For the Balance of a Heart: A Poker Boy Story Read online

“And how could we cross over?” Screamer added.

  Before Stan could answer, Madge appeared carrying milkshakes, the drink of choice for all of us when working on a case.

  “You guys talking about going over into the shadow world?” Madge asked as she put the milkshakes in front of us.

  Mine was vanilla with whipped cream stacked high. I really wasn’t in the mood for a milkshake, but I forced myself to take a taste anyway. It was as wonderful as usual. I had no doubt that if this meeting kept going for another ten minutes, I would down the entire thing.

  Patty nodded thanks to Madge for the milkshake, then answered her question. “We’re just discussing if Helen crossing over would cause the connection between here and her mother to be broken.”

  “In some extreme areas of the shadow world, I suppose it might,” Madge said. “But I honestly doubt it.”

  “I agree,” Stan said.

  Madge went on as she moved around the table delivering our shakes. “I’ve worked both sides of the line over the years. Not much purposely crosses the line because that line is always moving for everyone.”

  “She’s right,” Stan said. “Every action, every reaction by everyone moves the line for that person.”

  I was so confused I just wanted to slump down into the booth and cover my head. So I focused on the first question that came to mind.

  “Madge, what’s it like living on the other side of the line?”

  “Exactly the same as here,” she said, finishing putting out the milkshakes, napkins, straws and spoons for everyone. “You can’t tell the difference, actually. It’s the same world.”

  Banging my head on the table would probably do no good, but I sure felt like doing that. And clearly Stan read me like a book.

  “You ever sat at a poker table with a cheater?” Stan asked me.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “How about a guy who couldn’t buy a good card if his life depended on it, or played just a little too long and lost all his money.”

  “Sure,” I said. “A normal table.”

  “They are living on the other side of the line,” Stan said. “At least for their time at the table.”

  “So the shadow side isn’t an actual place?” Screamer asked just slightly before I could.

  “Yin-Yang,” Madge said. “They both exist together and one could not exist without the other. Although I have to admit there is very little yin in this room. All yang.”

  “We all have our dark sides,” The Smoke said.

  Screamer nodded.

  “Of course you do,” Madge said. “There are no exceptions. But this group tends to not use the dark side without reason. And that’s why I like to hang around with you all. I’ve spent far too much time solidly over on the other side of that line.”

  I looked at Madge with a brand new level of respect. Some day I was going to have to ask her a ton of questions about her past.

  Patty just shook her head. “So if crossing the line would not normally block any connection between Helen and Laverne, and visiting her father here in Las Vegas would not do that either, what would?”

  I had the same question, but decided to ask it from another angle. I looked directly at Stan. “What exactly do you think Laverne is actually asking us to do?”

  “Go into the tunnels,” Stan said without looking at me.

  “Not me,” Madge said, turning and vanishing through the invisible door back to the Diner.

  “I cannot go down there,” The Smoke said, his eyes almost flashing anger.

  “I understand,” Stan said.

  “Well, I don’t understand much of anything we’ve been talking about,” I said. “Laverne having a daughter, Laverne being married, yin-yang, and now tunnels. My head is starting to hurt. So would someone who understands these tunnels please explain them to me? Slowly.”

  Before anyone could say a word, Laverne appeared back in the chair at the end of the booth. She looked at Stan, her eyes intense. “You believe Helen might have actually gone down into the tunnels?”

  “It would seem to be the only logical conclusion I’m afraid,” Stan said.

  “I came to the same conclusion,” Lady Luck said and sat back, clearly shaken.

  These tunnels, whatever they are, must be something very nasty to have Lady Luck act like that.

  “I was so hoping it wasn’t going to be that,” she said. Then she took a deep breath and looked at Stan. “Explain to Poker Boy and his team everything you can about the tunnels and I’ll go talk with Helen’s father. I’ll see if he has any suggestions or has heard from Helen. I would imagine he’s getting as worried as I am.”

  With that she vanished again.

  The Smoke pushed to the end of the booth and stood. “I am sorry, I cannot help with the tunnels.”

  “I understand,” Stan said.

  I stared at The Smoke as he moved around the booth and vanished into the doorway to the Diner. I considered The Smoke one of the bravest I had ever met. And now he didn’t seem to be afraid either. There was something else.

  “You want to explain what just happened?” Screamer asked Stan before I could. There were only four of us left now to try to save Lady Luck’s daughter.

  “In a very ancient agreement between gods to end a war, The Smoke’s people were banned from certain ancient cities back when the cities were inhabited. The agreement still holds even after hundreds of thousands of years.”

  “The tunnels are a part of an old city?” I asked.

  “An ancient one,” Stan said, nodding. “From the time of the Titans.”

  “I didn’t know they were real,” Patty said, saving me from asking yet another stupid question such as who were the Titans?

  “Very real,” Stan said. “Far before my time. They ruled this planet for almost two hundred thousand years, then one day they all suddenly vanished.”

  “Anyone know why?” I asked. “And I thought there were only a few of them. Why did they need cities?”

