Queen of Spades Read online

  “Player ties,” the dealer announced.

  The unlikely 8-to-1 win increased her bankroll to $2,800. More than ever, Barbara felt she should leave. After losing two consecutive hands that whittled her chips down to $2,000, she forced her body to rise before she lost the rest. She tossed the dealer two $25 chips and left the table, heading directly toward the cashier’s cage. The line was long, and as she waited, Barbara looked at her watch for the first time: to her astonishment, it was almost half past midnight! Over six hours had passed since she’d first entered the Royal. Dazed and still buzzing from her rush, she fingered the four purple $500 chips in her grasp, rolling them in her palm, relishing their feel. Her eyes roved over the casino floor, and eventually came to rest on the entrance to the High-Limit Salon. It was a room she’d always ignored because she’d never possessed the means to enter it. But tonight, she had two grand in her hand and the line was moving too slow for her liking.

  Why not?

  Cursed

  Two nights after his private conversation with the Countess, Chan appeared for work and was directed by Mannheim, who was wearing a new suit, to exchange his black vest and name tag at the cashier’s cage for purple ones that designated his promotion to the High-Limit Salon. Chan was floored. Indeed, even as he pulled the new vest over his white shirt, Chan could hardly believe the Countess had moved so fast in fulfilling her promise. More than ever, he found himself convinced of her powers—mathematical and otherwise.

  Chan’s promotion drew the attention of his colleagues in the pit, and he was heartened to hear Leanne and Bao whistle, cheer, and applaud as he walked across the worn casino carpet toward the entrance of the High-Limit Salon. He turned and smiled at them, waving before he disappeared inside.

  He had never before set foot in the room, and as he entered, his shoes sank into the rich, plush carpet. Compared to the brazenly lit pit, the room was dim, and the color of the carpet—deep burgundy—emphasized the impression of murkiness and bloodiness. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Then Chan saw there were three tables, separated by tall marble braziers. To his left was the Baccarat board. To his right was the wheel. And in the middle was the Faro table. At the last, Chan saw the Countess seated in her imposing chair with her back to him, the driver beside her.

  Mannheim, who was standing behind the Faro table, excused himself and approached Chan. He was in an exceptional mood. “How quickly things change,” he said. “Who would imagine you and me in the High-Limit room, just half a year ago?” He patted Chan’s shoulder. “You’ll split half your time between Baccarat and Faro. You’ve dealt Baccarat before, right? That’s where you’ll start.”

  Chan was glad to begin his shift dealing Baccarat, although it had been several years since he’d last dealt it. There were only two players at the table, a man and a woman, betting between $100 and $500 per hand in a very deliberate fashion, and Chan was able to settle into the game. On one hand, he earned himself a green chip when he drew a third card to Player, making a 9 to beat the Banker’s natural 8. “Nicely done, new dealer,” said the woman, who was dressed like an executive. She raised her glass toward him. “Welcome to High Limit.”

  At twelve thirty, Chan was tapped out, and he shifted over to the Faro table. He was extremely nervous as he sat down, with Mannheim hovering behind him and the Countess there, observing him closely, the slightest hint of a smile on her lips. His fingers trembled slightly. Mannheim handed him a new setup and Chan broke the seal on the deck, then fanned the cards face up on the table and counted them. Then he took the leftmost card, the King of Spades, and deftly overturned the entire deck in domino fashion, before counting all the backs. All the while, Chan could feel the eyes of the Countess on his hands, watching him wash, shuffle, and cut the deck, and slide it inside the shoe.

  The deck went slowly, with a hitch or two when Chan struggled to remove a card through the thin slit in the top of the shoe. On the second occasion, Mannheim told him not to worry, that he would soon get a feel for the unusual device. The Countess did not make any bets during the deck, and the other players—there were two others, local retirees Chan had seen before—made only small wagers occasionally. Nobody offered to call the last three cards. After dealing the hock, Chan scrambled the deck, shuffled it again, and reinserted it inside the shoe.

