Dead Man's Hand

by Otto Penzler

  She returned a moment later with a new bottle of Sonoma Chardonnay.

  "You don't want me to do it, do you?" he asked.

  "I'll answer that with one question."

  Where would they get the money, what about the girls' tuition, would they have to hit their retirement funds?

  But it turned out she was curious about something else: She asked, "Does a full house beat a flush?"

  "Uhm, well..." He frowned.

  Diane withdrew from her pocket something she'd apparently collected when she'd gone into the kitchen for the wine: a deck of Rider playing cards. "I can see you need some practice, son."

  And cracked the wrapper on the deck.

  The bar was on Melrose, one of those streets in West Hollywood where you can see celebs and people who want to be celebs and people who, whether they're celebs or not, are just absolutely fucking beautiful.

  Sammy Ralston was checking some of them out now—the women at least—and looking for starlets. He watched a lot of TV. He watched now in his small place in Glendale. And he'd watched a lot Inside, too, though the Chicano inmates dictated what you saw, which during the day was mostly Spanish-language soaps, which weren't so bad, 'cause you got a lot of tits, but at night they watched weird shows he couldn't figure out. (Though everybody watched CSI, which he had a soft spot for, seeing as how it was physical evidence—from one of his cigarettes—that landed him Inside in the first place after the B&E at a Best Buy warehouse.)

  He looked up and saw Jake walk through the door, shaved head, inked forearms. Huge. A biker. He wore a leather jacket with Oakland on the back. Say no more. He stood above Ralston. Way above. "Why'd you get a table?"

  "I don't know. I just did."

  "Because you wanted some faggot chicken wings, or what?"

  "I don't know. I just did." The repetition was edgy. Ralston was small, but he didn't put up with much shit.

  Jake shrugged. They moved to the bar. Jake ordered a whiskey, double, which meant he'd been here before and knew they were small pours.

  He drank half the glass, looked around, and said softly, "Normally I wouldn't fuck around with a stranger, but I'm in a bind. I've got a thing going down and my man—nigger out of Bakersfield—had to get the fuck out of state. Now, here's the story. Joey Fadden—"

  "Sure, I know Joey."

  "I know you know Joey. Why I'm here. Lemme finish. Jesus. Joey said you were solid. And I need somebody solid, from your line of work."

  "Windows?"

  "Your other line of fucking work."

  Ralston actually had two. One was washing windows. The other was breaking into houses and offices and walking off with anything salable. People thought that people who boosted merch went for valuable things. They didn't. They went for salable things. Big difference. You have to know your distribution pipeline, a fence had once told him.

  "And you understand that if we can't come to an agreement here and anything goes bad later, me or one of my buddies from up north'll come visit you."

  The threat was like the fine print in a car contract. It had to be included, but nobody paid it much mind.

  "Yeah, yeah. Fine. Go ahead."

  "So. What it is. I heard from Joey about a month ago this TV crew did a story at Lompoc. Life in prison, some shit like that, I don't know. And the crew got this hard-on to hang with the prisoners."

  "Macho shit, sure." Ralston'd seen this before. People from the Outside feeling this connection with people Inside.

  "So Joey heard them talking about this TV poker show some asshole producer is doing. It's planned for Vegas, but in a hotel, not a real casino. And they don't use chips. They use real cash. The buy-in's supposedly two-fifty K."

  "Shit. Cash? What's the game?" Ralston loved poker.

  "Fuck, I don't know. Old Maid. Or Go Fish. I don't fucking lose my money at cards. So I'm thinking, if it's not a casino, security won't be so tight. Might be something to think about." Jake ordered another whiskey. "Okay. So I check out the prison show and get some names. And one of the gaffers—"

  "Yeah, what is that? I've heard of them."

  "Electrician. Can I finish? He's a biker, too, from Culver City. And he's a little loose in the mouth when he's had a few, and so I get the details. First of all, this's a live show."

  "What's that mean?"

  "Live? They don't record it ahead of time."

  "They do that?" Ralston thought everything was recorded.

