Authors: Kay Keppler
“Hope?” Sharp Eddie said. “Is that really you? How are you, kiddo? It’s been too long. We’ve missed you. I’ve lost fifteen pounds since I stopped buying you ice cream.”
A sudden stab of longing and regret caught her unawares.
She’d missed them, too
. Sharp Eddie had always had a huge girth and a kind heart. He loved silly jokes, and now she remembered all the treats he’d showered on her over the years.
“Don’t believe him, Hope,” Marty the Sneak said. “He’s
gained
fifteen pounds. He’s been eating his ice cream and yours, too. We’re thinking of changing his name to Sherman. Sherman the Tank.”
Hope blinked back tears and smiled, as memories—good ones—flooded back. Whatever her father had done to her, the uncles weren’t to blame.
“Marty—” she began. “Eddie. It
has
been too long, and I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. I—”
“Don’t, Hope,” Sharp Eddie said. “It’s all right. We missed you is all. And now, here you are.”
“Thank you for saying that,” Hope said, clutching the phone, feeling a rush of relief so strong it left her dizzy. “Back then—I was so hurt. And angry. I couldn’t handle it. But still, I shouldn’t have cut you out.”
“Hope,” Marty interrupted her. “Stop. Enough. We understand how it was. Derek—well, we told him he was a horse’s ass, not that it did any good. We didn’t know what to do. Except let you know we were there for you. But you knew that, right? Because here you are.”
Hope cleared her throat. “I—I did. I do.”
“It’s good to hear from you, Little Hope,” Sharp Eddie said. “Now, tell us what’s wrong and how we can help you.”
Hope laughed, sniffing a little.
You couldn’t fool an old card player
.
“I do need some help,” she said. “What do you know about Passaic Holdings?”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. Hope listened to the connection hiss.
Can’t be good
, she thought.
“Why do you want to know about Passaic Holdings, Hope?” Marty asked.
“You must have heard that Derek lost our ranch in a poker game. I want to get it back. It’s a long shot, but I thought maybe I could play the winner for it. What have I got to lose, right? So I need to know who Derek played. The name on the deed is a New Jersey corporation called Passaic Holdings. And, you’re from Jersey. I figured you’d know who that is.”
“I did hear about that damn card game, yes,” Marty said.
Then he stopped. Eddie said nothing.
“And?” Hope asked. “What’s the rest of it?”
“Passaic Holdings is a big conglomerate,” Marty said. “They got the contracts for trash, recycling, paper waste, chemical cleanup and disposal, I don’t know what, all over Jersey. I heard that Derek played Big Julie Saladino in that game. He’d be the CEO.”
“Big Julie Saladino? The Jersey crime boss?” Hope’s mood took a nosedive. No way could she negotiate a card game with a Mafia don. Yikes. One false step and instead of the ranch, she’d be staking out property six feet long and six feet under.
“Hope, please.” Marty’s voice was strained. “Big Julie has no documented ties to organized crime. Big Julie Saladino is a respected Jersey entrepreneur whose business interests just happen to fall in the construction, waste collection, and laundry sectors.”
“Oh, right,” Hope said, remembering that Marty’s phone might be bugged. She was out of practice in dealing with her extended, unrelated-by-biology family.
“So—Big Julie moved his operation to Vegas?” she asked. “Or if not, is he still out here?”
“Jackpot, Hope,” confirmed Sharp Eddie. “Bing-bing-bing!”
“Big Julie is in Vegas for the foreseeable future,” Marty agreed. “He wants to be with his girlfriend and away from his wife.”
“It’s a safety issue,” Sharp Eddie said. “She says she’s gonna kill him. The wife, I mean. Her and the Russian mob is both after Big Julie, so he took off for Vegas.”
“Big Julie likes the action better in Vegas than Atlantic City right now, and he also likes the weather better,” said Marty. “Who wouldn’t, right? Better for your health.”
“Do you know where he’s staying?”
