Queen of Spades Read online

  “You’re too kind, sir,” Chimsky said as he collected his tip.

  Then the Countess took one of the green plaques off the four she had just won. Slowly, she pushed it toward Chimsky.

  “Please break this for me,” she said. “And keep five for yourself.”

  “Madam, are you serious?” Chimsky said. “I can’t possibly—”

  “You’ve earned it,” she said, eyeing him narrowly. “Haven’t you?”

  Chimsky laughed nervously. “Your generosity is extraordinary—and greatly appreciated, madam.”

  She said nothing, watching him as he made change. When he was done, he realized Lederhaus had been tapping him on the shoulder for some time. “I think that’s enough excitement for one night, Chimsky.”

  The crowd groaned at his removal, and he acted as if he were being pulled against his will, but Chimsky was glad for the involuntary EO—he could not go through that again. He basked in the glow of the table’s admiration for just a moment longer. Then, once he was clear of the Salon, he hurried to the locker room and changed quickly, his fingers still shaking.

  He wondered if he would encounter Fong or his buddies again that evening. But as he walked out to the employee lot toward his car, he saw—for the first time all week—its driver’s seat empty. The door was unlocked, and the keys were in the ignition. A note stuck underneath the wiper blade read: “Nice job, Chimsky. Consider yourself off the hook. For now.”

  Chimsky’s face widened into a grin. He folded the note and put it in his pocket. Then he took a running start, leaped into the air and whooped. He felt ten years younger, as light as a feather, and even looked it for a moment. His pockets flush with the six grand Fong and the Countess had tossed him, there was no question how he would celebrate, having restrained himself for so long. He wanted to call Barbara and tell her the good news, ask her to join him—but would she even care? He’d phone her later. Instead, he pulled out of the parking lot, merged on the expressway, and headed west toward the nearest casino.

  A Painted Man

  Chan’s mother and father both died when he was a small child—his mother of breast cancer when he was seven, his father in a single-car accident just months later—and he had been raised by his maternal grandmother at her home in Scarsdale, New York. It was his grandmother who’d instilled in Chan an interest in gambling, although she went to great lengths to prevent her young charge from being exposed to such activity. She loved playing mahjong with her guests, who were numerous and frequent, and after dinner, Chan would watch them retire to the study, where through a closed door, he could hear their exclamations and the unceasing clatter of tiles long into the night.

  When Chan asked his grandmother what was happening inside, she told him he was too young.

  Out of her regular visitors, there was one who especially intrigued and frightened Chan, a man with long, dark hair and a painted face who appeared only once every several months, and always alone. When he came, dressed invariably in shirt and tie, there was no dinner. His grandmother would be agitated on these occasions, and she would send Chan to bed with a bag of potato chips. Then she and the stranger would sequester themselves in the study, where Chan could hear them arguing—the man’s voice high pitched and loud, his grandmother’s subdued and contrite. The man never stayed long—only a half hour at most—but his grandmother would remain in the room, not emerging until the next morning, exhausted and shaken.

  Chan had learned never to ask his grandmother about these visits. One time he had persisted, and she had struck him on his left arm with a long-handed ladle, leaving a welt. Later, she had come into his room, where he lay on the bed crying softly, and apologized, stroking his shoulder. “That man is not a good man, Arturo,” she said. “Please don’t ask me again about him.”

  Tuesday night was especially slow at the Royal—after the big hand on Saturday night, the casino still seemed to be in a state of recovery—and when Mannheim asked if anyone wanted an EO, Chan had volunteered and was granted one. He went home, showered, changed, and at five minutes to two, he was sitting in civilian clothes behind the wheel of his hatchback, a full tank at the ready, watching the long, silver Phantom parked near the valet stand at the Royal. As he waited, Chan imagined where the Countess lived, a hidden estate in the mountains, perhaps, far from the casino, lying in ruin.