  Stan shook his head. “The myths of their leaders is all that has survived. There were millions of Titans at one point in time. They are said to have ascended to a higher plain, or went into space, or got locked up by a powerful curse in a hidden prison.”

  “And the tunnels under Las Vegas is the remains of one of their cities?” Screamer asked.

  “Actually,” Stan said, “It is their main ancient city, their capital city. It is supposed to be completely preserved. It was buried by the gods who followed them into the position of ruling the planet. No one knows why. This area holds a great deal of unseen power, which is why so many of the gods live here, and why the city of Las Vegas even exists in this dry desert.”

  “And The Smoke can’t go down there because his people got in a fight with the Titans?” Screamer asked.

  Stan shook his head. “His area of the gods and a few others fought the Giants. In one battle they destroyed part of a Titan city and were forever banned from any Titan area ever since.”

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to focus through the thousand questions to stay squarely on the task Lady Luck had given us. “So Helen might have gone down there into an ancient protected city? Would that break the connection with her and her mother?”

  “I’m assuming it would,” Stan said. “The field surrounding that huge city is very powerful.”

  “How did she find her way in there?” Patty asked.

  “Everyone knows how to get in,” Stan said. “But no one has ever figured out how to get out.”

  “Wonderful,” was all I could say.

  Chapter Three

  After a few more minutes of confusing me with more mythic history than I could begin to learn in a very long semester of college, I finally held up my hand.

  “There is only one question we don’t have an answer to,” I said. “We don’t know why Helen would go down there without a way back. What was she after?”

  At that moment Lady Luck appeared. “She went after this.”

  In
front of her and floating over the booth was an image of a golden key, turning slightly in the air. “Her father said she had been spending the last hundred years researching it and he says Helen thinks it is hidden in the old city.”

  As the key turned in the air over the table, it slowly transformed into a sneering, ugly man’s face and then back into a golden key.

  “That was one of the faces of Janus,” Lady Luck said. “The key is one of his four faces. Some believe when combined with the other three keys, it will release the Titans to return to this time and space.”

  I had scooted away from the image of the floating key and finally Lady Luck snapped it out of existence.

  “Why would she want to release the Titans?” Stan asked, his voice hushed.

  I glanced at him. Clearly there was still a lot of very real history I had to learn.

  Lady Luck sighed and dropped into the chair in front of the booth. “From what I understand, Helen has researched the Titans for centuries. Her father tells me she believes them to be an honorable race that have been unfairly imprisoned over time.”

  “And what do you believe?” I asked.

  Lady Luck shook her head. “My beliefs are of little value now. We need to go into the old city and find Helen.”

  “No!” a deep voice said from just behind Lady Luck. “You cannot go into that city and you know it.”

  A small man, not more than five feet tall and as round as a basketball stepped up and looked into Lady Luck’s eyes. If she hadn’t been sitting down, she would have towered over him.

  Now it was Stan’s turn to push back as far as he could into the back of the booth.

  Lady Luck said nothing.

  After I stopped holding my breath for anyone talking to one of the most powerful gods in the world like a child, it dawned on me who the man was.

  “Benny, I presume?” I asked.

  He glanced at me. “Got it in one, Poker Boy.”

  Then he looked back at Laverne. “She’s my daughter as well. But you and I both know you can’t go in there after her. If you did not return, the world as we know it would collapse. We have both worked far too hard for that to happen. We must stay balanced. And to do that, you must stay here.”

  The silence in my little office felt like a heavy weight. Finally Benny looked away from his wife again and back at me, and then Stan.

  “Find our daughter,” he said softly. “We’ll give you all the help we can from out here.”

  With that he and Laverne vanished.

  I looked at the white faces of Screamer and Stan, then took Patty’s hand in my own and squeezed it.

  But all I could think about was that we were so screwed.

  Chapter Four

  For the next hour Stan explained to me and Patty and Screamer what “the tunnels” were. And how big they were supposed to be.

  “But no one really knows what they can see from the doorways, since no one has ever returned after going in there.”

  Finally, I had to ask.

  “So where is this entrance?”

  Stan shook his head. “There is an old metal door right on the edge of Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, about a hundred paces from Freemont Street down a side street.”

  “You’re kidding,” Screamer said.

  “I’m not,” Stan said. “No one notices it and you have to have some powers to open it. But all of you could do it.”

  “And no exit?” I asked.

  “No one that I have heard of has gone in and come out again.”

  “Ever?” Patty asked.

  Stan just shrugged, about as clear an answer as there was.

  My stomach was so twisted into a knot around what was left of my Chinese food lunch, I couldn’t even think of a response or another question.

  “Well,” Screamer said, finally, breaking into the silence, “let’s hope we can find a way out once we are in there.”

  My mind was twisting again, struggling on what Screamer had just said. But I couldn’t get it.

  I turned to Screamer. “What you just said bothers me, but I can’t put my finger on why.”

  “Bothers me as well,” Screamer said, shaking his head. “For obvious reasons.”

  “Link us, would you?” I said, taking Patty’s hand and then reaching my other hand across the booth between the empty milkshake glasses. “There’s something I’m not seeing and I feel it might be the answer.”

