Dead Man's Hand (13 page)

When I had
the ace in front of my face I turned it over so everyone could see and without
a smile of vindication I simply said, “Better luck next time William.”

Before anyone
could really process William’s coming departure two of Dempsey’s goons appeared
out of thin air to either side of William.  One of the reasons why Dempsey
used such a thuggish method to remove all of the defeated players from play was
because sometimes one of those players would try something.  I had seen it
once today, and it had been when
Nicolai was bankrupted by
Bella.  As stupid as it was to try and assault Dempsey’s niece
the man had made an attempt.  And the pair had
quickly stepped in to remove the flailing professional from the hall. 
Dempsey even apologized for the outburst before we got back to the game. 
The pair wordlessly helped William in his transition from active participant to
sullen observer.

Tyson looked
over at me and again I saw something alien in those eyes.  What was it
now?  Was that interest?  Had my little act with William peaked
Tyson’s interest?  If I kept this up I would break him down like a little
baby in about oh I don’t know, maybe fifty years.  Though the fact that I
alone had managed to bleed the stone, even by as little as that, well it was
good enough reason for me to feel pleased.  He must have seen this because
he cracked a little smile.  That smile did more to unsettle me than any of
his dead stares ever could.  “That was well played, Marcus.” 

“My
hand?” 
Was that all I could think of saying in response to that
scheming smile?

Widening his
smile Tyson shook his head as he replied, “No, not your hand.  But rather
how you unveiled it, well played.”  I looked down as the dealer finished
sliding all of the chips to me, but when my attention returned to Tyson he
finished his thought.  “It allowed William to think he might still have a
chance to win while in the end you crushed his spirit.” 

For a second
we all thought Tyson was finished speaking but I guess he just had to say one
more thing.  “Though I have to admit I thought you were bluffing. 
I’m very glad I didn’t call you on that.”

I found
myself actually curious why he folded so I asked him, “Why’s that?”

With his face
falling back behind his stone etched mask he said without emotion, “My flush
would have lost to yours.”

As Tyson’s
words sank in, I started idly fingering my stack.  I quickly decided that
I needed to get out from under Tyson’s glare.  With a glance at the dealer
I asked, “Do I have the small?”  When he simply nodded I picked up the
required amount and tossed it into the barren pot before standing up.  “If
you all would excuse me, I think I’m going to follow Allison’s lead and get
myself a drink.”

Without
waiting for any kind of response I turned around and calmly walked over to the
bar.  I just needed a few moments of peace and tranquility.  When I
reached the bar I was pleasantly surprised to find Simon standing there, though
he was flanked by a couple of Dempsey’s
fauxtenders
. 
While I was sure they could help with grabbing a bottle or mug of beer, the
simple things, I was pretty sure Simon would have preferred a couple of real
bartenders to help out. 

My intent was
to deal only with Simon and I was walking directly for him, but one of the two
fauxtenders
tried to intercept me.  With a curt wave I
dismissed him altogether, I didn’t have the patience to deal with one of
Dempsey’s inept minions, not right now.  I stood and waited as Simon
finished what he was working on before I called out to him.  “It’s good to
see that a true craftsman working the bar.”

Turning to
look at me Simon smiled as soon as he recognized my face.  “Well,
unfortunately there isn’t much of a call for quality work.  The players
need their wits and those who have lost… well let’s just say they aren’t in any
mood to have something complicated.”

“Artists are
never respected in their lifetimes.”  I said through a genuine smile.

With a
lighthearted chuckle Simon tipped his head toward me as he replied.  “Now
you do flatter me.”

Willing to banter
with this man I dismissed his modesty, and insisted on laying praise on his
shoulders.  “Nonsense Simon, you are a true master capable of mixing
anything with whatever you happen to have behind your bar.”  Cracking a
smile I added, “Though I think I’ll disappoint you with what I’m going to ask
for.”

“And that
is…”  Simon said deliberately stopping so I would be compelled to
answer.  He must make out very well when he didn’t have to work for
Dempsey.

 “Just
another one of your martinis if you please.”

With deft
hands Simon began to make the requested drink and while he worked he asked,
“Typically I wouldn’t pry, but I’ve managed to catch a little of the tournament
here and there and… have you been eliminated already.”

“No, I just
needed a drink.”  I replied. “I was planning on just getting some water
but by happy coincidence you’re behind the bar.”

“There’s
nothing coincidental about it, you’re not the only one who likes my skill
set.”  He said, flashing a look towards where Dempsey sat watching the tournament.

