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  “Don’t worry, you can afford it,” is a Sklar catchphrase.

  He likes telling rich people they’re richer. They like hearing it.

  As the group rehashes the crime, Greta glances at her watch for the tenth time. It’s eight-thirty. Everyone is there except Magma. Magma knows that Greta runs her dinners like clockwork: Invited for seven forty-five. Sit down at eight-thirty. That way everybody’s out by ten or ten-thirty. No one wants a late weeknight. It also helps her chef, whose delicious concoctions depend on perfect timing.

  Greta invites her old friend Magma to every single one of her dinners, even though it’s always a major pain in the ass to find an extra man for a single, older woman. Tonight, Greta’s dredged up an eligible for Magma—no easy feat in a town where unmarried heterosexual men are rarer than legal parking spaces. He’s a writer named Brent Hobbs. Greta sat next to Hobbs at a recent charity event. The forty-ish Hobbs made a small splash some years ago with a book on the mortgage crisis called Complicity. He has since descended into the blogosphere with a site called HobbsNobbing, where he spices up financial news with gossip.

  Greta went out on a limb calling Hobbs out of the blue. But Sunderland once mentioned Hobbs’ book on the country’s near economic collapse was one that, “got it right,” and she always likes to surprise her guest of honor in some interesting way. Thus she invited him. Plus, Greta knows that great hostesses have to be vampires, ever in search of new blood to keep their parties lively.

  Greta figured Magma, too, would relish the prospect of meeting a smart, heterosexual, younger man—Magma being a widow with lusty appetites. Yet how has her friend repaid her? By being late. At eight-thirty-five Greta instructs Martyn to tell the chef they will sit down.

  He gives her a solemn nod. Words are not necessary. He understands his employer perfectly. They will start without Mrs. Hartz. Martyn has been her butler for over twenty years. Friends and parties come and go. He stays.

  As guests are being served the first course in the candlelit dining room, Magma makes a breathy entrance.

  “Hello, everybody! So sorry to be late. But I was at The Four Seasons today. I saw the whole thing! I’m an absolute wreck!” Magma says, raking a hand through her thick, dyed-blond hair.

  Greta doesn’t think her friend looks a wreck. In fact, Magma’s glowing with excitement. Her round face is flushed, her kohl-rimmed blue eyes are sparkling, and she’s wearing a dress that leaves little of her ample cleavage to the imagination. Tonight she looks more like her sexy, youthful self than ever.

  Greta and Magma have known each other for ages. They met back in the day while working at Glamour. Magma wrote features for the magazine and Greta was the assistant beauty editor. They hit it off immediately and stayed in touch through the years, speaking the shorthand of true friends. They’ve gone through good times and bad, confiding in one another about their lives and families. They are godmothers of each other’s children. Both women are widows now. But Greta is a rich widow, while Magma must scrape by on her late husband’s service benefits, plus what she gets for the articles she writes for women’s magazines. But there’s very little money in that. Who wants beauty and fashion tips from an older widow?

  Magma is seated next to Brent Hobbs, who seems even more taken with her ample bosom than with the caviar blinis. Their flirtatious conversation is quickly interrupted by guests demanding to hear Magma’s account of the shooting. Sensing she is the star of the evening, Magma holds forth, describing Maud’s journey to Sunderland’s table step by long-winded step until—gasp!—bang!

  “My old and dear friend! Shot! I saw him being carried out on a stretcher!” She bursts into tears.

  The first time Magma bursts into tears the guests are moved by her dramatic ordeal. The second time she breaks down, during the entrée, they are less sympathetic. Her third outburst, during the salad course, is met with stony stares. By the time the Grand Marnier soufflé arrives, people wish to hell Magma had gone to some other fucking restaurant. They resent their hostess for allowing a conversational terrorist to hijack the evening and take it down with her in flames. Magma keeps saying, “It all happened so fast.” Yet her retelling has taken a decade.

  The weary, despondent guests leave right after dinner—all except Magma and Brent Hobbs, who is now drunkenly diving into Magma’s cleavage with the same gusto he dived into the boeuf-a-la-mode. Greta’s polite hostess façade crumbles.

