Tony himself took three cards.
Okay, Keller told himself, run the numbers. By taking three cards the boy signaled that he'd been dealt only one pair. So in order to beat Keller he'd have to end up with a straight flush, four of a kind or a full house of kings or aces. Like a computer, Keller's mind went through the various odds of this happening.
Based on his calculations about the boy's and Piemonte's draws, Keller concluded that he probably had the winning hand at the table. Now his goal was to goose up the size of the pot.
The boy shoved his glasses up on his nose again and glanced at Piemonte. "Your bet."
With a cautious sigh, the player from Chicago shoved some chips out. "Twenty thousand."
Keller had sat in on some of the great games around the country--both as a player and an observer--and he'd spent hundreds of hours studying how bluffers behaved. The small things they did--mannerisms, looks, when they hesitated and when they blustered ahead, what they said, when they laughed. Now he summoned up all these memories and began to act in a way that'd make the other players believe that he had a bum hand and was going for a bluff. Which meant he began betting big.
After two rounds, Piemonte finally dropped out, reluctantly--he'd put in close to $60,000--and he probably had a decent hand. But he was convinced that Keller or Tony had a great hand and he wasn't going to throw good money after bad.
The bet came around to Keller once more. "See your twenty," he said to Tony. "Raise you twenty."
"Jesus," Stanton muttered. Keller shot him a dark look and the old man fell silent.
Tony sighed and looked again at his cards, as if they could tell him what to do. But they never could, of course. The only answers to winning poker were in your own heart and your mind.
The boy had only fifteen thousand dollars left on the table. He reached into his pocket and took out an envelope. A hesitation. Then he extracted the rest of his money. He counted it out. Thirty-eight thousand. Another pause as he stared at the cash.
Go for it, Keller prayed silently. Please . . .
"Chips," the boy finally said, eyes locked on Keller's, who looked back both defiant and nervous--a bluffer about to be called.
Stanton hesitated.
"Chips," the boy said firmly.
The old man reluctantly complied.
Tony took a deep breath and pushed the chips onto the table. "See your twenty. Raise you ten."
Keller pushed $10,000 forward--a bit dramatically, he reflected--and said, "See the ten." He glanced at all he had left. "Raise you fifteen." Pushed the remaining chips into the center of the table.
"Lord," Piemonte said.
Even gruff Rothstein was subdued, gazing hypnotically at the massive pot, which was about $450,000.
For a moment Keller did feel a slight pang of guilt. He'd set up his opponent psychologically, calculated the odds down to the last decimal point--in short, he'd done everything that the youngster was incapable of. Still, the boy claimed he wanted to be treated like a man. He'd brought this on himself.
"Call," Tony said in a whisper, easing most of his chips into the pot.
Stanton looked away, as if avoiding the sight of a roadside accident.
"Queens full," Keller said, flipping them over.
"Lookit that," Piemonte whispered.
Stanton sighed in disgust.
"Sorry, kid," Keller said, reaching forward for the pot. "Looks like you--"
Tony flipped over his cards, revealing a full house--three kings and a pair of sixes. "Looks like I win," he said calmly and raked the chips in.
Piemonte whispered, "Whoa. What a hand . . . . Glad I got out when I did."
Stanton barked a fast laugh and Rothstein offered to Tony, "That was some fine playing."
"Just luck," the boy said.
How the hell had that happened? Keller wondered, frantically replaying every moment of the hand. Of course, sometimes, no matter how you calculated the percentages, fate blindsided you completely. Still, he'd planned everything so perfectly.
"Time to call it a night," Piemonte said, handing his remaining chips to Stanton to cash out and added humorously, "Since I just gave most of my fucking money to a teenager." He turned to Rothstein. "From now on, we stick to that rule about kids, okay?"
Keller sat back and watched Tony start organizing the chips in the pile. But the odds, he kept thinking . . . . He'd calculated the odds so carefully. At least a hundred to one. Poker is mathematics and instinct--how had both of them failed him so completely?