  Within moments, the Countess and her entourage emerged, and she was delivered into the rear compartment of the Phantom. The driver got in with one last look around, and the taillights came on. Chan felt the low thrum of the powerful engine resonating through the floorboards and into his feet, which began tingling. He started his hatchback and fell in line behind the Phantom, leaving the span of a city block between them. A light rain was falling. The young man ahead drove confidently—never braking unnecessarily, always taking turns at the optimal speed. Chan imagined the Countess inside, the smoothness of the ride lulling her into a post-Faro stupor—was she drinking? As Chan kept pace, he thought to himself that he liked the idea of some rejuvenating fluid passing across the threshold of her ancient lips.

  They drove quietly through the city, and then the Phantom turned onto the freeway heading north, which at this late hour was given over to their two vehicles, and the occasional tractor trailer they passed easily. The young man was pushing the Phantom, going eighty, then ninety miles an hour, the trucks disappearing in the rearview as quickly as they came upon them. Chan’s hatchback strained under the pressure, the stress of the chase causing the loose joints of the front axle to rattle and jar Chan. In this trembling cabin, the miles began ticking by, one after the other. Chan kept the radio off so as not to alter the spell that bound him to the streaking taillights of the Phantom—he was drawn into a kind of reverie by them, swimming in front of him.

  It was more than ten years ago, the previous time he had followed someone. A man with long, gray hair, in a disheveled shirt and tie, had boarded a gambling boat Chan was working on. The man hadn’t recognized Chan, because the last time they had seen each other, Chan had been twelve. But Chan knew him immediately: it was the man who had visited his grandmother in Scarsdale—he could not mistake the man’s painted eyes, nor the distinct high-pitched voice as he berated the cards to do his bidding. “Trey!” he would yell, startling the other players. The man won every bet he made at Blackjack for an hour, doubling on hard 12s and 13s, splitting 10s, hitting on a 17, even—the man not only seemed to know what cards Chan held, but also what was coming next from the shoe. He seemed to be able to stare into the deck.

  Chan had never seen anything like it. Perhaps this was the secret shared between the stranger and his grandmother behind the closed study door. After the man was finished gambling, up well over $10,000, Chan watched him get into a taxi, and Chan followed it to a cheap motor lodge on the outskirts of town. He crept in the muck alongside the man’s room—the window was half-raised and the smell from inside, of burning oil and incense, was overpowering. Through the filmy glass, Chan had seen the small man, now shirtless, sitting on the floor before the mirror: in one hand the man held a syringe. His other arm was restrained by rubber tubing the man pulled taut with his teeth. The man injected a clear fluid into the tattooed bicep of his left arm—the tattoo, Chan remembered, was of a bull’s eye. All the while, the man muttered numbers, repeating them in a trance as his hold on the syringe slackened. “Deuce . . . Trey . . . 7 . . .”

  Chan had discovered in this moment that there was a kind of secret he was not interested in uncovering after all; he had staggered away, revolted.

  He had never seen the painted man again.

  The Countess was different, though—she wasn’t like any of the other peculiar gamblers Chan had come across in his travels, going on occasional hot streaks among many cold ones, relying on vague mysticism and narcotic substances to harness their luck. Her methods were far more deliberate, scientific even. Chan didn’t know how he knew, but he was certain she was not gambling to win money—she played as a test, as an inv
estigation, the same way Chan was investigating her—as a reason to live. But for all her singularity, he could not understand why there was so little known about her—where she lived, for example.

  It wasn’t until Chan looked at the clock on the dash, and saw that it was half past five in the morning, that it began to dawn on him why this particular piece of information was so difficult to come by. It was for the most practical sort of reason: the arrow on his fuel gauge was pointing toward just a quarter tank left.

  Yet Chan felt unwilling to give up after he had pursued the Countess so far. He drove another eighty futile miles in the pre-dawn darkness, which was beginning to lighten and turn gray. Only when the fuel indicator clamored for his attention did he begin to acknowledge that he might have to surrender the chase. For reasons that he could not fathom—Did it have an extra tank? Did it run on something else?—the silver Phantom did not seem burdened by the need for fuel. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for his rattling Datsun.

