The Twelfth Deck

A Dusty Hipster Story by Author Michelle Minnig

Crane Miller began his shift at midnight and entered the storeroom to start his inventory count. Fred Browning had the floor staff at Top O’ Hill audit the storeroom every two hours, so Crane would be counting it twice more before his shift ended at 5:00 AM. As he tallied the clay poker chips stacked in their solid mahogany racks, he heard thunder rumble in the distance. The count on the chips matched the previous log, so he moved on to the boxes of custom-printed playing cards.Browning had a fresh delivery of personally designed Top O’ Hill playing cards dropped off every two months, each shipment sporting a slightly updated back design. The level of scrutiny felt extreme to Crane—especially counting card stock every two hours—but Browning ran the underground casino tighter than a prison, and that ironclad security was precisely why the place had never been successfully raided by the police.The inventory sheet had three distinct entries for playing cards: cartons (sealed wooden crates holding twelve bricks each), bricks (twelve individual decks wrapped in heavy paper), and loose decks set aside for immediate floor rotation. He counted three sealed cartons—a match. Eight paper bricks—also a match. But when he reached the loose decks on the worktray, he counted only eleven.Crane felt his throat tighten as he stared down at the inventory log. He counted them again, sliding his finger across the cellophaned edges. Still eleven. He checked the line on the sheet once more, where the handwritten number 12 silently shouted back at him.This was going to be one doozy of a night.Crane stepped out of the storeroom. He scanned the crowded room until he spotted Browning standing near the roulette table. He swiftly walked directly to his boss and nervously delivered the news in a hushed tone.Browning's eyebrows lowered and his jaw stiffened as Crane informed him of the missing deck. He left Crane's eyes and immediately scanned the room. There hadn’t been an unmatched inventory in five years. The last time it happened, it turned out to be a miscount by an inexperienced floor clerk whom Browning had threatened within an inch of his life. Jerry Pence had taken the next train out of town and never returned to Tarrant County again.“Who did the last count?” Browning asked in a low quiet voice that somehow projected over the casino noise and rattled Crane’s eardrum.“Tom Clark, sir,” Crane instantly replied.“Find him and bring him to the office.” Browning ordered.As Crane rushed off to carry out his assignment, Browning noticed Sterling Brite standing up at the table Chadwick Vance had reserved. The five men at the table were enjoying their annual Halloween poker game—a tradition the World War I unit had held at Top O’ Hill for at least a decade.As Sterling stood over the table, Browning noticed his jacket pocket was hanging lower than it should. He could distinctly make out the rectangular outline of something inside.There was a loud crack of thunder as Browning headed toward their table.Chadwick saw Fred Browning approaching and thought the owner was stopping by to give them a typical greeting, but something in Fred’s eyes made him uneasy. Browning stopped at the table, right between Sheldon and Cooper.“Good evening, gentlemen,” Browning said in a patron’s cordial way. Then, looking straight at Sterling, he added, “Mr. Brite, would you mind sitting down and emptying your right jacket pocket?”Sterling’s confusion instantly transformed to fear when he reached into a pocket he knew was empty and pulled out an unopened deck of cards. For once, the silver-tongued lawyer was at a loss for words. He carefully read Browning’s face and looked around the table at his closest friends. Even the truth wasn’t going to protect them from whatever punishment Browning had planned. The hard, cold truth was that he had no idea how the deck got into his pocket.Browning saw Crane and Tom Clark heading toward the office and motioned across the room for them. The men hurried to his side.