Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (24 page)

Zielinski heard the commotion long before the door opened. Joey the mob bouncer wasn’t having much luck keeping a couple more people out of the poker den.  Zielinski poked his eyes up with his hand surreptitiously close to his shoulder holster.  When he got a look at the lead intruder, his hand froze.

Keaton.  Disguised as a man, but Zielinski had seen her disguise many times.  Blue-light special K-Mart suit, a little worn, a tired expression on her face, and a real need for a shave.  She hesitated for a moment when she made him, a tiny hesitation few others would have the expertise to see.

Keaton’s companion had the expertise, because she caught Keaton’s hesitation as well.  This attracted Zielinski’s attention to her.  His first thought when he glanced at Keaton’s companion had been ‘Focus’: woman, skin of a Major Transform, vaguely radiating Major Transform charisma.  Now, he hesitated in stone-faced shock.  Hancock!  Sure, she wore ratty clothes, short blonde hair, with heavy makeup plastered on her face, and they had done something to her chin or mouth, but that was Hancock under the wonderful disguise.  Hancock didn’t appear happy, likely in part because she couldn’t do a man’s voice and thus couldn’t pull off a male disguise, much to her disgust and embarrassment.  Still, the two Arms had found some way to make Carol look feminine again, a marked improvement.

Damn.  There likely went his chance of any profit tonight.

“Hey, this’s Pete,” Lorenzo said, taking Keaton’s hand and shaking it.  “Pete Angeleoni – and what’s this?  The little lady?”  Lorenzo took a puff of his sausage-width cigar and fumigated Hancock.  “No dames, remember?”

Sounded like this wasn’t the first time.  Zielinski hadn’t realized that high-stakes poker was part of Keaton’s training.  Not in his wildest dreams.

“She’s with me,” Keaton said, her voice a nasal Bronx baritone. “She wants in onna game tonight.  Joey, go getta couple more chairs.”  The last she said to the door guard, who came into the room behind the two Arms.

Joey glanced at Lorenzo.  The heavy-set man sized up Keaton.
“We’re playing serious poker here.  We don’t need no dames coming in an’ screwing things up.”

“She’s with me and she stays,” Keaton said, with a visceral threat behind her words.  The newly minted term ‘predator effect’ leapt into Zielinski’s mind.  Impressive, he decided.  Keaton hadn’t grown stronger, but she had gained more control than she had before.  “You gotta problem with that, you can keep it to yourself.”

The men shifted and looked at each other.  They didn’t want Hancock here, but they didn’t want to challenge Keaton, either.  Impasse.

“She got money?”
Zielinski asked.  His comment attracted Hancock’s attention, and she nearly crawled out of her outfit when she finally recognized him.  He wore a muted disguise, nowhere near as complete as hers.  Hancock showed worry, probably as to whether he and Keaton had set this up for some harsh lesson or other.

Keaton nodded.
“She’s got money.  Show’m your money, Suzie.”

“Okay,” pause, “Pete.”  Hancock said, the pause just long enough to have been an inappropriate ‘ma’am’.  None of the other men noticed anything strange about the pause, much to Zielinski’s relief.  Hancock brought out five grand and showed it to them.  Zielinski smiled and let greed fill his eyes, playing the part of some stranger who didn’t know them.

“We’d love to have you join us, Suzie,” Lorenzo said, the skin around his eyes crinkling in repressed glee. “Joey, get ‘em some chairs.  We can show the lady how poker is played, can’t we?”

The men around the table smiled and nodded, sensing easy money.  Joey went and got the Arms chairs.

Zielinski realized his fears were correct.  This wasn’t the first game Keaton had dragged Hancock into and they were both excellent poker players.  Not only did the predatory Arms pick up on the normal tells, they also picked up on all the damned extras, including hormone spikes and body heat changes.

However, bluffing wasn’t everything.  The tendencies, the habits poker players got into, were just as important.  Tendencies took a great deal of experience and mental discipline to figure out.  For instance, it didn’t take him long to realize Hancock undervalued strong hands and overvalued medium hands.  On the other hand, he swore that Keaton specifically played with him, changing her tendencies from hour to hour.  It didn’t help her half as much as she thought it should, as he knew several of Keaton’s tells from earlier encounters with the Arm.  Of the two, Hancock grew the most annoyed with him.  He
had broken a few more of her precious assumptions regarding how normals behaved.

