Death On the Flop (13 page)

“Now, this couldn’t be the guy you knew, honey,” Frank said. “His name was Farouk, right?”

“Oh, right. Farouk.”

“Too bad,” Dr. Vassey said. “You probably couldn’t have helped the detectives, although I doubt they will spend much time with this one. Old guy dead. Call girl. Likely history of heart problems. They’ll probably write this one off without visiting the room.”

I looked down and dried my tears, feeling more threatened. I felt so guilty. “P-poor guy.”

“I got a dozen more like them if you want to cry on their heads too,” Dr. Vassey offered like he was hosting an episode of Name that Slab.

“Thanks, Doc, but we got to go. Her brother is still missing.”

“Ah right, that.” Dr. Vassey said, taking Frank’s proffered hand. “Good luck.”

We nodded our thanks and got out of the sub-zero room as fast as we could. Frank shook his head when I opened my mouth to speak in the elevator and then in the lobby. I bit my tongue all the way to the Hummer.

“Do you think they killed Felix looking for me?”

“Not necessarily,” Frank said, his dark eyes now almost black. “But it is a helluva coincidence.”

“Poor Felix.” I held my hand over my mouth to keep the sobs in. “If I killed him, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Stop that kind of talk, Bee. It doesn’t do the old guy any good, you are the one to worry about now,” Frank said, negotiating around a bus slowing in front of us. “But this changes things. We have to operate on the assumption that Conner is hunting down his witness, and that he is pretty much ruthless. That means you have to stay in hiding.”

“Great idea,” I agreed.

Frank swung his head around so fast to look at me that the Hummer swerved into the neighboring lane. We heard a couple of honks. “That doesn’t sound like you. You must be really scared.”

“Sure I’m scared, but the best place to hide is in plain sight,” I reminded him. His mouth tightened but he didn’t interrupt me at first, “So first I’ll register for the tournament—”

“Too late, entries are closed,” Frank put in.

“In Ben’s place,” I finished.

Frank shook his head. “They won’t allow substitutions.”

“I won’t have to be one. He registered as B. Cooley. I am B. Cooley. I’ll just adopt his address and phone.”

“And you’ll sure make it easy for Conner to find you.”

“He’ll know who I am and where I am, but what can he do about it? He is consulting on security for the tournament. Any player who is hurt or killed or disappears during the event will certainly reflect poorly on him, won’t it? He would be sabotaging his cover career to protect the undercover, illegal one. Whoever the hell it might be.”

Frank pulled the Hummer into the parking garage without answering, swinging it into a space and killed the engine. Only then did he turn to look at me. “You’ve certainly thought this through and argued it like a pro. Are you an attorney?”

“No, unemployed ad exec.”

He gave me a wry grin. “Even better. You sold this one to me. Although I reserve the right to change my mind at the first sign that Conner is getting desperate enough to hurt you ‘in plain sight’.”

I didn’t answer, but Frank must have taken it for an assent, because he nodded briskly and got out of the car. I almost reached for my door handle, but then I remembered what he’d done the last time we’d left the car, so I waited, fidgeting in my seat, unaccustomed as I was to this rather old-fashioned gallantry. He came around and opened my door. Once I was out, he touched my shoulder. “Bee, understand that I’m agreeing to it, but I don’t like it. And there’s one part of the plan you haven’t covered: how are you going to learn Texas Hold ’Em by tomorrow night?”

I smiled. “You’re going to teach me.”

 
The poker tables at the Lanai were in the middle of
the casino. The bouncers wouldn’t let any nonplayer near enough to the tables to see the cards, but we could see the players, if not the action. My first lesson was to watch the body language from afar.

“Soak up the rhythm of the play,” Frank advised. “There are little things you will see here and might not understand you’re seeing them. But when you play, your mind will click them into place. You are a visual and tactile learner. That will be an easy way to teach you. Show you, then let you play the cards.”

“How do you know what kind of learner I am?”

“By how you reacted at the morgue. Some people can’t stand the sounds, some people can’t stand the smell. You had trouble seeing and feeling. You’re a tactile and visual learner. The best way to teach you to play will be to show you, only telling while you are seeing and then let you play.”

We watched, although I didn’t know what I was watching for. Frank pointed to a table with one flamboyantly dressed middle-aged woman and six men of varying ages from early twenties to senior citizen. Three of the men wore mirrored sunglasses. I noticed that every time it was the woman’s turn to bet, one of the men would tap his fingers on the table, or would stare at her, or would blow out a big sigh. I didn’t notice as much of the same behavior when a man was betting.

“Why are they trying to intimidate her?” I finally asked Frank.

He grinned. “You noticed that, huh? Good. You might have a knack for this after all. You’re very intuitive and observant. They are intimidating her, partly because of the societal gender gap—and remember that is worse if you are playing with people from certain parts of the world, like Eastern Europe or Asia. Also, they are intimidating her because it is part of the game and they are trying to intimidate each other as well. The reason why it is becoming more and more obvious in her case is that she is letting them. Watch how she is making her bets faster, how she is starting to bounce her leg under the table—a nervous habit. See how she is peeking at her cards repeatedly, even though she’s got to remember what she has by now. They are down to The River.”

“What’s The River?”

“The last community card thrown out by the dealer. I’ll get more into semantics upstairs, for now just watch.”

He fell silent and let the last round of bets take place. We, of course, couldn’t hear them but we could see her push her cards into the center.

Frank shook his head. “They talked her into folding, and I bet she had something in her pocket to stay in the hand that long. Okay, first thing, look at your cards one time, memorize them and never look at them again. Only novices and nervous Nellies look at their cards over and over. If you get distracted and can’t remember just fold, because your repeated peeking will change the game so much, encouraging all kinds of bluffs and semibluffs, that you won’t be able to play.

