Drawing Dead (14 page)

The t-shirt said
Alive for Pleasure
.

I felt a mammoth paw on my shoulder. I turned around. A huge guy with thick, greasy lips and spiky hair.

I heard about you, he said.

Great, I said.

From Bruno, he said.

Oh shit.

Luiz, he said by way of introduction. This here’s Mikey Z.

He nodded at his companion.

Mikey had the acne scar thing going, and a wispy blond mustache. Both of them huge and with black leather. Slightly smaller than Bruno, but the same general type, except ugly. Both of them holding motorcycle helmets.

How you doin’? Mikey Z. bellowed in a thick voice from the back of the throat, a broad smile working mightily to make itself as insincere as possible.

Doing great, I said. You?

I hear you owe Evgeny some serious money.

Maybe, I said. What’s it to you?

Nothing, he said with an unsubtle wink. Just wondering.

We faked some poker chatter. They said they were cleaning up in the side games. Yeah, me too, I lied. I asked them where they were staying. The Bellagio. Of course. If it wasn’t the most expensive place in town, it was close. Well, good for them. If they made half of what they claimed to make in the cash games, they could afford it.

Mikey asked me where I was staying.

Dusty Ranger, I said.

What?

The Dusty Ranger, I repeated.

Don’t know it, Luiz said.

I didn’t think you would, I said.

I headed back to my table.

The smoke tasted black and brackish in my throat. I worried that I hadn’t disguised the motel name enough. Last thing I needed was Bruno knowing where I lived.

I got back in time to be dealt the button. I peered at my hole cards. Pair of Tens. Nice.

I raised a grand.

Too much. I was overcompensating.

Jerry re-raised all in.

Damn.

Again? I said.

He grinned at me. Adjusted his aviator shades.

Tens is a good hand. A very good hand. Not a great hand. But a very good one. Especially all in.

But not a monster. Not at all. Even if he didn’t have a higher pair—and I didn’t think he did—any hand with a Jack, a Queen, a King or an Ace could beat me. Three cards each to make a higher pair. That’s twelve cards to beat me. Five cards to come. Five times twelve is … whatever the hell it is. A lot.

No. Not a monster.

If I’d been the one gone all in with my Tens, I’d have been very comfortable. You want to be the aggressor. All the books tell you that. It’s called fold equity. When you combine the times that your opponent folds to your bet with the times your hand holds up and wins, you’ll be an overall winner. But when you’re just calling, you’ve got to have the better hand at showdown every time: that’s the only way you can win. What really drove it home was all the times you didn’t bet out. You had a hand. Somebody raised big. You flat called. He flipped over his cards.

A monster.

Yes, guys bluff. Guys bluff all the time.

But they’re not bluffing all the time.

And with all of your chips at stake, or most of them, or even just a lot of them, you had to be sure. You couldn’t be certain, of course. You could never be certain. But you had to be sure enough about it that you wouldn’t be second-guessing yourself later.

And you were a hell of a lot more sure when it was you, and not the other guy, putting in the big bet.

I was trying to work through all this shit when I saw Brendan near the door to the smoking area. He was with two guys. Looked like Anatoly and Andrei. Shit, had all of New York City already got here? And wasn’t Brendan supposed to be tracking down Eloise? Or at least her last known address?

I pushed it away. I had a hand to play. I called for time. I didn’t have to fake anything. There was no more room for deception. I was either folding, or calling him all in. He, on the other hand, might be giving something away. I looked him up and down. Jiggling legs? You could tell by the upper body movement. Usually meant a big hand. None of that from Jerry. Trying too hard to be inconspicuous? That
would mean, probably, that he didn’t want a call. I didn’t see any of that either. Excessive blinking? Usually meant a bluff. But I hadn’t gotten a read on his normal blink rate. So the fact that he was, in fact, blinking up a storm didn’t do me any good. Could be he did it all the time. And anyway, if he was good, and I had no reason to think otherwise, he could be doing it on purpose. To give me a false read. The reverse tell. Can be very effective.

So, I had to rely on the betting patterns. The cards. The math.

While I was thinking, I glanced towards the bar. There was Brendan again, still with the Russkies. Looked like they were throwing back vodka shots. Shit, I thought, I’ve got to go straighten the kid out. He can’t have already gone to Henderson and back.

