For the hell of it, as the man raked in the enormous pile of chips, Cooper examined his opponent’s expression one last time, checking for any outward sign of satisfaction, pleasure, vengeance, or thrill. He found none-only the unchanging prosthetic wince.
The tendril rising.
Cooper left.
He took a three-hour catnap in the morning sun, going without a lounge chair, just laying himself out on a towel by the lone functioning pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of green Tommy Bahama shorts decorated with palm trees, he passed out until he felt alert enough to get behind the wheel of his Apache-point his racing boat east and try to stay awake while it took him home.
Cooper had more of a dark weathering to him than a tan, his shoulders a deep brown, precancerous wasteland of bone-dry skin, the rest of him a few notches lighter but just as worn. His black hair was streaked with more gray of late, though the gray was hard to see now that he’d started chopping his mane a little shorter. For any of the competitors wandering past on the deck, it was hard to place his age: could have been forty, could have been sixty, depending on the angle. When he opened his eyes, one thing that could be seen was that W. Cooper, as he was known, was a man who’d checked out a couple decades back.
He’d lost at this poker tourney the year before too, at the inaugural launch. That made a cool half million he’d blown in thirteen months, but he wasn’t ready to count it as a loss just yet: play in this thing six, seven times and he figured he’d be able to pull out a win, putting him, considering the advertised payout, somewhere around three-point-five million ahead. All that had to happen for this to play out was a little luck-and for Fidel Castro to remain alive.
Once he’d caught wind of Castro’s private game, he knew he wanted in, but as a so-called employee of one of Fidel’s least favorite institutions, landing an invite involved certain evident challenges. For the chance to even get a look at the sordid cast of competitors certain to be invited to Castro’s personal cash-stash fund-raiser, though, Cooper figured it would have been worth whatever measures it took to secure a ticket in. He found what he needed on a highly classified list of Agency assets in the Greater Antilles, reading the name, four or five down from his own, of a Cuban national holding a position on Fidel’s personal security detail.
Cooper made a few phone calls and discovered that somebody in Langley had, at the Cuban’s request, arranged for the defection of his second cousin, once removed, who happened to be one of the country’s top pitching prospects. Upon his defection, the pitcher had succeeded in signing a three-year, $6-million contract with the Florida Marlins. Cooper thinking at the time he dug this up that the three-year contract put the kid about 5,999,999 bucks ahead of what he would have earned during an entire career playing ball in his homeland, the only money he’d make back home being the second job the Revolution required him to hold.
Cooper pulled a string or two, got the Cuban security officer’s phone number, and went ahead and had the man pile atop his debt-to-America-related assignments the addition of the name W. Cooper, with the address of a post office box in the British Virgin Islands, to the list of invites to Fidel’s inaugural game. One particularly heavy bag of U.S. currency later-small bills preferred, the invite said-and Cooper was doing battle with some of the richest men ever to cheat on their wives, the competitors doing so by way of a seemingly endless supply of Cuban call girls provided by Fidel between the marathon sessions of Texas Hold ’Em. Castro held the event aboard a refurbished cruise liner, which Cooper heard from a fellow competitor had fallen victim to repeated instances of Legionnaires’ disease before its big-name corporate cruise company had decommissioned the vessel and dumped it for free on whoever was interested in signing a waiver clearing the company of any residual liability.
By Cooper’s count, in that first year of holding the game, Che’s old buddy Fidel had managed to land forty-two takers, which, after the nominal cost of refurbishing the cruise liner, transporting the guests to the event, and buying their food, drink, and women, the last surviving symbol of all things revolutionary had pocketed five million good old-fashioned American dollars of his own, above and beyond the winner-take-all five million dollar purse.
Duly rested, Cooper abandoned his poolside slumber on the deck of the cruise ship and cleaned out his cabin. He threw on a tank top, slipped into his new choice of flip-flops-Reefs-and got one of Fidel’s charges to ferry him over to his Apache. He fired up the boat’s twin MerCruiser 850-horsepower 572-CID blowers and immediately slammed the throttle all ahead full, shooting for the best time the 41' Apache could muster for zero to sixty knots on its way out of the otherwise tranquil Havana Bay.
The trip back to his home turf, which he preferred to make using a route running south of Puerto Rico rather than north, took him just over three hours. It put him in dire need of another nap, Cooper swinging out of the Sir Francis Drake Channel and into the Conch Bay Beach Club lagoon, a shallow bay wrapped in white sand, palm trees, and what had once been the best snorkeling, pound for pound, in the Caribbean. The preponderance of visiting tourists had eroded the pristine quality of the aquatic scenery somewhat.
Normally, he might have found it interesting that a pair of U.S. Coast Guard cutters were parked across the channel from the club. This was something he had seen before, but only once. Today, however, the only thing that interested him in the slightest was a drool-ridden snooze fest.
He splashed down in the Apache’s skiff and rode over to the beach club dock. He stepped out of the boat without tying it off, leaving that for Ronnie, the club’s errand boy, to handle. Cooper knowing Ronnie would need to flee, mid-task, from his lunchtime table-bussing duties in the Conch Bay Beach Club Bar & Grill to do it-and if Ronnie couldn’t get there in time, Cooper would be more than willing to delay his nap for a few minutes to stand and watch the putz swim out and retrieve the boat from the open bay. It might even be that the resident barracudas would grow agitated at the errand boy’s presence, and bite him.
Cooper planted his feet on solid ground for the first time in six days at ten till two in the afternoon, the oppressive Caribbean sun beating down on him through the humid soup that passed for air. He had fantasized about this moment for days, the fantasy largely responsible for keeping him awake during the latter portions of the head-to-head battle with his prosthetic-faced opponent. He had pondered, considered, even salivated at the prospect of a tall glass of Maker’s Mark on the rocks, a swordfish sandwich, basket of conch fritters, and a bare minimum of eighteen consecutive hours of sleep.
Because of this, Cooper did his best to ignore the additional presence-coinciding with the cutters across the channel-of the 24' Royal Virgin Islands Police Force patrol boat parked against the last piling of the beach club dock.
Reclined on the pilot’s seat was a cop wearing the RVIPF’s standard Marine Base getup-royal blue polo shirt, beige khaki shorts, black-and-white-checkered cap with a glossy bill. The cop resembled a running back in the prime of his career-thick, muscular thighs, tree trunks for arms, and an abdomen flat as a board. He also exuded, by nature, an infectious optimism, one of the reasons Cooper liked him. His name was Riley, and Cooper didn’t bother to greet him. He knew that his presence inevitably meant that the cop’s annoying superior officer, the chief of police and newly elected chief minister, wanted to see him.