Mystical Glasses

By Jack Kregas

Joey was a poker player with a history who found the Mystical Glasses that allowed him to win at cards. He enjoyed taking down the casinos and spending their money. Life was good for Joey and his female friend.

 

Then it all changed from fun to living in fear. Stalked by a psychopathic killer out for revenge and the glasses, Joey was now faced with staying alive.

 

A crime thriller with characters from today's headlines where the innocent and the guilty change places to satisfy their own ambitions.

 

Jack Kregas's personal knowledge as a poker player and casino client is evident in this crime fiction thriller. Familiar locations authenticate the story line with twists and turns astonishing the reader.

 

Joey was a poker player who found the Mystical glasses that allowed him to win at poker. Good life except he was pursued by a twisted individual out to kill him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jack Kregas
• Release date: Jun 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781386800941

Jack Kregas

Jack Kregas was born in New England in the north east of the United States. After a stint in the US Army, he was discharged in Europe and the next forty years were spent skiing and living life to the max as well as creating several successful businesses.Winters in the Alps and summers windsurfing on Maui, Jack departed Switzerland for Maui full time with his Australian wife and small daughter. After five years he moved the family to Australia and became an Australian citizen.Jack now lives in Brisbane and plays golf and tournament poker. After having published his first book in 2015, an autobiography, It's All About Me and a few others of his adventurous life, he has written another thirteen books the latest being THE VEGAS TRANSACTIONS published in July 2021 and How to lose at Texas Holdem in September 2121.

Book preview

Jack Kregas was born in New England in the north east of the United States. After a stint in the US Army, he was discharged in Europe and the next forty years were spent skiing and living life to the max as well as creating several successful businesses.

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After many winters in the Alps and summers windsurfing on Maui, Jack departed Switzerland for Maui full-time with his Australian wife and small daughter. Five years later, he moved to Australia with his family and became an Australian citizen.

Jack now lives in Brisbane and plays golf and tournament poker. After publishing his first book in 2015, an autobiography of his adventurous life, he has written another five books and is currently working on his seventh.

OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Fiction

Innocent Retribution

Contested Ransom

Choice Cruise Lines

Non-fiction

It’s All About Me and a few others

It’s Not Only About Me

MYSTICAL GLASSES

A novel by Jack Kregas

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it. Complaint already contains revenge.

Freidrich Neitzsche

Publishing Details

Mystical Glasses by Jack Kregas

© Jack Kregas

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright restrictions above, no part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

2nd Edition 2017

ISBN:

Copyright: Jack Kregas 2017

This book is copyright

Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

This is a work of fiction. The events and characters in this book are fabricated from the imagination of the author. Some places and locations maybe real, others are not. Any similarity to any person living or dead is purely coincidental

This book is dedicated to all those who retire, get bored, and find a new ambition in life such as writing books in the hope someone will read and enjoy them.

I acknowledge all, women, men and children who have suffered abuse or revenge from a misguided individual. Stay strong.

A very warm thanks to my editors, Susan and Megan, who are ever hopeful I will by some miracle learn to spell and make their job easier.

Thanks also to Afterglow Media for putting my ideas into another excellent cover.

Chapter 1

Joey shifted in the chair. He had a cushion behind his back, which helped when sitting, especially for almost two hours. The need to urinate made itself known. A glance at the shot clock told him there would be a ten-minute break in four minutes. Piss down his leg or hold it.

He looked at his cards, shielding them from the others next to him at the table. Eight of spades, four of hearts, the same shit hands he had been getting since the game started six hours ago. Another folded hand. The starting stack had been 25,000 in chips. He doubled his stack but was far behind the chip leader who had well over 250,000 chips.

The shot clock still said two minutes to go until the break. He looked at the TV screens on the wall. A baseball game on one, boxing on another, a third with two black guys who seemed to be in a heated disagreement about something. He focused on the table where a pair of tens had taken the pot, then back to the clock as the last seconds ticked off. The buzzer rang. Game suspended for a ten-minute break.

Joey rose and quickly stepped towards the toilet making his way out of the poker room through a larger room of table games along the hallway to the toilets. He was unzipping his fly as he entered. The room was divided. To his right were the washbasins and Dyson hand dryers. To the left, urinals and stalls. He had it out before he was settled in front of the urinal. Ah, the relief. He always had to piss like a racehorse when he drank that shit coffee they served. How much did his bladder hold? It seemed to him it was shrinking. Maybe he just drank more. He shook it once and then again. He remembered a saying his friend used to repeat, shake it more than once and you’re playing with it. He shook it again. Wet spots on your pants walking through the casino were not cool.