  "So it's a big surprise who wins."

  "That's not a bad idea for a show. I mean, I'd watch it." Ralston peeled the label off his beer. It was a nervous habit. Jake noticed him and he stopped.

  "Well, you can tell 'em you fucking approve, or you can shut up and listen. My point is that they'll have a mil and a half in small bills on the set. And we'll know exactly when and exactly where. So Joey speaks for you and I thought you might be interested. You want in, you get twenty points."

  "It's not a casino's money, but there'll still be armed guards."

  "Last time I looked, 7-Elevens don't have that kind of money in their fucking cash registers."

  "Guns involved, I'd be more interested for thirty."

  "I could go twenty-five."

  Sammy Ralston said he'd have to think about it.

  Which meant only one thing: getting a call through to Lompoc. After he and Jake adjourned, he managed to get Joey Fadden, doing three to five for GTA, hard because a weapon was involved. By virtue of the circumstances, their conversation was convoluted, but the most important sentence was a soft "Yeah, I know Jake. He's okay."

  Which was all Ralston needed.

  And they proceeded to talk about the sports teams and how much they both lamented the name change of the San Francisco 49ers' home to "Monster Park."

  The site of the game was the Elysium Fields Resort and Spa on the outskirts of Vegas.

  On Wednesday morning, the day of the show, the contestants assembled in one of the hotel's conference rooms. It was a curious atmosphere—the typical camaraderie of fellow performers, with the added element that each one wanted to take a quarter million dollars away from the others. The mix was eclectic:

  Stone T, a hip-hop artist, whose real name, O'Connor learned from the bio that Felter had prepared for the press, was Emmanuel Evan Jackson. He had been a choirboy in Bethany Baptist Church in South Central, had put himself through Cal State, performing at night, and then got into the LA rap, ska, and hip-hop scene. Stone was decked out like a homie from Compton or Inwood—drooping JNCO jeans, Nikes, a vast sweatshirt, and bling. All of which made it jarring co hear him say things like "If's a true pleasure to meet you. I've admired your work for a long time." And "My wife is my muse, my Aphrodite. She's the one whom I dedicate all my songs to."

  O'Connor was surprised to see Brad Kresge was one of the contestants. He was a bad boy of West Hollywood. The lean, intense-eyed kid was a pretty good actor in small roles—never with a major lead—but it was his personal life that had made the headlines. He'd been thrown out of clubs for fighting, had several DUI arrests, and he'd even done short time in LA County Jail for busting up a hotel room as well as the two security guards who'd come to see what the fuss was about. He seemed cheerful enough at the moment, though, and was attentive to the emaciated blonde hanging on his arm—despite the fact that Aaron Felter had asked that the contestants attend this preliminary meeting alone, without partners or spouses.

  Kresge was unfocused and O'Connor wondered if he was stoned. He wore his hat backward and the sleeves of his wrinkled shirt rolled up, revealing a tat that started with a gothic letter F. The rest of the word disappeared underneath the sleeve, but nobody doubted what the remaining letters were.

  Sandra Glickman was the only woman in the game. She was a stand-up comic from New York originally who lived out here now. She worked the Laugh Factory and Caroline's and appeared occasionally on Comedy Central on TV. O'Connor had seen her once or twice on TV. Her routines were crude and funny. ("Hey, you guys out there'll be inter
ested to know I'm bisexual; buy me something and I'll have sex with you.") O'Connor was surprised to learn that she'd gone to Harvard on a full scholarship and had a master's degree in advanced math. She'd started doing the comedy thing as a lark before she settled down to teach math or science. That had been six years ago, and comedy had won over academia.

  Charles Bingham was a familiar face from TV and movies, though few people knew his name. Extremely tanned, fit, in his early sixties, he wore a blue blazer and tan slacks, dress shirt and tie. His dyed blond hair was parted perfectly down the side, and it was a fifty-fifty chance that the coif was a piece, O'Connor estimated. Bingham was a solid character player, and the character was almost always the same: the older ex-husband of the leading lady, the coworker or brother of the leading man, a petty officer in a war movie—and usually one of the first to get killed in battle.