Taking my
attention away from Simon, I looked over at the nearer of the two
fauxtenders
and spoke, with an air of command that I hadn’t
thought I would have been able to muster right then.  “Would you make
yourself useful and get me a bottle of water.”  The man’s eyes instantly
filled with annoyance, clearly they were not accustomed to being treated like
nothings.  But with that said he moved very quickly to comply with my
request.

When he
placed the cold bottle down in front of me I said, “Just to show that there are
no hard feelings between us hopefully you’re allowed to cash this in” and for
some reason I tossed him a chip that I must have grabbed from my pile without
thinking.  And judging from the smile that blossomed across his face I guessed
he would be allowed to do just that.  Though I was willing to bet not many
of Dempsey’s men warranted having the privilege.

Looking back
to Simon I asked him, “How much are the drinks?”

 “The
martini is forty eight dollars.”

Leaning in I
grimaced as I asked, “And how much for the water?”

 “Eight
dollars, sir.”

“So fifty six
dollars total then?”  I asked as I reached for my wallet, which felt just
a little too light.  I started to thumb through my wallet and I
immediately started to mentally curse the emptiness.  There was not enough
to cover the cost of the martini, let alone anything else I might want.  I
should have planned a little better than this.  Taking a deep breath I
told myself that there was no need to panic, I just needed to produce a little
more capitol.  Grasping the first bill I could, which happened to have
good old George picture, I poured enough heat through my will and into the bill
to trigger a permanent transformation.  It cost me more body heat than I
wanted to use but it was what I needed to do.  And as the warmth flowed
into the lowly bill the guidance of my mind transformed it into a portrait of
Ben Franklin.

I almost lost
my balance.  It was a lot of heat that I hadn’t been planning to use, but
the last thing I needed was for any of the bills I used to revert back to their
original form.  Hence the extra body heat.  The sudden chill I could
deal with; that was why I had my collection of hand warmers.  But what I
couldn’t deal with was an irate Dempsey, so a few cold fingers were worth the
extra trouble.  Clenching my jaw, while trying not to appear to clench it,
I pulled the newly transformed bill out of my wallet and handed it over to
Simon.

“I’ll get you
your change in a second sir.”

“Keep the
change.”

 “Thank
you sir.”  He replied with a vigorous nod.

Picking up my
two drinks I turned around and headed back to my table, hopefully the hand I
left was just about done.  I also hoped that the interruption would help
me block out Tyson’s icy gaze. It was exceptionally creepy.

It was nice to finally
win a pot.  Not that this was my first pot of the night but it had been a
while since I had won my last one.  As I collected and stacked my new
chips I looked around at the surviving tables and began to wonder why we hadn’t
received an infusion of new blood.  Since the start of the tournament five
of our original number had been eliminated and plenty of the others tables had
been removed, but the displaced players never made it to our table.  Which
was rather annoying since shortly after I had assumed control of William’s
stack the table had cooled off rapidly for everyone.

As I continued stacking
my winnings Allison chimed in.  “You’ve had quite the run of luck
recently, Marcus.”  Glancing from her smile to her fingers I saw her
smoothly guiding a chip back and forth across her knuckles.

Putting on a warm smile I
replied.  “Ever since William’s departure everyone at this table has had a
good run of luck.”  With a rather forced and disgusted chuckle I couldn’t
help but add, “Keep in mind that we haven’t lost someone in oh…”  Looking
down at my watch I did the simple math before looking up and added, “It’s only
been a couple of hours?”

“Stealing little pieces
of each other’s pile has proven to be quite the kill joy.”  Kelly voiced dryly.

“Has it really only been
a couple of hours since William was eliminated?”  Jonathon asked through
weary eyes.  His visible exhaustion made me glad I was so far able to keep
myself supplied with adrenaline shots and caffeine pills, just never too much
of either.  With a smile I remembered the willingness of a chemistry
teacher I once met to answer my random questions.

“Yes, it has!” snapped
Kelly, who hadn’t fared all that well over the intervening hours.  “And since
we’ve all grown cautious, it means we’re unfortunately due for another boring
three hours!”

“You are right that we’ve
had to endure a rather tedious stretch of poker, though some of us have managed
to keep our minds occupied.”  And since I really didn’t care about her
reaction, I shifted my gaze to Tyson and offered, “Since you’re the one most
bothered by dithering about, I figure you must be going absolutely stir crazy
sitting there and waiting for something to happen.”

The closed mouth Tyson
looked up at me and asked, “Can I assume that the meaningless chit chat is
finished for the time being?”

Every time I tried to
stare down those lifeless orbs I got a chill down my spine.  The man still
unnerved me, and I did my best not to let him get anything more out of me than
the barest minimum. So I looked straight at him and spoke with as little
emotion as I could manage.  “You’re the only person here I would have
preferred never to have met.”  And when he offered no reaction, not even a
hint of surprise added grudgingly.  “But I will admit, you’re quite the
skilled player.”

