Deadman's Bluff Read Online Free

Deadman's Bluff
Book: Deadman's Bluff Read Online Free
Author: James Swain
Pages:
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was dragging his opponent’s chips across the table with a gleeful look on his face. Rufus let out a disapproving snort.
    “I can’t wait to play that boy once the tournament’s over,” Rufus said.
    “You really dislike him, don’t you?”
    “Kid’s got no class. You can tell he’s never driven the white line.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Looking for action. You drive a couple hundred miles to a game you’ve heard about. Sometimes the town isn’t even on a map. If the game looks beatable, you play. You do this forty weeks a year, and spend the rest of the time at home, getting reacquainted with your wife and kids. It’s a hard way to make a living. And the hardest part is driving the white line, not knowing what lays in store for you.”
    “Sounds dangerous,” Valentine said.
    “It is. One time down in Austin, I was playing in a tent on this rich guy’s cattle ranch. It was Saturday night, and there’s a hundred guys playing poker. Not just ordinary guys, either. There were billionaire oilmen, richer-than-God cattle barons, the crème de la crème of high society, if Texas has such a thing.
    “A car pulled up, and four hooded guys with machine guns jumped out. They shot up the tent and made everyone lie down, then robbed us. They were slick, and everyone knew not to mess with them. I was the last person they got to. One of the robbers stared at me. Then he winked.”
    “A friend?” Valentine asked.
    “Yup. We’d run together for a year. I’d heard he’d fallen on hard times.”
    “What did you say to him?”
    “Nothing. I didn’t want anyone in that tent knowing we were acquainted. I gave him everything I had, including my late father’s watch.”
    “That must have been hard.”
    “I got it all back in the mail a week later. He hadn’t even touched my bankroll.”
    They reached their exit. A minute later, Valentine was pulling up a winding front entrance lined with palm trees.
    “That was awful nice of him,” Valentine said.
    Rufus frowned, as though being nice had nothing to do with it. “He wasn’t going to rob me, even if I was the last person on the face of the earth. We drove the white line together.”
     
    People who gambled for a living lived on a roller-coaster: one day they were up, the next day they were hurtling down. When Valentine had first gotten together with Rufus four days ago, the old cowboy, one of the first victims of Skip DeMarco, had been poorer than a church mouse, and Valentine had offered the couch in his suite for Rufus to sleep on. Even though Rufus’s for tunes had changed dramatically since then, he’d not asked Rufus to leave. He enjoyed the old cowboy’s company.
    They walked through the hotel’s main lobby, which had a jungle motif. It reminded Valentine of an old Tarzan movie, and at any moment he half-expected a guy wearing a loincloth to come swinging through the lobby.
    They got on an elevator, Valentine hitting the button for the fourth floor. As the doors closed, two guys hopped on. Late thirties, one black, the other white, they argued over who was the best golfer of all time—Nicklaus or Woods—neither man willing to back down.
    Everyone got out on the fourth floor. Still arguing, the men went in one direction, Valentine and Rufus in the other. “I happened to personally know the best golfer in the world, and it wasn’t Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods,” Rufus said. “It was Titanic Thompson.”
    Valentine had heard of Thompson. He was a famous hustler who the character Nathan Detroit in
Guys and Dolls
was based on. “I thought Thompson’s games were cards and dice.”
    “And golf,” Rufus said. “Ti was the best. He taught me all the angles. I can beat any golfer in the world, if the money’s right.”
    They reached the suite and Valentine stuck his plastic key into the door. He rarely stayed up late, and the long hours he’d been keeping were taking their toll. The security light flashed green, and he pushed the door open.
    “Home
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