  “If you two want a bed, the guest room’s upstairs—second door on the left. I’m done!” she announces, knowing Sun isn’t the only casualty of this ghastly day.

  Chapter Eight

  Poker has its own moral universe. Lying is called bluffing. Deception is the norm. I entered that amoral sphere without actually realizing it until it was too late. At first, poker was simply good theatre: Every hand a scene, every player an actor. Time flowed differently at the tables. Playing poker was the only way I was able to forget my problems for long stretches of time. I didn’t understand how profoundly the game was changing me until the change was complete.

  I’ve played poker with everyone from a Supreme Court Justice to the guy who delivers takeout from a greasy spoon in D.C. I’ve learned tricks and strategies from people who make their living at the game, and, in some cases, at even dicier careers as well. For example, when I told people Burt Sklar was a swindler, a guy I played with offered to “take care” of him for me if I just said the word. I didn’t take him up on his kind offer mainly because the theft of money simply wasn’t a strong enough motive for me to exact such a terrible revenge. I didn’t know then what I know now. Then, I just felt sorry for myself.

  I used to come home to my tiny apartment after a long day doing grunt work, and surf the web, obsessing over how I ever let a con man like Burt Sklar into our lives. One evening, just by chance, I discovered Pokerstars, a site where you could play poker online for fake chips. Remembering those comforting old times when I played cards with my dear grandmother, I logged on and started playing No Limit Texas Hold’em—definitely not my granny’s poker.

  But here’s the thing: On the Internet I wasn’t Maud Warner, an old bag in curlers and fuzzy slippers sitting in front of my computer with a bag of potato chips and a Coke. On the Internet, I was “BluffaloBill237,” a disaffected, unemployed construction worker, who was mad, bad, and dangerous to play with. I amassed so many fake chips I figured this game was definitely for me. It wasn’t long before I started playing for real money. I was very lucky at first and made enough in cash games and in tournaments to quit my dumb office job and play poker all day.

  I hid behind this male persona until one cool Friday morning in April when I logged on to Pokerstars as usual to play a tourney. To my horror, the entire site was shut down. April 15, 2011, known to poker players as “Black Friday,” is the day that lives in poker infamy. Citing banking and gambling law violations, the United States Department of Justice had issued an indictment against the three biggest online poker sites in the country. Playing online poker for real money in America was effectively over.

  I went into withdrawal. I needed poker like an addict needs a fix. Then I ran into an acquaintance who told me he could get me into a home game run by a pal of his named Billy Jakes. I was so desperate I agreed to try it, even though I was scared as hell to play live poker where people could see me as I really am: An older woman.

  The first time I played at his house—the Poker Palace, as it was nicknamed—Billy saw that I was nervous and was very patient as I fumbled my chips and occasionally bet out of turn. After the game, he took me aside and told me he had watched me play. He said I had great card sense but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. He said he could give me a couple of lessons in No Limit Hold’em, if I wanted. I accepted with pleasure.

  Billy became my mentor and a good friend. Pretty soon we were driving to casinos together, playing cash games and tournaments. During those long drives, we lea
rned a lot about each other’s lives. Billy was a stand-up guy I could trust. I knew he’d come to my rescue now.

  I look up from my table and see Billy staring at me across the poker room. There’s deep consternation in his boyish face. I acknowledge him with a slight nod. We’ll meet outside. There are cameras everywhere. It’s important we’re not seen walking together. I play another hand, then rise and load my chips in two full racks. It’s been a profitable night.

  An irascible player I’d nicknamed Yosemite Slimebucket in my mind pipes up: “Not leavin’, are you, girly? The night is young,”

  “But I’m not. So long…” I want to add “Suckers!” but now is not the time.

  I cash in my chips at the cage. Billy is waiting for me in his car on the service road outside the casino.

  “Thanks for coming, Billy.” I buckle up in the passenger seat.

  “I must be crazy,” he says.

  “What’s the news?”

