Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker
416
Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker
416eBook
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Overview
Rough sex, black magic, murder, and the science-and eros-of gambling meet in the ultimate book about Las Vegas
James McManus was sent to Las Vegas by Harper's to cover the World Series of Poker in 2000, especially the mushrooming progress of women in the $23 million event, and the murder of Ted Binion, the tournament's prodigal host, purportedly done in by a stripper and her boyfriend with a technique so outré it took a Manhattan pathologist to identify it. Whether a jury would convict the attractive young couple was another story altogether.
McManus risks his entire Harper's advance in a long-shot attempt to play in the tournament himself. Only with actual table experience, he tells his skeptical wife, can he capture the hair-raising brand of poker that determines the world champion. The heart of the book is his deliciously suspenseful account of the tournament itself-the players, the hand-to-hand combat, and his own unlikely progress in it.
Written in the tradition of The Gambler and The Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street is a high-stakes adventure, a penetrating study of America's card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one man's effort to understand what Edward O. Wilson has called "Pleistocene exigencies"-the eros and logistics of our primary competitive instincts.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780374706203 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2007 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 416 |
| Sales rank: | 548,053 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
James McManus is a novelist and poet, and most recently the winner of the Peter Lisagor Award for sports journalism. He teaches writing and comparative literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, including a course on the literature and science of poker.
James McManus is a novelist and poet, most recently winner of the Peter Lisagor Award for sports journalism. He teaches writing and comparative literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, including a course on the literature and science of poker. He is the author of Positively Fifth Street.
Read an Excerpt
Positively Fifth Street
By James McManus
Picador
Copyright © 2007 James McManusAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-374-70620-3
CHAPTER 1
THE END
Sex is a Nazi. The students all knew this at your school. To it, everyone's subhuman for parts of their lives. Some are all their lives. You'll be one of those if these things worry you.
—LES MURRAY, "Rock Music"
Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here ...
—LADY MACBETH
A nubile blonde squats on her boyfriend's bare chest and he's too stoned to do much about it. Nipple clamps? No sir, not this time. Even one would just be, like, way generous. Seizing him by the neck with both hands, she raises her shins from the carpet and presses her full dead weight onto his rib cage and solar plexus, forcing more air from his lungs. How's that feel? As she rocks back and forth, they lock eyes. "You like that?" she asks, flirty as ever. "How come?" Her name is Sandra Murphy. When she wears clothes, her taste runs to Gucci, Victoria's Secret, Versace. Her latest ride is the SL 500, in black. She used to work at a high-end sports car emporium in Long Beach, so she knows what the good stuff is. After that gig she moved to Las Vegas and danced topless professionally, but she hasn't had to work in three years—not since she danced for the guy she is currently laying her hands on. "My old man," she calls him sometimes, or "my husband," especially since she moved in. And she would sort of like to get married. Settle down, kids, that whole deal. Not right now, though. Because you, you've got time, as Liz Phair advises in "Polyester Bride," one of Sandy's all-time favorite songs. Time to get rich, see the world, party hearty. And lately she's been having the time of her used-to-be- not-so-great life. Million-dollar mansion, cute boyfriend, bionic sex, Benz, plus she's keeping her looks, above all. That's the key. In 1989 she was runner-up for the title of Miss Bellflower, a south-central suburb of Los Angeles. That was nine years ago, when Sandy was seventeen, but she maintains her dancer's physique by working out five days a week, and she still keeps the sash in her closet. Most men, her boyfriend included, cannot get enough of her, especially the way she looks now. She is lithe, wet, determined, on top.
