Pale Carnations -ch. 4 Update — 4- -mutt Jeff- ...

He turned his back to me then, a clear dismissal, and began shuffling once more.

Jeff finally stopped shuffling. He fanned the cards—a perfect spread of kings and sevens, all dead hands—and then scooped them into a single pile. “Pretty thing, ain’t she? Bit of a screamer, though. Not the fun kind. The legal kind.”

The air in the back room of The Carnation tasted of old cedar, whiskey sweat, and the faint, coppery tang of last month’s takedown. I found Jeff there, not in the kennels where the new stock was kept, but hunched over a scarred card table, the brim of his flat cap casting a shadow over eyes that had seen too many losing hands. Pale Carnations -Ch. 4 Update 4- -Mutt Jeff- ...

“Go on,” he said. “Let’s see if you’ve got your father’s luck.”

I didn’t move.

I reached out, slow, and drew from the middle. The Queen of Hearts. Her painted smile was the same as the girl’s in the photograph. The same hollow fold.

I didn’t take the bait. I pulled the folded photograph from my inside pocket and laid it face-up on the table between us. A girl. Pale hair, dark roots showing. A gaze that wasn’t pleading, but calculating. She’d been a runner, once. Before Jeff got his hooks in. He turned his back to me then, a

“Mutt,” I said, sliding the door shut. The latch clicked with a finality that made his shoulders twitch.

The door closed behind me, and the hallway smelled of bleach and roses. Somewhere deeper in the club, a piano struck up a lazy, familiar tune. And beneath it, just barely, I could hear the sound of someone crying—not loud, not desperate. Just the quiet, practiced sob of someone who’d already folded. “Pretty thing, ain’t she