Inside Straight (14 page)

"Okay."

"Give us a ring when you get your timings." He pushed his chair back, leaned in as he did so. "Oh, one last thing, Graham. You're a bright lad, and you've planned all this out and everything, but do yourself a favour and stay on the fuckin' level. Don't think you're brighter than me, alright?"

There was a dead look in his eyes.

I nodded. "Alright."

"Yeah? We clear?"

"Yeah, absolutely. One hundred percent."

"Good lad."

And as he walked away from the table, I had to push my hands into my lap to stop them from shaking.

Sunday night. Paper lanterns, or at least their health and safety alternatives, hung from the ceiling and flickered too regularly to be anything but electric. The place smelled like the inside of a Chinese takeaway thanks to the buffet that stretched the length of the restaurant. The club was packed with punters looking for cheap tables and a free feed, just the way Jacqui wanted it, and she beamed at me from the middle of the pit as I hopped the rope for the night shift. Next to her, Kevin Nash was sat uncomfortably in an old inspector's chair. He gave me half a smile and a weak wave. Otherwise, he looked worried, swollen and in a considerable amount of pain.

Jacqui patted Nash on the shoulder. "Guess who couldn't stay away?"

I smiled. "I can see. I didn't think we had inspector's chairs."

"Had one brought in from the Union especially."

"Nice of you."

"You want some mooncake?" Nash gestured to a plate on the pit desk. What looked like a particularly unpopular pork pie had been cut into slices and left to go stale. I noticed crumbs of pastry on the pit monitor and something shuddered inside me.

"Maybe later."

"Nothing's going to get you into the spirit of this, is it?"

Jacqui was smiling when she said it, so I was smiling when I replied. "You never know. Let me get settled first. How you feeling, Kevin?"

"Not bad." He shifted on the chair. The movement sparked something that made him gasp and tighten his face.

"You need anything?"

He shook his head ever so slightly. "Just not a hundred percent yet."

"No, doesn't look like it. One day at a time, though, eh?" I put out a hand and he shoved the pit sheet into it. We were under even, and he'd opened the bottom pit. I noticed a dealer and inspector on AR Seven in the top pit, stacked with a small change game when all the action was down here. I couldn't close it now, though. I'd just have to re-open once that lot up in the restaurant filled their boots. That was the thing about the night shift – once a table was open, it had to stay that way.

Nash cleared his throat. "Everything okay, Graham?"

I realised I was frowning. "Yeah, everything's fine, Kevin. I'll just do a quick float check."

Which I did. Not that I didn't trust him, but from the looks of the pit sheet he'd been winging it all afternoon, and not altogether successfully, either. That was the thing, you couldn't have a pit boss sat in the middle of the pit all shift. He had to be mobile. He needed to see his clickers and floats to keep tabs on what was coming in and what was going out. I gave it a quick tot and concluded that we were already heading for a large loss on the day shift, which meant I was working from negative equity. It didn't bode for a good night, and it was unprofessional. But like Nash said, he wasn't a hundred percent yet. That was if he ever had been. I knew his type. He was a caretaker.

There are two main types of pit boss – your caretaker and your cop. Most people running a pit will have an element of both, but they'll still lean towards one or the other. The caretakers ran family pits, and their chief concern in any given shift was to make sure their staff got the right number of breaks and weren't worked too hard. Anything else – like, say, the pit keeping its shirt – was gravy. Dave Randall was a caretaker back when he used to work for a living, and he'd taken those skills into management. It was possible, then, for people to fluke their way up the ladder, especially as the organisation's ostensible priorities went from profits to punter satisfaction.

Then there was the cop. That was definitely more my line, and it was perhaps an old-school way of working. The pit took priority. I didn't care if I had to spin them sick, I'd keep dealers on tables for as long as it took to get that money back. It meant for some uncomfortable shifts sometimes, but then I knew most of the staff respected me even if they didn't particularly like me. It also meant I brought in the numbers for Regional, and that meant more to me than any whinging croup. The trouble was, it was the cops of the pit who were usually charged with cleaning up the mess left by the caretakers. And looking at Kevin Nash's pit sheet, I could see that nothing had changed on that score. I wouldn't have minded normally, but tonight more than any other night, we needed to be up.

I scribbled a few notes onto the back of a roulette card and then returned to the pit desk. "We should get on. Going to be a busy night. I bet Kevin's wanting to get off, aren't you?"

"You don't have any problems, then?"

I looked at him, trying to work out his tone. The look on his face was suitably contrite, so I let it go. "Nothing I can't handle, Kevin. You alright to hang around for a little bit while we go and brief the night staff?"

"Yeah, no problem."

"Excellent. Jacqui?"

She led the way. I chanced a look over my shoulder, saw Nash staring at me. He was serious about something, but I didn't know what it was. Maybe he thought I was muscling in on his job or his pit. If that was the case, then he couldn't have been more wrong. I had a feeling that it was something else, though, and it was a feeling I couldn't shake off.

In the briefing room, I was greeted by the usual assortment of fish and experience, and I hoped the experience would keep its eyes to the floor and not play hero later on. Jacqui ran down the list of reasons why tonight was special without naming the one that had taken up permanent residence in my head. Pollard had said he'd listen to my suggestions, which was very corporate of him, but I'd had no confirmation since. No more personal visits, no phone calls and I'd kept the burn phone on at all times. It was sitting in my jacket pocket right now. I wondered if tonight was still on, but then I couldn't go off down that path, otherwise I'd be a nervous wreck all night. Better if I just went ahead with what I had to do and if it didn't happen, then it didn't happen. If it did, then at least I'd know what was supposed to happen, unlike these poor sods.

I led the night shift out into the pit and watched them break off to their respective tables. Nash hauled himself out of the inspector's chair. "Need any help there, Kevin?"

