Gambling universe superhero Poker Boy loves saving dogs, even though that’s not part of his duty in the gambling universe. He sometimes thinks he saves more dogs than he does people.

Now he and his team must use every skill they have to save not just one dog, but all dogs from a force that can’t be stopped.

Or can it?

 

 

 

THE SMOKE THAT DOESN’T BARK

A Poker Boy Story

 

 

ONE

 

 

As a superhero in the gambling universe, I have no idea why I always end up saving dogs. It sure seems that every time there is a person for me to save there is also a dog that needs my help. Not always, but my sidekick, Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, thought it funny because it happens so often. And as she said, “It’s kinda sweet.”

Sometimes the person who needs the help owns the dog, other times the dog is not related in any way to the person I’m trying to help. I asked my boss, Stan, the God of Poker, about it once and he just thought I was kidding. It seems that animals have their own gods that take care of them.

Stan told me that over the years there has been very little reason for the Gambling Gods to associate with the Gods of Animals and Reptiles. That made sense to me considering animals are not known for placing bets.

But sometimes the lines between the different branches of gods are not as clear as some people make them out to be.

It was New Year’s Eve, or more accurately, two in the morning on New Year’s Day. One of my favorite things to do on New Year’s Eve was to play a tournament at the MGM Grand on the strip in Vegas. Granted, that is a long way from my double-wide mobile home near a large Indian casino in Oregon, but Patty lives and works in Vegas, so I look for any reason to visit her as often as I can.

I must confess that Patty and I have a relationship. Sometimes that isn’t smart between superhero and sidekick. But she’s actually a superhero as well, working under the God of Hospitality. And we aren’t serious enough yet for me to move from Oregon to Vegas. We have talked about it, sure, just not there yet.

By Vegas standards, the New Year’s Eve tournament wasn’t a big event, not like others around town, but for the past ten years I had made the little tournament at the MGM Grand on New Year’s Eve a tradition, and I like tradition. And since half the people playing in the tournament were drunk tourists, and most of the professional poker players were at the bigger tournaments at other casinos, it made getting into the money fairly easy. In fact, I had made the final table and the money every year.

Besides, I love the sounds of a casino alive with people laughing and talking and machine bells going off, and on New Year’s Eve, all that seemed to be more in focus, sharper, and if possible, louder.

The money was always nice as well, since the MGM Grand also kicked in a few grand added money. I have nothing against making some money in a decent poker game. After all, superheroes have to make a living to pay for chasing after the bad guys. Most people thought the gods paid for the superheroes working for them, but they sure don’t. We are expected to make a living and solve everyone’s problems at the same time.

Considering that I make my living playing poker, I’m not complaining.

But Patty had to work tonight on her new job at the front desk of the MGM Grand, and she wouldn’t be off until 3 a.m., at which time we would head to her wonderful apartment and enjoy the first day of the New Year together.

So I still had an hour, and had made the final table of the tournament. In fact, I was chip leader, and planned on using my chip advantage over the other eight players at the table to eventually take all their chips. In less than an hour, I hoped.

Suddenly, the dealer froze in the middle of her deal, the card suspended in midair, her nose scrunched up in concentration. All the loud noise of the casino and the laughing and talking cut off like I had been transported to an empty desert without any wind.

Around the table the players’ faces were frozen in the moment. I had learned over the years that when you freeze a person in a moment, they seldom look good. A person’s looks are dependent on movement. If you don’t believe me, just randomly stop your DVD player with an attractive person on screen. Chances are their eyes will be rolled into their head slightly, their mouths open in a doofy fashion, and their expression twisted. The eight other players at the table and the dealer were no exceptions to the “frozen uglies” as I liked to call what they looked like.

Someone had taken me out of time and I only knew of a few people beside me that had that power, so I glanced around. Stan, the God of Poker, was winding his way through the frozen-in-time players, clearly headed my way. Another silver-haired man was walking a few steps behind him.

The guy had large and slanted dark eyes, set far enough apart that, for a second, I wondered if he could see in two directions at once. He was dressed in a dark silk suit and matching tie that shouted money and power. He moved so smoothly behind Stan I wasn’t sure he was even walking.

“Poker Boy,” Stan said as I stood and stepped toward them, “meet The Smoke.”

The Smoke just nodded and didn’t bother to step close enough to shake my hand, so I didn’t offer. I had a very odd feeling about the guy, but couldn’t place it, which made me even more uncomfortable. As a poker player, my greatest strength was easily summing up a person and figuring them out. This guy would be tough across a poker table.

Now understand I didn’t dislike the guy. I just couldn’t get a read on him.

“I’m assuming there’s a problem,” I said to Stan, adjusting my superhero costume, which consisted of a black leather coat and black Fedora-like hat. My six-foot height made me about five inches taller than the compact frame of The Smoke. For some reason that pleased me.

“Let’s walk,” Stan said. “We need to meet Patty.”

If Stan was putting both of us on a case, something really important had gone wrong.

Really important.

I pointed at my stack of tournament chips on the table. “Release the room and I’ll tell them to blind me off. I’ll follow you in a moment.”

