The Poker King Returns novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The King's Hands

Kray names his terms in front of the room: one freeze-out on Nov 20 for the Wren; in the linen room Cade tells Pamela who he is, she slaps him, and she slides him a deck.

Nobody in the Wren said a word.

Cade got off the man's back and stood, wiping his hands on his vest.

"Poker King," I said.

It came out like a question, because it was one.

Everyone in Reno who had ever played a hand knew that name.

There had been a World Series champion four years ago who turned a ten thousand dollar seat into almost eight million and a bracelet.

He had vanished a year later, and the card rooms still argued about why.

I had never once looked at the face on those posters.

I looked at it now.

Kray watched me do it, enjoying himself.

"Here is my offer," he said, loud enough for the whole floor. "I'm a reasonable man."

"You're a thief," my father said, still holding the roulette table.

"Friday, November twentieth. Right here in your poker room."

Kray tapped his own chest, then pointed at Cade.

"A freeze-out. Him against me. If he wins, your note is torn up in front of your customers."

"And if I lose?" Cade said.

"Then I take the Wren. Deed, license, the bar, the bird on the sign."

He looked around at the carpet, the slots, the old brass lamps.

"I'll keep the dealers. I like a staff that knows its place."

"We'll think about it," I said.

"You'll do more than think. The note is due Sunday, November twenty-second, and I don't extend."

His man got up from the carpet holding his arm.

Kray put a hand on the man's shoulder and led him out.

The doors swung shut.

Then forty people all started talking at once.

"Bea," I said. "Take the floor."

"Kid."

"Take it."

I walked past my father without looking at him, because if I looked I would cry.

Cade was already heading for the stairs.

I followed him up to the second floor and into the old linen room where he slept.

It held a cot, a hot plate and a milk crate of paperbacks.

I had brought him soup in this room more times than I could count.

I shut the door behind us.

"Say it," I said.

He stood with his back to me and his hands loose at his sides.

"My name is Cade Merrick," he said. "I'm thirty-three years old."

"I heard that part."

"Four years ago I won the Main Event in Las Vegas."

"I heard that part too."

"Three years ago someone mailed me a box of handwritten cash logs from a small casino."

He turned around.

"There was no return address and no name. It was proof that Desmond Kray was washing money through card rooms."

"The kind of thing that gets a man killed."

"The kind of thing that gets a man sued."

His mouth moved, not quite a smile.

"I took it to a federal prosecutor and the Gaming Control Board.

"Kray's lawyers said the pages had no chain of custody, and the case died in six weeks."

"And then?"

"And then he sued me for defamation and won by default, because I was too stunned to show up."

He said it so flatly that it made me angrier.

"Eight point three million dollars. It took every dollar I'd won."

"And the tours?"

"He owns the biggest one. A call from him and I couldn't buy into a card game in Nevada."

He picked up his duffel bag from the floor and set it on the cot.

"I drove here in January with two hundred dollars."

"You sat in your car for three nights."

"Until a woman knocked on my window with a coffee."

His voice broke on the last word.

I hit him.

I hit him open-handed across the face as hard as I had ever hit anything.

His head turned, and he let it.

"Two years and nine months," I said. "You let me think you were a man who couldn't read the specials board."

"I couldn't tell you."

"You carried my father's drinks while a man you knew was hunting you."

"I thought I was hiding."

"From me?"

"From everyone."

His cheek was already red.

"You didn't ask me for a name," he said. "You asked if I wanted eggs."

I had.

I remembered standing in the Wren's kitchen at six in the morning and saying, "You look like you need eggs."

I started to laugh and hated it.

"Don't," I said.

"I'm not."

"You dropped a tray tonight like a man who'd been waiting three years to."

"I was."

"For what?"

"For somebody to put a hand on you or your father."

He said it plain.

He did not move toward me.

My face went hot all the way down my neck.

"You should have told me," I said.

"I know."

"I'm still furious."

"I know that too."

I crossed the room.

There was a folding card table by the window, with a deck of cards still on it from some old solitaire game.

I picked it up and shuffled once, hard.

I slid the deck across the table to him.

"Then show me," I said. "Show me exactly what you can do."

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