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professional player you get treated like shit. So I moved my action to the Venetian and got in with an okay crowd. We played in a private room just to the side of the main area. Philip was one of the regulars. He and I played together for six or seven consecutive days.
    â€œEverybody thinks poker is cutthroat but, you know, you can only play so many hands, and when you’re not playing a hand or you’re between hands, there’s a lot of chit-chat. It actually gets kind of social. That’s when Philip and I got to know each other.”
    â€œWhat kind of poker player is he?”
    â€œNot bad, not bad at all. He tended to play a little too tight and that worked against him, especially in Vegas, where they pick up on your tendencies really quickly. But it didn’t kill him. When he drank, well, that was another story. The more he downed, the looser he got and the more money he lost. He didn’t drink that often, though. I figure he was down maybe thirty or forty thousand for the week we played together. Not that he gave a shit. He never lost his cool.”
    â€œHow did you do?”
    â€œI was up two thousand. It should have been more, but I lost a couple of monster pots the last two days I was there.”
    â€œSo you and Phillip played poker together.”
    â€œAnd we talked. He told me about his business, about his big-time brother. I told him about my rather crappy existence. Despite the difference in our lifestyles, we hit it off. On my fourth day at the table, Philip asked me to join him for dinner. We ate at the Chinese restaurant in the Venetian, comped, of course, and he opened up a bit more. We did the same the next night and the night after that. On the sixth night he asked me if I wanted to do some business with him. I told him I wasn’t a businessman. He said not to worry, that he would look after all the details. All I had to do was follow his lead and act like I owned a company.
    â€œI told him I needed to know exactly what I was getting myself into. He told me that he hadn’t finalized his plans yet and said he would like to contact me in a week or two if that was okay by me. I had no reason to say no. I wasn’t back in Fort McMurray more than a week before he called. He asked me to fly to Kelowna to meet him. And I did.”
    â€œHe had set up Kelowna Valley Developments by then?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œWhy Kelowna?”
    â€œHe said it was far enough from Vancouver to discourage casual visits.”
    â€œFrom whom?”
    â€œHis wife.”
    â€œHis wife?”
    â€œYep, that’s why he was doing all this shit. He had money he needed to move out of the country into some investments, and she was all over him. He said she wouldn’t care if he was putting money into land in Kelowna.”
    â€œAnd he wanted you to be the middle man. That’s all, right?”
    â€œThat’s all.”
    â€œAnd you leapt at the chance?”
    He looked at her as if she were crazy. “Have you ever been to Fort McMurray?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHave you ever spent an entire winter working outdoors in minus-twenty-degree weather?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, you’re goddamn right I leapt at the chance.”
    â€œSo you became president of Kelowna Valley Developments.”
    â€œI did. He brought the articles of incorporation with him and gave me a cheque for ten thousand dollars to open a bank account.”
    â€œAnd then how did it work?”
    â€œPhilip would send me all the paperwork I needed. I just turned around and sent it back to his office. They’d cut me a cheque, I’d deposit it, then Philip would tell me where to wire it. It was real simple.”
    â€œAnd you kept three and a half percent.”
    â€œThat was the deal.”
    â€œDidn’t you think that was a lot of money for simply shuffling paper around?”
    â€œThe wife sounds pretty fierce,” he said, with a slightly sheepish