  Screamer shrugged and glanced at Stan.

  “I think I would only confuse the issue,” Stan said. “Sometimes too much history and knowledge can hurt more than it can help.”

  I knew Stan was right, so Screamer reached over and touched my arm and suddenly he and Patty were both in my mind. We had done this sort of thing so many times over the years, it didn’t even feel strange anymore.

  It just felt familiar.

  After only a few seconds, Screamer pulled his hand away from my arm and I was back alone in my own head.

  Patty gave my hand a squeeze, but didn’t let go, for which I was glad. Her touch kept me calm and thinking clearly, at least most of the time.

  “See anything?” I asked Stan, then Patty.

  “Something about the exit,” Patty said.

  “You were thinking we should find it first, before we go in.”

  Suddenly I knew the answer.

  “That’s exactly right,” I said. “And I have an idea. I’ll be right back.”

  I instantly teleported to the Diner.

  Madge was scrubbing a counter far harder than it needed to be scrubbed. Clearly she was upset at herself for not wanting or being able to help.

  “I need a thermos of hot chocolate,” I said.

  She looked at me and frowned. “Official or otherwise?”

  “Official,” I said. “How long?”

  “Two minutes,” she said, turning for the kitchen. “I’ll bring it to you.”

  “Thanks.” A moment later I was sitting next to Patty in the booth in my office.

  And I was smiling. I knew how to find the exit, at least from this side.

  “What was that all about?” Stan asked, looking as puzzled as the rest of my team.

  “Call Laverne and Benny and I’ll explain,” I said.

  “No need,” Laverne said as she appeared again in the chair facing the booth. Benny was standing beside her and she still seemed taller than he was. “You think the exit is controlled by the Silicon Suckers?”

  “I do,” I said. “In fact, I’m convinced of it.”

  The Silicon Suckers were an ancient race of beings that lived in huge tunnels and caverns under desert regions of the planet. The gods, a long time ago, had negotiated a truce with them to keep humans and Silicon Suckers from fighting.

  “How can you be so sure?” Benny asked, his voice deep and low and almost rumbling with power.

  “There was a point when I was trying to save a superhero from the Keno side from her time with the Suckers. I had to watch her negotiate with the leader of the Silicon Suckers for an exchange of land for a number of thermos every month of hot chocolate.”

  “Strangest thing I had ever heard about,” Benny said, shaking his head.

  “During the negotiation, the leader of the Silicon Suckers floated a map in the air of the land around Las Vegas, showing what humans controlled and what they controlled. There was a giant round area under the city of Las Vegas that had neither human or Silicon Sucker color on it. At the time, I assumed it was that way because it was under the city and no one cared.”

  “The ancient city,” Laverne said, nodding. “From what I understand, the original protective screen over it was a dome, so it would be round.”

  “I’m willing to bet,” I said, “that the Silicon Suckers know of the exit and have just kept it locked or blocked.”

  “Worth finding out before going in there,” Laverne said, nodding her head. “We’ll be watching if you need help.”

  With that she and Benny both vanished again before I had a chance to ask th
em why they didn’t just go and talk to the Silicon Suckers instead of me. More than likely there was some reason I didn’t know about. Just another question I would have to ask later.

  Before anyone could say anything, Madge appeared out of the invisible door carrying the thermos of hot chocolate, the most sacred and valuable of drugs to the Silicon Suckers.

  I was going to need to negotiate for Laverne’s daughter’s life with hot chocolate. I just hoped I could offer them enough.

  Chapter Five

  Five minutes later, after making sure my plan was solid with Stan and Screamer and Patty, I found myself standing alone on the edge of Highway 95 leading north out of Las Vegas.

  The Silicon Suckers’ main entrance was under a billboard, hidden from view for anyone not welcome in their castles, as they called their caverns and tunnels.

  The hot wind was whipping my coat around me and I had to hold my hat on my head with one hand to keep from having to chase it up the highway.

  I waited until there were no cars coming in either direction, then slipped off my shoes and left them in the sand next to a sagebrush. I stepped into the wide tunnel and took ten steps into the sand tunnel, as showed respect, then stopped.

  Silicon Suckers were big into respect. And rules. They had a million rules.

  A few seconds later two Silicon Suckers appeared. They were, as normal, completely naked, but I had no idea what sex they were, or if Silicon Suckers even had a sex. Their bodies were very, very skinny and a pasty gray, but their heads were huge, with wide, unblinking eyes.

  Over the centuries, humans who had seen them called them aliens and lately they had become known as the Grays. But as far as I knew, they had lived on Earth longer than humans, and that was going some I was starting to discover.

  Both of the Silicon Suckers bowed slightly to me and I returned the bow, then followed them down through what seemed like miles of sandstone tunnels, illuminated but something I had never been able to figure out. The light just seemed to come from everywhere in the tunnel.

  When we broke out into the open into the huge cavern that was the main area of this city, I was stunned. Never had I seen so many Silicon Suckers in this area, and they all seemed to be moving at a normal pace, clearly all busy.