I was learning that I was one hell of an interviewer. That, or my subject was one hell of an interview. Either way, I was expertly performing the trick called “vanishing Men’s Quarterly article.”
I put the notepad and pen away, hoping that might cause Ace’s lips to loosen. Bruce Steadman had told me to focus on the people as well as the moves, but I couldn’t help wondering if the moves were maybe the doorway that led to someplace deeper. And when it came to Ace’s moves, I had all kinds of questions. I wanted to forget about myself for a while, about the man I’d hurt, the money I owed, and to lose myself in table angles and the logistics of cutting the cards and false shuffles and deals.
I asked him if he used the mechanic’s grip. When he raised an eyebrow, I said, “You don’t use the straddle grip, do you? That would be too obvious, right?”
False dealing from the bottom of the deck wasn’t all that hard in principle, but to do it well you had to eliminate friction, your fingers against the cards. So the grip mattered. With a straddle grip your index finger and pinky were out of the way, but it hardly looked natural. Even a layperson might find it fishy. If you’re a magician doing it, who cares? The audience knows a trick is about to happen. But at the poker table, fishy can’t fly, can it? Surely, fishy could get you—
Ace’s grin was higher on one side than the other. “You’re such a fucking magician,” he said.
“What?”
“Mechanic’s grip, straddle grip …” He shook his head. “You have no idea what I do.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re missing the whole point.”
“Considering the three hundred dollars I just paid you, perhaps you’d care to educate me?”
He stared at me a moment. “How many children do you think I have?”
“What?”
“You know. Kids. How many do I have? Get it right and I’ll give you back fifty dollars.”
“And if I’m wrong?”
“Then you’ll owe me twenty more,” he said. “Hell, I don’t care, make it ten. That’s practically a free bet. Come on, how many kids?”
“You?” With his sunglasses on, his age remained a mystery. Still, after a little thought I had my answer: “Four.”
His smile revealed small, crooked teeth. Orthodontic work needed but never received. “Not too shabby,” he said. “Tell me how you knew.”
“Remind me again what this has to do with cards?”
“Come on, Einstein, you guessed four. You knew. So educate me.”
Two teenage boys on skateboards raced past, having chosen the mild weather over school. They slalomed around the people eating lunch, rounded a corner, and were gone.
“The obvious choice was zero,” I said, “so that was out. You wouldn’t have asked me to guess if you had one or two, or maybe even three, because there’s nothing unusual about that. Five or more and you’d be a strict Catholic or Mormon or whatever, and that seems unlikely. It was either four, or maybe three. Maybe five with the last kid being an accident.”
“So …”
I shrugged. “So I guessed. I narrowed it down to a few choices and I took my best guess and got lucky.”
“Bravo.” He graced me with a quick, quiet clap. “That’s what we do. And don’t call me a card cheat or a cardsharp. The cards are the medium, not the method. The method is the con. Do you follow?”
I liked that phrase. The medium, not the method. I wouldn’t dare pull my notebook out of my purse, but I would commit that to memory. “We narrow down our choices,” he was saying, “and make the most logical guess. It isn’t rocket science, though I’ll bet you rocket science isn’t rocket science, either.”
“You mean if you’re a rocket scientist.”
“And that’s just the poker-playing part. An expert con man at the poker table must be an expert poker player—or at least a damn good one. Because a lot of the night, you’re just playing poker. And as long as you’re playing poker, you might as well win some hands. Might as well come out ahead on the merits of the poker game. But then you create a couple of hands that swell the pot, and you make sure to win those, and that’s when you make the real money. A few big hands. You read people, you figure out who’s desperate to win, who’s dicking around with their phones, who’s the biggest natural-born loser in the room. You figure out who you can separate from their money, and then you do it. And you do your homework beforehand so there’s no surprises. I’ve got files on everyone I play against. I go in ready.”
It all made sense. “But what about the grip?”
“Natalie—”
“I’m just really curious about that.”
“Natalie, forget the grip. Will you forget the grip? Just shut up about the grip. The grip isn’t important.”
“Okay, but I have a deck of cards in my bag, if you want—”
He waved me away. “You’ll see everything on Sunday, in front of real players. I want you to see it the way they see it. When you see it how they see it, in action, it’ll all make sense. Then, afterward, you and I will talk. We’ll dissect everything. How’s your car, by the way?”
“Terrible,” I said.
“But will it get us to A.C.?”
Ace would be getting a free ride to his poker game. Fine. I told myself that the drive would be useful for the interview. Unless he ended up being dangerous. That was always possible. I wished I could see his eyes behind those sunglasses. I had plenty of experience reading male faces for the bluff and had gotten pretty good at it over the years, but sometimes you get it wrong. And the parkway in South Jersey would be a lousy place to get it wrong. Yes, I would travel with him, I would drive, but I would leave my itinerary with my upstairs neighbor.
“I guess we’ll find out,
