Raymond found some playing cards in a junk drawer, and the four of us pulled up chairs to the kitchen table.
“You got any chips?” L’il Roy asked Raymond, who shook his head.
“How about toothpicks?” I asked, remembering my early days playing with The Corporation when Ben didn’t want to play for money. Raymond went to a cupboard and grabbed a box. I counted out twenty for L’il Roy and twenty for myself. The thug had the audacity to count them behind me.
“Hold ‘Em?” I asked.
“Definitely,” L’il Roy answered. “Raymond can deal.”
“I don’t know how to do all that flop and river shit.”
L’il Roy let out a grunt of disgust, then lifted his chin to Jack. “You know how to deal Hold ‘Em?”
Jack nodded and took the cards from Raymond.
“No limit?” I asked L’il Roy. He seemed to be setting the rules for this game.
“Of course.”
I tapped my horseshoe pendant three times and sat forward in my seat. “Let’s do this.”
It went back and forth for an hour and a half. He won a couple of hands, I won a few more. The chip count – toothpick count – was slightly in my favor. I had three more than he did. “We have a flight to catch soon,” I said.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” L’il Roy answered. I shrugged, which seemed to piss him off. Which had been my strategy all along, to appear as if I was humoring him, letting him play with a pro. That this could all be over the minute I started playing seriously. It worked a little bit, he’d bet one hand way more aggressively than he should have, and when he lost it, he lost his cool, slamming his hand down on the kitchen table. I hadn’t shown any sign of emotion, just calmly collected the winning pot, slowly sliding the toothpicks across the table. Away from him and toward me, even letting a few of them trickle through my hands, like there were so many I simply couldn’t handle them all.
I was definitely in his head.
A few more hands and I had three more of his toothpicks. He wanted to go all in, I could tell. It was a showy move and L’il Roy was a showy guy. Who else would kill his own brother to make a point? He was just busting to say it. To push his toothpicks in and say the words to a pro player – one he had apparently watched quite a bit.
“All in,” he said on the very next hand, proving my point. I had a pair of fours. Not a bad hand, but not a hand I’d typically go all in with. But I didn’t think he had anything, that he was bluffing. And I covered him in chips, meaning if he won, I’d still have chips – toothpicks – left, although I’d be down. Whereas if I won, it would be over.
And we’d be on our way to the airport with no more bruises for Raymond, and no shots fired. Always a good thing, no shots being fired.
“I call,” I said and put my toothpicks into the pot, and tossing over my fours for everyone to see.
He sneered as he showed his pair of tens.
Shit. This game was going to keep going, with me severely handicapped, unless I got a four somewhere in the five community cards that were to come. And if it kept going, and I was seriously down in chip count, anything could happen.
Jack discarded the burn card then dealt the three flop cards, placing them face up on the table. An ace, a seven and a ten.
“Fuck,” Raymond said, pretty much summing up my sentiments.
“Looks like you’ll be coming home with me, Raymond,” L’il Roy said.
“She’s got more picks than you, she can keep playing,” Raymond pointed out.
“Limping is more like it than playing.” He looked squarely at me. “Or bleeding.”
It was a poker term, bleeding chips, but I didn’t think he meant it like that.
“Hey, L’il Roy,” Jack said, causing us all to turn our heads toward him. He hadn’t said a word during the whole game, which was typical for the dealer, and also for Jack. “How did you know Anna? She wasn’t on TV that much. You must watch a lot of poker.” He turned to me before L’il Roy could answer him. “What did you tell me? Three final tables? Four?”
“Six,” L’il Roy and I said at the same time. He looked over at me, a tiny bit sheepish if a cold-blooded killer had the capacity to look sheepish. “I got ‘em all on my DVR,” he explained. “You and Vanessa Russo. I save both of you. She plays a lot more than you do, though.”
“She travels, like the other players. I stay in Vegas.” He looked at me like he didn’t understand, but I wasn’t about to go into my makeshift family with L’il Roy. The less he knew about them all, the better. “There’s other good female players,” I said.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to picture them naked when I watch them play.”