  By this time, his fingers had loosened and become supple, and he was mastering the amount of pressure necessary to issue a card through the small opening at the top of the shoe. Again, the Countess placed no bets during the deck, and wagering remained light throughout the deal, no more than $100 or $200 per turn. When Mannheim asked if anyone wanted to call the last turn, one of the players bet $100 on a final sequence of Ace-Trey-7; the first card was a 7, and the player, an old man, groaned and said, “Oh well.”

  It was now one in the morning, and Chan was tapped out by the next dealer. He moved back to the Baccarat table, where the same two players from before had been joined by a very young spiky-haired man in an enormous gray pin-striped suit, the shoulder pads prominent and misshapen.

  Chan recognized him immediately.

  The boy had about $1,500 in front of him in black chips, the room minimum, and he refrained from betting for an entire shoe, saying he did not like the way Chan looked and was waiting for the previous dealer to return.

  As Chan reshuffled the shoe, the boy asked him to call for service, a request with which Chan was obliged to comply. A server came by and the boy ordered a Manhattan, to be made with a specific kind of vodka. At this unusual order, Mannheim, who was still shadowing Chan on his first night, cleared his throat. “Sorry, sir, but would you mind providing identification?”

  The boy rooted inside his pockets. “I don’t appreciate being treated this way,” he said as he handed over a card. “Perhaps I should take my business elsewhere.”

  Mannheim did not hand the card back. “According to this license, Mr. Peterman, you are thirty-six years old. I have a hard time believing that.”

  The boy’s face colored. “Are you saying I’m a liar?”

  “I’m saying there’s been some sort of mistake. Unfortunately, we cannot allow you to gamble here.”

  By this time, Chan noticed several husky security guards, clad in all black, appearing inside the threshold to the room. They drew the attention of the other players, but the boy remained transfixed in his chair. “Can I have my ID back?” he said.

  “We are obligated by law to retain IDs we deem false.”

  “This is unheard of!” the boy exclaimed. “Please call the manager.”

  “You’re speaking to him,” Mannheim replied.

  “Then call your boss. I would like to file a complaint.”

  Mannheim signaled to the security guards, and Chan saw them approach the table. Finally noticing them, the boy began grabbing at his chips. “This is an outrage!” he said as he shoved them into his pockets. “You will hear from my lawyers.”

  By this time, everyone was watching the altercation at the Baccarat table. The two security guards surrounded the boy, who was still seated, and the first lifted him bodily from the chair while the other held on to his legs. They carried him out, and by this time, he was screaming insensately: “I curse this room! And everybody in it!”

  After this undignified departure, the room took several minutes to quiet down. “Another night in paradise, hmm?” Mannheim said to Chan, squeezing his shoulder, before leaving to oversee the Faro table. Chan dealt the next shoe of Baccarat, and it proceeded in a subdued manner, with the two players left still chatting about the incident, and not paying much attention to the cards.

  The curse of the spiky-haired boy seemed to cast a pall over the High-Limit Salon for the next two weeks. On Chan’s second night, he dealt two entire decks of Faro without a single bet winning, and some of the players joked he was the one who was cursed, since the boy had last sat at his table. The Countess laid no bets for an entire week, continuing to watch every movement he made carefully. Then, during Cha
n’s second week in the Salon, she played one hand of Faro, betting a single $500 chip on an Ace to appear—and losing. Chan looked toward her for some sort of explanation—had she been merely bored?—but she regarded him sternly, as if the errant card were his fault.

  In the afternoons at home, Chan continued to meticulously practice dealing from a makeshift Faro box he had constructed from a shoebox, focusing on the cards until his eyes watered and the images of the cards began to blur. But every night at the table, he continued to deal losing hands to the customers, and one evening, he overheard some players discussing how he was already getting a reputation as “the new cooler” of the High-Limit Salon, a moniker which mortified him. For her part, the Countess remained aloof, returning his looks with a studied insouciance that was hardly comforting.