  “You’re the news, Maudie!”

  “No, I mean, Sunderland. Is he dead?”

  Billy looks at me askance. “Jesus! Do you want him to be? He’s in intensive care. What the hell were you were thinking?”

  “An eye for an eye…?” I say like it’s a question.

  Poor Billy’s waiting for me to elaborate.

  “That’s it?” he says at last. “That’s all you’re gonna say about shooting a guy in cold blood? Did you even mean to shoot Sunderland? I thought Sklar’s the one you hate so much.”

  I pause for a moment. “Let me ask you something, Billy: Who’s your worst enemy at the poker table?”

  “What? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Just answer the question, Billy. Who?”

  Billy sighs in exasperation. “I dunno…the asshole who always raises your big blind.”

  “Yourself,” I correct him. “You are your own worst enemy—in poker and in life.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that if you don’t know yourself very well, you’ll always lose. Believe it or not, that is the single most valuable lesson I ever learned from poker.”

  Billy is shaking his head. “Oh really? Well, then, who the hell are you, Maud Warner? The woman who’s been my closest friend and confidant for the last five years? Or the lunatic who just shot the Pope of Finance in a restaurant?”

  “Can’t I be both?”

  I turn away and stare out the window at the neon-pricked night whizzing by. It’s good to be free and not cooped up in some cell, as I expected. We drive in silence the rest of the way to Washington. Forty minutes later, we pull up in front of Billy’s two-story brick house on a tree-lined, residential street off Nebraska Avenue. Billy sneaks me in through the Poker Palace entrance.

  I walk through the converted garage feeling nostalgic for the times I played there. The brick walls are decorated with poker memorabilia, including large framed photos of famous old-time poker players like Doyle Brunson and Stu Unger. Baseball caps from various casinos hang on hooks. A neon sign on the mantelpiece shimmers with four aces. There’s an open kitchen with a stove, sink, refrigerator, and microwave oven, plus a long refectory table for setting up food. A water cooler nestles in one corner. A large plasma TV hangs on a wall. I run my fingers lightly over one of two casino-quality felt-lined poker tables, thinking of all the fun I had there before I got so hooked on the game I needed to play a lot more than once a month. Like a true addict, I needed the fix of a game that ran every day—a dangerous, illegal game, which is as far from the Poker Palace as Chateau Lafitte is from rotgut.

  The phone is ringing as we enter the main house.

  “Betcha this is Gloria from Madrid… ’Lo?” he says, answering in a fake sleepy voice.

  I hear Gloria’s excited voice shrieking through the line. Billy makes faces at me as he tries to calm his wife down. He finally hangs up the phone.

  “Hola. They know all about you in Spain,” he deadpans.

  “What else did she say?”

  “Basically, that if I heard from you, I was to give you her love. And turn you in.”

  “I don’t blame her.”

  Billy heaves a beleaguered sigh. “The guest room’s upstairs. Glo gets back in two weeks. You’ve gotta be gone by then.”

  Billy gives me an old nightgown of Gloria’s to sleep in and some toiletries. I’m pretty beat. Still, it’s so good to be free, sleeping in a nice cozy bed instead of on a slab at Rikers. My own private tournament has begun. Having unexpectedly escaped, I have time to monitor the situation, to see if everyone has as strong a stomach as I do. Will they play their hands like champions? I’m counting on it.

  I told them many times, “No matter what happens…don’t fold.”

  Chapter Nine

  Jean Sunderland awakes from a fitful sleep in the drab hospital waiting room. She glances at her watch. It’s past two in the morning. She gets up to stretch her legs. She walks slowly up and down the hospital corridor, reminding herself that she’s a strong woman.

  Jean had a big life before she ever met Sun. As the young creative director of Streeter/Greene, Jean was viewed as a successful woman who didn’t need a man to fulfill her. She appeared supremely happy with her life. All the women’s magazines held her up as an icon for The New Independent Woman. Like the advertising woman she was, she knew that image is all—except when you go home to an empty house. Success cools the more you cling to it for warmth.

