by Alan Cook
Chapter 5
The inside had the appearance of a conventional house. The spacious
living room was to the right of the entryway, where I stood. It was
well furnished and the large picture window, visible from the outside,
was on the front wall. A stairway to the second floor rose directly in
front of me and a corridor led toward the back of the house, with
several closed doors along it.
Nobody was in sight. However, I heard music coming from somewhere,
and the gravelly voice of Louie Armstrong, singing, "Hello, Dolly." Was I
expected to know where to go? Ned would know. I headed along the
corridor, walking on the hardwood floor, toward the sound of the music.
I came to a stairway heading down, directly beneath the other one. The
music wafted up from below. Just as I turned to go down these stairs a
young man appeared at the bottom. He was in his twenties, clean-cut,
short hair, wearing a suit, white shirt and tie. The kind of person my
father would hire.
As I descended the stairs I looked over the polished wooden banister and
a large room appeared before me, encompassing most of the dimensions
of the house. Louie's voice became louder, singing some of the words and
scatting the rest of the time.
In addition to the music, I heard the hum of the conversations of several
dozen men and women, who were engaged in playing games. A craps
table dominated the center of the room and a blackjack table and roulette
wheel stood near it. At another table people played poker and others
played chess and backgammon.
Two things distinguished this from the casinos I was familiar with: There
were no slot machines and there was no cigarette smoke in the air. The
customers were well dressed and an aura of affluence emanated from
them. I felt underdressed for the second time that day without a tie,
even though I was now wearing a sport coat.
I immediately experienced the familiar excitement of being in the presence
of gambling. The urge to feel the cards or dice in my hands, the certainty
that this was my lucky night--it all came back in a flash. I mentally reviewed
the contents of my wallet--about 60 dollars--and wondered how one got
started since Ned had said no money changed hands.
In the next instant I told myself harshly that I was here to do a job and
nothing else would get in the way. Then I reached the bottom of the stairs.
"My name is Stan," the young man said, sticking out his hand.
I shook hands with him, wondering how many hands I had shaken since
morning. I almost said my own name, remembered I wasn't myself,
hesitated, and ended up mumbling, "Pleased to meet you."
"Mr. Buchanan would like to speak with you," Stan said, leading the way to
a door underneath the stairs.
I had a moment of panic as I realized that Mr. Buchanan would know I
wasn't Ned Mackay, but I should have thought of that before. Stan
opened the door and motioned me in ahead of him.
The small room I entered had a sloping ceiling over part of it, caused by
the stairway it was under. It was dimly lit and a number of television
monitors were being watched by young men who were clones of Stan in
dress and appearance. None of them appeared to be older than 30.
I glanced at several of the monitors and realized I had been correct in
assuming that I was being watched. They were all connected to
surveillance cameras, not only outside the house, but looking down on
the tables in the casino room, also. The latter monitors were undoubtedly
to catch cheaters.
Stan closed the door and walked past me to a man who sat on a high stool
behind the men in front of the monitors. From his vantage point he could
see all the monitors. He was older, with gray hair, but it was still cut short.
He was the most casually dressed person in the room, wearing a loud
sportshirt and a pair of pants that appeared in the dim light to be some
shade of yellow.
"Here he is, Mr. Buchanan." Stan said to the man.
Mr. Buchanan rotated the seat of his stool toward me and looked me up
and down as he transferred a glass from which he had been drinking
through a straw from his right hand to his left. Then he stepped down
off the stool and said, "Hi, I'm James Buchanan."
He was considerably shorter than I. His hand was cold from the glass
as I shook it. I had another moment of panic, but I couldn't lie any
more. "Karl Patterson."
"Well, Karl Patterson," he said with a smile, "I'm glad to know your real
name."
I felt I owed him an explanation. "Ned is planning to be here tonight," I
said. "He told me to wait outside, but he's late and I figured..."
"You figured you might as well come inside. And you suspected you
wouldn't get in if you used your real name. Well, at least you passed
the test."
"The test?"
"The ship and the boiler. A favorite of mine, not because it's terribly
complex, but because you have to straighten out the confusing
verbiage before you can solve it."
"You mean you wouldn't have let me in if I hadn't gotten the right
answer?"
"That's correct." Mr. Buchanan smiled at the look on my face. "I can
anticipate your next question. Did everybody who is here tonight
solve it? With couples, we only ask one of them to come up with the
answer. We do discourage groups of more than four riding in on one
person's answer, however. We want to keep the intellectual level
elevated as much as possible."
Was he serious? "May I ask you a question, Mr. Buchanan?"
"Only if you call me James."
"Since you obviously knew from the beginning that I wasn't Ned,
why did you let me in?"
