Miami Noir (21 page)
I thought about the dog, and how he had remained faithful to his owner until the very end. Then I thought about Rob, and what he intended to do to Royal tomorrow if I didn’t find him a home.
Suddenly, I shoved my notepad over to Mr. Campos. “Please write down the recipe for the marinade you used to break down the tough fibers in the neighbor’s body.”
Mr. Campos did not move—instead he just stared at me, a knowing look in his eyes. Then, just as I was about to lose hope, he picked up the pen and began to write.
B
efore poker I was an insurance claims investigator, a corporate private eye with a short-sleeved white shirt and skinny tie, sometimes catching scumbags but mostly helping big guys screw little guys out of benefits they were entitled to. I put ten years experience to work on my own disability claim—a psych claim, though you can’t buy a decent psych policy anymore. Now I just open the mail for my check once a month and play poker. I’m never wearing a tie or watch again. The trick is to keep your head straight, not be sucked in, not to want too much.
I play at McKool’s, a sweet two-table poker room in a Miami River warehouse, minutes from the Dolphin Expressway. Across the bridge from the downtown ramps to I-95, it has easy access, drawing players from Boca to Homestead. McKool runs six nights a week, says if you don’t give players Saturdays with their wives, then the wives won’t let ’em play. I wouldn’t know from wives, and with any luck never will.
Texas Hold’em’s hot, and I play it, but I prefer Omaha 8-or-better high-low split, which McKool spreads on Fridays. There’s more to think about in high-low, and a lot of seductive starting hands, trap hands which suck people in. I scoop both sides in split-pot games more than anybody. That’s why McKool calls me Bobby Two-ways. Everybody has a nick-name: Rebel, Bumper, Luckbucket, Goombah. Everybody except McKool.
McKool’s has a kitchen girl who knows how you take your coffee, what you want on your sandwich, what snacks you like. I catch two meals every play, and sometimes hit the fridge for a takeout bag at the end of the night. There’s a shower, for guys who play all night and then head straight to the office. McKool’s got a smoking room in back with its own vent system, and another room with two computers so people can play online poker while waiting for a seat. Both rooms have queen-size beds—some guys take a little nap then get up to play more, or snooze for an hour before heading to work.
I met McKool when he first came back to Miami after twenty years in the army, before he opened up his room. We were playing in the big game at Black Jack’s, down in Ocean Reef—$100-$200-limit Hold’em. We’d played all night and were down to the hard cores. Only four of us remained. Tommy Trash—he had the garbage contract for the Keys—had lost $20k-plus, and wanted to play a four-handed $25k freezeout, winner take all. McKool had gotten beat up pretty badly too, and didn’t have the buy-in. I’d been the big winner. So I bought McKool’s cherry-red 1962 Ford Thunderbird Sports Roadster convertible with a 390 V-8 300 hp engine for twenty-five grand—a steal. The four of us played for the hundred thousand. It only took a couple of hours for McKool and me to bust out Tommy and Jack and get heads up. We played and played and played. And played some more. Fourteen hours later McKool busted me. His mental toughness and physical conditioning for the long sit made the difference. He won the hundred grand, and offered me $30k to buy back the T-bird. But I liked it and said no.
McKool used that win to bankroll opening his place. He’s offered me forty, then fifty, and recently sixty grand for the car. I’m not much into things, but I love that ragtop. Besides, it’s good when The Man wants something he can’t have from you.
I don’t really have friends, but McKool and I know we can rely on each other. I think I’m the only player in the game who has his private cell. I do a lot for McKool: recruit from the pari-mutuels; deal when somebody calls in sick; give up my seat when he needs to fit a live one in. Mostly I show up for the afternoon gin game before start time and stay through the last hand. Starters and finishers are key to running a profitable house game, getting games off early and keeping them going late.
My trouble started at McKool’s Thursday game, No Limit Hold’em night, five hundred minimum/a thousand maximum buy-in, five and ten blinds. Rebel—Rebecca Ellen O’Shaunessy—strolled in after her shift as bartender at a trendy South Beach club, as she did a couple of nights a week.
Rebel’s easy on the eyes, all natural. To see her is to want her. She’d sweetly turned me down more than once. Mid-twenties, about 5’6", maybe 115 pounds, green eyes and auburn-almost-red hair, perfect spinner bod. The kind of girl men would leave their wives for in a heartbeat. McKool uses Rebel like he uses me, like he uses everybody—hustling here, cajoling there, pushing buttons, building up a stash of favors so butts are in seats and the cards are always in the air by 7:00, and the game goes on toward dawn and beyond. Knowing the hottie was coming kept early players hanging on late, and gave the late players reason to arrive early. We rarely broke before sunrise when Rebel played.