The boyfriend, Ted Binion, is heaving for air. He used to run the Horseshoe Casino with his father and brother, but those days are long gone. The Nevada State Gaming Commission threw its Black Book at Ted a few months ago, banning him from even setting foot in his family's venerable gaming house. Plus his heroin habit has been shutting him down sexually, closing him off from the world, getting him into real fixes. He's promised himself, promised Sandy, promised just about everyone (at least three or four times) that he's going to kick, stick to booze, but he isn't so sure that he can anymore. What he is goddamn sure of is that he's in serious pain. In fact, he could die any moment here. Wrenched into a bone-on-metal knot against the small of his back, his wrists are fastened together with the rhinestone-studded handcuffs he and Sandy picked up a few months ago at a boutique in Caesars Palace, down on the Strip. Clamps, thumbcuffs, clothespins, wet strips of rawhide—this stuff has been part of their routine since they first got together, a day he's exhausted from cursing. It was part of what got them together, but whose fault was that? They'd always loved boosting their pain-pleasure thresholds with pot, XTC, Ketel martinis, tequila, sometimes bringing one or two of Sandy's girlfriends into the picture. This time Sandy got the drop on him, and she's used it to cross a big line. Ted doesn't have too much fight left, however, so there isn't much else he can do about it. Fifty-five years old, he's been smoking cigarettes, using street drugs, and drinking extravagantly since he was a teenager. Right now—just after nine on the morning of September 17, 1998—he has three balloons' worth of tar heroin and eighty-two Xanax in his stomach and large intestine, some of it already coursing through his arteries, triggering the soporific enzymes he was hoping this time wouldn't take. He's always had a weakness for what he calls Sandy's pretty titties, and he's getting an eyeful right now, whether he wants to or not. In spite of the Xanax, the heroin, and the fact that she's choking him—maybe these things have all canceled each other, he thinks, like waves out of phase—there's really no denying the low, distant stir of an erection. It's a million miles away now, thank God, already receding at the speed of light squared ...
Because Sandy's new boyfriend, Rick Tabish, kneels on the carpet behind Binion's head, facing Sandy. Standing up, Rick is tall, dark, and, to Sandy's mind, handsome. Six two, two thirty, with springy hair, beady brown eyes. Plenty strong. A star linebacker in high school and college back in Montana, he is now thirty-three, getting soft through the middle, hairline receding above his temples, developing confidence issues. For non-early bloomers, thirty-three can become the age of miracles—the time to start a family, launch a new venture, make partner, publish your first novel, even found your own worldwide religion. For the last couple of years, though, Rick's been afraid that his best days are a decade behind him, and he desperately needs to make sure that he proves himself wrong. Because what the fuck else is he doing here? People around Las Vegas know him as Ted Binion's friend. They met manning side-by-side urinals at Piero's, and since then they've partied at Delmonico's, the Voodoo Lounge, and plenty of strip clubs together, both with and without Sandy Murphy. When Ted needed a place to stash six tons of silver bullion, he hired Rick's company, MRT Transport, to dig and construct a secret underground vault on Ted's ranch in Pahrump. They used an MRT truck to haul the bars of silver from the Horseshoe's vault out to the new one, along with a few million bucks' worth of rare coins, paper currency, and $5,000 Horseshoe chips. Rick and Ted, in fact, are the only two people who know how to get at that vault. The ranch is now managed by Rick's latest partner, Boyd Mattsen, and its front gate is guarded by peacocks. The peacocks were Teddy's idea.
The story gets better and better, then worse. Much, much worse. Less than ten minutes ago, for example, Rick and Sandy tried to have sex alongside—even, for a regrettable moment or two, on top of—Ted's handcuffed torso. If junkie Ted couldn't fuck her, then Rick would take charge, and Ted would have to watch them, then die. That was their logic. Or, more accurately, their syllogism, if either of them knew what that word meant.
Ted knew. When he wasn't out (or back home) raising hell, he read books and magazines as though his life depended on it. Civil War, western history, biographies of Sherman and Grant, Carl Sandburg's biography of Lincoln. He loved local and national politics, public television, the History and Discovery channels. He even loved reading the dictionary. So exactly how had a smart guy like him gotten himself in this fix?
Ninety minutes earlier, Rick and Sandy forced him to choke down nearly half a liter of tar heroin after lacing it with a hundred and seven 50 mg Xanax tablets. They'd handcuffed him at gunpoint and told him to lie on the floor, on his back. After cursing them out, even snickering at their gall, he complied. Still wearing shorts and a navel- baring T-shirt, Sandy straddled Ted's chest and yanked up his shirt, something she'd done countless times—only now, instead of tweaking his nipples, she was pinching his nostrils together, leaving him no choice but to open his mouth. Careful not to scratch the esophagus, Rick used a turkey baster to squirt the gunky beige concoction past Ted's teeth, down his throat. The stuff reminded Sandy of melting brown pearls, like some stupid mini-sculpture you'd find in New York or LA. In the meantime, gagging and desperate, Ted was offering her $5 million to get off him, and she could tell from the sound of his voice that he meant it. He'd pay her. They could kill Rick right now in self defense, then get married, have a baby—a girl baby, maybe, named Tiffany—and never even have to talk about this crazy Rick bullshit again. All she had to do was take the 9-mm pistol they both knew was hidden in the bench of her white baby grand piano and blow Rick away. (Ted and some cops had taught her to shoot at that range, and later she'd practiced on bottles and cacti in the desert.) Ted was begging her, calling her "baby." That hurt.