“The second thing she taught us is to never let them see you sweat. That leg bounce, even though it was under the table, was evident to any veteran poker player. Suck it up and stay as still as you can. If you need an outlet, chew gum.

“Third, and most difficult to master, is don’t let anyone speed up your bet. Having said that, you don’t want to take so long that the dealer has to hurry you. That sends a whole different message. You can do that if you are trying to send a message to the table, but that’s only after you’ve got a better handle on the game. If you use it wrong, it just shows you are a novice, again. So if you want to show you aren’t intimidated, stretch your bet a little longer than normal, but not too long.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“Not if you let yourself ‘feel’ the rhythm of the game.”

We watched as the woman shook her head at the dealer, stood and left the table. “Tapped too hard on the aquarium, guys,” Frank said under his breath. As I looked around for the fish tank, Frank chuckled and leaned over to whisper to me. “Those guys made a mistake. They put too much pressure on her when they could have intimidated her just a little and let her stay in the game. A fish is what veteran poker players call a poor player. And, using a fish is much more profitable for the whole table than scaring it away. A fish will give you money, but only if it stays in the game.”

As Frank pointed to another table to watch, I was overcome with an anxiety attack. There was so much to learn and so little time. I almost gave up, but then I remembered the blood on the wall, the trashed room and my only brother. Damn his hide, but I loved him. I guess the only thing I had to lose was a game. He might be somewhere fighting for his life.

I sucked in a fortifying breath and listened to Frank. “See the guy with all the chips at this table?”

“How did he get all those?” I asked. In the five minutes or so we’d been watching, he hadn’t played a hand.

“I’ve had an eye on him since we came in. He’s a stereotypical player known as a ‘Rock.’ He’s a tight player who plays very few hands, only great ones that are virtually guaranteed to make him money. Now the catch here is, sometimes to be a good Rock, you have to play like any other player every now and then, or else when you place a bet, the rest of the table will say, ‘Oh crap, he has pocket aces’ and all fold before you can make any real money. I bet if we watched long enough, we would see him bluff a hand or two. Or perhaps play one hand like a Maniac just to confuse the table.”

“A Maniac?” Sounded scary.

“A Maniac is a very loose player, does a lot of hyperaggressive raising and bluffing when all he has is muck in his hand. A lot of people who are gambling addicts are maniacs because they are just into risk and not the strategy. A Maniac will actually lose more than she wins. But someone who plays mostly like a Rock but acts like a Maniac at strategic times will be very dangerous, because she will be unpredictable.”

Frank looked at me. My thoughts were written all over my face again. “Okay?” he asked uncertainly.

“Sure. It’s clear as mud,” I answered.

“Just keep watching. It will come together when we go upstairs and play.”

I sighed. Playing with Frank sounded fun right about now. I caught a whiff of the testosterone heated Dove again and watched his hands tap out a rhythm on the bar. I swear the man was getting to be irresistible. I think I was definitely hard up. Perhaps they had a pill to dispel sexual attraction at the hotel gift shop. Frank obviously didn’t need one.

For some reason, for the first time since I’d conned the poor guy into helping me, I considered that I might be taking him away from work. “You know, Frank, I shouldn’t monopolize your time like this. If you have work to do, please don’t let me stop you. Ben is my problem, not yours.”

Frank met my gaze with a grateful one of his own, then broke it to look back at the poker games again. “I have the time. I’m kind of between cases.”

Cases? “Are you a private investigator?”

“Not exactly.”

“What
exactly
are you?”

Frank’s gaze met mine again. “Your Texas Hold ’Em tutor.”

“And expert in avoiding the question,” I added. “Well, I appreciate your help. It really is none of my business what you do.”

Hmm. But I really, really wanted to know. I absolutely hate mystery.

Apparently, Frank didn’t mind being one, though, because that was the end of the conversation for him. He nudged me and pointed at the table we could see the most clearly. “See that?”

The dealer was shaking his head at a man who’d dropped his head nearly to his chest. The rest of the table was either glaring at him or shaking their heads. “What happened?” I asked.

“The guy splashed the pot.”

“There are certainly a lot of sea and water analogies in Hold ’Em,” I murmured.

Frank nodded. “When you bet, always push the chips you are betting in a stack in front of you. Never, ever throw them in the pot. That’s what he did.”

“Poor guy,” I said. “He just didn’t know any better.”

“Maybe, or maybe he just wanted to get away with gypping the pot and hoped he wouldn’t get caught.”

“Huh,” I said, “I guess this game is never what it seems.”

“Yeah, it is in the end.”

“How’s that?”

“While the players might, the cards, they never lie.”

While I was still pondering the possibility that black
jack players may lie a little too, Frank motioned me to follow him. “I think you’ve seen enough for now. We’ll go play and then the next time you watch, you’ll catch more.”

We made our way back through the casino, past a live troupe of hula dancers in traditional muumuus being accompanied by a ukulele. I had to hand it to whomever researched the makings of a Hawaiian themed hotel. Everything I’d seen was pretty authentic, or as authentic as a natural paradise could be in Sin City. I’d know more than the average Jane, I suppose, my best friend having grown up on the Big Island of Hawaii. Shana is constantly harping on any stereotypical portrayals of her home state. I learned more firsthand when we’d visited her parents three years ago. Seeing all the cultures that made Hawaii unique portrayed so well in the Lanai suddenly made me want to move there. Hey, maybe I would, considering I had no career anymore. And maybe one less brother to worry about.