Hold ’Em Hostage (9 page)

“H
ow do you know it's the same marker?” I asked
when I finally found my voice. Many questions had rolled through my mind along with my version of the answers, including deciding that the guy's department was with the SPCA—after all, Frank did have a hunting license. I'd found it when I pilfered his wallet one early morning. But, if it weren't the same marker, then all the questions and answers didn't matter because we weren't talking about the same guy, right?

The dealer had demanded we post blinds so conversation was suspended for the bets. With my mind reeling, I couldn't remember now what my pocket cards were so I just checked, while waiting for my neighbor's response. It didn't come immediately. He seemed terribly intent on the hand. Come on, guy, my boyfriend might be an infamous murderer. Who cared about poker at a time like this? I cleared my throat. He glared and slow played a little longer, until finally the dealer nudged him into a bet.

When two Aces fell on The Flop I remembered what was facedown in front of me—bullets. I had four of a kind and I couldn't even get excited about it. Normally, I would stay cool, draw everybody in to staying until The River, but I so wanted the hand to be over that after a check-raise, I went all in. A chorus of groans went up around the table. Blackie shook her head, her first show of any sort of normal communication, and I was almost distracted out of my intensity toward Marker Man. I don't know what skin it was off her nose, anyway. After all, I'd saved her several bets' worth of chips by being stupidly impatient. The whole table folded to me.

As I quickly raked the chips toward me, I accidentally flipped over a card. Two of diamonds? Huh? The table howled. “She bluffed us!”

I guess I did. Had I been so upset by Marker Man that I'd mistaken what was in my pocket? Sheesh. Good thing I hadn't known or my blood pressure would've been dangerously high. I really don't bluff, especially not in the first day of a tournament.

“Of course it's the same marker,” my neighbor answered in an undertone as one of the WSOP officials came to see what the ruckus was about. She leaned down to whisper in the dealer's ear as Marker Man continued, “Look on the other side and find the tiny Y-shaped crack. It's filled with crimson paint.”

I found it. Damn.

“I suppose you topped the man in a game to get it,” he said. “That's the only way he'd give it up, unless of course, you killed him. And if you did, I won't tell.”

I suppressed a shiver at his matter-of-fact tone. Still, I knew he had to be mistaken. Markers were a dime a dozen, thousands out there alike. Surely all old markers like this one wore in a similar pattern.

“So are you going to tell me his name?” I asked finally, three hands later, after I'd lost nearly two thousand in chips in my distraction.

“You tell me where you got it.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“He favors white T-shirts, Levi's and Luccheses.”

The liquor made me swallow a gasp as I shrugged coolly. “That could be half the cowboys where I come from.”

“You from L.A.?”

Uh-oh.

“Guess it's the same guy.” My Italian seatmate nodded knowingly. “You sure got talkative eyes.”

Averting the offenders, I dropped my Gargoyles back over them and spent the rest of the next hour just playing my hands, slowly regaining what I'd lost on the table, if not in my heart.

 

“C
an I buy you a drink?” I asked my seatmate when
the chimes indicated our next break.

As we meandered our way to the nearest bar in the Fortune, I found out his name was Rudy Serrano. He didn't drink anything but Mountain Dew by the truckload, he said, when he was playing cards. He'd lost two hundred thousand dollars, his entire life savings, one night two years ago in a cash game in a dark corner of San Luis Obispo drinking ouzo. From then on, he didn't swear off alcohol, just alcohol when he was playing Texas Hold 'Em, which was his great white hope for earning back a retirement fund.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I'm retired from the Los Angeles Police Department, detective, first grade, but have to work as a rent-a-cop for an apartment complex to supplement my pension until I win enough playing poker.”

I wanted to tell him not to give up the day job but concentrated on information instead of self help. “You said some pretty strong things about Frank. I want to know the story.”

“I guess you didn't beat Gilbert at a game of poker to get that marker, then, huh? And I'd say from the look on your face when you say his name, you didn't off him to get it either.”

“No. I'm, uh, a friend of his. He taught me how to play.”

“You were taught by one of the best, I have to say that. To play Hold 'Em, that is.”

