Public Enemy

3

Cooper studied his opponent. Prescription sunglasses keeping anybody from reading his eyes, long-sleeved silk shirt somehow made to look like a polyester blend, a single, curling tendril of smoke rising all day and all night from the cigarette he kept clasped in his hand-Cooper didn’t recall his taking a single drag on the cigarette in forty hours at the table, and yet that tendril of smoke remained, rising endlessly from the season ticket the man’s yellow-nailed fingers kept for themselves at the edge of the felt.

There was never once a change in the expression on the man’s face, only a mild wince that never eased, as though he’d had prosthetic makeup applied before assuming his position at the table. Earlier, Cooper had noted the resemblance to photographs he remembered seeing on the back of Tom Clancy novels; as the battle wore on, he began to wonder whether the man cleaning his clock for twelve straight hours might actually have been the best-selling author, before writing this off as a delusional endeavor enacted by his fatigued, inebriated mind.

Of all the skill-free competitors who’d made it through to the eight qualifying tables-a roster loaded with Russian mob bosses, CEOs both current and deposed, even a head of state-Cooper just had to get stuck with this clandestine four-time World Series of Poker champion bluffing him out of the building from behind his Tom Clancy prosthetics. With maybe eighty percent of the paid-in-full bozos taking Fidel up on his offer-comped charter jet, free digs aboard the converted cruise liner, and an endless sup ply of brown-skinned hookers, all in exchange for a one-time $250,000 entry fee-just to blow their money…

They had worked more or less together in picking off the other competitors at their table for the first twelve-hour session, but once the amateurs were dispensed with, Clancy had begun working him over like a speed bag. He did so most notably on three separate intentional busted bluffs, where the prosthetic Clancy had made a relatively large wager on dog-shit hole cards, losing as though it was becoming a habit, careful each time to “accidentally” reveal his cards rather than just cede the hand. Cooper knew what he was up to-Look, buddy: when I bet big, I’m always bluffing-but his knowledge held no value as the momentum began to shift, his piles shriveling like a scrotum in ice water. He felt as though he was watching a train wreck develop, the way he figured you’d feel when parked on the tracks inside a stalled, locked car, that blinding, Cyclops headlight of the train making its relentless approach.

All of which had set the stage perfectly for the moment in which he was now mired.

Head-to-head, the winner moving on to the finals-loser headed home two-fifty large in the hole. Forty hours of this hard-earned semifinal round culminating in the largest pot Cooper had ever seen, every color of chip imaginable covering every square inch of the felt. Clancy had just taken Cooper’s ten-thousand-dollar softball of a last-round raise and bumped him another two hundred grand. Clancy, of course, wasn’t risking all of his chips: the bastard still had maybe four hundred grand stacked beside the cigarette hand, and knew perfectly well his raise was enough to force Cooper all-in. Engineered to psychological perfection, no less: Cooper had been losing consistently for a couple hours now, and Clancy knew Cooper had become starved for a win, tempted to gamble on Clancy holding another of those dog-shit hands he’d let him see so many times in a row.

Cooper suspected Clancy was holding a high pair, a good place to be in a game of Texas Hold ’Em featuring three face cards out there on the flop. Meaning it had come to this: Cooper could hold on to his remaining eighty some thousand in chips-cling to this crumbling cliff he’d been trying in vain to prop up-or roll the dice, as it were, and give his opponent the chance to put him out of his misery. His pair of sixes in the hole had a snowball’s chance in Havana of winning the hand, but if he didn’t play for the steal, he’d be out of chips in another thirty minutes anyway.

Cooper pushed the last of his chips into the gargantuan pot, pointed a finger and lowered his thumb to indicate a trigger-pull in the direction of his opponent, and eyed the backs of Clancy’s pair of cards. Over they came, and Cooper took in the colorful pair of kings, meaning Clancy was full of kings over jacks, and that the tendril of smoke and prosthetic mask were headed for the final table and a shot at the five-million-dollar championship prize, while Cooper, with his deadly two pair, was headed home around two hundred and fifty-two thousand lighter than when he’d stepped off the porch of his bungalow five days back.

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.

Cooper strolled through the restaurant, the place crowded today for lunch, ducked behind the thatched-roof bar, and poured himself a pint glass of Maker’s Mark over very little ice. The local kid working the bar continued making the drinks he’d already been making without so much as a glance in Cooper’s direction.

Cooper took a moment to pull a long sip from the bourbon. Observing the glass to be emptied by a third, he served himself a refill, seized a menu from the stack behind the bar, opened it to the lunch options, swiped the pen from the breast pocket of the bartender’s T-shirt, encircled the swordfish sandwich and conch fritter selections, wrote COOPER across the bottom in two-inch block letters, set it on the counter in front of the bartender, thrust a finger upon it, told the bartender, “Tell Ronnie,” then took his glass of bourbon and headed out of the restaurant.

Discovering that along with Riley, the patrol boat, and the cutters, he was also going to have to try to ignore the chatty buzz at the normally peaceful bar, Cooper kicked off his Reefs and trekked barefoot through the sharp-stoned garden path mainly just to prove that he could. Passing a series of freshly painted, breezily designed two-unit structures equipped with air conditioners and colorful flourishes of blossomed flowers, he ducked past one last palm frond to the last in the set of bungalows. On this very last of the buildings, bungalow nine, a board had been nailed into the concrete foundation on the corner nearest the garden. Positioned at shoulder height, the sign’s style and placement reinforced the message its words delivered:

KEEP OUT.

Cooper ascended the stairs of his weather-beaten bungalow, came in through the unlocked door, and plunked himself upon the frayed armchair in the middle of the room’s main living space. A bed, a table, an ottoman at the foot of the armchair, a kitchenette with a portable fridge, and a mostly outdoor shower-and-toilet stall were all that defined the place. Cooper took in none of it, putting back most of the bourbon, holding one of the ice cubes in his mouth, and leaning his head back against the chair’s soft head-rest. A faint hint of hope formed in his head, a final conscious thought.

It might just be I got away with it. Maybe, just maybe, I can sleep.

Giving in to sheer, unadulterated bliss, Cooper lost consciousness before the ice cube melted on his tongue.