Queen of Spades Read online

  “‘Did you get it?’ I said. I could see in one hand he was still clutching the crowbar—and in the other he was holding a slip of paper. It was the ticket!”

  Someone in the circle audibly gasped. Barbara realized she hadn’t taken a breath in several moments. She had never heard a story such as this.

  “Go on,” Dimsberg said.

  “We went back to the gas station the next afternoon.” The life had drained from Shirley’s voice now. “The ticket wasn’t the winning jackpot ticket after all. We told him to check again, and he said that he was absolutely certain that it was not the winning ticket. Julia had only gotten two of the numbers right—but it was still worth fifty bucks.”

  The way the woman said “fifty bucks” made Barbara cringe—like they were all victims of some sick joke.

  Shirley closed her eyes for a moment. “James hardly speaks anymore, since that night. But I know we’re on the same page. Fifty dollars is far from enough. We play every drawing now, for Julia’s sake. We started buying seven tickets a time, because that was the day she was born. Then we bought seventeen every time, because that was both the month and the day she was born. Then thirty-seven every time, factoring in her birth year and age. Still, we haven’t won. But we know we will if we can just find the right number to buy. Julia is worth more than fifty goddamned dollars.”

  Here, the woman fell silent.

  “Hey, at least she won,” Dimsberg said. “Lucky Julia, you know?”

  Quickly, Barbara rose—feeling everyone’s eyes turn to her—and left the circle. She nearly ran.

  Once outside, Barbara leaned her head against the cool brick of the Community Center, smoking a cigarette. No one else came out. She couldn’t believe they could all still sit there, after hearing a story like that. What she needed was to get away from them for a moment. What she needed was a drink, she thought, recalling Chimsky’s offer. She ground the butt to ash on top of the trash bin, and stepped across to the pay phone beside it.

  “Okay,” she said into the receiver when he answered. “One drink. Meet me in half an hour at Rudy’s.”

  When she arrived, Chimsky was already waiting at their usual spot in the back, a small booth for two underneath a mounted moose head, a drink in hand. He was dressed in his dealer’s garb. He rose to meet her, extending his arms in an awkward attempt at a hug, but she patted his arms away gently. “No, Chimsky,” she said. “Sit down.” She pulled out her chair, collapsed heavily on it, and sighed. He looked at her with unconcealed delight.

  “Hi, Barbara. I was so thrilled when you called.”

  “I see you’ve started without me.”

  “I was a little nervous,” Chimsky said. “I’m really glad you called, Barbara—but I said that already. How are you doing?”

  The waiter came by, a young man with wet, spiky hair, and Barbara asked him to fetch her a gin and tonic. After his departure, she sighed again. “To be honest, Chimsky, it’s been hard, fitting everything in. I’m working full-time now. And then going to the meetings.”

  “Are they still making you feel terrible about yourself?” Chimsky said. “I never liked—”

  “Please,” she broke in. “Don’t start. They provide structure in my life. I was out of control for a long time.”

  “But we had a good time,” Chimsky said. “We were good for each other.”

  “Stop, Chim. You know that’s not true.” Barbara’s drink was placed in front of her on a tiny napkin; she thanked the server, and he nodded and left. “Let me enjoy this, will you?” She sipped it, relishing its smoothness. “Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on with you?”

  Barbara listened to her ex-husband’s recap with only half an ear. Rudy’s was loud at that hour, and Chimsky was describing a series of events that she did not have the desire to understand completely. She looked him over as he spoke, noticing how he had aged, growing thinner, more lined. He was ten years her senior, but the difference had scarcely been noticeable when they’d been married—now, however, she thought he looked in his sixties, despite being fifty-two. No, fifty-three. Chimsky was fifty-three, because she was forty-three. He was explaining to her a hand of Faro, a game she never played, and an old woman who tipped him $5,000—

  “Wait, did you say five grand?” Barbara asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How much of that is left? I’m afraid to ask.”

  “At least twelve hundred,” Chimsky said. “Business has been slow at the Royal lately, but we still have good nights. You should come by—”

  “I told you I hate that place,” she said. The waiter returned, and she ordered noodles—she hadn’t eaten all day, she realized. Chimsky ordered another whisky sour. “Do you ever play the lottery?” she asked after a moment.

  “The what?”

  “The lottery. The state lottery.”

  “I’ve bought a ticket or two,” Chimsky said. “Why?”

  “Do you ever win?”

  “Of course not,” Chimsky said. “You know how much of a scam those tickets are—on average, they return sixty-two cents on the dollar.”

  “Never mind,” Barbara said. “Someone was testifying about it tonight in my meeting, and I guess it’s on my mind. I can’t tell you about it, of course.”

  “You’ve been thinking about playing it?”

  “No. But the new people were so odd and sad. She said they play thirty-seven tickets at a time.”

  “They’re wasting their money. They’d be much better off coming into the Royal once a week and betting it all on red.”

  Barbara laughed. They ordered another round of drinks, and then settled into light reminiscing. Her noodles were delicious. She hardly knew what Chimsky was saying while she ate and listened to the music, which seemed softer now that she’d been drinking, but she found his idle chatter not unpleasant to hear again, after things had been so brutally quiet recently.