I ignored his implication, and he finally continued when I didn't elaborate on our relationship. “I'd say Gilbert was one of the most successful Texas Hold 'Em cash players there ever was—before the game was a household name, that is.”

“Why did he quit?”

He shrugged. “He quit playing when he quit his marriage and started drinking. Who knows why. Maybe he was just turning his back on everything in his life except the job. Most men have to have a job to breathe. He's no exception.”

“Turned his back. Even on his kids?”

“No.” He took a swallow of his Mountain Dew. “He sees them on a regular basis.”

“His wife, he sees her too?”

“No. Not at all, except by accident.”

That would be tough. See young kids, not wife. Hmm. Weird. How did he manage that? Maybe they were transferred by nanny. And how did this guy know so much? I sucked in a deep breath as my companion watched a couple arguing in the corner of the bar. I knew I had to be careful. This guy was smart and just telling me as much as he wanted to. His motivation concerned me, but not as much as my desire to know answers to all my questions. I had to ask them in order of importance before he decided to clam up.

“So, who did he kill?”

“Sheesh. You finally got around to asking what a man would ask first. Gilbert was in the middle of an international investigation when his wife was tortured and almost killed on orders from the principal in the case. It was supposed to be a warning to Frank to back off. It was a death sentence for themselves instead. Ronald Trucek and two of his associates were tortured and killed not twelve hours later. An eye for an eye. Frank works for—or used to work for—a government law enforcement organization. I can't tell you if it's the CIA, or something deeper, something none of us has ever heard of. The murder was personal, I can promise you that, but whoever signed his paychecks made sure he got a free ride. We were told to look the other way. It pissed me off, because it plays hell with your stats, wrecks promotion possibilities. I got a helluva lot of grief from the media for not solving the case. I never really got my mojo back. My boss told me to lie, make up a story about the associates turning on Trucek and him killing them before he died himself. I couldn't do it. Couldn't ask the detectives working for me to do that. Instead, we still have an open case in the LAPD books, one of the most notorious killings in our history is unsolved.”

“If the incidents were similar, nobody put two and two together?”

“The details of Monica Gilbert's attack were kept under wraps. The same with the Trucek murders. Most of what you think you know about some cases actually comes out at trial. Neither of these went there. So you, the public, will end up knowing little.”

I almost didn't want to ask, but knew I had to. “What happened to Monica?”

“She was hospitalized for a month, touch and go for nearly three weeks, in rehab six months. Frank was a stay-at-home dad during that time—the kids being only two and five. It was easier than being home after she returned, though. From what I hear, she never blamed him, but he blamed himself every time he saw her limp, struggle to stand, every time her eyes filled with tears of frustration when she couldn't lift one of the kids up when they begged her, ‘Mommy, carry me.' Gilbert couldn't see her every day and live with his own guilt.”

This was worse than my wildest imaginings. “He left her because she was crippled?”

He shook his head. “He left because he was emotionally crippled. He couldn't see her and not blame himself 24/7 that his job had almost killed her and left her almost worse than that for the rest of her life.”

I'd become accustomed to the image of a model-beautiful woman who wasted her days shopping Rodeo Drive, playing tennis at a Hollywood country club and toting mini-Frank and mini-her to overdone birthday parties where every child got a Chihuahua á la
Legally Blonde
as a party favor. Of course ex–Mrs. Gilbert was gorgeous but cold, a decent mother (because Frank let her have the kids), but never a decent wife. Perhaps she cheated on him in my mind once or twice. Perhaps she'd remarried the plastic surgeon who'd done her fifth needless cosmetic surgery in as many years. Perhaps she'd been a heartless workaholic who never had time for him.

But in my mind, she'd never been a good-hearted woman, crippled by a maniac set upon her by Frank himself, whom he'd loved, who loved him. Who'd been a hapless martyr. Never.

“You're retired now.” I interrupted the negative direction my imagination was taking me. “Why don't you turn Frank in and solve the case?”

“Frank and I were friends once. Law enforcement compadres of a sort. He doesn't have much of a life left, but I can't take away what little is left—even if I can't ever look him in the eye again after seeing what he did to another human being.”