“Round up the boys and send them to the loading dock,” Browning directed. Crane glanced momentarily at the men at the table and felt a sharp pang of sympathy for what he knew they had coming.Browning walked around the table to Sterling, held out a demanding hand to retrieve the deck of cards, and said with cold calmness, “Gentlemen, could you please join me outside to discuss how an unopened deck of our signature cards happens to be in your possession?”A flash of lightning lit up the sky as Browning opened a side door next to the bar.The men walked single file through the right side of the double delivery doors as heavy raindrops pelted the flagstone surface outside. A second flash of lightning revealed eight men standing side by side under the timber awning near the edge of the receiving dock.Once they were all outside, Browning closed the door. Sterling and his friends turned to face him with the shadowy figures at their backs. Sterling had dealt with stern men like Browning in legal disputes between ruthless oil barons and hardened ranchers. This man wasn’t going to tolerate proclamations of innocence or wild stories. The lawyer knew his best option was stating the truth in as few words as possible.Browning took a step toward Sterling, closing the distance between them to roughly twelve inches. Sterling swallowed hard as the man trespassed into his personal space. Browning stared him directly in the eye and, in the same cold tone he had used at the table, asked, “Mr. Brite, how did our cards make it into your pocket?”Sterling resisted the urge to shift his eyes. Without breaking the man’s stare, he answered, “I don’t know.”Browning took a step back, looking down as he scratched his chin. He had scrutinized Sterling’s gambling technique many times, proud of his ability to spot every tell in the lawyer’s arsenal. Browning was entirely sure the man standing before him was telling the truth.He motioned for one of his men to come over. Grady McCuller steadily lumbered to his boss’s side. Sterling was close enough to hear Browning over the rain as he told the man to “give them a light beating and then drop them off on Division Street.”Sterling was relieved. Walking away with a couple bumps and bruises was the lightest punishment he had expected Browning to sentence them to.Grady McCuller was typically the man in charge when Browning doled out the order for a light beating. He had been a professional boxer until 1935, when his career came to a halt after getting caught taking a dive in the Donny O’Shea fight. Grady would have rather beaten O’Shea senseless, but he’d needed the money to fund a trip to Vegas for a bout his promoter promised against Max Baer—a fight guaranteed to pay top dollar. Since then, he had earned the nickname “Shady Grady” and had become a pariah, blacklisted from professional fighting.Browning had a strict definition for what a “light beating” meant: scrapes and bruises, but no broken bones. The message was simple—don’t talk, and don’t come back. Grady’s time in the ring had perfected the precise power and placement of a punch needed to deliver Browning’s message.Sterling took a hit to the ribs. Pain radiated through his side, but he could tell the giant of a man had pulled the punch. He stood back up straight and, without resistance, waited for the next blow. He could only hope his friends would read his compliance and follow suit so this would all be over quickly.The next blow was a short hook straight to the pit of his gut. The impact to his solar plexus dropped him to his hands and knees, clutching his ribs and gasping for air.From above he heard Sheldon yell, “Stop!”With the wind knocked out of him, Sterling couldn’t speak. All he could do was desperately wave a hand, pleading for his friend to back down.With the resistance flag raised, Browning’s muscle stepped forward and immediately pinned the four remaining men by the arms. Grady closed the space between himself and Sheldon, looming over the smaller man.“What did you say?” Grady asked, in a voice that barreled over the drumming rain.Sheldon, with his college professor instincts, replied, “Please stop! Let’s be reasonable.”But Sheldon had no idea how reasonable Grady was being, or how light a hand he was using to execute his boss’s order. Grady let a small plume of rage waft into his fist as his right hook slammed into the side of Sheldon’s head. Maybe this would teach the professor a thing or two about what reasonable meant at Top O’ Hill Terrace.Sheldon dropped. The other twelve men on the loading dock watched and waited, hearing only the sound of the rain. Ten seconds passed. Nothing. Grady knew he had hit him hard, but that punch shouldn’t have knocked the man out cold.Five more seconds passed before Cooper realized what had happened. The blow had driven a piece of shrapnel—which triage doctors in France couldn't safely retrieve during the war—straight into Sheldon's brain.Sheldon wasn’t getting up.Cooper tore himself free from Drake Miller's grip and lunged at Grady, driving his hands straight for the ex-boxer’s throat. Drake didn't hesitate. Smoothly drawing his Colt .38 Special from its side holster, he stepped to the side of the struggling men. He