Vegas Knights (20 page)

  "Now, gentlemen," Dad said. "I want you to carefully observe the slits on the sides of the box."

  With broad and flamboyant gestures, his assistants pointed out a pair of wide thin slots on either side of the box. They were just about wide enough to shove a sword through them. Of course, if we did that, they would stab right through Dad's guts.

  "Now, place the tips of your swords at the edges of the holes closest to the audience. On the count of three, I want you to shove your blades straight into those holes as fast and hard as you can."

  I must have goggled at my dad. He grinned at me and then Bill in turn. "It's all right, gentlemen. In the event that I might come to harm at your hands tonight, I hereby absolve you of all responsibility for your actions."

  "Can we get that in writing?" I asked.

  The audience burst into a nervous titter. This had been fun for everyone at first. Now it was turning deadly serious.

  Dad flashed a broad toothy smile and rattled his handcuffs. "I'm afraid I can't quite reach a pen at the moment. You'll just have to settle for the testimony of a thousand eyewitnesses."

  Bill and I nodded in agreement, each giving the audience our most confident smiles. I didn't feel good about it in the slightest, but I could fake it with the best of them.

  "Now," Dad said. "On the count of three, ram those blades home."

  I wiped away the sweat beading on my brow, which – until that moment – I hadn't realized was there. I don't know if it sprang from the heat of the spotlights or a sudden attack of nerves, but I didn't suppose it made a difference. I grasped the hilt of the sword in both hands and steadied the tip of the blade at the indicated hole on my side of the box.

  "One."

  I steadied my grip.

  "Two."

  I took a deep breath and steeled my arms.

  "Th– Now don't be shy with those blades, boys. There's nothing worse than having a steel rod shoved halfway through you so that it can swirl around inside you and destroy your guts."

  I'd just about thrust the sword straight into him before he switched tactics, and I'd barely caught myself. It frustrated me enough that I considered shoving the sword into him while he talked, but I couldn't bring myself to be quite that petty.

  "You may notice that the blades are much longer than I am thick. If you push them in properly, they should stab clean through me and emerge out of the other side of the box. Take care and strike clean and true." He grinned at us both. "Please."

  He nodded at us, and Bill and I steadied ourselves once again.

  "One!"

  I swore that if he tried to stop me this time I was going to shove the blade right through him anyhow. I assumed that he had some sort of trick up his sleeve. I wondered what it might be, but I couldn't see how it might work. Of course, you could have filled that entire theater with what I didn't know about magic.

  "Two!"

  Preparing myself for the sharp stab he'd requested, I visualized the blade passing right through him. I hoped he knew what he was doing, or he was setting himself up for a world of hurt.

  "Three!"

  I slammed the blade home with a single forceful move. I felt some resistance as it snaked forward, through my dad's body, but I kept his warning in mind and pushed right past it. I saw the tip of Bill's blade appear right next to me, on my side of the box. It came out clean and unbloodied.

  Dad tensed up hard, and he hauled on his handcuffs like he might rip them right out of their anchors. Then he howled with what I hoped was excitement and triumph.

  The crowd burst into an unrestrained roar of applause.

  The assistants grabbed the framework and spun it around on the stage, showing it from every angle. I gasped when I noticed that the tip of my blade ran red.

  I stared at Dad's face when they brought him back around to face the crowd. He seemed as easy and confident as if he'd just been given a long-expected award, but I could see lines of strain on his face. No one else would have noticed them, I was sure, especially not if they were sitting on the audience rather than the stage – or they didn't happen to be his son.

  The assistants reached up to the top of the contraption and released a set of black curtains I hadn't even seen rolled up along the top rails before. They unfurled down, obscuring the contents of the latticework from every angle.

  The device shook once, twice, three times. A moment later, there was a bright flash of light from inside the curtains, and a cloud of smoke burst from within.

  When the smoke cleared, the curtains had fallen away, and the Chinese Torture Trap stood empty.

  The assistants undid the lock on the box in the middle of the trap, then swung the entire thing open on its hinges and spun it around for everyone to see.