I shivered at the stark reality in his voice. I couldn't ask the details of the murders. My mind's eye was doing more than his words could anyway. Instead, I asked something that would prove infinitely more painful.

“Do you think he still loves her—Monica?”

Rudy Serrano paused thoughtfully—considering more my feelings than the truth, I was certain. “Yes. Yes, I'm sure he does love Monica, in his own way.”

“And she loves him?”

“Yes, I've talked to Monica. There's no doubt about that.”

Great. I was in love with a vicious killer who still loved his wife.

Could it get any worse?

I knew better than to ask that question.

“Any idea where Gilbert is right now?” Serrano asked.

There were lots of answers to that one, but I decided that the most precise would be the safest. “No.” I shook my head, took a sip of pinot grigio and shook my head again. “I sure don't.”

B
ecause Ben, morose and brooding, had arrived at
the Main Event to escort me back to the Mellagio, I'd missed the opportunity to see Frank's reaction to his supposed old friend Rudy Serrano. I cursed fate or perhaps Frank's sixth sense that seemed to alert him to potential dangers. I'd needed that reaction to know how to proceed—whether to interrogate him, avoid him or to continue to trust him until I found out more. I loved him, but more importantly right now, I felt like I knew who he was, under his skin. Or I thought I had. The man in Frank's skin might well have killed someone to avenge a loved one, but wouldn't have tortured him on top of it. The man in Frank's skin wouldn't have left his crippled wife to raise two babies on her own.

Maybe who Frank was now wasn't who he used to be. And if that was true, how did I feel about that?

My head was beginning to hurt with my self psychoanalysis. “What's your problem?” I snapped at Ben. Maybe I could analyze him instead. “Pouting because you're not going to win the Main Event this year?”

He slid me a slitty-eyed look. “No.”

A pair of women walking past us paused in midstep to stare at Ben. One grabbed the other's arm and stage-whispered, “Do you really think it's Colin Farrell? I think he plays poker. No, he looks more like Ben Affleck. He played one time in a cash game with my best friend's sister's brother's niece's uncle's mother.”

It was Ben's usual invitation to flirt with a wink and a grin. He didn't even look their way.

“How'd you do that anyway?” I continued to taunt him, hoping for anything, even an explosion. “It's hard to bust out of a tournament that early, especially one with ten thousand people playing.”

With a grunt, Ben strode on ahead. His phone sang a strain from “Lord of the Thighs” by Aerosmith. I never had the stomach to ask him where he found that as a ring tone but now it reminded me Ben was still Ben. He hadn't yet changed his ring tone to the theme song of
The Wonder Years
, so maybe I didn't have to worry. He answered, striding so fast he was almost running to keep me from hearing him. Stilettos or no, I still caught up with him. Ha! He ducked into a men's room. Damn, I was tempted. Sorely tempted…

“Excuse me, Bee Cool,” a young female voice asked as a finger tapped me on the shoulder.

“Yes?” Ingrained politeness answered. I turned around, even as I realized I probably should be jumping away in case it was another Dragsnashark associate in drag. Before me stood two teenage girls, dressed in jeans and logo tees, one of them reminding me so much of Aphrodite that my heart ached.

“Can we have your autograph?” They shoved WSOP programs forward. They were both stuffed with some extra paper behind the page with my photo and I moved to slide it out of the way. One of the girls stopped me, tapping on my photo. “Sign here.”

I did, a bit of an awkward signature because of the bulkiness underneath, but oh well. “We are big fans of yours, Bee Cool. It's awesome the way you dress so model, act so hot, play so cool and beat all those stuck-up ugly old pros who think they're so smart.

“We want to be like you one day. Like, wear Marc Jacobs and Derek Lam and Manolos and Choos, come to Vegas and play poker all day.”

“Is that right? Let me tell you, first you need to have a real job too, you know. And go to college. I couldn't have money to put on the table if I didn't work as an ad executive.”

“That's not true,” the petite blonde said. “You won half a million dollars last year. The Internet said so.”

