LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

for trouble…or romance. A muscle-bound guy wearing a headband and leg warmers kept looking his way and licking his lips. In desperation, Wesley pulled out a deck of cards he’d been allowed to keep and announced he was giving a clinic on how to play the ultimate game of skill and luck, Texas Hold ’Em Poker. His audience seemed suspicious at first, then crowded around. He sat cross-legged and dealt the four men closest to him two cards each facedown on the gritty concrete floor. Just the feel of the waxy cards in his hands sent a flutter of excitement to his chest.

      “Those cards are your pocket cards,” he explained. “I’m going to deal five community cards faceup—three, then one, then one more—and the object is to create the best hand possible from your two cards and the five community cards. Bets are made between rounds of revealing the community cards.”

      “We need chips,” one guy said, then started ripping the buttons off his shirt. Everyone followed suit and within five minutes, a pile of mismatched buttons lay in the middle. Impressed with their resourcefulness, Wesley divided the buttons among the four players and gave them tips on betting. “If you have strong pocket cards, you’ll want to bet. If not, you’ll want to fold.” Then he grinned. “Unless you want to bluff, and then you’ll want to bet.”

      “What’s a strong card?” a man asked.

      “Any face card, or an ace,” Wesley said. “Two of a kind is great, two cards of the same suit can put you on your way to a flush, and two neighboring cards, like a nine and a ten can put you on your way to a straight.” He went around, taking button bets on the pocket cards. “Now I’ll deal what’s called the flop cards.” He tossed a discard card to the side, then dealt three cards faceup—a three of spades, a five of hearts and a queen of hearts. “We got a possible straight going with the three and the five, and a possible heart flush with the five and the queen.”

      Excitement built among the players and spectators as they studied the cards, creating possible hands. Wesley smiled to himself. There was something so sweet about evangelizing the game of games…and training potential players that he might someday face across the table and rob of every penny they had.

      He tossed the top card onto the discard pile, then dealt another card faceup. “This is called the ‘turn’ card.”

      An ace of hearts. A murmur went up among the men. Wesley studied the players’ “tells,” the body language and betting techniques that told a more experienced player what the person was holding as surely as if the cards were transparent. The big guy on the far left was holding crap—probably a ten and a deuce, but he wasn’t going to fold and look bad to the other guys. The guy next to him was grinning like a fool after the turn card, so he probably had a pocket ace to make it two of a kind. Beginners thought that aces beat everything else, no matter what.

      The third guy also had nothing, else he wouldn’t be gnawing on his nails and staring at the community cards as if he could will them to change. The fourth guy, though—he had something because he was holding his cards close to his chest as if they were winning lottery tickets. Wesley guessed he had pocket queens and was looking at three of a kind, which so far was “the nuts”—the best hand in the game.

      “Here comes the river card,” he said, and dealt a nine of clubs—not much good to anyone, he guessed, although the bidding was brisk. The aces guy was all in with his six wooden buttons and a jeans rivet. Pretty soon, everyone was all in, and Wesley asked, “Whad’ya have?”

      The first guy turned over his ten of spades and four of clubs and took some ribbing from the other guys. The grinning aces guy turned over his ace of diamonds and seven of spades, giving him the expected pair of aces. The third guy cursed his mother and tossed in his jack of diamonds and six of spades, then stomped away as if they had been playing for real money instead of sewing notions. The last guy turned over his pocket queens to the cheers of the men behind him, and raked all the raggedy buttons toward him triumphantly.

      While Wesley was shuffling for another hand, the cell door buzzed and slid open and he was being summoned again. “Your lawyer’s here,” the guard informed him.

      Wesley handed off the deck of cards, stood and allowed himself to be handcuffed again, then followed the man to a room where Liz Fischer waited, tapping the toe of her pointy high-heeled shoe. She was a tall, athletic blonde in her mid-forties, a real looker who seemed to be in perpetual motion. Wesley recognized her from newspaper photos of his father’s case, although her hair was shorter and she looked a little leaner.

      “Hello, Wesley.”

      Her voice, for sure, was familiar—throaty and abrupt. He’d had more than one wet dream lately with that voice looping in his head. “Hello, Mrs. Fischer.”

      She smiled at his politeness. “I’m not married, so it’s Ms.—in fact, call me Liz. How nice to finally put a face to the voice. I just wish it were under different circumstances.”

      When she sat down at the table, the scent of her cologne reached him—not a feminine, floral scent, but something earthy and strong that she might have gotten out of her lover’s medicine cabinet this morning. Which could also explain the oversize white dress shirt she wore with her prim suit.

      She clicked open her briefcase. “So, you got caught. I told you to be careful.”

      He splayed his hands. “I slipped up, but everything’s fine.”

      She frowned. “The optimism of youth. Do you realize that you’re facing jail time and a hefty fine?”

      A vision of Leg Warmers licking his lips flashed through Wesley’s mind. “How much jail time?”

      “Probably less than six months, but it won’t look good on your permanent record. Now, tell me what happened.”

      Wesley repeated the lie, that he had hacked into the courthouse records to clear his own traffic violations. “I’m really sorry,” he added.

      The woman’s expression was bland. “You’re going to have to do a better acting job than that for the district attorney. And you’re telling me that this records break-in has nothing to do with your sudden interest in your father’s cold case?”

      “That’s right.”

      She studied him suspiciously. Wesley imagined himself through her experienced eyes: a skinny, know-it-all kid who’d grown up without parents and likely wouldn’t amount to much.

      “You look like Randolph,” she said, surprising him with intense eye contact.

      His cock jumped—damn, he was going to embarrass himself. He shifted in his chair. “That’s what my sister says when she talks about my father, which isn’t often.”

      “Carlotta was bitter when your parents…left. Rightfully so. How is she?”

      “Fine. A little upset with me at the moment.”

      “I called her occasionally after…. afterward, and she always assured me everything was okay.” The woman looked remorseful. “I should have looked in on both of you more often.”

      “We did okay,” Wesley said, trying not to sound too reassuring in case she was inclined to reduce her fee out of some sense of obligation. “But Carlotta doesn’t know that I’ve talked to you about my father’s case. It would only upset her.”

      “She won’t hear it from me, but you know that I agree with her, Wesley. You should let sleeping dogs lie, and get on with your life. Your parents seem to have gotten on with theirs.”

      Anger sparked in his stomach, but he didn’t want to alienate this woman. She was too valuable in his search for the truth. Plus, she was wearing a pink satin bra beneath the white shirt, and that was really hot. “Do you know where my father is?”

      Liz Fischer’s expression hardened, giving the first hint of her age. “No, and if I did, I’d go straight to the police. Now, let’s get back to the matter at hand and see if I can get you out of here.”

      After answering a few more questions and receiving a stern warning

Скачать книгу