  At midnight that night, before separating outside Rudy’s—Chimsky wanted to escort her home, but she said no, firmly—they agreed they should get together again sometime in the vague future. She was too unsteady to drive, so she began to walk in the rain, only about twenty minutes through the silent, wet streets to her apartment. Along the way, she passed a gas station, and she went inside to warm up and get a cup of coffee. In the line at the counter, Barbara broke her usual practice and glanced at the dazzling array of state lottery tickets in the display case. The ingeniously designed Changing of the Card caught her eye. A dealer was depicted with a white-gloved hand poised over a playing card. From the left, the card was the 7 of Diamonds. From the right, it was the Queen of Spades.

  She hesitated when it came her turn in line. She could break her rules once. No one was watching. She turned to double-check. Then she pulled a five-dollar bill from her purse and bought her coffee, her gum, and one Changing of the Card. She folded the ticket and slid it inside her purse, into the side pocket, and walked home quickly, humming a faint melody underneath her breath.

  BOOK TWO:

  SNOQUALMIE

  In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the town’s saloons became known for their notorious all-night poker games, in which new settlers faced off against unscrupulous sharps over property deeds and entire inheritances’ worth of cash.

  —Untold History of Snoqualmie

  Changing Room

  At the beginning of the year, Mannheim had ordered the Countess’s black high-backed chair moved to her spot at the Faro table, where it stood dark and hulking. The Countess had been adamant that she needed it on the premises while she gambled in the High-Limit Salon, for it was, as she explained to Mannheim and Lederhaus, her equivalent of a severed rabbit’s foot. The patterns she had expected to see in the Faro deck had not shown up for over three years now, she told them, and she felt her charm so close might attract a different vein of luck. It was a testament to how much she had grown to be a fixture at the Royal that her wishes were accommodated, and soon, the high-backed chair became nothing more t
han a curiosity to the other players in the high-limit room, and a common sight to the staff, who moved it to the corner during the daytime.

  And in fact, on Saturday evening, the Countess had won the largest hand dealt at the Royal the entire year. Mannheim heard the commotion from the pit, and upon inquiry learned that she and the new customer from Florida, Mr. Murphy, had together both successfully called the last turn and won almost two hundred thousand dollars in sum total. Chimsky had been the dealer. Mannheim had not thought much more about this coincidence, the Countess and the stranger winning simultaneously, except to consider the possibility that the presence of her chair had played some incomprehensible role. Still, Mannheim had witnessed countless big hands at the Royal over the years, and this was another one that he filed away in his memories with the intention of quickly forgetting about it.

  Therefore, he was surprised several weeks later to receive a call from Gabriela. She wanted to see him in her office before his shift began, for a private meeting—just the two of them. Mannheim, who had always harbored the slightest hint of an attraction for his boss, ironed a white shirt and gray slacks and selected a red tie with a striking impressionistic pattern.

  When he arrived at her office, she told him to shut the door.

  “You’re looking better these days, Mannheim,” she said pleasantly. “Have you been exercising?”

  “Well, I started seeing someone,” Mannheim said. He took the seat facing her across the desk. “To help me sort out a few things.”

  “You mean a therapist?”

  “Someone like that.”

  “Good for you. I’m a big believer in taking care of every side of ourselves.”

  Mannheim coughed nervously and nodded.

  “Remember that big Faro hand from a few weeks ago?” Gabriela said.

  “Do I. I was in the pit when it happened.”

  “I always thought there was something fishy about that hand, and I think I’ve figured out why. I want you to take a look at this.” Gabriela turned the television monitor on her desk so that they both could see. “This is the tape from surveillance of the table that night.”

  The video was gray and grainy, with no sound. It was a bird’s-eye view from atop the Faro table, and showed Chimsky gathering the deck and washing it, shuffling it, and inserting it into the shoe.

  “Do you notice anything unusual?” Gabriela asked.

  Mannheim asked her to play it again. After another look, he said, “No, it looks all right to me.”

  “This is the deck previous to the one where the big hand was dealt,” Gabriela said. “I timed it, and the entire shuffle takes fifteen seconds. I timed the deck before and it took fourteen seconds, essentially the same amount of time.”

  “Okay,” Mannheim said.

  “Now watch this.” Gabriela fast-forwarded to a point in the tape where Chimsky handed over an old deck to Lederhaus, who was standing behind him. He received a new setup in return, which he removed from the box and fanned out over the felt. After confirming the fronts and backs, Chimsky scrambled the cards together and performed his standard shuffle. But Mannheim could tell that this time, something was different.

  “How long did that take?” he asked.

  “Twenty-three seconds, from the first wash to putting it in the shoe,” Gabriela said. “And this was the deck where the last three cards were called in order, not only by this stranger with the beard no one’s ever seen before, but also by a customer who almost never bets.”

  “Could it have been the new setup?” Mannheim said. “Sometimes they come out of the box too slick.”

  “It could,” Gabriela said. “Do you think that’s the reason?”

  Mannheim watched the replay again. “Well,” he admitted, “if you just look at the deal in isolation, it seems okay. But with the other two—something smells fishy.”

