"You don't look old enough to have a five-year-old."

"I was fifteen."

"Makes you twenty?"

"I'm twenty. You're nice."

"You're nice, too, Candace."

There was quite a bit more, but that's as interesting as it got, and anyway you get the drift.

She smelled good-most of the dancers were doused in what used to be called dimestore perfume, but she had on Giorgio, or a reasonable facsimile. She had the usual heavy makeup, clownish cheeks, blue eyeshadow, pink lip gloss, but that was par for the course these days even for non-stripper girls. Even though she didn't grind, I had a raging hard-on. My shorts were in ruins.

Another stripper, a skinny brunette with big but real b.r.e.a.s.t.s, came over and whispered in Candace's ear, then went away.

Candace beamed at me. "Lover boy's picked somebody else out! He's on his second table dance already. I think I'm in the clear. You're very sweet, Jack."

I had told her my name was Jack.

Then she gave me a kiss.

Long and kind of real.

After that, she gave me a more legit V.I.P. room treatment for the rest of the song ("Hit Me with Your Best Shot"), and then led me back into the strip club. I tried to give her a twenty but I swear (unbelievable, but it happened) she wouldn't take it.

I probably could have bought a legit table dance from her at that point, but I'd had all I could take. I went and sat in the rear of the smoky, mirrored room, focused on fake t.i.ts and disco lights until my erection went down, then wandered back into the middle bar. No more beer for me. I asked for and got a Diet c.o.ke.

It was almost one, and I had a game to play.

Chapter Seven.

About the same square footage as the strip club's V.I.P. lounge, the private poker room was tucked behind the Lucky Devil's main bar, though with no access from there. And of course the way in from the casino was guarded by one of those ubiquitous bouncers on boxes.

You've heard of wall-to-wall carpeting-well, this room had carpeting on on the walls, plush, cream-color stuff, much thicker than the more normal-pile (but same color) carpet on the floor. Matching built-in couches ran along all the walls except the one adjacent the parking lot, which had an exit-only door and, more prominently, a big black padded Naugahyde wet bar with black shelving heavy with booze on one side and a stereo set-up on the other. A busty little platinum blonde in the standard Lucky Devil black spandex minidress was tending bar (and the stereo); right now she was filling bowls with chips and pretzels and such, her big brown eyes having no more expression than her racc.o.o.n mascara. the walls, plush, cream-color stuff, much thicker than the more normal-pile (but same color) carpet on the floor. Matching built-in couches ran along all the walls except the one adjacent the parking lot, which had an exit-only door and, more prominently, a big black padded Naugahyde wet bar with black shelving heavy with booze on one side and a stereo set-up on the other. A busty little platinum blonde in the standard Lucky Devil black spandex minidress was tending bar (and the stereo); right now she was filling bowls with chips and pretzels and such, her big brown eyes having no more expression than her racc.o.o.n mascara.

The decor was less eccentric than practical-sound-proofing was the order of the day, or night anyway, and the low-slung ceiling tile was part of how this chamber could be so quiet in the thick of a club where each room was noisier than the last. The track lighting was subdued, but the big hexagonal table was the target of a Tiffany-style hanging lamp. Though the billiard felt was new, the table appeared old, its maple handrails showing wear, and the chip wells and drink-holders (despite fresh cork) had the look of a craftsman who'd operated long ago.

I was the first player to arrive, other than my host, a tall, slender guy in a lightweight white suit over a gray shirt and skinny white tie, very hip and New Wave, only his well-oiled Frankie-Avalon-circa-1958 pompadour undercut it. His hands were free of rings, but that was because he'd removed them before starting to shuffle, putting them in his drink well-gold rings encrusted with just a few fewer precious gems than the Maltese Falcon.

Jerry Giovanni, suspiciously tan for a Midwesterner-Florida trips, maybe, or tanning bed access-was almost handsome, a slightly horsier-looking John Travolta.

Pausing in his shuffling, holding the deck in his left hand, he got to his feet, extended a palm and said, "Jerry Giovanni. My friends call me Jerry G."

I shook the hand. Firm. "Jack Gibson, Mr. Giovanni."

He sat, smiled wide, the whiteness of his teeth against the tanned flesh just as startling as the similar effect Richard Cornell achieved, and gestured to the seat opposite him.

"We only have five players tonight, Jack. And call me Jerry G."

"Okay, Jerry G."

"So I was pleased to hear you were joining us. I asked Mandy to have you come in a little early."

"Mandy?"

"Little blackjack dealer. Redhead. She likes you, Jack. I could fix you up. Kid can suck the chrome off a '71 Caddy."

"No, that's okay. I can make friends on my own."

