Against The Odds (Anna Dawson #1) (6 page)

“I’m done in an hour, why don’t you wait for me in the book?”

I nodded, and headed away after I’d said hi to the other poker room guys. I settled in at the book room. It was late, so no games were on, but ESPN and its sister-stations were on the televisions, so I watched the scores, calculated the point spreads, read the stats of the players, committing it all to memory. Well, not all to memory. I got up, went to the side of the room where all the odds sheets were, grabbed one not looking at what it was for, a pen from the box next to the sheets and went back to my chair ready to write down more stats as they came up.

I was about to flip the paper over to write on the back when I noticed that I’d grabbed the lines for tomorrow’s college hoops games. They must have just been put out.

Shit. There it was, jumping out at me. Central Iowa at Northwestern. CIU was a twenty-five point favorite which is a hell of a lot of points. Especially for a win on the road. But Raymond Joseph had been playing with a vengeance since his embarrassing showing at Minnesota three weeks ago. And he was from Chicago, so he’d want to show off for his hometown friends.

I had to bet that game.

But my wallet was empty.

I turned away from the paper, up to the board. Amidst all the brightly colored lights that listed all the games and point spreads across the entire side wall of the book room, the CIU game seemed to burn brighter, as if it was almost flashing at me.

Yeah, I know, I silently told it. Iowa’s going to win by thirty. Raymod Joseph’s going to have the game of his life. I felt it.

I
knew
it.

My stomach clenched, I knew what I was going to do.

I gathered my things and headed back to the poker room, which conveniently sat right beside the sports book. I went through a side entrance to avoid Jason’s table and found Jeffrey where I’d left him not ten minutes before.

He didn’t seem all that surprised to see me coming. “Taking a rain check?” he asked when I got to him.

I smiled. “Yeah. You mind?”

He shrugged. “Would it matter if I said yes?”

I struggled for an answer, but he let me off the hook. “Don’t answer that. I don’t really want to know.”

I gave him a quick kiss and headed away. “Anna,” he called after me. I turned. “Next time I’m going to tell you to wait for me at the bar.”

I smiled. “Next time I will,” I answered.
 

But we both knew it wasn’t true.

A
s soon as I was out of sight of the poker room I grabbed my cell phone and dialed. I should have this number in my speed dial, but Lorelei always sets my phones up for me when she buys me new ones and I didn’t give her this number to enter.

We don’t do cell phone contracts. No sense having another monthly bill that might need to be shuffled in a lean period. We buy the pay as you go ones and when I hit, Lorelei buys a bunch of phone cards.

Besides, I know this number by heart.

“Yo,” the man picked up on the first ring.

“Paulie. It’s Anna.”

“Hey, Anna,” his voice softened.

“Where’s the game tonight?” I asked as I pulled the pen and paper I’d written stats on in the bookroom out of my jacket pocket.

“Caesar’s,” he said. I did a yooie, heading away from the parking deck and back toward the casino, to the walkway that led to Caesar’s Palace. “Room fortythree-twentytwo.”

I wrote it down. I’d played in too many different hotel rooms to imagine I could remember a different number every night.

“There room for one more?” I asked Paulie.

“There’s always room for you, Anna,” he said. It should have been sweet, but there was just enough come-on in his voice to make it oily.
 

Kind of like Paulie himself.

O
n my walk to Caesar’s, I pulled a stack of hotel key cards from one of the pockets in my cargo pants. I didn’t carry a purse when I was gambling. Between the pockets of my leather jacket (which became denim in warmer months), and multi-pocketed pants, I usually had enough room for my keys, cell phone, ID and money. Paper and pen could be found at every book room. Anything else just got in the way.

I flipped through the key cards until I found one from Caesar’s and put the rest away, buttoning the pocket.

I moved quickly through the casino toward the hotel elevator banks. I flashed my key card to the security guard, the one that stood by the elevators and made sure only registered guests got by.

 
I tried not to make eye contact with those guys—I don’t want them remembering me. Or questioning why I seem to be a hotel guest for one night, never have any luggage, and come back every ten days or so.

Of course, with the amount of people they see go through, it probably wasn’t a problem, but I kept my head down just the same.

When I got to the room number Paulie gave me I knocked. When he opened the door I saw that it was a suite. I wasn’t surprised. Vince had come a long way since I’d first met him. Back then he’d been running back room games in…well, back rooms.
 

Back rooms of restaurants, stores, whatever. But since he moved his floating operation to hotel suites his clientele had noticeably improved.

So, why were there ten guys up here playing poker when there were perfectly good poker tables only a few floors below? And those came with scantily-clad cocktail waitresses.

First of all, you knew if you played in one of Vince’s games you were playing with real players. Not yahoo tourists who’d watched
The World Series of Poker
on ESPN and figured they’d give it a try on their next vacation.

Now, in theory, being at a table with bad players is a good thing in poker. It isn’t like that in black jack where a bad player could take the dealer’s bust card and the whole table loses.

But for those of us who truly loved the game, you wanted to play with good players. Great players. To know you took down a good player brought so much more satisfaction than bringing down a table full of tourists.

And more money.

Also, when you play at a cash game at a casino, you lose a little of each pot to “the rake”—the percentage that the house takes out of each pot. That’s how the casinos make money on poker, because, of course, the dealer never wins as they do in black jack or other games. Instead, a percentage of each pot is taken in for the house. The rest to the winner.