  “Indeed,” Gabriela said, reclining in her seat and regarding Mannheim carefully. “There’s no hard evidence. But something happened between the other two decks and this one. It might just have been the new setup. But then again, it might not.”

  “I think we should keep an eye on Chimsky,” Mannheim said. “Maybe we should ask Lederhaus?”

  “Lederhaus is seventy-five,” Gabriela said. “He’s already halfway out the door. If something crooked did happen, anyone who’s in on it will cool out for a while—at least three or four months—before they try it again. You’re next in line—I’ll lay you 3 to 2 you’ll be in charge of the high-limit room by then.”

  Mannheim had not thought about his place on the seniority list for a while, and the news surprised him. “I understand,” he said.

  “What about the Countess? Do you think she was in on it?”

  “I don’t think so.” They watched the tape again. “She makes her bet after Murphy does, right before Chimsky is about to deal. I wonder if she picked up on something and was just taking advantage of it.”

  “Right. Maybe somebody should talk to her.”

  Mannheim understood that Gabriela meant himself. “I’ll see what she says,” he said.

  “Wonderful. Let me know what you find out.”

  Mannheim said good-bye, rose from the chair, and left Gabriela’s office, heading downstairs toward the changing room. Chimsky cheating? And then there was Gabriela’s implication that Mannheim would be supervising graveyard shift in the High-Limit Salon soon, sooner even than Dr. Sarmiento’s timetable for his demise. This was a position Mannheim had always believed he wanted, and it seemed like a symbol, holding a new kind of meaning for him now.

  His instinct to seek professional guidance had been right, Mannheim thought—his life had become richer since he’d started seeing Little Theo and Dr. Eccleston. Something was happening in his life—something remarkable, according to Eccleston and Theo—and this idea delighted Mannheim, so much so that several of the dealers he passed on the stairs commented, as Gabriela had done, on his seemingly improved appearance and mood.

  Once in the changing room, Mannheim stood in front of his locker, combing his hair and humming an old tune, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.” The Royal was in mid-shift, and no one else was around. After he finished grooming, Mannheim returned the comb to its spot on the top shelf and was about to close the locker when he stopped short. He smelled something coming from within the locker. The scent of skin dried in the sun, Mannheim thought. Or old, thinly shaved wood. He sniffed at his clothes and shoes—was it coming through the locker from the other side? Mannheim shut his own and slowly walked over to the next aisle.

  He approached the locker opposite his, counting each intervening door with a tap of the hand—one, two, three, four lockers from the end of the aisle. With each the smell grew more powerful, and Mannheim covered his mouth—it was pungent, murky, and made him feel short of breath. He heard voices in the hall outside, faint and distant. Was there a wetness in his ear? The lights were growing dimmer and Mannheim placed both hands on the locker to steady himself. The metal felt warm. He could scarcely make out the name on the door of the locker—CHAN—before he fell on his side, and everything became dark.

  A Mysterious Caller

  A month after his fruitless night on the interstate, Chan received a phone call in the early evening, while he was sleeping. Emerging from a dream set in his old Westchester high school, it took Chan a moment to differentiate the reality of the rings from the agitated school bells of his reverie. He pressed the receiver to his ear, catching a sharp intake of breath.

  “Hello?” he asked.

  There was silence—a pause as a decision was made. Then a click and the buzz of the dial tone. Chan hung up. His first thought was that someone had discovered what he’d done, following the Countess, and this idea persisted in his mind as he slowly dressed for work. He’d taken a month off from investigating her further, just in case. But had someone finally found out?

  In the pit that night, Chan felt unseen eyes upon him as he dealt, scrutinizing his movements. He forced his hands to go
slower, in order to commit no errors. Mannheim was acting distant toward him, and this coolness only served to increase Chan’s unease. On his first break, instead of kibitzing with Leanne and Bao in the lounge, he wandered the periphery of the pit, surveying each aisle of slot machines for he knew not what.

  Eventually, he found himself drifting down the long entrance vestibule and stepping outside. The Countess’s Phantom was there in its usual spot in the valet line, gleaming almost phosphorescent in the moonlight and the heat from the high-wattage bulbs under the casino awning. A thin line of vapor rose from the hood of the car. Chan ran a finger along its edge, and it came back moist and warm.

  After admiring the car a moment longer, Chan went back inside, and for the rest of his shift, he dealt precisely, painstakingly.

  Later, in the hour before dawn, he was walking out to the employee lot when he saw someone leaning against his pock-marked Datsun, a man with his arms folded across his chest, his legs casually crossed. As Chan neared, the man rose from the car, and Chan recognized him. It was J. P. Dumonde. A battered red leather suitcase stood by his former boss.

  “I see you’re still driving the same reliable car,” Dumonde said, smiling and revealing a pristine row of white teeth Chan did not remember him having. The man patted the hood of the hatchback. “Same old Chan, I take it?”

  “Hello, Dumonde,” Chan said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just passing through. The casino was in the guidebook, and you know me. I can’t pass up a good gamble. And to my delight, who do I see dealing at the $5 Blackjack table but none other than my old friend Arturo Chan?”