Darker Shades of Fear

(Installment 5)

 

The room was no bigger than a storage closet, which it had actually been at one time.  The only thing it stored now was a round table, six chairs and a deck of cards.  The single fluorescent bulb emitted a dull light, giving the small space a dim glow.  Four of them were already seated and settled when Kenny walked in.  The bartender escorted him to the hidden room and Kenny thanked him with fifty dollars before he disappeared behind the door.

Inside he met the hard eyes of four men seated around the table.  He stared defiantly back, resisting the temptation to roll his eyes.  He took a seat and lit a cigarette, refusing to acknowledge their presence until his went acknowledged.  Finally, a heavier set man spoke up,

“What the hell you doing here, kid?” He asked, emphasizing the last words with a considerable amount of distain.

Kenny exhaled easily.  “Poker.  What the fuck you think I’m here for?”

The large man looked to the other occupants of the room and chuckled.  “Look, kid, that’s great and all, but you’re a little out of your league on this one.”

He sighed in a puff of smoke.  “Call me ‘kid’ again and I’ll break your fucking neck.”

He was hardly intimidated but he saw something in the blond man’s eyes that terrified him.  Logic told him it was the lighting but rationality told him to shut his mouth and not find out.

 

They sat in silence until the door swung open and a dark haired dark eyed man entered the room.  He was in his late thirties much like everyone else present, save Kenny of course.  He sported Armani jeans and a signature shirt beneath a leather jacket.  He took his seat and began to shuffle the cards as he looked around the table.  His dark eyes lingered on Kenny a moment, detecting some distant familiarity but not enough to conjure a memory.

“Who are you?” He asked.

“Kenny.” He said, masking his loathing.

“How’d you get in?”

“That’s my business.”

Jack nodded, bridging the deck.  “No betting limit.  Ante up.”

The heavy man seated beside Jack anted first, offering three hundred dollars.

The man to Jack’s left contributed two hundred fifty.

The businessman next to him threw in three hundred fifty.

The other matched the previous contribution.

Kenny and Jack eyed each other.

“Ante.”

Kenny lazily tossed seven hundred dollars into the center of the table.

Five sets of eyes bulged at the sight of the cash.  Kenny looked toward the ceiling, smirking a bit and inhaling his cigarette.

Attention turned to Jack.

He grimaced and angrily threw four hundred in.  He dealt the cards, starting at his left as customary.  He finished and placed the deck in the center of the table, next to the wad of green bills.  Everyone looked at their hands, then each other, then their hands and back again.  Once this was complete, eyes shifted to the businessman on the left of Jack.

“Open.” He said, “Five hundred,” swallowing hard.

“See.” The other said, placing the bet.

“I see.”

“See.”

Jack waited a beat.  “See.”

Again, Kenny had become the focus of the game.  “I see your five hundred,” He said, “I raise you six hundred.”

Jack gritted his teeth.  “I see your six hundred.”

The game began.

 

Jack and Kenny were the only two who had not folded yet.  It was the final game and Kenny had taken every one before it.  The tension in the smoke filled air was thick and Jack’s forehead had begun to sweat.  Kenny was relaxed and caviler as always.  That attitude had pissed everyone off when it coerced them into folding, leaving Kenny with absolutely nothing in his hand and six thousand dollars for it.

Jack displayed his hand proudly, “Straight flush.” He said, “Beat that, you little fucker.”

Kenny smirked and did exactly as Jack had requested.

The dealer stared at his opponent’s hand in shock, his jaw literally agape.  Everyone who had previously folded gathered around the table and looked on with disbelief.  On the table before them rested a neat ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of spades.

Kenny took his winnings from the table and said, “You play a pretty good game, Jack.  C’mon, let me buy you a drink.”

Kenny’s response shocked them more than his royal flush.

 

“So that, my friend, is why you never, ever get drunk in a stable.” Jack rambled drunkenly.  “Especially with horses in it.”

Kenny, who was immune to his babbling, nodded.

“Say, you really remind me of somebody… thing is I dunno who.  Your face looks like I’ve seen it before but ya play poker like somebody...somebody I can’t remember, either…”

Kenny rolled his eyes, waiting for Jack to pass out.

“It was a real long time ago.  He was just a kid but God damn he could play cards.  Anything, anything! I’m talking about 5-card, 7-card stud, hold-em, lowball… I beat him a couple times but damn.  Damn!”

Kenny ignored the familiarity that associated itself with Jack’s description.

He looked at Kenny through bleary eyes.  “Do you know who I’m taking about?”

“Sorry, Jack.”

“Oh.” He said. “I thought you might have…”

Kenny downed a glass of vodka.

Jack squinted at his companion.

“C’mon, Jack.  I’ll get you to your car.”

Jack staggered to his feet and stumbled in pursuit of Kenny, struggling to remember why this man felt so familiar.  As they stepped onto the street and into the shadow of the building, the revelation hit him.

“I know who you are!” He said, enlightened.  “You and that kid I used to deal!  Shit, man, that was years ago!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The kid, with the hair… you know?”

Kenny shook his head.

“His name… his name was… what was his name?” Jack tried to remember.  “Clyde?  No, no, not Clyde… Kent, maybe? No… something with a ‘C’, wasn’t it?”

Kenny refused to think about the answer.

“Cliff, Clint… Carl?  No, it wasn’t Carl….  Clark!  That’s it!  The bastard tried to stiff me with that ring, ‘cause I remember I… I… what’d I do, again?” He asked before promptly passing out.

Kenny’s face was flushed with fury and his bottom lip was bleeding, as he’d done so to keep from screaming.  All too calmly he opened Jack’s trunk and took a pair of latex gloves.  After putting them on, he filled one of the loose syringes with heroin from the trunk and made sure to trap an air bubble in the liquid.  He approached the passed out man who was lying on his back and pushed up his leather sleeve.  Kenny injected the drug and watched as he stopped breathing.  He checked the pulse of the punctured arm and found nothing.  He dragged the body around back and planted the syringe in his hand.  He had to restrain the urge to spit on the bastard.  Even in death he fucking hated Jack.

 

An hour later, he was in another bar drinking himself blind.  The room wasn’t spinning yet, but Kenny could barely remember his name so things were looking good.  He looked around and decided that he wanted to fuck.  He stood and staggered out onto the street. He walked about a block and found an extremely curvy woman in a scrap of leopard print that she passed off as a dress.

“Hey baby,” she said, “what are you doing tonight?”

“You.”

She shifted her weight, “That all depends on how much you got.”

Kenny opened his wallet and gave her five hundred dollars.  “If you’re any good, I might give you a tip.”

Her eyes widened as she took the money and put it in her purse.  “Where you staying?”

He smiled drunkenly and led her to his shitty motel room.

 

Outside on the streets below, sirens wailed loudly.  Some member of the local police force would be getting a medal for the “discovery” of the body of a notorious interstate drug lord.  Some paramedic had already written “overdose” on the death certificate.  Some mortician would be conducting an autopsy.  He’d conclude that Jack had been drunk and tried to shoot up, but carelessly injected air into his veins and died.  It would all be on the front page of the paper tomorrow. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

©Danielle Lovallo, 2004