Inside Straight (2 page)

"But I imagine he will, and I'm not going to deny a father time with his new son, am I?"

I nodded, tried to work out how much annual leave he might have accrued. It was warm in here.

"It isn't an issue, is it, Graham?"

"No, of course not." I mock frowned. "Not at all."

She looked relieved. "Good."

"I was just under the impression that this was a short-term arrangement, that's all."

"Oh, it is." She smiled again. "Don't worry about that."

I rolled my hand. "It's just that, you know, I'm aware how temporary can turn into indefinite ..."

"Six weeks max, I promise."

I'd believe it when I saw it. But now wasn't the time to push, so I nodded my assent.

"Great." She brightened up even more. "Okay, then. Well, I should show you the pit, shouldn't I?"

She touched my arm, guided me to the door. I couldn't think straight until she removed her hand. I didn't like being touched. It was intrusive, unnecessary. But she was management, so she could do whatever she wanted. I just hoped she didn't do it very often.

Out in the pit, Jacqui went through the Riverside pit procedures, pointing out all the usual stuff. I kept my mouth shut and tried to look interested, even though I'd heard it all before. I'd been in the business since I was legal. I'd worked some of the busiest pits in Manchester. I could have run this particular pit with a white stick and stumps.

"So that's that." She opened her arms. "You think you'll be okay?

"Yes, I'm sure I'll be fine." I looked at the pit sheet, ran a finger down the names. "How are the dealers here?"

"It's a mixture."

"I heard they were mostly trainees."

"That's right."

"From Manchester?"

She shook her head. "Newcastle."

"What about the inspectors?"

"Again, a mixture."

"But mostly new, would you say?"

She nodded. "Some seniors, but we keep them for the nights."

"Fair enough." I didn't recognise any of the names on the day shift, which meant I had an aquarium on my hands. "Alright, well, I think I'm set."

"I'll let you get on with it, then." She offered her hand. I brushed soft skin once more, tried not to squeeze too hard. She smiled. "Welcome to the family."

"Thank you."

The smile grew wider. "Oh, and speak of the devils, here they are."

And out came the day shift.

If this place was a family, it was more Addams than Osmond, going by the look of the staff. Shuffling, slow on their feet and thick of accent. If there was a decent dealer among them, they were wearing one of the ugliest disguises I'd ever seen.

Still, I sucked it up for the benefit of their beaming manager. I assigned their tables, watched their posture, and realised that the dealers were satellite dregs, trained by some cruise floozy who wouldn't know a buzzing game if it crawled into her Jimmy Choos. These trainers were used to floating pits and captive, geriatric punters. As a result, their trainees were both mentally and physically clumsy. They spent their first hour of the shift waking up, and when one of them spun up, it was with the same listless gesture that a drunk makes when he wants to be left to sleep.

That might have been fine for the blue rinse brigade, but it wouldn't wash with the likes of the bloke who wandered in just after three o'clock and sat himself at the blackjack table. His head was a bristled cement block dropped onto wide shoulders. He carried himself like John Wayne and pulled up a stool like he was about to order a belt of sippin' whisky. He had a look on his face like he was here to gamble, and the dealer had better be up to it. Looking at the state of the dealer, a emo-looking line drawing, I had similar concerns.

Once parked, the punter chucked a crumpled twenty at the dealer and jerked his chin at me. "Y'alright?"

"Fine."

"Been busy?"

I smiled. "Not really."

The dealer made it look like an afterthought as he slid twenty singles across the baize. The punter scooped them up, showing arms that were laced with blue ink. The tattoos – they were either cobwebs or vines, I couldn't be sure which – slithered out from under the short sleeves of his polo shirt, down over the biceps and forearms, before tapering off over his hands and fingers. These were peacock tats, designed to show the world how dangerous he was. All they showed me was that he was committed to the image. I'd seen dangerous before, and this wasn't it. At the Arches, I'd watched tables clear because a Red Pole bought in. When you worked in a club that was a prawn cracker's throw from the Wo Shing Wo's Manchester head office, you got to see the truly dangerous men up close. They didn't need tattoos, they just
were
. And this guy at BJ One, he
wasn't
.

Still, there was potential, especially considering the skinny Scouse inspector with the salt-and-pepper hair had decided that his time was better spent gassing about football with the dealer on the dead poker table than watching the live game. I could see the irritation in the punter's face, saw him scowl at the cards, and flipped the monitor over to BJ One to keep tabs.

The punter showed king-five, the dealer a two. The dealer's finger hovered over the punter's fifteen. "Card?"

The inspector told the poker dealer that he was full of something warm and brown, then he laughed. The punter looked up. "Lads, I'm trying to—"

The blackjack dealer tapped the table. "Stay on fifteen?"

The inspector laughed again. The dealer flipped his card, then flipped again, counting it out: "Two, five, eleven—"

"What?" The punter frowned at his fifteen.

"Twenty-one." The dealer slapped the final card down, then swiped the chips and dropped them into his float. He brushed at his massive fringe and waited for another ante.

Not yet two hours into the shift and the emo kid was on a killing spree.

"Wait a second, I said card."

"No, you didn't."

The inspector turned. The smile was gone, the conversation on hold, an attitude brewing. "What's the problem, Kieran?"

"He's saying—"

"I told him card."

"But he never." Kieran shifted his weight onto one leg and pouted. "I said stay on fifteen. You never said nowt."

The inspector leaned in. "Did you say you wanted a card?"

"Yes." The tension in the punter's voice spread to his shoulders. He had a single in his hand that looked as if it was one disagreeable word away from being snapped in half.

