THE HAMMER FILES: A Hand of Trouble

JAMIE DIAMOND’S GAMBIT

The Knock

I’m Jamie Diamond: and this game is mine. The street was a grimy canyon of brick and shadow. The cold bit at my neck. The address Jack gave me was just a number on a steel plate door, no windows, no buzzer, just a faint, metallic groan from inside. I raised my fist and knocked the specific rhythm Jack had drilled into me: a sharp tap tap-tap tap tap, a pause, then a faster tap-tap. The sliding peephole opened, and a pair of yellowed, cold eyes peered out. “What’s the word, slick?” a voice growled. “I’m looking for Jack,” I said, my voice low and steady. The eyes narrowed, then a bolt slid back. The door swung inward, revealing a mountain of a man who just grunted and gestured me inside with a thumb the size of a sausage.

The Gathering

I stepped through the door, and the world changed. The smell hit me first—stale whiskey, cheap cigars, and the sharp, coppery tang of greed. The air was a thick, gray soup of smoke, hanging over a heavy oak table in the center of the room. A single, low-hanging lamp cast long, dancing shadows, making the men look less like men and more like vultures circling a kill.

I took my seat at the table. The chair groaned under my weight, and the mountain of a man who’d let me in slid into a seat on my left. Around the table sat seven men, their faces like bad poker hands, all secrets and ugly tells. The clatter of chips, the rustle of cards—it all seemed to happen in slow motion, a deadly ballet of greed and deception.

Reading the Tells

As I looked at the men around the table, my mind began to drink in their characters, to soak up their very existence, like a rag in a barmaid’s hand soaks up beer from a dive bar on a Saturday night. I gave each man a category. And a number. What else would you expect from a card sharp? The guy on my right, Number 8, a slick-haired weasel who keeps running his thumb over a gold pinky ring. He’s a poser. He likes to play the part of a slickster, but he’s about as slick as sandpaper. Number 5, the man across from me? His bloodshot eyes and twitch tell me his category is ‘in a bottle’. Number 4, three up on my left? His category is just old. He can barely lift his glass, let alone choke someone out with a piano wire. Number 6? He’s shaking from the game. He doesn’t play it; it plays him. His category is ‘loser’. Number 2, on my left? Nope. He’s a sharp like me. That leaves 3 and 7.

Me at 6. The bald rat who smells of death at 9. And the one with dark curly hair at 3. They sit directly across from each other. And their stench is as thick as wallpaper paste. While I’d bet the bald rat at 9 was the most dangerous man in the room, he wasn’t my real concern. The dark curly-haired Number 3 squinted his eyes like a man who just lost his wallet on payday the moment I came in. Part panic. Part dread. Part anger. His eyeballs rattled around in their sockets like two sloppy pool shots trying to make their way down the same pocket. I’d been watching him closely, calculating the amount of time I had until that moment of recognition of who or what he was searching for exploded across his face. And that moment was in 5… 4… 3… 2…

The Implosion

I sprang the moment his recollection spread blood-red anger across his face. A roar tore from his throat, “Jack Hammer! I saw you with Jack Hammer!”

I slammed my hands down, flipping the heavy oak table. Cards and chips flew. The mountain on my left roared, but the chaos had bought me a fraction of a second. The thuggish brute and the bald rat were on their feet. I was already on my feet, and I had one thought, one focus: get out.

The Escape

I scrambled past my overturned chair, the shouts of the other players lost in the clamor of scattering chips and crashing furniture. I put my shoulder into a wooden door that led into a narrow, dark hallway. “Thank God for my mental mapping,” I thought, my mind replaying the layout of the backroom I’d observed upon entering. I took the steps two at a time, spilling out onto the cold, unforgiving sidewalk. Behind me, I heard the lumbering oxen begin to thunder down the steps. Like a gazelle, I was on my feet and bolted to hunker down behind a cargo van. I peered around the corner of the van, heart hammering against my ribs, and saw Jack coming across the street.

The two hulks from the poker room—the mountain and the bald rat—thundered into the street. My mouth opened, a shout tearing from my lungs before I even thought about it. “Jack! Look out!”

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