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."
"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 enormo
us 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.
At last, Edith opened a door into a glass-walled observatory. It alone was as large as the house he had grown up in. Exotic plants hung from wrought-iron or knotwork hooks. He recognized orchids and miniature roses, but he had no idea what the rest were. The room was divided unofficially in half by a slate-bed pool table that made him more envious than the rest of the display of wealth had. On the far side, a couple of dozen comfortable-looking armchairs were arranged in a rough circle. Small, circular tables about the size of a dinner plate stood at the elbow of each one, no doubt to hold drinks. Griffen approved.
The twenty or so people already present in the other half of the room turned to look at him. All of them, of white, African-American, and mixed heritage, were men except for one woman in a deep green two-piece dress suit. Griffen had learned a little about clothes in the last few months. Everything they wore was so understated and well fitted that he knew they had top-tier designer labels hidden inside. He was glad he was wearing his best black wool pants and a handsome, long-sleeved Fuji silk shirt in pale blue, but he still felt as if he had been hired for the afternoon instead of invited as a guest.
Etienne was the only one who was dressed as casually as he was. He spotted Griffen and wormed his way out of the crowd he was talking to. He came up with his hand extended.
"You here!" he said. His grip was powerful enough to make Griffen wince. "Good! I was just tellin' Mr. Fenway how much you liked the floats. He is in charge of the floats committee. Let me introduce you to everyone, all right?"
By the time he had dragged Griffen over to the largest group, the most elegant of the men had his own hand out to take Griffen's. His long, almost spidery fingers wrapped around Griffen's hand and shook it firmly.
"Callum Fenway, Mr. McCandles," he said. "Nice to meet you."
Callum Fenway's narrow face threw his large, dark brown eyes into relief against his cafe au lait skin. His hair had been straightened into shiny, floppy waves that made him look like a romantic hero or a cocker spaniel.
"Call me Griffen, Mr. Fenway," Griffen said.
"Well, thank you, Griffen," Callum said, with the air of a schoolteacher speaking to a first-grader. The attitude made Griffen nervous and annoyed at the same time. "We do hope that you will be joining our exclusive little number." He turned to speak to a woman at his side. "My dear, Griffen McCandles. Griffen, my wife, Lucinda."
Lucinda Fenway was a surprisingly lovely woman whose face was almost a perfect heart shape. Her long, nearly black eyes boasted sweeping eyelashes like delicate lace fans. Her figure was tiny at the waist but lush above and below. If she hadn't been a dragon, he would have put her at fifty, but he did not dare guess her real age. "How nice of you to come. Will you have a drink?"
"Irish whisky, if you have it," Griffen said, making it sound as suave as though he were James Bond requesting a vodka martini. "Thank you."
Lucinda turned her head and raised her eyebrows just a trifle.
One of the infinite number of young, twentyish women who worked temporary jobs serving at private parties on their days off from the elegant restaurants downtown slipped through the crowd and pressed a cold tumbler into his left hand. Griffen took a grateful swig as Lucinda recited name after name to him. He did his best to retain them, but he had a dozen tricks for getting people to reintroduce themselves to him. He just smiled and shook hands.
". . . And Terence Killen, who is in charge of our membership committee. I hope you two will be having a nice little conversation later on," Lucinda concluded, coming to the last person, a plump, ruddy-faced man with a head of executive-class silver hair.
"Griffen."
"Mr. Killen," Griffen said formally. He held his temper in check. The krewe should have invited him by the third or fourth introduction to use their first names, too. The longer it went on, the madder he got. It was a power move to deny him the familiarity, but he determined he would not show that it bothered him. Better to make it sound as if using the honorific was what he did to keep his distance. He smiled superciliously at the membership chairman, who squirmed a little, then caught himself. Yes, they knew what they were doing. So did he.
"Well, let's get started," Callum said. With his glass, he gestured toward the circle of chairs beyond the pool table. Griffen waited for the others to lead the way. To his surprise, they all deferred to Etienne.
The werewolf-dragon hybrid loped toward a seat set with its back to the center of the white-painted fireplace. The set of brass irons that stood beside it made it look as if Etienne had his choice of scepters to wield. He settled down and put his right ankle on his left knee. The rest of the men followed and took seats in the circle. If there was a system governing who sat where, Griffen had no idea. Callum went to take his place at Etienne's right hand. The chair at his left remained empty. Etienne waved Griffen over.
"C'mon, man! This is where you be
long," he said. Griffen, feeling the eyes of the rest rake him as he went by, sat down where he was directed. Etienne took a battered three-by-five spiral-bound notebook out of his back pocket and flipped to a page. "This is the ninth meeting of the Krewe of Fafnir since its refounding late last year. As you captain, I call for news from my lieutenants on the progress of each of you departments." He grinned sideways at Griffen. "This isn't the whole krewe, of course. We're just the heads of all the committees. We meet from time to time to catch up on what's done and what still needs to be done. There's an encyclopedia of work to get through. Just get up and walk around if you get bored."
"I won't," Griffen said. He glanced at the circle of men. "Uh, aren't there any women lieutenants?"
One of the eldest men present, sallow-faced and with pouches under his eyes that made Griffen think of a deflated frog, cleared his throat. "You're out of order, Griffen," he said, in a squeaky voice that would have sounded natural in a pond.
"Wait," said a young man with shiny dark hair and dark eyes and a pale complexion. "That's going to be a matter for discussion in future years, but it was like this when this krewe last organized a parade. If you join us, you can have a vote. The discrepancy with modern society, uh, has been noted. But that's not what we're here to talk about today if you don't mind."
Griffen felt he'd been slapped down, but it was none of his business unless he put his money where his mouth was. Mardi Gras krewes didn't get any support from the government, so fairness laws didn't apply. If he wanted to make a change in their structure, he would have to change it from the inside.
"Okay, then," Etienne said. "Let's go down the list. Treasurer?"
No surprise that Callum Fenway was in charge of money. He stood up and produced a BlackBerry from his jacket pocket.
"At present the checking account has eighty-four thousand sixty dollars and twelve cents in it. Got some big upcoming payments, to Nautilus and Blaine Kern, for float rental and construction, to Bourne Range for the den rental, Howson's for fabric and notions for costumes, and Mimi's Masks on a down payment for our parade masks. We won't know exact numbers until about a week before the parade date, so final payment has yet to be determined. This week, I have processed nineteen requests for riders. All their checks have cleared."
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