In a Cold Sweat (10 page)

“I’m in, Sonny. What’s the big blind?” Jackie asked as she organized her chips. The game was Texas Hold ’Em and before the game starts, the two players post blind bets. They're called blinds because they are made before the players see any cards. The blinds ensure that there is some money in the pot to play for as the game starts.

“Ten Grand,” Mr. C told Jackie. He posted the small blind of five thousand dollars, while Sonny put up the ten thousand as the big blind. Jackie put up ten grand to get in and the game began.

As the night wore on, Jackie found herself having a good night. She’d racked in a few big pots and was way ahead that evening. The Flop, a term used for the three 'community' cards that are dealt face up on the table, were the ace of hearts, the eight of spades, the six of spades. The fourth community or
turn
card,
was the ace of spades.
 
Jackie was holding the ace of clubs and the six of hearts and she was feeling good about the two pair of aces she was looking at, and raised the bet by twenty thousand dollars.

Harold Ware played with his chips and stared across the table at Jackie trying to get a feel for whether she was buffing. Then he smiled and called her bet. At that point there was more than two hundred thousand dollars on the table.

The River, the final community card, was dealt. “Ace of spades,” the dealer said.

“Twenty,” Mr. C uttered.

Sonny flipped up his hole cards and took a peek. “I raise thirty.”

“The bet is fifty to you, Jackie,” the dealer said.

Full house
,
got ’em
, Jackie thought and made her bet. “Seventy-five,” she pushed her chips in and waited for the showdown.

 
“Well now, Jackie, I’ma
have
to call you on that one,” Harold said and pushed his chips forward.

“Showdown folks,” the dealer said.

Mr. C turned over his cards and pushed them toward the dealer and he arranged the cards with the community cards. “King and queen of spades. A flush,” the dealer said and turned to Sonny.

He smiled a very satisfied smile and flipped over his cards. The dealer racked the two and eight of clubs. “Full House; eights full of aces. To you, Jackie.”

Jackie looked at the four hundred thousand dollars in front of her and was sure that it was hers. Very slowly, Jackie pushed forward her cards. “Ace of clubs, six of hearts. A higher full house.”

All eyes in the room were now on Harold Ware. He pushed his cards face down to the dealer. “Five and seven of spades. A straight flush, four to the eight. Mr. Ware wins.”

Jackie cursed and gathered together what was left of her chips. Jackie backed away from the table and stood up.

“You ain’t leavin’, are you, sweetie,” Harold said to her.

“Not as long as you got all that money sittin’ in front of you. You don’t have to worry. I’ll be back in a minute to take some of it,” Jackie assured him and headed for the bar.

 
The bartender had a shot of Hennessy waiting for her when she got there. Jackie didn’t like drinking at the table. She thought it was too much of a distraction. It was more important to stay focused. While she sipped her drink, Jackie tried to figure the odds on Harold Ware having a straight flush. Lately, she’d been giving a lot of thought to what Travis said about planning. If then else.
Put simply, if this happens, then do this, if that ain’t workin’, what else
can you
do
. Could she really apply that same logic to poker? Could she plan a game?

No
. Playing poker was more a matter of probabilities, the chance that something is likely to happen and drawing conclusions about the likelihood of those events. The theory was something she would work on at some other time.

Right now, she had a mission, and she had no intention of blowing it. Black told her to keep an eye on Mylo for him and that’s what she was gonna do. During her little breaks from the game, Jackie had done her best, which wasn’t very good, to plant listening devices around the house. Most didn’t work at all, and those that did had a lot of static. When Jackie told Monika about it, she laughed and promised to come with her one night and clean up her work.

Jackie was about to return to the game when Frank Sparrow, the middleweight champion of the world, came through the door with two other men. The entire mood of the room changed at that moment.

In the short time that she’d been playing there, Jackie had heard all sorts of stories about Sparrow. He was a big-time poker player, who liked to throw around money and usually lost big every time he came in the place. Everybody was glad to see Frank Sparrow.

Sparrow had grown up in Black’s neighborhood and was loyal to Black for helping support his career. Jackie couldn’t wait to get him at the table and decided to wait until he sat down to reclaim her seat. In the meantime, she ordered another drink and sought out a spot to observe the champ and how Mylo, who had just come out of the office, interacted with him.

From her vantagepoint, Jackie watched Sparrow work the room. Talkin’ loud, making predictions on the fight, fainting punches on demand to display his hand speed and spreading around a little money to the few working women in attendance.

For his part, Mylo laid back and waited for Sparrow to make his way over towards him. Jackie looked him over carefully and could see that Mylo was a bit jittery and looked nervous as he watched Sparrow make it around the room.

Since her surveillance set up was suspect, when Sparrow finally got to Mylo, Jackie had already moved into position to overhear the conversation. “What's up Champ?” Mylo said and embraced him.

“I know you’re surprised to see me, Mylo, but I escaped from lockdown for a few hours.” Sparrow boasted. “They can’t hold me. No man alive can stop me when I want something,” he continued and fainted a few punches.

“Yeah, Freeze wanted to bet me that you’d make it here before the fight. Glad I didn’t take any of that action.”

“Is Freeze here?” Sparrow asked and pointed toward the office.

