So instead of attempting something that had zero chance of success, I decided to use different tactics and try to keep him from learning things that would only upset him. One such tactic had been ignoring his phone calls so he wouldn’t be able to ask me who was orchestrating the tournament. When I originally found out about the tournament and entered my reservation, I honestly had no idea who was pulling the strings, and I hadn’t cared. I only knew that in order to play, one had to either have a direct invitation or a referral from someone who had one. I had the latter. Thus, I had a roughly vague idea of what I was willingly walking into. Matt, on the other hand, was never much of a risk taker, which is fine. There will always be men who dine upon caution, they balance men like me.
But I had decided that I needed to keep his level of caution away from the game, and that was before I even found out who was in charge. Now it was a downright necessity. He would either politely ask me to withdraw, or somehow get down to New Orleans, and physically drag me away from the tournament. Okay, so I knew which was more likely, and I didn’t want to deal with that. Truth be told I had contemplated withdrawing for a day or two once I learned who was backing everything.
I certainly could have done that, after all this tournament had quite a long waiting list, which those not fast enough with their reservation had learned very quickly. But I decided to stay in, despite the man behind the curtain. And it was not the money that kept me around. While it was quite the enticement, I didn’t really need it, I mean I could always make more on my own whenever it got a little scarce. No, the real reason I stayed was simply the allure of the challenge. I had a real weakness for hold’em, and it was getting harder and harder for me to find a game back home.
Unfortunately, trying to keep Matt from finding out about the game now meant trying to withhold certain information, and that simply worked better when I wasn’t asked a direct question. So I bit my lip and decided to take my chances and try to fib my way out after all, “You know Matt, I haven’t quite been able to track…”
“Not a chance Marcus!” Did I mention that Matt knew me fairly well? He sniffed out that lie from the word go. “I’ve known you far too long for you to try and pull something like that. Who’s running this tournament of yours? I knew that was why you’ve been ignoring my calls, so tell me now.”
That was quite the leap, even for Matt; there was no way he could have known what I knew. But I wasn’t done trying to weasel my way out of answering the question so I decided to try and irritate him into forgetting the question entirely, it worked sometimes. I laced my voice with absentmindedness and started speaking, “Excuse me…”
“Don’t play games with me, Marcus!” And there went that idea down in spectacular flames. I could plainly hear just how upset he was, there was real ire in his voice now. “Not with me! You only beat around the bush like this when you KNOW exactly what you need to say but, for whatever reason, you’re unwilling to say it. Now spit it out.”
Resigned that I would be treading a potential minefield I took the necessary time to prepare myself for the ordeal. I could mitigate the blowup if I was careful and, at that moment in time, I had to be extra careful. “From what I have seen through my glass circle and the fact that he’s the only real power in that part of the city, my guess is that Dempsey is the puppeteer.” This was a lie, but it was rooted in enough truth that I thought, maybe, I could get away with it. Unfortunately for me, I knew Dempsey was the one backing the tournament. I had known this little fact for almost a week. I hoped that Matt would be too irate to realize how long I had known this information.
After a few moments of silence that were being tortured into an eternity, I began to think that maybe I had unnecessarily feared Matt’s reaction. When had he managed to mellow out without my knowing about it? But I quickly dismissed this idea, there was no way he could be so calm. With a twinkle in my eye I thought that just maybe the call had been dropped. Perhaps even, maybe it had dropped before I had mentioned Dempsey’s name. Ever the optimist, I pulled the phone away from my face so as to check the display. No luck, we were still connected. Had I sent him into cardiac arrest or something, why was he so silent?
As I was bringing the phone back to my ear Matt finally broke his silence. “What in the name of all that’s good and holy would convince you that walking into that tournament is a good idea?” I yanked the phone away from my head as fast as I could, but it barely helped. I hadn’t realized that the speaker on this phone was so powerful or that Matt had that type of lung capacity. With my ear drum ringing I latched upon the only positive in the tirade, it sounded as if he had truly missed the timing. Granted, it wasn’t much, but under the circumstances I would take what I could get.
Matt was never one to remain irate for long so I let him get it off his chest. Fortunately, I was pretty certain he failed to notice the sound of my phone hitting the ground and he didn’t seem to expect an answer to his question, at least, not yet. Since I could still hear him with my phone on the floor, I figured I would wait until he finally took a break. Leaving the phone where it was, I went back to watching the surveillance, which I had lost track of since starting this wretched conversation. And, of course, it was in those distracted moments that something happened on screen, or at least I thought it did.
I had been watching the feed for almost three days and had seen nothing. Granted, it was entirely possible that any and maybe all of the work had been done prior to my arrival, but I had figured that there would be something to see. Otherwise, I would have just skipped that little excursion. But as I was bringing my attention back to the camera I thought I saw some more motion. Before I could do anything with the camera I realized that Matt’s voice was no longer filling the room. When had he stopped talking? Shaking my head I quickly grabbed the phone off of the floor while straining to see something that might have moved, when my ears underwent another assault.