He laughed with a snort, liking that, or pretending to. His eyes were too large for his face and a little close together; guess I already said he had a horsey look. But his snorting laughter emphasized it.

"No offense meant," Jerry G said. "Good-looking fella like you, I'm sure you get more tail than Sinatra."

"Maybe Sinatra now now."

He shuffled, did some show-off stuff doing the accordion bit with the deck. Not that smart a move from a guy doing all the dealing.

"You know the house rules, don't you?"

"The house usually does."

He snort-laughed again. "No, no, Jack, I mean, the rules of of the house. Of this room. It's a thousand-dollar buy in. We don't play table stakes-you can go to your pocket any time. Checks are fine, even items like watches or jewelry, if the players are agreed as to value. But no IOU's." the house. Of this room. It's a thousand-dollar buy in. We don't play table stakes-you can go to your pocket any time. Checks are fine, even items like watches or jewelry, if the players are agreed as to value. But no IOU's."

"Cool."

"I'm the banker, and I'm the dealer. And I play."

"I heard about that. I can live with it. What What do we play?" do we play?"

He grinned nice and wide, yards of white teeth and miles of tan skin-this must have been the last thing Custer saw. "Dealer's choice."

I had to laugh. No snorting, though. "I wouldn't mind having that defined a little better."

"Obviously, no wild cards. I'll choose between draw, five-card stud, seven-card stud, and Texas Hold 'Em. I like to mix it up."

"Okay. I appreciate you taking the time to bring me up to speed like this."

The smile settled down and the eyes seemed shrewd suddenly. "No problem, Jack. But that's not why I wanted a few minutes with you."

"All right. Why do you?"

He shuffled, but his eyes watched mine, not the cards. "You're a stranger in town."

What was this, Tombstone?

I said, "I would imagine a lot of 'strangers' come to Haydee's Port."

"But why did you?"

I didn't answer right away.

He jumped on the silence. "One thing, Jack, a lot of people have tried to pull something on me, and on my papa. You know who my papa is?"

I nodded.

He paused in his shuffling to jerk a thumb upward, as if it were G.o.d he were referring to and not an old Mafioso. "Different kinds of cops have come here, do-gooders of various varieties, and it's just never worked out for them."

"I came to play poker."

"You understand, we can play kind of rough, and I don't just mean the cards. This isn't a matter of me asking you if you're a cop, and you saying yes or no or whatever, and we cover the entrapment ground. No. That river out there, it doesn't discriminate between local or federal or reporter or just about anybody who tries to play us."

I never really intended to pretend to be a salesman of vet supplies, at least not for longer than enough to get in the game, and then come clean later. But I could tell I needed to skip a step.

"My name isn't really Jack Gibson," I said.

"What is it then?"

"I haven't told anybody that in a long time. I've used a bunch of names, and I'm using one right now, not Gibson, where I live. And I prefer to keep that private."

"All right. I can understand that. What brings you to Haydee's Port? To the Lucky Devil?"

"I used to do work for the Giardellis. I did quite a few jobs for them, usually through a middleman. I did one directly for Lou Giardelli, not long before he pa.s.sed."

He had stopped shuffling. He was studying me, eyes tight now, forehead creased, not exactly a frown. Not exactly.

"I came hoping to have a word with your father," I said.

"About what?"

"Rather not say."

"If it concerns my father, it concerns me."

And that was when the first two of our fellow players arrived, and then another showed, and another, and soon we were playing cards.

I have to give Jerry G credit-our interrupted conversation did not seem to throw him off his game. He had good concentration, and played smart cards, marred by an occasional reckless streak. He was friendly to me, often joking between hands, as did they all, but the table talk during play was limited to say the least.

You don't need to be too concerned about the other men at the table. One was a doctor from River Bluff, a surgeon, and another was a lawyer from Fort Madison; both were in their prosperous mid-fifties. Another was a guy from Port City, Iowa, a good sixty miles upriver, who had blue-collar roots and ran a construction business; he was in his late thirties. The player who'd come the farthest was an executive with John Deere who'd come from Moline.

Everybody seemed to know each other, though this did not seem to be a regular group-my take was that a pool of maybe twelve provided the players for these mid-week games.

Jerry G ran the bank out of a small tin box, and we played white chips at fifty, red chips at one hundred, and blue chips at five hundred. You could only bet five hundred on the last round of betting. I admit I was not used to stakes like this, but you soon learn to just play the cards and bet the chips at their relative value. I played conservatively, and did not bluff. If I bet them, I held them.

The players picked up on this early, and started kidding me about it. Before long they had accepted that I simply did not bluff.

