Chapter 7 from the R.M. Dolin novel, “What Is to Be Done“
“Barkeep,” Miguel belligerently shouts while holding his hand above his head impatiently snapping fingers. “Tequila, and don’t forget the lime; you forget a man’s lime he maybe thinks you don’t like him.”
Armando hesitates, measuring his response before curtly filling a previously used shot glass with his lowest quality tequila. He tosses a previously discarded lime onto a small tray. “I don’t like you, Cabron,” he mutters under his breath before adding a cheap shaker of popcorn salt and the shot glass to the tray. Miguel’s henchman waiters the tray to his boss. “Gracias porfavor,” Miguel mocks, holding up the glass to toast the bartender before executing his tequila ceremony.
The badly damaged woman demands Armando’s attention, not to teach her cocktail making skills, but to treat her wounds, put ice over her swollen eye, and restore her as best as possible. He talks in Spanish, but she doesn’t respond. Dario convinces her to surrender the blood-stained knife, which he surgically cleans should there later be an investigation. Physically it will take weeks for her to heal even though he did a better job pulling her together than lesser trained doctors could. Emotionally though, it will be years, if ever, before she recovers. “I’ve seen this before,” Dario whispers to Armando. “Shit can’t be undone and some things you don’t come back from.” Dario works his medical magic under cold pale neon, swabbing wet towels along her cheek to wipe away blood still oozing past his sutures. “I’ll keep you safe,” he whispers, wishing he could as easily wipe away her anguish. It goes without saying that a vow like that from a man like him contains the unspoken caveat, “at all costs.”
Across the room, the card game combatants are about to engage. Jake cuts five cards from the deck and studies them before being strategically arranged face down in a single row. “Pick your poison.”
“Why don’t any of you wear masks?”
“They’re as useless at stopping a virus as a basketball net is at catching minnows, why don’t you, you’re the demographic their politically profitable propaganda’s aimed at?”
“Bad for business.” Miguel hovers his hand along the row of high dollar cards. “No stinky Chinese virus is gonna mess with me.” He stops over the second card, lightly tapping its edge. “There should be a strategy?”
“How can there?”
Miguel slides down two cards, again tapping the edge in an effort to discern its value. “I don’t know, which convinces me there is, you wouldn’t risk so much without an edge.”
“My edge is the universal karma ensuring good triumphs over evil.”
“No way you believe that?”
“What can I say, I’m an optimist. Other than karma and optimism, hard to discern an edge.”
Miguel studies Jake looking for a tell.“This one,” he confidently announces returning to the second card.
Jake pushes the card toward Miguel establishing a new row. With the pomp and ceremony such high drama demands, he flips the point card. “Nine of clubs, a solid middle card.”
The PhDs huddle around Jake. Ruben is sent back to the Wind River with one of Miguel’s muscle men to manage, “other investments.” The Wind River’s decided to exercise reservation sovereignty and ignore the Governor’s lock-down orders, which means the place is hopping with people not stupid enough to believe to the pandemic hype.
Preston places his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Pretty damn surreal, huh?” He forces a tentative smile wanting to be strong for his old friend, but in reality, he has to remind himself to breath.
Jake smiles at Preston lightly squeezing his hand, “I’m glad you’re here.” He then refocuses on the game. “From here on out you decide to keep your point card, or trade for whatever down card I select.”
“Until the last card,” Miguel caveats.
“Whatever card you keep at the end is yours, and the other’s mine. Either way, its head-to-head.” Jake slides the third card to the new line. “Wanna trade?” He sips his bourbon as an agonizing minute marches toward Miguel’s frozen decision. “Five cards are better, eight cards worse,” Jake hopes his analysis moves Miguel along. “Dealer takes all ties.”
“You didn’t call that!” Miguel angerly shouts.
“House rules,” Jake calmly fires back; same as casinos; gotta win to win.”
“I knew you had an edge, you bastard. It’s like the freaking green zero on roulette. Don’t seem like much, but because it’s there the house always wins.”
