I’ll pick you up in ten.
Man. You’ve got a serious Jones on.
I do. Come protect me from myself.
Okay. But I’m charging my usual rates.
No problem. I’ll take it out of my winnings.
I picked up Butch. We hit the road. I asked him to drive. I wanted to look at the pictures.
I figured we’d go to one of those new Indian reservation casinos. I’d never been to one before, but they were popping up everywhere. We could do our bit for the indigenous peoples, and scratch that poker itch.
I was pretty sure I knew which one was closest to the city, and what road to take. I wagered there’d be signs as we approached.
Once we were on the road I asked Butch if there were any developments in the Larry Silver case. That he could share with me.
Not really, he told me.
I pulled out the manila envelope. Looked at the crime scene photos. Offered them to Butch.
Nah, he said. Seen them before.
It was the usual grisly stuff. The left side of the kid’s face was caved in. Okay, right-handed perp. That really narrowed it down. I made a note to check Jules. We get lucky, he’s left-handed. Blood soaked down Larry’s shirt. Stopped and pooled at the belt-line. He was sitting down when he got whacked. Another interesting detail. Maybe. Nothing much else.
Murder weapon? I asked.
I’m not supposed to tell you that.
Come on, Butch. They find anything?
He didn’t respond.
I peered at the photos. Turned them this way and that. The wound was ugly. But symmetrical. Rounded. Narrower at one end.
Baseball bat? I asked.
Butch glanced at me. Didn’t say anything.
Baseball bat? I repeated.
He looked at me again. Winked.
I wasn’t sure what it meant.
There were signs for the casino, but it still took us hours to find the place. Once you got off the thruway you had to thread your way through rural roads and small towns, and in the end a forest. Twenty minutes of trees and the road opened up, and there it was: a string of behemoth casino buildings, stark, banal and insistent, in the middle of nowhere.
Not your father’s Indian reservation.
Inside, we navigated miles of not so tempting kitsch. Trinket shops, arcades, three zillion tacky restaurants and the usual array of glittering machines designed to take your money all night long. We found the poker room, way in the back. They didn’t want to advertise the game. The margins were too low. It was the only game you didn’t play against the house, which meant that though the take was regular – a small percentage of each pot was raked – it was not spectacular. Never would be.
Three in the afternoon. The few active tables were full of lifers. The yellow faces and stale banter of guys who’d played each other every night and day for years. Just keeping busy til some fish swam up.
Once I sat and played a hand they’d all converge like sharks on chum.
Butch had no fear. He sat down. Bought in for five hundred. Gave me the wink and the nod.
I, on the other hand, I told myself, am not that stupid.
I wandered back through noisy corridors. They beckoned me at every step to spend my hard-earned cash on things I didn’t want and needed less. Blow-up alien dolls. Ten-dollar plastic amulets. Tickets for the second coming of some washed-up third-rate crooner.
I resisted the temptations. I found the hotel desk. Checked in for a nap.
Butch was a big boy. He could take care of himself.
The elevator to the rooms was hard to find. They’d hidden it in a corner. Back behind the Indian trinket shop. They didn’t want you in your room. You couldn’t spend your money there.
The bed was hard. The TV didn’t work. There was no mini-bar.
I fell asleep.
I had a dream. I was pulling at my ear. The ear came off in my hand. I looked at it with curiosity. Turned it over in my hand. On the back were buttons. Ah, I thought, in my dream, so that’s how they’re attached.
I drifted slowly awake. I touched my ear.
It was there.
There were no buttonholes.
I had no idea what time it was. My watch said seven o’clock. Morning or evening, I wasn’t sure. The window in the room overlooked an atrium. No help there. Until I looked up. Skylights, black as pitch. Evening, then. A winter night in paradise.
I smoothed the creases from my suit.
40.
It seemed five miles to find the poker room again. I stopped for coffee and a Danish. The Danish was obscenely sweet, the coffee thin and odorless.
I found Butch. It wasn’t hard. He hadn’t left his seat. The table had become highly promising. Two guys in Hawaiian shirts and shorts, red-faced and pounding bourbon shots. One long-haired guy, steaming. Cursing every card as it was dealt. Guaranteed irrationality on tap. It’s what you dream of. A brace of young depressed compulsive losers there as well.
Heaven.
I sat down.
Deal me in, I said.
It was a five-ten limit game. Not huge, but you could win, or lose, enough to make you notice. I started slow, conservative. Taking time to educate myself about the players’ tendencies. Mr. Longhair jamming every pot with hope and desperation, trying to recoup his long-lost stake. The depressives on the other hand played slow. Agonizing over every bet. Tight and passive, they call it. Plum pickings. Any time you felt like taking their money, you just put in a big bet. If they didn’t have the nuts, they’d fold like origami. If they had the cards, they’d gleefully re-raise, their childlike excitement so apparent on their sallow desperate faces you’d have to be a brick to fail to notice.
Not to say there weren’t some good players at the table too. Butch. Me, maybe. A woman to my left. Small and feisty. I liked that. I liked the worn suede boots she wore, zipper on the side. I liked the tear in the knee of her jeans. I liked the hand-knit driving gloves, the crumpled visored khaki hat. I liked her large and succulent mouth, her watchful eyes. I liked that she chewed gum with unselfconscious vigor. That she threw her chips into the pot the same way.
With all the dead money at the table, it didn’t take long to double my stake.
Once I’d taken a couple of easy pots from the sallow pair of desperados, they wandered off to recoup at the slot machines.
I wished them luck.
I meant it.
I had a small rush.
Poker players live for the rush. The statistics guys tell you it’s all random. And yes, you can grasp that. But, like saying love’s a chemical affair, it might be true, but it doesn’t come close to describing what it’s like to be there. When you know, you just know, the next card will fill your boat. Full house. Give me your money. And the rush can run and run, hand after hand of mammoth cards in the hole and improbable draws on the end. Until, as