With this approach, I was just barely holding my own. I had trouble in particular with Texas Hold 'Em, which was not a game I'd ever played before. Apparently it was a Vegas favorite, and I did my best. I was strongest on draw poker, which is what I'd grown up playing, though the stud hands were the ones that allowed me to build my "never bluffs" reputation.

The game was pleasant-n.o.body b.i.t.c.hed, n.o.body got mad, n.o.body was insulting. These were professional men, and even the construction guy had the right tone, and a good sense of humor-he enjoyed saying "f.u.c.k" and "s.h.i.t" in front of these men who never uttered the words unless a really bad loss came their way. Only the surgeon and the construction guy were smokers, and ceiling fans keep the air breathable.

The little barmaid kept the drinks coming, and here I noticed one of Jerry G's little tricks-he was not drinking. I had to watch the barmaid out of the corner of an eye to see that Jerry G's tumblers were being filled not with Scotch but with tea from an under-the-counter pitcher-the boss was like his B girls out front, only pretending to get tipsy. At least he wasn't talking patrons into buying him Dewar's that was really Lipton's.

The music was strictly Vegas-the barmaid was using the turntable, not the CD player, and spinning Frank, Sammy, Dino, Bobby Darin, Keely Smith, Steve Lawrence, that kind of thing. I could see Jerry G, with his heritage, being a traditionalist, but guessed (with that skinny tie of his) that our host might really have preferred Robert Palmer or Kenny Loggins, or in his darker moments maybe Black Sabbath. Most of his guests, however, were of an age that the Vegas lounge lizards were more their style than Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat.

We were set to take a bathroom break around three-thirty, and were playing one last hand before then. Jerry G was dealing a round of Chicago, seven-card stud with the high spade in the hole taking half the pot. There had been some grumbles at the table, since the high spade thing struck several players as d.a.m.n near offensive as wild cards; but it was clear Jerry G liked to deal a hand of this now and then, so we were all stuck.

The first card dealt me down was the ace of spades. That gave me half the pot, even if the rest of my hand had been warm spit; but it wasn't-by the time the last bet came around, I had a pair of deuces up, plus the ace of hearts, and a piece of s.h.i.t. But the three cards in my hand included that ace of spades, the ace of diamonds, and another deuce.

I had been betting modestly, getting everybody to stay in. You might almost call that bluffing, or reverse bluffing, anyway. Everybody but the lawyer took the ride-the pot was huge, two grand and change already. I could tell the surgeon probably had either the king or queen or maybe jack of spades down, and he seemed to have a spade flush going. Between me and Jerry G, in betting order, came the contractor, who could have had a jack-high full house going, and if he had the jack of spades as one of his hole cards, he would have to stay in, with a pot like that.

But the bidding had been hot and heavy enough to give him pause. The contractor bet a modest white chip-fifty bucks.

I had half this pot in the bag, and almost certainly the rest of it. I would like to have raised. I would like to have raised maybe one hundred thousand dollars.

But I checked.

The surgeon was next in line, and he raised a blue chip-five hundred clams.

Jerry G, who had two queens up (and might have had the queen of spades down), saw that bet. The contractor said, "f.u.c.k this s.h.i.t," and folded.

I raised another blue chip.

Everybody gave me looks to kill, since checking and then raising was bad manners, if kosher. But the surgeon took the final raise of another blue chip, which both Jerry G and I saw.

I'd been right on every a.s.sumption-the surgeon had the king of spades down and a flush. Jerry G had a queens-high full house and the queen of spades down.

But, like I said, I had the ace of spades in the hole, and an ace-high full house, so I hauled in the chips. Math was never my strong suit, though I had to be four grand ahead on just that round.

The players swore at me good-naturedly, and Jerry G nodded for me to follow him out the exit door.

I was near a little light over the door to the poker room, but he was in the shadows, an arrangement he'd contrived. He offered me a cigarillo, I declined, and he lighted up the little cigar, and regarded the rear expanse of the Giovanni kingdom. At three-thirty A.M. on a Wednesday, the graveled lot was d.a.m.n near full. A big-hair hooker in a pink spandex minidress was leading a biker like a lamb to the slaughter (or maybe to the slattern) toward one of the eight little trailers that lined the lot at right and left.

"What do you want to talk to my father about, Jack?"

"I mean no offense not telling you, Jerry G. I don't mind if you accompany me. But I need to talk to him in person."

The amber eye of the lighted cigarillo stared at me. "What about, Jack?"

I had a feeling I better take a shot. I took it. "I used to work through a middleman, not directly for your friends in Chicago. There was always insulation. You know about insulation."

"I know about insulation."

"So maybe you can figure out what kind of work I used to do."