Otto Penzler - Dead Mans Hand: Crime Fiction at the Poker Table

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HOWARD LEDERER

An Otto Penzler Book Harcourt, Inc.
Orlando Austin New york San Diego London

Copyright 2007 by Otto Penzler
Introduction copyright 2007 by Howard Lederer
"Missing the Morning Bus" copyright 2007 by Lorenzo Carcaterra
"Pitch Black" copyright 2007 by Christopher Coake
"One-Dollar Jackpot" copyright 2007 by Michael Connelly
"Bump" copyright 2007 by Jeffery W. Deaver
"Poker and Shooter" copyright 2007 by Sue DeNymme
"Deal Me In" copyright 2007 by Parnell Hall
"The Stake" copyright 2007 by Sam Hill
"The Monks of the Abbey Victoria" copyright 2007 by Rupert Holmes
"A Friendly Little Game" copyright 2007 by Lescroart Corporation
"Hardly Knew Her" copyright 2007 by Laura Lippman
"The Uncertainty Principle" copyright 2007 by Eric Van Lustbader
"In the Eyes of Children" copyright 2007 by Alexander McCall Smith
"Mr. In-Between" copyright 2007 by Walter Mosley
"Strip Poker" copyright 2007 by The Ontario Review, Inc.
"The Eastvale Ladies' Poker Circle" copyright 2007 by Peter Robinson

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dead man's hand: crime fiction at the poker table/edited by Otto Penzler.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Detective and mystery stories, American. 2. PokerFiction. 3. GamblersFiction.
4. Gambling and crimeFiction. I. Penzler, Otto.
PS648.D4D385 2007
813'.54dc22 2007009583
ISBN 9780-15-101277-0

Text set in Century Old Style
Designed by Kaelin Chappell Broaddus

Printed in the United States of America
First edition

A C E G I K J H F D B

This is for my fellow Gamesmen:
Joe DeBlasio
Rupert Holmes
Douglas Madeley
Todd Parsons
Robert Passikoff
Jerry Schmetterer
Monte Wasch
and, in loving memory,
John Burgoyne

Foreword Otto Penzler

Introduction Howard Lederer

Mr. In-Between Walter Mosley

Bump Jeffery Deaver

In the Eyes of Children Alexander McCall Smith

One-Dollar Jackpot Michael Connelly

Strip Poker Joyce Carol Oates

The Stake Sam Hill

Pitch Black Christopher Coake

Deal Me In Parnell Hall

Poker and Shooter Sue DeNymme

The Monks of the Abbey Victoria Rupert Holmes

The Eastvale Ladies' Poker Circle Peter Robinson

The Uncertainty Principle Eric Van Lustbader

Hardly Knew Her Laura Lippman

A Friendly Little Game John Lescroart

Missing the Morning Bus Lorenzo Carcaterra

The biggest surprise about putting together a collection of stories combining poker and crime is that it has not been done before now. If ever a subject begged to be associated with crime it is gambling, and if you think poker doesn't involve gambling, you are seven years old and think it's fun to play for matchsticks.

For most of my long life, I have played a little poker and always considered it a participatory form of entertainment and pleasure, unlike, say, horse racing, which is best enjoyed as a spectator sport. I don't know about you, but I'd be reluctant to climb aboard one of those seven-foot-high, half-ton beasts as it careers along at a thousand miles an hourat least.

Poker is a game that seems at its best when played with friends who laugh at your witty repartee, as you laugh at theirs. There has to be some money involved, of courseenough to hurt a little if you lose, enough to add some spring to your step if you win, but not enough to change your life forever in either direction.

I have played in a monthly game for about twenty years, making me one of the newcomers among a group that started nearly fifty years ago. Players have come and gone, of course. Of the originals, two have died, one moved to Florida (which is the same thing), one to California, and a few have merely drifted away. Some Mends of the core players joined for a while and dropped out, to be replaced by newcomers like me. It's a friendly game with most of the guys (and it's all guys, whether by design or happenstance or custom) taking turns as host, the biggest change being that, somehow, beer has been abandoned in favor of Diet Coke and ice water.

With minor variations, this is how I've always known the game of poker in my mind's eye. We're not that different from the players who sit around the table in The Odd Couple. One will bet on every hand, no matter what he's been dealt. Another is more interested in telling stories and listening to them than in playing. A member of the game for about thirty years still asks, at least once a night, if a full house beats a straight. One deals as if each card had a different and peculiar shape, inevitably dropping cards to the floor and dealing some faceup when they should be down, and vice versa. Still another bets each handno, each card, in seven-card studas if his son's college education depended on it. One plays so badly that, if he says he can't make it to the game, we offer to have a limousine pick him up.

Like so many other elements of life with which I was once familiar and comfortable, poker has changed. Twenty years ago, if someone had been invited, not to play poker but to watch it, he would have asked to be shot instead as a more humane method of execution than being tortured to death.

Today, of course, telecasts of big-money poker are ubiquitous, hugely popular, and, admittedly, addictive. The great playersthose with mountain springwater instead of blood and a giant ball-bearing in the place where others have a heartused to ply their skills clandestinely, slipping into a town, cleaning out the local hotshots, and skedaddling before they realized they had been taken by a professional cardsharp. Now they are like rock stars, though they wear clean clothes and take baths. Even occasional televised-poker viewers recognize Johnny Moneymaker, Annie Duke, Howard Lederer, Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth, and Amarillo Slim.

There is a lot of money involved in the World Series of Poker and other televised events, and there are high-stakes games in Las Vegas, various Indian casinos, and in the back rooms of bars across the country. And the total gambled in these venues is dwarfed by the staggering sums wagered on Internet poker, which is like crack for compulsive gamblers. Where a lot of money is involved, can crime ever be far behind? In the case of poker specifically and gambling in general, defining crime is as easy and sensible as drawing to an inside straight.

In what must be regarded as Orwellian doublespeak or the height of cynicism, there are laws on the books of every state that make it a crime to gamble for money. There are far more venues in which it is permitted to place a wager in Las Vegas than there are in New York, for example, where it's a lot easier than in Utah, where it's pretty much outlawed. Okay, you figure, while you may not agree with the law, or like it, you understand the concept, which is to protect those who can least afford to lose their hard-earned food and rent money. While those who see it as a form of moral depravity may be a trifle zealous, federal and state regulations against alcohol (at one time) and drugs (currently) and cigarettes (imminently) were also passed for what is perceived as the common good.