  Chan’s confidence was at a low ebb when he clocked in for work at midnight on Friday, December 21, the night the Countess had calculated for the cosmological event. At home, Chan had cleaned himself thoroughly and carefully styled his appearance.

  “You look just like you did during your audition,” Mannheim recalled when he saw Chan that night. “Positively severe.”

  Despite Chan’s preparations, however, he still seemed poison to the players at his tables, who lost over and over, with only an infrequent win to stave off their exodus. And on his second down at the Baccarat table, between one and one thirty, Chan had to suffer the ultimate embarrassment of sitting the entire half hour with no players.

  At one thirty, Chan was tapped out and returned to deal at the Faro table. Two players immediately left when they saw him sit down. At the end of his nerves from hearing himself talked about and treated in such a manner, as a kind of anathema to good luck, Chan again suffered issues getting the Faro box to comply with the actions of his fingers. Noticing this, Mannheim told Chan to calm down. “We’re in no rush,” he said, but Chan could not help feeling they were.

  After three hands, he stole a glance at his watch. It was 1:32 on the twenty-first of December, less than a half hour until the moment the Countess had specified.

  He resumed dealing the deck of Faro, and as before, there was very little action. Then Chan was momentarily distracted by the sight of a new player entering the High-Limit Salon. Her open face and manner struck a strong chord of recognition—had he played poker with her over Thanksgiving? He had. Her name was Barbara, and she was Chimsky’s ex-wife. Chan watched as she approached the table, pulled aside one of the empty chairs, and seated herself.

  “Welcome to the table,” said Mannheim. “Barbara, isn’t it? Chimsky’s friend?”

  “Oh, it’s you two!” she said. She looked at their name tags. “Nice to see you again, Stephen. And you too, Arturo.”

  Chan smiled at her. She exchanged four purple $500 chips for twenty black $100 chips, and asked about the betting minimum. Chan noticed the Countess was regarding Barbara with some impatience, and he quickly said it was $100. Barbara nodded and began to play. Very soon, within a couple hands, she was betting $300 or more at a time in random, haphazard fashion. Her fast and loose style appeared to amuse the Countess, and Chan allowed himself to relax slightly, resulting in a more fluid dealing style.

  The Changing of the Card

  At 1:40 a.m., at the completion of the deck in play, the Countess tapped her fingernail against the edge of the table. “A new setup, please,” she requested.

  Chan collected the cards and passed them to Mannheim over his right shoulder, in exchange for a fresh deck. Chan twisted the pack to break the seal and removed the deck from the box. He fanned the cards face up across the blue felt in a perfect semicircle. Everyone at the table saw that the new deck was complete, and contained all fifty-two cards in the expected order: the Spades first, from King through Ace, followed by the Hearts, the Diamonds, and then the Clubs.

  Lifting the leftmost card, the King of Spades, under his left pinky, Chan flipped the deck over, domino-style. Then he inspected the backs of the cards. All were identical—an intricate, interlocking fleur-de-lis pattern in light blue—and again, everyone present saw there were exactly fifty-two cards.

  After Mannheim confirmed the deck was complete and ready to be played, Chan washed the deck thoroughly, scrambling the cards using wide circular motions of both hands, counter-clockwise with the left, clockwise with the right. When he was satisfied the cards were fully mixed, he collected and squared the deck.

  The Countess had been exact in her directions: during the three riffle shuffles, each card under his right thumb must perfectly interlace with each card under his left. Chan carefully performed two riffle shuffles in this way. Then he squared the deck in preparation for the strip cut. Holding the edge of the deck in his right hand, widthwise, he stripped from the top of the deck three times, each instance pulling between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand exactly thirteen cards. Then he performed the third and final riffle shuffle and squared the deck again.

  Now there was only the one-handed cut left to execute. Chan stilled his breathing and concentrated on the fleur-de-lis pattern on the back of the deck. Then, with his right hand, he nimbly snatched the top half off the deck, exactly twenty-six cards deep. He could tell by feel he had done it. He placed these cards onto his yellow cut card and then put the remainder of the deck on top. He squared the deck one last time and inserted it into the shoe.

