“Slow it down, Cletus,” I said.
“No, no, big mon. We take it to them with tongs,” he said. “We need Rydel in custody. Just go with the flow.”
He knocked back the rest of his Jack and finished his glass of beer. He touched at his mouth with a paper napkin, his face blooming, his eyes lit with a dangerous alcoholic shine.
He went into the men’s room and minutes later came back out, a paper towel folded in his right hand. He located himself behind Bobby Mack Rydel and the woman with white-gold hair. While the dealer put down the flop, Clete placed the folded paper towel between Rydel and his girlfriend, deliberately dropping the two shiny purple- and-black square packets it contained on the floor.
“Oh, gee, I’m sorry,” he said. He bent over and picked up the packets, then replaced them under the paper towel, first making sure that everyone saw them. “I think they’re what you wanted-those hard-ribbed ones, right?”
Rydel used his elbow to rake the two packs of condoms off the table, back onto the floor, never even looking at Clete. Even more dumbfounding was the fact that hardly anyone else at the table paid attention to Clete’s behavior.
Clete shifted gears and went into another mode. He studied the three communal cards that were faceup on the felt, his thumb and forefinger on his chin. “That’s too bad. You should have gotten out before the flop. Looks like you’re screwed, Bobby Mack,” he said.
That did it. Rydel removed his hat and hung it by its leather chin cord on the back of his chair. Then he twisted around so he could see Clete more clearly. His eyes were lead-gray, his sideburns neatly etched, the skin around his mouth drained of blood. “Who are you?” he asked.
“You don’t remember me?” Clete said.
“No, I never saw you before in my life.”
“You remember Courtney Degravelle?”
“No, I don’t. You got me mixed up with someone else.”
The head of security had walked up behind Clete. He was a retired St. Mary Parish sheriff’s detective by the name of Tim Romero. He had salt-and-pepper hair and was dressed in a blue sports coat, knife-crease gray slacks, and shined loafers. “Is there a problem here?” he said.
“Not with me,” Clete said. “But this guy here is on the grift. I already reported him at the door. If he hasn’t switched out cards on you yet, he will.”
“Do you mind stepping over to the bar with me?” Romero asked.
“No, I don’t mind. But that guy is a griffin and his partner there, the guy with the waxed head, is a pervert.”
“That’s it, Mr. Purcel, you either come with me or you’ll be escorted from the casino.”
Clete raised his palms. “You want creeps at your tables, that’s your choice. Tell you what, call your colleagues in Atlantic City or Vegas about these two guys and see what kind of feedback you get.”
I cupped one hand on Clete’s shoulder and looked at Romero. “He’s okay. We’re going to get a cup of coffee,” I said.
“If you say so, Dave. But don’t make me regret I took this job,” Romero said.
Clete and I went to the bar and immediately he ordered a Jack and a beer back.
“Clete-”
“Trust me,” he said. “We’re going to nail those guys. We just need to twist the screw a little tighter.”
“I think we’re firing in the well,” I said.
“Wrong,” he said.
He sipped from the shot glass and touched at his mouth with the back of his wrist, his stare riveted on Rydel’s face. Rydel glanced up at him, then back at his cards. Then he looked up again. Clete’s stare stayed on his face. Rydel fitted his hat back on and slanted the brim down like a man keeping the sun’s glare out of his eyes.
I got out my cell phone and walked to a quiet place at the end of the bar. I scrolled down to Betsy Mossbacher’s cell number and punched the “Call” button.
Please pick up, Betsy, I thought.
“Dave?” she said.
“Can you run a dude by the name of Bobby Mack Rydel? I need it right now.”
“What’s going on?”
“Come on, Betsy, help me out. I think I’ve got a house fire here.”
I don’t know how she did it but she did. My suspicion was she or a colleague dipped into an intelligence file. By my watch, it took less than four minutes for her to call back.
“You’ve got a live one,” she said. “Rydel was in Force Recon in the Marine Corps, attended jump school at Benning, and was kicked out with a dishonorable discharge after he was charged with rape in Japan.”
Clete had walked over to the slot machines, not far from the card tables, and had positioned himself where he could look directly into Rydel’s face. Each time Rydel looked up, Clete was grinning at him, smacking his gum, his big arms folded on his chest.
“He ran a training school for mercenaries in the Florida Panhandle and was probably mixed up with mercs in Mozambique in the eighties,” Betsy said. “He has a seventh-degree belt in karate. He beat a man to death in Miami and got off because the victim was armed and Rydel was not. Are you getting this?”
“Yeah, I’m right here,” I said.
Rydel had just bet heavily into a large pot, trying to ignore Clete and keep his eyes focused on the game, waiting for the final cards to be turned up by the dealer.
“Rydel is on a watch list in France. Interpol thinks he may be involved with arms smuggling. He may have been with the Contras briefly, but for sure he’s worked all over Africa,” Betsy said.
Rydel raised the bet, pushing three stacks of chips into the center of the felt. A black man in a purple suit with rings on all his fingers called and raised. Rydel called and raised again, pushing out the last of his chips. The black man shrugged and called the raise, yawning either out of confidence or perhaps acceptance that he had gotten in over his head.
“Here’s the last of it,” Betsy said. “He’s been a contract security employee for several companies operating in the Mideast. His specialty is thought to be interrogation. Don’t ask me to do this again.”
The communal cards the dealer had dealt faceup in the center of the felt included an ace of spades and an ace, king, and jack of hearts. Rydel turned over his hole cards, an ace of diamonds and an ace of clubs. The two aces from the flop gave him four of a kind, an almost guaranteed winner.
The black man grimaced as though he had just bitten down on an abscessed tooth.
“I catch a hand like that about once every six months,” Rydel said.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Me, too,” the black man said.
He turned over his hole cards, a ten and queen of hearts. With the ace, jack, and king from the communal cards, he was holding a royal flush, the best hand in poker.
Clete began wheezing with laughter, his folded arms bouncing up and down on his chest. He passed by Rydel’s chair, slapping him hard on the back. “Tough luck,” he said. “If you need a credit line, forget it. This is a class joint. They don’t take food stamps.”
You could hear him laughing all the way to the men’s room.
Rydel sat for about thirty seconds staring into space, his hands splayed on his thighs, perhaps counting up the number of instances his attention had been distracted from the game by Clete’s ridicule.
He said something in the ear of the woman with the white-gold hair. She wore a white knit dress full of eyelets and her breasts hung as heavy as cantaloupes in her bra. Her eyes were lifted toward the ceiling, fluttering as Rydel spoke. I had a feeling this was not the kind of evening she had bargained for. I also realized I had seen her before.
Rydel got up from the table and followed Clete into the men’s room.
“Hello? Are you still there?” Betsy said.
“I’m here,” I said.
“Where?” she asked.
“In deep shit,” I replied.
