Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [83]
Though I recognized the woman working the board, one of an interchangeable rotation of semi-attractive Filipinas who worked there, she didn’t know me from the other 1,200 low-rent fliers who’d approached her since the start of her shift, asking if there were any open spots at the 3–6 or 4–8 tables. As it turned out, the waiting list was nearly as long as that for Lakers season tickets. She did have some seats, however, at the 2–4 tables upstairs.
Why not, I thought. I’m only gonna be here a couple of hours.
On a busy night, sometimes you’ll get stuck in the overflow, a partitioned conference room on loan from the adjacent Crowne Plaza Hotel. It could have been used earlier that week for a home-equity loan officer convention, or maybe a really sad low-budget wedding. But now it was twenty tables of cheap poker, with decent coffee and tea service and complimentary plates of Chinese food on the hour. I had a five-minute wait, and then they sat me down, throbbing toe and all.
I had a pretty good night too, until the Russian showed up.
At 11 p.m., I found myself up a hundred, maybe 140 bucks. That represented a good night for me, even though I would have had to work a seventy-hour week before it started to resemble anything close to the equivalent of a decent living. Still, I’d drawn the perfect table mix of sour middle-aged Korean ladies, old dudes who bore the perfume and hairstyle of late-era William S. Burroughs, a couple of Persian frat boys from UCLA, and a pockmarked cholo who leaned so far onto a cane when he stood that he fell to a sixty-five-degree angle. Like so many doomed poker players before me, I told myself just one more hand before I leave.
The Russian sat down three players to my left. I call him Russian, though he easily could have been Ukrainian, or maybe from Georgia, something post—Soviet breakup, vaguely Caucasian. I never got a chance to ask. Regardless, he wore a red two-piece tracksuit and silver-tinted sunglasses, and a big gold chain with a Mercedes medallion around his neck. His tight-trimmed beard made him look particularly ridiculous, since he obviously got his fashion tips from a mid-’90s hip-hop magazine. He slapped down double what he needed to buy into the first hand. This, I knew, was a sure sign of a fast player; you should never, ever gamble until you understand your odds.
The dealer sent me a jack-ten, suited, worth playing if you’re near the button, which I was. The Russian, who was way out of position, raised when it came to him, probably not surprising given his brazen opening bet. I called. The flop showed a king and queen, off-suit. This was a great straight draw for me. Before I could raise, though, the Russian beat me to it, immediately folding the other two players who remained. I re-raised. He saw me, and raised me again. I called.
A nine came on the turn. My odds at winning stood at about ninety-seven percent. Yet still he raised me. And again. And then twice again on the river. He turned over his cards to reveal pocket threes. I sucked up his chips like a coin reclamation machine at the supermarket.
“Lucky man, Dodger,” he said to me, apparently referring to the Dodgers cap I always wear to Commerce, to augment my chosen posture of regular guy.
“Not so lucky,” I said. “Unlike some people, I just know what I’m doing.”
The other players at the table moaned and shifted a little. This wasn’t what they wanted to hear. But it was undeniable.
“We’ll see,” the Russian said.
I smelled profit in that conference room. My watch showed 11:15. One more hour, I told myself. I’ll milk this cow, and then it’s off to bed.
By 1 a.m., I was up several hundred bucks, no mean feat at a low-stakes table. But the Russian knew no play other than the check-raise. He may have folded one in ten openers. Other players tried to take advantage, but I had them read as well. Finally, the old dude to my right got up, cracked his bones, and mumbled off into the sooty night. The Russian immediately stood up and plunked himself in the chair.
“Now I will show you, Dodger,