“That’s a multi-play advantage, in a single spin, the odds of a green are one in thirty-seven, practically a non-factor. Odds of any particular card turning up is one in thirteen. That two cards pair is -.” Jake turns to Dominic. “Let’s just ask our resident statistician?”
Startled to have the spotlight, Dominic cautiously answers, “through the roof.”
“There you have it, and my boy’s a PhD.”
Dominic whispers to Theo, “Didn’t say how far through the roof.”
Jake pushes his challenger. “Gonna trade or what?”
“I’m good with my nine, since you so kindly explained the odds.
Jake quickly flips the card, “four of diamonds, good call.”
Dario leaves the woman in Armando’s care to watch the game up close just as the old man, in a move way outside his well-choreographed routine, limps to the bar, “drama makes me thirsty.”
Armando fills a fresh glass with cold tap. He uses Jake’s black bottle bourbon this round, on account of things being so damn serious.
“Barkeep,” Miguel shouts. “I got his drink.”
The old man tosses two fives and two ones on the bar. “I don’t drink with vermin.”
Miguel shoots out of his chair aggressively staring the old man down. “You refusing to drink with me!”
The old man looks at Miguel without expression while Armando slides the drinks and cash across the bar. “On the house.” The old man takes his beer and bump and begins the arduous journey back to his table.
Armando smiles proudly as the old man leaves. “No one’s obligated to anything in my bar,” he tells Miguel.
Miguel glares at this smart-ass barkeep with every impulse, every fiber, compelling him to throw down. He starts for the bar and is almost there when reason manages a slim and unprecedented upper hand. Stopping close enough for his rage to dismantle the false sense of sanctuary the bar provides, he warns Armando, “dancing over your mashed-up body is topping my list of things that make me happy.”
Armando stares back unyielding. “The road to paradise Cabron, is paved with many false pleasures.”
Miguel’s rage re-boils. “I’ve had it with your smart-ass mouth.” Armando grins but offers no response. Miguel’s anger seethes all the way down his arm into his tightly clenched fist. ‘Screw the card game,’ he ragefully rationalizes, ‘screw the invisibility rule, screw everything!’ Miguel leans toward Armando with only one thought, to put this smart-ass in his place once and for all.
Just as the drama seems destined for a certain outcome, Jake intercedes, “we don’t finish,” he shouts, “I win. House rules.”
Miguel spins around recoiling like a caged tiger tired of being poked. In less than a minute he’s been disrespected by three people, which is three too many. “I’m going to kick the shit out someone,” he growls. “I just need to determine which of you pendehos is first.”
“It’s certainly none of my business,” Jake nonchalantly offers, “but shouldn’t you focus on your next card? After all, twenty-grand’s is twenty-grand.”
Miguel glares at Armando seductively lured by a lust that lingers on the edge of rage before abruptly having an interlude of reason. He gets that Armando is all too willing to throw down even though he’ll get is ass kicked, and on some level, he respects that. What flat ass pisses him off though, is the way Jake disrespects him without having the cojones to back it up. “I’m going to kick your ass at cards,” Miguel emphatically states while settling back in his chair. “Then I’m going to kick your ass.”
“Maybe,” Jake smirks. “About the cards I mean.” He smiles at Armando, appreciating the success his friend had getting inside Miguel’s head. He then pushes the end down card to the new line. “Batter up.”
“I’m good,” Miguel fires back without hesitation. The seven of spades is revealed so fast, it’s as if Jake knew Miguel would keep his point card. “Two cards to go, senor, and my nine’s looking good.” Miguel sits up in his chair. “The way I see it, I have less to lose. I’m risking a grand to win twenty cause a replacement girl cost two, but she’s earning one making cocktails. Twenty to one is damn sweet pot odds.”