Tony eased the chips toward Stanton for cashing out.
The sound of a train whistle filled the room again. Keller sighed, reflecting that this time it signified a loss--just the opposite of what the urgent howl had meant at the game with the Frenchmen.
The wail grew louder. Only . . . focusing on the sound, Keller realized that there was something different about it this time. He glanced up at the old man and the two players from Chicago. They were frowning, staring at each other.
Why? Was something wrong?
Tony froze, his hands on the piles of his chips.
Shit, Keller thought. The sound wasn't a train whistle; it was a siren.
Keller pushed back from the table just as the front and back doors crashed open simultaneously, strewing splinters of wood around the back room. Two uniformed police officers, their guns drawn, pushed inside. "On the floor, now, now, now!"
"No," Tony muttered, standing and turning to face the cop nearest him.
"Kid," Keller whispered sternly, raising his hands. "Nothing stupid. Do what they say."
The boy hesitated, looked at the black guns and lay down on the floor.
Stanton slowly got down on his knees.
"Move it, old man," one of the cops muttered.
"Doing the best I can here."
Finally on their bellies and cuffed, the gamblers were eased into sitting positions by the cops.
"So what'd we catch?" asked a voice from the alley as a balding man in his late fifties, wearing a gray suit, walked inside.
Detective Fanelli, Keller noted. Hell, not him. The cop had been Jesus Mary and Joseph enthusiastic to purify the sinful burgh of Ellridge for years. He scared a lot of the small players into not even opening games and managed to bust about one or two big ones a year. Looked like Keller was the flavor of the week this time.
Stanton sighed with resignation, his expression matching the faces of the pro players from Chicago. The boy, though, looked horrified. Keller knew it wasn't the arrest; it was that the state confiscated gambling proceeds.
Fanelli squinted as he looked at Rothstein's and Piemonte's driver's licenses. "All the way from Chicago to get arrested. That's a pain in the ass, huh, boys?"
"I was just watching," Rothstein protested. He nodded at the table, where he'd been sitting. "No chips, no money."
"That just means you're a loser." The detective then glanced at Piemonte.
The man said a meek "I want to see a lawyer."
"And I'm sure a lawyer's gonna wanta see you. Considering how big his fee's gonna be to try and save your ass. Which he ain't gonna do, by the way . . . . Ah, Keller." He shook his head. "This's pretty sweet. I been after you for a long time. You really oughta move to Vegas. I don't know if you follow the news much but I hear gambling's actually legal there . . . . And who's this?" He glanced at Stanton. He took Stanton's wallet from one of the uniformed cops and looked at his license. "What the hell're you doing in Ellridge when you could be playing mahjong in Tampa with the ladies?"
"Can't afford the stakes down there."
"The old guy's a wise ass," the skinny detective muttered to the other cops. He then looked over Tony. "And who're you?"
"I don't have to tell you anything."
"Yeah, you do. This ain't the army. That name rank and serial number crap doesn't cut it with me. How old're you?"
"Eighteen. And I want a lawyer too."
"Well, Mr. I-Want-a-Lawyer-Too," Fanelli mocked, "you only get o
ne after you've been charged. And I haven't charged you yet."
"Who dimed me out?" Keller asked.
Fanelli said, "Wouldn't be polite to give you his name but let's just say you took the wrong guy to the cleaners last year. He wasn't too happy about it and gave me a call."
Keller grimaced. Took the wrong guy to the cleaners last year . . . . Well, that short list'd have about a hundred people on it.
Looking down at the stacks of chips in front of where Tony'd been sitting, Fanelli asked, "Pretty colors, red, blue, green. What're they worth?"
"The whites're worth ten matchsticks," Rothstein said. "The blues're--"
"Shut up." He looked around the room. "Where's the bank?"
Nobody said anything.
"Well, we will find it, you know. And I'm not going to start in here. I'm going to start out front and tear Sal's bar to fucking pieces. Then we'll do the same to his office. Break up every piece of furniture. Toss every drawer . . . . Now, come on, boys, Sal doesn't deserve that, does he?"
