Shot”), and then led me back into the strip club. I tried to give her a twenty but I swear (unbelievable, but it happened) she wouldn’t take it.
I probably could have bought a legit table dance from her at that point, but I’d had all I could take. I went and sat in the rear of the smoky, mirrored room, focused on fake tits and disco lights until my erection went down, then wandered back into the middle bar. No more beer for me. I asked for and got a Diet Coke.
It was almost one, and I had a game to play.
Chapter Seven
About the same square footage as the strip club’s V.I.P. lounge, the private poker room was tucked behind the Lucky Devil’s main bar, though with no access from there. And of course the way in from the casino was guarded by one of those ubiquitous bouncers on boxes.
You’ve heard of wall-to-wall carpeting-well, this room had carpeting on the walls, plush, cream-color stuff, much thicker than the more normal-pile (but same color) carpet on the floor. Matching built-in couches ran along all the walls except the one adjacent the parking lot, which had an exit-only door and, more prominently, a big black padded Naugahyde wet bar with black shelving heavy with booze on one side and a stereo set-up on the other. A busty little platinum blonde in the standard Lucky Devil black spandex minidress was tending bar (and the stereo); right now she was filling bowls with chips and pretzels and such, her big brown eyes having no more expression than her raccoon mascara.
The decor was less eccentric than practical-sound-proofing was the order of the day, or night anyway, and the low-slung ceiling tile was part of how this chamber could be so quiet in the thick of a club where each room was noisier than the last. The track lighting was subdued, but the big hexagonal table was the target of a Tiffany-style hanging lamp. Though the billiard felt was new, the table appeared old, its maple handrails showing wear, and the chip wells and drink-holders (despite fresh cork) had the look of a craftsman who’d operated long ago.
I was the first player to arrive, other than my host, a tall, slender guy in a lightweight white suit over a gray shirt and skinny white tie, very hip and New Wave, only his well-oiled Frankie-Avalon-circa-1958 pompadour undercut it. His hands were free of rings, but that was because he’d removed them before starting to shuffle, putting them in his drink well-gold rings encrusted with just a few fewer precious gems than the Maltese Falcon.
Jerry Giovanni, suspiciously tan for a Midwesterner-Florida trips, maybe, or tanning bed access-was almost handsome, a slightly horsier-looking John Travolta.
Pausing in his shuffling, holding the deck in his left hand, he got to his feet, extended a palm and said, “Jerry Giovanni. My friends call me Jerry G.”
I shook the hand. Firm. “Jack Gibson, Mr. Giovanni.”
He sat, smiled wide, the whiteness of his teeth against the tanned flesh just as startling as the similar effect Richard Cornell achieved, and gestured to the seat opposite him.
“We only have five players tonight, Jack. And call me Jerry G.”
“Okay, Jerry G.”
“So I was pleased to hear you were joining us. I asked Mandy to have you come in a little early.”
“Mandy?”
“Little blackjack dealer. Redhead. She likes you, Jack. I could fix you up. Kid can suck the chrome off a ’71 Caddy.”
“No, that’s okay. I can make friends on my own.”
He laughed with a snort, liking that, or pretending to. His eyes were too large for his face and a little close together; guess I already said he had a horsey look. But his snorting laughter emphasized it.
“No offense meant,” Jerry G said. “Good-looking fella like you, I’m sure you get more tail than Sinatra.”
“Maybe Sinatra now.”
He shuffled, did some show-off stuff doing the accordion bit with the deck. Not that smart a move from a guy doing all the dealing.
“You know the house rules, don’t you?”
“The house usually does.”
He snort-laughed again. “No, no, Jack, I mean, the rules of the house. Of this room. It’s a thousand-dollar buy in. We don’t play table stakes-you can go to your pocket any time. Checks are fine, even items like watches or jewelry, if the players are agreed as to value. But no IOU’s.”
“Cool.”
“I’m the banker, and I’m the dealer. And I play.”
“I heard about that. I can live with it. What do we play?”
He grinned nice and wide, yards of white teeth and miles of tan skin-this must have been the last thing Custer saw. “Dealer’s choice.”
I had to laugh. No snorting, though. “I wouldn’t mind having that defined a little better.”
“Obviously, no wild cards. I’ll choose between draw, five-card stud, seven-card stud, and Texas Hold ’Em. I like to mix it up.”
“Okay. I appreciate you taking the time to bring me up to speed like this.”
The smile settled down and the eyes seemed shrewd suddenly. “No problem, Jack. But that’s not why I wanted a few minutes with you.”
“All right. Why do you?”
He shuffled, but his eyes watched mine, not the cards. “You’re a stranger in town.”
What was this, Tombstone?
I said, “I would imagine a lot of ‘strangers’ come to Haydee’s Port.”
“But why did you?”
I didn’t answer right away.
He jumped on the silence. “One thing, Jack, a lot of people have tried to pull something on me, and on my papa. You know who my papa is?”
I nodded.
He paused in his shuffling to jerk a thumb upward, as if it were God he were referring to and not an old Mafioso. “Different kinds of cops have come here, do-gooders of various varieties, and it’s just never worked out for them.”
“I came to play poker.”
“You understand, we can play kind of rough, and I don’t just mean the cards. This isn’t a matter of me asking you if you’re a cop, and you saying yes or no or whatever, and we cover the entrapment ground. No. That river out there, it doesn’t discriminate between local or federal or reporter or just about anybody who tries to play us.”
I never really intended to pretend to be a salesman of vet supplies, at least not for longer than enough to get in the game, and then come clean later. But I could tell I needed to skip a step.
“My name isn’t really Jack Gibson,” I said.
“What is it then?”
“I haven’t told anybody that in a long time. I’ve used a bunch of names, and I’m using one right now, not Gibson, where I live. And I prefer to keep that private.”
“All right. I can understand that. What brings you to Haydee’s Port? To the Lucky Devil?”
“I used to do work for the Giardellis. I did quite a few jobs for them, usually through a middleman. I did one directly for Lou Giardelli, not long before he passed.”
He had stopped shuffling. He was studying me, eyes tight now, forehead creased, not exactly a frown. Not exactly.
“I came hoping to have a word with your father,” I said.
“About what?”
“Rather not say.”
“If it concerns my father, it concerns me.”
And that was when the first two of our fellow players arrived, and then another showed, and another, and