Blinding off a stack meant that a player in a tournament still had to pay the blinds every round, even if they weren’t in the chair. So my chip stack would dwindle slowly until gone while all my hands would be folded.

Stan nodded and turned to leave. I sat back down just as he released the freeze and let me drop back into normal time. The sounds of the casino came crashing back in like a hammer and every face around the table returned to normal.

I quickly stood again and nodded to the dealer. “Blind me off until I get back.”

She nodded and I turned and headed out of the poker room. Unless I got back quickly, I wouldn’t win the tournament, but with the size of my stack, just being blinded off slowly might get me third or fourth as other players knocked themselves out. Still a decent payday for my New Year’s tradition.

I was about halfway to the lobby of the casino when everything around me froze again and the noise vanished once more. Stan and Patty and The Smoke were standing in the middle of the wide aisle near the huge, open hotel lobby, talking.

Patty looked better than ever. I had first met her five years back when she worked downtown at the Horseshoe, the last year the World Series of Poker was held there. Tonight the white blouse and dark pants accented her perfectly trim body in a way I very much liked. Her long brown hair was tied back and up, giving her a serious look.

I know it sounds corny, but every time I saw her, my heart sort of raced, and this time was no exception, even though I had talked to her just an hour ago during one of the tournament breaks.

Patty glanced over at me with her large brown eyes and smiled a smile that could melt anyone into a puddle on the ornate tile floor. “You winning?”

“Of course,” I said, laughing. “Chip leader. Final table just got started.”

“Sorry,” Stan said.

I just shrugged. “Work needs to come first. So what’s the problem?”

Stan glanced at The Smoke, then said simply, “About two hours ago, someone placed a number of very large bets with a number of bookmakers around town that all the dogs in North America would be killed at exactly twelve noon on the first day of the year, Vegas time.”

Patty gasped and I tried to understand what Stan had just said. “All the dogs? Why?”

“No one knows,” Stan said.

“That’s just sick,” Patty said.

The Smoke seemed to be showing no emotion at all. He just stood there, his thin, dark, wide-set eyes seeming to observe everything around him.

The silence of the frozen casino seemed to grow as Patty and I tried to take in what we had been told.

I turned to face The Smoke directly. “I assume you work for the animal gods.”

The Smoke nodded. “We are aware of your ability to save dogs,” he said, his voice deep and low. “Since this involves a bet, my boss went to Laverne and we asked for your help.”

Laverne was Lady Luck herself. I hoped she had a lot more than me and Patty and Stan on this problem.

I nodded and turned to Stan. “I assume you are looking for the guy who placed the bet.”

“Oh, we know who it was. He has nothing to do with the coming deaths. He’s just trying to make some huge money on it to rebuild his house.”

“The Bookkeeper!” both Patty and I said at the same time.

Stan nodded and we all went back to being silent. Three months ago the Bookkeeper, while trying to prove to the world that there was no luck, had mathematically trapped Lady Luck herself. Patty and I and Screamer, the third member of my team, had barely rescued her in time. But in the process, the Bookkeeper’s home had been completely destroyed, along with all of his super computers and about three bedrooms and a living room full of very smelly trash.

The Bookkeeper had an uncanny ability to predict future events with just math.

“We’ll need to talk to him,” I said.

Stan nodded. “I’ll bring him to you. Where?”

“Does he still smell?” Patty asked about a half-second before I did.

“He smells like a field of lilacs now,” Stan said. “Something one of his bosses did to him.”

“A small field I hope,” I said.

Stan shook his head. “Not so small.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Patty said.

“Our normal place in fifteen minutes,” I told Stan.

Stan nodded.

Our normal place was a small restaurant, open 24 hours a day, called The Diner. It pretended to be an old 1960s diner, and was tucked into a hole on a side street near the old Horseshoe Casino downtown. When the team of Patty and Screamer and I first formed, that’s where we met, and it’s become our normal meeting site for any case we were working together.

Besides, it had great milkshakes, and right now I could use one.

Stan released the “out of time bubble” on us and Patty and I headed across the lobby toward the exit to the parking area out back, with her explaining how she managed to get off an hour early on her shift tonight. We were most of the way across the hotel lobby when I realized that The Shadow was following us about five feet back, walking as silently as anyone I had ever met.

“Where’s Stan?” I asked, turning to him.

“He said I was to help you,” The Shadow said, again his voice low and rough and at the same time very smooth. “He said he had a few other leads to check out and would catch up.”

I nodded and said, “Sounds fine. More help the better.”

I turned back to Patty, who handed me her cell phone as we walked, with The Shadow following a few feet behind us. When I put it to my ear the phone was already ringing.

“Patty,” Screamer said as he answered, clearly seeing his caller id. “What’s up?” His voice was chipper and I could hear music and laughter behind him.

“Sorry to bother you tonight,” I said, “We’ve got a pretty nasty one.”

“Hey, Poker Boy. Great hearing your voice again. When?”

“Fifteen minutes,” I said.

“I’ll be there,” he said and hung up.

I handed Patty back her phone, then said. “The old gang is back together again. I just hope we can pull off another miracle.”

“So do I,” The Smoke said softly behind us.