Pushing Luck
It had been over a decade since I last saw Jamie Belmont, and in that time she had apparently grown a male prostitute. He was attached to her hip, sprouting dark, well-groomed hair and pretty enough that he would have looked feminine if not for all of the gym muscle. His clothes were skintight, expensive, and faux-casual, probably made by some designer with a name like Rutger Hauer. I decided to surgically remove him.
“Why, Jamie Belmont,” I said in my best Colonel Sanders impression. “As I live and breathe.” We and close to a hundred other people were standing in the reception hall of Russell Sidney’s Atlanta mansion, milling about between two large spiraling staircases and the wraparound balconies they led to. Maybe only fifty people if you didn’t count the high-class hookers or the suspiciously large and rough-looking men who were standing behind buffet tables and beneath serving trays. The latter looked like apes who had been shaved and crammed into red tuxedos.
“Is that supposed to be a Southern accent?” Jamie demanded in the real thing. Even in high heels, she had to look up to stare me down. Jamie was maybe a shade over five feet tall, a pert and pretty brunette who would have been called a “pocket rocket” in my youth, back before the phrase became a slang term for vibrators. “You sound like Yosemite Sam.”
“Consarn it, ya varmit!” I scolded her. “I sound genteel! Now shut yer dad-blamed piehole and be charmed.”
She laughed and fluttered her eyelashes, extending a hand out to be kissed.
I obliged.
“But where are my manners?” Jamie turned to her admirer. “Patrick, this is Mark Powell, an old friend of mine. I haven’t seen Mark in…what? Seven years? Eight?”
Twelve, actually, but it’s not like we had been engaged or anything. My name wasn’t even really Mark Powell.
Jamie turned her attention back to me. “Mark, this is Patrick of no last name. I believe young Patrick is in the service industry.”
“We’re all just here to enjoy ourselves,” Patrick said uneasily.
“Could you give Jamie and me some privacy?” I asked pleasantly, but in a way that made it clear I wasn’t really asking. “We have a lot of catching up to do, and some of it is personal.”
For just a second, Patrick gave me an evaluating stare that belonged to someone who had grown up in much less expensive clothes. It was a neutral, soulless gaze, and he didn’t like what he saw with it. “No problem.”
“I don’t know if I should be mad at you or him,” Jamie observed as she watched Patrick’s tight pants walk away.
“Him,” I said promptly.
We were there because Russell Sidney ran an illegal poker tournament. He wasn’t a serious criminal, or he hadn’t been a decade earlier. Russell was more a spoiled brat than anything else, a trust-fund baby who didn’t like to be told what he could and couldn’t do, and what he liked to do was play poker. Since the interest off his principal didn’t give him enough money to be a mediocre card player as often as he wanted, Russell started occasionally using his remote mansion to host underground tournaments. He ran an honest, discreet game; sometimes he used the fees he collected to sit in, and sometimes he just watched.
The entry fee was currently twenty-five thousand, enough to weed out players who lacked means or mettle. It was worth it because while you still had to buy your chips, there was a five-hundred-thousand-dollar prize waiting for the winner of the tournament in addition to whatever money he or she might win as they progressed through the rounds. Moreover, Russell’s family name still had enough power to attract wealthy dilettantes, which in turn attracted the kind of players who prey on them.
Players like me.
Being a poker player was never a lifelong dream of mine, but I have been trained to pay attention to detail and have heightened senses. I can literally smell fear and arousal and anger in someone’s
It had been over a decade since I last saw Jamie Belmont, and in that time she had apparently grown a male prostitute. He was attached to her hip, sprouting dark, well-groomed hair and pretty enough that he would have looked feminine if not for all of the gym muscle. His clothes were skintight, expensive, and faux-casual, probably made by some designer with a name like Rutger Hauer. I decided to surgically remove him.
“Why, Jamie Belmont,” I said in my best Colonel Sanders impression. “As I live and breathe.” We and close to a hundred other people were standing in the reception hall of Russell Sidney’s Atlanta mansion, milling about between two large spiraling staircases and the wraparound balconies they led to. Maybe only fifty people if you didn’t count the high-class hookers or the suspiciously large and rough-looking men who were standing behind buffet tables and beneath serving trays. The latter looked like apes who had been shaved and crammed into red tuxedos.
“Is that supposed to be a Southern accent?” Jamie demanded in the real thing. Even in high heels, she had to look up to stare me down. Jamie was maybe a shade over five feet tall, a pert and pretty brunette who would have been called a “pocket rocket” in my youth, back before the phrase became a slang term for vibrators. “You sound like Yosemite Sam.”
“Consarn it, ya varmit!” I scolded her. “I sound genteel! Now shut yer dad-blamed piehole and be charmed.”
She laughed and fluttered her eyelashes, extending a hand out to be kissed.
I obliged.
“But where are my manners?” Jamie turned to her admirer. “Patrick, this is Mark Powell, an old friend of mine. I haven’t seen Mark in…what? Seven years? Eight?”
Twelve, actually, but it’s not like we had been engaged or anything. My name wasn’t even really Mark Powell.
Jamie turned her attention back to me. “Mark, this is Patrick of no last name. I believe young Patrick is in the service industry.”
“We’re all just here to enjoy ourselves,” Patrick said uneasily.
“Could you give Jamie and me some privacy?” I asked pleasantly, but in a way that made it clear I wasn’t really asking. “We have a lot of catching up to do, and some of it is personal.”
For just a second, Patrick gave me an evaluating stare that belonged to someone who had grown up in much less expensive clothes. It was a neutral, soulless gaze, and he didn’t like what he saw with it. “No problem.”
“I don’t know if I should be mad at you or him,” Jamie observed as she watched Patrick’s tight pants walk away.
“Him,” I said promptly.
We were there because Russell Sidney ran an illegal poker tournament. He wasn’t a serious criminal, or he hadn’t been a decade earlier. Russell was more a spoiled brat than anything else, a trust-fund baby who didn’t like to be told what he could and couldn’t do, and what he liked to do was play poker. Since the interest off his principal didn’t give him enough money to be a mediocre card player as often as he wanted, Russell started occasionally using his remote mansion to host underground tournaments. He ran an honest, discreet game; sometimes he used the fees he collected to sit in, and sometimes he just watched.
The entry fee was currently twenty-five thousand, enough to weed out players who lacked means or mettle. It was worth it because while you still had to buy your chips, there was a five-hundred-thousand-dollar prize waiting for the winner of the tournament in addition to whatever money he or she might win as they progressed through the rounds. Moreover, Russell’s family name still had enough power to attract wealthy dilettantes, which in turn attracted the kind of players who prey on them.
Players like me.
Being a poker player was never a lifelong dream of mine, but I have been trained to pay attention to detail and have heightened senses. I can literally smell fear and arousal and anger in someone’s
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