Ings Over Wolves

Full House, Kings Over Wolves

"Is the flounder fresh?"

"Caught this morning."

I gave the guy behind the counter a quick smile before going back to scanning the seafood. "Perfect. Give me eight pounds, and let me see... I'll take five pounds of the bay scallops, and three dozen clams. You know what? If you have baked clams, give me a couple dozen of them, too."

Seeing movement to my right, I glanced in that direction to see a beautiful woman trying not to be obvious as she watched me. Like me, she was dressed casually, but that didn't mean much. We were in the premier seafood shop in Montauk, which meant you had money, regardless of how you dressed. I'm not big on false modesty. I know it doesn't play a large part in my life, but women find me attractive. It's not as if they get so distracted that they swerve off the road when they see me, but there's never been a time since I was thirteen when I couldn't find someone to spend some time with.

I smiled again and went back to my selection of seafood. I was wearing dark tan board shorts, sandals, and a light blue tank top. It was definitely a beach day. I thought for a second that that was why her gaze lingered, wondering why I was dressed like some college kid. When I realized why she was actually staring, the realization of who I was rushed back and I felt like an idiot.

She was staring at the artificial leg. I closed my eyes for a moment and sighed.

"That'll be it on the seafood. I need to grab some vegetables, Italian bread and some wine before I check out. I'm sorry, you know what, could you throw in three pounds of cleaned and deveined jumbo shrimp? Thanks."

As I picked up the rest of the ingredients, the woman approached me.

"Do you like Entenmann's? The donuts and cookies and bakery stuff? That wine in your basket? The people that owned that vineyard used to own Entenmann's."

I nodded at her and wondered if she'd be approaching me if she knew how old I actually was. We looked to be about the same age, but I guessed that I was close to twenty years older.

"My mom always used to have their cheese Danish in the freezer. It was in case company ever came by. God forbid you ever touched that cake. You'd never hear the end of it. I'm Anthony."

"Claire. I used to devour their chocolate chip cookies. I'd pop the whole box in the microwave for thirty seconds. They'd get warm and gooey, and I couldn't get enough. My one big vice. I haven't seen you around, Anthony. Are you here for the summer?"

I shrugged. "It's a little more open-ended than that. I'm staying with some relatives I didn't know existed. I have a flexible schedule, so it works out. My business takes me to Connecticut and to Atlantic City when necessary, so not too far away."

"Well, I'm happy to show you around if you'd like."

She actually blushed, which I found adorable. I'd planned on walking home, like I had walked to the stores, but she offered to give me a ride. I'd gotten lazy and recently I started changing that. I thought that I was a badass until I met my siblings. It turned out that I'd had a tremendously over-inflated sense of self. Alistair had almost killed me, and that I didn't stand a chance against him truly rankled. So, I'd been swimming, running, working out, and sparring with Yekong.

Losing my leg to my monstrous father slowed that down, but I was back at it as soon as possible.

She drove me to the house where my family and I were staying at, and we exchanged contact information. When I went inside, two of my sisters looked up from a book they were examining and gave me a little wave. Not too long ago, they would've leaped up and insisted on taking the bags from me. I'd tried to be patient and declined their help with a smile, but I loathed being treated like a cripple. Thankfully, that was in the past. If I didn't actually ask for help, they treated me like anyone else.

I got to work on making my mother's linguini with clam sauce for everyone and when Yekong told me that her niece and nephew were coming by, I used that as an excuse to get her to help me with the grilling of the flounder.

The kids weren't related to her by blood, but she couldn't love them more if they were. She was especially enamored with the girl. I didn't get it, but I didn't have to. Those kids were actually Alistair's surrogate niece and nephew, but since Yekong was his sister, she adopted them to her heart as well. If they were coming over, chances were good that their parents were as well. I was glad that I bought extra.

To say that my siblings were odd would be the understatement of the century. They were straight up weird. I just didn't get them. Almost all of them had grown up in isolation, with no other brothers and sisters. That wasn't me. I came from a huge family, with two half-brothers, three half-sisters, and a few tons of cousins.

