Queen of Spades Read online

  Chan paused and carefully placed his palms on the table. “My previous appointments were temporary—but I believe the Royal is different, sir.”

  “We think so,” Mannheim said, smiling. “What can you deal?”

  “Blackjack, Pai Gow, Caribbean Stud, Two- and Three-Card Poker—the usual. The only games I cannot deal,” Chan said, “are Craps and Roulette.”

  “What about Faro? We offer that in the high-limit room here.”

  “Nor Faro,” Chan added apologetically. “I’ve never had the opportunity.”

  “That’s fine,” Mannheim said. “In the pit, we only spread Blackjack, Pai Gow, and Three-Card.” He stood up from the table. “Well, shall we?”

  The two men exited the lounge and Mannheim led Chan across the dark patterned carpet—ingeniously designed to camouflage any chip that fell upon it—to the pit, which in that nether hour between swing and graveyard shifts was calm and subdued. They walked behind the velvet ropes into the center of the pit, where the assistant graveyard manager, Dayna, stood with her arms crossed. One of the high-limit dealers, Chimsky, was also there, chatting to Dayna about an upcoming boxing match he considered an extraordinary betting opportunity, a “mortal lock.” Mannheim knew Chimsky and disliked him—technically, Mannheim was his superior, but Chimsky lorded over everyone in the pit the fact that he worked in the High-Limit Salon.

  Mannheim tapped one of his dealers on the shoulder and indicated to her that she should step aside for a few hands. Chan positioned himself in the spot, and the two customers at the table, old Royal regulars, regarded the new dealer suspiciously.

  “Hello,” Chan said. “I hope you are well.”

  “We will be if you deal us some winners,” one of the customers said. “Leanne’s killing us tonight.”

  With the flick of an agile wrist, Chan was off. Mannheim and Chimsky stood and watched the audition, which consisted of three hands. The first thing Mannheim looked for was confidence in knowledge of the game, the rules and the payouts in particular. The second was speed and efficiency—the more hands dealt per down, the better for the house. And finally, there was that aspect of dealing that cannot be defined—style, for lack of a better word. Chan was unremarkable in the first two departments, but his idiosyncratic flair in sliding a card from the shoe, flipping it over using just the edge of the card, the overall effect created by his spider-like fingers as they traveled across the felt, mesmerized Mannheim. He understood why Chan had had so many previous dealing appointments: the man was an exceptional dealer.

  “So what do you think?” Mannheim whispered. He knew Chimsky, who prided himself on being the best at the Royal, could always be counted on for a brutal but fair assessment.

  “He’s not very fast, is he?” Chimsky said. “He’s solid enough for the pit, though. He’s better than half the people here already.” Chimsky said the last softly enough that exactly none of the dealers of whom he spoke could hear.

  Mannheim nodded. There was something in Chan’s serious manner, in his subtle dealing style, that bespoke some secret intensity. He reminded Mannheim of himself at a younger age, a slow-burning fuse ready to be lit—but by what? Mannheim had never discovered his own spark, and now it was too late for him. But afterward, in the lounge, after he informed Chan he was hired—news the man received with utter equanimity—Mannheim told Chan that he hoped he would discover what he was looking for at the Royal.

  “Find yourself a nice place to live,” Mannheim said. He recommended a building with furnished rooms several miles away, in downtown Snoqualmie. “Get acclimated to our little corner of the world. Come in tomorrow night and we’ll get you started. Oh, and let me know the size for your vest.”

  After Chan departed, Mannheim—pleasantly diverted by the audition—returned to the pit to begin his nightly ritual, kibitzing with his dealers and regular customers. His mood was light as he listened to their tales of woe: bad beats in Blackjack, an unlucky DUI, a tooth that had mysteriously gone missing. Mannheim was laughing at this last story when he began to feel a wetness in his right ear—from the inside. He put a hand to the spot and when he examined his fingers, there was blood on them. Mortified, Mannheim excused himself and rushed to the employee bathroom, all the while applying pressure to his ear, but to little effect—he could feel blood dripping down the front of his hand, staining the sleeve of his jacket.