"Because I like a good puzzle, and I wondered who you really were."
However, he didn't ask me any more questions. Instead, he said,
"Would you like a tour to pass the time until Ned gets here?"
"Sure." My job was to gather information.
"You've already seen our monitors. Let's go into the main room."
James opened the door and preceded me into the much more
brightly lit casino room. Track lighting shone down from what I was
now sure was a false ceiling and kept all the tables illuminated. Some
of his young men were acting as croupiers and one was dealing
blackjack, from only one deck, I noticed, approvingly. Others served
drinks to the patrons.
James called a server and asked me what I wanted to drink. I said iced
tea. When he came back with it a couple of minutes later I started to
pull out my wallet, but James stopped me by putting up his hand.
Without being asked, the waiter had also brought James another iced
drink in a tall glass with a straw. It contained a clear liquid.
We strolled from table to table. He didn't give a boring explanation of the
obvious, but instead let me watch each game for a bit. I saw a blackjack
player take a hit when he should have stood and the itch inside told me
I could do better. I saw a woman roll three consecutive sevens at the
craps table and I wished my money was riding on her.
As we passed through the room James said hello to many of the people
and joked with others. At a table where two men were engaged in a
game of chess he said to one who appeared to have the worst of it,
"Tom, you'd better lay off the booze. Your brain cells aren't operational
tonight."
He put his hand on the shoulder of one distinguished-looking gentleman
who was playing craps with a beautiful but inadequately-covered
woman beside him and said, "Jed, when Sally rolls the dice don't let her
bend over too far or we'll have to put her assets back into her dress.
I'd better tell one of my assistants to get a warm spoon ready."
When I had a chance I asked, "Why don't you have slot machines?"
James led me to one side of the room and said, "First, there is no skill in
playing the slots. They're all luck. I only like games and puzzles with at
least an element of skill. All the games played here fit into that category.
Second, as you may have noticed, we don't use money here."
I didn't want to sound as if I were from Buttonwillow, but I didn't know how
else to phrase the question. "Are you telling me all those chips don't
represent money?"
James smiled an engaging smile and said, "When you've acquired a certain
amount of wealth you can do pretty much what you like. What I like is
games and puzzles. Why shouldn't I be able to set my basement up as a
casino and invite my friends over, if I want to? What game would you like
to try?"
My skepticism at his answer boiled over, but I didn't know what else to
say. For one thing, the players were concentrating awfully hard for
nothing being at stake. In any case, why not try a game? With no
chance of losing money I couldn't get into trouble. A little blackjack,
perhaps? No, I really needed to ask James some questions about Ned.
We were standing beside a table with a backgammon board on it. I said,
"Do you play backgammon?"
"I play a bit of everything. Would you like to have a go?"
We sat down and arranged our fifteen checker-like pieces on the
designated points. As we each rolled one die to determine who would
start I asked in what I hoped was a casual manner, "Does Ned come
here often?"
"Whenever he's in San Francisco. Ned's an old friend of mine. We go
way back."
I rolled a six; James rolled a one. Using these rolls for my first play, I
made my bar-point, or seven-point; that is, I moved two pieces to it,
creating a block.
"What games does he like to play?"
James rolled a 3-1 and made his five point.
"Oh, he likes to shoot craps or play blackjack. Sometimes he plays
poker."
I rolled a 4-3 and moved two pieces to my side of the board from his
twelve-point.
"Would you say he is a compulsive gambler?"
James rolled a 6-3 and moved a piece from my one-point, hitting one
of my pieces and sending it to the bar.
He sat, looking at the board, as if studying the game. I commanded
my hand that held the dice cup to be still as I waited for his answer.
He finally looked at me and said, "A year ago I would have said there
was nothing compulsive about Ned. Now I'm not so sure."
"Any special reason?"
"Because of things that have happened."
An enigmatic response, but I had better not push it any more or I
would arouse suspicions. I rolled a 3-2, usually not a great roll, but
I got my piece off the bar with the two and used the three to hit
James' piece.
"If you don't play for money, what's the thrill?"
James smiled a quick smile. "The thrill of playing any game, I guess.
Trying to beat your opponent. Or the dice. Or the cards. Trying to
excel. And we do keep rankings in each game, from the biggest
winners to the biggest losers over the course of a year."
That was still unsatisfactory, but I didn't ask any more questions. As
the game proceeded, James made what I considered to be several
tactical blunders in how he moved his pieces. However, the game
was still undecided down to the last two moves.
James rolled a 5-1 and bore a piece off the board with the five. He
now had only two pieces remaining, on his two-point and his three-point,
and he could move one of them one point. To my surprise, he moved the
piece on his three-point to his two-point, leaving two pieces there,
instead of from his two-point to his one-point, which would have left
them on his one and three.
