The game was a combo of dice and cards, iridescent pieces which showed up like magic tricks, and danger to boot, dazzling the eyes.
We’d rehearsed our signals. Blink twice for a move to up the ante. Once, plus a pause to fold. We’d switch it up to a parting of lips and scratch of jowl, then back to the double-blink when TK’d take a swig of his local liquor and lick his chops.
The boats or overhauled barges were packed really close together along the shore and lit up with bright neon. Red, yellow and white light streamed across the dark waters. Fireworks arched across the lake—faraway festivities were in the works.
Other pleasure boats plied the water like gaudy floating birthday cakes. The waters were dense with salts and minerals and gave greater buoyancy to the gambling houses. The draw on these flat-bottomed boats was a whopping twenty-six inches. Not much speed. They could pull in at three knots, slow as turtles, but why go fast when you’re making yols by the minute? Better to keep the fat fish aboard slapping their chips onto the tables.
All the while I kept a wary eye out for trouble. Those hard faces around us, laughing and wisecracking, were the faces of killers. Violent repercussions could be the result of one failed gambit, should one be caught. We’d be thrown to the monster moonrays, feral eels that haunted the salty waters. Heard horror stories of cons weighted at the ankles and thrust into the deeper water, while the gangsters watched the disappearing act from the comfort of their yachts, eating surf and turf and sipping martinis.
Wren, who looked less suspicious, would clock up most of the wins, while I’d sit back on my thumbs and tank hands and blame it on wifey. Wife and Hubby team. Rich and spoiled from moneyed families who had struck out on the ill-fated expedition of marriage, then made the naïve mistake of wasting their yols on these nice gentlemen.
It was important to give the right cues, not to set anyone’s suspicions off. I was reading these guys as best I could while Emmie chattered on about nothing. She was doing well; one would never know the woman was a cold-blooded killer. Fatty, directly opposite me, with the dimpled cheeks and airbrushed hair, was all smiles amid peanut eating and shell cracking. Munching away with his quail-ass grin while he won hand after hand. Pissed me off. But it was part of the act.
Patience, Rusco. Keep losing.
The skinny one with the black suit and dour looks paid me no heed but managed a nod and grunt from time to time to his crony. No less crafty, I could tell. The older one was harder to read. Salt and pepper hair, serious type but not so serious. A blank, bulldog face with strong lines on the upper cheeks, sometimes crinkling in a smug grimace; other times he’d drop a line of philosophic rhetoric straight from Goethe. Because he was the boss, he was the most dangerous of the lot. They called him Elmer. What kind of jackleg name was that? Either it was a gag, or I was missing something. Still, I gave Elmer his due respect and played the happy hubby, drinking more than my share, wincing with every gasp of the local swamp water laced with distilled spirits, twice as potent as normal alcohol. I let the flush rise to my cheeks, a healthy pink—the gambler’s flush they called it—pulled at the sweaty fabric on my collar, made a half-hearted smile and little coo at my beloved wife—who the others seemed to dig, despite the horrid wig job. Amused me, while my brain worked overtime trying to figure out how to stall the game and lose some more.
TK was doing his part, wandering about to different tables, chatting, letting us play out our tricks and hands, so it didn’t look as if he was feeding us any information. Also letting us lose a lot while he was there, to create a negative association with his presence. A clever diversion.
That tingling feeling between my shoulder blades told me that our window of opportunity was closing fast. Time to cash out. Emmie had accumulated a good stash on the last hand. I’d lost the next round deliberately, and badly, though I had put in small bids.
“I told you not to lead with that flush!” I yelled at her.
“Sorry,” she giggled. “I’m not thinking straight, dearie. Must be these highballs. They’re stronger than what I’m used to.”
Layering it on a little thick perhaps, but it got some chuckles from our card crew. Husband and wife team, wife stricken with a case of the tipsy giggles and an excess of yols.
I threw down the dice in a huff of disgust. “Emmie, I’m out, need a break. You’d better come too. You’ve won quite a bit.”
“Nothing doing, Hamber, I’m just warming up.”
“Beginner’s luck,” I grumbled at her with unfeigned jealousy. “We’re not inexhaustible, you know.”
“Hush, dear,” she cooed, “I’m just getting into the game! Don’t be a prig. I’m sure these nice gentlemen’ll go easy on me—if I start to lose.”
One of the shark eyes leaned in with an oily, but genial tip of the head. “To keep your charm in the game, madam, is our modest pleasure. It’s Lemmy here you have to worry about.” He nudged the man next to him in
