Sam almost wished it had taken longer. Not much longer, just a little; he had come up with exactly one idea about how to win the bet he had to make with Walker, but it wasn’t a notion he liked. But once he’d delivered Jin’s message to the person she’d sent him to find and stepped outside the Broken Land, he knew he’d run out of time. He started walking toward West Brighton. Sam understood that if there was any chance at all of beating Walker, he was going to have to find a way to stack the deck. Proverbially speaking; maybe literally, too. Ordinarily, to fill the gaps in his knowledge of cards or gambling, he went straight to Constantine, who’d taught him to hustle in the first place. For this, though, he needed something more. Fortunately, there was a person right in town who might be able to help. If, that is, he could somehow be convinced to help Sam rather than hit him again. The sharper still sat in Sam’s spot on Culver Plaza, his feet up on a little folding table, his hat tipped back, and his face turned to the sky.
