In A Cold Sweat

House; eights full of aces. To you, Jackie.”

Jackie looked at the four hundred thousand dollars in front of her and was sure that it was hers. Very slowly, Jackie pushed forward her cards. “Ace of clubs, six of hearts. A higher full house.”

All eyes in the room were now on Harold Ware. He pushed his cards face down to the dealer. “Five and seven of spades. A straight flush, four to the eight. Mr. Ware wins.”

Jackie cursed and gathered together what was left of her chips. Jackie backed away from the table and stood up.

“You ain’t leavin’, are you, sweetie,” Harold said to her.

“Not as long as you got all that money sittin’ in front of you. You don’t have to worry. I’ll be back in a minute to take some of it,” Jackie assured him and headed for the bar.

The bartender had a shot of Hennessy waiting for her when she got there. Jackie didn’t like drinking at the table. She thought it was too much of a distraction. It was more important to stay focused. While she sipped her drink, Jackie tried to figure the odds on Harold Ware having a straight flush. Lately, she’d been giving a lot of thought to what Travis said about planning. If then else. Put simply, if this happens, then do this, if that ain’t workin’, what else can you do. Could she really apply that same logic to poker? Could she plan a game?

No. Playing poker was more a matter of probabilities, the chance that something is likely to happen and drawing conclusions about the likelihood of those events. The theory was something she would work on at some other time.

Right now, she had a mission, and she had no intention of blowing it. Black told her to keep an eye on Mylo for him and that’s what she was gonna do. During her little breaks from the game, Jackie had done her best, which wasn’t very good, to plant listening devices around the house. Most didn’t work at all, and those that did had a lot of static. When Jackie told Monika about it, she laughed and promised to come with her one night and clean up her work.

Jackie was about to return to the game when Frank Sparrow, the middleweight champion of the world, came through the door with two other men. The entire mood of the room changed at that moment.

In the short time that she’d been playing there, Jackie had heard all sorts of stories about Sparrow. He was a big-time poker player, who liked to throw around money and usually lost big every time he came in the place. Everybody was glad to see Frank Sparrow.

Sparrow had grown up in Black’s neighborhood and was loyal to Black for helping support his career. Jackie couldn’t wait to get him at the table and decided to wait until he sat down to reclaim her seat. In the meantime, she ordered another drink and sought out a spot to observe the champ and how Mylo, who had just come out of the office, interacted with him.

From her vantagepoint, Jackie watched Sparrow work the room. Talkin’ loud, making predictions on the fight, fainting punches on demand to display his hand speed and spreading around a little money to the few working women in attendance.

For his part, Mylo laid back and waited for Sparrow to make his way over towards him. Jackie looked him over carefully and could see that Mylo was a bit jittery and looked nervous as he watched Sparrow make it around the room.

Since her surveillance set up was suspect, when Sparrow finally got to Mylo, Jackie had already moved into position to overhear the conversation. “What's up Champ?” Mylo said and embraced him.

“I know you’re surprised to see me, Mylo, but I escaped from lockdown for a few hours.” Sparrow boasted. “They can’t hold me. No man alive can stop me when I want something,” he continued and fainted a few punches.

“Yeah, Freeze wanted to bet me that you’d make it here before the fight. Glad I didn’t take any of that action.”

“Is Freeze here?” Sparrow asked and pointed toward the office.

“He’s not here, came through earlier.”

“I wanted to holla at that nigga; see what y’all was talkin’ ’bout,” Sparrow said.

“You ain’t gotta wait on Freeze, you can talk to me. I mean, that’s how it’s been all along, Champ; you and me. Come here, let me put somethin’ in ya ear.”

Mylo led Sparrow into the office and Jackie cursed, because the device she had placed on the doorframe had the worst static. Still it was worth a shot, so she went into the bathroom to try and pick up the conversation, but there was way too much distortion for her to make out anything.

“Look, here’s the deal. Bettin’ been real strong on you to win, lot of action on what round you’ll take him in,” Mylo said as soon as he closed the door. “Everybody knows you’re a slow starter. No one will think twice about you gettin’ caught with a clean shot early.”

It was almost a sure thing that Sparrow would win, but he often come out of the dressing room cold and had gone down in the first three rounds. Sparrow was able to come back and win in each of those fights by knock out, but the consensus was that one day, Sparrow would get caught with a shot that he couldn’t get up from.

“You go down in the first round,” Mylo explained to the champ again. “Everybody says, yeah, it was bound to happen sooner or later. You said it yourself, they insisted on a rematch clause. You take the rematch and you kick his ass in the second fight. But you come away from here with a cool million, not to mention the guarantee money from the second fight, ’cause you know it’s gonna be huge.”

“I don’t know, Mylo. Are you sure this is what Black wants me to do?”

“If he had known you were coming, he’d be here to tell you himself. In fact, he was in here earlier tonight wantin’ to know what you was gonna do. He said he was countin’ on you to do this and was on me to make it happen.”

Sparrow walked over and sat on the edge of the couch. He felt like he owed his career to Black for putting him onto a fight promoter that started getting him good fights. Still, it was a big decision, one he sat and thought long and hard about. Sparrow basically made up his mind that he was gonna do it and that was the main reason he begged his trainer for a night out, with the promise that there would be no gambling and no women.

“And this is what Black wants, right?” Sparrow still wanted to hear it one more time.

“He sat in that very spot and told me himself,” Mylo assured Sparrow.

“Okay, tell him I’m in,” Sparrow said and got up. “Tell Black I’m glad to do it for him.”

“He’ll be glad to hear that, Champ,” Mylo told him, I know I am. The truth was, Black and Freeze knew nothing about this. In fact, Mylo was still waiting for Black to actually speak to him. It was all Mylo’s idea for Sparrow to throw the fight. Mylo would tell Sparrow that Black wasn’t in on it after he had his money in his hand. At that point, what could he say?

Chapter Ten

Mike Black

When Mystique was changed, we took a cab to our usual hotel. On the way, she told me about the drama that happened earlier at Cynt's. Two of the dancers got into a fight over a customer. “And she’s holding the girl by her wave,” Mystique said laughing. “And hittin’ her in the face and sayin’, ‘I done told your skank ass ’bout fuckin’ wit’ my customers.’ ”

“She hurt her bad?”

“Busted her lips, her nose was bleedin’ and her eye looked like it’s gonna look fucked up tomorrow.”

“Little extreme, don’t you think?”

“No,” Mystique said definitely. “If any one of them bitches came anywhere near you, I’d kill their ass.”

I laughed as the cab pulled up in front of the hotel, but she didn’t. I looked in her eyes and knew she was serious.

When we got to our suite, as she always does, Mystique said she wanted to take a shower. She kissed me on the cheek and started for the bathroom. I unbuttoned my shirt and got a bottle of Courvoisier from the mini bar. “Come here for a second. There’s something I need to tell you,” I said and sat down on the couch.

Mystique sat down next to me, took my face in her hands and kissed me again. “What you wanna tell me,