Dragons Deal Page 7

  "Absolutely," Marion said. She made for the room's only lavatory. When she came out, the dealer excused herself and went in. Jordan took that opportunity to examine the wrapped decks of cards in the basket. He sent his consciousness deep inside the first one, a deck with two red-spoked wheels on the back, letting each individual card impress upon his psyche until he could see the spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds pressed up against one another. He would be now able to read them as they were used. He put it down and concentrated upon the next, a blue deck with the image of a leering joker riding a bicycle.

  The sounds of water rushing and a door opening caused him to glance up as he was reading the third deck. The young black woman came toward him, alarm on her face.

  "Sir, don't touch that!" she insisted. She hurried to take the basket away and set it down.

  "I'm sorry," Jordan said, evincing contrition. He handed back the third deck. She replaced it at the left side. "I didn't realize they were off-limits."

  "Yes, sir, I'm afraid so," she said, allowing herself to be slightly mollified. "It's . . . I must be the only one to handle these cards."

  "I apologize. I only wanted to see the backs. There is a large variety, isn't there?"

  "Well, there is," she said. "There are more than fifty designs. I don't have to repeat a design during the entire evening, so there's no question . . ." She let the sentence tail off.

  "I understand," Jordan said. "You have to be careful to prevent cheating. I was just curious."

  She looked reluctant but did not want to seem inhospitable to a guest. "If I handle them, you may see them all, sir. Just please, don't touch."

  "I won't," Jordan said. She showed him deck after deck. He hoped she would not change the order, but she put them back in the basket the same way they had been before. Now he had to finish the situation before she used up the three he had touched and went on to one he could not read.

  He glanced up. The others were finished with their break-time activities. Luis whispered to them until Jordan met his eyes. He broke off, looking uncomfortable. They had been talking about him. It did not matter. Jordan was not there to make friends.

  It was easy going from then on. The others clearly suspected him a little of wanting to cheat, so they kept an eye on him. Jordan moved his hands in an open and ostentatious manner so there was no question that he was handling only his own cards and for as brief a time as possible. He let three promising hands go, to the benefit of Len and Marion, especially Len, so that their piles of chips grew. Seeing him lose made the others relax a little. Luis told stories. Marion laughed at them in her loud, easygoing way. Len and Carroll peered noncommittally at their cards and pushed chips in.

  Carroll let out a soft exhalation of breath as the dealer passed him cards. Jordan did not look up. It was the first such noise he had heard the bald player make. Was this a tell, at last? Then Carroll burped and grunted. He left his cards where they lay on the table. Jordan was frustrated. He must get that man out of the game so he could concentrate on players he could read. Jordan checked his own cards. A pair of kings. A good start. He began to concentrate energies upon Carroll, urging him to take action.

  "Two thousand," the bald man said.

  "Raise," Jordan said, adding another five thousand to the pot. Carroll's eyebrows rose a fraction.

  "Too rich for me," Luis said, with a laugh. He passed his cards to the dealer. Len and Marion followed suit. The flop was revealed; none of them were face cards. Carroll checked. Jordan raised a thousand. Carroll threw his cards in. Jordan felt a twinge of annoyance, but at least he had created some movement in the silent man's psyche.

  It took four hands to lure Carroll in so that he was betting on each hand. By then, the dinner hour had passed. The server behind the bar brought selections of one-bite hot snacks to each of the players. The food was delicious but not meant to interrupt concentration. Jordan needed every erg of it he had. He held the first pair of aces in the entire game in his hand, spades and diamonds. He kept as still as a snake prepared to strike. No matter. Even if Carroll had an ace, it was not in suit. Marion was on the button, so Jordan bet first.

  "Five thousand," he said.

  "Raise one," Luis said. Jordan was unconcerned about the Miamian. He had seven-eight suited.

  Marion folded, and Len added his chips to the pot.

  "See you," Carroll said.

  Jordan saw Luis's raise.

  They all watched the dealer avidly as she peeled three cards off the top, then turned up the next three cards. Two nines and a queen. Jordan added another six thousand. Luis and Len held on. Carroll's broad face broke out in pinpoints of perspiration.