As he turned, he noticed an older man in a long coat emerge from a stall and head towards the sinks. The long coat seemed out of place. Too warm for such a coat. Maybe the guy is sick Joey thought as he tried to zip his pants but the zipper wouldn’t move. He stopped thinking about the guy to concentrate on the zipper problem. He was now thinking that trousers with a faulty zipper should be tossed away. Finally, after more fiddling with the zipper, he got it up.

Walking to the sinks, his eye caught something shining on the floor just near the stall where the old man had exited. Joey reached down and picked up a pair of glasses. He guessed the guy in the coat must have dropped them. His thinking now changed to giving them back and finding the owner of the glasses. Joey walked around to the sinks and searched for the guy in the coat but couldn’t see him anywhere. He washed his hands, ran cold water over his face and through his hair, dried his hands and left the toilet. He glanced left and right to see if he could spot the man he thought had dropped the glasses. No luck.

All poker players please return to your seats. The game will continue in one minute, came over the address system.

Joey walked back to the poker room and took his seat. He sat down looking at the glasses he had found. They were big and thick. Something like you got free from a medical fund. He put them in his pocket. He would turn them in to the lost and found at the next break.

In the next hour, Joey won a couple of small hands without improving his stack much beyond 65,000 chips. He had paid $250 to enter the tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $10,000 and the top 10% of the entrants being paid. He noticed that 242 had started with 131 still in the game. He calculated the top 25 would win cash with the 25th getting $340 and the winner $3800 or thereabouts. He’d have to make a move in the next half hour or be out soon after as the quality of his cards hadn’t changed. He caught hands he couldn’t bet on or even bluff that he might have something. He knew he had to be patient, hoping he could catch a good hand before he was out of chips to the ever increasing blinds.

Texas Holdem poker is a variation of seven-card stud. Each player receives two cards down and then either, bets on the cards, folds, or checks if no one bets. Three cards are then dealt face up. This is called the ‘flop’. Betting continues. A fourth face up card known as the ‘turn’ is dealt, with further betting. The fifth face up card or ‘river’ card ends the hand with final betting. The best hand of five cards is the winner.

(In tournament poker, you pay a buy-in price to play and start with a certain number of chips, for example, 10,000. These are chip value only for the game. In cash-game poker and blackjack, the player buys a desired value in chips, sometimes a minimum. These chips are worth the face value of the chips in real money.)

To make it interesting and to force play, there are blinds. The player in front of the dealer is the small blind and the one next to him is the big blind. As the deal moves around the table, so do the blinds. The blinds usually start out small at a $50 chip and the big blind twice that, or a $100 chip. Every twenty minutes the blinds go up. Now after over six hours of play the blinds were $4000 small, $8000 big. In most tournaments after six blind levels, an ante is introduced. That means every hand everyone has to contribute. The ante now stood at $500 a hand.

There were nine players at Joey’s table. With the blinds and antes, the pot had 16,500 in it before the betting started. A first bet of 10,000 or more would be a normal starting bet based on the size of the pot.

The contributions to blinds and antes would soon put Joey out of chips. He looked at his cards. An ace and a queen, the best hand he had seen in a while. Two folded in front of Joey, one bet $12,000 and another folded. Joey was thinking. He could call and see what the next three cards were. He could raise or he could push in all his chips and hope all the players would fold, letting him have the pot. What the hell, it’s now or never.

All in, said Joey pushing his chips into the middle of the table. The dealer counted his chips taking out the 12,000 the other man had bet, leaving an all-in raise of 56,400.

Everyone folded to the first bettor who was considering what to do. Joey eyed him without expression. He was hoping the bettor would fold. He relaxed in the chair to show he had no concern if the guy called or not. He was bluffing with confidence.

The guy had about 130,000 in chips meaning a call would leave him with a very short stack. Finally, he shook his head and threw in his cards. Joey didn’t show his cards. The dealer pushed the chips to him. Joey stacked them up. He now had just under $100,000 in chips, which should be enough for him to get to the next decent hand, if it wasn’t too long coming.

Joey ordered a coffee and reached into his pocket to pay. He gave an extra dollar tip to the waitress. In his pocket he discovered the glasses that he’d found. He had forgotten about them so took them out to have a look at them. They were a strange shape, big and ugly as if for someone who had limited vision. They were slightly tinted with solid black frames holding very thick glass. Joey looked at the cards that came his way and folded. The glasses were heavy. He put them on. The vision was blurred. He took them off and saw that the lenses were dirty.