Jake braces himself with the last of his bourbon. “Things are falling your way, but you’re one bad decision from disaster. Let me see,” Jake deliberates, “which card should it be? You initially wanted is card, but perhaps we should save it for the final round?” Before Miguel can provide his preference, Jake pushes the other remaining card to the new row. “Let’s gamble on the throw-away card.”
Miguel taps the down card agonizing over his choice. “Some might say I should trade because you can’t expect to win every duel.”
“Zoro did.”
“Zoro wasn’t real.”
“Are you certain, he does after all, live in the hearts of romantics.”
“Ya know, old man, I never get what the hell you’re talking about.”
“My shrink says the same thing, but we defiantly don’t want to open that Pandora’s Box. Now, about that trade?”
“You’re the smart one, what do you think?”
“If your gonna trade somewhere along the way, now’s the round.”
“But you know the down card.”
“Gotta factor that.”
“You said trade thinking I’d think you’re screwing me, thereby tricking me to keep my nine when the down card’s higher. But then again, you demented bastard, maybe you think I’ll think what I thought and you want me to trade because the down card’s a three.”
“If it helps, I am prepared to say with certainty, one of the three remaining cards wins.”
It takes Miguel a moment to get Jake’s sarcasm. “You’re a sick shit, you know that?”
“Insulting me doesn’t change the down card.”
“But it makes me feel better.” Miguel slides his chair closer to the table. “I think you want me to think I should keep my card, so I’m gonna trade.”
Before Miguel can change his mind, Jake flips his new point card, a Jack of Hearts. “Hell yeah!” Miguel shouts. “Only three cards can beat me.”
“Three and three-quarters, when you account for ties.”
“You bastard!”
Just as tensions crescendo, Armando rescues the moment by arriving with his entourage. “Bourbon is served.” He announces while waiting for Dario to guide the woman to Jake’s side of the table. She struggles to steady the servers’ tray containing a single whiskey glass. “One bourbon rocks per your precise instructions.” Armando gestures for the woman to present her cocktail.
Jake takes the glass. “Thank you darling, I mean muchos gracias.” He noses the cocktail smiling with satisfaction. “Black bottle bourbon?”
“What else could it be, Cabron?”
Jake holds up the glass for careful examination. “Possess the proper ratio of ice to bourbon.”
“Went with crescent cubes,” Armando proudly reveals.
“Daring.” Jake says while taking a sip.
“But a thousand dollars good?” Miguel questions.
Jake savors his next sip. “I’d summit four ten percenters for this.” He sets his glass on the poker table beside the remaining down card, then smiles at the woman. “You’ll make an excellent bartender. God knows this place can use one.”
“Hey,” Armando fires back. “I taught her.”
Before Jake can respond, Miguel, interrupts. “We gonna finish, or bullshit about bourbon?”
“A thousand pardons,” Jake quips. “No pun intended.” He intentionally delays restarting until Armando’s escorted the woman to the relative safety of the bar-back. In no hurry, Jake nonchalantly taps the remaining down card with the painfully slow cadence of a wall clock counting down the last five minutes of a long workday. “It appears; we’ve reached our showdown.”
“So, it seems,” Miguel scowls through constrained agitation. The room is ensconced in silence, that is, except for Jake’s incessantly mesmerizing taps.
“Perhaps you no longer remember what the last card is?” Miguel probes. “You’re old, memory not what it was. Must be hard for an intellectual to forget more than you remember?”
“I’m sorry,” Jake retorts, “why are you in my bathroom?”
Miguel is initially thrown off but quickly recovers. “I had that coming.” He re-examines his point card distracted by Jake and the world’s most annoying sound. “You want me to keep my card, don’t you? You’ll mask it with probabilities and possible outcomes but in the end, you want me to keep my card.”
“Yes,” Jake answers with exasperation. “I want you to keep your card.”
“Do you say that because you think I’ll follow your suggestion or do the opposite?”
“You asked my advice, anything beyond that’s on you.”
“You want me to trade, I’m sure of it. You think I’m stupid enough to think that card beats my Jack.” He leans back to further consider his options. “What about you, Cous, is this not interesting?”
