Queen of Spades Read online

  The street on which Dr. Eccleston’s office lay, Mannheim discovered, was in fact an alley off the main boulevard of the district. Mannheim peered in the windows as he passed, until he reached the last shop in the alley—“Dr. Eccleston, PhD, Spiritual Counselor,” the sign read, under a detailed rendering of a human brain, “Walk-ins Welcome.” A bell jangled as he entered, and Mannheim found himself in a small, dark waiting room, the lights off and the curtains drawn. At first, he thought the place closed, but then he saw there was light coming from underneath the inner door to the office.

  Mannheim sank into a woolly armchair to wait. In the darkness, he’d begun to doze when a voice from the corner—he had not even noticed there was anyone else in the room—startled him into full wakefulness.

  “I can tell why you’re here, sir,” the voice said. A young boy was sitting in the far corner, behind a plant, swinging his legs. Mannheim could see he was wearing some sort of school outfit. “Dr. Eccleston says I’m gifted.”

  “Ahem, hello. And who might you be?” Mannheim asked.

  “My real name is Theodore. But the kids at school call me Theo because that’s twenty times cooler. Which do you like?”

  “I think Theo is a perfectly fine name. My name is Stephen.”

  The boy slid off his chair and approached Mannheim. “My stepdad wants me out of the house in the afternoons when he’s trying to sleep. He works nights, you see.” He narrowed his eyes at Mannheim. “You work nights too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Everyone who comes here in the afternoon says they work nights. Unless they’re wearing a suit. Then they’re on lunch break.”

  “I see.”

  “Dr. Eccleston is teaching me how to read palms right now. She said I have to start with the basics. What I want to learn is how to channel dead people through a Ouija board. That’s what empaths do, you know. Dr. Eccleston says I can learn to vacate my body and let a spirit in for ten minutes, before I swoop back in.” The child demonstrated with his hand the dive of a hawk seizing fish out of a lake.

  “Interesting,” Mannheim said. “I’m not exactly sure that’s what I’m looking for—”

  “Give me your left hand,” Theo commanded. “I’ll show you.” Mannheim did as he was told, and soon the boy was investigating his palm, pressing his nails into the soft areas. “That’s what I thought. You have an abbreviated life line, sir.”

  Mannheim nodded grimly as Theo continued to probe his hand.

  “Oooh!” he exclaimed. “I’m not a hundred percent sure—but you have a rare pattern in your palm! Dr. Eccleston calls it a simian crease.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Look,” the child said. He held up Mannheim’s hand to show him. “Your heart and your life line converge right here.” Mannheim was directed to an area between his thumb and forefinger, right where he would’ve held the handle of a carving knife. “It means you’re a lucky person.”

  “That’s news to me,” Mannheim said. He recalled sitting on the floor of his attic, the weight of the rope around his neck. “I don’t feel like I’m lucky.”

  “Well, you are. Your palm says so. Something amazing is going to happen to you before you die.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Because,” Theo said, with the slightest hint of exasperation. “A medium can tell things, and then you read the palm to confirm you’re right.”

  “I see. So how much are you charging me for this reading, Theo?”

  He expected the child to say five, ten, or even twenty dollars, but the boy said he was gifted, and that a reading from him should cost a hundred dollars. Chastened, Mannheim withdrew the bill from his wallet and handed it over, which Theo accepted without hesitation and slipped into a pocket inside his school outfit.

  Having paid the child so handsomely, Mannheim now discovered that he wanted more from the child. “So do you have any advice for me?” he asked when it seemed like none was about to be offered.

  The boy thought for a moment. “Maybe you should stay awake as much as possible. Watch for this amazing thing to happen. Then you can die.”

  “What makes you think I have control over when I die?” Mannheim asked.

  “You don’t?”

  It was at this moment that the inner door opened. Both Mannheim and the child looked up and saw the imposing silhouette of Dr. Eccleston darkening the doorway. She was attired in tinted glasses and a long white lab coat.

  “Theo!” she boomed. “I told you that you must never turn off the lights when clients are here!”