  The crowd roared louder than ever. Bill and I stared at the box in amazement. I had no idea where Dad had gone or how he'd pulled it off. I wondered if the blood on the sword had been real or just another part of the act. I had no way to tell.

  As the applause began to fade, the assistants pointed up to the far back end of theater. Someone appeared there a moment later, his back to us as he slid down toward us on a zip line so black I hadn't seen it the entire show.

  As he reached the stage, the man dropped down from the line and landed in a backward somersault that put him directly between Bill and me, right where the Chinese Torture Trap had been before the assistants had moved it. Coming out of the somersault, he struck the landing like an Olympic gymnast and raised his arms high and wide.

  It was, of course, Dad, dressed in his black dinner jacket once more.

  The audience went insane. The people out there all leaped to their feet, giving Dad a thunderous standing ovation.

  The curtain came down behind him, cutting Bill and me off from the audience and leaving him alone with his worshipful crowd. His assistants came over to us and led us to the side of the stage.

  "Thanks so much for your help," one of them – a leggy brunette with bright blue eyes – said. "If you're able to stick around, Mr Wisdom likes to give his helpers a souvenir and an autograph after the show for being such good sports."

  "I think we need to be going," I said. "We have a lot of friends out there waiting for us."

  Before I could even take a step away though, the curtains at the front of the stage parted, and Dad stormed back toward us. "Don't you dare try running off on me now, Jackson," he said. "You have a lot of explaining to do."

  The crowd outside kept up the applause. Dad scowled at me and Bill. "Wait here," he said. "This won't take a moment."

  He slipped out onto the stage again, and the cheers started up again, louder than ever.

  This happened twice more, with Dad becoming more agitated each time. When he came back after the third curtain call, he reached out and grabbed me by the arm as if to make sure I wouldn't disappear.

  "That's all they're going to get from me tonight," he said. "Now, we need to get somewhere quiet to talk."

  He leaned on me hard, and I realized he hadn't grabbed me to keep me from running off. He needed me to help hold him up.

  "Are you all right?" I asked.

  He grimaced. "You did a hell of a job on me there, Jackson," he said. "I managed to phase through your friend's blade just fine, but yours got me good."

  "What the hell are you talking about? You're fine." I pulled open his jacket. The white shirt underneath it was soaked with blood. "Dad!"

  "I'll be all right," he said. "I managed to heal it up part of the way before I had to slide down the zip line. Otherwise, I'd have bled all over the crowd on my way down. People tend not to forgive something like that."

  The assistants came over, gasped in horror, and insisted on leading Dad off to his dressing room. "All right," he said with a grim nod. "Before someone outside the act notices."

  He pointed at Bill and me first. "But you two are coming with me."

  Gaviota appeared behind Dad, emerging from around a corner. Dad noticed my jaw drop, and he turned around to see who the intruder might be. I thought for sure I'd see a knockdown drag-out fight between the two of them. Instead, Gaviota stuck out his hand.

  "Great show, Luke," he said. "You haven't lost a single step. You should let us book you here every night."

  "No can do, Ben," Dad said. "I have too many other duties. You know that."

  My head spun so hard I couldn't open my mouth, but Bill spoke up and said what I couldn't. "Wait. You two work with each other?"

  "Of course." Gaviota nodded. "It's been, what, four years now?"

  Dad winced instead of replying, and Gaviota noticed what kind of pain he was in. "Jesus, Luke," he said, staring at the bloodstain that had spread farther across Dad's white shirt. "You're hurt? We gotta get that taken care of."

  Dad started to object, but then just gritted his teeth and nodded. Gaviota pointed at the assistants. "Get him down to his dressing room," he said. "I'll have a healer or three down there in under a minute."

  The assistants each put one of Dad's arms over his shoulders and then hauled him away. As they went, Gaviota called after them. "Don't worry about the boys, Luke. They're in good hands. We'll be waiting for you up in the lounge when you're ready."

