Vegas Knights (23 page)

  Dad gritted his teeth like the only thing that kept him from bending me over his knee was all the people standing around us. Or maybe he wanted to bolt from the place. I couldn't tell. From the look on his face, though, he wouldn't be able to restrain himself for long.

  "I'm going to go watch Bill play, Dad," I said. "I seem to have a lot to learn."

  I walked over to the Poker table and didn't look back. There were only a few players left. Gaviota had the largest stack of chips in front of him. A lot of that had come from taking both Cindi and me for everything we had, but he'd collected a lot more since then. Ryan had the second-largest stack of chips, although he trailed Gaviota by a distant second. Bill had managed to stay in the game, although it looked like he'd accomplished that by playing as conservatively as he could. Everyone else had been knocked out. They'd abandoned the table and wandered off to mingle with the others in the lounge, leaving only Misha and the three final players to grind through the endgame struggle.

  Misha looked up at me. "Care to buy your way back in, fella?"

  I shrugged at him. "Don't have the cash."

  "Your dad's here, right?" said Bill. "Why don't you hit him up for our cash?"

  "You mean for the chips you stole from the casino the other night?" Dad said as he walked up behind me.

  I frowned. "We won those chips."

  "Nothing fair and square about it though, eh, boys?" Gaviota laughed. "Not like playing Mojo Poker."

  Maybe it was the beer talking. Maybe it was my frustration with my dad. Maybe I was still embarrassed by how well Gaviota had played me. I knew I should have let that slide, but I just couldn't.

  "Sure, the first night wasn't really fair, but actually, that second night was exactly like Mojo Poker, wasn't it? Everyone at the table was a magician. The only difference is that you knew what Bill and I were doing, and we had no idea about you."

  "No, wait," Bill said in mock innocence. "I remember, there was one other difference." He scratched his head. "Help me out here, Jackson. Now what was it?"

  I knew what he was doing. Bill and I had worked this angle many times while playing Poker on campus. Angry players made mistakes. They let their emotions rather than their brains drive their decisions. So we made a lot of players angry.

  That got us into a lot of fights too – or very close to them. This became a real problem at places like frat houses where everyone else at the game would back their friend against us. It meant we had to walk a fine line between getting someone mad enough to play poorly but not so enraged that they'd attack us.

  The strategy had worked OK against other college kids. I wasn't so sure about pulling it with adults – especially members of the magic-powered Cabal – but I had started it. Bill was just helping me push things along. It was up to me if I wanted to keep going.

  I did.

  "Yeah-yeah-yeah," I said. "I remember now. It was the way we cleaned them out without really trying."

  Bill and I gave each other our best shit-eating grins, then shared them with everyone else at the table.

  "All right," Gaviota said. "All right. I took one and you took one. Let's square this up. You're in on the game now, and I know enough about you. Let's play. You and me. Mano a mano. Heads up."

  "Wish I could." I shrugged. "I can't."

  "If it's about the money, we can work that out. How about I stake you and we play for the chips you won?"

  "That's already mine, isn't it? Why should I risk it? I'd be putting up twenty-five thousand dollars against your one."

  Gaviota acknowledged that with a nod. "Granted. So how about you play against your old man instead?"

  I froze. "What? Why would I want to do that? This is between you and me. Tiebreaker, right?"

  Gaviota stood up. "I don't seem to have anything you need that bad. Your dad, on the other hand, he has exactly what you want."

  "What's that?" Dad said, unable to keep the undercurrent of suspicion out of his voice.

  "Your permission," Gaviota said with a smug grin. "If Jackson wins, you agree to let him make his own decision about the Cabal. If you win, he goes home."

  "I don't need his permission," I said. "I'm an adult."

  "His blessing then. Whatever it takes to get the two of you to quit griping at each other in the corner and get on with your lives."

  I pulled in my lips and made a face. "Still don't care that much." If I was honest with myself, I cared a lot, but I wasn't about to let Dad or anyone else in the room know that.

  "Your money then," Dad said. "You beat me, you get my blessing and all the chips I'm holding for you."