  "Hey, you hear of that sting that the Feds played at the Miami Port Authority?" Luis asked.

  "I saw it on the news," Jordan said. Luis beamed at him. He loved it when people got involved in his stories. Jordan kept up the conversation, but his attention was on Carroll. The bald man pushed three stacks of chips into the center. Everyone, including Luis, stopped talking.

  "All in," Carroll said.

  "Call," Jordan said immediately.

  They turned up their hands.

  "Very nice," Marion said, as they saw the three nines. Carroll smiled at her. Luis had a queen and a seven. Len had another queen and a six. They glanced at one another, each sizing the others up. Jordan hoped his count was accurate. Three cards below the deck remaining in the dealer's hand was a queen. Three cards below that was an ace. He turned his attention from Carroll, taking a great risk, and put it on the young woman. She winced as she felt his subconscious push, but said nothing.

  The players leaned toward the center of the table. Jordan felt her will bend to his. One, two, three. The queen was revealed on the turn.

  "Oh, ho!" Luis chortled. "Is there another pretty lady in there?" Len pushed his cards in. Even if the last queen did appear, his hand would fall on the six. Carroll looked smug. The chances of two in the bush was low compared with the one in the hand.

  One, two, three. Everyone held their breath. The dealer must have sensed the tension. She paused a moment before turning up the river card. Jordan, even though he knew it, felt his heart pounding with anticipation.

  Ace.

  "Ooooh!" Luis moaned. "Rocket ship!" He flicked his cards in.

  Carroll's eyes went from the cards to Jordan's face and back again. There was no way that Jordan could have engineered a cheat. Carroll had simply lost.

  "Bad luck," he said. He extended a neat, hairless hand to Jordan, who shook it politely.

  "Bad luck," Jordan agreed. He almost wiped his forehead in relief. Carroll pulled his chair back from the table and went to the bar. The server poured him a stiff drink. Carroll returned and sat with his back to the window to watch the others play.

  Jordan steeled himself. One last deck that he had touched lay in the basket. He must not go beyond that. He needed a big finish.

  He won moderately, allowed himself to be bid up, then dropped out of a hand Luis won. Luis had just enough chips remaining to stay at the table. Carroll was in a good position to see everything except the dealer's hands and Marion's. Now was the time for Jordan to strike.

  He used a tiny trickle of power to cause the ace of hearts to be ignored, then to stick to the underside of Marion's arm as she leaned over the table to watch. She never noticed. It was prepared.

  Jordan went up against Len, knew this was the hand he wanted. Perfect. He went all in against Len, who had no choice but to match him though he still had a stack of chips in reserve. Straight. Straight flush. When Len won the next hand, Jordan showed that his hand would have won but for the missing ace, which Marion was holding.

  "There's no way to assume you would have been dealt the ace of hearts," she protested.

  "There certainly is no way for me to have been dealt the ace of hearts if you were concealing it, madam," Jordan said.

  "You think I did that on purpose?" she asked, with horrified realization. "I would never cheat."

&n
bsp; "Sure looks like it to me, lady," Luis said.

  Jordan turned to the dealer. "This game is a farce. I believe that I would like my money back. Who knows how long this has been going on this evening?

  "How long what has?" Len demanded. He was not the openly emotional person his wife was, but he flared like an ember that had been poked. "Are you calling my wife a cheater?"

  "Since you won on a hand that depended on the missing card your wife was holding, I would call it collusion," Jordan said, his eyes burning. "I want my stake returned to me."

  Len lifted his chin pugnaciously. "You can't have it. I won that money! You lost it. That's poker!"

  "Gentlemen!" the dealer said, looking terrified. She held up her hands. "Please, give me a moment."

  The young woman retreated to the end of the room with her cell phone. She spoke in low tones at length to the person on the other end of the line. Her eyes filled with tears. Jordan heard her voice break. She wiped her face before she returned and managed, with some effort, to regain her composure.

  She sat down at the table and smiled at them.

  "Would you like to take a break, madam and gentlemen?" she asked.