  The boy hurried and flipped a switch behind one of the drapes, instantly bathing the room in a harsh, fluorescent light. Mannheim was surprised to see that Theo seemed smaller—not younger, but undersized for his age, which could not have been more than ten. The room appeared now as just another waiting room, the shadows having hidden its more prosaic elements: the dropped ceiling, the drab carpet, the bell attached to the front door to indicate the presence of visitors.

  Once the child had retired to his corner, Dr. Eccleston inclined her head politely toward Mannheim, held her office door open with one arm, and with the other beckoned him to enter.

  Spur of a Moment

  The phone rang Saturday evening in Chimsky’s rooms at the Orleans—he had taken the night off in order to sweat his bet—and its loud tolling unsettled him and made him tighten the robe around his gray belly. He stared at the phone until the rings died out. Then, very carefully, he placed the receiver onto its side on the end table, and tried to refocus on the events that were unfolding on the immense television that encompassed an entire corner of his living room.

  Things were not going so well out in Las Vegas for Chimsky. When he’d placed his bet, Chimsky had been absolutely sure of the outcome of the big fight. But now, with one round to go and the fight clearly headed toward a decision, his judgment was so clouded by his fear of losing that he had no idea what the scorecards would eventually reveal: whether Golovkin—and therefore Chimsky—had won, or whether Golovkin had lost, in which case Chimsky was fucked.

  In the twelfth round, Chimsky could swear that Golovkin had gained the ascendancy, closing along the ropes with a battery of thudding blows against Coronado’s horribly disfigured left eye. But Chimsky could see that Golovkin himself sported a face colored with bruises and a swollen cheek. The decision could go either way, Chimsky thought, a sentiment that was confirmed when the ring announcer proclaimed that the first judge scored Golovkin slightly ahead, 115–113, while the second preferred Coronado by the same margin. Chimsky held his breath.

  “Say Golovkin,” he pleaded.

  An hour later, there was a sharp knock on the door. Chimsky found himself still sitting on the couch, although at some point he’d turned off the television. As the knock transformed into pounding, Chimsky rose and padded heavily down the hallway. When he opened the door, Mr. Fong stood there, holding a clipboard, ready for the accounting. He was accompanied by Quincy and another enormous man, red-haired, both dressed in movers’ smocks. “I told you, Chimsky,” Fong said. “You don’t know shit about boxing.”

  Chimsky silently ushered them in.

  Fong looked around the rooms while in the kitchen, Chimsky made Quincy and the other man—his name was Simon—cups of tea, hoping it would serve to soothe Fong’s henchmen before whatever was about to transpire. They chatted quietly and were polite enough, Chimsky noticed, to not mention the fight at all. Fong came back into the kitchen after twenty minutes and began directing his men on what to remove from the apartment. They started with the enormous television and the couch on which Chimsky had so recently sat. Next went his king-size waterbed and the framed lithograph by Kandinsky that had hung over it. Eventually, sitting on a folding chair, Chimsky looked around and saw that everything of value had been taken from the premises. With the removal of the final item—the late Rajah’s three-tiered cat tower—Fong calculated the grand total and showed his arithmetic to Chimsky:


  “Your loan was for the amount of fifty thousand dollars, which I have added to your previous debt of forty-six thousand three hundred seventy-five. I have taken the liberty of withdrawing the balance in your checking account, five hundred thirty-seven dollars, as well as taking possession of your car, furniture, and household effects for twenty thousand, which I think we can all agree is an extremely generous valuation. The remaining balance of seventy-five thousand eight hundred thirty-eight dollars is what you owe us. Now, we need to speak about your plan for payment of this amount and its associated interest.”

  As if on cue, Quincy and Simon reentered the kitchen and took up a position behind Chimsky. He could feel their presence on the back of his neck.

  “Start talking, Chimsky,” Fong said.

  “Well,” Chimsky said. “I work in the High-Limit Salon at the Royal—but you know that already. I get toked an average of two dollars per hand, and I can deal fifteen hands per down, so that’s thirty dollars per down. In a normal eight-hour shift, I deal twelve or thirteen downs. So that adds up to about four hundred per day, cash, not even counting my paycheck.”

  Fong did some quick figuring in his ledger. “That means it would take you over forty weeks to repay the loan. That isn’t acceptable.”

