I sat down, slumping to visually reduce my size even more. I waited. Patient. Calm and patient. Quiet. No threat to anyone. So close, now…

"I understand you've already spoken to Roger Blue," the man who I guessed was Mr. Mason said.

I didn't answer, waiting.

"Is that right?" he asked, not even a trace of impatience in his silky voice.

"Yes," I told him. "That's right."

"Then you know what our services cost?"

"Fifty thousand dollars," I said. "In cash. No bill bigger than a hundred. No new bills, no consecutive serial numbers."

"Very good." The husky man smiled. "May I assume you have it with you?"

"Yes," I said, moving my right hand slowly so he could see the leather briefcase. "It's all here."

"Raymond will take care of that for you," Mr. Mason said, pointing with a stubby finger. A diamond glittered on his hand.

The man who had let me in took the briefcase out of my hand, then he walked out the door, closing it behind him.

I was alone with the husky man. "This will only take a few minutes," he said. "Can I offer you a drink?"

"No thank you," I told him.

It was almost eight minutes before the man he called Raymond came back. Raymond's hands were empty. He made some gesture I didn't understand. The husky man turned to me. "Are you ready?" he asked.

I nodded yes. The husky man got up from behind the big desk and walked up to me. I stood up too. "What's the name?" he asked me.

"Knight," I told him. "It's my real name."

"Okay," he said. "What do your friends call you? You know, the guys you hang out with?"

"Knight," I told him.

"Knight it is," he said. "Come on."

I followed him out of the office. Down the hall, he opened another door. Inside was a staircase. A staircase down. He went first. I was behind him. I could feel Raymond behind me.

At the bottom, there was a big paneled room. In one corner there was an octagonal table covered with green felt. The border of the table had little round cutouts, one on either side of each chair—I could see what they were for, a place to rest an ashtray and a drink. Five men were seated at the table, playing cards. There were a lot of chips in the middle of the table.

"Have a seat," the husky man said.

I took one of the empty chairs. A girl came over, said "What will you have, sire' She was a tall girl. She looked even taller in the fishnet stockings and black high heels. She wasn't wearing anything else.

"A glass of water," I told her.

Nobody laughed, the way they do sometimes when I say that. The girl went off and came back with a heavy-bottomed crystal tumbler full of water and ice.

"Meet your poker buddies," the husky man said to me. He went around the table, pointing at each of the five men in turn.

"Indian Pete," the husky man said.

A medium-size man with a dark reddish complexion nodded at me.

"Sammy Belt," the husky man said.

A slender man with a wispy mustache nodded at me.

The husky man did the same for all of them. Then he said, "Boys, this is Knight, okay' He's a semi-regular, plays stud and draw, plays for cash, no markers. He settles up each time. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses. Heavy cash player, but not much swing, you all got it?"

The five men nodded again.

"Questions?" the husky man said.

"You smoke?" a black man with a fine-boned face asked. His voice was Caribbean.

"No," I answered.

"Drink anything but water?" a pudgy blond man asked me.

"No." I told him.

"You mind turning around…slow?" the man who said he was Sammy Belt asked.

I did that, one full turn. When I faced him again, he nodded an okay.

A tall slender man came over to the table. A couple of the players nodded at him, but he didn't say anything. The tall man opened a mahogany box and took out a new deck of cards. He slit the wrapper with his thumbnail and dumped the cards out onto the green felt. Then he shuffled the cards, his hands moving in a blur, faster and cleaner than any machine. When he was done, he looked up expectantly.

"We need you to play a few hands," the husky man said. "Take you maybe an hour, an hour and a half, all right? Just so we can get a look at your style."

The tall slender man looked at the pudgy blond guy to his left, raising his eyebrows in a question.

"Draw," the pudgy blond man said.

The tall man tapped the table in front of him. Each player tossed a blue chip into the middle. "The chips are twenty, fifty, and a hundred," the husky man said. "You'll probably need about five grand worth."

"You already —" I started to say.

"This is an honest game," the husky man said. "Dead honest. If you don't play…with your own money…we can't really get to know you. And you can't get what you're paying for."

I took five thousand dollars out of my jacket and put it on the table. A girl came over. A redhead, shorter than the first one but dressed the same way. She opened a box. It was lined with white velvet. She put three stacks of chips in front of me: red, white, and blue. Then she put my money in the box and walked away.

I tossed a blue chip into the middle of the table like the others, and the tall man dealt the cards. The men were good players. I'm a good player too. After about an hour, the man called Sammy Belt said. "You don't talk much, do you?"

"No," I said.

"That's the way you are? All the time?"

"Yes," I said.

The man they called Indian Pete laughed.

The husky man came back into the room. He tapped me on the shoulder. "How are you doing?" he asked.

"Good," I said.

"Let's count them up," he said. He spread my chips around on the green felt. "You got sixty-one hundred dollars here," he said. "JoJo will cash you out."

I guess the redhead was JoJo because she came over with the velvet-lined box. She put my chips inside, then she counted out the money for me—sixty-one hundred dollar bills.

"Here's the setup," the husky man said to me. "The house cuts every pot five percent. That's all you pay, ever. Anything you want to eat, anything you want to drink, it's on the house. Got rooms upstairs where you can take a nap, take a shower, take one of the girls if she's willing, okay''

"Okay," I said.

"The house provides the dealer." He pointed at the tall man. "That's Slim," the husky man said. "This is his table. Your table too, all right? This table is only stud and draw—no red dog, no wild cards, nothing fancy. Other tables, they have different rules. The five percent of each pot, that buys you the entire services of the club, understands'

"Yes," I said.

"Anything else'' the husky man asked, glancing around the men seated at the table. Nobody said anything. The husky man put his hands behind his back. "Knight here comes in around ten," he said, watching me. I nodded. "Leaves around four, five in the morning."

I nodded again.

"What night?" the husky man asked me.

"Tomorrow," I told him.

"You got it," the husky man said. "Remember what Roger Blue told you, right? Tomorrow is what you bought for your fifty large. It don't go down like you expected, you want to do this again, it costs the same."