Poker News

Poker Cop: ‘N’ is for Needle

I come to in the back of an ambulance, tied down to a stretcher. A paramedic, his back turned, is filling a hypodermic needle. I ask, “Am I going to live?”

The Ugly Man, holding the needle, turns around and says, “No. You’re going to die!” I struggle with my restraints. The Ugly Man, holding the needle, says, “You have to the count of three to give me your invitation to the House of Cards. One.” He raises the needle.

“I can’t give you. . . .” “Two.” up over his head “. . . . what I don’t have.” “Three.” and plunges it downwards.

This City is cheap. Too cheap to fill its potholes, which grow from cracks into craters.

The speeding ambulance hits one of these craters, sending it careening up off its wheels. The impact throws the Ugly Man backwards, crashing into and then, as they swing open, out of the ambulance’s double doors. I watch him cartwheel down the street.

At the hospital the ambulance driver, finding me alone, asks, “Where’s the paramedic?” “He’s at the scene of a terrible accident,” I answer. “I’m sure he’ll be in the ER soon.” X-rays show my left arm is broken. The MD’s slap on a hard plaster cast and hand me a bottle of pain killers. Nurse Hideous puts me to bed. I close my eyes and sleep.

Can’t breathe! I can’t. . . . The pillow lifts off my face. Don Paulo screams, “You killed my mother!”

I gasp, “I had nothing. . . .”

The Don presses the pillow back onto my face. No air! No air!

The pillow lifts again. “You and The Jackal killed her! Why?”

I gasp, “The Donna wanted to tell me about. . . “

The pillow falls. Someone yells “No one move,” and the pillow lifts.

Jake, his shotgun pointed at Don Paulo, stands in the doorway. The Goons ignore this warning and pull out their guns. “Jackal!” says Don Paulo, “the blood of my family is on your, and his, hands!”

Jake says, “Not true, I. . . .”

“Do you deny you, and he, killed my mother?”

“We did not!”

“Do you deny that he lured my father to a poker game where you killed him?”

“Absolutely!”

“Do you deny being the ‘mystery man’ who, this one claims, shotgunned Gyp to death?”

“On my honor. . . .”

The Don, unafraid of Jake’s shotgun, screams, “Liar!” The Goons, fingers on their triggers, wait.

I think to myself, Something’s wrong, and for once know what it is.

“Wait!” I yell. “Your father, Don Giuseppe, and your nephew Gyp were both killed by a double-barreled shotgun, right?”

Silence.

“Donna Francesca told me you feared that she too would be killed by a double-barrel shotgun-wielding maniac.”

Silence.

“Look!” I yell. “Look at Jake’s gun. It has one barrel! ‘The Small Man,’ Gyp’s killer, used a double-barrel shotgun!”

Don Paulo looks into the single O of Jake’s shotgun.

The Don thinks this over, “Yes. You are right.” He begins to tell the Goons, “Lower your. . . .” when Nurse Hideous, who has walked silently into the room with my lunch, see the guns and drops the tray, which crashesnoisily to the floor.

The Goon’s are startled. They raise their guns. Jake takes aim.

In desperation I scream out hysterically, “Don’t shoot! . . . Don’t! . . .”

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