“Ewww,” I said while L’il Roy laughed and dropped his eyes to my chest.
It was a light moment in a very tense day, and I tried to draw it out a little. “When did you first start to play poker?”
His laugh died on his face. “My brother taught me when I was little.”
So much for light banter across the table.
“Let’s get this fucking thing over with,” he said sharply as he motioned for Jack to continue.
Jack dealt the burn card to the side then placed the turn card next to the flop cards. A four. I had a three of a kind, which was an awesome hand. But they were fours, and L’il Roy had three tens.
“I kept your room nice and ready for you Raymond,” he gloated.
“This game isn’t over yet,” I reminded him, even though it probably was. Only a four would win this hand for me, and the chances of getting a four of a kind against a three of a kind were astronomical. Yeah, I’d still have some chips, but Raymond would be in a much more dominate position. Which was probably what he pictured when he watched tape of Vanessa Russo and myself.
He only laughed at me and motioned for Jack to get on with it. Jack buried the burn card and turned up the river card. A four.
Silence. Complete silence while the fact that I’d drawn a four of a kind to win the game crept over all of us.
Finally, I pushed my chair back and stood up. I held my hand out to L’il Roy. “Good game,” I said with my Black Widow persona.
I think that’s what did it. It wasn’t a personal sense of honor, but I’d held my hand out to him, like I would any pro I’d beaten, and he seemed to know that.
He stood up, shook my hand, and said, “That was one hell of a hand.”
“It was a bad beat, we both know it, but that happens in professional poker all the time.” I’d slipped the professional part in there, and even smoothed my hands down my hips, like I did to my black suit when I took out a good player and was trying not to show relief.
And man, was there relief.
L’il Roy turned to Raymond, but there was no losing with grace where Raymond was concerned. “Don’t show your face around here again,” he said and walked out of the house before Raymond could even answer him.
We loaded up the car and closed down the house in record time. Just before we left the house, Jack walked back to the table and took the two Jokers from the deck we’d played with. He folded them up and jammed them in the top of the track of the accordion door in the hallway. He tested it a few times, made sure it now worked properly, then motioned for us to hit the road.
We were still okay time-wise, but nobody wanted to stick around the house after L’il Roy left. While Jack drove, I called Lorelei from the car and told her we’d be having a houseguest for awhile.
“Is everything…okay…in Saul’s room?” I asked. It had been weeks, but I hadn’t gone back into that room after it had been cleared by the police. I’d assumed Lorelei had cleaned Saul’s personal belongings out and had the cleaning woman do a thorough cleansing.
“It is, but I thought I’d put him in the other guest room.”
“But Gus is in the other guest room,” I said before I thought about it. Oh, Gus was not sleeping in that room. Okay.
“Gus moved back to his apartment today,” she said, not elaborating, which was weird.
“Oh. Okay. Are you…did you…”
“So that room will be ready by the time you get here,” she said very matter-of-factly.
“Okay. Thanks.”
“No problem,” she said, but there was just a tiny quiver in her voice.
“Lor?”
“So, I’ll see you later, then?”
She obviously didn’t want to discuss what did or didn’t happen between Gus and herself, so I let it go. “You don’t have to wait up.”
“I’ll probably still be up. It won’t be that late with the time change.”
We said our goodbyes then hung up.
“Did she know I was coming?” Raymond asked from the backseat.
“No.”
“’Cause you didn’t even tell her who was coming or how long I was staying.”
“So?” I looked over the seat to his puzzled face.
“Your roommate don’t care that you’re brining an angry young black man home?”
“You’ll be right at home with the angry old Jewish man,” Jack said, and I swatted him on the arm.
“Ben is not angry.”
“He might be tomorrow,” Raymond and Jack said at the same time.
“Ben will love having another male around, especially now that Gus has moved out. All Ben likes to do is go out to breakfast with his friends, and then watch sports all day, then a friendly game of cards at night. Think you can handle him?”