I didn't think of them like that, as half anything. They were just my brothers and sisters. I had been the eldest, and we grew up in a large, boisterous Italian family. Then Alistair got it in his head that I was trying to kill or kidnap our sister and went berserk. He hunted me down in the casino where I worked and almost ended me. There wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. When everything was made clear, I forgave him, but I still lived with that memory.

For the rest of them, having the Sunday meal together was a ritual they had only seen on TV or in the movies. For me, it was a way of life. There had always been children underfoot, gravy on the stove, and Nona making meatballs at five in the morning. Me cooking for everyone was a way to share a bit of who I was, and try to bring to them the memories I cherished most from my childhood.

The kids and their parents soon showed up, and we sat around while the food cooked and played some cards. I had to dump a few hands here and there to make things enjoyable. I tried not to make it obvious, and I didn't really care about the game, so it wasn't a big deal.

I was lucky. Maybe the luckiest man on earth. That wasn't a claim made as a reaction to some sappy romantic notion. I was literally preternaturally lucky. Each of my siblings had a special ability, something that they excelled at. Robert could hide in plain sight, Alistair could influence animals, and Yekong was deadlier than the plague. Except for our father, she had never met anyone that she couldn't out fight. My ability was luck.

It was a shame, really. I enjoyed gambling, and the truth was that I was good at it. I didn't really need that extra edge, but I had it anyway. My mind was quick at seeing all the angles and calculating the odds. Counting cards, assessing probabilities, and reading people was second nature to me. So, yeah. I dumped a few hands so everyone could have a good time.

Still, I itched to get back into a real game. We were sticking together, out there at the end of Long Island. Not only were we getting to know one another, but we felt protective of our little family. We had just gotten Alistair back from the creatures that had abducted him, and he was a changed man. Soon before that, we had confronted our father. That had resulted in another of our sisters dying, another of our brothers being killed, me losing my leg, and Alistair having the side of his head caved in. None of us were in a rush to leave each other's company.

If any other crazy shit was going down, we wanted to be there for each other.

Still...

Still, I was getting that itch to find a game. After everyone ate, I stood at the sink rinsing dishes. Yekong's niece was helping as she carried in plates from the table outside and loaded the dishwasher with what I had rinsed off.

"What's the deal with your tattoo," Cynthia asked.

I looked at my arm. Wearing a tank top, the tat was fully visible. It was an ace of spades on the top of a deck where all the rest of the cards were facedown. "What do you mean?"

Her forehead furrowed and her eyes grew narrow, as if she was trying to figure out a puzzle. "When we were playing, the card changed. It's an ace of spades, but for a couple of minutes it was a Jack of Hearts."

I shook my head. "No, it wasn't. It was probably a trick of the sunlight and shadows."

"Yes it was. It was definitely a Jack of Hearts."

She was right, but I wasn't going to tell her that. "The ink they used for the tattoo? It's special. It has these chromatic properties that make it look different sometimes. A trick of the eye."

She shrugged. "Okay. You don't have to tell me."

I'm in my fifties. The older I get, the more difficult it is for me to accurately gauge how old kids are. I was guessing she was around thirteen. For someone that age, she was oddly self-possessed. It made sense. Not many people caught a glimpse of what my tattoo truly was.

As I walked out from the house, past the table where everyone was sitting and towards the beach, everyone thanked me for cooking. They called me Tony, which was initially annoying. My name is Anthony, and it had always been Anthony. Somehow, their initial mistake had stuck, and for them, I was Tony. When I was about ten feet from where the water lapped at the shore, I pulled out my phone and made a call.

"This is Molly."

"Hey, Molly. Good to hear your voice. The tournament's tomorrow, right? Do you have room for one more?"

The next morning, I woke up and walked into town again. This time, it was to get a shave and a haircut. When you are going to spend hour after hour sitting across the table from sharp players and battling for every chip, there are rituals you observe.

Tasteful, but old school aftershave was used. New socks and comfortable shoes adorned my feet. I wore a charcoal gray Oxford shirt, black slacks, a black jacket, the watch my stepfather gave me when I graduated high school, and a black belt.