I pushed the thought away. I pondered Jerry’s play. There wasn’t much to go on, this hand. I’d bet. He’d raised. A re-raise to a raise as big as mine was a pretty ballsy play. If it was a bluff, it was a good one. You had to think about what the other guy was thinking. I was thinking that he was thinking that because of my earlier aggressive play, I’d probably raised with less than optimal hands before. He just hadn’t had a hand that could beat a bluff, to call me on it with. But then, recently, I’d folded a few in a row. He had to think I was tightening up. Maybe.

On the other hand, the guy himself had played a lot of iffy cards, earlier.

I looked him down some more. He was staring straight ahead. Riffling a small stack of chips. Doing it smoothly.

Nothing to go on.

I glanced back at the exit. Brendan and the Russkies were gone.

It gave me a bad feeling.

But I had a hand to play.

Forget about what he was thinking about me. What’d he been doing? When I thought about it, Jerry hadn’t played many hands lately. He’d gotten a lot more selective. I had to give him credit.

On the other hand, he could have been raising with a real hand, but one less than Tens. A crapshoot hand was very likely. Ace, King. Ace, Queen. Something that was less than fifty-fifty to beat my Tens.

I looked at the guy. Black shades. Still staring straight ahead. Not moving. Giving me nothing.

Ah, shit, I thought. Why take a chance here? I still had a lot of chips. Make my stand later. When I was the aggressor.

I folded.

A few more hands went by. Thrusting and feinting. A grand here, a grand there. We were staying about even. I looked down at Ace, King.

How to play it? I go all in, he probably folds. All I get are the blinds. Though the blinds were big. Two and one. Three grand. Not a bad haul.

But. Ace, King. I could try to trap. Get all his chips.

I called.

He bet. Two grand.

Well.

He could have anything. Or nothing. He was good. He was randomizing his bets. So. I had to calculate on the basis that he had at least a slightly better than average hand. And I had a monster. So. It was easy.

I went all in.

He nodded. Flipped over Aces.

Shit on a stick.

The Aces held up.

Better luck next time.

I nursed my disappointment for a minute. Until the vision of Brendan with those fucking Russkies came back to me. Fuck the satellite. What the hell was he doing? I went out back. Didn’t see them. It had been a while. I checked out the hamburger joint. Nothing but stained sweatshirts waiting for mustard.

The beer tent.

Natalya was still there.

Hey, I said.

Hey, Ricky! she said.

You’re a lucky girl, I said.

Oh? How so? she said, nonchalantly pulling out a scotch glass and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. Ice? she asked.

Sure, I said.

She poured me a big one.

So how is it I’m so lucky? she asked.

I only let really good-looking women call me Ricky, I said.

Ah. Then I am indeed very lucky girl.

That dropped ‘a’ was the first hint of her Russian roots. Other than the name, and the facial features.

I asked had she seen a couple of Russian guys with a tanned, good-looking American guy, mid-thirties, slim waist.

Sure, she said. They played pool for a while. Drank a lot of vodka. Got a little stupid. So I threw them out.

You didn’t.

No, I didn’t, she said with a laugh. They took off. But they were pretty tanked.

You know those guys? The Russians?

Not really. I’ve seen them hanging around the last couple of days.

You’re sure the American guy went with them?

Sure I’m sure.

Shit, I thought. There’s no way the little fucker had checked out the Henderson house.

Damn, I said.

Problem?

Nothing. If you see him, let me know, will ya?

Sure, she said. How’m I going to do that?

Oh. Yeah. Sorry.

I wrote down my cell number on a napkin.

Now, she said, I have the power on you.

So you do, I said. So there’s nothing else for it. You’ve got to give me your number, too.

Oh, Ricky, you are too quick for me. But no, I think you do a little more work before you get my number.

She said it like she didn’t mean it. That I could lean over, say just the right funny thing, and her phone number would pop out of her mouth, just like the winning ticket from the slot machine.

But I didn’t have time to follow up. I couldn’t let this Eloise thing go. Apart from my general obligation to do the job I was hired for, it might be useful to actually do some work for the money I’d misappropriated. If all went well, I’d earn it, and never have to account for it.