Poker’s not a game where you have to be the best player in the world—just the best at the table. Winning players aren’t welcome at most private games. We take cash from the game, use it to pay rent and buy groceries. A houseman wants action. Gambling fools. The suckers who look for any excuse to play a hand, who don’t understand that more often than not the right play is to pass, not get involved. Live ones attract players, working pros drive them away. I’ve been barred from the weekly games at the Coconut Grove Yacht Club and Lauderdale Country Club. I help McKool not because I’m a nice guy, but so he’ll let me play in his juicy lineup of fish.
Rebel did her grand-entrance thing, giving this one a wink, tousling that one’s hair, stroking the other’s arm. Escort Randy—he owns a low-rent Internet escort agency, buck-fifty-an-hour girls, mostly but not all skanks—asked her for the zillionth time if she’d work for him, and for the zillionth time she smacked him on the arm, then gave him a hug. I like Randy—he gives me a twenty-dollar discount on calls.
McKool had his usual crew on hand: three dealers, Lilith the kitchen girl, and Cartouche, the half-Senegalese half-Moroccan from Montreal McKool had hooked up with in some little jungle war. Cartouche didn’t exactly have a job, though he sometimes dealt and even sometimes cooked. He just stood by McKool’s side, a silent giant.
Rebel sat down and set off on a chip fry like she hated her money. No Limit’s a dangerous game for people who play fast. In limit games, when you make a mistake, you lose a bet or maybe a pot. In No Limit, when you make a mistake, you lose everything. Rebel got herself stuck fifteen hundred in less than twenty minutes, and soon had McKool pinned in a corner, stroking his arm, giving him that damsel-in-distress look.
McKool sometimes gives regulars a nickel or dime’s credit juice-free, but only until the next play, up to a week max. Having players on the book is a necessary evil of the business. Problem is, when they owe you money, the next time they have a few bucks they take that money someplace else to play, instead of paying you. McKool, after his twenty years in Special Forces, doesn’t have a lot of collection problems. Plus he has Cartouche. McKool’s rule is only lend to people who have money to pay you back right away. I knew Rebel wasn’t getting a penny more out of McKool.
She looked around the room, caught me eying her. She stuck out her lower lip in a pouty way, and mouthed “please.” I shook my head. She smiled and shrugged, then grabbed Skip Converse, one of Miami’s slimiest shysters, and pulled him away from the table. A minute later he plopped his big butt back in his seat—Skip’s a fish with no clue when to pass and hates to miss a hand. Reb sashayed over to the other table, draped her arms around Big Country’s shoulders, and whispered something in his ear. He got up and they stepped into one of the back rooms.
“Chick already owes me five hundred,” Skip said. “I told her the next nickel would require sex. Can’t imagine why she passed.”
Five minutes later they came out of the back, Big Country laughing like a schoolboy. He bought two racks of reds from McKool and handed them to Rebel. She gave him a full-contact hug, something more than affectionate, and a kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks, Country, you’re a real gentleman,” she said. “I’ll crush these fuckers, but if for some reason they escape, I promise you’ll have it back Sunday.” Then she terrorized the game. One hand she came over the top on Big Country and moved him off a big pot. I knew from the way she stared him down she’d bluffed him off. Lending people money to play against you is a bad bet. If they lose, you won’t see it anytime soon. If they win, you lose. But I understand not being able to say no to a pretty girl. What man doesn’t? In a couple of hours Reb won back the fifteen hundred she’d lost, the dime she’d borrowed from Big Country, and seven hundred sugar. Then she did something she almost never does. She locked up her win.
While McKool counted her down, Rebel came over, rested her hand oh-so-lightly on my inside thigh, and blew gently on my neck, sending a shiver down my neck and making my dick hard. She whispered in my ear, “Two-ways, I need your help. Meet me upstairs at the Road in an hour?”
I hate being manipulated by anybody, especially women. “Make it an hour and a half,” I said.
As she headed to the door, Skip called out to her: “Hey, Rebel, what about my five bills?”
She smiled sweetly. “Next week, Skip.”
Cartouche gave Rebel a look; she understood that really meant next week.
Every eye in the room followed her as she walked out. If God had ever made a more perfect ass than Rebel’s, he kept it for himself.
I cashed out then headed down South River, the full moon behind me. Downtown and Little Havana meet here in Riverside, not far from the Orange Bowl. I often play dominos with the old Cubanos at Marti Park before heading to afternoon gin at McKool’s.