  Quincy and Simon closed on Chimsky, who was still sitting on the folding chair, and dragged him off it, upsetting it. They stretched his right arm over the marble island in the kitchen as if it were a chopping block.

  “I could work six days a week,” Chimsky offered. “Or seven. I could work doubles.”

  “That’s not good enough,” Fong said.

  Simon began twisting Chimsky’s arm counterclockwise while Quincy held him down, and his arm felt like it was going to come out of the socket. The pain was excruciating, and Chimsky burst into tears at its intensity. “For God’s sake, stop!” he cried. “You didn’t let me finish!”

  Simon stopped twisting his arm, but held it in position so the agony, still severe, had at the very least leveled off.

  “Well?” Fong said.

  Through the fog of pain, Chimsky seized on the hand he had dealt the Countess several weeks previous, the one she’d won with the Deuce of Spades. “I can deal you a huge winner!” he blurted suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I can deal you a huge hand—hands, even! As many as you want.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve been practicing.”

  “You’ve been practicing,” Fong repeated.

  “I can manipulate the shuffle,” Chimsky said. “Set the deck for you.”

  Fong paused, allowing Chimsky to plunge on.

  “Come to the Royal a week from tonight. Sit at my table. Buy in for twenty-five, thirty grand. Watch a few hands and then start playing, maybe five hundred or a thousand a hand. I’ll deal these hands straight from the shoe. Then after playing for a while, you can say you’re about to leave. On the next shuffle, I’ll set the deck. Bet normally until it gets to the last three cards. Then say that you want to call the last turn, and that you want to bet everything you have in front of you. I’ll deal you a winner. You’ll win four times your bet!”

  Fong looked dubiously at Chimsky prostrate before him. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I told you,” Chimsky said. “I’ve been practicing for years—for twenty years! In front of a mirror so I can’t tell what I’m doing with my own eyes! Please!”

  Fong signaled Simon and Quincy to release him, and Chimsky collapsed to the floor. His shoulder was on fire and Chimsky rubbed it vigorously, groaning in pain.

  “Show me,” Fong said. “Get your shoe.”

  “My arm,” Chimsky said. “I can’t even move it right now.”

  Fong laughed. “Don’t be shy, Chimsky. We all want to see.”

  “It’s my dealing arm!” Chimsky cried. “I think your apes dislocated it!”

  “Hey now,” said Quincy.

  “He may be right, Mr. Fong—we did do a number on it,” said Simon.

  Fong laughed again and shook his head. “All right, Chimsky, you’ve made your case.” He dismissed his men, telling them to finish packing the van. Then, when they were alone, Fong leaned down, close enough for Chimsky to smell aftershave and the faint scent of pineapple. “I admit your little idea intrigues me. One week from today, we’ll return exactly two hours before your shift is scheduled to begin, and you can demonstrate for us what you’re describing.” Fong smiled and squeezed Chimsky’s afflicted shoulder, causing him to cry out. “See you next week.”

  After their departure, Chimsky lay on the floor moaning, catching his breath. Slowly, he raised himself up on the counter and stared at the bare surroundings. They’d left nothing at all, except for Rajah, stuffed and mounted on a stand in the corner, regarding him with cold, emerald eyes. Chimsky knew he was as doomed as the cat. The fact was he’d been dealing for twenty-three years, and he knew no one who could set a deck the way he’d described, undetected, including himself.

  There was no choice but to run. Chimsky waited a half hour, working up his nerve, and then took the service elevator down to the parking garage, to see if they’d taken his car yet. When the doors opened, Chimsky was relieved to see his Saab coupe was where he’d left it that morning. Only when he walked up to the car did he notice that somebody was already occupying its front seat.

  It was Simon, the enormous red-haired man who had twisted his arm. Also, the one who had carried out his coffee table, which weighed two hundred pounds.