“Any chance to take you down is.”
“I didn’t think much of this game at first, but now it’s my new favorite. I like that I decide my fate, not many have that power.” The big bouncers sense victory and drift behind their boss wanting to witness the story that’ll be retold many times up and down the valley. “What ya say, Cous, happiness is within reach, be a shame to journey this far only to come up short.”
“Go to hell.”
Miguel grins with the anticipation of those lacking a salvageable soul. “Only three cards can beat me, Cous. Admit it, I’m gonna win.”
Armando carefully considers his options should Dario do what Dario does. Based on past performance, Miguel’s prodding is at best unwise because once Dario snaps, it’s sudden, violent, and without warning. While Dario may achieve minor victories along the way, ultimately, he’ll lose. Armando watches Dario discretely sidestep to the end of the poker table creating a clean line to Miguel, knowing he’s okay with loosing.
Dario’s focus is fierce, seeing nothing but Miguel’s shit eating grin; a grin so filled with evil it leaves no room for redemption. He feels the consequences of earlier events stiffen as he tightens his fists before making micro adjustments to optimize his impending lunge. Then, just has he’s ready to pounce, his knee is squeezed so hard it buckles. “What my friend wishes to convey,” Jake calmly states releasing his grip, “is that while you’re liking where you are, nothing’s been decided.” Jake surveys his rival before shifting to Armando who discretely signals, he’s ready for whatever’s about to happen. “We await your decision.”
“What screws with me is knowing you know the right call.” Miguel searches for a read. “You said I have to like where I am, which I do, so I gotta go with the odds.” Miguel leans back amplifying his decision. “I’m good with my card.”
Quickly, Jake picks up the remaining down card while looking directly at Miguel. He doesn’t break eye contact as he tosses the card toward his rival. “Should have traded,” he calmly states just as the card splashes across the previous goes. Miguel stares wildly as the King of Clubs comes to rest next to his empty shot glass.
Preston steps back not sure what’s going to happen but understanding math is not their friend. Armando discreetly hands the woman her knife while positioning himself, so she’s screened from direct assault. He reaches below the bar sliding his fingers over the baseball bat to settle on the short-handle shotgun his grandfather gave him when he first started at the bar. This is not the first time Armando’s reached for the shotgun, but it’s one thing to discipline a drunk or scare some punk gangster wannabe, versus reaching with so much inevitability. Dario’s already calculated the number of moves he’ll have before Miguel’s men get him. He’s also rank-orders each assailant based on who’s needs to be dealt with first.
Jake is oblivious to all the pre-battle preparations as his laser focus remains on Miguel. “I win.”
“So what?” Miguel flippantly states. “I’m taking my whore.”
“But I won.”
“Yes, you did, but it’s no different than you taking her to start all this.” He stares down Dario, “Hector, you and Ramon have, Cousin Dario.”
From behind Hector takes a stand, “No.”
Miguel jumps up confronting his underling. “Excuse me?”
“I ain’t going off on a corpsman. I do a lot of shit for you Miguel, but this is where I draw the line.” In unprecedented defiance, Hector walks out the bar.
Miguel now has anger on top of rage and insulting humiliation; either by itself is nearly impossible to control, but combined they make a most volatile cocktail. Miguel storms up to Ramon. “What about you Vato, got any stupid ass bullshit I should know about?”
“No boss,” Ramon timidly answers.
“What about your brother, he got any issues we need to discuss?”
Ramon looks tentatively toward his brother, “No, we’re good.”
“Okay.” Miguel says turning back to Jake readjusting his sport coat in an effort to corral emotions. “We’re back on track.” He looks at his men to make sure they’re ready. “As I said, I’m taking the whore, I’d rather do it quietly, but to be honest, either way.”
