I start back to Hedvika’s place. Now that I know I’m in the right city, and after the right man, I have to figure out how and where to find him. Flashes of faces and bits of conversation play back through my mind. Hedvika telling me rent is due Monday, in crowns or euros, either currency is fine. The caretaker as he eats his breakfast and warns me about Praha’s criminals, bad for alone womans most.
As I pass a shop, an old man staggers out from beneath the entryway, a liver-spotted hand outstretched, and asks me something in a weak voice. I’m about to veer around him, but then I don’t. Karma being what it is, I dig through my pockets for a little change, but all I find is a few bits of paper, a book of matches, and the deck of playing cards I took with me from New York. I reach into the pocket of my jeans, find a few coins, and give them to the old man.
The deck of playing cards.
I pull it from my pocket and turn it over in my hands.
*
It is the beauty of Prague 1 that draws the tourists, and it is the tourists who draw the criminals. You see it all around the world, everywhere fat tourists gather. They’re like a natural resource, wild berries just waiting to be picked.
From my seat along the stone rim of a fountain, I can see almost all of the Old Town Square with its beer tents and overpriced souvenir stalls and pods of tourists shuffling back and forth, oohing and aahing and grinning for pictures. I see also the pickpockets and swindlers working them. All the usual suspects are here, all the swindles that seem to translate well across culture and language—the short change, the currency swap, the broken camera—the things I’ve seen time and time again all over the world. What I don’t see, though, is three-card monte.
As for the cops, they’re everywhere but seem to ignore the cons. In the three hours I spend observing Old Town Square, no one is ever arrested. I see an upset tourist talking to a cop, and he hands her a leaflet, which she drops to the ground in frustration before storming away. I pick it up and see instructions in several languages on how to fill out a police report online.
I set up my box between two beer tents and begin the shuffle. Three cards bent along the long axis so they’re easier to pick up—the queen of hearts, jack of spades, and jack of clubs. I juggle their positions, shifting the queen to the left, to the right, to the middle.
What I need and don’t have, though, is a shill, a partner who pretends to be playing the game and winning. So if my mark picks the right card, I’ll have to resort to the time-honored method used by solo cons everywhere: shouting that the police are coming, then folding up the game and running away.
My first marks appear quickly, a trio of drunk German boys wearing jerseys from the Munich soccer team. They sway and stumble, beers in hand, as they watch the game.
“Follow the lady,” I bark. “Folgen Sie der Dame.”
They move closer, and one of them ventures a finger forward, tapping on the leftmost position. I flip the card and whaddayaknow, the queen! I shuffle again, back and forth, juggling and swapping the three cards. He taps center. Winner again.
“Zeigen Sie mir Ihr Geld,” I say, still shuffling. Show me your money. He pulls out a twenty-euro note, and wins a third time. I slide a twenty to him over the box.
Come on, his friends urge, let’s go. But the greed bug has bitten, and the boy pulls out more money. Double or nothing, I tell him, and he agrees. I pick up the queen, flick down the jack of spades, then shuffle one more time. He taps the right side, and I flip it over. Jack of spades.
He tosses forty across the table, resenting my victory but hooked and eager to prove to himself and his bros that he’s not a loser. He produces two more twenties as I continue the shuffle. He slaps his hand down on the left side. Jack of clubs. Too bad.
An American couple—white sneakers, baseball caps, the husband in a NASCAR T-shirt—sidles up for a look. On their practice round, the woman picks correctly. I tell them in fake broken English to place a bet.
“Oh, I just don’t know,” the woman hedges, the rounded, chubby Midwestern vowels floating through the air, delicate as balloons.
“Too bad,” I say. “I can tell you’d be good at this.”
The man pulls a ten-euro note from his pocket. Which turns into a twenty after his first loss, and a fifty after his second. His face turns pink, and he exhales sharply as if I’d just kicked him in the stomach. The two storm off, shaking their heads.
After an hour, I’m ahead over a hundred euros. After two hours, I’m ahead three hundred forty. I feel sick fleecing tourists like this, but the money goes a long way toward making me feel better again.
As I head back toward the edge of the square, two guys in matching Puma tracksuits fall into step beside me. They’re young, and pretty good-looking, especially the tall one, with a weightlifter’s neck that’s as wide as his head. He says something in Czech, grabbing my arm just above the elbow and squeezing hard. I look at him blankly, and he tries again in nearly unaccented English. “From the river to Narodni is ours, you understand?” He has the air of the unchallenged schoolyard bully about him, and he shoves me against the wall of a beautiful old church at the edge of the Square. “How much you make today, boy?”
“I’m not a boy,” I answer in English thick with Sofia’s Russian accent. “And it’s none of your fucking business.”
He lifts my chin with his finger and studies my face. “No shit,” he says. “Libor, check this out. A girl.”
The other one—Libor, evidently—grins and makes a comment in Czech.
“I’m called Emil,” the tall one says. “Heard of me?”
“No.”
“This, this whole area, belongs to me. It belongs to Emil. So I tell you what. You give me the money and stay the fuck away, got it?”
“Don’t you mean it belongs to Bohdan Kladivo?” I ask.
The two look at each other. “You deal with us, you deal with him,” says Libor as Emil reaches for my jacket and starts pawing through the pockets.
With one hand I seize Emil’s wrist, while I strike the inside of his shoulder with the other. He lands hard on his side, and I twist his arm behind his back, pinning it. Libor starts shouting as I dig my fingers into the gelled hair on Emil’s scalp and slam his forehead into the cobblestones—only once, and not too hard. I’m just trying to make a point.
Then Libor grabs me and pulls me away. Emil springs to his feet, a small trickle of blood running from the edge of his scalp down his forehead to his nose. He begins reaching into the jacket of his tracksuit, but Libor holds out his hand and says something about the police. Emil punches me in the stomach instead.
Twenty
We leave Prague 1 and head south along the river in Emil’s BMW station wagon. Libor sits beside me in the backseat, pressing a small pistol into my side with one hand, while the other touches my back, my shoulder, my ass, my leg. I make a note to cut grabby Libor’s hand off at some point in the future if I live through this.