"He never."

I moved away from the pit desk. "How much did you have on the layout?"

All eyes on me now. I glanced at the cash desk. Jacqui and Tintin had both stopped what they were doing. If my reputation had preceded me – and I didn't doubt that it had – then they were expecting the illustrated man over here to kick off.

"Six."

The truth, which meant he wouldn't take the mick when it came to the pay-out. I nodded at Kieran. "Go on. Pull the next card."

Kieran looked at his inspector.

"What're you looking at him for? Pull the card."

He pulled the next card from the machine.

A four.

"Alright, give the gentleman his twelve quid."

"Eh?" The bottom half of Kieran's face became loose.

I leaned in, shifted the cards around so he had visual aids. "The gentleman is sitting with king-five, you showed a two. He asked for a card on fifteen—"

"He never."

"Nobody stays on fifteen, heads-up. Especially when you're sitting on a two." I tapped each card as I mentioned them. "So he asks for a card, you pull a six and put him to twenty-one. He stays on that. Flip your other, there's your three for five, pull the jack for fifteen and then a four for nineteen, you with me? Dealer stays on seventeen or over, so you're staying with nineteen, yes? Which then loses to the gentleman's twenty-one. Pay the man."

Kieran blinked. He looked at his inspector again.

"He's not going to tell you any different." I clipped two fivers and two singles from the float and spread them for the camera. Slipped them together and placed them in front of the punter before I brushed my hands and stepped away. "Sorry for the misunderstanding."

The punter nodded. "No bother."

I returned to the pit desk and double-checked my staff sheet, making a mental note to have a word with both dealer and inspector. The dealer needed to pace his game and the inspector needed to clip his yap. I shouldn't have had to throw my weight around on my first shift, but there you go. The place had been open a couple of months and the staff were already defined by their bad habits.

Well, no more. Not on my shift, anyway. It was clear that this place needed all the experience and professionalism it could get. They needed a Palace man on the case.

Then again, just one clear-eyed glance around the pit reminded me that I wasn't here to teach – this club was more cell than classroom. I was here to be punished, and when I locked eyes with the blackjack punter, he nodded in a way that made me think I'd done something wrong.

So I turned back to the pit desk and performed a quick camera check, just to be on the safe side. You could never be too careful. There was always someone out there willing to take full advantage of a momentary lapse in judgement. And I wasn't going to let it happen twice.

The rest of the shift was a slurred parade of penny-ante punters until the tables started to warm up at around half-seven. I had three roulettes open, each with a healthy game, and both card tables were ticking over nicely.

This time of night it was mostly white punters, all dressed up and pretending to be sophisticates in a Ferrero Rocher ad. The men smelled of beer, the women of Glade plug-ins, and they engaged in the kind of lightly grinding chatter that was one rung up from small talk – jobs, houses, kids, weather, holidays. Most of this lot would play a few spins on the roulettes before they retired to the restaurant for an overpriced, gristly steak in peppercorn sauce and a couple of bottles of club plonk. They'd return later, flush-faced and reckless, itching to blow their fifty-to-a-hundred pound limit. Once they'd done their spuds, they'd spend the rest of the night toasting themselves cross-eyed until last orders, when they'd finally stagger off to find a cab.

At half-eight, I saw the staff door open and the night boss arrive to take me off. A line of dealers and inspectors followed. They headed for their allocated tables, tapped shoulders and sent the day dealers who weren't doing doubles into that one last quick spin that signalled the changeover and an early night.

The night boss had a shaven head, darkened slightly by the shadow of male pattern baldness. He wore glasses and I guessed that the frames were fashionable, because I couldn't think of any other reason to wear them; they made him look like a war criminal. I caught a whiff of sweetish aftershave as he leaned in to introduce himself. Strong smells for the start of the shift, which meant he was prone to perspiration – he needed those strong smells to cover the body odour at five in the morning. Right now he was the olfactory equivalent of the
Inception
klaxon.

"Kevin Nash."

Another homosexual, if his handshake was anything to go by. I gave him my best non-judgemental smile. I'd need this one's support. "Graham Ellis."

"How are you finding it so far?"

"Fine. A bit slow, but days always are, aren't they?"

"God, yeah. Especially here." Nodding, smiling, wide eyes behind lenses. "A bit different from the Palace, I'd imagine."

"Yeah." I smiled at the floor, threw in a cliché to keep the conversation friendly: "But then, you know, every club has its own personality, doesn't it?"

"You can say that again."

I didn't. Once was enough.

He nodded over my shoulder. "I heard you met Barry Pollard?"

I followed the nod, saw the tattooed blackjack punter up at the bar, a pint in front of him. "There was a dispute. Nothing serious."

"He didn't kick off?"

I shook my head. "He was in the right. It wasn't a problem."

"Lucky you. Listen, you want some advice, I would be careful there." Nash grabbed the pit sheet, scribbled something on it. "Keep an eye on him."

"He seemed okay."

"Okay? Oh dear." Nash hugged the pit sheet to what could have been either his chest or the upper part of his gut – the way he was built, I wasn't sure. He leaned in a little. His aftershave made my eyes prickle. "Let me tell you something – two weeks before we opened, Barry Pollard and two of his
associates
came round looking for Pete Rockwell. You know Pete?"

"No."

"Again, lucky you. He was the original GM, but he wasn't here long. Don't even think he was here for the opening. Right piece of work if you ask me."

I hadn't.

"Anyway, Pollard and his
associates
turn up, they want to speak to Pete. Turns out they have this proposition for him."