  Much as she hated to admit it, there were times when she’d have traded her brilliant career for a wonderful man who would take care of her. She knew how pathetic it was to feel this way, particularly for a woman who’d made her reputation on being a staunch advocate for women’s rights. But she couldn’t help herself. Jean understood the Prince Charming fairy tale to her core—which is why she was so good at selling it to others.

  When Sun Sunderland came courting her, she felt blessed. He rescued her from the deep loneliness which had shadowed her for as long as she could remember. She embarked on what she now thought of as her real life at last, brimming with fun and friends and experiences, with a man she adored and admired. Separately they were each very successful. Together they were a power couple. The Sunderlands. A brand.

  Back in the waiting room, Jean sees she’s not alone. A dark-haired young woman in large insect eye sunglasses, wearing a short patent leather raincoat and matching boots, sits cross-legged, tapping her long red nails on the sides of her chair. She seems both bored and anxious. Jean sits down a decorous distance away. They respect each other’s space by not speaking.

  Jean checks her iPhone. There are too many e-mails and messages to count. She feels overwhelmed. She shuts off the phone, debating whether to go downstairs and get some coffee. Just then, a young resident comes in. Jean perks up. He glances around.

  “Which one of you is Mrs. Sunderland?”

  Jean and the young woman bolt up simultaneously, answering in unison: “I am!”

  Jean says gently, “He’s asking for me, dear. I’m Mrs. Sunderland.”

  “So am I.”

  “Excuse me?” Jean says with an appalled little laugh.

  Who is this woman? A reporter? A kook? Who?

  The young woman lowers her sunglasses and stares at Jean for a brief moment. Glimpsing bloodshot, mascara-smeared eyes, Jean knows there’s a real story here, one she’s not going to like.

  “I’m sorry you had to find out this way,” the young woman says softly.

  “Are you mad?” Jean cries.

  The young woman turns to the doctor. “Take us both in, please.”

  The doctor doesn’t know where to look. Med school doesn’t adequately prepare you for the psychological dramas of the profession. Only TV soap operas do that. All this poor guy knows is that a critically ill patient is asking for his wife, and there seems to be two of them in the
waiting room.

  “Look, we don’t have a lot of time here,” he says. “Both of you come with me. You ladies can sort it out later.”

  The two women follow him down the corridor into the ICU. Several minutes later, Jean Sunderland emerges in tears.

  Alone.

  Chapter Ten

  Greta is sound asleep when her phone rings. She fumbles for it, murmuring a sleepy, “’Lo?”

  “Greta, it’s me. I’m downstairs. Can I come up?”

  Greta recognizes Jean’s distraught voice. She perks up immediately. “Of course, darling! I’m right here. Tell the doorman it’s fine.”

  Greta throws on the pink cashmere robe that’s always laid out on her divan. As she waits for the elevator, she prepares herself to hear that Sun is dead. Why else would Jean seek solace at this ungodly hour in the morning? When Jean steps off the elevator, Greta throws her arms around her dear friend.

  “Jeanie! Sweetheart! I’m so, so sorry!”

  Jean stares at Greta with rat-red eyes. Greta has never seen Jean look quite so upset and bedraggled—not even three summers ago in Southampton when Jean got caught in a riptide and almost drowned. Greta leads Jean into the bedroom and sits down with her on the divan.

  “Talk to me, Jeanie,” Greta says, wrapping a consoling arm around her friend.

  Jean doesn’t answer. Finally, with the solemnity of an undertaker, Greta ventures, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Worse,” Jean says.

  “Oh no…! Paralyzed? A coma?”

  Jean heaves a weary sigh. “I need a drink. Have you got any scotch?”

  “Of course, darling.”

  Greta scurries to the library bar and fetches the Balvenie. She pours Jean a glass. Jean swills it down in gulps, like it’s iced tea on a sweltering day. Greta doesn’t say a word as she watches her friend slowly relax into the divan. She senses Jean is gathering her thoughts. Greta is very good at waiting for people to say what’s on their minds. That’s why she’s such a great friend: She knows when to shut up.