"No, I'm fine." He reached for his stick, which was still propped up by the side of the pit desk. I could have handed it to him. I didn't.

"So what happened?" I watched the dealers tap and spin, the moment that defined the new shift. "You get knocked down or something?"

"No."

"I heard there was an accident."

His lips had disappeared. "No."

"You don't want to talk about it, that's fine. I'm sorry I asked."

Acting like I didn't care, and knowing full well that there was nothing a man like him enjoyed more than being the centre of attention. The more you acted as if it wasn't a big deal, the more he'd want to share his story. I waited for the inevitable "oh, alright then", but it didn't come.

Instead he set his stick to the floor and mumbled a goodnight as he lowered himself from the inspector's chair. His eyes crinkled as he leaned on the stick, and he let out a puffed breath every other step. Watching him walk away made my legs ache.

Jacqui approached and unhooked the rope for Nash, then followed him over to the staff door to open that for him, too. I had to admit, they'd done a number on him. That limp would linger, probably for the rest of his life.

Rather him than me.

Nash turned at the staff door and looked at me as he spoke to Jacqui. I busied myself with the pit monitor, switching table views for no good reason. I saw a bottle of pills on the pit desk. Painkillers, strong ones with a difficult name that ended in "pam". That would explain the state of the floats – Nash was bombed out of his skull. I turned to search for him, but he was already gone. I shook the bottle, dropped it in my pocket. No sense in leaving them round here for the dealers to snatch; I'd hand them off to Jacqui as soon as she returned to the pit.

When the punters had shoved enough of the buffet into their gobs, they wandered back to drop their cash and the top pit kicked off, attracting the dregs from the busier tables. I put Jeff and Lauren up there as inspectors – they both looked awake enough to handle the four-table mini-pit without doing too much damage – then I opened the Punto Banco to skim coins from the penny-antes. I had to make sure I had a decent card croup to hand for ten o'clock, too. That was when Mickey Braun came in. Mickey was a Sunday night blackjack player from way back, and his slight size and tiny voice belied the fact that he was a killer card player, and as such deserved to be treated with a little more respect that the kind of punter who insisted on calling it pontoon. He sauntered up to the BJ One, took a stool, and played a couple of fiver rounds before the distaste became all too apparent.

I sauntered over to him. "Having a good night, Mr Braun?"

"Top end on here ..." He breathed out.

"I know. I've got breakers coming back in five. I'll have BJ Two open at a pony minimum, how's that?"

What passed for a smile creased his face. He showed a couple of small, tobacco-brown teeth. "Aye."

My decent card croup was Alex – I had others, but they were female and Braun wasn't keen on female dealers because he found them too distracting – and I had him open up the blackjack with Gerry, the only inspector in the place I could trust to manage a card and roulette at the same time. It wasn't ideal – typically your inspector would watch two cards or two roulettes at the same time, but the way this place was laid out, the second blackjack table was flanked by a craps table on one side and a roulette on the other. But Gerry was solid enough to pull it off and with a couple of strong dealers he wouldn't have to do much more than observe.

Of course, as soon as the table opened, the cheaper punters came round, but they recoiled quickly enough once they found out it was a twenty-five quid minimum.

One in particular became immediately indignant in the way that only truly stupid people can. "What's the deal with that, like?" He was a red-faced man with the kind of blonde hair that made him look as if he didn't have eyebrows. Short-sleeved shirt, whitish chest hair showing, something gold around his neck. "Who d'you think I am, Alan Sugar?"

"The other blackjack's a pound minimum."

"There's no room."

I looked behind me. There were two free seats. "Really?"

"How come you've only got the two?"

"We have three. There's another blackjack in the top pit."

He followed my point and moved his mouth. "It's dead down there."

"Plenty of seats, then."

Some people would moan about anything. Truth of it was neither dealers nor punters liked that top pit. It was disconnected from the rest of the club, and it never quite heated up as much as it could have. Even when midnight rolled around and the immediate pit was hammered with skyscraper roulette games, the top pit was positively civilised by comparison. We had the Chinese punters in by now, bunched up around the roulettes mostly, nudging, shouting, slapping and screaming with every jump of the ball. Lucky for us, we had experience on the wheels and working choppers, because there were about twenty stacks of colour hitting the pan with each spin. If there was one thing the Chinese roulette player loved, it was buying low and stacking high. And there was certainly a good amount of "ooh"ing whenever one of the big stacks swayed. One false move and it would all come down. For a moment there, it was like being back at the Palace.

When I did my hourly float tally at one, I discovered that we were way up on the afternoon, which was a relief. After a brief and broad-stroke account in my head, I figured we were on the path to a good seventy-eighty on the night, with a good few hours to go. If I added that to an average Saturday night's takings, then I figured there'd be a hundred thousand or so in the cash desk tonight. Not quite the high six figures I promised Pollard, but it was good enough. That was if it was still going ahead.

When I turned, I got my answer.

Jez. Dressed like the usual weekend punter, all short-sleeved striped shirt and chinos. The clothes were clean, but the arms were inked. I could see a blue tattoo running up the inside of his right arm. It read DADDY in big, childish letters. He'd just sat down – I saw the previous punter pulling at his trousers as he walked away. I stayed where I was. I couldn't risk talking to him, not on a miked table. He wasn't here to gamble; that much was obvious by the stained fiver that hit the layout in front of him. If I didn't know better, I could've sworn it looked like it had been stained with one of the dye packs that were loaded into the cash boxes. I'd seen some programme about how they were putting DNA strands in the dye, so they could tie the money back to specific robberies, and I suddenly started to think that it was from the Palace job and why was he spending it here if not to try and incriminate me in some way.