More Twisted

back with: “Here’s my real rule number one in poker: As long as you don’t cheat you can do whatever you want to trick your opponents.”
    “You going to share that rule with Tony?” Stanton asked.
    “I’m going to do better than that—I’m going to give him a firsthand demonstration. He wants to learn poker? Well, this’ll be the best lesson he ever gets.”
    “You think breaking him and taking his tuition money’s going to make him a better player?” Stanton asked.
    “Yeah, I do. He doesn’t want to be in school anyway.”
    “That’s not the point. The point is you’re an expert and he’s a boy.”
    “He claims he’s a man. And one of the things about being a man is getting knocked on your ass and learning from it.”
    “In penny ante, sure. But not a game like this.”
    “You have a problem with this, Grandpa?” Angry, Keller turned ominously toward him.
    Stanton looked away and held up his hands. “Do what you want. It’s your game. I’m just trying to be the voice of conscience.”
    “If you play by the rules you’ll always have a clear conscience.”
    A voice called from the doorway, Lasky’s. He said, “They’re here.”
    Keller slapped Stanton on his bony shoulders. “Let’s go win some money.”

    More cigar smoke was filling the back room. The source: Elliott Rothstein and Harry Piemonte, businessmen from the Windy City. Keller’d played with them several times previously but he didn’t know much about them; the two men revealed as little about their personal lives as their faces shared what cards they held. They might’ve been organized crime capos or they might have been directors of a charity for orphans. All Keller knew was they were solid players, paid their losses without griping and won without lording it over the losers.
    Both men wore dark suits and expensive, tailored white shirts. Rothstein had a diamond pinkie ring and Piemonte a heavy gold bracelet. Wedding bands encircled both of their left ring fingers. They now stripped off their suit jackets, sat down at the table and were making small talk with Stanton and Lasky when Tony returned. He sat down at his place and pulled the lid off his new Starbucks, nodding at Rothstein and Piemonte.
    They frowned and looked at Keller. “Who’s this?” Rothstein muttered.
    “He’s okay.”
    Piemonte frowned. “We got a rule, we don’t play with kids.”
    Tony laughed and shoved his nerd glasses high on his nose. “You guys and your rules.” He opened an envelope and dumped out cash. He counted out a large stack and put some back into his pocket. “Hundred large,” he said to Stanton, who gave a dark look to Keller but began counting out chips for the boy.
    The two new players looked at each other and silently decided to make an exception to their general rule about juveniles in poker games.
    “Okay, the game is five-card draw,” Keller said. “Minimum bet fifty, ante is twenty-five.”
    Piemonte won the cut and they began.
    The hands were pretty even for the first hour, then Keller began pulling ahead slowly. Tony kept his head above water, the second winner—but only because, it seemed, the other players were getting bad hands; the boy was still hopeless when it came to calculating the odds of drawing. In a half-dozen instances he’d draw a single card and then fold—which meant he was trying for a straight or a flush, the odds of doing that were just 1 in 20. Either he should’ve discarded three cards, which gave him good odds of improving his hand, or gone with a heavy bluff after drawing a solo card, in which case he probably would’ve taken the pot a couple of times.
    Confident that he’d nailed the boy’s technique, Keller now began to lose intentionally when Tony seemed to have good cards—to boost his confidence. Soon the kid had doubled his money and had close to $200,000 in front of him.
    Larry Stanton didn’t seem happy with Keller’s plan to take the boy but he didn’t say anything and continued to play his cautious, old-man’s game, slowly losing to the other players.
    The voice of conscience  . . .
    As the night wore on, Lasky finally dropped out, having lost close to eighty thousand bucks. “Fuck, gotta raise the price for ding-pulling,” he joked, heading for the door. He glanced at the duo from Chicago. “When you gentlemen leave, could you bang inta some parked cars on the way to the expressway?” A nod toward Keller. “An’ if you wanta fuck up the front end of his