“Don't believe everything you read, especially on the Internet.” I warned. “Playing poker is entertainment, so when you're old enough you can set aside what you want to spend on that and only spend that much. No borrowing to win money, understand?”

Neither girl looked convinced. “Speaking of money,” the brunette put in. “We caught the bus here from Oregon just to see you, our idol, but now we don't have enough to go home.”

I sighed. I hated this. I didn't want to encourage this kind of behavior, but if Affie were somewhere now needing bus money home I hoped some kind soul would give it to her. I reached into my purse, found my wallet and extracted two hundred-dollar bills.

I dangled the money out to them but held fast as I ordered, “Now, your parents are missing you, I'm sure. Go straight to the bus station and—”

“So you see, my good people,” a voice behind me boomed. “How your children are being corrupted by the evil poker players of the world. This gambling game, this Texas Hold 'Em, it is poison, and its players are akin to the devil. Plying our youth with money, money, money, addicting them to the game so young. It is to be scorned. It is to be STOPPED!”

The girls snatched the cash out of my hand and ran. I spun around to see Phineas Paul with a gawking bunch of tourists who were pointing at me and shaking their heads. Then I noticed the cameraman and reporter. I turned and looked at where the girls had disappeared, narrowing my eyes in thought. It couldn't have been staged, could it? They really had seemed inordinately thrilled with my fashion sense.

Ben emerged from the restroom just then, took in the scene in a split second, grabbed my arm and hauled me in the opposite direction and around the corner. “Wait. Wait! Miss Cooley. We'd like a comment,” the reporter yelled.

“Do you think Paul's been following me around waiting for me to do something to play into his twisted, sick hand?”

Ben's mouth twisted into a tight grin, making him look a little more like himself than he had since last night. “Even you have to admit, Bee Bee, it wouldn't have been a bad bet. Considering all the messes you get yourself into on a regular basis.”

We could hear feet running behind us. Ben dove into the next open doorway and we found ourselves in the Harley Davidson shop. Not pausing, he wound us through the clothes racks and shoved me headfirst into a dressing room. He followed and slammed the door.

“How long do you think this is going to take?” I asked after a minute.

Ben opened his mouth but before he could speak a knock at the door silenced him. “Hey! Hey! We don't allow that kind of thing in here,” a heavily accented Eastern European female voice warned. I knew from my last visit to Vegas that those with a bossy foreign accent probably were in employ at the hotel or casino.

“What kind of thing is banned?” Ben asked. “Talking?”

“
Nein
,” she barked. “I mean, no. Hokay, if you try on, then you can stay in there. Hokay?”

“Hokay,” Ben answered. “Why don't you pass us something to try on, then, sugar?”

I could feel the poor woman melting on the other side of the louvered door. Ben's appeal surpassed his looks. It was truly disgusting.

A half second later a trio of shirts, a black leather skirt with lots of chain and a pair of black leather pants wafted over the top of the dressing-room door. Ben grabbed them, allowing, I noticed, his fingertips to brush Miss Nein's hand. She sighed. I coughed to hide my gag. Ben looked over the selections. The pants were his, the skirt was mine, two were men's shirts, the other was a women's shirt that he passed to me. It was a black Harley-emblazoned T-shirt that looked like it ended at a cap sleeve but really continued with a see-through fabric that was dyed to look like skin tattooed all the way to the wrist. Okay!

Ben surveyed my shirt, putting his fingers behind the tattoo fabric. “This is cool. You ought to try it on.”

“Sure,” I muttered. “It's just my style. High fashion meets low rider.”

“It's exactly
not
your style, which is exactly the point.” Ben nodded. “Look, Bee Bee, between the bad guys after you and that scary preacher, I was just thinking you could use a disguise. If this works, it might be it.”

“I'll look like an Annie Duke wannabe,” I argued.

“As long as you don't look like Bee Cool.” Ben shrugged.

Just to shut him up, I turned my back and doffed my button-down, and squeezed myself into the skin-tight shirt. The transparent sleeves went down past my wrists in an impressive faux effect. Ben gasped and spun me around to face him.

