“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I mean that.”

“You can thank your old man. I’m returning a kindness from way back,” Dante said. “Speaking of which, I have a friend in management at Binion’s. You play there, he’ll comp you a room. You can tell him I said so.”

“I’ll do that, and thank you so much.”

Dante stood up and Phillip followed suit. As they shook hands, Phillip felt himself breathing a sigh of relief. In his fantasy, he’d played hardball with the vig, and Dante had come down two percentage points, impressed by his bargaining skills. Now he felt sheepish having broached the subject with a man of Dante’s reputation. He was lucky he hadn’t been thrown out on his ass. Or worse.

As though on cue, the door opened and the brunette appeared.

“One word of advice . . .” Dante added.

“Yes, sir?”

“Don’t mess up. You dick with me, you’ll be sorry.”

“Got it. I’m good for it. I guarantee.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

Binion’s had seen better days, but Phillip’s room was nice enough. Looked clean at any rate. He dropped his duffel, put seven of his ten-grand stake in his pocket, and went down to the floor, where he traded the cash for chips. He spent a few minutes circling the poker room, getting a feel for the place. He was in no particular hurry. He was looking for a loose table, one where a lot of money was being tossed out on each hand. He bypassed a table where the player with all the chips in front of him wore a Rolex watch. Forget that. The guy was either too wealthy or too good, and Phillip didn’t want to go up against him.

He paused at a table filled with seniors who’d been bussed in from a retirement home. They wore matching T-shirts, red with the silhouette of a setting sun in white. Play was passive, the betting haphazard, and one elderly woman had trouble remembering how hands were ranked. The guy next to her kept saying, “Alice, for god’s sake. How many times I gotta tell you, flush beats a straight and a full house beats a flush.” Small chip stacks at a table like that would probably take him weeks to get unstuck.

Once he’d made the rounds, he had the board person put his name on the list for the no-limit game on table number 4 or 8. This was No-Limit Texas Hold’em with a five-grand buy-in, rich stakes for his blood, but it was the only way he could think of to recoup his losses and put himself back on top. He preferred to play at the even-numbered tables, four being his lucky number. The first opening was seat 8 at table number 8, which he decided to view as a good omen, both being multiples of four. Phillip placed his chips to his right and ordered a vodka tonic. There were six guys already in the game and he entered in late position, which gave him a nice preview of the action. He let a couple of hands go by, showing discipline by folding on a jack-queen and then a pair of 5’s. Small pocket pairs, which rarely hit the flop, were tempting to bet and therefore dangerous.

Playing with borrowed money, he felt a certain burden to perform. Ordinarily, he liked the pressure of play because it sharpened his wits. Now he found himself tossing in hands that on other occasions he might have pushed. He picked up a small pot on two pair, and six hands later won fifteen hundred dollars on a wheel. He hadn’t lost anything to speak of, four hundred dollars max, and he felt himself grow calmer as the vodka flowed into his system. While the long, dull stretch was unproductive, it gave him the chance to watch how the others at the table operated.

The fat fellow in the blue shirt too small for him affected boredom when he had a strong hand, implying it was a bust and he could hardly wait to get it over with. There was a pinch-faced older man in a gray sport coat, whose every gesture was contained. When he looked at his cards, he barely lifted the corners, glanced at them once, and then stared off in the opposite direction. Phillip kept an eye on him, watching for involuntary tells. There was a fellow in a green flannel shirt, built like a lumberjack, who called anytime he thought he was behind in the hand, hoping to hit some good board cards. Phillip wasn’t worried about the remaining three, who were either too tight or too timid to constitute a threat.

He played for an hour, pulling in five more small pots. He hadn’t hit his rhythm, but he knew patience would pay off. The older man left his seat and a woman sat down, a pale blonde in her forties with a scar across her chin. She was either drunk, an amateur, or the worst poker player he’d ever seen. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, puzzled by her erratic play. He lost an eight-hundred-dollar pot to her when he misread a bluff. Then he overestimated her by folding when he should have hung in. It occurred to him she might fall into another category altogether, that of a seasoned pro and superb actress, far tougher than she first appeared. The signals were mixed. He red-flagged her in his mind and focused on his cards, letting his awareness of her fade into the background. There was a particular kind of quiet he experienced when the game started working for him. It was like being in a sound booth. He picked up table talk, but only from a distance and with no impact.