  After exchanging a silent wave with him, Chimsky returned to the elevator and reevaluated the situation. So—all he had was one week to master the impossible. Or at least, Chimsky suddenly thought, at least well enough so that it would escape the notice of anyone at the Royal. As the elevator rose, Chimsky felt a bit of his resolve return. He knew that surveillance still used cameras from the 1970s—the black-and-white footage was grainy, with no sound, and was recorded on tapes that had been used hundreds, even thousands of times, erased every Sunday. There was a chance it would be impossible to tell from such poor resolution the minute acts of legerdemain required when the critical hands occurred.

  Chimsky re-entered his apartment, which now contained just poor Rajah and the old wall-to-wall carpet from the Orleans. The air was noisy and cold without furniture to block its passage, and, shivering, Chimsky shut it off. After drinking two glasses of water to rehydrate his frayed nerves, Chimsky went to the hall closet and removed from the top shelf a roll of deep blue felt, his practice shoe, and a cardboard box full of voided sets of Royal playing cards. Carefully, he unrolled the felt on the countertop and flattened it with his elbow. The counter was about the same height as the Faro table when he sat on two phone books and the folding chair.

  Chimsky took out a deck and fanned it over the felt face up, then face down. As he scrambled the deck and squared it for shuffling, he tried to focus his mind on the location of the Ace, the Deuce, and the Trey of Spades. Painstakingly, on each of the three riffle shuffles, he manipulated one of these cards onto the bottom of the deck so that eventually, all three lay next to one another. Then, very carefully so as to maintain the integrity of their sequence, Chimsky strip cut the deck. It was clumsy, but he finally managed to move the three cards to the precise middle, twenty-six cards deep, although his actions were so obvious even a child would have noticed. He then placed the deck next to his yellow plastic cut card and performed a one-hand cut directly to the location of the three-card sequence, so the Ace, the Deuce, and the Trey were now the top three cards in the deck. Then he turned the deck over and slid it face down into the shoe. He dealt the entire shoe out: the first time, it came out Deuce, Ace, Trey. Then they came out in reverse order: Trey, Deuce, Ace. The third and fourth times, there was another card shuffled into the sequence accidentally. But by the time Chimsky had done this a dozen times, the sequence was coming out right, although his actions were only slightly smoother. After several hours, when the deck he was using became too worn, he tossed it back
into the box, took out another deck, fanned it out on the felt, reshuffled it, recut it, slid it back into the shoe, and started again.

  Homework

  Chan clocked in at midnight, so for many weeks, he only ever set eyes upon the Countess as she was being escorted from the casino and returned to her car. It wasn’t a procession he could possibly have missed. With a growing sense of anticipation, Chan awaited the approach of two a.m. every night, and when he saw her, a desire to watch the Countess gamble came over Chan—he especially wanted to deal hands to her.

  One night in August when the start of his break coincided with her leaving, Chan followed her entourage outside to where her long, silver car sat gleaming underneath the casino awning. Before she stepped in, the Countess handed each of the valets a black $100 chip, and they bowed their heads in turn. Then, for a moment it seemed she had noticed Chan’s scrutiny—her sharp eye had settled upon him, burning with an eerie vigor.

  Chan had blushed, turned quickly, and reentered the casino. The look possessed a meaning that eluded him at the time, but later, lying restless in bed, he felt he knew what she asked of him: Can you?

  On his next day off, Chan drove to the Snoqualmie Library, a modern, three-story edifice with a glassed-in atrium that occupied an entire block of downtown. Chan had heard that libraries in the Pacific Northwest were revered institutions, yet he was still impressed by the building’s immense size, and the number and diversity of patrons he found inside, each deep in their own study. In a low whisper, the librarian at the information desk directed Chan to the second floor, where the archives of the local newspaper, the Snoqualmie Intelligencer, could be found. Chan carried with him up the wide marble steps a satchel that contained a spiral-bound ledger, a pencil sharpener, and two sharpened pencils. His plan was to discover for himself an account of the night from three years ago, the one Chimsky had mentioned, when the Countess had placed two consecutive bets at Faro and won over a hundred thousand dollars. There was something about Chimsky’s story that Chan did not entirely trust, borne of the general suspicion under which he held everyone who worked in his field. There were many other tales he’d heard in the past that had proven fictitious under examination, and as Chan pulled from the shelf three large, leather-bound volumes of archives from the time period of the alleged incident, he was prepared for any outcome from his research.