  Finally, at twenty minutes past six, Chan slowed, watching the Phantom vanish over the horizon, and pulled off the freeway into a truck stop to refuel. The sun was beginning to rise through the Cascades in the east. It had all the feel of being a damp and misty summer morning. After he filled up—spending all the gratuities he had earned that night—Chan sat in his car for a moment, feeling as if he were emerging from some impassioned dream. Then he got back on the freeway, heading south, once more toward the Royal, nursing the overextended engine of his car all the long drive home.

  Lottery

  Barbara was late to the meeting, and she rushed to it directly from her job at the call center. It was only after she settled down in her metal folding chair next to the two newcomers that she noticed the socks under her slacks were mismatched: one was navy and one black, a difference she’d been unable to distinguish in the dark that morning. She crossed her ankles and moved them underneath the seat, next to her purse, and tried to pay attention to what Dimsberg was saying, but her mind was distracted by the discovery of the socks—and Chimsky’s phone call that morning, out of the blue, asking her to meet for a drink. Could anyone be more dense?

  As she pondered what she’d ever seen in her ex-husband—it had become Barbara’s habit to regard Chimsky as the catalyst of her issues, although a year in the Snoqualmie Chapter of Gambling Help had consistently reinforced in her mind that she was their source—the newcomers sitting beside her suddenly rose, startling her.

  “Excuse me,” mumbled the woman, aiming to get out of the circle by moving her chair. A man followed—her husband? Barbara scooted aside several inches, and the couple had broken through and were mere steps from freedom when Dimsberg’s voice ascended to arrest their escape.

  “My friends!” he said. “Stay among us a while longer. You must’ve come for a reason—tell us your story.” He opened his arms magnanimously. Dimsberg was not a charismatic person, with his long face and teeth like a rat’s, but he seemed to have a way of making people do what he wanted, and the couple returned to their seats, although they remained standing.

  “What are your names, my friends?”

  They said they were Shirley and James Harris. Barbara joined with the rest of the group in welcoming them. “Welcome, Shirley! Welcome, James!” There was, of course, that perverse part of Barbara that wanted to whisper to get the hell out before Dimsberg could get his claws into them.

  “We weren’t sure, you know, if we belonged,” Shirley said hesitatingly. “James and I—we don’t gamble every day. Or even every other day.”

  “Shirley, one of our mantras is an addict is always an addict. Your very presence in this room is telling.”

  “Still—we aren’t sure about this.”

  “Tell us why you came,” Dimsberg said. “Why don’t you let us decide?” Other people in the circle encouraged them, and Barbara again found herself in their number. She relished hearing first-timer stories—they satisfied to some degree her desire for action. She admired those in the circle who’d lived through worse than her; conversely, there were some in the circle whom she did not respect for what she felt were minor problems made major. Barbara was curious where this new couple would fall.

  It was the woman, Shirley, who spoke. She explained that she and James never went to casinos, and before this past year had never gambled outside of occasional forays into the state lottery, when the amount of the jackpot was too large to resist. They never won anything. Still, they were doing fine. They had enough coming in from their jobs as math teachers to survive, and the children—there were several, Barbara couldn’t tell how many—were out of the house. The mortgage was paid each month, et cetera. They were nice, unassuming people. Everyone in the circle was waiting, like Barbara, in anticipation of some more tantalizing morsel.

  “Our youngest, Julia, was always the lucky one in the family,” Shirley said. She placed her arm around her husband’s waist. Sitting so close to them, Barbara could see his neck muscles tense at his wife’s touch. “She kept track of the jackpot religiously, and would let us know whenever it hadn’t been hit in a while. She was always winning small amounts—a hundred here or there, sometimes even a thousand. We dabbled, but she played every week, twice a week, like clockwork. We’d chide her about it. Just as a joke.

