Chapter 8: The Pit

I didn't move my hands.

Twenty-One slid his card across the felt to me and picked mine up.

He bent the corner up with his thumb, the way he'd taught a hundred young dealers to do it.

I watched the color go out of his face.

It went out slowly, from the forehead down.

I lifted the corner of the card he'd given me.

It was the three of hearts.

There was only one card in the deck lower than a three, and he was holding it.

"You played me," he said quietly.

"For ten years I watched you touch that ring," I said. "You touched it at your wife's retirement party when you said you'd miss her."

He looked down at his own hand.

His thumb was on the ring.

He jerked it away.

"You can't take again," Garson Langan said pleasantly from the screen over the cage. "One take each, Twenty-One. Every rule I say is the whole rule."

Twenty-One's take was spent, but everybody else at the table still had one.

All he needed was one person to take his card.

He turned around and put on his pit smile.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Anybody want a king? I've got a king here, and I'm too nervous to hold it."

Nobody moved.

He went around the table to the whale and put his arm across the old man's thin shoulders.

"Old friend," he said. "Twenty years I comped your rooms. Take my king. Do me a favor."

The whale looked at Twenty-One's card, and his long brown hand started across the felt toward it.

"He's touching his ring, honey," Five said.

The whale's hand stopped.