Ian Hamilton - The disciple of Las Vegas

“You’re going to stay with the dogs for a while.”

“What the fuck, are you crazy?” he yelled.

Ava looked at Douglas. “Have the dogs eaten today?” she asked.

“This morning.”

“When next?”

“Around five.”

“You’ll be okay for a while,” she said to the two men.

Carlo gave Ava the gun and went to help his partner. They took the smaller one first, making him hop. Then they each grabbed an arm of the other man and dragged him to the cages. She could hear the dogs barking when the men came into view. Ava walked towards the kitchen, still pointing the gun at Douglas and Ashton, and looked through the glass door. Each man had his back pressed against the bars of the cage and the dogs were sniffing at their feet. Andy was smiling nervously; even on the other side of the bars the dogs made him nervous.

Ava turned her attention back to Douglas and Ashton. “Now, Mr. Ashton, I think it’s your turn.”

“Who the hell are you and what the fuck do you want?” he said, his eyes jerking back and forth between Douglas and the door leading to the backyard.

Ashton’s hair was gelled and spiked. He was heavier than she had thought, and his five-foot-six frame didn’t carry the weight well. He wore a black silk shirt that hung loosely over his stomach and a pair of fashionably ripped blue jeans.

“I’m the woman your partner met at Wynn’s two days ago, the woman you sent two goons to beat up.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he said, his eyes flickering towards Douglas. Douglas just nodded as if to say, That’s her.

“That doesn’t matter right now. You’ll know soon enough. But first I need to talk to Mr. Douglas, and while I do I’m going to put you in the third dog cage.”

“No!” he snapped.

“You can either walk out there on your own or I’ll have the boys take you.”

“Fuck no!”

Ava walked to the kitchen and opened the glass door, still pointing the gun at the two men. “Come and get the small one and put him in the last cage,” she shouted at Carlo and Andy.

Ashton tensed, his teeth gnawing at his bottom lip. His eyes flicked in the direction of the front door. Don’t be stupid, Ava thought. Carlo and Andy came back in and grabbed Ashton’s arms. “There’s no need to tape him,” Ava said in English. “He’s no threat.”

Ashton stood and glared at her. Then he spat in Ava’s direction. “Fuck you,” he said.

Carlo looked at Ava to see whether she wanted him to sort out the Englishman. She shook her head.

When they had left the room, she turned to Douglas. “Well, Mr. Douglas, I guess it’s just you and me for a while,” she said. “You should have met with me at Wynn’s and saved us all this trouble.”

David Douglas’s lips were tightly set. He wiped his mouth, staring hard at Ava as if he was trying to commit her to memory.

“You do remember me, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“And you do remember why I wanted to talk to you?”

He shook his head. “You can’t get away with this. This is the United States, not some fucking Asian backwater. We have laws and we have people who enforce them.”

“You seem to be selective about which laws you want enforced. For example, you don’t seem to be overly concerned about a massive case of fraud.”

“You’re going to talk about that shit again?”

“That’s the only reason I’m here.”

“Those guys who hired you, they’re nothing but a bunch of sore losers. They think because they’re online, knowing how to really play poker doesn’t matter. I’ve been playing the game my whole life and I’ve forgotten more than they know. Losing to me is no upset. Beating me would be,” he said, still looking hard at her.

“You don’t even know who hired me.”

“I can guess.”

“Well, just so we’re clear, the people I work for represent Chinaclipper — Philip Chew. So your Asian remark was at least partially apt.”

He started to get up. Ava held out a hand, palm facing him. “I took out the one who wasn’t shot, so don’t even think about it,” she said.

The door to the backyard opened. Carlo and Andy had returned from depositing Ashton in the dog cage. “Get two chairs from the kitchen,” she told Carlo, and then turned to Douglas. “They don’t understand English, so I have to speak to them in Cantonese. I just asked for two chairs to be brought in here. I’m going to have them tape your arms and legs to one, so basically you’re not going anywhere unless you take the chair with you.”

“This is such shit.”

Carlo and Andy came back into the room, each carrying a chair. Ava watched Carlo tape Douglas’s hands behind his chair back and his ankles to the chair legs. She handed the gun to Carlo, positioned the second chair directly across from Douglas, and sat down. She opened her bag and took out the paperwork she had been reviewing that morning. “This is what we’re here to resolve,” she said. “Over the past six months or so you stole more than sixty million dollars from Chinaclipper, Brrrrr, and Felix the Cat.”

“I won, not stole. And it was nowhere near that much money.”

She noticed that his hair was beginning to rise. It was very fine, and thinning on top. Her guess was that he got it permed. From a distance it might look angelic; up close it looked absurd. “You used your own name some of the time, but mainly you played under the names Kaybar and Buckshot,” she said. “I have all the play data here. I also have a letter from the Cooper Island Gaming Commission confirming that you used both those names. Do you want to see it?”

“No. What’s the difference? Using a different name didn’t diminish my talent.”

“Mr. Douglas, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Right now you’re headed for the hard way. I would prefer that you cooperate and make this as easy on all of us as possible.”

He hesitated. “What do you want?”

“I want, as a start, for you to admit that you were all those people.”

“You have the letter.”

“I want to hear it.”

“Fine.”

“Fine what?”

“I played as Kaybar and Buckshot.”

“There, that wasn’t so difficult,” she said. “Now I want you to admit that the money you won playing under those two names was stolen.”

“No, and you and your little friends can go fuck yourselves,” he said.

“Let’s not get emotional,” Ava said, holding the report that Felix had prepared in front of Douglas’s face. “Look at this. It’s an analysis of the hands you played against my client and others, and it says that the numbers are statistically anomalous.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They don’t make sense. The report says you won all that money in the face of all logical probability. That means you cheated. And we think we know how you did it — you breached security and manipulated your own software. We’re convinced that you could see all the cards at the table. The Gaming Commission is running cross-checks on this analysis as we speak and will confirm it all. When they do, you will be exposed as a cheat, a liar, and a fraud and the River website will be ruined.”

“Is that your threat — that I’ll be exposed?”

“Perhaps.”

“What if I don’t care?”

“You’d throw away a lifetime of building a reputation so easily?”

“I’m a poker player, not a priest. Moral expectations are low to begin with.”

“And your website?”

“We’re losing money.”

“The money you stole didn’t help?”

“I’ve never believed in throwing good money after bad.”

Ava took a deep breath. “Mr. Douglas, are you right-handed or left-handed?”