  “One day,” she continued, “ten months ago this week—we received a phone call from the police. There had been an accident downtown. Julia was walking with her friends. They were celebrating—she’d just found a job. Some maniac drove up on the sidewalk. She—Julia—was pinned underneath the car.” She stifled a sob. “They rushed her to the hospital, but it wasn’t any use.”

  Dimsberg told Shirley to take as much time as she needed. Barbara glared at him.

  “I don’t even remember what happened the rest of that week,” Shirley said. Her voice grew quiet. “There were arrangements made on our behalf.” She broke down again.

  This time, Dimsberg had the sense to keep his mouth shut.

  When she resumed, Shirley’s voice was measured. “We thought we wouldn’t be able to go on. But you know, life makes you. One day, about two weeks after the accident, we were filling up at our normal place. James went inside to pay, and when he came out he had the strangest look on his face. Like he’d heard something wonderful and awful at the same time. Do you want to tell them about it, honey?” He shook his head. His eyes never left the ground. “Okay, I will, then. But stop me if I get anything wrong.

  “Apparently, there was a bit of a commotion in the shop. The jackpot had been hit the previous Tuesday—a dozen people had hit it. One of the twelve winning tickets had been purchased from that gas station! Everyone was talking about it. But no one knew who it was, because no one had claimed the ticket yet.

  “Like I said, James had this strange look in his eyes when he got in the car and told me. He said he knew who had bought that ticket—Julia—and at first, I told him he was crazy. I didn’t want to believe it. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. That was where Julia always bought her tickets. And why wouldn’t someone claim their share of the jackpot? No one forgets to redeem $1.7 million. Unless they couldn’t. Unless they were dead. We never wanted to forget about what happened to Julia—that lost ticket became a symbol to us. It was like a gift she’d left us, James said. It was our responsibility to find and redeem it.”

  The woman paused to take a drink of water from a bottle that Dimsberg handed her. Barbara looked around, and everyone was waiting on her next words with rapt attention.

  “We started by searching her apartment,” Shirley said. “All her old rooms. We became obsessed with finding that ticket. Pretty quickly, things started to get out of hand. We bought an X-ray detector, an infrared camera. We tore the furniture apart. Pried open the floorboards. We looked everywhere a ticket could be. All of Julia’s dear clothes—we ripped open their seams and pockets. But we found nothing. We were sitting in the kitchen one morning, drinking coffee, and James was saying we’d looked every
where.

  “Suddenly I remembered Julia lying in her coffin at the wake, in the suit she’d been wearing the day she interviewed for her new job. It was her only suit. Could she have bought the ticket the same day as her interview? Could the ticket still be inside that suit? I said it was at least possible. I looked over at James and he had that strange look in his eyes again. I was afraid to ask, but I already knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing I was thinking. Forgive us, dear Lord, we’ve both gone a little crazy since Julia left us. James said her spirit was not at rest. Was it possible that we could desecrate our own child’s grave to find that ticket? I firmly believed she wanted us to.” Shirley looked around the circle. “I know how all this must sound to you—!”

  “You’re among friends,” Dimsberg said. “There’s no judgment here.”

  The husband continued staring down, unmoving. There was only a slight ripple along his jawline as his wife spoke, as if he were grinding his teeth. Shirley held onto him tightly. “That night,” she began—she was almost whispering, and Barbara had to strain to hear—“James and I went back to the grave. We had a bag of tools in the back of our pickup. There were two of us shoveling, but it still took hours. Finally, we got down to the coffin. I remember the sound of James’s spade scraping against the wood, and it seemed to snap me out of my trance. Suddenly, I felt that we shouldn’t be doing this—that what we were doing was wrong, horribly wrong.

  “But James said we had gone too far already. I said all right, but you have to do the rest. I turned away and I heard him grunting and prying open the lid of the coffin with the crowbar. I heard the snap as it opened. James was shrieking, and I covered my ears and shut my eyes, and I shouted at him to grab the ticket, grab the ticket! It seemed like hours before I finally heard the noise of the lid slamming closed. When I opened my eyes, James was standing there. He could hardly speak.