There are 36 possible rolls with two dice (six times six). With two pieces
on his two-point, there were ten rolls that wouldn't move both his pieces
off the board on his next turn; they included every roll with a one in it
except a double one, since doubles count double. But, if he had left the
pieces on his one and three-points, there were only two rolls that
wouldn't have cleared the board for him: 2-1 and 1-2.
I won the game because of his mistake.
James congratulated me and said, "Would you like to play a match to five
points for a small stake?"
"You don't play for money."
"Not for money. If I win you serve drinks for half-an-hour. If you win I'll
give you a ride back to your hotel so you don't have to walk."
Did he know that I'd been a bartender? "Is that how you get these guys
to work for you?"
James laughed. "No, I pay them real money. They're on my staff."
I glanced at my watch. It was almost eleven. I doubted that Ned was
going to show, and I didn't have anything else to do. It was a screwy
bet, but my itch was still there so I accepted.
James' game suddenly improved dramatically. He stopped making silly
mistakes. Nevertheless, I wasn't worried because backgammon is 75%
luck, and luck seemed to be on my side. I was ahead in points 4-3 when
we started what I hoped would be the deciding game.
The game started badly for me and got worse. James was able to set
up blocks on all six points of his inner board while I had two pieces on
the bar. As long as he maintained those blocks I couldn't get my
pieces off the bar, and with pieces on the bar the rules said I
couldn't move.
He played it perfectly and gammoned me, meaning that he bore all his
pieces off before I bore off any. A gammon counts double so he won
the match 5-4.
I offered half-hearted congratulations. James grinned and said, "You play
a good game. Next time we'll use the doubling cube. But before you
start serving your penance, why don't you call Ned's hotel and make sure
he got back okay. He's very reliable--when he says he's going to do
something he does it. I want to make sure he's okay."
I looked at James in surprise. He and Ned must be very good friends.
Ned probably got held up at his business meeting until late and then went
straight back to his hotel, but at least he could have called here. I looked
at my watch again. It was after 11:30.
James rose from his chair and led me to the control room. When he walked
fast he had a noticeable limp. The crowd had thinned out considerably. I
suspected that most of them were working people. I followed James
through the door to the control room where he handed me a cordless phone.
"I don't know the number of Ned's hotel," I said. In fact, the only reason
I remembered the name of it was because we had passed it on the way
to my hotel and Ned had pointed it out to me.
James asked me the name and turned to a nearby personal computer
sitting on a shelf high enough so he could use it standing up. I looked
over his shoulder and could see that he was accessing the Tartan
website on the Internet. As he worked the keyboard I noticed for the
first time that the tip of the fourth finger of his left hand was missing,
making it difficult for him to key the letter "s." He found the hotel name
on an index page and clicked on it. Ten seconds later he gave me the
phone number.
I punched it in and after two rings a clerk answered. I asked her whether
Ned Buchanan had checked in and was put on hold. In 30 seconds
she came back on the line and told me that Mr. Buchanan had not
checked in.
I disconnected the phone and relayed the information to James. His
forehead creased in a frown.
"Stan, what restaurant was Ned Mackay's meeting at?" James asked the
young man who had welcomed me. He was watching the monitors.
"The Golden Palace," Stan answered, without turning his head.
James did his trick with the Internet again and punched a number into
the phone. He had a brief conversation. By the time he hung up, his
frown had grown more intense.
"The meeting never took place," James said to no one in particular. "Ned
was never at the restaurant."
Before I could express my surprise James punched in a new number. His
side of the conversation went like this: "It's James. Has Ned been there
tonight?" Pause. "No, I didn't. When was he there?" Pause. "Did he say
where he was going when he left?" Pause "You're kidding!" Pause. "He
did?" Fidgety pause. "No, I haven't seen him. I don't know what's going
on. I'll call you when I find out." He jabbed the disconnect button.
James immediately had another go-round with his computer and again
punched in a number. He swore under his breath until somebody
answered the phone, and then said, "This is James Buchanan. I was
expecting a visitor tonight, but he hasn't shown up. He's in San
Francisco but he didn't check into his hotel. His name is Ned Mackay.
Could you...?"
James listened and shock registered on his face. He appeared to struggle
as he asked several brief questions, including "Where?" and "When?" and
then said, "Yes. Yes, I'll be here."
He turned to me. He said, choking on his words, "That was the police.
Ned was mugged...he's been shot."
"Shot?" I said, uncomprehending. Then, as it sank in, "Is he...?"
"He...he's dead."
Aces and Knaves copyright ©2002 Alan L. Cook
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