“This is unbelievable, Bee Bee,” he exclaimed. “They look real! Even from this close up.”

“Hokay, you two,” the store clerk whispered through the louvers, “if you don't take care of
things
not so loud, I got to call security.”

Ben and I looked at each other in question.

I opened the door and stepped out. A small crowd had gathered outside the dressing room and, since I didn't notice Reverend Paul and his impromptu congregation, I just assumed the line meant there was a big midnight demand for Harley wear. That is, until one man nudged his buddy, pointed at my chest and said, “Yeah, I'd say those look pretty real even close up too! I win the bet.” He held out his palm to his friend, who fished for his wallet as he peered at my breasts.

“Listen, dude,” I sneered in an attempt to match my tattooed persona, “he was talking about the tattoos!”

“Sure, and what were you all doing in there, comparing artwork?” Yuk yuk yuk.

“He's my brother,” I answered in full affront mode.

“You like it a little kinky? We could go for that,” his companion chortled.

I spun around to see why my loser brother wasn't helping me, and saw him with a leather hat, the leather pants and the leather skirt. Abandoning my impromptu fan club, I hissed in his ear, “What are you doing?”

He reached into my purse and pulled out my wallet, handing over my credit card with a skilled aplomb. “We are buying your disguise.”

“Oh.” I arched an eyebrow. “I see I will be wearing men's size 32 leather pants also?”

“Those are my early birthday present,” Ben said, winking at the store clerk whose name tag read “Helga.” She wiggled and giggled.

Ben grabbed the hat with one hand and gathered my hair in the other, stuffing the tendrils under the hat. I'm sure I looked just terrific. “Don't I need some black lipstick to go with this?” I asked.

“Actually, midnight blue is in right now,” Helga told Ben, who reached for a tube off the display at the register.

I grabbed his forearm in a death grip. “Don't you dare!”

“Come on, Bee Bee, gotta be authentic if you are going biker chick.” He clamped a metal chain-link bracelet that looked like an instrument of torture on my wrist. Horrified, I dropped his arm and he snatched up the lipstick and passed it to Helga, his very willing partner in crime. Nearly four hundred dollars later (he, armed now with Helga's phone number), we walked out of the Harley shop and down the corridor toward the parking garage. He'd made me change into the skirt. I held my ground on the lipstick and refused Helga's suggestion that I get some knee-high boots.

“I think it would've been cheaper to buy a real tattoo,” I complained.

“Do you want one?” Ben asked, proud owner of a giraffe tattoo on his abdomen. A giraffe that incidentally tucked its head just inside the waistband of Ben's swim trunks. Sick. Don't ask me where his head ended up when Ben had his undies on. I don't want to know.

“No!” I said

“It might be good for your investigation.” Ben pointed out. “After all, we could ask the tattoo artist about your bad guy's tattoo—what it means, who might have drawn it on him.”

Evil. My brother was completely evil. Of course I was tempted to investigate. “Why don't you get another one?” I asked.

“Bee Bee, I already have three.”

“Three? Where are the other two?”

Ben raised his eyebrows. “You wanna see?”

“No!” I blurted so loud that several groups of people in the parking garage turned around.

“Okay. Be that way.”

We walked in silence for a while, me holding out as long as I could to ask the next question. “What are they, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“What kind of tattoos are they—in case I need to identify your body.”

“That's uplifting, Bee Bee.”

“Well, it's happened before,” I reminded him.

“Okay, okay. They are a pair of lips with an eye in the middle and a tree frog.”

I knew I shouldn't ask the next question. “Where?”

“Well, the tree frog is climbing up—”

I was saved by Aerosmith singing from Ben's phone. “Hello? Hi, Frank. We are going to get Bee Bee a tattoo.”

I punched his shoulder. Part of me was relieved to see Ben seemed more himself since we'd done the Harley stop—the part of me that wasn't pissed off about me being transformed into a biker chick. I wondered what my police shadow thought of this.

“I'll tell her,” Ben promised as he handed over the phone.

“Frank wants you to get a butterfly on your—”

I snatched the phone out of his hands. “Where are you? Any leads on Affie?”