“If your idea of a friendly card game was what we just went through, no, I think you’d better let me out right now.” He smiled. Not his trademark, wide-as-his-whole-face smile, but it was a grin just the same and I quickly returned it.
There was – finally – a sense of lightness, now that we were so close to getting out of this whole thing, both physically and legally. I studied him for a moment, thinking of the three of us walking through the airport, then grabbed a knit hat that I’d bought earlier for myself or Jack, from the well of the console, and tossed it back to Raymond.
“Put that on. Your bruises are noticeable enough without that scary, frizzed-out, hair.”
“Racist,” he teased, but put the hat on.
I pushed the console top back into place, jerking into Jack’s right arm as I did so. Something slid out of the cuff of his shirt, peeking beyond it and his leather jacket. He started to move that arm to the steering wheel, but I pulled it back toward me. I pulled the object out, already knowing it was a playing card, but not understanding.
And then I did.
“What is this?” I asked, turning the Jack of spades over in my hands, although I knew what it was. I only wondered if Jack would tell me the truth.
He looked in the rearview mirror to see if Raymond was listening. He was not only listening, he’d also propped himself up so he could see what I was holding. He was also looking at Jack with a questioning gaze.
“That,” Jack finally said, a resignation in his voice, “was supposed to be the river card.”
Raymond blinked, trying to process it, but I was way ahead of him. “How’d you get the four?”
“When I was shuffling, I saw it was on the bottom of the deck. When you went all in and I saw you had fours, I thought maybe it would come in handy.” He shrugged. “And it did.”
“But how?” Raymond asked, but I’d already figured it out.
“That’s why you asked about my final tables, you knew that would get L’il Roy talking.”
“It did.”
We all sat in silence for awhile, letting Jack wind us through the Chicago traffic and on to the airport.
“Huh,” Raymond finally said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“So, you cheated?” Raymond asked, just for clarification, but there was disbelief in his voice. And he didn’t even know Jack the way I did.
“Well,” Jack said, looking pointedly at first Raymond in the rearview mirror, and then a sideways, meaningful look at me. “I was just trying to keep up with the company I was keeping.”
Ouch. But we deserved it, Raymond and I both. I watched as the city disappeared behind us and our labyrinth of freeways became wider and more expansive as we approached O’Hare.
Something about Jack and cards was playing at the back of my head. Something just out of … “Hey,” I said to him, grasping it. “The other night at the house when we were playing cards?”
“Yeah?”
“The night Vince was there?”
“I know which night you mean, Johanna.” There was an impatience in his voice.
“That last hand? What did you have?”
“Deuces. You saw. Ben beat me with a flush.”
“Not that hand. The last big hand. The one you mucked.”
“Yeah?”
“What did you have?”
“What does it matter? Vince won the hand.”
“Did he?”
“Why would I muck a winning hand?”
“I guess that’s what I’m asking.”
“That would be stupid.”
“Would it? Or was it some mind game you were playing to let him think he had the upper hand.”
“The upper hand with what?”
“I’m not sure. The investigation into Paulie’s murder? Or me?”
“I don’t need the upper hand in a murder investigation. I’m the one wearing a badge.”
“And the other?” I asked.
But he didn’t answer.
“Come on, Jack, did you have kings or aces?” I gave him the out of just naming his winning hand, not even having to admit he’d done it. But still he didn’t say anything.
I shrugged, but I kept my face on Jack’s as he stared straight ahead, out onto the road. Finally, finally, there was just a tiny, infinitesimal movement of his mouth, and I knew as surely as I sat across from him at a poker table that I was right.
I just wasn’t sure which one of those two motives I was right about. Knowing Jack, I’d probably never know.
I sat back in my seat, hands crossed against my chest, a smile on my face, my satisfaction that I’d read him apparent. He looked over, read my body language, and knew that he’d given up some kind of tell.
“Kings,” he finally said as we pulled into the rental car lot, “I had kings.”