by Grant Mccrea
The other way is the rope-a-dope. You get a monster, a pair of beautiful Aces, you just call. The flop brings another Ace, he bets, you just call again. He keeps betting, you keep calling. What’s he got? Ace, King, probably. Or Kings, or Queens, and he thinks you’re on a draw. Or air. He’ll play air like this. And on the river, there’s no flushes on board, no pairs that could make a full house for him. There’s a straight out there, but not something he’s likely to have. So when he bets again, you come over the top.
Of course, you can’t be too obvious about it. You’ve got to mix it up. The guy’s no fool. He’ll pick up on it if it’s all you do. But since you’ll use both of these techniques with big made hands as well as draws, it’ll be hard for him to read you. He’ll have to keep betting. He doesn’t want to give you a free card if you’re on the draw.
That’s how you play a guy like Bruno.
The problem was, I found out, Bruno was also sick lucky. There are guys like that. You don’t want to believe it. You want to think it’s all random. The luck evens out in the end. I mean, you do know it. There’s no empirical doubt about it. Long term, the cards even out. But somehow, it seemed, Bruno lucked out more than his share.
So, we’re at the table a couple hours. Nothing much happening. Bruno’s doing his shoving and talking, laughing and dominating the table. With his chips, and with his outsized personality. I’m playing cagey. I’m staying out of his way. I pick up a few small pots from some of the others. Tight, selective, aggressive. Winning poker.
Everyone folds to me. I’m two off the button. I look down. A smooth, shiny black pair of Aces. The Grand Enchilada. The Holy Grail of poker hands.
I throw in three hundred bucks.
Vinnie mucks his hand. If I don’t double up soon, he says, somebody’s going to get hurt. Won Ton John folds, too. Everybody else folds to Bruno. He’s on the button. The best place to be. Last to act in every postflop betting round. He looks at me. Smug. Calls my three hundred.
The blinds fold.
I got you, I’m thinking. I got you this time, big guy.
The flop comes King of clubs, Ten of hearts, Six of hearts.
I don’t hesitate. If I hesitate, it’ll look like exactly what it is: Hollywood. I’m acting. I’m trying to look weak. As everybody knows from Poker Tells 101, weak means strong, strong means weak. So, seeing as how I don’t figure my adversary for more than a two-level thinker, I’m looking to do the reverse tell: fire out a grand without missing a beat. He’s got to figure there’s a good chance it’s a continuation bet: I was going to bet whether the flop hit me or not. I have to back up my preflop aggression. He knows that. Everybody knows that. And this flop looks good to me. Relatively uncoordinated cards. Two hearts, of course. He could have a flush draw. But the chances of Bruno having two more hearts in the hole are relatively small. And anyway, I bet enough that if he calls with the heart draw it’s going to be very expensive for him to try to hit it.
I’ll take my chances.
Bruno goes into the tank. He looks at his cards. He stares me down. He looks back at his cards.
It’s quite an act.
I’m not sure what it means.
Meanwhile, I’m doing my usual thing: staring at a spot on the felt. Immobile. Unreadable.
At least that’s the theory.
Bruno starts making little piles of black chips. I try not to salivate too visibly. He pushes out five piles. A five-thousand-dollar raise.
I’m all in, I say instantly.
This is the moment I’ve been setting up for hours. I know the guy’s a good player. I don’t let my distaste blind me to his skills. Most of the time, I stay out of his way. But at some point, I’ve been telling myself all night, I’m going to punish him. I’m going to look in his arrogant face and gloat. It’s going to be a very satisfying moment.
I push my whole stack into the middle. Slowly. It’s a big stack.
Oh shit, he says with a rueful smile. You got me. I call.
Damn, I think, that was way too gentlemanly.
Ruined the mood.
No hearts, I tell the dealer, who peels off the Ten of spades.
No more Tens, I say, louder. No more Kings, louder still. No hearts!
By now I’m yelling. I’m not embarrassed about it. Yet.
The river is … the King of clubs.
Bruno shrugs, turns over the King and Eight of hearts. Three goddamn Kings.
You fucking son of a bitch, I mutter.
I fling my now-pathetic Aces across the table. They bounce off the felt, hit the dealer in the chest. He shrugs, picks them up. Gives me a Look. The Look says, Do that again and I’ll be dealing you rags the rest of the night.
I know I’m making a fool of myself.
I can’t help it.
The dealer starts sweeping the mammoth pile of chips to Bruno.
If you look at it objectively, shit, the guy had fourteen outs. The nine remaining hearts. The two Kings. Three Sixes. Fourteen outs twice: once on the turn, again on the river. Jesus, the chances were almost exactly fifty-fifty. And anyway, that’s poker. Shit happens. You get sucked out on.
But I’d had him right where I wanted him. And he got away. The oversized prick. I slammed out the back door into the yard. Lit a cigarette. Cursed the Poker Gods.
The guys inside having a good laugh at my expense.
I didn’t care. I was too fucking mad.
14.
THE SECOND TIME I MET THE DISTRACTING MS. CHANDLER was at Bastone’s, a pasta joint in Little Italy. I was pretty sure it wasn’t her kind of place, but I liked the baked ziti, and I wasn’t going to take the chance that my esteemed client was going to invade Melissa’s space again.