  "I think that would be a good idea," Marion huffed. Her pale cheeks sported red spots over the cheekbones. She sprang up and marched as far away from the others as she could and stood glaring at them. Len joined her. He could not look at anyone. Jordan stood with Carroll and Luis by the window. The dealer remained at the table, guarding the cards.

  Within minutes, a well-dressed black man named Jerome arrived. He went to the dealer's side. The girl blurted out her story in a whisper. Jordan, the only one who could hear, was impressed by her accuracy and powers of recall.

  Jerome was of interest. Jordan felt dragon blood in him. He hoped that his own dragon blood was concealed enough by strong magic not to be detected outright. Jerome left the table and came toward the men with his hand out.

  "I am sorry you folks didn't have a good a time as you should have," he said. "It seems clear that the, er, friendly nature of the game was ruined. I've thought about it hard, and I think that the only fair thing to do, folks, is to return your original stakes to you. With a 10 percent premium, on the house. What do you say?"

  "But I won that money fair and square!" Len said. "I should keep it."

  "I beg to differ," Jordan said, coldly. Inwardly, he was shouting for joy. "I want satisfaction. I did not know I would be sitting down with practiced con artists."

  "I been playing with these people a long time," Luis said, sneering at Len. "I don't like cheaters. I don't care what you think you can get away with. I'm in for your deal, Jerome."

  "Thank you, Mr. Serafina," Jerome said. Carroll murmured that he agreed, too. Jordan, with a great show of reluctance, nodded his consent. Jerome took the money out of the bank under the table. The dealer handed him her notebook of the original stakes. Jerome counted it out to them, then added extra money from his own wallet.

  Jordan accepted forty-four thousand dollars, then peeled off a pair of hundreds and put them down in front of the dealer.

  "No reason for you to take a loss because of them," he said, tilting his head toward the unhappy Canadians.

  "Yeah, good idea, Jordan," Luis said. He added a couple hundred of his own. "Buck up, sweetie. You didn't do anything wrong. C'mon and have a drink with me, Jordan. You, too, Carroll. I know a place with the best cocktails."

  "Thank you," Carroll said. His smooth forehead displayed one horizontal fold of pleasure at having the money he had lost returned. "You're on."

  It was the fairest outcome. No one was happy with the arrangement but Jordan, and that glee was entirely inward. No one was at a loss except for the house, but they all felt as if advantage had been taken of them. The three men gathered up their belongings and went to stand in the elevator bay. The suite door stood open only yards from them. Luis shook his head with disapproval as he punched the DOWN button.

  As they waited, with his heightened senses, Jordan listened to Jerome. The black man had held back the Canadian couple for a private chat.

  ". . . I am sorry to tell you that under the circumstances, you won't be admitted to another game in our operation."

  "But we came here to play poker," Marion insisted.

  Jerome was patient and polite, but obdurate. "I suggest you try the casino, ma'am. I have no way of knowing for sure what happened here, but it just can't happen again. I appreciate that you came to visit us today. I'm very sorry."

  "I'll report you! What you're doing is illegal!"

  "Hypocrite," Luis muttered. "She was okay for it to be illegal when she was winning."

  Jerome knew it, too, but he didn't throw it in her face. "The cops know about us, ma'am. But go ahead if you want. We can file countercharges. I have witnesses. What would you like to do?"

  Marion didn't say another word. She stormed out of the suite with Len in her wake like an unhappy water-skier. She paced back and forth at the edge of the elevator bay. Jordan felt the tension in the air as thick as honey. The Canadians found it too uncomfortable to wait with the others who had accused them. Marion threw open the stairway door and stomped down. Len, with a glare at Jordan, followed her out.

  Jordan assumed that McCandles would ensure that none of the five players would ever meet again over a table, but how many of them would return to play again in a McCandles-sanctioned game? Few, he was sure, if the conversation over cocktails with Carroll and Luis was anything to go by.

  After an hour in a quiet club on Royal, he left the two men still commiserating, and returned to the Royal Sonesta.

  His colleagues glanced up as he appeared in the doorway of the Mystic Bar. He spotted their energy signatures at once and made his way to them.

  "How did it go?" Rebecca asked.