  I grunted. "That doesn't do me much good if I can't ever cash them in."

  Gaviota spread his hands wide in a magnanimous gesture. "I will personally guarantee that Bootleggers will honor your chips and pay you for them in any fashion you prefer."

  Bill gave me a shrug that said, "Why the hell not?"

  "All right," I said. "Deal me in."

  Gaviota, Ryan, and Bill gathered up their chips and stepped away from the table. My father sat down next to Misha. I took the chair across the blue-black stretch of felt from him.

  The heads-up part of a normal game of Hold 'Em is a contest of nerves. With only two players, it doesn't often take much of a hand to win a round. Often one player bets and the other folds before the flop. This happens until both players think they have hole cards worth considering.

  In a game of Mojo Poker, it didn't matter much what the hole cards were because they could change. This was going to get deadly serious fast.

  Misha counted out a thousand dollars worth of chips to each of us. "I still can't pay for these," I said.

  Gaviota waved me off. "Don't worry about it," he said. "This is for pride, not money. The chips are on the house."

  I considered thanking him and then taking the chips to a cage downstairs to cash out, but I didn't think he'd take that well. Dad and I cut cards to see who would be the first dealer. I won.

  Bill stood next to me and bent down to grab me by the shoulders and shake me as he spoke. "You can do it, Jackson," he said. "You've come a long way since we got here. I've never seen anyone work the cards as well as you."

  "You know the best part of a heads-up Mojo Poker game?" I said. "You don't have to worry about a tie letting someone else steal your pot."

  "You got it. Just go for the best hand you can make – but be sure to screw up his too. Good luck!"

  I cracked my knuckles and watched Misha deal out the cards. I peeked at mine: the Ace of Spades and the Jack of Diamonds. I was the first dealer, so I paid the small blind. The first bet was Dad's.

  To stay in the round, he'd have to pay at least the big blind – or he could fold. He hadn't even looked at his cards when he tossed a pair of green twenty-five dollar chips onto the table. "Fifty."

  "All in," I said. I pushed the chips across the table.

  He gazed at me, sizing me up. The last time we'd played poker, it had been with the two of us and my Grandpa Laveau. The game had been just after my thirteenth birthday, not too long before Katrina hit, and I'd been thin, gangly, and growing like the delta – slow but steady. Now, instead of peach fuzz on my cheeks, I had stubble on my chin.

  With my eyes, I dared him to call me.

  He did.

 
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
 

I reached out to flip my hole cards over, but Misha stopped me. "That's what you do when all the fellas go all-in with regular Poker, sure," he said. "Not in Mojo Poker. They stay down until the end."

  I nodded my understanding and left my cards facedown on the table. I looked at Dad to see if he would smirk at my error, but his face showed not one bit of emotion.

  I looked around and saw that we'd drawn a crowd. All other conversations had stopped. Every set of eyes in the entire lounge were on us now, including those of the bartender, who'd stopped serving drinks.

  Misha dealt the flop. I focused on protecting my own cards rather than trying to mess with Dad's. The cards came up Ace of Clubs, Eight of Spades, and the Nine of Diamonds. That gave me a pair of Aces if nothing changed. No flush presented itself for either Dad or me, nor did we yet have an easy shot at a straight.

  With both of us all-in, there wouldn't be any more betting. We didn't have anything else to bet. Instead, we could concentrate entirely on the cards.

  I focused mostly on protecting my Ace. I also put some effort into changing my Jack into the Ace of Hearts, since that would give me three of a kind.

  I checked my cards. The Ace of Spades was just fine, but now I had two of them. Either Dad had forced the change on me entirely for some odd reason, or he'd managed to change the suit while I had controlled the index.

  Misha revealed the turn. I protected my first Ace and ignored the other one. Then I reached out with half my mind and attacked the card coming out of Misha's hand. As it turned over, the face seemed blurry, but when it hit the table, it became the Ace of Clubs.

  That gave me four Aces, although I could only use two of them. If I changed one of my hole cards to the Ace of Diamonds or Ace of Hearts, I'd have three I could use, a good hand. I'd need to muck with Dad's hole cards at the same time, though, to make sure he didn't just do the same thing.