For a second I thought I
had rattled him as I thought perhaps confusion crossed his brow.  But as
quickly as the expression had appeared it was gone.  Why had my compliment
gotten a reaction, when my attempt to poke the proverbial bear went unnoticed?
I guess the man had expected anything but a sincere compliment.  After
another moment Tyson nodded in acknowledgement before placing his neat little
stack of chips into the pot.  Immediately Kelly picked up one of her own
chips as she considered her own decision.

I couldn’t help but
wonder why the blinds themselves had yet to knock someone out; they were large
enough, fifty and twenty-five thousand respectively.  But as I had told
Allison, everyone was getting a turn courting luck at this table.  Thus
the money simply kept getting passed around, which didn’t seem to be happening
at any of the other tables.  They were eliminating players, but for some
reason this one seemed unable to do so.  Taking another look around, I
counted only three remaining tables.

When a table lost too
many players to continue, it was removed and the players were lead to other
tables.  The magic number for this consolidation seemed to be five. 
Once a table dropped to five or fewer the remaining players were asked to pick
up their chips and follow their guides to their new table.  But for some
reason there had been no additions to our table.  I couldn’t think of a
single reason why we were being ignored.

As I was thinking about
this Kelly tossed her blind into the
pot.
  She
had presumably been annoyed by Tyson’s remark and decided to throw her chips
right at his carefully crafted stack.  She must have thought that would at
least annoy him, since she was sporting a smirk on her face. Tyson completely
ignored the little tantrum.  It had been a very childish thing to do, but
that was Kelly’s style.  She was as bombastic as anyone I had ever met.
 You could either ignore her or give as
good
as
she dished out.  I had been returning her behavior in kind but Tyson’s
approach seemed to work better, as much as I hated to admit it.  The man
was like a piece of stone, just sitting there waiting for his hand.

As the cards began their
journey across the table, my attention was drawn towards the newest
dealer.  Our first dealer had left shortly before I eliminated William and
then we once again received a new dealer just a couple hands ago.  It
seemed that Dempsey liked to keep his players strung out while his dealers
remained fresh.  After almost five hours I was really wishing for a break,
the adrenaline I was making would only do so much for me before it would be
wise for me to stop taking it. 

The thought of asking
about a break had been awfully tempting right up until the moment when some
other poor fool asked the question.  After I saw what had happened to him,
I was thankful I had kept my mouth shut and very happy I had learned how to
produce certain chemicals, like caffeine and adrenaline.  That newbie had
indeed been given a break, only it was a more permanent one.  He had been
escorted up into the stadium and his chips were promptly distributed around his
table.  Looking up into the stadium anyone could tell who it had been,
since he was sitting all alone, hate filling his eyes.

The only benefit to the
situation that I could think of was that with the majority of the players
drawing towards a state of exhaustion or overstimulation, mistakes would be
more easily made, either bad betting or obvious cheating. Combine that with
fresh dealers and the game would soon be approaching its conclusion. 
Unfortunately, I was beginning to join the ranks of the over stimulated. With
the use of my ready supply of stimulants, my attention span was decreasing to a
state of near nonexistence.  Which was why the dealer ended up having to
prompt me that the bet was to me.

With my attention back
where it belonged, I bent down so that I could closely examine my cards. 
And as I lifted up the corners I caught sight of the king of spades and the ace
of hearts.  A good place to start and it looked like no one had raised the
blind so I collected my bet.  To my surprise both Allison and Jonathan
decided to see the flop, but both seemed to be slightly apprehensive that Tyson
would raise the cost.  Fortunately he decided to just pay the difference
and left any sort of raise to Kelly.  She simply checked and the round of
betting closed.

With everyone at the
table set for the flop, I gave a quick glance around the room and caught sight
of a few displaced players heading our way.  I silently cursed fate for
not displacing them a good five minutes earlier.  We were finally going to
get some new blood, hopefully that would break up this five way stalemate we
had going.  With a closer look at the upcoming arrivals I noticed that one
of them was Bella and she was watching me very intently.  She looked
genuinely excited and for a brief moment I wondered if it was because of me or
just that she would have the chance to study her new opponents objectively.

I returned my attention
to the game just in time to see the flop.  And what a beautiful sight it
was, with the ace of spades alongside the eight and six of hearts.  Not
only had I picked up another ace I had a flush draw as well, now I just needed
to study everyone else.  I quickly shifted my gaze to the players and saw
Tyson reach towards his pile and begin making a side stack.  When he had a
small pile of chips he showed them to the dealer, who announced “The opening
bet is one hundred thousand.”