And there it is, the final outcome of a long-drawn drama. In reality, every man in the bar knew the instant Miguel and his evil blew in this story was driving toward a singular climax. Dario knows it’s all on him, he doesn’t take it as a bad about his friends, it’s just how it is. Armando knows he has to be the one to tip the scales, he’s the only one with the requisite fire power. From the moment Jake rolled into the Al Azar ranting about an ill-fated feeling, Armando recognized something was up, he just didn’t want to give Jake the satisfaction. When his Abuelo gave him the sawed-off shotgun and talked about fate, he warned Armando there’d be a time when his resolve would be tested, now is that time. Jake understands everything hinges on him, he also knows Dario and Armando are thinking the same thing. “I’m afraid can’t let you do that.”
Miguel glares at Jake with a toxic mix of surprise and anger. “Only cousin Dario can stop me, and I got him covered.”
Jake sees Dario’s fists tightening around his resolve as clearly as he notices Armando awkwardly leaning under the bar. “You will honor our agreement.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Mandy,” Jake calls out, keeping his focus on Miguel, “how’s your WiFi?”
“What’s not to like about free WiFi?”
“You see,” Jake taunts, “he has free WiFi.”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Dominic?” Jake continues. “How long it take you to hack into Century Link to set Mandy up?”
“Four, maybe five minutes, pretty lame encryption.”
“Let me walk you through your shit-show,” Jake explains. “Either you leave without the girl, or we hack into the FBI mainframe leaving a dossier linking you to every unsolved crime in Northern New Mexico, many of which I’m sure you’re involved with anyway.”
Miguel forces an unconvincing smile. “You can’t do that.”
“Dominic, how long it take you to hack into the DOJ mainframe last month when we reversed the judgment on that El Rito property the Governor was stealing for water rights?”
“Less than ten minutes.”
“You’ll be arrested before making it home,” Jake calmly continues. “Not country club Santa Fe jail either, we’re talking federal prison with the real bad asses.”
Miguel only half hears Jake as he struggles to get his limited mind around what’s happening. This is the first time he’s been assaulted in cyberspace and isn’t certain it’s for real. Strangely, he turns to Dario for guidance. “Is this possible?”
“You don’t want to screw with these guys,” Dario warns, “they work at Los Alamos, and you know the crazy-ass shit that goes on up there.” Northern New Mexico lore is filled with stories of mad scientist on the Hill and the morally questionable things they’ll do to satisfy their morbidly demented curiosities. It’s hard not to believe the stories when every week newspaper headlines highlight someone at the Lab doing what was previously unimaginable. New Mexicans believe Los Alamos scientists are not only capable of accomplishing any task, but that they have no compunction about doing whatever it takes.
Miguel looks at his men hoping someone has a suggestion. Normally this would be easy, crack a few heads and take what you want. This though is different, and Miguel’s had enough encounters with Labies to totally believe these feeble old men are capable of carrying out Jake’s threats. To his credit, Miguel’s smart enough to accept when a moment is lost, so with angry deliberation he gathers himself to leave but only musters the dignity of the defeated. On his way to the door, he stops across the bar from the woman causing her to tremble. “You belong to, Senior Jake,” he tells her in slow Spanish. “If you run, and I hope you do, I’ll find you.”
“Buenes noches, senor,” Miguel says doing his best to speak past his rage. “You have won, this round, but you and I will have business in the future, on that you can be sure.” Before Miguel steps out of the Al Azar and back into the stark swirl of the Santa Ana’s that blew him in, he turns one last time to glare into his defeat. He stares at the old man suddenly finding him annoying. It’s fortunate for everyone that Miguel chooses not to confront him. If he had, he would have seen what was scratched in his notebook and given Miguel’s unstable state such disrespect would have pushed him beyond control. In the tattered journal the old man drew an intricately detailed sketch of two men sitting at a card table surrounded by onlookers. There’s a woman alone with her back against the wall perilously clutching a bloodstained knife. Above the drawing is the title, ‘Derivation of Destiny.’ At the bottom, centered below the image of Jake splashing his winning card across the table, the old man wrote, “. . . well played.”