“He’s got a suite at the Desert Dunes Casino and Resort,” said Sharp Eddie. “From what I heard, he’s got a big-stakes card game in his room every Saturday night. He’s cleaning up.”
“Yes, from my family, among others, probably,” Hope said, her voice sharper than she’d intended.
Marty and Sharp Eddie were both silent.
“I’m sorry, you guys. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. But Derek went too far. He lost the ranch in a
card game.
I am seriously mad.”
“You can’t stay mad if you want to get the ranch back,” Marty warned. “You’ve got to be clear. Focused. Tell me what you need.”
Hope realized that Marty had just said he’d help her. That meant that
all
the uncles, if asked, would help her. She felt her spirits soar.
“Thank you, Marty. I owe you big time. I need to see Big Julie this week—tomorrow if I can. I want to ask him to play me for the ranch. No limit Texas hold’em. Winner takes all. Can you get me an introduction?”
“I’ll call Big Julie,” Marty said. “He’ll see you if I ask him. What else?”
Hope took a deep breath. “If Big Julie agrees to play, I need to get my game back. I haven’t played cards in seventeen years. I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew. It’s a lot to ask, especially after all this time, but—can you help me? Can you come to Vegas?”
Marty didn’t hesitate.
“On my way,” he said. “I’ll be staying at the Golden Palace. I always liked the card room there, and they got a hell of an all-you-can-eat Chinese dim sum buffet for four-ninety-five. Give me your cell number. I’ll call you tomorrow when I get in.”
“Make that two of us,” Sharp Eddie said.
“Count on six of us,” Marty said. “I’ll call the others, too. We’ll
all
come.”
While Hope talked to the uncles, Amber dragged a dining room chair over to the desk in the corner and booted up the family’s computer.
“What vegetables are you shipping this week, Mom?” she asked Faith, as the machine grunted and whirred. Amber helped her mom by typing up recipes and menus for the produce Faith packed and delivered.
Faith put down the box she’d been filling. “Let me see,” she said. “Chard. Leeks. Carrots. Tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, fennel, onions, and potatoes—red and Yukon gold.”
“Okay,” Amber said. She pulled down the family’s favorite cookbook and turned to the vegetable section. Her mom said that when Amber made up the recipes, she needed to be original. She couldn’t just copy something out of a cookbook—she had to
create
. Amber
wanted
to be creative, but she didn’t know
how
to be creative with the recipes and make the results taste good. And nobody could tell her.
Aunt Hope had helped a little. She’d suggested that Amber alter recipes by substituting different vegetables or other ingredients. But even if Amber thought that she’d gotten something right, the customers usually complained. “The zucchini lasagna was too watery,” one woman had emailed. “Did anyone test this recipe?”
Well, no, of course not. Amber wasn’t surprised that the recipes didn’t turn out. She was ten. And she was
guessing.
She sighed, looking for something that she could type up for this week. Here was one. “Spinach, Tomato, and Cheese Loaf”—that used two of the vegetables in the box. Amber started typing.
Two cups cooked, drained spinach
. Okay.
Two and a quarter cups drained, canned tomatoes
. Oops. No cans allowed. Make that, okay, three cups fresh, chopped tomatoes, because she really hated typing fractions.
One-quarter cup chili sauce
. What was “chili sauce”? Amber typed, one cup catsup. No fractions, no chili sauce.
One-half pound grated hard cheese or crumbled feta.
Wasn’t a half-pound an awful lot? Amber typed, one cup grated cheese.
One cup cracker crumbs
. Okay.
Juice of one-half onion.
What?
How did you juice an onion? Amber wasn’t typing that. But her mom said she had onions for the box. Okay. That would work.
One chopped onion
.
One-quarter teaspoon salt.
No. Grammy said she had to watch her blood pressure, and she wasn’t eating salt. So no salt.
One-quarter teaspoon pepper
. Okay. Pepper didn’t seem to have anything to do with blood pressure. But maybe she would add a little more, to make up for no salt. Several customers had complained that the recipes weren’t seasoned enough. Amber typed, one teaspoon pepper
.
