After an hour, Bunny was up a little, as was Cuts. Harsh was winning big, Jesus was down, and Handy had already crashed out once. Cuts had let him buy back into the game, mainly to stop him whingeing about it. Bunny noted that Cuts kept ten toothpicks in reserve for this eventuality.
They heard the shout going up, starting from the bottom floor this time.
“Thirty seconds to lockdown.”
Again, as it repeated, they could hear the sound of people rushing back to their cells.
Bunny looked at Cuts.
“It’s OK, Rourke. Stay where you are. You aren’t getting out of this hand that easy.”
Cuts laid down the river card, the eight of diamonds, and Bunny nodded. “Fair enough.”
Nobody paid any attention as the cell-door mechanisms clicked and shut.
Before he’d come into Cuts’s cell to play, Bunny had told him he just needed to spend a penny. In reality, he was using the time with Carlos out of the cell. He’d checked that nobody was looking, grabbed Mr Pie from Carlos’s bunk and took it with him behind the sheet covering up the toilet. As he’d pretended to do his business, he reattached the eye. It came with a peel-off backing and a strong glue, so it went on first time. It didn’t match, but it was close enough. The bear looked back at him, suddenly happier with his lot in life.
Bunny had flushed, re-checked nobody was paying attention, and shoved the bear back under the sheets on Carlos’s bed. The memory of the few times in his life he’d played Santa had popped back into his head.
Bunny looked at his cards again and then placed them under his arse. With limited room in the cell, it was the safest place for them. Handy had a roving eye, not that it had done him any good thus far.
The betting went around a couple of times. Handy was all-in again, Harsh and Jesus dropped out, and Cuts was steadily raising. The five down cards were the ace of hearts, ace of clubs, six of hearts, four of hearts, and the eight of diamonds.
Commander Blake appeared at the top of the stairs with Carlos in his mask and cuffs behind him, followed by the same two guards.
“Hey,” whispered Cuts, looking at Bunny. “Eyes on the cards.”
“Right,” said Bunny, picking up two of his toothpicks. “I’ll call.”
As the Quiet Man’s entourage passed the cell, Handy threw down his two cards. “Read ’em and weep bitches, I got a straight! I win!”
Harsh barked a laugh. “You dumb-assed delinquent. You think with two aces showing, neither of these two got themselves a full house?”
“Open ’em,” hollered Blake outside, and they paused at the sound of the cell doors on each landing opening.
“Doesn’t matter if they got a full house,” said Handy. “I got a straight.”
Jesus took his own name in vain. “For the last time, a straight gets beaten by a flush, a full house, four of a kind, and so on and so on.” Jesus looked to the heavens. “Forgive him, Father, for he still knows not the basic rules.”
“Cut that shit out,” said Harsh.
“Alright, children,” said Cuts. “Enough. I got myself a six and an ace, so I know I got Handy beat …”
“This is bullshit!”
Blake looked in as he and the two guards passed by, having dropped Carlos back to the cell. “We having a problem in there, Mr Cuts?”
“No, sir,” said Cuts quickly, glaring at Handy. “There’s no crying in baseball.”
“That there is not,” said Blake. As he turned to head down the stairs, he winked at Bunny.
As soon as he was out of sight, Cuts leaned forward and walloped Handy on the top of the head.
“What was that for?”
“Figure it out,” said Cuts. “Now,” he continued, turning over his cards. “Like I said, I got myself an ace and a six here, which gives me a full house as my verbose cellmate so astutely surmised. I should be pleased, but I have a sneaky suspicion that our new friend is about to do something very rude.”
Bunny shrugged and turned over his two cards. “Ace and an eight.”
The revelation was met with cheering, booing and jostling as Bunny swept up the pot, smiling at Cuts.
“Lucky leprechaun-licking Celtic curmudgeon,” hollered Harsh.
“You got that right,” said Cuts.
“Can I buy back in?”
“No, Handy,” said Cuts. “You know the damn rules. Don’t—”
Cuts froze, as did everyone except Harsh.
Carlos was standing on the landing, holding his teddy bear. He held it out and smiled. “Look, Bunny. Mr Pie got better!”
Four of them froze. Bunny looked over at the stairs. Mercifully, Blake and his two cronies seemed to be far enough away not to have heard.
“Who the fuck’s that?” said Harsh.
Cuts shushed him.
“Oh shit, it isn’t?”
Cuts shushed him again.
Bunny looked at Carlos and jerked his head back towards their cell.
The smile fell from the big guy’s face and he trudged back to his bed.
Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Then Cuts looked around the room. “Nobody saw that – we clear?”
They all nodded just as the buzzer sounded for the final count before lockdown.
“Y’all get out,” said Harsh. “And if anyone asks, I’m deaf now too!”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Arnie Buckler sat in his regular seat in the back booth of the Pussycat’s Parade gentleman’s club and enjoyed his second lap dance of the evening. Cherise was one of his three favourite dancers. She had that certain something that he liked.
Arnie knew how the world saw him – a short, grubby man who lacked style, grace, charm … All of that and – OK, maybe the world had a point. Still, didn’t that make his success in life all the more impressive? It was easy to get by if you were some statuesque, straight-toothed jock who hadn’t had halitosis, chronic eczema and male-pattern baldness since the age of sixteen, plus the sweat thing, to which no doctor had ever fully got to the bottom.
Arnie had everything going against him. He was fully aware that the bulbous wart
