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.”