Bastone’s was the kind of place that had a cheap bust of Julius Caesar on the wall, surrounded by five generations of Bastones, stiffly posed in elaborately framed pastel portraits. The even earlier Bastones were on the opposite wall, stiffly posed in black-and-white framed photographs.
All the waiters in the joint were in black tie. On the wainscoting by the table was a doorbell of the early sixties kind, a little brass hubcap with a Bakelite button, presumably installed when the place was new, to allow you to summon a waiter. Hadn’t worked since Rich Little was a big act. There seemed to be more wait staff than customers, anyway. The waiters, of course—Luigi and Pasquale and Giorgio and their kin—were lifers. Guys in their seventies and eighties who had worked their way up from busboy in the fifties and sixties. And never looked back.
The Vegas-style surveillance domes in the ceiling were the only modern touch, giving away—as if you hadn’t figured it out for yourself—the real provenance of the place, of the clientele. Although the world was changing, it seemed, seeing as how, looking around at the dozen or so customers, none of them appeared to have been born in Palermo or anywhere in the vicinity. Unless you counted the northern hemisphere as the vicinity.
After a bottle of Chianti, it didn’t seem important. If it ever had.
Something about the multiple angled mirrors from the corner table I’d finagled gave me a long-distance image of myself from a three-quarter rear view. My, I thought, you’re almost handsome, from that perspective. I resolved to sit three-quarters away from all future prospective conquests.
Ms. Chandler’s entrance had a way of unsettling things. She arrived with little ceremony but a great deal of impact. She was dressed in red this time. Not an insistent red. More of an autumn, leaf-turning, cooling red. Everything matched: the shoes, the purse, the look in her eye. And everything looked very, very expensive.
Mr. Redman, she said after a pleasantry or two, perhaps you have some initial thoughts?
Thoughts? I asked, turning myself to the three-quarter view. Ah, yes. About your sister. Well, I have to admit you haven’t given me a whole lot to go on.
There’s only so much I wanted to commit to paper.
Of course, I replied.
There are some other … complications.
I see. W
ell, I’d be happy to hear about them. But first—
Money, she said. You don’t have to worry about that.
I’m not worried, I said, pleased that she’d gotten my drift. At least, you seem like a person with resources. But I think we need to make sure that we’re on the same page. Now, this seems to be a missing persons case. I gather there are some complications, as you say. But it’s still a missing persons case. And frankly, Ms. Chandler, as much as I sympathize, missing persons cases tend to be rather, well, routine, shall we say. And it just strikes me that my, our, rates might be a little more than you would want to be paying, simply to track down your sister.
How do you mean, routine?
What I mean is, almost everybody in this day and age leaves a trail. Used to be called a paper trail. Now it’s electronic. Residence, driver’s license, credit cards, cell phone records, everything. And all of it’s in a computer somewhere. And you say she’d been ill. There are hospital records. Though those are hard to get. Privacy laws and all. But there are outfits that specialize in getting access to all those types of information. They do it very inexpensively. Because they specialize.
She recrossed her legs.
Volume, she said.
Yes, I replied, pondering those legs. Volume.
Well, thank you for that. As a matter of fact, it merely serves to increase my confidence in you. That you would tell me that. Not that it needed any increasing. If Mr. Kennedy recommends you, I know you’re good at what you do.
Well, thank you, Ms. Chandler …
But you needn’t be concerned. I’ve already tried that route, you see. I’ve had all the data mined.
Ah, I said. And?
Nothing.
Nothing?
Not a trace of her. Not since she moved to Nevada.
That’s very unusual.
So they tell me.
Hmm. Likely she changed her name, then. But her social security number would have brought something up. You did give them her social security number?
Of course.
And your letters weren’t returned.
That’s right.
Odd.
Yes.
Well, then. I guess we have some work to do. We’d be happy to do our best. Now, please understand that this is just routine, but—
You need a retainer.
She said it with a touch of amusement. The waiter arrived with her cosmopolitan. He had a large black growth like a sleeping rat on the side of his neck. I repressed a double-take. But if Ms. Chandler noticed, she wasn’t letting on. She took her drink with the same practiced smoothness that she did everything else.
Um, yes, I said. A retainer.
How much?
In spite of her charms, I didn’t really feel like getting tangled up in Ms. Chandler’s little family drama. First, it sounded fishy as hell. And even if it wasn’t fishy, it was probably going to get nasty. These family things always do. And, skin or no skin, her imperious manner was getting on my nerves. And I had poker to play. So if I was going to do it—if we were going to do it—it was going to have to be profitable.
One thing I need to tell you, I said.
Yes?
I’ll be going to Las Vegas shortly. And when I’m there, I’ll be playing a good deal of poker. It’s the World Series of Poker. So I won’t be spending full time on your case.
Mr. Redman, in the first place, I would assume that even if you didn’t have this … poker thing, you have other clients. I wouldn’t expect you to be devoting your every waking hour to my little problem. And the fact that you’ll be in Nevada anyway, she laughed a knowing laugh, well, it’s rather convenient, isn’t it? Which occurred to me when Mr. Kennedy told me you’d be there.