  "Shouldn't we go with him?" I said. I'd been dreading the chewing out my father was going to give me for still being in Vegas, but my concern for him trumped that.

  Gaviota shook his head. "There's nothing you can do for him, kid. The healers will have him like new in no time. Let's just head back to Bootleggers so we'll be there when he's ready."

  "Seriously?" I said. "I can't. I'll just worry about him the entire time."

  "Listen to him. He's right," Bill said, showing far more regret than Gaviota had mustered. "We'd just be in the way."

  "Smart kid," Gaviota said. "There's a time to get involved, and a time to back away and let the trained professionals handle things. Let's get you boys back to the lounge. If you need a distraction to help keep your mind off Luke until he's OK, I've got just the thing."

 
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
 

"The name of the game, ladies and gents, is Mojo Poker." Misha dealt with deft flicks of his thick fingers and wrists, displaying far more control over the cards than I would have thought he could manage. "We have a couple new players here tonight, so I'll explain the rules as we go. Be as gentle with them as you like."

  "Fresh blood," a short balding man at the end of the table said. "I'm always glad to see that." He flashed a too-easy smile through his goatee.

  Nine of us had joined Misha at the oblong poker table that sat in the south part of the lounge, near the bay of windows that overlooked the Strip. The players included Bill, me, Alejandro, Melody, Gaviota, and the goateed shark. The three others I didn't know were a tall bearded man with prematurely gray hair, a blond-haired man with a desert tan, and a curvy brunette with a wide friendly smile. We each had two cards in front of us, face-down on the midnight blue felt.

  "You can play Mojo Poker just like real poker, with any sort of variants you like," Misha said. "In Chicago, we prefer the Five Card Draw version, and in Asia they play Pai Gow Poker. Here in Vegas, we mostly stick with No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em. Blinds – the big and little antes – start at twenty-five and fifty dollars. They go up every half hour."

  I nodded at him as he went along. Bill and I had played a lot of Hold 'Em online over the past few months and in local poker games, testing out our skills. I knew the game well.

  "It can't be any harder than
Magic: The Gathering,
right?" said Bill. "I played the hell out of that game in high school, and it comes with hundreds of possible cards instead of just fifty-two. And each of those has a different power that can affect the game."

  I clamped down on my poker face as I laughed inside. I'd seen Bill pull his naïve noob act many times before. "Anything to make them think I'm a sucker," he often said. He'd have all their money before they realized he wasn't nearly so ignorant about the game as he claimed.

  "Actually, some of the best players on the professional poker circuit these days sprang out of the
Magic
pro tournaments," the tall man said. "Jon Finkel, David Williams, Eric Froelich, and Noeh Boeken made the jump, and others are coming over all the time. The game makes for a very fertile training ground."

  "Thanks for the history lesson, Ryan," the brunette said. "Can we play cards now?"

  "Just making friendly conversation, Cindi. And helping provide our new friends with some perspective."

  Although she was barely half Ryan's size, she chucked him in the arm with her fist. "You're so cute when you're didactic."

  Misha cleared his throat, and all eyes returned to him. "The standard buy-in is a thousand dollars. One rebuy is permitted, although only if you have less than a thousand dollars in front of you at the time. During our annual tournament, we don't permit that, but today it's OK."

  "We're all friends here, right?" said the brunette. She fixed her wide brown eyes on Bill and me and smiled. "I'm Cindi, by the way. This boy next to me with the tan is Christian, that's Peter with the beard, and–"

  "I think they get the picture," Christian said. He grinned when he said it, but his posture said he'd sat down at the table to play.

  Bill stuck out his hand and started shaking. "Bill Teach," he said.

  I followed behind him. "Jackson Lafitte."

  "So far it sounds like standard poker," Bill said. "What's the catch?"

  Sporting a wide grin through his permanent five o'clock shadow, Misha drew the top three cards off the deck and laid them face-up in the center of the table. "Here's the flop," he said. He peeled off another card, then another. "There's the turn, or fourth street. And the river, or fifth."