More Twisted

awkwardly trying to stand on its hind legs. Handsome enough even though he wore black-rimmed nerd glasses and was pale and skinny.
    Keller decided not to ask the kid to sit down. “What games?” He ate more of his burger and glanced at his watch.
    The kid noticed the move and said, “Well, the one that’s starting at eight tonight, for instance.”
    Keller grunted a laugh.
    He heard the rumble of one of the freight trains that bisected this neighborhood on the north side of town. He had a fond memory of a diesel rattling bar glasses six months ago just as he laid down a flush to take a $56,320 pot away from three businessmen who were from thesouth of France. He’d won that pot twenty minutes after the first ante. The men had scowled French scowls but continued to lose another seventy thousand over the course of the rainy night.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Tony Stigler.”
    “How old’re you?”
    “Eighteen.”
    “Even if there was a game, which there isn’t, you couldn’t play. You’re a kid. You couldn’t get into a bar.”
    “It’s in Sal’s back room. It’s not in the bar.”
    “How do you know that?” Keller muttered. In his late forties, the dark-complected man was as strong and solid as he’d been twenty years ago. When he asked questions in this tone you stopped being cute and answered straight.
    “My buddy works at Marconi Pizza. He hears things.”
    “Well, your buddy oughta watch out what he hears. And he really oughta watch who he tells what he hears.” He returned to his lunch.
    “Look.” The kid dug into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. Hundreds mostly. Keller’d been gambling since he was younger than this boy and he knew how to size up a roll. The kid was holding close to five thousand. Tony said, “I’m serious, man. I want to play with you.”
    “Where’d you get that?”
    A shrug. “I got it.”
    “Don’t give any Sopranos crap. You gonna play poker, you play by the rules. And one of the rules is you play with your own money. If that’s stolen you can hike your ass outta here right now.”
    “It’s not stolen,” the kid said, lowering his voice. “I won it.”
    “At cards,” Keller asked wryly, “or the lottery?”
    “Draw and stud.”
    Keller enjoyed a particularly good bite of hamburger and studied the boy again. “Why my game? You got dozens you could pick.”
    The fading city of Ellridge, population 200,000 or so, squatted in steel-mill territory on the flat, gray Indiana River. What it lacked in class, though, the city more than made up for in sin. Hookers and lap dance bars, of course. But the town’s big business was underground gambling—for a very practical reason: Atlantic City and Nevada weren’t within a day’s drive and the few Indian casinos with licensed poker tables were filled with low-stakes amateurs.
    “Why you?” Tony answered, “’Cause you’re the best player in town and I want to play against the best.”
    “What’s this, some John Wayne gunfighter bullshit?”
    “Who’s John Wayne?”
    “Christ . . . you’re way outta our league, kid.”
    “There’s more where this came from.” Hefting the wad. “A lot more.”
    Keller gestured at the cash and looked around. “Put that away.”
    The kid did.
    Keller ate more burger, thinking of the times when, not much older than this boy, he’d blustered and lied his way into plenty of poker games. The only way to learn the game poker is to play—for money—against the best players you can find, day after day after day. Losing and winning.
    “How long you played?”
    “Since I was twelve.”
    “Whatta your parents think about what you’re doing?”
    “They’re dead,” he said unemotionally. “I live with my uncle. When he’s around. Which he isn’t much.”
    “Sorry.”
    Tony shrugged.
    “Well, I don’t let anybody into the game without somebody vouches for them. So—”
    “I played in a couple games with Jimmy Logan. You know him, don’t you?”
    Logan lived up in Michigan and was a respected player. The stakes tended to be small but Keller’d played some damn good poker against the man.
    Keller said, “Go get a soda or something. Come back in twenty minutes.”
    “Come on, man, I don’t want—”
    “Go get a soda,” he snapped. “And you call me ‘man’ again I’ll break your fingers.”
    “But—”
    “Go,” he muttered harshly.
    So this’s what’d be like to have kids, thought Keller, whose life as a professional gambler over