pressed the snub barrel to the side of Cooper’s skull, and pulled the trigger.Again, the men waited in silence to see if the storm had muffled the gunshot, or if Browning would appear furious at the delivery door. Ten more seconds went by, and the door remained shut.Enis and Chadwick were still in the grip of the guards. They both cried out, but their voices were swallowed by the pounding rain. Grady and Drake knew they had to work fast. Together, they hauled Cooper and Sheldon’s bodies to the edge and shoved them over the side of the receiving dock into the mud below. The rain was already washing away the blood pooling on the flagstone from the bullet hole in Cooper’s head.Drake Miller had been a merchant marine before meeting Fred Browning at the Club Villa Madrid in Lake Charles. Browning had been en route to New Orleans to inspect new roulette table designs at H.C. Evans and Company. Drake’s brother, Crane, was managing the floor at the Villa Madrid casino, and Drake happened to be on shore leave at the bar when Browning took the stool beside him.With Grady leading the way, the men headed toward the creek. As Sterling was forcibly marched forward with Drake's gun to his head, his breathing steadied and his voice returned. Taking a deep breath, Sterling asked the man behind him, “Have you thought about how Fred is going to react to all of this?”“I’d imagine he’ll be pretty mad,” Drake replied dryly.Good—Sterling had him talking. “Well, what if Sheldon and Cooper died on Division Street after you dropped them off?”There were local rumors that Browning's goons dropped broken cheaters off on Division Street. The area was dangerous at night. Most made it home okay, but there were occasional gang shootings.“I’m listening,” Drake said.Sterling felt a small spark of relief. The storm was starting to pass, and he could hear the rushing water of the overflowing creek as they approached. He remembered the water injunction suit he had defended the previous year and that Johnson Creek emptied into the Trinity River. With the water this high after the storm, the bodies would wash miles down the river.“What if we file a police report stating our friends Sheldon and Cooper were stopped by thugs who demanded their wallets?” Sterling proposed. “When they resisted, they were shot, and the gangsters took off with them in the trunk.”“Why would they believe that?” Drake asked.Sterling knew it wasn’t the best story, but it didn’t have to be. “Because three respectable war veterans file a police report that it happened that way.”“But your mouthy friend wasn’t shot,” Drake sneered, pushing Sterling forward.Sterling fought back his emotions. “No, but if you shoot him now in the exact spot where he was hit, it’ll look like the bullet killed him. If the bodies are dumped in the creek, they may not be found for years. If they are, the police report will already be on file, and it’ll be a closed case. Browning never has to know anything went wrong.”Sterling hated the idea of Cooper and Sheldon’s bodies being thrown into Johnson Creek like dead fish, but he could deal with that later if he and his two remaining best friends survived this.Drake called one of the other men over to hold Sterling and pulled Grady aside. Sterling couldn’t hear them over the water, but they appeared to be weighing his proposal. When Drake finished talking, Grady nodded. The two men were in agreement. Sterling, Chadwick and Enis were being held along the side of the creek when the two men approached.Drake stood before the three friends with a crooked smile. “You’re right. It would be better if Browning didn’t find out about this.”Sterling let out a breath and gave a small, confident glance to the men beside him.“But we don’t need a police report.”Sterling saw the gun rise an instant before Drake shot Enis and Chadwick point-blank in the forehead. Drake stepped forward to look Sterling dead in the eye as the lawyer's relief transformed to dread.“The story works better if you’re all in the river.”At 2:26 AM, Crane finished his second count of the casino storeroom. The twelfth deck had been returned, and the log was balanced. He hung the clipboard on the hook near the door and returned to the floor.His brother was back, sitting at the bar. Drake’s shift normally ended at two, and tonight was no exception. Crane walked over, curious about what had played out on the delivery dock.“So, what happened to the guys with the card deck?” he asked.Drake raised his glass. “We gave ’em a light beating and dumped ’em off on Division.”As Drake knocked back a sip of bourbon, Crane noticed a dark powder burn on the right cuff of his white shirt.