“Miata, stay down,” he said. Which wasn’t asking much, because the dog was only about eight inches tall to begin with. I would have guessed Chihuahua, with the short hair and the bug eyes, but in the back of my mind I remembered the old urban legend about the couple who went to Mexico and brought back a dog, only to find out it was a rat. This might have been that animal.

“I forgot to warn you about the dog,” Jackie said.

“You must be Alex,” the man said. He shook my hand with a firm grip just this side of painful. “I’m Winston Vargas. Win for short, because that’s what I do. Right, Jackie?” He gave Jackie a wink.

Jackie rolled his eyes and stepped past him. The dog kept dancing around us and barking, its little legs moving at hummingbird speed.

“Don’t mind him,” Vargas said. “He thinks he’s a Doberman. Hell, maybe he was in his last life.”

“What did you say his name was? Miata?” I bent down to offer my hand. The dog showed me its teeth. Okay, bad idea.

“My wife named him after her car,” he said. “Of course she’s not here so I get to look after him all night. Again.”

“Well, thanks for having me over,” I said. I was giving the night a chance, like Jackie said. I really was.

“I’m glad you could make it,” he said. “Let me show you to the table.”

He led me through the house to the poker room. I guess it would have been called the entertainment room most of the time. There was a home theater set up along one wall, with a screen that had to be seven feet across. A wet bar dominated the opposite wall, with enough bottles on the shelves to restock Jackie’s place. The back wall was all windows, looking out over the river. In the center of the room, beneath a great Tiffany lamp, was one of those six-sided poker tables with the green felt in the middle and the little compartments on each side.