  In the bathroom, he leaned his head against the wall of the stall and stuffed the afflicted canal with tissue. As he waited on gravity to stem the flow, Mannheim could not help but recall Dr. Sarmiento’s warning that disturbing symptoms would arise as his condition worsened: internal bleeding, amnesia, fainting spells. Even unusual odors and hallucinations. For a moment, Mannheim wished that the trickle wouldn’t stop, that it would in fact surge, and he would bleed to death right then and there on the floor of the Royal, and be done with it all. But of course, after ten minutes, it did stop.

  Mannheim carefully cleaned his ear, both the lobe and inside, washed his sleeve, and then made his way back to the pit, feeling slightly disoriented, his equilibrium off. There, he watched as the rest of the evening at the Royal unspooled around him, hardly taking any notice now of what Dayna, Leanne, and the others were saying. There was a note of doom in his voice whenever he confirmed the buy-in amounts shouted by his staff, or explained to a customer why they were no longer allowed any alcohol. In the back of his mind was the knowledge that there was a very good chance that Chan would be the last dealer he would ever audition, that he would ever hire at the Royal, for Mannheim was dying, and only he and Dr. Sarmiento knew this.

  Chan’s First Night

  At the appointed time, Chan returned to the Royal, freshly groomed. From the cage, he received his name tag—Arturo Chan, Pit Dealer—and a red vest, size small. It shaped his torso nicely, and he could tell Mannheim was pleased by his neat appearance. He tapped in at a Blackjack table, replacing a rotund, curly-haired dealer named Bao who dashed off to smoke. There were two players at the table, a mother and daughter who each had fifteen dollars out, but seeing the dealer change, reduced their bet sizes to five dollars, the minimum.

  “Good luck,” Chan said, passing his right hand over the table with a flourish. He dealt them both pat hands—the mother a 20 and the daughter a 19—and then promptly dealt himself a Blackjack, with the Jack and then the Ace of Spades. “Story of my life,” the mother muttered as Chan swept their bets. They each pushed out five more dollars. This time, Chan dealt the mother a 6-4 for 10 and the daughter a 5-6 for 11—and himself a 7. They doubled down and Chan stonewalled their hands with a Trey and a 4, respectively. “It never fails!” the mother exclaimed, glaring at him. When Chan revealed that his second card was another 7, giving him 14, their spirits rose for a moment—only to be dashed when Chan dealt himself a third 7 to make 21. Disgusted, the pair left for greener pastures.

  Mannheim, who had been watching, chuckled. “I think this casino is going to like the way you deal.”

  It took twenty minutes before Chan received another customer. A young couple sat down, holding hands. He offered them the deck to cut and the woman took the yellow cut card and plunged it in the middle. Chan deftly made the cut and inserted the entire thing into the shoe. Out of the first three hands, they won twice when Chan busted, and pushed when they all drew 18. The table gradually filled, seat by seat, so by the time Chan got to the cut card, there was only one empty chair. Chan was finding a good, steady groove, and occasionally he won a toke or two for himself from the young couple, who had taken a liking to him and were occasionally placing one-dollar wagers on his behalf.

  It was in this kind of dealer’s trance, during his third down of the evening, that Chan looked up from the hand he was dealing—a new player was taking an inordinately long time deciding to hit or stand—and noticed a small procession was negotiating its way through the pit, toward the exit. It was a group of valets escorting an extremely old woman. Chan was struck by her appearance—she wore a long, dark gown,
and her fine white hair was pulled back high from her forehead by a gold circlet. In several spots, the skin on her face was nearly translucent, revealing a patchwork of veinery underneath, like the delicate marbling in a block of cheese.

  “Sir, my card please,” the new player at the table was saying. Chan realized he’d been distracted from the play of the hand. He quickly dealt the player an 8 to make 20, and busted himself with a King. But moments later, while he was making the payouts, his attention was again drawn from the table, this time by the sound of someone shrieking in delight.