These games tended to bring out the “whales”, big spenders, big stakes, basically the biggest fish in the sea. Yeah, I know a whale is not technically a fish, but I didn’t make up the term. There are high-roller poker rooms in each casino, and most times the whales played there, but sometimes they wanted even more privacy than those little enclaves afforded them.

Maybe they shouldn’t be seen in a casino? I’ve played across from some politicians, a couple of NBA players and a high-profile college football coach, none of whom would want it known they were playing high-stakes poker in a casino.

The other reason people played Vince’s games was the reason I was here tonight.

I stepped past Paulie, nodding hello, and over to a desk area where Carla, Vince’s bookkeeper, was set up.
 

Carla was a pretty woman with what she would tell you—and often did—twenty extra pounds. She had dark hair that had just started showing streaks of gray, that she wore in a severe bob. In her late forties, she’d been working for Vince since I’d come on the scene.

“Hey, Carla,” I said.

She looked up from her
Peopl
e magazine. “Hey, Anna. You playing tonight?”

You would think that would be obvious, but I guess I could have been there to pay off a debt or something. “Yeah,” I answered.

“Cash or marker?” she asked.

“What’s the starting stake?”

“Twenty,” she said.

I pretended to think about it. Like any second I’d pull out twenty thousand dollars from one of my pockets. I saw Carla exchange a look with Paulie and knew I wasn’t fooling anybody.

“Marker,” I said.

Carla wrote it down in her ledger book. She flipped the book around and pointed for me to sign. I did. Not legal of course, but definitely binding.

She handed me a stack of chips, and just like that; with interest, I was in debt to Vince for twenty-four thousand dollars. If I didn’t pay him back in one week, it would be thirty.
 

And I got the friends and family interest rate.

But I didn’t think about owing Vince after tonight. I never did. I’d win more that 24K, pay Carla, stop by the book and bet the CIU game and if there was any left, I’d give it to Lorelei to stash.

 
Every time I stepped into this room—or one in any hotel just like it, I knew…
I knew…
I would win.

Why else would I bother?

T
wo hours later the plan was right on track. Just a couple more hands and I’d pay Carla, bet the game, have some for Lorelei and maybe even have time for a quick nap before taking Ben to breakfast.

I had Mr. Chow on the hook and he knew it.

I’d played with him before. Good player. Excellent player. But I’d had the cards tonight. And now I was two or three hands away from taking his entire stack. He or I had already cleaned out three other players. The other four were still in but limping. Mr. Chow was the big fish tonight and I was going to land him.

He raised my bet, as I knew he would. I hadn’t bet much, just feeling him out. I had cards, but I thought he might too. I was just about to re-raise, but only slightly, when a cell phone went off.

All the men checked their jackets, pockets, all shaking their head as the phone continued to ring. Finally everyone in the room turned their eyes to me, looks of surprise on the faces of guys I regularly played with.

 
Not that a cell phone going off was that unusual, although these players—serious players—talked a lot less on phones than the guys in the casinos. But there were still plenty of plans made—and broken—on phones as the night wore on.

What was so unusual was that it was
my
phone. Nobody ever called me, and certainly not at this time of night.

Ben
. As quickly as that thought processed, sheer terror shot through me. I reached for my phone, stumbling on the button of my cargo pants pocket. A quick look at the caller ID confirmed my fears.
 

“Ben?” I answered. Mr. Chow pointed to my cards, I held up my finger—“one second” style.

“Hannah, darling, come home. I need you,” Ben said, his soft voice barely audible.

“Ben? Are you okay?” Stupid. Would he be calling me at three a.m. if he were okay? Would he even be up? Truth was I didn’t know a lot about Ben’s nocturnal habits, that was more Lorelei’s shift than mine.

“No. I need you to come home,” Ben answered.

“Do you need an ambulance? Is Lorelei there? What’s happened?”

“I don’t need an ambulance. Lorelei is here but she can’t help.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “I need
you
, Hannah. Please come home.”

“I’m on my way,” I said and hung up, already rising from my chair.

I reached for my chips and only then realized I was still in the middle of a hand. I looked at Mr. Chow. He probably had cards. I knew that. That’s why I’d been betting small on this hand.

I should just fold, concede this hand to him and cash out. I looked at my stack. I could easily pay Carla and have some left over. Probably not as much as I’d wanted to have to bet on the basketball game, but depending on what was going on at home, I probably wouldn’t get a chance to bet it anyway.

I picked up my cards, ready to toss them in…and then I stopped, my hand frozen. Call it the devil on your shoulder. Call it deep-seeded demons. Call it whatever they do in any twelve-step program.
 

I called it a “hummer”.
 

No, not that kind.
 

And right then the hummer ran through me like a locomotive.

When it snuck up on you like that; in a hand of poker, or watching somebody hit a three point shot as the buzzer ran out to make the spread. Well, there’s no feeling like it in the world. Part dread, part elation, and all exhilarating.

It was better than chocolate. Better than sex.

Better than chocolate-covered sex.

But also that feeling you get during a scary movie right before the starlet has her head chopped off.

I set my cards back down. Pushed my stack to the center of the table and declared, “All in.” The hum rushed through me, making my stomach clench with anxiety. Dollar signs dancing in front of my eyes.

The hum lasted only a second until Mr. Chow nearly broke his arm pushing his chips in to call me.

And I knew I’d been the fish tonight.

He turned over pocket aces to my queens. I knew there’d be no miracles and there weren’t. I motioned to the dealer to hurry up and he did, but I didn’t need to stick around.