I called Brendan’s cell. No answer. No surprise there.

Enough. I’d have to check out Henderson myself.

Had to change out of the poker clothes first. Get into some realistic detective getup.

Appearance, like location, is everything.

To get to the exit from the poker area I had to pass through the Poker Lifestyle Exposition. I wasn’t at all sure what the Poker Lifestyle consisted of, but whatever it was, I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to pay extra for it.

Best I could tell, the Exposition was an excuse for anyone with anything to sell that was vaguely poker-related to set up a booth and look bored. It was housed in a mammoth room right across from the playing hangar. In the middle of the place one of the Internet poker sites had set up a two-story extravaganza. Downstairs was a comfortable lounge with laptops, where you could play for free on their site. Upstairs they had put a king-size bed on which reposed three girls in hot pants and t-shirts. A bunch of fat, sloppy, badly dressed guys—poker players, in other words—were lined up on a staircase waiting their turn to sit on the end of the bed, their backs to the girls, and get hit with pillows. One of the girls tossed armfuls of feathers into the air while the other two did the hitting. Some guy with a camera was standing against the far wall taking insta-photos that the pillow guys then might have the honor of purchasing.

I guess part of the Poker Lifestyle is getting slammed with pillows by hot babes while somebody takes pictures.

I’d missed that part.

I vowed not to miss it again.

O
UTSIDE, THE HEAT WAS SOLID, IMMOVABLE
. I trudged through the thermal wall to the cabstand. I was in luck. No line. I got into the first car. It smelled of dust and dry rot. The driver wore a leather cap, covered with badges. They seemed to have something to do with fishing. I wondered where you went fishing in the desert. I asked him. He chuckled, didn’t answer. He got me to the Dusty Angel. I asked the fisherman to wait for me while I changed. The Dusty Angel had a cabstand, but it was usually empty.

I changed into some quasi-respectable clothes. Back in the car, I asked the guy if he knew where Henderson was. He chuckled again, pulled the car into the street.

Heading to Henderson. Heading: Henderson. I cursed Brendan. I cursed him some more. If I’d been wearing a sign, it would have said:
I’d rather be playing poker
.

Henderson, I learned later, is a big part of Vegas. Everyone knows where it is. Rich people live in Henderson. I suppose you might call it a suburb. But it just seemed to be more of the same. You looked out
your hotel window—if you were lucky enough to be staying at a hotel, and not a motel with a parking-lot view—and beyond the ludicrous excess of the Strip, Vegas just seemed to stretch on forever, or to the mountains if you were looking in that direction. The same, the same and more of the same, sun-blasted adobe and cinder block. It made the idea of separate towns and jurisdictions, boundaries, borders, sort of, I don’t know, futile.

Desert housing developments are just like desert golf courses: watered and manicured to absolute perfection. The golf course fairways look like they’ve been bikini-waxed, as some famous golf commentator once said, and got fired for saying. I thought it was a pretty good line. But golf culture is not big on candor. Honesty, integrity, yes. Speaking your mind? Get back to the caddy shack, buddy. No, forget it. Get off the fucking course, and never show your face here again.

The point being, the greens and fairways are meticulously maintained. The desert climate is inhospitable to pests, to the insects and crabgrasses that bedevil golf courses in more humid climates. The rough consists of vast stretches of desert wasteland. You hit your ball left off the tee, you’re not fighting through tall gnarly grass, you’re battling rattlesnakes and rocks, cacti and lizards.

Henderson is like the fairway, the highways. Everything is frighteningly new, extensively watered, groomed and pruned. The houses set discreetly back behind rows of palms. Well-constructed houses. Tailored to the weather and the landscape. One might even admire them, if there weren’t so damn many of them. Most parts of Vegas, there were rows and rows of identical desert-brown developments, a parody of old suburbia. In the expensive parts of town, the houses were individual, the product of architectural thought. But it was still hard to tell one from another. There was something homogenous about them. Like American cheese. Not the cheese known as American. That’s Ohio. But the way that any cheese you can find in America can only reach a certain level of idiosyncrasy. You’ll never find a Brie that tastes like a Brie from Brie. Because there’s a law in America: you’ve got to homogenize it.