About an hour in, Keaton signaled something to Hancock about Lorenzo the Stick.  After the signal, Hancock gently began to play up Lorenzo.  Not sex, not aggression, but as a mystery woman.  Hancock chatted without saying much, save she did drop a few hints that her father gambled for high stakes, she wasn’t Pete’s dame but a cousin, and although she knew the poker lingo she didn’t have any skill at all.  Truly, no skill at all…

That is, she grabbed control of Lorenzo, Arm charisma style.  In addition to reading people, she was well on the way to mastering manipulation and intimidation.  Progress!

Zielinski wanted a movie camera, or, failing that, a tape recorder.  Hell, he would settle for a notebook and a pen.  Even a pencil and a napkin.

Because of Carol’s work, Lorenzo didn’t realize he had been taken to the cleaners along with poor defenseless Tony Fratello.

After
a while, only the three of them remained at the table, while Lorenzo ventured off to recruit some other mark to get skinned.  Fratello had vanished long ago.  Keaton dealt the hand out and Zielinski, dealt crap, folded immediately.  He frowned at his dwindling pile of chips.  Slowly but surely, with Lorenzo and Fratello out, the damned Arms had been eating into his winnings.

With him out, that left Keaton and Hancock in, alone against each other.  Intrigued, he paid close attention.  A round after he folded, Keaton and Hancock began to bluff each other.  He watched in amazement, wondering if either of the two of them could tell the other was bluffing.  Surely, Keaton could tell Hancock was bluffing.  He had a very hard time convincing himself Keaton couldn’t tell.

Keaton called and Hancock showed her hand.  Four queens.  She hadn’t been bluffing!  Damn, that was a good trick, faking a bluff.  He had this asinine urge to get up and do a little dance.  She was
his
Arm, dammit!

Keaton slapped her hand down in disgust and twitched a shoulder at Zielinski, as if to say, “As you see, this is Hancock’s specialty
.”  Something Hancock proved better at than Keaton.  Fantastic!  For several months, he had been secretly afraid the Arms were worse than Focuses about the benefits of age.

To his surprise, the two Arms backed out of the game shortly after, leaving Zielinski with his winnings.

They got him in the parking lot.

“How’d you find out we would be here?” Keaton asked.  Predatory stalk.  He backed off slowly.  Keaton cornered him against his car.  Hancock waited, off to one side, obedient, well behaved and Arm observant.

“I didn’t.  This was just luck.  Ma’am, I assumed you’d found
me
out,” Zielinski said.

“Fuck, Zielinski,” Keaton said, nose wide, enjoying his discomfort.  “I don’t believe in luck like this.”

“Did both of you know the Tony guy would be here?” Hancock said.

The older Arm nodded along with Zielinski.

“This was no coincidence, then,” Hancock said, sharp as a tack as always.  Then she held out her hand, practically sticking it through his ribs.  “Our territory, our mark, our winnings.  Fork it over.”

Dammit, that was his money now!  Enough to cover his mortgage, alimony and food money needs for the next month.  “I’ll be
of no use to you poor,” Zielinski said, as he handed over the money.  He knew not to argue.  Not with two Arms.

“Tell you what,” Keaton said.  “You tell us all the tells and tendencies you picked up from us.  I’ll give the money back.”  Pause, but only long enough for polit
eness.  “Hancock isn’t close to being ready to face professional poker players.  You took advantage of her.”  To Hancock.  “He built the beginnings of his now lost family fortune taking money from soldiers in Korea and from far too many gullible doctors over the years.  He told me he’d sworn off the high stakes games after he got involved with the fucking first Focuses.”

“I have to do
something
to earn money.  Playing Doctor isn’t paying at all well these days,” Zielinski said.  Keaton smiled and Hancock chuckled.  He licked his lips.  “Keep the money,” he said to Keaton.