When I went back downstairs to wait for my Uber, two of my sisters whistled. Smiling, I rolled my eyes and told him I wouldn't be back until the next day. It took us almost three hours to get from the eastern tip of Long Island to Dark Pier Poker in the heart of Brooklyn. Traffic was what it was. I never understood people who bitched and complained about it. If you're going to be traveling from Montauk to Coney Island, it's going to take a while.

When I arrived, I walked past the store front selling gaming equipment, went back to the steel door and hit the buzzer. Using the camera, someone recognized me and buzzed me in. I went down a flight of stairs, through a stock room that held case after case of playing cards and to another door, this one hidden. Again, I had to be buzzed in.

For an underground poker room, it was well appointed. Sinatra and his gang were playing on a loop on the sound system, Molly was behind the counter talking to other players that were entering the tournament and men and women were milling about.

Usually, Dark Pier had open tables in the main room and a high-stakes table in the back. Since all I ever wanted was the action and didn't really care about the money, I sat wherever there was an empty seat.

I knew what happened in that back room. The game was the same, but the chips didn't have a monetary value, and the players weren't always human.

That day was different. Everyone started out the same, and no one table was different than another. You take down everyone at your table, and you moved on. Climb your way to the final table, and you were playing for everything.

"Haven't seen you around lately, Anthony. Staying in the city tonight?"

"Hey, Molly. You're looking great. Probably. I have a place way out east on the island, but I'm not looking to grab a car to go that far at four in the morning."

Her smile turned her eyes soft, and my heart was off to the races. "I keep the key in the same place if you want to crash at mine."

"That sounds good. Sounds real good."

I kept cash at Dark Pier Poker. Actually, it was just a little notation on the ledger. I was up with them, and used some of that to pay my entry fee. The hours ticked by, and I did well, amassing chips and moving up to higher tables. I could never be sure, but I was confident that I was advancing based on my skills, not my ability.

They treated us well, having everything that we could possibly want at our disposal. Fine foods, the best of coffees, anything habitual that regular players enjoyed, and some crutches that others dependent on that might not be exactly legal.

There was a large guy at the other end of the room that grew more irritating as time slipped by. He was one of the hairiest men I had ever seen, and he seemed to be a walking bag of physical ticks. His laugh, which was loud and obnoxious, erupted from his throat like a bark.

Say what you would, though, he had talent. What he clearly didn't recognize was that underground poker rooms weren't a meritocracy. You could win for the evening, walking out flush and soon realize you'd been banned because nobody else wanted to play where you were playing.

The smart money was on being congenial but restrained, quick with a smile and a kind word. Nobody likes losing to an asshole.

I made it to the final table. So did the jackass and a number of other gifted players.

Oolie stepped out of the back room, smiled and nodded at a few people he knew and made his way to the center of the tables. A tall, dark-haired man, he was always dressed in a custom suit, Oolie was the face of Dark Pier Poker.

The man had a certain gravitas. No one pushed Oolie, and that wasn't entirely due to who he worked for. It didn't matter how fearsome your casino's reputation was, how off-kilter your players were, or who they were associated with. There wasn't a poker room in the world that was as respected as Dark Pier Poker. Rumors were whispered of people who had screwed up. Some guy trying to steal from the house, a woman trying to blackmail Oolie, two idiots trying to convince Molly to go home with them. It happened every few years, and then the offending party simply disappeared.

I couldn't place his accent, but I thought it might be Scandinavian. He calmly waited until everyone went silent and then raised his hands, like Caesar acknowledging the people at the Coliseum. "We appreciate everyone who came down today, especially those who stayed after not making it to the final table. We're going to pick up play in exactly ninety minutes. Until then, we have both dinner and breakfast being brought in. Please let me know if we can get anything else for you. Now, allow me to introduce Hannah Cho. She is a regular customer and has been a member of our community for years. Hannah lives right next to Coney Island, and we're lucky to have her visit our humble store.