Miami had been born along the river. South River Drive, with all its banyans, ficus, and palms, runs southeast-to-northwest by the riverbank, cul-de-sacs and dead ends off it on the river side. This once was a working river, but the fishing boats on the east end had given way to condos and office towers, though piles of lobster pots and crab traps lay stacked here and there along the banks. Scattered small freighter terminals serviced seedy tramps running back and forth to the Bahamas, Haiti, and other islands. Most of South Florida’s stolen bicycles and chopped-up car parts found their way into these cargo holds, and more than a little of the area’s dope came through here.
I parked by a sand-yellow, two-story stucco building on the riverbank: Miami’s oldest bar, Tobacco Road. During Prohibition, rum-runners out of Bimini had unloaded their wares from the river behind the building, under the protection of the local sheriff. The day Prohibition ended, the bar opened fully stocked and has never closed since. Most Miami bars close at 2, but the Road has a grandfathered late-night license. I arrived twenty minutes late, figured if Rebel wanted something then keeping her waiting a bit would establish negotiating control. I climbed the narrow staircase to the tiny upstairs bar, but she hadn’t arrived. I sat at a cocktail table, ordered a mojito from Maidel, the-waitress-who-wrote-blues-lyrics-about-three-legged-dogs-and-lovelorn-artists, listened to a frumpy grad student reading incomprehensible poetry from the tiny stage, and waited.
She arrived ten minutes later, on her arm a handsome blond guy. I stood as they approached. She kissed me on the lips, almost but not quite tonguing me. “Bobby, this is my boyfriend Dmitri. Dima, this is Bobby Two-ways, the poker player who used to do insurance investigations.”
Dmitri smiled, showing hillbilly teeth. “Rebecca tells me you are a man to be trusted,” he said with a thick Russian accent. “That you do the right thing.”
I shot a glance at Rebel. In an after-game bull session one night, I’d told her I could always be trusted to do the right thing. The right thing for me, that is. She’d laughed, and many times since had made sly comments about “the right thing” with a wink and a knowing smile. “What’s this about, Reb?”
“How’d you like to fuck me, Bobby?”
“Fuck you out of what?”
She licked her lips. “Really.”
“Really? Like in sex? How’s Dmitri here feel about that?”
“It’s his idea.”
“I’m not big on audiences.” I thought she was inviting me to do a three-way with them. “And he’s cute, but definitely not my type.”
Rebel shook her head. “No, no, nothing like that. I need money. Big money. Dima came up with a scam we can work. We need a third person. All you got to do is fuck me.”
“It would have to be after 2. I don’t do mornings.”
“You’d fuck me on I-95 in the middle of morning rush hour with your mother watching.”
She was right, of course. I’d drag my dick through a mile of broken glass for a chance at her. Anyplace, anytime. “Why do you need money so bad?”
She laughed, not an amused laugh but a sharp one. “Why does anybody need money? And why do you care? We can score. Big money. Low risk. If this was a no-limit hand you’d shove your stack in. You get ten percent for a half hour’s work.” She pressed her breasts against my arm, rested her hand high on my thigh under the table, breathed on my neck, and said huskily, “If you call this work.”
Dmitri leaned toward me, whispered the details—a law-suit scam, like those teams that stage car accidents to rip off insurance companies. I’d sent my share of those scumbags to jail, back when. He’d cased the target well, had the timing down. Litigation potential hit seven figures, easy. A quick settlement was worth a half mill, minimum.
Poker players make fast decisions, always on incomplete information—hundreds, thousands of dollars won or lost in a blink. Good players make quality reads of situations. We get into our opponent’s mind. What is he thinking? What does he think I’m thinking? What does he think I think he’s thinking? Anticipate what he’s going to do, what he wants you to do, make the play that uses his thoughts against him. Investigating this as a claim, what would I go after? As a scammer, how would I avoid what the investigator would look for? What would the investigator think a scammer would be thinking? How could I use those thoughts against him?
“It’s probably a winner,” I said. Solid poker players, like insurance companies, act on risk-reward ratio. But it’s more than just the odds. If ninety-nine percent of the time you get a good result, but one percent of the time the result is horrendous, then even a 99–1 favorite can be a bad bet. Dmitri’s scheme looked good, yet even a slim chance of winding up in the slam made this an easy fold for me. “But I like my life the way it is.” I laid a twenty on the table for my drink and Maidel’s tip, and stood up. “Sorry, I’m out.”