  The rumor was he'd been born Charles Brziesneski. But so what? O'Connor's own first name was still legally Maurice.

  The big surprise in the crowd was Dillon McKennah. The handsome thirty-something was a big-screen actor. He'd be the one real star at the table. He'd been nominated for an Oscar for his role in a Spielberg film, and everybody was surprised he'd lost. He'd been called the new James Dean. But his career had faltered. He'd made some bad choices recently: lackluster teen comedies and a truly terrible horror film—in which gore and a crashing sound track substituted, poorly, for suspense. Even on his most depressed days, O'Connor could look at himself in the mirror and say that he'd never taken on a script he didn't respect. McKennah mentioned that he was working on a new project, though he gave no details. But every actor in Hollywood was engaged in a "new project," just as every writer had a script "in development."

  They drank coffee, ate from the luxurious spread of breakfast delicacies, and chatted, generally playing type: Stone T was hip. Sandra cracked jokes. Bingham smiled vacantly, stiff and polite. Kresge was loud. McKennah was Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. And O'Connor was the strong, silent sort.

  As the conversation continued, O'Connor was surprised to find how lucky he was to be here. Apparently, when word went out about Go for Broke, close to five thousand people had contacted Aaron Felter's office, either directly or through their agents.

  Everybody wanted the bump.

  Now, the door of the conference room swung open and Aaron Felter entered. "Okay, all, how you doing?...Hey, Sandy, caught your act on Sunset this weekend."

  The woman comic gave him a thumbs-up. "Were you the heckler?"

  "Like I'd spar against you? Am I fucking nuts?"

  "Yo, Aaron, can we drink?" Brad Kresge asked. "On the set, I mean. I play better that way."

  "You can do whatever you want," Felter told him. "But you break any cameras—or any heads—you pay for 'em."

  "Fucking funny."

  When coffee cups were refilled and the bagel table raided again, Felter sat on the edge of the table in the front of the room. "Now, folks. Today's the day. I want to run through the plan. First, let's talk about the game itself." He asked a young man into the room. The slim guy was the professional dealer Felter had flown in from Atlantic City. He sat down at the table and—after awing them with his incredible dexterity—went through protocol and rules of the game they'd be playing: Texas Hold 'Em.

  This was one of the simplest of all poker games (selected, O'Connor guessed, not because of the contestants, but because of the audience, so they could follow the play). There was no ante; the players to the dealer's left would place blind bets before the deal—a small blind and a large—to create a pot. Each player then was dealt two "hole" cards, which nobody else could see, and then placed bets or folded, based on those cards.

  Then came the "flop": three community, or "board," cards dealt faceup in the middle of the table. Betting commenced again, and two more community cards are dealt faceup, making five. Traditional rules of poker apply to the betting process: checking—choosing not to bet—as well as seeing, raising, or calling someone at the showdown.

  When that occurs, players use their two hole cards plus any three of the five faceup board cards to make the best hand they can.

  "Now, one thing we're not doing," Felter announced. "No hidden cameras."

  Most televised poker shows feature small cameras that allow the audience and commentators to see each player's hole cards. The systems were tightly controlled and the games usually recorded ahead of time, so there was no risk of using that information to cheat in real time, but that wasn't Felter's concern. A born showman, he wanted the tension of live drama: "What's the excitement if the audience knows what everybody's hand is? I want people at home to be on the edge of their seats. Hell, I want them to fall off their seats.

  "Now remember, you're live. Don't pick your nose or grab your crotch."

  "Can I grab somebody else's crotch?" Glickman asked.

  McKennah and, despite the blonde on his arm, Kresge raised their hands.

  Everyone laughed.

  "And," Felter continued, "you'll be miked, so if you whisper, 'Fuck me,' we'll bleep it, but your mother's going to know you said something naughty. Now, I want laughs and sighs, and banter. We'll have three cameras on close-ups and medium angles and one camera on top showing the board. No sunglasses." This was directed to Brad Kresge, who was always wearing them. "I want expression. Cry, look exasperated, laugh, get pissed off. This is a poker game, but first and foremost it's TV! I want the audience engaged.... Any questions?"

