Instead of continuing, however, Gris-gris kept fidgeting uncomfortably, glancing around the room.
“What’s the other thing?” Griffen said, prompting him.
Gris-gris seemed to gather himself.
“Well, you see…”
He broke off and took another sip of his drink.
“What it is…” he began again, then stopped.
Griffen frowned at him.
“You’re starting to worry me, Gris-gris,” he said. “Talk to me. Are you in trouble with the law? Do you need money?”
Gris-gris shook his head.
“Nothin’ like that,” he said. “Look. What I’m trying to say is that I want to date your sister…if it’s all right with you, I mean.”
Griffen sat back in his chair and blinked. For a moment, he could think of absolutely nothing to say.
“Hey, if there’s a problem…that’s cool.” Gris-gris said hastily, misunderstanding the silence.
“No. It’s just…you just caught me by surprise is all,” Griffen managed at last. “You know, this is the first time anyone ever asked my permission to date Valerie. We’ve always pretty much gone our separate ways.”
“Then it’s okay?”
“I don’t have a problem with it,” Griffen said. “I figure it’s her decision to make.”
Besides, Griffen thought, the rumor mill has been so good that he has worried less and less about her. Here, the town protected his “little” sister.
“I understand that,” Gris-gris said. “I just didn’t want you to think I was sneaking around behind your back to hit on your sister. Some guys get real upset if they think you’re trying to pull a fast one.”
“Well, I appreciate you letting me know,” Griffen said, finally starting to recover from his surprise. “It’s always good to keep communication lines open.”
“Speaking of that,” Gris-gris said, “I don’t have any way to get in touch with her…or you for that matter. That’s why I came looking for you here.”
“We can fix that easy enough,” Griffen said. I’ll pass you both our cell phone numbers before you leave. In the meantime, let me get the next round here.”
As he went to the bar to get the drinks, it occurred to Griffen that he should probably check with Valerie before giving out her cell phone number. The more he thought about it, though, the more he was convinced to let things go as they stood.
Why should he be the only one to have to deal with surprises?
Twenty-one
Fourth of July weekend meant different things to different people in New Orleans.
For some it was the Essence Fest, another of the numerous music festivals that dotted the city calendar.
For others, it meant a long weekend break from work. Weather permitting, an excursion to the beach, the Audubon Zoo, or even just a picnic or backyard barbecue provided a sufficient change of pace.
With the hotels and restaurants full, the service industry dropped it into low gear and worked their tails off. No rest for the wicked.
For Mose’s crew, and therefore for Griffen, it meant a high-stakes poker game.
It seemed that this was a yearly event that a group of regular players attended, both local and out of towners. To be accurate, it was one of several yearly games that Mose hosted, usually coinciding with holidays or major local celebrations. This was just the first big game that Griffen had been invited to play in since he arrived in New Orleans three weeks earlier.
While he was at college, there were several regular games that Griffen would sit in on. These would usually be at someone’s apartment or fraternity house, and would be held on specific nights of the week. Some of them would begin midday on Friday and continue through the weekend, with players sitting in, then leaving to go on a date or sleep, then sitting in again. Those games were usually at nickel/dime/quarter or, in some cases, quarter/half/dollar stakes. The host would usually pull a low chip or two out of every pot to cover the cost of the cards (they always used new decks) and refreshments. Griffen’s real preference was half/dollar/five stakes as it upped the power of the bluff, but students were traditionally poor and games like that were rare unless you were willing to collect large quantities of IOUs.
The Fourth of July game Mose hosted was nothing like that.
Instead of sitting around someone’s dining room table in an apartment, they had a suite at the luxurious Royal Sonesta Hotel in the heart of the French Quarter. There was an open wet bar with top-shelf liquors, and instead of potato chips and pizza they had trays of sandwiches and potato skins from room service. They also had a real casino poker table with two nonplayers (Jerome being one) alternating as dealers.
The stakes were $25/$50/$100 with $500 chips available if the betting got fierce. It was the highest stakes game Griffen had ever sat in on, and he was worried that it would affect his game. While in theory, one should play a blue chip the same whether it was worth a dollar or a hundred dollars, it was hard to keep the actual dollar value out of one’s mind. As an example, Griffen had always avoided the penny/nickel/dime games back at school. For one thing, the amount to be won in a single evening wasn’t worth the time and effort. More important, the low stakes affected everyone’s play. Even if someone raised your bluff the limit on the last card, for a dime it was easy to call the raise just to see if your busted flush and one medium pair would stand up.
There was another worry just as bothersome.
Mose had told him that the word was out through many of the regular players that Griffen was being groomed to take over the operation. When they phoned or e-mailed in to reserve a seat in the weekend’s game, they had also commented that they wanted to meet and play against the new wunderkind. This made Griffen very self-conscious and aware of his age. Even though both Mose and Jerome counseled him not to worry about it, he was afraid that the players would consider him too young to run the operation and take their play elsewhere. That would bode ill for his eventual involvement.
There were five players in addition to Mose and himself: a middle-aged businessman and his teenage son from Oklahoma, a solidly built Philippine woman from Los Angeles who was a surgeon, a well-dressed black man who was some kind of politician locally, and a Chinese restaurant owner who Griffen recognized as a semiregular at the Irish pub. He had wondered about the teenager being allowed to sit in, but was told that it was sort of a coming-of-age ritual. The businessman’s father had brought him to sit in on one of Mose’s games when he was in his teens, and the man wanted to continue the tradition.
As the evening progressed, Griffen began to gradually relax and lose himself in the play of the game. For once, he felt that he didn’t have to worry about threats on his life. All of the players were well-known and vouched for by Mose, and no one else came in or out of the room. They were all good players, though the teenager was clearly the weakest, but Griffen found he could read them as easily as he had his old opponents at school.
Mose had the fewest “tells” with the Philippine lady a close second, but everyone seemed to have those little habits and gestures that would signal when they had a good hand or if they were bluffing. In addition, there were changes in breathing patterns and eye blinks that were more telling than the players’ betting patterns or table talk. The teenager might as well have been playing his cards faceup.
When a break was called after four hours of play, Griffen estimated that he was several thousand dollars ahead.
“So, Mose. What’s this I hear that you’re going to be stepping down in favor of this young Turk here?” the businessman said, freshening his drink.
“Nothing goes on forever, Mr. Goodman,” Mose said. “I figure it’s time I started taking it easy.”