The flop cards were the jack of spades, king of diamonds, three of clubs, seven of clubs, six of hearts.
“Ma’am?” the dealer asked Glickman.
“Seventy-five thousand,” she raised, sighing, “Think of all the eyeliner that’d buy.”
The audience laughed. In her routines she was known for excessive makeup.
Stone sighed, too. And folded.
Bingham snuck a peek at his cards again. This was a bad tell. It meant that you were double-checking to verify that you had one of the better hands, like a straight or flush. Then he looked over his money. His suitcase was empty and he had only about sixty thousand on the table.
“All in,” he said. Under standard rules of poker he could call with less than the raise, but couldn’t win more than what he’d put into the pot.
O’Connor saw the older man’s hands descend to his slacks; he wiped his sweaty palms. His face was still.
All eyes were on the cards.
O’Connor was sitting forward. Who won? What were the cards?
And the announcer said, “And we’ll be right back, folks, for the conclusion of this exciting day in Las Vegas.”
Agony. The next five minutes were agony.
The cards remained facedown on the table, the contestants chatted, sipped water. Kresge told a filthy joke to Glickman, who was subdued for a change and she smiled distantly. If she lost this hand she wouldn’t go bust but she’d be way behind. If Bingham lost he’d be heading home.
No money, no bump.
Both Glickman and Bingham kept smiles on their faces, but you could see the tension they felt. Their overturned cards sat in front of them. The waiting was torture for O’Connor — and he had nothing to lose.
After an interminable few minutes during which beer, cars and consulting services were hawked to millions of people around the country, the action returned to the table.
The dealer said, “Ma’am, you’ve been called. Would you please show your cards?”
She turned her two over and revealed the full house.
Bingham smiled stoically. “Ah.” He displayed the ace-high flush. She’d beaten him with one hand better than his.
He rose and gave her a kiss. Then shook the others’ hands.
The protocol, Aaron Felter had told them, was that anyone who went bust had to rise and leave.
Head off down the Walk of Shame, O’Connor dubbed it.
Departing this way seemed a bit ignominious, but this wasn’t just poker, of course; it was the hybrid of poker on television.
I want drama…
The security guard displayed his empty suitcase to the table and the camera — more drama — and then deposited it in a specially built trash can.
The audience applauded furiously as Sandy raked in her cash.
After a commercial break and the ceremonial opening of a fresh deck of cards, the play continued. The remaining players were warmed up now and the betting grew more furious. On the sixth hand of this segment, Glickman, O’Connor and McKennah all folded and Stone T went one-on-one with Kresge.
Then the rapper made a bad mistake. He tried to bluff. O’Connor knew you couldn’t bluff against people like Kresge — in poker or in real life. People who trash hotel rooms and smack their girlfriends don’t have anything to lose. They kept raising hard and O’Connor could see that Stone was breaking the rule he had been reciting to himself all night: Don’t stay in, just because you’ve already spent money.
Stone pushed in all his remaining stake — nearly eighty thousand — a cool smile on his lips, terror in his eyes, through Da Ali G lenses.
Kresge took his time finishing a light beer and then, with a sour smile, called the rapper.
Stone’s two-pair hand was annihilated by an ace-high full house.
One more contestant was gone.
There was time on tonight’s show for one more hand and it was during this round that divine retribution, in the form of Mike O’Connor, was visited upon Brad Kresge.
It was really too bad, O’Connor reflected from the vantage point of someone who happened to have the best hand he’d ever had in poker: a straight flush, jack high. As the betting progressed and Glickman and McKennah dropped out, O’Connor assumed the same mannerisms he’d witnessed in Stone T when the rapper was bluffing.
You’re an actor, he told himself; so act.
Kresge was buzzed from the beer and kept raising, intent on bankrupting the old guy. The odds were minuscule that Kresge had a better hand than this, so it seemed almost unfair to drive him out of the game so easily. But O’Connor had always treated acting as a serious profession and was offended by Kresge’s ego and his childish behavior, which demeaned the business. Especially after seeing the sneer on his face when he knocked Stone T out of the game, O’Connor wanted the punk gone.
Which happened all of ten seconds later.
Kresge went all in and O’Connor turned the hole cards, his eyes boring into Kresge’s, as if saying: When I stay in a hotel, kid, I clean it up before I leave.
The audience applauded, as if the good gunslinger had just nailed the bad one.
Kresge grinned, finished his beer and took O’Connor’s hand, trying for a vise grip, which didn’t work, given O’Connor’s workout regimen. The kid then sauntered off, down the Walk of Shame, as if he could actually set fire to a quarter-million dollars and have more fun.
Then the theme music came up and the host announced the winnings for the night: McKennah had $490,000. Glickman had $505,000. Mike O’Connor was the night’s big winner with $515,000. Now, the control room mike went live to them and the poker experts took the stage to talk a bit about how the game had gone. The three remaining contestants chatted with them and Lyle for a few minutes.
Then, the theme once again and the red eyes on the cameras went dark.
The show was over for the night.
Exhausted and sweating, O’Connor said good night to the other players, the host and the experts. Aaron Felter joined them. He was excited about the initial ratings, which were apparently even better than he’d hoped. Diane joined them. They all made plans to have dinner together in the resort’s dining room. O’Connor suggested that those who’d lost join them, too, but Felter said they were being taken out to the best restaurant in the city by an assistant.
O’Connor understood. It was important to keep the buzz going. And losers don’t figure in that.
Diane said she’d meet them in the bar in twenty minutes; she wanted to call the girls. She headed off to the room and Felter went to talk to the line producer, while O’Connor and McKennah signed some autographs.
“Hey, buy you a beer?” McKennah asked.
O’Connor said sure and they started through the huge hall as the assistants took care of the equipment. TV and movies are as much about lights and electronics and computers as they are about acting. The two security guards were assembling the suitcases of money.
He didn’t have his bump, not yet.
On the other hand, he was a quarter-million dollars richer.
Nothing wrong with that.
“Where’s the bar?”
McKennah looked around. “The main building. I think that’s a shortcut. There’s a walkway there.”
“Let’s do it. I need a drink. Man, do I need a drink.”
Sammy Ralston felt the pistol, hot and heavy, in his back waistband. He was standing in the bushes in dark coveralls spearing trash and slipping it into a garbage bag.
On the other side of the walkway, behind other bushes, waited big Jake. The plan was that when the guards wheeling the money from the ballroom to the motel safe were halfway down the walkway, Ralston would hit the switch and flash the powerful photographer’s light, which was set up at eye level. They’d tried it earlier. The flash was so bright it had blinded him, even in the well-lit hotel room, for a good ten, twenty seconds.