“Let’s get everybody set up first,” Vargas said. Then came the trays of food from the kitchen, the drinks from the bar, the cigars. “What kind of whiskey do you drink?” he asked me. “I’ve got some Macallan twelve-year here…”

“Is that Jack Daniels I see over there?” I said.

“It is,” he said. “If that’s your preference.”

“That’ll do me fine. Save the single malt for somebody special.”

“Jackie tells me you were a catcher,” he said. “I should have known a catcher would take Jack Daniels over a Macallan. You can always spot a catcher.”

I gave Jackie a look. He gave me an innocent smile.

“I played some ball when I was in the college,” Vargas said. “And then in the Air Force, when I was stationed in Korea.”

“Let me guess, first base,” I said.

“First and a little third. How did you know?”

“You can always spot a first baseman,” I said.

He laughed at that, brought my drink over and sat down. “Are we gonna play some cards here or what?”

So we did. Jackie was on my left, then Bennett, Vargas, Kenny, and finally Gill on my right. Vargas played the way I would have expected. He was aggressive in his betting, and he hated to fold. He wanted to be in every single hand. When he wasn’t raising, he was fussing over the table itself, making sure we kept our drinks off the green felt and in the little coaster compartments. I had never known how much I hated fancy poker tables until that night.

Vargas also liked to talk. It was just a matter of time until he wandered back to his business. “When I got out of the Air Force,” he said, shuffling the cards, “I decided to take over the hardware business from my father. He had a little store down in Petoskey. Now you’re probably thinking, how does a little hardware store survive these days when you’ve got your Lowes’s and your Home Depots all over the place? The answer is, you have to see the train coming before it runs you over.