Sandy's outward response was to smirk, glance at Rick, shake her head. Even so, she was tempted. As Ted kept on pleading, her jangly nerves made her cackle and pick up a cardboard Halloween goblin. The goblin, with R.I.P. stenciled across the front in white-lightning letters, was left over from last year's trick-or-treat decorations, and she thought it might add a nice touch; that's why she'd tossed it onto the sofa last night in the first place. "You're already dead," she said now, jouncing the goblin in front of both men. Even Rick, who had beaten and tortured people before to get money, was taken aback by the ghoulish dementia of this weird cardboard Totentanz. Yikes!
While Sandy puppeteered the death dance on his half-naked chest, Ted was reduced to proposing to set Rick up in a series of ad hoc construction projects, overpaying him lavishly. "Whatever you want, man. Enough to, you know, change your life."
"Change my life!?" Rick snorted, "Change my life?!" while Sandy jeered, "Rest in peace, motherfucker."
"I'm about to start laying the pipe to your wife," Rick added more coolly, making the rhyme without meaning to. He undid his belt. "Keep laying the pipe to her, Teddy, is what I should say." And Teddy had swallowed enough of this gunk, Rick decided as he watched Sandy inch off her T-shirt. Three and a half creamy doses. If that didn't do it, then fuck him.
But the plan to sexually taunt their handcuffed friend while he slowly gave in to the drugs never quite got off the ground. Even after Sandy's elaborate striptease, Rick couldn't keep his erection "because of the vibe around here." No faggot, no warlord, Rick still had no spur (in the cowboy or Shakespearean sense) to prick the sides of his intent, but only his vaulting ambition—his ambition, punnily enough, to loot Teddy's vault, shove his prick into his woman. But his half-erect penis had accidentally grazed Ted's warm hip, zapping both men with a nastier shock than they'd get from leather soles on a carpet—this as Sandy pushed open one of Ted's eyelids, just to make sure he at least caught a glimpse of their triumph. How's about them apples, Teddy? You jealous? (Teddy Ruxpin Bear is what she called him sometimes. Not this morning.) But prick then zapped hip, just before those heart attack knocks on the glass ...
This was Tom Loveday, Ted and Sandy's gardener, rapping on the window that looked back out toward the pool. Loveday had arrived at five before nine for his regular Wednesday morning stint on their grounds that Sandy had totally spaced on. Loveday was trimming the hedges along the back of the house when he noticed that Ted's dogs, Princess and Pig, were oddly lethargic; instead of bounding up to meet him as usual, they stayed hunkered on the patio, whimpering. Loveday had already sensed something was off because the drapes of Ted's den were pulled closed for the first time in the twelve years he'd worked here. Shielding his eyes from the glare, he tried to peer into the den while rapping a knuckle against the warm glass. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he heard two muffled curses.
So now, using the thumb and index finger of his left hand, it is Rick who holds Ted's nostrils together, using his right palm to clamp the mouth shut, his knees as a vise for the head, while Sandy compresses the lungs and chokes off the windpipe. Even in his opiated and oxygen-deprived delirium, Ted flops and arches his back, bucking so furiously that Sandy slips off him. Climbing back on, she's a little freaked out that, despite what Rick promised, doing Ted has become kind of unpleasant. Rick, for his part, would love to just beat Ted to death with the butt of one of his pistols, but he knows that the marks would defeat their own purpose. This begs the question, of course, of how the threat of a gunshot or two had persuaded Binion to submit to the cuffs, not to mention his shivering embarrassment at the discovery and use of one of his sex toys. Should've let them shoot me, Ted realizes now. Would've had a better chance of making it through this and watching them pay. He also understands that because it was only yesterday that he himself scored the heroin and filled the Xanax prescription, a coroner may well declare his death an accidental OD or, worse, a suicide. The previous evening Ted had instructed his estate lawyer, James Brown: "Take Sandy out of the will if she doesn't kill me tonight. If I'm dead, you'll know what happened." Yet there may not have been enough time to execute the order; even though he'd given Brown the word, didn't testamentary amendments need a third-party witness to be legally binding? Plus Brown might've thought he was kidding! Ted changed his will all the time, and Brown often gave him a couple of days to cool off before bringing him papers to sign. Ted's net worth is between $50 and $70 million, and with Oscar Goodman representing her, Sandy might wind up with all of it; she was already getting the house and $300,000 in cash. What Ted wanted now was for every last dime to go to Bonnie, his nineteen-year-old daughter, who'd left home three weeks ago to begin her first year of college in Texas. But he didn't need to die for her to get it.