He took a napkin that was next to his drink on the portable table and wiped them across, back and forth. Again, he put them on. They were worse than before so he took them off again. He took the napkin and carefully rubbed them up and down, to clean all the glass area. This time when he put them on, he looked up at the TV. He could barely make out the lady on the screen. He looked down at the table as the dealer dealt his first card to him. He could see it was the king of hearts. He saw that the card dealt to the person next to him was a five and the next card dealt was a ten.

Joey took off the glasses. His heart was racing. He put his head down as if to scratch his leg while trying to compose himself. Slowly he sat up and took a look at his hand. A seven and a jack. He looked around the table while he held the glasses in his hand below the table. One player bet 10,000, another called the bet and then it was Joey’s turn. He called. Three players in the hand. The flop was seven, three and eight. He had a pair of sevens. The player, who bet first, bet 10,000 again. The next one folded.

Joey put on the glasses. He could see the cards on the table in front of the bettor were queen, queen. Joey called the 10,000. The turn card was a jack. The man with queens now felt confident with his hand, as there were no cards on the table larger than his were. He bet 25,000. Joey hesitated and counted his stack. He put on his nervous face but then called. The river card was a ten. Joey knew he had won. This was a position he had seldom been in. Yes, he had had hands where he knew he couldn’t be beaten but that was very rare. Now he knew he had won because he could see his opponent’s hand. The bettor went another 25,000. He could force the guy and go all in but reluctantly, he called and won.

Joey stacked his chips and stood up leaving the table. He walked out of the casino. The glasses were secure in his pocket. He took in the fresh air. A thousand thoughts were in his mind at the same time. He could win the tournament. He was a cheat. Where was the guy who dropped the glasses? Surely, he would be looking for them. What to do now? Joey went back into the casino but not directly to the poker room. Instead, he made his way around the casino stopping now and then to look at the action on a table while trying to spot the old man who had lost the glasses. He made his way back to his table. There were now 87 players left. He knew what to do.

Joey stood in front of the cashier. She counted out $885 for 6th place. He checked everyone in his line of sight trying to see if he could find the old man. He took the bills from the cashier and put them in his pocket with the glasses. He left the casino walking out to his car. He took his time unlocking the car letting his eyes scan the car lot. No one was paying any attention to him. He got in and slowly left the casino. One hand was on the steering wheel. The other on the outside of the pocket that held the cash and the glasses. He knew his life had changed forever.

Chapter 2

The drive from the casino at Gardena to where Joey lived was twenty-three miles. Joey drove under the speed limit watching in the rear view mirror thinking he might be being followed. His thoughts were all over the place. He was in a position to make a ton of money if he was clever. He could also get dead very quickly if the old guy who lost the glasses or someone he might work for, came after him. There was sweat on Joey's forehead. He had to piss and was getting a headache from his overloaded mind working overtime.

He eased his car into the undercover parking spot. He glanced around. No one in sight. Walking at a nonchalant pace, he reached his apartment, unlocked the door, went inside and relocked it. He headed for the refrigerator, grabbed a Coors Light and sat in his only comfortable chair. He had to think.

The apartment was on the ground floor of a small two-story complex. It consisted of one bedroom, one bath, a sizable living-kitchen area and a parking space. It was clean, well kept and a short walk to the beach. The best part was it cost Joey only $950 a month and $50 to the manager. Joey had been there for over two years. The rent never changed, any repairs were done in a timely manner, and the manager could arrange most anything.

Scott ‘Sleaze’ Gronski was the manager of the twelve units. Sleaze was the name shown above the left pocket of his work-shirt. Sweat marks revealed themselves under both arms with various stains dotting the shirt. Sleaze was average height, overweight, and bald patches were visible anytime he took of his baseball cap. His face gave the appearance of taking a few punches too many, with scars half hidden by a few day’s growth. It was hard to tell his age but somewhere between forty and fifty would be close enough.

Sleaze had informed Joey when he moved in, that he was in charge. No bullshit of any kind was tolerated. To ensure that things stayed the way they were, $50 a month would be paid to Sleaze in cash. Any services that were needed Sleaze would provide at a price, of course. Joey came to the realization that ‘things’ meant the rent. Whatever was going on, Joey didn’t know nor did he care to ask. He paid on time and every so often dropped off a case of Budweiser to him. Sleaze had helped him when he replaced some furnishings that were in the unit, with a new bed and chair. Sleaze said he would attend