  There were none, and the contestants dispersed.

  On his way to join Diane for a swim before the show, Mike O'Connor was trying to recall what was familiar about Felter's speech.

  Then he remembered: It was out of some gladiator film, when the man who was in charge gave his before-the-games pep talk, reminding the warriors that though most of them were about to die, they should go out and put on the best show they could.

  ***

  Sammy Ralston and Jake were in a bar up the street from Elysium Fields Spa.

  Jesus, it was hot.

  "Why Nevada?" Ralston asked. "Why the desert? They oughta put casinos where the weather's nicer." Ralston was sweating like crazy. Jake wasn't. Big guy like that and he wasn't sweating. What was that about?

  The biker said, "If the weather's nice, people stay outside and don't gamble. If the weather's shitty, they stay inside and do. That's not rocket science."

  Oh. Made sense.

  Ralston fed a quarter into the mini-slot at the end of the bar, and Jake looked at him like, You want to throw your money away, go ahead. He lost. He fed another quarter in and lost again.

  The two men had spent the last few days checking out the Elysium Fields. It was one of those places that dated from the fifties and was pretty nice, but also sort of shabby. It reminded Ralston of his grandmother's apartment's décor in Paramus, New Jersey. A lot of yellows, a lot of mirrors that looked like they had bad skin conditions, a lot of fading white statuettes.

  Jake, with his tats and biker physique, stood out big-time, so he'd done most of the behind-the-scenes information gathering, from press releases and a few discreet calls to his union contact on the studio backlot. He'd learned that the TV show would be shot in the grand ballroom. At the beginning of the show, armed guards would give each player a suitcase containing his buy-in, which would sit on a table behind his chair. He'd take what he needed from it to play.

  "Gotta be a big suitcase, I'd guess."

  "No. Two fifty takes up shit. If it's in twenties or bigger."

  "Oh." Ralston supposed Jake would know this. The most he himself had ever boosted in cash was about $2,000. But that was in quarters and he pulled his back out, schlepping it from the arcade to his car.

  After the initial episode tonight was over, the money went back in the suitcases of the players who hadn't gone bust. The guards would take it to the hotel's safe for the night.

  As for the surveillance of the Elysium Fields, Ralston had done most of that. He had his window-washing truck and hi
s gear here, so he was virtually invisible. All contractors are. He'd learned that that the ballroom was in a separate building. The guards would have to wheel the money down a service walk about sixty feet or so to get to the safe. Ralston had found that the walk was lined with tall plants, a perfect place to hide to jump out and surprise the guards. They'd overpower, cuff, and duct-tape them, grab the suitcases, and flee to the opposite lot.

  He and Jake discussed it, and they decided to act tonight, after the first round of games; tomorrow, after the finale, there'd be more people around and they couldn't be sure if the money would be returned to the safe.

  The plan sounded okay to both men, but Jake said, "I think we need some kind of, you know, distraction. These security people around here. They're pros. There're going to be looking everywhere."

  Ralston suggested setting off an explosion on the grounds. Blow up a car or pull the fire alarm.

  But Jake didn't like that. "Fuck, as soon as anybody hears that, they'll know something's going down, and the money'll have guards all over it." Then the biker blinked and nodded. "Hey, you noticed people getting married around here a lot?"

  "Yeah, I guess."

  "And everybody getting their pictures taken?"

  Ralston caught on. "All those flashes, yeah. You mean, blind 'em somehow with a camera?"

  Jake nodded. "But we walk up with a camera, the guards'd freak."

  "How about we get one of those flashes you see at weddings. The remote ones."

  "Yeah. On tripods."

  "Yeah. We get one of those, set it up about halfway along the walk. When they're nearby, we flash it. They'll be totally fucking blinded. We come up from behind. They won't fucking know what hit them. I like it. Think we can find something like that around here?"