My Stepfather Lost Me in a Poker Game, Then I Cleaned Him Out novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Marker
Aimee finds her stepfather's marker for "one month of Aimee" on his card table, drives to the bail office where the winners are before they can come for her, and trades the month for his secrets, until Laurent says he was at both of the other games where Russ bet her.
"One month of Aimee."
That was what the marker said, in my stepfather's handwriting, under a coffee ring on his card table.
It was a Sandpiper marker slip, the kind the casino cage hands a high roller who wants chips on credit.
Russ had crossed out the line for the dollar amount and written over it in blue ink.
"One month of Aimee. Owed to A. Necaise and L. Roux. R.L."
I read it three times, barefoot on the cold concrete.
The net room sits under our house on East Beach, where my father used to hang his shrimp nets to dry.
Every Saturday night Russ ran a private cash game down there.
This morning there were empty glasses on the felt and a blue deck squared in the middle.
The deck was stiff and new, and it still smelled like the cellophane.
That was strange, because Russ's Saturday deck was soft and worn at every corner, and he never changed it.
He didn't let anybody else bring cards to his game.
I noticed it, and then I forgot it, because Russ came down the inside stairs with his coffee.
"Morning, sugar. You found it."
"You bet me," I said.
"I bet a month." He grinned with all his capped teeth. "Don't look at me like that. You'll be home for Thanksgiving."
"You lost me."
"I lost a hand. Andre and Laurent split the last pot, tied straights. Thirty years, I never saw that."
"They're coming at noon. Pack something nice."
"I'm not going."
Russ sipped his coffee and looked up the stairs.
My mother was sitting at the top of them in her wheelchair.
She couldn't come down, because Russ had never put in the lift.
In fourteen months she hadn't been down those stairs once, except the night she fell down them.
Her good hand was white on the armrest.
"Then you stay," Russ said pleasantly. "And your mama goes to the county home in Pascagoula Monday morning."
He tapped the folded paper in his robe pocket.
It was the power of attorney.
She'd signed it the year they married, just in case, and he'd been spending her life with it ever since.
"Medicaid bed, sugar. Six to a hall. They turn them twice a day if she's lucky."
Mama made a sound in her throat.
It wasn't a word, because the fall had taken most of her words.
"Go on back to bed, Jeanie," Russ called up. "You can't get down here anyway, can you, baby?"
I picked up the marker.
"Put that down," he said. "That's mine."
"It's got my name on it."
I walked up the stairs past him and knelt by my mother's chair.
She grabbed my hand and squeezed it three times, which was our old code for I love you.
Then she squeezed again and wouldn't let go.
"I know, Mama," I told her. "I'm not leaving you with him."
I only knew I wasn't going to sit on the porch at noon and wait to be picked up.
At twenty to ten I parked on Howard Avenue under a red sign that said NECAISE BAIL BONDS, OPEN 24 HOURS.
I knew Andre Necaise.
He'd been Russ's best man.
Five years ago, at the wedding, I'd heard him tell my mother, "Russ is a bad bet, Jeanine."
An hour later he stood up beside Russ in a white jacket and handed him the ring.
L. Roux I knew too, though he'd never spoken one word to me.
Laurent Roux ran surveillance at the Sandpiper.
Every black camera dome over my table was his.
A woman in pink scrubs sat by the door with her purse in her lap.
An old man in a church suit held a bail receipt and cried quietly.
Behind the counter, Andre was counting stacks of hundred-dollar bills into a bank bag.
He was huge, grey at the temples, with a black beard and a scar through one eyebrow.
Laurent sat on a stool at the end of the counter in a dark suit and no tie, drinking from a paper cup.
I walked to the counter and slapped the marker down on top of the money.
"You're early," Andre said.
"I don't like being collected."
"I'll pay it," I said. "Thirty days, starting now. But he doesn't get to hand me over. I'm handing myself over, and that costs extra."
Andre leaned on the counter with both fists. "Costs what?"
"One true thing a day about Russ Ladner. Something he hid from me at your table."
"And if I skip a day?"
"Then I walk, and you go collect from him."
Andre laughed, low and not kind.
"Sweetheart, he owes me three hundred and eighty thousand dollars. I've been collecting from him for two years."
"Then you know how that's going."
Laurent set his cup down.
His eyes were a very pale grey, and they didn't move off my face.
"What do you want true things for?" he asked.
"I'm going to take him apart with them."
The old man in the church suit had stopped crying to listen.
Andre looked at Laurent, and Laurent gave him the smallest nod.
"Deal," Andre said. "And the first one's free."
He pushed the marker back across the money toward me.
"This isn't the first time he's put you in the pot. It's the third."
My mouth went dry.
"He won the other two," Andre said.
Laurent turned the paper cup a quarter turn on the counter.
"I was at both of those games," he said.
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