  “Yes!” a woman near the entrance was shouting. “Yes! Yes!” It sounded like the mother that Chan had dealt to earlier that evening. Her slot machine was going off, relinquishing its jackpot in an orgy of bells and sirens. And a most curious sight—Chan could see that just beyond the machine and its happy winner was the old woman, leading the procession of valets up the ramp that led out of the casino, taking no notice of the commotion at all.

  “Hey dealer! Are you going to pay us or what?”

  Flustered, Chan apologized. He finished the payouts and swept the hands, and as he slid the cards into the discard tray, he was glad to see that Mannheim hadn’t seemed to notice his dawdling. For the rest of the down, Chan resolved to focus.

  At the end of his fifth consecutive down, Mannheim tapped him on the shoulder and told Chan to go on break. “Keep up the good work,” he said.

  Chan wandered to the employee lounge, where two fellow pit dealers pulled a chair for him to join them. Leanne and Bao were friendly and gregarious, and after fifteen minutes of chatting about their respective dealing pasts, Chan asked them about the old woman he had seen leaving the casino. They were only too happy to respond. He learned that no one knew her real name, and that she was referred to by all the regulars and the staff as the Countess.

  Every evening, Leanne said, she could be found playing Faro in the High-Limit Salon. She arrived at ten p.m. in a long, silver Rolls Royce limousine, and would gamble for three hours—no, it was four, said Bao. Until two a.m. precisely. All the while, her chauffeur, a young man who never spoke a word, stood stiffly by her side.

  “She’s sort of the queen of the Royal,” Bao explained.

  As they continued chatting about the old woman, a shadow fell across their table and a loud voice interjected: “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.” Chan turned and recognized the heavyset bearded dealer who had been present during his audition—Chimsky. He was standing before them in his purple vest, drinking a cup of coffee. “You three may be interested in hearing how she fared in her gambling this evening.”

  Leanne sighed. “Go ahead, Chimsky. You’re going to tell us anyway.”

  Chimsky smiled and sat down in the seat next to Chan’s. “Tonight, she watched eight decks pass without placing a bet,” he began. “Three whole hours. Then, with no warning, I see her quietly push out one green plaque onto the Deuce.” Chan knew the green plaques at the Royal were worth $25,000 apiece. He leaned closer.

  “Three Deuces had already come out during the deal,” Chimsky said. “The only one left was her Deuce—the Deuce of Spades. I waited for the table to quiet. Then I threw down her card and there it was!”

  For the only time that evening, Chimsky told them, a slight curl of a smile had escaped the Countess’s lips. She waited calmly while Chimsky slid her winnings across the table—another green plaque to match the one she had wagered. She had not played another hand, although she watched until two a.m., as she always did. Then she had risen, ordered her car, and departed.

  “Are you saying,” Chan asked—it was the first time he had spoken to Chimsky—“that she places only one bet over the course of an entire evening?”

  “Not quite.” Chimsky turned toward him. “Many nights she watches and doesn’t ever place a single bet. But very rarely, she’ll place two in a row. The last time was three years ago, and she won over a hundred grand.”

  “I remember that night,” said Bao. “It was all the talk for about a week.”

  “So she plays a system,” Chan said.

  Chimsky laughed. “Of course. But I haven’t been able to figure hers out. Once, I recorded every hand she played on my deal for a month, about a dozen total. I couldn’t detect the slightest pattern.”

  “But who is she? How can she can afford to bet such large amounts?”

  Chimsky shook his head. “No one even knows where she lives!” He looked like he was about to say more. “Ah, but look at the clock. The Faro table calls.”

  At the conclusion of his shift—the last four hours of which were unremarkable—Chan returned to the cheap, furnished room he had rented based on Mannheim’s recommendation and tried to sleep. However, even with the windows papered over, there remained slits through which light penetrated and vexed his eyes, no matter which way he turned. Eventually, he arose and took a long shower instead, then made a pot of coffee and returned with a mug to the living room. Where a television normally would have sat stood an old trunk paneled in dark wood—Chan gazed upon this with some satisfaction and ran his hand over its leading edge.