  I noticed sweat beading on Dad's brow. He was working hard at this – harder than me. I wasn't sure if I had that much more mojo than him or if I just didn't know what I was doing. I'd have bet on the latter if I hadn't already put all my money on this hand.

  With only one more card to go and no betting to distract us, I had to think fast about what to do. I decided to ignore the river entirely and put a minimal amount of effort into protecting one of my hole cards. Instead, I channeled every extra bit of mojo I had into messing with Dad's hole cards. If it worked, I'd win for sure. Or so I hoped.

  The final common card came up as the Eight of Clubs. That ruled out any possibility of a flush for anyone, and it destroyed any shot at a straight too. I didn't worry about it. I just kept focusing on Dad's cards as hard as I could, pouring every last ounce of my mojo into making them do what I wanted.

  "Look at that, would you?" Christian said, pointing at the common cards. "Aces and Eights. The Dead Man's Hand."

  "Not quite," Peter said. "The original didn't have double Aces of Clubs."

  "Close enough for me," Melody said with an ominous air.

  Misha shivered. "All set?" he said, struggling to stay as businesslike as he could manage.

  Dad stared straight into my eyes. "Not even going to check your hole cards?" he asked.

  "Don't need to." I never once broke my eye connection with him.

  "Fellas?" I could hear a tremor in Misha's voice. "Are you ready?"

  Dad and I nodded as one.

  "All right. Three. Two. One."

  On the silent "Zero" beat, Dad and I flipped over our hole cards.

  The Ace of Spades I'd protected had remained safe. The other had changed into the Queen of Diamonds. Using my Ace in the hole with the common cards gave me two pairs: Aces and Eights – a proper Dead Man's Hand.

  Dad wore a rueful smile as he looked at my cards. His plan, as far as he knew, had worked. I suspect he thought he had turned over a pair of Aces or a pair of Eights, which would have given him three of a kind. That would have beaten my two pair solid.

  A collective gasp ran through the crowd, seeming to suck all of the air out of the room. Dad looked down at his cards and saw what had shocked the others. His cards were blank.

  Dad shot to his feet. "That's cheating!" he said. He thrust a long finger at me. "You can't do that. It's cheating."

  I sat back in my chair. I had thought he might say that, but I was determined to ride this one out.

  "I thought Mojo Poker was all about cheating. The best cheater wins, right? I didn't hear anyone say the cards had to show any kind of faces at all."

  "Well they do!"

  "Are you sure about that?"

  "Sure I'm sure!" He turned to Gaviota. "Tell him!"

  The man shrugged. "It looks to me like you have an illegal hand there, Luke. You can't make a hand of five cards with only four available cards."

  Dad steamed. "Break out the rulebook," he said. "I want a ruling on this."

  Gaviota signaled the bartender, who pulled a little black book out from behind the bar. It had a black cover with the title "Mojo Poker: The Game and the Rules" stamped on it in gold foil letters. He handed it to the woman I'd beaten in poker down in the Bolthole the other night. She brought the well-thumbed book to Gaviota.

  "Thank you, Ming." Gaviota accepted the rulebook and began to page through it. I thought about standing up to peek over his shoulder, but I wanted to play it cool, so I kept to my seat.

  "It should be under 'Changing the Cards.' Near the middle," Ryan said. "If it's there at all."

  "I'm not seeing it," said Gaviota.

  Dad took the book from him. The other magicians in the room opened their eyes wide in surprise, but Dad ignored both them and the dirty look Gaviota shot at him. "I'll find it," he said.

  Gaviota's cell phone rang, belting out the first few bars of Frank Sinatra singing "Luck Be a Lady." He reached into his pocket and looked at its display. "It's the boss," he said.

  Everyone in the room knew what that meant, and they all fell silent to catch Gaviota's end of the conversation. Dad kept flipping through the book, still not finding what he wanted.

  "Yes, sir," said Gaviota. "You're sure?" He raised an eyebrow at me, but I couldn't tell if that meant I would be vindicated or punished. "Thank you, sir."