“He’s not here, came through earlier.”

“I wanted to holla at that nigga; see what y’all was talkin’ ’bout,” Sparrow said.

“You ain’t gotta wait on Freeze, you can talk to me. I mean, that’s how it’s been all along, Champ; you and me. Come here, let me put somethin’ in ya ear.”

Mylo led Sparrow into the office and Jackie cursed, because the device she had placed on the doorframe had the worst static. Still it was worth a shot, so she went into the bathroom to try and pick up the conversation, but there was way too much distortion for her to make out anything.

“Look, here’s the deal. Bettin’ been real strong on you to win, lot of action on what round you’ll take him in,” Mylo said as soon as he closed the door. “Everybody knows you’re a slow starter. No one will think twice about you gettin’ caught with a clean shot early.”

It was almost a sure thing that Sparrow would win, but he often come out of the dressing room cold and had gone down in the first three rounds. Sparrow was able to come back and win in each of those fights by knock out, but the consensus was that one day, Sparrow would get caught with a shot that he couldn’t get up from.

“You go down in the first round,” Mylo explained to the champ again. “Everybody says, yeah, it was bound to happen sooner or later. You said it yourself, they insisted on a rematch clause. You take the rematch and you kick his ass in the second fight. But you come away from here with a cool million, not to mention the guarantee money from the second fight, ’cause you know it’s gonna be huge.”

“I don’t know, Mylo. Are you sure this is what Black wants me to do?”

“If he had known you were coming, he’d be here to tell you himself. In fact, he was in here earlier tonight wantin’ to know what you was gonna do. He said he was countin’ on you to do this and was on me to make it happen.”

Sparrow walked over and sat on the edge of the couch. He felt like he owed his career to Black for putting him onto a fight promoter that started getting him good fights. Still, it was a big decision, one he sat and thought long and hard about. Sparrow basically made up his mind that he was gonna do it and that was the main reason he begged his trainer for a night out, with the promise that there would be no gambling and no women.

“And this is what Black wants, right?” Sparrow still wanted to hear it one more time.

“He sat in that very spot and told me himself,” Mylo assured Sparrow.

“Okay, tell him I’m in,” Sparrow said and got up. “Tell Black I’m glad to do it for him.”

“He’ll be glad to hear that, Champ,” Mylo told him,
I know I am.
The truth was
,
Black and Freeze knew nothing about this. In fact, Mylo was still waiting for Black to actually speak to him. It was all
Mylo’s
idea for Sparrow to throw the fight. Mylo would tell Sparrow that Black wasn’t in on it after he had his money in his hand. At that point, what could he say?

When Mystique was changed, we took a cab to our usual hotel. On the way, she told me about the drama that happened earlier at Cynt's. Two of the dancers got into a fight over a customer. “And she’s holding the girl by her wave,” Mystique said laughing. “And hittin’ her in the face and sayin’, ‘I done told your skank ass ’bout fuckin’ wit’ my customers.’ ”

“She hurt her bad?”

“Busted her lips, her nose was bleedin’ and her eye looked like it’s gonna look fucked up tomorrow.”

“Little extreme, don’t you think?”

“No,” Mystique said definitely. “If any one of them bitches came anywhere near you, I’d kill their ass.”

I laughed as the cab pulled up in front of the hotel, but she didn’t. I looked in her eyes and knew she was serious.

When we got to our suite, as she always does, Mystique said she wanted to take a shower. She kissed me on the cheek and started for the bathroom. I unbuttoned my shirt and got a bottle of Courvoisier from the mini bar. “Come here for a second. There’s something I need to tell you,” I said and sat down on the couch.

Mystique sat down next to me, took my face in her hands and kissed me again. “What you wanna tell me, baby?”

“I’m gonna be gone for a while. I’m takin’ Michelle to the Bahamas to see my mother, and then
me
and Bobby are goin’ to Hong Kong.”

Mystique looked devastated. “How long you gonna be gone?” she asked and curled in closer to me. I put my arm around her.

“I’ll be back from the Bahamas in a few days, but I don’t know when I’ll be back from Hong Kong.”

“Can I ask you what you’re goin’ to Hong Kong for?”

“I need to talk to somebody. Might take a while to find them.” I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell the woman I was about to have sex with that my only purpose in life was to find out why my wife was murdered. That nothing else mattered and that included her and how she felt about it. But that was the way it was.

“I understand.” Mystique kissed me again. “I’m gonna go take a shower,” she said and got up. I watched her walk away and thought about taking her with me. By the time the bathroom door closed I had decided against it. Takin’ her to the Bahamas wasn’t an option. Mystique was good people, and I like her, but I had already decided that I wasn’t gonna bring her or any other woman around Michelle, unless I was really serious about her. I wouldn’t want Michelle to get used to somebody being in her life and then they’d be gone. That wouldn’t be fair to Michelle. Besides, Michelle doesn’t really like women. Any time a woman holds her she cries. Plus, I wasn’t ready to bring Mystique anywhere near my mother. I turned on the television while I drained the small bottle of Courvoisier.

Once I thought Mystique had enough time to be naked and in the shower, I got up, took off my clothes and went in after her.