  By the time this entire procedure was finished, it was 1:41 a.m.

  Chan began dealing the fresh deck. The first card, the soda, was an Ace, which Chan discarded. The players were then allowed to place their bets for the first turn. The Countess refrained, as she had informed Chan she would. Barbara, meanwhile, placed a series of $100 bets on twelve different cards, playing Faro much like she would play Roulette. The next card off the deck, the winner, was a Deuce, followed by the loser, a 7. Mannheim duly noted these events on the case-keep.

  Overall, Barbara won $100 from her dozen bets. “That’s it?” she asked. “I need to change my strategy.”

  “You should,” offered one of the players, a white-haired woman in a pink polo shirt, the collar up. “You’re not going to win anything that way.”

  “Maud, let her play how she wants.”

  “No,” Barbara said. “She’s right.”

  On the next turn, Barbara changed her wagering to three $500 bets, on Trey, 5, and 7. Chan revealed the next card off the deck, the winner, and it was the Trey of Spades. Barbara clasped her hands in delight. Chan paid her $500 for her win, and she tossed him a $25 chip in return.

  “Thank you,” Chan said, inclining his head politely.

  “There’s plenty more coming,” Barbara said. “I can feel it.”

  The Countess looked at her as if to say, You cannot conceive the half of it.

  Over the next dozen turns, Barbara continued her hot streak, winning half the time, $500 each time, and losing only once. By 1:54 am, Chan estimated she had close to $8,000 in front of her, three towering stacks of black chips she shifted and reconfigured continuously.

  Finally, on the fifteenth turn, the Countess moved her left hand slowly forward, pushing a stack of twenty purple chips into the betting circle, $10,000 total. She bet on the 7 to appear. Seeing this, Barbara quickly placed five $100 chips on the 7 as well.

  Chan hesitated, glancing over at Mannheim’s case-keep, but whatever pattern the Countess recognized eluded him—the order appeared completely random. He heard Mannheim behind him, breathing shallowly, expectantly. After the players finished betting, Chan slid the next card from the shoe and it fell to the table.

  It was a 7—the 7 of Clubs. “Yes!” Barbara cried. The Countess calmly watched as Chan made the payouts from his tray, matching her stack of twenty purple chips and Barbara’s five black chips.

  On the sixteenth turn, the Countess declined to bet. The other players, including Barbara, bet as they had before, this time on the 9. The first card out was the 9 of Spades, and they all hooted—but then the next card, the loser, was also a 9, the 9 of Clubs.
Chan was obliged to take half their bets on behalf of the house. “Nobody told me this rule,” Barbara said as she saw her $500 reduced to $250.

  The player named Maud told her it was the house advantage.

  On the seventeenth turn, the Countess resumed wagering, $20,000 this time, on the 6. Barbara followed her with $1,000, and Maud joined as well, betting $500. Maud’s partner, an old man in an ill-fitting ball cap, bet on the 8 after an examination of the case-keep. Chan slid the next card out and it was the 6 of Hearts—the Countess was right again!

  “I’ve learned my lesson,” the old man said as he glumly watched Chan pay the other players. “I’m following your lead next time.”

  The pattern had been established. On the eighteenth, twentieth, and twenty-second turns, the Countess did not bet, and neither did the three other players. But on the nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third turns, the Countess steadily increased her wager—from $40,000 to $80,000 to $160,000—and each time, she won, and so did Barbara, Maud, and the old man.

  After the twenty-third turn, a flustered Mannheim asked the table to pause as he assessed the situations. Chan counted down the players’ stacks in his mind—the Countess had $350,000 in plaques and assorted chips in front of her, Barbara had near $25,000, and the old couple had over $10,000 between them. Their winning had drawn the attention of the other customers in the High-Limit Salon, and the Baccarat and Roulette players had stopped their gambling and gathered around the table to watch the action.