Two of the faceless men to Kim’s left carefully placed a stack of chips into the center of the table, as if on cue. Another shuffled the deck and dealt out five cards to each player.
“Oh gee, I’m first? OK, here goes!”
Kim bid conservatively, flashing an idiotic smile at the group. Her efforts were met with further silence. Each player either folded or bid higher, and those left placed their cards on the table. Kim lost out, as she expected, and the portly, flushed man across from her took the pot.
They continued like this for a few more rounds. The windowless room was dark and unnerving, but Kim tried her hardest to stay focused. She deliberately folded or bid low on each round, losing out every time. It wasn’t hard – these guys were exceptional players, true masters of the game.
They didn’t seem pleased about their easy victory, quite the opposite. In fact, the group grew noticeably more nervous, despite their best efforts to tamp down emotion. Kim was confused. She was pulling out all the stops on her innocent lamb act. Instead, she was just putting them on edge. She needed a new strategy and quickly.
It was time to take it up a notch. The truth was that Kim was no newbie to poker. Her dad was an avid player, and he’d schooled her on the ins-and-outs of the game whenever she hadn’t been neck-deep in homework. She was the queen of strategy, and she wasted no time in letting her fellow players know. She took every opportunity to either screw or trump them. To her disbelief, the men began to relax in their seats, wiping sweat from their faces and slumping down. They still played a strong game, but they did so with a lot more ease.
What is going on here? thought Kim. They don’t seem like men ready to commit a murder. They’re just as wound up as I am.
The game continued without incident, Kim continuing to outplay the nameless men again and again. This proceeded for about another hour until she was declared the winner, without pomp or ceremony. The red-faced man simply got up and handed her the pot. Kim was confused. Why weren’t they trying to kill her? Did they suspect her? Or was winning the ticket to freedom, a freedom a less experienced player like Virginia had been denied? There wasn’t time to think it over. The game was up, in all respects. Time to bring in the big guns.
“Oh wow, I sure wish my best friend Jacob was here to see this,” she tittered, saying the magic word. “He’s an ace at the poker table.”
Seconds later, the door burst open, and armed men scattered into the dimly lit room. Just as expected, they moved in before the players could even react, cuffing them and reading them their rights with expert efficiency. As before, the chips scattered across the floor, but this time no blood was shed.
Kim tried to gain some satisfaction from the fact that perhaps she’d prevented another young woman from taking her place. But watching the faces of the nameless men as they filed out, weary but resigned, as if they’d met an end they were long expecting, it was hard to feel fulfilled.
Alex was the only one who looked pleased as punch. He was busy trying to make himself useful, otherwise known as getting in the way.
“We nabbed ‘em!” he said gleefully. “Like foxes smoked out of a henhouse.”
“I hope you’re not planning on using that as dialogue,” replied Kim. “Because I would never say that.”
“Would you say that?” asked Alex to Jacob, who’d appeared to his left.
“By nature, I don’t use similes,” he replied dryly. “I find them ineffective means of expressing the truth.”
“What a pair of party poopers.” Alex frowned. “You’re both acting as if you didn’t just close a big case. Shouldn’t we be popping champagne right about now?”
“This isn’t a movie set, Kane. We don’t drink on duty. And even if we did, we wouldn’t be caught dead slugging sparkling wine.”
They followed the crew outside to where the players were loaded into patrol cars. One by one, they set off silently into the unnerving darkness. The detectives and Kane got into her unmarked car and trundled off. Kim fiddled with the radio, settling on a soft rock station.
“Anything but Sinatra right now,” she mumbled, tugging on her too-short sundress.
“Can I say that you make a badass undercover cop?” Alex put in from the backseat. “Totally digging the Daisy Mae look. And damn, from the sound of it, you kicked ass at that poker game.”
“I must say, Detective Daniels, I had no idea you were such a card shark, pardon my slang,” said Jacob.
“My dad was an ace at the card table – poker, bridge, you name it. Thankfully he won a lot more than he lost, or we would have been in trouble. My sister and I spent a lot of time when we were young watching him and his buddies hunched around the poker table. Glad it finally paid off.”
Kim pulled into the precinct. Jacob unbuckled his seat belt. “Detective, you’ve had a tough night. Why don’t you head home? I’ll make sure the perps are locked up tight, and we’ll start the interviews tomorrow.”
It was true. There was nothing more she wanted at that moment than a hot shower and a warm bed. The perps weren’t going anywhere. What was the rush?
“Thanks, I owe you, Newport.” Kim shot a weary look at Alex. “You want a ride home, Bogart, or is your limo waiting?”
“Don’t mind if I do, Daisy. East 64th street, please and thanks.”
Kim rolled her eyes while navigating back into traffic. “Upper East Side. Of course.”
Alex smiled enigmatically. “So how about that drink?”
“I thought it was dinner. You know what, I prefer eating alone anyway. Less interview-style questions about my childhood and more shoveling food into my mouth.”
“Then let’s skip dinner and go right to dessert,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
“Thanks, but I think I have a date with the rest of the Riesling in my fridge.”
Alex slumped back, defeated. “All right, well, if you won’t try my panna cotta, you might as well tell me why you’re not enthused about your big win tonight.”
Kim shot him a disgusted look. “Lovely, Kane.” She stopped at a red light and hurriedly tried to fix her loose hair into a bun. “Look, I know we have the right guys. It’s just that my gut is telling me something is off. When I was losing, the perps were sweating it big time. Even weirder, they were trying to hide it. Then, when I started to win, they relaxed. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was playing by another set of rules that I wasn’t supposed to know. They were obviously trying to attract young, inexperienced female poker players. Why freak out if I lost – after all, that’d be the expected conclusion, right?”
Alex looked thoughtful. “It reminds me an episode of Time After Time when Jareth tries to trick his wife into making love to Gareth. He films the whole thing, being sure to zoom in on their one distinguishing mark – a mole behind the left ear. He can then accuse her of infidelity and divorce her. Gareth, of course, doesn’t want the wife to submit to his advances because she’s the one thing that keeps Jareth under control. So he’s torn between seducing her like Jareth wants and trying to repel her.”
Kim gave him a long look. “Are you really comparing our case to a show that features ghosts, mythical dwarves, and evil twins?”
“Look, Ginger, I’m well aware that Time After Time isn’t Shakespeare. But think about it, Gareth is torn because he’s acting on behalf of someone else, not under his own agency. I live at number 301, by the way.”
Kim was silent for a moment as she turned right off Lexington Avenue onto 64th street and stopped in front of Alex’s building – a towering brick high rise on a leafy street. The doorman waited respectfully outside.