Digging his bare heels into the carpet, Ted bucks and thrashes with all he's got left, causing Rick and Sandy to step up their efforts. "Change your life!" growls Rick under his breath, viciously twisting Ted's nose. When the meat of his thumb gets smeared with wet mucus, it pisses him off even more. "That's right, you decrepit old fuck!" Sandy hangs on with her knees like she's breaking a stallion, rocking down into her grip on Ted's throat. Capillaries in his eyelids have ruptured, his face and neck brightening from pink-tan to purple. And still she holds on, keeps her balance. Rick grunts and curses through his teeth, remembering not to make noise but forgetting again when his forehead bangs hard into Sandy's. "You—fuck!" To keep from crying out herself, Sandy grinds her molars together and blinks back the sting, but the squeak and whine of her exertions go a half octave higher.
Thirty-five more airless seconds—the time it takes a boat to go under completely, for the last waves and bubbles to clear—before Ted loses consciousness, though his thigh and neck muscles continue to spasm. Misreading these as further resistance, his tormentors keep rocking forward. Sandy leans a bit to her left, and Rick to his left, so their heads won't collide anymore.
A long minute later: no heartbeat, no spasms. Something else, though. Something so bad Sandy yelps. Breathing through their mouths, she and Rick have little choice but to listen as Ted's bowel gurgles and splutters, the appalling sounds audible above the buzz of Loveday's hedge clippers out beyond the swimming pool. Even so, Rick keeps the pressure on Ted's nose and mouth, just in case the fucker's playing possum. Sandy hopes Rick will stop now, let go, but says nothing. They glance into each other's eyes, then away. Rick believes Sandy is crying. Both of them are happy, at least, to hear no more knocks on the window.
They take off the handcuffs. One to an ankle, they drag the body across the room and arrange it faceup on a sleeping mat. They intend to make it appear as though Ted had been watching TV as he turned out the lights on himself. Classic rock videos? Porn? Unable to find what they want, Rick turns off the set. They arrange Ted's black Levi's, his loafers, an almost full pack of Vantage cigarettes, three lighters, the remote control, and the empty Xanax bottle—all within easy arm's reach of the mat. But now they discover the trail, a dark, wet, brown dotted line across the moth-colored carpet. At first Tabish thought it was gunk that had spilled from the baster, but no. Murphy understood right away.
Another thing creeping them out is that Ted isn't moving. At all. A volcano two minutes ago, now nothing. Extinct. The stillness and silence make them leery of even glancing in his direction, yet how can they not? Tabish has personally never seen the cocksucker looking so dignified. To Murphy, Ted seems—what is the word for it?
Regal.
"Your boyfriend is leaking," notes Tabish.
Murphy laughs, catching herself. "Not funny," she says.
It takes them a good twenty minutes to expunge the dark trail—no soap, just a couple of rags and warm water—but they won't be able to tell how thorough they were until that area of carpeting dries. Murphy composes herself, calls the housekeeper, Mary Montoya-Gascoigne. Adopting her lady-of-the-house persona, she tells her maid not to come to work today because "Ted isn't feeling well." Trying to think even further ahead, like a lawyer, she asks herself: Isn't that technically accurate?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Positively Fifth Street by James McManus. Copyright © 2007 James McManus. Excerpted by permission of Picador.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,THE END,
DEAD MONEY,
FAMILY, CAREER, EVEN LIFE,
BLACK MAGIC,
URGE OVERKILL,
THE POKER OF SCIENCE,
NOBODY SAID ANYTHING,
CHICKS WITH DECKS,
DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON,
BOOK-LEARNED,
ON THE BUBBLE,
SONG FOR TWO JIMS,
TENSION-DISCHARGE,
THE LAST SUPPER,
EITHER WAY,
ZOMBIES IS BAWTH OF'EM,
TONS AND TONS OF LUCK,
AFTERWORD,
Additional Praise for Positively Fifth Street,
ALSO BY JAMES McMANUS,
About the Author,
POKER TERMINOLOGY,
BIBLIOGRAPHY,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
INDEX,
Copyright Page,
Related Subjects
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