“Well the flop doesn’t
help me any.”  Kelly announced as she promptly folded her hand, which
shifted Tyson’s focus to me.

Tyson’s decision really
didn’t take all that long; he must have gotten something good on the
flop.  Or for all I knew he was bluffing, who could tell with body control
like his?  Maybe Tyson had the flush draw as well.  Not for the first
time I found myself wishing Tyson had some kind of tell, but once again I
dismissed this useless thought as it was doing me no good.  I thought
about Tyson’s style of play for a bit, had he tried to bully people out? 
He might have, that was the problem, I just didn’t know.

I must have been sitting
there thinking longer than I realized because the next thing I knew I heard
Allison say, “Those cards aren’t going to change while you sit there staring at
them.

I almost choked with the
knot that ran up my throat, but I kept things smooth as far as I could tell and
when I knew my voice wouldn’t crack I replied with a tone that oozed ease.
 “I know that, besides that’s not what I’m trying to do.  Though,
that certainly would be a cool trick.”  The last words seemed to come out
of their own volition and I cursed the mental smile it provoked.  If they
knew that I actually could do something like that then I would be in some serious
trouble.  Would I ever learn to control my tongue?  I started to idly
pick up a small pile of chips at my left hand and drop them in place. I had
been crafting that particular tell for a while now, I was hoping it would
work.  I kept repeating those motions as I continued where I had left off,
“I’m not hoping for a change Alison.  I was just trying to decide how much
I wanted to put in.”

“And…” Jonathan prompted.

I kept my breathing calm
and deliberate, I couldn’t afford to send signals, good or bad.  I had a
feeling that this would be another good hand, but I have been wrong before,
fortunately not yet today.  “I think I’m just going to match Tyson’s price
to see the turn.”  I supplied as I proffered the required payment to the
pot.  I was working overtime to hide the concern from my face, Tyson was
making me doubt my gut.  In an attempt to displace my worry I looked at
Allison, “You’re up Ally.”

As she wrinkled her nose
Allison was tapping the backs of her cards, and I could tell that she was
pretending to be deep in thought.  She eventually broke that concentration
and addressed the table as a whole.  “Well I have to agree with Kelly.
 That flop wasn’t… all I hoped it would be.  But I think my hand is
worth pursuing.”  Fingering her pile she lifted the required amount and
promptly paid to see the next card.  “I guess I’ll see the turn as well.”

“Unlike the two of you
I’m not willing to stick with this garbage.”  Jonathan quipped as he slid
his pair of cards back to the dealer.

“Three down and two to
go.”  Allison said through a wicked little grin.  “I do hope you’ll
provide us with an interesting card, my good sir.”

And as if on cue the
dealer burned the top card and produced another ace, the ace of spades. 
Which gave me trip aces with a king high, and with what was available, that was
a very good hand to hold.  I flicked my eyes over at Allison and noticed
the slight gleam in her eye that she couldn’t completely cover.  So far
today I had learned a lot of things, but one of them had been that she was a stellar
player.  She wasn’t as skilled as Tyson in regard to hiding her reactions,
but then, I seriously doubted any such person existed.  But what she
excelled at was working out the odds and knowing what the best available hands
were.  So, for her to be so excited, that meant she had to have the last
ace, the ace of clubs.  But what was her other card?  That was the
only mystery currently hiding behind her mannerisms.

I turned from studying
her to the cards and once again ran through what was possible at this stage of
the hand.  There was no chance of someone having a royal flush, though I
would love to see that hand once in my life.  A straight flush or even a
straight were almost just as improbable to find right now.  With the ace
under my hand there was no way anyone could come up with four of a kind,
thankfully. Unfortunately both a full house and a flush were still very much in
play and either would best my trips.

That river card was still
a cause for concern, though not from Allison.  She was riding the same
hand I was, trip aces, at least I was pretty sure of it.  She couldn’t get
a flush, not with the club I was betting she held.  And she wasn’t
reacting like she had a pair to compliment her trip aces.  She had trip
aces with a high kicker, possibly even a king in her pocket.  Either way,
her betting would confirm her hand.

However, Tyson was the
first to make a claim, and he made quite the bet with another hundred
thousand.  He was being aggressive, but my first instincts had played
exceptionally well for me today so I raised him, bringing the new price tag for
the river up to one hundred and fifty thousand. 
Let us all see just
how in love you are with that hand, Tyson.
  Everyone turned to look at
Allison, who, without hesitation, reached for her own chips and calmly made her
choice clear.  “Well, I think I’m just going to have to raise you both
let’s say, double.  Three hundred thousand dollars to stay in and see the
river.”