I made a note to tell Kennedy to keep his damn mouth shut.
Ah, I said, as though I’d known it all along. Of course.
I also have business in Nevada, she said.
You do?
Yes. I have some property interests.
I see.
So you will not be surprised if I mysteriously appear.
This seemed to be intended as a joke of sorts. I chuckled appreciatively.
So, she said. The retainer?
Twenty thousand, I said without thinking.
Fine, she replied without hesitation.
Oh my, I thought.
By wire transfer, I said. I’ll give you the account information.
I pulled over a napkin. Wrote it down.
Still she didn’t blink.
Fine, she said, folding the napkin neatly and placing it in her elegant red purse. You’ll receive it tomorrow.
Damn, I thought, is this how it works all the time? I could get used to this business.
Well, I said, perhaps we could talk a bit about the details.
Let’s do that, said Ms. Chandler.
She put the purse aside. Unbuttoned her jacket. The blouse beneath was silk, airy. Not exactly revealing, but, how to put it? Enticing.
At the next table were a couple of the regulars. Long Henry, given to poetic pronouncements and other non sequiturs, was trying to impress a middle-aged woman in a hippie-style dress that had seen a lot of days and nights in a lot of bars.
I used to be a professor, he said.
What happened? asked the woman.
She was fiddling with something in her macramé bag. After a while I realized it was a dog. Not one of those poofed-up little-old-lady dogs. Some mangy thing with red eyes.
Happened? asked Henry, seeming genuinely confused.
To your job, she said. As a professor.
Oh that, he said vaguely. I don’t remember.
Now, about this Russian fellow you mentioned? I asked Ms. Chandler. Were they married?
Are they married?
Sorry. I didn’t mean … I mean, I didn’t mean to assume, imply, I thought perhaps they were divorced. Or perhaps I meant, had they been married? I mean, I didn’t mean to say that she may have come to any harm.
Never mind, she said. No, she’s never been married. That I know of.
Was she living with him?
Not that I’m aware of. But I don’t know.
Still seeing him, last you heard?
Well, I don’t really know. She wasn’t, isn’t, in the habit of talking to me about her personal life. I don’t even remember how I know about him, to tell you the truth.
Do you remember his name?
Vladimir, I believe.
Last name?
I’m not sure I ever knew his last name.
Did she ever say they’d broken up or anything?
No. I don’t think so.
Okay. Well, normally we’d start with him. But we don’t even have a last name. I think somebody’s just going to have to go to the last address you have, ask around.
I’ve already paid somebody to do that.
I understand. I see. Yes. But you pay guys like us for a reason. Maybe we ask a few questions they forgot to ask, or in a different way, if you know what I mean. Ask somebody those guys didn’t think of asking. Follow stuff up. Those guys, they run a service. They have a checklist. They do the minimum. They cash your check. If someone’s … uh … trying to lay low, they’ll never find them.
All right. I understand.
Okay. Another thing. You mentioned that she’d been ill.
Yes.
And in your note, it said something about being allergic to sunlight?
Yes.
What did you mean by that?
I did not mean anything by that. That is what she told me. To tell you the truth, it has always puzzled me.
I can understand that. It puzzles me, too. I mean, wouldn’t you move to England, rather than the desert, if you were allergic to sun light? But we can do some research. Figure out what she could have been talking about.
I would appreciate that.
By the way, I was curious about one other thing.
Yes?
You asked if I had a gun.
T
hat seems to be a bit of a detour. From the job at hand.
Yes. Maybe. But it made me wonder. I mean, your sister is missing. She’s been ill. Nothing you’ve told me would make me think that there’s likely to be any danger in trying to track her down.
Ms. Chandler gazed at me a moment, a small smile at the corners of her mouth. She smoothed her hair. Looked away with a teasing air.
I was just curious, Mr. Redman. I’ve never dealt with a private investigator before.
I see.
But I like it that you asked. It gives one confidence. That you would notice something like that. Follow it up.
Well, thank you, I said. So, we’ll check out that address. Start there. As soon as we get to Las Vegas. I’ll check it out. Or one of my associates will.
The one with the pretty face?
The one with …
The fellow on the stairs. At your house.
Oh. Yes. Brendan. Probably. Do you have a problem with that?
Oh no, not at all. I assume he knows what he’s doing, if he’s with you. I’m sure you trained him well.
Oh, sure, I lied. You can count on Brendan.
Ms. Chandler was laughing.
It was rather disconcerting.
15.
MY EYES PEELED OPEN. I looked at my watch. Ten past noon.
I love an early start to the day.
I glanced through the mail. Anything that looked official meant I owed somebody money. I threw it out. Anything colorful, with pictures, was potential entertainment. Catalogs were fun. They could only take you so far out of your world, though. Eventually you had to get up, put on some clothes. Do something.
The phone rang.
Brendan.
Brighton Beach, he said. Six o’clock.
I don’t know, I said. I forgot about that.
What do you mean, you don’t know?
I pissed off Evgeny. He’ll be there, for sure. I’m not sure I’m comfortable going there when Big Daddy’s not happy with me.