"Hannah comes from a distinguished line of stage magicians and has acted as a consultant for a number of movies I'm sure you'll recognize. She's going to spend about half an hour discussing illusions and stage magic portrayed in the movies. Relax, grab something to eat, and learn some behind-the-scenes secrets about the silver screen. Again, thank you all for coming and let me know if we can be of service."

They didn't have a carving station, because the existence of the poker room wasn't common knowledge. Still, I could tell that the meats had been sliced within five minutes of delivery. I grabbed myself a Dr. Brown's cherry soda and made a roast beef sandwich with horseradish on fresh rye bread. Was it a little lowbrow? Yeah, but it was also delicious. I was walking over to the screen where the young woman was setting up, when I speared myself a couple of dill pickles and grabbed a napkin.

I would've been surprised to learn that the woman had never been on stage. She had a way of captivating the audience that seemed practiced and an earned his skill as opposed to natural charisma. Maybe her relatives who were magicians had trained her. Her discussion was a fun way to kill some time, and after the half hour was over, she segued into a Q&A that lasted at least as long.

I didn't know what she did for a living, but she looked like a college student. When I pulled out some bills, folded them and put them under her laptop, some others followed suit. I was sure that she was being paid well by Oolie, but she was going to pick up at least a few grand from the players in the room.

The loudmouth hairy guy that made it to the final table used the ninety minutes to poke and prod at the rest of us who were still playing. He obviously thought he was Helmuth, a top-tier player that can gainan advantage by getting in the head of other players.

Once the break was over and we were seated, he ramped up the aggression. It rattled some, and others ignored him. I found a middle ground. I just agreed with anything he said. He insulted me, I agreed. He talked about how he was going to kick all of our asses, I agreed. He could say it was raining lollipops outside and I would agree. It eventually started to irritate him.

His insults directed at me grew both harsher and louder, but I kept a smile on my face and played my game.

Other players fell to the wayside, and eventually it was the jackass and I left at the final table. His tics were on full display as he would bare his teeth, almost growl and lean over the table towards me at every opportunity. After every disappointing hand, or me doing anything he didn't expect, he tilted his head slightly and lifted his nose towards the air. I wasn't sure if he was just screwing around, he was eccentric, or if he had actual issues.

It didn't matter. I just played it straight, chipping away at his stacks, cutting his legs out from under him.

On a hand where I folded, but he had expected me to go all in, he exploded with an inarticulate scream, placed his palms on the table and stood at his full height, looming over me and the dealer.

"You're cheating, Anthony. I'm saying it in front of everyone here. You are a damn cheat. Admit it. What are you, a wind-up man, or maybe a dirt walker?"

There were maybe a handful of people in the room that knew what either of those was. I was one, and clearly so was he. A wind-up man wasn't human at all. They were created beings, like golems. They passed for humans, and lived amongst us, but their motivations were their own. Dirt walker's were the undead. Both they and the wind-up men had ways to see that we didn't. In games of chance, they played the individual, not the cards.

I calmly looked up at him and kept my voice even. "Maybe there's something going on here that neither one of us understands. Or maybe I'm just better than you. What I do know, is that you've been getting an edge all night. You can smell the other players, can't you? You can tell when they have an adrenal spike, you could smell fear when they're bluffing. You want to call me a cheater, little dog? Go fuck yourself. Come back when your hands are clean. Or should I say paws?"

Howling, he leaped over the table towards me, arms outstretched, muzzle starting to grow, fingers narrowing to a sharp edge. As soon as he began to move, I yanked my pants leg up, pulled the handle of my knife out of my artificial leg, and stood. Grabbing the back of his head, I slammed him down on top of the table and plunged the silver stiletto into the base of his neck and through his spine.

My blood sang as I ground his face into the felt, his transmutation stopped and reversing. I wasn't an unstoppable force, like Alastair. I wasn't a legendary fighter, like Yekong. But I was still my father's son, and my soul was on fire as I ended this threat. My frequent grin had turned feral and I slowly turned to see what other threats were in the room. It didn't matter, I would kill them all. With his hands held up in a placating gesture, Oolie was moving towards me. Other players, most with Mob hookups, tried to meet my eyes, wondering if they were going to have to defend themselves.