"Hold it," I said, leaning over the fat man's shoulder. My voice sounded like Robert Stack's Elliot Ness. Even so, it had as much stopping power to George as tissue paper had to a rhino. I looked down at the fat man. "Take a look at your cards. That's no busted flush."

He leaned forward. One of the foreign guys laid a restraining hand on George.

The fat man sorted the cards out. "King, ace, jack, ten, and… queen." He looked up at me, then across to George. The other players developed an obsessive interest in the patterns on the casino ceiling.

"You were so anxious to bluff him out," I said quietly, "you overlooked an ace-high straight." The old man stared at his cards and nodded, dazed beyond speech.

I gazed noncommittally at George and cleared my throat. "Ace-high straight beats three queens." I said it in as friendly a manner as possible. Just a helpful bystander. I could predict what was probably coming next.

George looked at me with eyes the color of muddy water.

"He didn't call his cards."

"He doesn't have to," I said. "The cards speak for themselves."

We shared one of those instants frozen in time that last forever and end in a heartbeat. His right hand fidgeted again. He shoved the chips away.

"Take `em," he muttered. He said nothing while shuffling for the next deal. Stud again.

This time, Ann was ace-high on the first round. "The pair of aces opens," she said with a sweet smile. Maybe they believed her, maybe they didn't. Poker was as much the art of lying as was politics. Any dame that could handle something as cutthroat as a table full of men ready to rip out and devour one another's livers was a dame worth knowing.

On the second round of face cards, two of the Sicilians raised. The gaunt old man folded, stood gracefully, and headed for the bar. The fat man scratched at his nose, frowned, and threw in some chips to see the bets.

George looked at his cards. After pondering for all of a few seconds, he raised. I almost felt sorry for him.

Ann called, saying, "Okay, so I lied." She looked so troubled, I wondered what cards she did have.

The third round revealed no pairs among the exposed cards.

"Check," Ann said.

The three foreigners folded and began talking to each other.

The fat man checked, too.

George gritted his teeth and made his bet. High.

The courtly old gent returned from the bar, shaking his head at the younger man's desperation.

Ann raised him. Higher. "Maybe I don't have aces, gentlemen"her voice drawled lazily-"but I've got something just as nice." She just let the sentence hang there, like lingerie on a breezeless clothesline.

The fat man scanned the cards displayed. He pursed his lips to blow through them like a horse. His cards slid toward the center of the table.

"I believe prudence forces me to fold." He inclined his head to the gold and emerald figure to his right. "You may have him, my dear. I think I've taken enough out of him, as you have out of me."

Ann politely acknowledged his words, then turned back to the game.

George dabbed at droplets of sweat gathering on his chin. I sidled over to him, reaching around him to snuff my cigarette in an overflowing ashtray at his elbow.

"I'd suggest folding," I offered softly. "It'll fool her into thinking you know what you're doing."

"I don't need-I can't. It's-" He breathed the stuffy air in short, frantic gasps.

Some people shouldn't play poker.

He raised his opponent by an idiotically astronomical amount. The crowd gasped.

"What a mark," somebody whispered.

Ann languidly threw in her chips. "Call." She had nothing to do but wait for the kill.

George dealt the final two cards. A deuce of clubs slid over to her side to join the ace of hearts, five of spades and nine of diamonds.

He dealt himself a queen of spades next to his king, ten, and five of diamonds.

Ann's lips pouted in disappointment. She looked again at her hole card, letting her shoulders drop. "Check," she said, listless as wet newsprint.

Lights seemed to flick on in George's eyes. He looked at the chips between them-enough to purchase several Central American countries. He calculated madly. Nervous hands shoved the remaining pile of chips forward.

Ann stared emptily until George had withdrawn his hands. A grin spread across her face. She added the last of her own chips to the stunningly huge mound between them.

"And I raise you." The words didn't come out as a slap in the face, but the young man reacted as if he'd been socked. She had him pegged from the start.

I was pretty sure what their hole cards were now. Ann must have figured his out a few rounds back.

George bowed his head to stare at the table.

"I can write you a check."

The gaunt old man bent over him to say, "You know the rules, my friend. No checks or notes. No lending."

It saved me from having to say it.

Ann straightened in her chair, making no sound. Her face had become as rigid as a stone carving. She gazed at George with wintry eyes and waited.

"I-" He glanced pleadingly around to the crowd. His gaze fell on Ann. "I have some shares. In my name. A controlling interest." He pulled some papers from inside his jacket.

I frowned. Had he been expecting to need them? Make that a reckless plunger-doubled and squared.

"A third of it should meet the raise."

Ann glanced at the shares with a disdainful look. "Oh, all right. You'll probably win them back anyway."

That, I thought, was unnecessarily cruel. The young man's eyes blazed like oil burning on a polluted lake. He threw in five of the folded blue sheets.

"I call." He reached to turn over his hole card.

"See you and raise."

Their gazes locked like handcuffs. The crowd stood like a statue garden, their only similarity their stillness. Their expressions ranged from disapproval to glee to shock.

The only one not frozen was George. He began to shake. His gaze fell to the remaining papers in his fist. He tossed them in.

I pitied him. Pity, though, has no place in poker. Then again, neither do fools.

She called. He turned over his hole card. He didn't have a flush. Just a pair of kings, as she must have suspected. His right hand edged off the table to drop limply onto his lap.

All eyes stared at Ann's hole card, as if their combined hopes could lift it from the felt. It resisted. It lay there until Ann reached over to invert it.

An ace. A diamond for the heart already exposed.

The fat man laughed, looking at the loser. The tall old man gazed with sympathy at the pitiable figure. Ann motioned for a security man to retrieve her winnings. The shares she recovered personally, tucking them away in her purse.

The fat man's laughter faded like a good memory when he saw the pistol in George's hand. A maddened finger jerked against the trigger.

I tried to outrace the bullet. My arms rose up in a double fist to come smashing down on his right shoulder. Too late. The gun lunged backward in his hand. He dropped under my blow like a bag of wet garbage, the pistol falling onto his lap.

The chair Ann sat in had a hole in it. High up, at chest level.

Ann was gone.

While guards jumped on George's unconscious frame, I looked for Ann. I saw no sign until I noticed a mound of chips slide off the table. I had to concentrate in some odd fashion in order to see her. Staring more intently, I saw her shoveling the chips into a Mylar bag. Not even the guards seemed to notice her. Whenever someone stared directly at her, it was as if his gaze just kept moving.

I stepped over to her and knelt down.

"Congratulations," she said, handing me the shares. "You now own controlling interest in a failed spacecraft company."

Across the field of green, George stirred as if waking from a deep sleep. One of the guards lifted him up while the other deftly retrieved the pistol.