The Poker King Returns novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Tray
Kray's men shove Hal Guffey against the roulette table and the waiter Cade puts one of them on the floor; Kray names him the Poker King in front of Pamela.
The waiter who had carried my coffee for two years and nine months put a man on the floor tonight.
It happened at nine o'clock on a Friday, in the middle of the Lucky Wren, in front of forty people.
I was dealing blackjack when the front doors opened and the slot machines seemed to get quieter.
Two men in dark overcoats walked in.
Neither of them looked at the games.
They looked at my father.
Hal Guffey was sixty-one years old and stood at the roulette table with his reading glasses hanging on a cord.
He had owned this casino for thirty-one years, and he had never once let a customer see him scared.
He looked scared now.
"Mr. Guffey," the taller man said. "Mr. Kray would like a word."
"Mr. Kray can call my office," my father said.
"He's calling it right now."
The man shoved him.
It was not hard.
But my father was heavy and had a bad heart, and his back hit the edge of the roulette table.
The wheel rattled and a stack of green chips went across the felt.
I pushed my cards away and said, "Take your hands off him."
I was already walking.
I was twenty-nine and five foot six, and the man was well over six feet, and I had no plan at all.
Bea, our pit boss, reached for the phone behind the bar.
The second man blocked her with one arm and smiled at her.
The tall man took my father's collar in his fist.
"Where's the money, old man?" he said.
"Let go of him," I said.
"Stay out of this, sweetheart."
Then a tray hit the carpet.
Glasses broke, and ice slid across the floor, and everyone in the room turned to the sound.
Cade had been walking past with six drinks for table four.
He was thirty-three, tall and quiet in a black waiter's vest, with a short beard and gray eyes that never seemed to rush.
I had never seen him drop anything in his life.
He did not look like a waiter now.
He crossed the floor and took the tall man's wrist in one hand.
I heard something in the man's arm click.
"Let go of Mr. Guffey," Cade said.
He said it softly.
The man let go.
He swung with his other hand, and Cade stepped inside the punch and turned him by the elbow.
The man went down on his face on the wet carpet, and Cade set a knee in the small of his back.
The room made a noise.
The second man dropped his hand to his coat.
Cade lifted his head and looked at him.
I don't know what was in that look.
The man's hand stopped where it was.
"Don't," Cade said.
Nobody moved.
Even the slot machines seemed to wait.
Then the front doors opened again, and a third man walked in clapping, slow and light.
He wore a gray suit, and silver cufflinks, and a tan that did not come from Nevada in October.
He was tall and calm and about forty-four, with silver-brown hair combed straight back.
He looked at his man on the floor with something close to boredom.
Then he looked at Cade.
His whole face changed.
It was the pleasure of a man who finds a coin he lost years ago.
"Well," he said. "Look at that."
Cade did not look up.
"Get your people out of my boss's casino, Desmond."
"Your boss's casino," the man said, and laughed.
He walked around the roulette table, stopping to straighten a chip.
"Mr. Guffey," he said to my father. "I bought your note in September. Fourteen hundred thousand dollars."
"I told you I would pay it," my father said.
"You told me many things."
He turned back to Cade.
"Three years," he said. "Three years I wondered which hole you crawled into."
"Desmond Kray," I said. "You don't own anything in this room yet."
He gave me a polite little nod, the kind he might give a waitress.
"You must be the daughter."
"I'm the floor manager. Leave."
"I will, in a moment. I'd like to make sure you know who has been carrying your drinks."
My stomach turned over.
"He's a waiter," I said.
Kray smiled.
"Is that what he told you?"
He looked at Cade, still kneeling on his man's back, and his voice rose so every table could hear.
"Hello, Cade Merrick. Still working for tips? The Poker King used to charge a million to sit down."
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