“Smart man,” Keaton said.  “You need all the help you can get if you’re going to survive us.”  She rode up against him, pinning him to the car.  “We’re both much more
predatory
now.”  Crap.  Now she played with sex.  Of all things, he felt sweat bead on the back of his knees.  Had to be a reaction from lack of sleep.

“Some other time, perhaps?” he suggested.  “I’m Arm Hancock’s, ma’am.”

“Student Apprentice Arm Hancock’s too busy counting your money to be bothered by what I’m doing,” she said, her voice husky.  “So, does Tonya and the Network know about your little gambling habits?”  With her comment, she tickled him under his chin.

Typical Keaton sideways question.  “It’s not a habit, it’s a way of earning money,” Zielinski said, starting to get exasperated.  This had already been a long night.

“Perhaps it was, but not anymore,” Keaton said.

He was afraid his night would soon be a long morning, as well.  The two Arms appeared to be out to have some fun, and his damned luck had made him their target.

Never play poker with an Arm.  You will lose.  Never play poker with an Arm and supply marked cards.  You will die.

“The Book of Arms”

Gilgamesh

…on to other news: two days ago, Occum had the unpleasant experience of getting to meet our old nemesis from St. Louis, Echo.  I learned about their meeting second hand from Occum – Mr. Rude didn’t even bother to extend us the courtesy of talking to the rest of the Boston Crows.  It seems this Chevalier character’s a mite peeved with the fact Occum’s been taming Beast Men.  Not very ‘Crow’, in Chevalier’s mind.  Not ‘proper’.  All this despite Occum’s okay from Thomas the Dreamer.  Occum got so hot under the collar he nearly became as beastly as his Beast Men!

Speaking of which, the Hoskins beast convinced Rover he should take a human name to help him keep his humanity.  Rover flipped through a trashed phone book and chose ‘Robert Sellers’.  Yawn.  I must say I don’t understand the minds of these Beast Men.  I thought ‘Crab Guy’ and ‘Rover’ were far better names.

Midgard

---

“This is appalling, Gilgamesh,” Wire said.  Gilgamesh
had talked Wire and Sinclair into his experiment by promising to tell them the only mildly terrifying tale of how he figured out this test might be interesting.  Neither Ezekiel nor Tolstoy proved interested enough to show up.  Gilgamesh, proud, drove here in his recently purchased ’59 Chevy pickup.  His truck turned out to be a maintenance nightmare and he had curled into a fetal ball for hours after the first time he drove the vehicle, but the clanking junk heap proved to be quite worthwhile for his free-lance appliance repair business.  For one thing, he didn’t have to sponge use of Sinclair’s truck anymore, nor collect any more comments from Sinclair about ‘you’re the famous Crow hero, learn how to drive’.  Having a vehicle also gave him more time for his ‘project’.  He had sponged off the other Crows for too long and he felt he needed to pull his own weight now.

He owed the Philadelphia Crows far more than money.

“I can’t believe sludge dross is so useless we can’t do anything with the stuff,” Gilgamesh said.  They gathered on the ground floor of an old apartment building one of the nicer local Focuses had moved out of last month.

Wire shrugged.  “Let’s see what we can do.”

They started.  “So here’s my tale.  It relates well to what we’re doing tonight,” Gilgamesh said.

Gilgamesh huddled in the culvert in Cincinnati and watched.  Cars ran over the bridge above him and made a hollow echoing sound in the steel pipe where he hid.  A small dribble of water ran through the oversized pipe and over the toes of his shoes.  Ice formed at the edges of the little stream.  Midnight had passed, but morning was a long way off.

He had stopped shaving again, but his beard hadn’t come in the way he expected.  His beard came in scruffy and fine haired, the beard of a seventeen year old.  He hadn’t changed clothes in a month; filthy, they hung loose on him.  He stank.  Gaunt, his eyes now held a hollow look to them.  He hadn’t had a meal of real food in two months, not since he lost track of Tiamat.

A half-mile away the one Focus in Cincinnati worked at a desk.  The other Transforms in her household slept but she had been hard at work for three hours so far and hadn’t slowed down.  Every few minutes she
would put her head in her hands, and twice she had thrown something at the wall in a fit of temper.