Then she typed up the baking directions.
There.
One creative recipe done. Five more to go.
“The first recipe is Spinach, Tomato, and Cheese Loaf,” Amber said, struggling a little with the formatting.
“That sounds good, Sweetie,” Faith said, carefully wrapping the beets in bio-degradable plastic wrap and placing them in the bottom of the box she was packing. “We should try that one ourselves one night.”
Only if we follow the recipe in the cookbook
, Amber thought. She didn’t know
how
the recipe would go wrong the way she did it, she only knew that it
would
. That’s what happened when you got too creative. You got a big mess. And she didn’t know any way to fix that.
As he’d promised he would, Marty called when he and Sharp Eddie arrived the next day. Hope’s other four uncles were already at the tables.
“Did you call Big Julie?” Marty asked now, as they headed into the casino. “What did he say?”
Hope had wondered if she’d recognize Marty and Eddie, if they’d recognize her, and what she’d feel when she saw them again. But when she met them in the lobby of the Golden Palace, it was almost like old times. Except for one thing.
“You’ve grown up, Little Hope,” Sharp Eddie had said. “Not so little any more.”
Hope had given them each a hug, she was so relieved that they’d come.
“I’m meeting him at two this afternoon,” she announced now, feeling happy and confident. “Thank you for setting up the meeting. Do you think he’ll let me play?”
“He’ll let you play,” Marty said. “He ain’t really got any options there. Come on, let’s get to the tables. We got some card playing to do.”
Hope followed Marty and Eddie into the card room, calling the other uncles from their high-stakes tables to the smaller-bet tables where Hope would relearn her game. Everyone settled in and bought some chips. The dealer brought out a new deck of cards.
Hope looked around the table at her uncles, men she hadn’t seen in a long time, professional card players who would revive her game and help her get the ranch back. They were the best. She couldn’t let them down.
The dealer dealt the cards. Hope took a deep breath.
She couldn’t turn back now
.
William Tanner Wingate, professional card player, consultant to federal law enforcement, and Tanner to his friends, was so startled by the scene in the Golden Palace card room that he stopped short, causing a waitress to bump into him and spill her drinks.
“Sorry,” he murmured, slipping her a red chip, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the table in the center of the room.
What was Marty the Sneak doing in Vegas? Marty came to Vegas only for poker tournaments, and there wasn’t a tournament going on—because if there was a tournament, Tanner would be playing in it.
And it wasn’t just Marty the Sneak. There was Sharp Eddie Toombs, Weary Blastell, Pete Wisniewski, Isaiah Rush, and Jim Thickpenny. The Jersey posse. And, even weirder than to see the Jersey boys all together at one table in Vegas when there wasn’t a tournament, was to see them sitting at the three-dollar table. If they went all-out, they could make a six-dollar bet.
Any one of those players could and frequently did play in high-stakes games where a hundred thousand or more dollars could be bet in a single night—or a single
hand.
But today the high-rolling Jersey boys were all sitting at a three-dollar table.
With a blonde.
And what a blonde.
Not a kid, definitely thirty, somebody who’d looped the track once or twice. But she was gorgeous, with the face of an angel and the body of a showgirl, even if she wasn’t exactly flaunting it in that navy suit. And who wore a navy suit to a card room?
Something was up. And whatever it was, Tanner wanted to know about it. And he definitely wanted to know about the blonde. He wandered closer and heard Marty say, “How much money you got, Hope?”
Hope.
So that was the blonde’s name. Well, he could hope, too.
“About forty dollars,” she said.
“Enough for today,” Sharp Eddie said.
“Yes, because I have to leave by one-thirty or so,” Hope said. “Don’t let me lose track of the time.”
The blonde was calling the shots?
A hot dominatrix blonde and the Jersey posse at the three-dollar table, like they were all having a tea party. Definitely a story there.