I knew I was in trouble, but I had no desire to put up with his taunting “What’s happening to me?” On its own, not a bad question given the circumstances, my problem was the tone. Rather than acting meek—or even normal—I instead sounded a bit belligerent and demanding.
Knowing how much trouble those words were going to cause my I tried to close my eyes, but like the rest of me they were frozen. I clamped down on the words that were wanting to pour out next. Instead, I lifted my gaze so that Alexis' solemn stare didn’t quite meet my own, while still allowing me to study his. This was not an easy thing to accomplish.
As the silence, not to mention the tension in his face, began to build, I was worried that my big mouth had finally secured my death. But suddenly the tension in his face simply disappeared. And with a deep belly laugh Alexis began to twirl his finger in front of my face, which only confused me. Eventually he was able to voice what he had been attempting to communicate through his hand gesture. “I’ve essentially wrapped you up in a cocoon.”
Emboldened by his answer, I asked the next question, “How?”
Folding his arms across his chest he offered me a friendly smile, but that was where the warmth ended. The tone let me know that while he may have been willing to overlook the tone I had used earlier, the same wouldn’t be true again. “Your question just demonstrates the lack of understanding you have when it comes to forging. Now forget any more questions you might have because I have one for you." While his voice was calm I could see the deadly seriousness in his eyes. Without moving, he somehow managed to appear to be looming over me again. With the same emotionless voice he asked me his question. "Why did you even try to challenge me?”
“What are you talking about?”
As I answered I could see the shock in his eyes grow. “Surely you must have…” but he was unable to say anything else past the stutter in his voice. Taking a long moment to collect his thoughts and composure he was eventually able to ask his question. “Are you honestly trying to tell me that you had absolutely no idea that I was a forger?”
Now I was the one to be confused. “What does faking signatures have to do...?”
The shock and confusion fell away from his face only to be replaced with a look of disgust. In a stern and commanding voice he asked, “You don’t know what a forger is, do you?”
“I can honestly tell you that I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Then what on earth brought you here, tonight?”
My throat tightened up and not because of the constraints. Truth be told I was honestly more than a little embarrassed that I was about to admit to my target that I was there with orders from a crime lord to assassinate him. At the same time, a part of me decided that the truth was my best option, so before I could stop myself, I started to blurt it out. “I was recently forced into this by Bertrand Dempsey…”
He immediately stood straight up so I was unable to see his face, but I could hear the snarl in his voice, “You’re one of that man’s assassins?” I could also hear the sheer revulsion hanging thickly in his voice.
Again before I could think, I opened my big mouth, “I guess so.”
The snarl and disgust were still in his voice, but they were also mixed with cautious curiosity as he asked, “What do you mean, you think so?”
“I was sort of forced into this job, if you want to call it that.”
The snarl had at least been dropped from his voice as he inquired. “Okay I’ll bite. How were you forced into this job?”
If I could have closed my eyes I would have, but since I unable to, I launched into the pertinent part of my tale. “I was playing in his hold’em tournament and I had had an extraordinary run of luck, which was taken by the dealers as a sign of cheating. And since this is Dempsey we’re talking about, they told him their suspicions. This in turn spurned him to order a break in the game so he could have cameras installed in the final table. It was there that he caught me when I actually cheated in the final hand.”
“What are you stupid?” He asked, though by his tone I could tell it was a rhetorical question, so I just bit my tongue. “You actually tried to cheat Dempsey?”
“I wasn’t cheating him personally.” I offered as an explanation. But as those hollow words left my mouth even I knew I had been fooling myself. I could no longer believe the lie that I had tried to sell myself. I had been nothing more than a fool.
With a look of indifference the towering man said coldly, “That doesn’t matter, boy. Truth is truth, and the truth is you cheated the worst man possible. But what does intrigue me is that you’re still breathing, which I’m going to guess leads into what you actually did?”
“I changed one of my pocket cards into an ace.”
“Giving yourself a…”
“Full house, aces over eights.”
With a laugh he looked down, “You willingly gave yourself a dead man’s hand?”
“What?”
“You do know what that hand is right?”
His question made me nervous, what was so special about that hand? I cautiously answered the question. “No, I’ve never heard of it. Should I?”
“The reason that hand is called a dead man’s hand, is Wild Bill Hickok was killed when he had that hand. You do know who that is, right?”
“Some famous dead cowboy right.” I said flippantly.
Shaking his head in frustration Alexis muttered, “What do they teach these kids in school these days?” Returning his attention to me, his words instantly grew clear as they bored through me. “While there is some debate over the actual composition of the hand there is a consensus that it was at least two pair. A pair of black aces and eights."