Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

The buy-ins commenced, cash being traded for chips. The cash was placed in a lockbox and then wheeled off on a luggage cart by two of Ruddle’s employees. This done, Kim dealt the first hand.

For the better part of an hour, some chips passed back and forth, but no serious damage was done and the men bantered amiably between hands, telling dumb stories about one another and chortling, huh huh huh, like apes at a grunt festival. As best I could judge, there were two dangerous players apart from Ruddle and Pellerin—a portly man with heavy bags under his eyes by the name of Carl, who rarely spoke other than to raise or check or call, and an ex-jock type with an Alabama accent, his muscles running to fat, whom everybody called Buster and treated with great deference, laughing loudly and long at his anecdotes, though they were none too funny. The remaining four were dead money, working their cards without discernable stratagem or skill.

“We can gossip and trade antes all night,” said Ruddle, “but I call that a ladies’ bridge tournament, not a poker game.”

“I didn’t notice you stepping up, Frank,” said Pellerin. “You been betting like you playing with your mama’s pin money.”

The table shared a chuckle.

Ruddle took it good-naturedly, but there was an edge to his smile and I knew he couldn’t wait to hurt Pellerin.

Truthfully, my mind was not on the game, but on Billy and Goess. The transfer of the lockbox to the vault made it clear that Billy’s true interest did not lie in that direction. My uneasiness intensified and it must have showed, because Jo gave my hand a squeeze. The play remained less than aggressive until, several hands later, Pellerin check-raised Ruddle’s bet after the flop by twenty thousand.

“I bid five clubs,” he said, causing another outburst of laughter.

Having watched him play every day at the Seminole Paradise, I knew this was a move he had been setting up ever since he’d arrived in Florida. He’d backed off a lot of players with it in the casino and it usually signified a bluff, something of which Ruddle would be aware. Now, I thought, he might have a hand. The flop was the four of spades, the seven of spades, and the seven of clubs. Pellerin bet another twenty thousand. From the way Ruddle had bet before the flop, I figured him to be holding a second pair, probably queens or better. If Pellerin wasn’t bluffing, he might have a third seven. Ruddle, after thinking it over, called the raise. Everyone else got out of the way. The turn card was the queen of hearts. Pellerin pushed out thirty thousand in chips.

“You got the nuts?” Ruddle asked him.

“There’s one way to find out,” said Pellerin.

Ruddle riffled a stack of chips and finally called. “Now we’re playing poker,” he said.

The river card was the eight of spades. With four spades face up, both men had the possibility of a flush draw.

“I hate to do this to our gracious host, but I’m all in,” Pellerin said.

“Call,” said Ruddle. He didn’t wait for Pellerin to show his hand—he slapped his hole cards down on the table. Ace of diamonds and ace of spades. He had made an ace-high flush.

“You got the high flush, all right.” Pellerin turned over his cards. “But mine’s all in a row.”

His hole cards were the five and six of spades, filling an eight-high straight flush.

The other players responded with shocked “Damns!” and “Holy craps!” Having lost close to half a million on the turn of cards, when there were only a couple of hands that could have beaten him, four sevens or a gutshot straight flush, Ruddle was speechless. Pellerin had been lucky, but he had played the hand so that if the cards were friendly, he was in position to take advantage.

“If you’d re-raised on the turn, I would have folded. Shit, all I had was a draw.” Pellerin began to stack his winnings. “Who was it said Hold ‘Em’s a science, but No Limit is an art? I must be one hell of an artist.” He waved at the bartender. “Jack Black on the rocks. A double.”

I expected Billy to be angry that Pellerin had moved on Ruddle so early in the evening, and I scrunched down so I could see him through the glass of the trophy case. He was sitting placidly, as if watching an episode of The Amazing Race, but I detected a little steam in the way his neck was bowed. Jo caught my eye and we exchanged a disconcerted vibe.

“Yes sir,” Pellerin said expansively. “You might have whupped a bunch of Leroys and Jim Bobs down in Tunica, but this here’s a different world, Frank.”

Ruddle stood and, walking stiffly, left the room. Some of the other gamblers followed him, doubtless to commiserate over the bad beat. Kim called for a short break, and Billy stepped over to me and whispered, “What’s he doing?”

“I’ll find out,” I said.

Billy’s nose was an inch from my face—I could smell his breath mints. “I want the bastard to suffer! You tell him that!”

He went to join the commiserators. I pulled Pellerin aside and told him Billy was upset.

“He’ll get his pound of flesh,” said Pellerin. “This’ll make it easier to manage the game. Ruddle will play tight for a while, and that gives me time to clear out the garbage.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” I whispered. “The guy in the camel blazer’s a hired killer. I know him from New Orleans. Alan Goess.”

“Is he? No lie?” His eyes flicked toward Goess and he smiled. “Hey, guy!” he said to Goess. “How they hanging?”

For a split second, the real Alan Goess came out from behind his rattlesnake deadboy guise, and I got a hint of his underlying madness; then the curtain closed and he said, “I’m doing well. So are you, from the looks of things.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” said Pellerin. “Yea, I am a troubled soul, but a firm believer in the Light and the Resurrection. How about yourself ?”

“‘ Fraid not,” said Goess. “I’ve never yet seen anyone come back.”

“You just think you haven’t,” Pellerin said, and would have said more, but I hustled him out of the room and told him not to screw around with Goess.

“I got it under control, boss,” he said. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

In the living room, Billy was having a chat with Carl, and Buster had cornered Jo. The other players were huddled up around Ruddle, patting him on the back, saying that Pellerin had been lucky, encouraging him to get back in the game. I gazed out the window toward the Mystery Girl, floating serene and white under the dock lights, impossibly distant.

Ruddle had had more chips than Pellerin, so the beat hadn’t wiped him out; but he didn’t have enough left to compete and he made a second buy-in of a quarter-million. The game resumed, albeit with a less convivial atmosphere. The room, small already, seemed to have shrunk, and the men sat hunched and quietly tense under the hanging lamp. Conversation was at a minimum… except for Pellerin. He drank heavily and whenever he won a pot he’d offer up a disparaging comment, engaging the ire of one and all. After taking forty grand off Buster, he said, “Where’d you learn poker, old son? From some guy named Puddin’ in the jock dorm?”

Buster said, “Why don’t you shut up and play cards?”

This notion was seconded by some of the others.

“In case you didn’t notice, I’m playing cards,” said Pellerin. “Damned if I can figure out what you’re playing.”

When Buster won a pot at his expense, Pellerin said, “Jesus must love a hillbilly fool.”

I had to admire Pellerin. Though he had a distinct advantage in the game, it took great skill to manipulate the fortunes of six other poker players. Ruddle gradually built his stack, winning back the majority of the chips he had lost. His mood grew sunnier and he began to joke around with the table, but when involved in a hand with Pellerin, he was barely civil, speaking brusquely if at all. By one o’clock, two lesser players had been driven out and another was teetering on the brink, down a quarter of a million, pushing in antes and mucking his cards hand after hand. At three-thirty, Buster decided to cut his losses and withdrew.