  When he lifted the lid of the trunk, the hinge activated a mechanism that elevated an inner shelf to the level of his waist. Upon the shelf were the books Chan had been collecting since early adulthood, antiquarian tomes on the history and art of gambling: the first edition of Yardley’s The Education of a Poker Player, Rocheford’s Les Caprices du Hasard, the classic Gambling Systems of the World by Martingale. Chan withdrew the Martingale and perused it for half an hour, seeking some mention of the system the old woman employed, but he found none that fit Chimsky’s description. This reinforced for Chan what he already suspected—that the Countess’s system was singularly hers.

  He returned the Martingale to its place, passed a finger over the Rocheford, and selected instead a particularly slim volume in a mustard-green dust jacket, upon which was depicted in an art deco style gamblers in formal dress surrounding a vast table imprinted with cards. Chan carried the book, which was entitled A Player’s Guide to Faro, to the couch where his coffee awaited. That morning, he’d asked Mannheim about the steps required to eventually be promoted to the High-Limit Salon, and Mannheim had said that there were no shortcuts—Chan would have to work his way up the seniority list, which could take years, and that in the meantime, the first thing he should do was familiarize himself with the rules of Faro.

  THE 13 RULES OF FARO

  Players: Any number, although six is the comfortable maximum.

  House Officials: A dealer and a manager who supervises betting and serves as the case-keeper, keeping track on a board visible to players which cards have been dealt and which are still available.

  1. The house acts as the banker, and the stakes involved may be limited at the house’s discretion.

  2. Players purchase chips from the dealer to facilitate making bets. Their value is denoted by different colors, or numerals stamped on them.

  3. The dealer sits before a table covered with a green or a blue felt cloth, on which are painted the thirteen cards of one suit, usually Spades.

  4. The dealer shuffles and cuts the pack, then places the cards face down inside a metal box called a shoe. At one end of the box, near the top, is a horizontal slit, wide enough to permit the passage of a single card. The top card is always kept opposite the slit by four springs in the bottom of the box forcing the pack upward.

  5. Having decided which cards on the Faro board they wish to bet on, the players bet by placing their chips on the cards selected.

  6. The first card in a deck is known as the soda, and is not used, but discarded. The second card is the winner, and is placed to the left of the shoe in front of the dealer. The third card is the loser for that turn, and is placed to the right of the shoe. There is a winner and a loser for every turn.

  7. Loser cards win for the house, and all stakes resting on the corresponding card on the board are taken by the house.

  8. Winner cards win for t
he players the amount of any bet placed on the corresponding card on the board.

  9. Whenever the winning and losing cards in a turn are the same rank (e.g., two Kings, two Sixes, etc.), this is known as a split, and the house takes half the chips staked on them. This is the house’s percentage, and can be expected to occur about three times every two decks.

  10. Each pair of cards is known as a turn. There are 25 turns in one deck of Faro. Including the soda and the hock (the last card in the deck), there are 52 cards total. At the end of each turn bets are settled, and new ones made for the next turn.

  11. When there is only one turn left in the pack (two cards plus the hock), players may call the last turn, that is, guess the order in which the last three cards will appear. If the three cards are different, and the player guesses correctly, the bet returns four times the stake. If there are two cards the same, the bet returns twice the stake.

  12. When the pack is exhausted, a fresh deal is made and the playing continues as before.

  13. In case of a misdeal, all active bets are returned.

  Two Temptations

  For many years, ever since he was a small child, Chimsky had followed the sport of boxing. In that time he’d witnessed the rise and fall of many champions—Bob Foster, Roberto Duran, and of course Ali—but this new fighter, Anton “Glove of Stone” Golovkin, was truly striking. No middleweight that Chimsky had ever seen, not even Hagler, carried as much power in his fists as the frightening Golovkin. During his recent ascension to the middleweight championship, the Glove of Stone had strewn in his wake a string of challengers, all stiffened by his concussive right to the temple or thudding left to the liver. Golovkin was 43 and 0 with 41 knockouts, and the two who’d survived the distance had done so at a heavy price to their own careers, neither having ever fought again.