Stacked Deck. Terry Watkins
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From: [email protected]
Re: professional gambler, Bethany James
Christine,
We’re getting closer to naming our enemy. If we can just gain Salvatore Giambi’s cooperation—or at least his information—we’ll be that much closer to taking down the mastermind behind these plots against the academy. There is a certain piece of Giambi’s past that will make him the perfect mark for one of my Oracle agents, Bethany James. She’s taken on many identities in the world of professional gambling, and going undercover in Giambi’s Monaco casinos will be nothing new for her.
Beth will bring us what we need at this stage of the game. She’s the best player I know.
D.
Dear Reader,
Writing about an Athena agent who supports herself as a professional gambler has been great fun and has brought back fond memories. I learned how to play poker as a kid. Not from books or TV, but from the best, a friend of the family who made his living as a professional gambler. With us, it was nickels and dimes, but the lessons learned were invaluable.
I hope you enjoy the adventures of Bethany James, a consummate gambler who always works the odds, both at the table and in the streets.
Terry Watkins
Stacked Deck
Terry Watkins
TERRY WATKINS
began filling journals and writing short stories in high school. Following stints in the military and half a dozen universities, and living in 10 different states, he finally obtained his MFA in writing from the American Film Institute. Happily ensconced in San Diego, Terry is writing novels full-time.
This story is for Mike Tooley, the embodiment of a
classy, full-time professional gambler, long before
it became an “in” sport. He was not only a top card
player, he was a philosopher in the fine arts of risk
and chance. The object, he always said, wasn’t to
beat your opponent,
it was to lure your opponent into beating themselves. In gambling,
Mike was a true Tai Chi Master.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 1
Las Vegas, March
Bethany James, a twenty-eight-year-old Vegas poker phenom, stared at her quarry with a hunter’s gaze as he riffled his chips, little columns neatly folding between his fingers. The tempo grew faster. It was one of his “tells.”
“So you want to gamble,” he said when she pushed her bet in. “Did you hit the river?”
“Jump in and find out.”
She ignored the familiar buzz on her PDA for the fourth or fifth time as she studied her opponent’s face, her unflinching stare boring into him like a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting away the outer layer, seeing the tightened muscles beneath his expression of calm.
He was bluffing all the way and she was going to take him down.
“One way to find out.”
When he was weak, he had the habit of putting his card protector, a small gold skeleton, down on his cards with authority, and he’d done that.
I’ve got you now, she thought. To needle him a little more, she said, “I should put the clock on you.”
“I think you have fours with an over card.”
“You wish.”
The other three men, all under thirty years of age, had already been small-stacked and eliminated one at a time.
Truth, as her gambler father once said—quoting his hero, the great billionaire gambler Kerry Packer—is what is left when all the lies and secrets, those little “tells,” have been revealed and your lie is the last lie standing. That is the moment when you take control of the game.
She waited for her opponent to play his mind games, knowing he was already looking to come over the top, maybe even go “all in” after she’d set him up by limping in with a small bet to look weak, enticing him into believing he could buy the pot with a bluff.
Through the window to the right of the dealer’s head, over the empty flower box, beyond the patio of this estate on Sunrise Mountain, Beth stared for a moment to rest her tired eyes, her gaze lingering on the shimmering sea of orange that was the neon metropolis of Las Vegas.
Someone once said of her that she was just like the city she grew up in. A chameleon, a changeling, an impostor.
Yes, true. Survival demanded it.
“You checked on the opening bet. Played slow. What do you have?” he said in a low whisper.
He was searching, hoping to see something. All night she’d been building the fake tell for him to see. Three times she’d bluffed and when she did, she’d pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth and chewed lightly on it. If he picked that up, he would jump all over her.
She pulled her lip in and gnawed away.
Beth could see nearly all the casinos from where she sat and she was outlawed from just about every one of them. Because of her card counting days, she was forced to use disguises when she did attempt entry. Now she mostly played in high-stakes private games like this one.
“You didn’t hit a set, did you?” he teased.
She didn’t respond.
The city below was laced with traffic, like a vast tangle of white and red snakes, and in the darkening sky to the east planes stacked up like a string of bobbing Chinese lanterns as they descended on McCarran International Airport.
Her eyes rested, she returned her focus to the game.
This