  "Perfectly," Jordan said, with a smile. He raised a long finger. The cocktail waitress bustled toward him, the tiny tray balanced on her hand. "It was almost too easy."

  Once he had given his order, he gave them details of the game. "I had hoped for a better opponent, but it didn't matter. The outcome was all that counted. Too bad that Griffen himself did not come."

  "We have not caused enough trouble to bring out the man himself," Peter said.

  "Soon enough," Winston Long said. "But we want to bankrupt him first, then disgrace him. If players believe that they are coming to games where they will deliberately be fleeced, he will lose all his business. Then we can retake this city."

  The waitress placed a brandy glass in front of Jordan and withdrew discreetly. Jordan raised it to each of his colleagues.

  "Hear, hear," he said, and drank.

  Eight

  Griffen got out of the taxi in front of the grand, white-painted house on a boulevard in the Garden District, and eyed the house uncertainly. He had grown up in a modest little house in Ann Arbor, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an eat-in kitchen on a quarter acre in a neighborhood full of similar if not identical homes. This gracious, white-painted mansion with robin's-egg blue storm shutters was easily three times the size of that house, and it stood in its own landscaped gardens. In fact, the gardener, a scrawny man in coveralls who could have been anywhere between thirty and ninety, was on his knees pulling weeds on the left side of the house in the last light before sunset. The Spanish moss hanging from the branches of the enormous catalpa trees just inside the wrought-iron fence drew sinister shadows on the close-trimmed lawn.

  "Y'all need to arrange for a pickup?" Doreen asked. An African-American woman in her forties, she ran a cab service based in the French Quarter. Her clientele tended not to own cars, since parking was difficult to find in the narrow old streets. Important clients like Griffen she drove personally.

  "I'll phone you," he said absently. He leaned in the window and handed her a five. "Not sure how long I'll be."

  "You got it, baby," she said. She glanced at the big house and patted him on the cheek. "Don't believe the half of what you hear in there. You can keep your
head on your shoulders, I know it."

  "I try to," Griffen said. "Sounds like you already know what's going on."

  Doreen grinned at him. " 'Course we do, baby. We're all proud of you. I'm gonna be out to see your parade with my grandbabies on a ladder. Make sure you throw us something, you hear?"

  "I promise," Griffen said. All the new customs he had to absorb in a short time made him feel a little overwhelmed. Doreen seemed to pick up on his mood. She poked him in the arm.

  "Don't you think a thing about these people. They all came into the world the same way as you and me."

  That was true, he mused, as he straightened his shoulders and marched toward the Greek-Revival portico held up by four pillars painted green. At least for him. Doreen wasn't a dragon, though he doubted few people of any descent could stare her down. She was noted for getting fares--and tips--out of drunk tourists when other cabbies were just grateful to get them out of their cars without having them vomit all over the upholstery. Still, it was good advice not to let dragons who were better established than he was lord it over him. Always walk in as if you own the place had been his longtime motto.

  Easier said than done, he realized, as he entered the grand house. A tall, thin woman with large eyes and an ascetic nose in a nice blue dress admitted him with all the airs of a duchess. She leaned back slightly to regard him. Though he was several inches taller, he felt as if she were looking down on him instead of the other way around.

  "May I help you?" she asked.

  "Mrs. Fenway?" Griffen asked.

  "No, I'm the housekeeper, Edith," she said, the austere look changing to a kindly smile. "And you must be Mr. McCandles. The Fenways are in the den with Mr. de la Fee and the others. This way, please."

  The intimidation quotient ratcheted right into overdrive as he sauntered behind her through the high-ceilinged corridor. The interior walls were painted white over stuccoed plaster. The doorways were outlined by wooden edging stained dark brown and as wide as his outspread hand. Each piece had been routed with five parallel lines that converged in a roundel every three feet and at the corners of the frames. He realized every one of them had to have been made by hand. All the knickknacks gleamed with the warm flicker of money. Griffen had seldom been in a home like that which wasn't a museum with little labels on it indicating the name of the piece, the designer it had been made by, and in what year. No one he knew lived like this. He thought he might like to have something like it himself one day.