie, throwing up his arms. I’m giving up poker. I mean it. Forget it. That’s my last hand, ever.
The dealer starts shuffling for the next hand. Vinnie looks around. Sees nobody’s paying attention to him. He sits down, looks at the two cards he’s been dealt.
Chips! he yells out.
How much? calls Internet Mike from the kitchen.
Internet Mike ran chips for Vinnie. He was called Internet Mike because he used to have a job in the Internet, back before it became the Internet. He didn’t have a job anymore. The technology had outrun his cerebral capacity. He had a crack habit for a while. His hair fell out. His teeth rotted. But he could still count to a thousand. Ten thousand. Fifty, in a pinch. So he ran chips for Vinnie.
There were worse lives.
Ten thousand, Vinnie calls back. Jesus Christ, he says, turning back to Evgeny, you are a sick bastard.
Sure, Vinnie, smiles Evgeny. But I know how to haff a good time.
Evgeny could afford to be a whale and laugh it off. Rumor was he was in the phony passport business, stuff like that. He never ran out of cash. Loved to take your money, but just as easily gave it away.
About two hours in, Brendan and I are limping along, not winning any big pots, not losing any. I’m second from the big blind. I still have about the amount I bought in for. I look down at Ace, Queen of diamonds. I just call. Unlike a lot of donkeys out there, I don’t think Ace, Queen is that good of a hand in early position. It’s a very vulnerable hand. Like Mike Tyson: looks strong, usually loses.
There are a couple of other callers, including Brendan and Evgeny, and the flop comes with a Queen and two rag diamonds. Nice for me. I have a pair of Queens, with the top kicker, the Ace.
The guy to my right is Won Ton John, a middle-aged guy who reportedly owns a Chinese restaurant. If he does, he must have a cousin running it for him, Sesame Noodle Sam or somebody, because nobody ever sees Won Ton do anything but play poker. He has the shades and a wispy Fu Manchu, and he’ll bet Nine, Four off suit from any position, if he’s in the mood. You have to watch out for him.
Won Ton puts his chin in his hands and thinks a bit. I’m not fooled. The last time Won Ton John thought about an action before committing it was in the Nixon administration. Anyway, after a little of the Hollywood he bets out $120, and I flat call. Everyone else folds to Evgeny, who calls. So there are three guys in the hand, $485 in the pot. The turn comes a lovely diamond Ten. I have the nut flush, and the board isn’t scary at all. Not only that, I’m in a hand with two maniacs. So I check, figuring one of them to bet for sure. But Won Ton checks, and Evgeny checks behind him. Shit. But hey, that’s poker. You can’t be right all the time.
The dealer lays out the last card, the river. A blank. A nothing card. A card that can only have helped them improve to a good-enough hand to put some more money in the pot for me. Not one that can beat me. I know I’m good. I bet $400. Nonchalantly. I want it to look like I’m trying to steal the pot.
Won Ton John raises it to $1,200. Oh Lord in heaven, I say to myself. Does it get any better than this? Please, Evgeny, do your Evgeny thing. Go all in.
Which is exactly what he does. It takes him a long time. He thinks. He ponders. He riffles his chips. He looks at Won Ton John. He looks at me. He has a mammoth pile of chips. Slowly, ever so slowly, he slides them two inches forward. Which is about as far as his stubby arms will allow.
Call, I say immediately.
Won Ton John folds.
Evgeny doesn’t look happy.
As the last aggressor, Evgeny has to show his cards first. He turns over two small pair, laughing. He knows he’s beat.
That’s when I make a mistake. An elementary mistake. But a big fucking mistake. The worst kind of mistake. Way worse than bluffing a fool. Or calling a Shark on the river with top pair and a medium kicker. Far worse than that.
No, I make the mistake of disrespecting Evgeny.
You lose! I call out in my excitement, turning over my flush and slamming the cards to the table.
Right away I knew I’d blown it. A guy who’s just lost a huge pot is not a happy guy, good loser or not. He can see the goddamn cards. Evgeny didn’t even need to see the damn cards. He knew he was beat as soon as I called his all in. He didn’t need me telling him the result. And he certainly didn’t need me doing it with a slam and a bang.
His laugh froze. It was replaced by a Look. Narrowed eyes. Cheeks deflated. He tucked his chin into his chins. It was a Look I hadn’t seen from him before. He pushed his chips ever so slowly an inch to the left, towards me, with his pudgy pink hands.
I noticed the French manicure.
Hey, Evgeny, I said, trying to salvage the moment. Sorry. I didn�
�t mean it that way.
Is okay, he said quietly. Is okay.
He didn’t mean that, either.
I couldn’t stay in the game after that. The table got cold. No more crazy betting with mediocre hands. No more joking and banter. I’d chilled out the whole joint. I felt like a total jerk. I took Brendan aside. Talked him into leaving early.
It wasn’t easy. At the poker table, Brendan was in his element. His insecurity didn’t count. The game had rules. There was always something to anticipate: your next two cards. There was always banter of some sort. Even if you weren’t included, you could listen, laugh, make a remark from time to time. It didn’t strain your social abilities. And like I said, he could play the game. There wasn’t anything else in life he could do as well.
So I waited awhile, until Brendan got his jones fixed. He got up a few grand. I talked to the waitress. Tara said she was a refugee from Vietnam. She looked too young for that. Hell, she was too good-looking. You’re a refugee, you’re supposed to look, I don’t know, lost or something. Tara looked like she was rented from some modeling agency. So I wasn’t sure I believed her.
But it didn’t matter.
5.
WE FLAGGED A CAB AROUND MIDNIGHT.
It smelled of cabbages and mold.
Hey, I said to the cabbie, Ukraine?
Yeah, he said. How you know?
I don’t know, I said. Just a vibe I got.
I was about to get into the proper pronunciation of ‘pierogies’—I had a Ukrainian girlfriend once who told me it was ‘pair-eh-heh,’ but nobody ever believed me—when Brendan interrupted.
They invited me to the Brighton Beach game, he said.
Who invited you?
Anatoly and Andrei.
You’re not going, are you?
Of course, man. That’s a great game.
That’s a great place to get your kneecaps busted. Come on. The stakes are too high for you. And those guys are ruthless bastards. Didn’t you hear about MIT Dave?
I’m not MIT Dave.
Well, that much was true. MIT Dave was an arrogant little prick who hung out at the big games in town. He got the moniker because he was reputed to once have audited a class at MIT. If he had, it wasn’t in hygiene. He was a weedy little guy with thick glasses and a smell of desperation. Wore an ancient Red Sox cap. Said he got it from his father, that he used to have a father, and didn’t any more. The cap reminding him of the days at Fenway. Popcorn and hot dogs and Carl Yastrzemski. Okay, maybe Carl was before his time. Anyway, he always had the cap.