Keller sighed and nodded to Stanton, who nodded toward the cupboard above the coffee machine. One cop took out two cigar boxes.
"Jesus our Lord," Fanelli said, flipping through them. "There's gotta be close to a half million here."
He glanced at the table. "Those're your chips, huh?" he said to Tony. The boy didn't answer but Fanelli didn't seem to expect him to. He laughed and looked over the players. "And you call yourselves men--letting a boy whip your asses at poker."
"I'm not a boy."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." The detective turned back to the boxes one more time. He walked over to the officers. They held a brief, whispered conference then they nodded and stepped out of the room.
"My boys need to check on a few things," Fanelli said. "They've got to go corroborate some testimony or something. That's a great word, isn't it? 'Corroborate.' " He laughed. "I love to say that." He paced through the room, stopped at the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. "Why the hell doesn't anybody ever drink booze at high-stakes games? Afraid you'll get a queen mixed up with a jack?"
"As a matter of fact," Keller said, "yeah."
The cop sipped the coffee and said in a low voice, "Listen up, assholes. You especially, junior." He pointed a finger at Tony and continued to pace. "This happened at a . . . let's say a difficult time for me. We're concerned about some serious crimes that happen to be going down in another part of town."
Serious crimes, Keller was thinking. Cops don't talk that way. What the hell's he getting at?
A smile. "So here's the deal. I don't want to spend time booking you right now. It'd take me away from those other cases, you know. Now, you've lost the money one way or the other. If I take you in and book you the cash goes into evidence and when you're convicted, which you will be, every penny goes to the state. But if . . . let's just say if there was no evidence, well, I'd have to let you off with a warning. But that'd work out okay for me because I could get on to the other cases. The important cases."
"That're being corroborated right now?" Tony asked.
"Shut up, punk," the detective muttered, echoing Keller's thought.
"So what do you say?"
The men looked at each other.
"Up to you," the cop said. "Now what's it going to be?"
Keller surveyed the faces of the others around him. He glanced at Tony, who grimaced and nodded in disgust. Keller said to the detective, "We'd be happy to help you out here, Fanelli. Do our part to help you clean up some--what'd you call it? Serious crimes?"
Stanton muttered, "We have to keep Ellridge the showplace that it is."
"And the citizens thank you for your efforts," Detective Fanelli said, stuffing the money into his suit pockets.
The detective unhooked the handcuffs, stuffed them in his pockets too and walked back out into the alley without another word.
The players exchanged looks of relief--all except Tony, of course, on whose face the expression was one of pure dismay. After all, he was the big loser in all this.
Keller shook his hand. "You played good tonight, kid. Sorry about that."
The boy nodded and, with an anemic wave to everyone, wandered out the back door.
The Chicago players chattered nervously for a few minutes then nodded farewells and left the smoky room. Stanton asked Keller if he wanted another beer but the gambler shook his head and the old man walked into the bar. Keller sat down at the table, absently picked up a deck of cards, shuffled them and began to play solitaire. The shock of the bust was virtually gone now; what bothered him was losing to the boy, an okay player but not a great one.
But after a few minutes of playing, his spirits improved and he reminded himself of another one of the Rules According to Keller: Smart always beats out luck in the end.
Well, the kid'd been lucky this once. But there'd be other games, other chances to make the odds work and to relieve Tony, or others like him, of their bankrolls.
There was an endless supply of cocky youngster to bleed dry, Keller reckoned, and placed the black ten on the red jack.
Standing on the overpass, watching a train disappear into the night, Tony Stigler tried not to think about the money he'd just won--and then had stolen away from him.
Nearly a half million.
Papers and dust swirled along the roadbed behind the train. Tony watched it absently and replayed something that Keller had said to him.
It's knowing everything about the game--even the little shit--that separates the men from the boys in poker.
But that wasn't right, Tony reflected. You only had to know one thing. That no matter how good you are, poker's always a game of chance.
And that's not as good as a sure thing.
