Stephanie Doyle: Calculated Risk

“Bubba, are you telling me there is a group of men back there playing poker with real money and not one of them knows who I am?”

Bubba merely smiled. “Like I said, I don’t know about any gambling or anything like that. Just looks like they’re having a nice conversation to me.”

Sabrina leaned over the bar and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Spot me a twenty?”

The man pulled the money from the register and slid the single bill across the bar top.

Sabrina pocketed it and pushed her hands into her jeans. She flicked her curls off her face and strove for an innocent dupe expression.

It had been so long since she’d played cards. She could almost feel her hands sweating. When they found out about her in Vegas, she’d been banned from every casino on the Strip. It had taken less than two days for Atlantic City to catch on to her. She’d made the trip to Monte Carlo once, but she reserved that spot as her fallback for emergencies only.

Naturally, she’d played out her welcome with everyone in town. For the most part she didn’t think about it unless times got really tough and she was forced to seek out an Indian Reservation. But with a bar tab looming over her head and a cell phone bill due that she simply had to pay-especially now-she was willing to take the opportunity that had presented itself.

“Gentlemen. Hello.”

The group of five lifted their heads and checked her out from her boots, up her long, jean-clad legs to the bulky, gray wool sweater she wore. Maybe some thought she was an overdressed hooker looking for a customer. Maybe others thought she was a cop about to bust up their game, it was hard to tell. They would find out soon enough who she was.

“I’m bored and I’ve got twenty bucks to blow. Mind if I sit in on the next hand?”

The group looked at each other, then one man with a mustache shrugged. “I’m out. Let her sit in.”

A portly fellow in the corner chortled. “I don’t have a problem taking a woman’s money,” he warned her.

“That’s good. I don’t have trouble taking anyone’s money either,” she fired back as she took mustache man’s chair. “I’m Sabrina.”

“Chuck.”

“Paul.”

“Bill.”

“Mike.”

“Jim.” The one with the mustache, who was now only a spectator, finally introduced himself.

“So what’s the game?”

“Texas Hold’em,” Chuck, the portly one, announced dramatically. “We’re playing all or nothing. Last man standing wins. Or woman.” He laughed again.

Sabrina furrowed her brow. “Texas…that’s a poker game?”

Mike was kind enough to explain the rules to her and Bill took the deck and shuffled it fresh, tossing her the first card.

When she looked at her two cards, her face remained expressionless. Pocket eights, a spade and a club. Instantly, Sabrina calculated the odds of winning with such a hand and began to do her thing. She watched the flop and memorized the cards that had been turned over. Then she studied each of the players in turn looking for tells that would clue her into what they were holding.

Going with the dumb blonde approach, she stumbled over the betting. “I want to raise. Raise, that’s the right word, isn’t it?”

“You got it, honey,” Mike told her.

She beamed at him. “Then I want to raise five dollars.”

Paul would be the only one to call her bet. And Paul would lose with a jack and ten off suit and nothing in the flop, turn or river that would help. Bill had tossed his cards over in frustration when he folded, or possibly as a ploy to gauge the table’s reaction. But because of that, she now knew that at least two of the diamonds were on the bottom of the stack.

When Mike started betting heavily against the three diamonds in the flop, she knew that he was looking for the flush. But with only a twenty-nine percent chance of having one of the remaining nine possible diamonds in the deck turn up, she was a lock with her triple threes and she went all in. Sabrina took the pot and eliminated Mike.

Then next to go down was Bill. His shuffling was getting looser with each beer he consumed, which made it ridiculously easy for her to determine what cards were left in the deck and what would be coming out on top.

Glancing down at the ace and seven suited she had in her hand, all Sabrina had to do was keep raising and wait for it. On the flop? No. On the turn? No. There it was…the other ace on the river. Bill had gone all in with the pocket kings. She beat him soundly, and smiled sweetly as she gathered up his chips.

It was like taking candy from a baby. Her next target was Chuck.

A little less than three hours later and three hundred and eighty dollars richer, Sabrina beamed at the table. “Can you believe that? And I had never even heard of this game until tonight.”

The four losers grumbled about beginner’s luck and Jim smiled back at her, apparently pleased he’d left the table before she sat down.

Sabrina counted out the cash and laid down two hundred dollars on the bar in front of Bubba, plus two twenties. One for the spot, the other for the payoff. “That about cover me?”

“That about does it,” Bubba chuckled, pocketing the two twenties. “See you around, girlie.”

After bundling herself back into her winter gear, Sabrina gave the bartender a negligent wave as she walked toward the front door. Behind her she could hear the five guys grilling Bubba as to whether or not she was a ringer. She heard Bubba laugh out loud and thought that at least she had done something good tonight.

Realizing she’d forgotten her hat, Sabrina pulled it out of her front pocket and tugged it on past her ears. She took a deep breath and opened the door to the cold. Walking down the empty sidewalk toward her house, situated just off the main street, she cursed herself for not bringing the Jeep. She hadn’t wanted to risk drinking and driving.

Not that she’d hurt anyone but herself tonight. It was a time of hibernation for Stansfield, Pennsylvania. Once the football season of the state college nearby was over, the town dwindled from a bustling hot spot on weekends to its regular smattering of locals. A few staff members employed by the college. A few shopkeeps and professionals. Two doctors, four lawyers and one sheriff. And Bubba and Nick, of course. Two men whose establishments tried to keep most of the coal miners, now long unemployed since the great “shutdown of ’94,” drunk and numb to their woes.

“What the hell am I still doing here?” she asked the empty newspaper dispenser as she walked by. It wasn’t the first time she had asked herself the question. It’s just that when she did, the answer was always the same. She had nowhere else to go.

Three days and nothing. Maybe Krueger didn’t understand what it had meant for her to take this assignment. Maybe he didn’t understand how desperate she was to get her life back on track. It was a very real fear for her that if she stayed on this endless path to nowhere, she might just disappear. At some point she decided she’d couldn’t let that happen.

What if he found Ploxm?

No, she told herself firmly. It wasn’t possible. She had the best credentials. He’d said so. Arnold had been one of her mentors. There was no question she had the best chance of cracking his code.

And besides, she hadn’t done anything to get fired.

Yet.

The bank across the street boasted a new sign that blinked the time and temperature. It was 10:52 and eighteen degrees Fahrenheit. Inexplicably, Sabrina converted the number to Celsius and continued on her way until a gust of extra cold wind whipped around her. Even though there were no cars coming she paused out of habit before she crossed the street.

That’s when she heard a sound behind her. Shoes on the sidewalk.