He looked around, making sure he was alone, then reached into his pocket and extracted the Starbucks cup lid. He lifted off the false plastic disk on the bottom and shut off a tiny switch. He then wrapped it carefully in a bubble-wrap envelope and replaced it in his pocket. The device was his own invention. A miniature camera in the sipping hole of the lid had scanned each card whenever Tony'd been dealing and the tiny processor had sent the suit and rank to the computer in Tony's car. All he had to do was tap the lid in a certain place to tell the computer how many people were in the game, so the program he'd written would know everyone's hand. It determined how many cards he should draw and whether to bet or fold on each round. The computer then broadcast its instructions to the earpiece of his glasses, which vibrated according to a code, and Tony acted accordingly.
"Cheating for Dummies," he called the program.
A perfect plan, perfectly executed--the only flaw being that he hadn't thought about the goddamn police stealing his winnings.
Tony looked at his watch. Nearly one a.m. No hurry to get back; his uncle was out of town on another one of his business trips. What to do? he wondered. Marconi Pizza was still open and he decided he'd stop by and see his buddy, the one who'd tipped him to Keller's game. Have a slice and a Coke.
Gritting footsteps sounded behind him and he turned, seeing Larry Stanton walking stiffly down the alley, heading for the bus stop.
"Hey," the old guy called, noticing him and walking over. "Licking your wounds? Or thinking of jumping?" He nodded toward the train tracks.
Tony gave a sour laugh. "Can you believe that? Fucking bad luck."
"Ah, raids're a part of the game, if you're playing illegal," Stanton said. "You got to build 'em into the equation."
"A half-million-dollar part of the equation?" Tony muttered.
"That part's gotta sting, true," Stanton said, nodding. "But it's better than a year in jail."
"I suppose."
The old man yawned. "Better get on home and pack. I'm going back to Florida tomorrow. Who'd spend the winter in Ellridge if they didn't have to?"
"You have anything left?" Tony asked.
"Money? . . . A little." A scowl. "But a hell of a lot less than I did, thanks to you and Keller."
"Hold on." The boy took out his wa
llet and handed the man a hundred dollars.
"I don't take charity."
"Call it a loan."
Stanton debated for a moment. Then, embarrassed, he took the bill and pocketed it.
"Thanks . . . ." He shoved the cash away fast. "Better get going. Buses stop running soon. Well, good playing with you, son. You've got potential. You'll go places."
Yeah, the boy thought, I sure as hell will go places. The smart ones, the innovators, the young . . . we'll always beat people like you and Keller in the end. It's the way of the world. He watched Grandpa limp away, old and broke. Pathetic, the boy thought. Shoot me before I become him.
Tony pulled his stocking cap on, stepped away from the railing and walked toward his car, his mind already thinking of who the next mark should be.
Twenty minutes later the gassy municipal bus vehicle eased to the curb and Larry Stanton climbed off.
He walked down the street until he came to a dark intersection, the yellow caution light blinking for traffic on the main street, the red blinking for that on the cross. He turned the corner and stopped. In front of him was a navy-blue Crown Victoria. On the trunk were the words: Police Interceptor.
And leaning against that trunk was the lean figure of Detective George Fanelli.
The cop pushed away from the car and walked up to Stanton. The two other officers from the bust early that night were standing nearby. Both Fanelli and Stanton looked around and then shook hands. The detective took an envelope out of his pocket. Handed it to Stanton. "Your half--two hundred and twenty-two thousand."
Stanton didn't bother to count it. He put the cash away.
"This was a good one," the cop said.
"That it was," Stanton agreed.
He and the vice cop ran one of these scams every year when Stanton was up from Florida. Stanton'd work his way into somebody's confidence, losing money in a couple of private games and then, on high-stakes night, tip the cops off ahead of time. Fanelli'd blame the bust on some anonymous snitch, take the bank as a bribe and release everybody; poker players were so happy to be able to stay out of jail and keep playing that they never complained.
As for Stanton, the gaff like this had always suited him better than gambling.