Inside Straight (30 page)
Authors: Ray Banks
Jez crouched by me, put one hand on my side and the shotgun on the ground. I looked at him, desperately trying to breathe away the shuddering, crunching pain. He put his free hand on my forehead. I saw the DADDY tattoo on his arm, the muscles moving as he made me close my eyes.
"Daddy."
I felt myself roll over onto my side, felt the encroaching agony of injuries old and new, and then I fell. When I hit the water, I opened my eyes and gasped for breath. I couldn't move, couldn't splash, couldn't do much more than suck a lungful of air before I sank like Stephen Laird.
I saw Jez stand up as I went down. I watched him. My eyes stung with the water. When I shouted, water rushed into my mouth, my throat, my lungs.
I saw him turn away from the edge of the dock and walk away.
And then it was noise and light and nothing but the cold of the sea and the shrill dying echo of a million mental tantrums.
###
Double-glazing salesman Alan Slater is in trouble. He hasn't had a good sales lead in months. His wife rightly suspects him of playing around. His best mate Les Beale has turned into a bigoted, boozed-up headcase. And that's the least of it.
When a rigged poker game has fatal consequences, Alan finds himself not only responsible for the clean-up, but also for Beale's escalating debt to a man who won't take "broke" for an answer.
As Beale's life spirals out of control, he becomes ever more desperately reliant on Alan to save his skin. But Alan isn't about to be dragged into the gutter by anyone, least of all his bad-beat, dead money former mate.
After all, there's no such thing as a compassionate double-glazing salesman.
"Memorable characterisation, Manchester at night and at its most sinister, lives flooding down the plughole – this is British noir in all its sordid splendour by a writer who has taken more than just an excursion to the dark side." – The Guardian
"A pitch perfect novel" – Crime Fiction Lover
"Brimming with pitch-black humour and written with a claustrophobic mania to rival the finest noir exponents, it's compelling and finely honed stuff." – The Big Issue
"Dark, nasty, funny, and painfully human" – Spinetingler Magazine
"A tight and pacy read, the prose stripped to the bone and the dialogue pitch-perfect. Fans of Colin Bateman and Elmore Leonard will find it hits their sweet spot. Cohen brother lovers; one for you too." – Loitering With Intent
"A great story. It's tight as hell and it's so deliberate that it's a complete joy to read... I loved Dead Money." – Dead End Follies
"An intensive masterclass in how to write." – Helen FitzGerald
"Banks writes in a clean style, looped with inky black humor, and the plot goes at a lightning pace, heaping dread upon dread." – On The Book Beat
"Dead Money is a quick read and a thoroughly enjoyable one, a Guy Ritchie film in prose, minus a lot of the showing off." – Kate of Mind
Dead Money
copyright 2004, 2011 Ray Banks
1
"Place your bets, please ..."
The Palace was a club for the chip-chaser with delusions of grandeur. It smelled like a gentlemen's club in the pit – smoke from before the ban clung to the heavy curtains that framed brick walls and gave the illusion of windows and an outside world. The lights were dim enough to make most of the punters look attractive, but not so dim as to allow them any funny business. Beneath their feet, a patterned carpet sprawled through the club, sticky to the touch where it wasn't worn to threads around the tables.
Not that anyone ever looked down in here. People kept their eyes on the prize, caught up in the heavy machinery of a casino working at full pelt – the clattering waves of chips as they spun down the chute, the whirl of the white roulette ball before it stumbled into a number and, under it all, that subsonic grinding noise of a hundred bad beat punters hitting dead numbers and awkward cards.
"Start finishing off now ..."
Over on the roulettes, time existed in snatches of inspiration, from the moment the ball hit the wheel to the moment it skittered into a numbered gutter. On the blackjacks, men with cheap suits doubled on nine showing because tonight was their night. At first glance, it was like being in your own personal Bond movie, but the second glance showed the tobacco stains on Bond's fingers, and the dots of piss on his inside leg. You didn't tend to take a third glance.
"No more bets ..."
But there were always errant hands on the layout, fingers splayed and trembling over a hindsight winner.
"That's
all,
no more now. No more.
Thank
you."
By midnight, I was up at the bar, a warm pint of Stella in front of me and a low, thumping ache behind the eyes. The beer didn't help my thirst or my finances, but it was better than bumping chips with the animals on the floor. Should've known better than to come out on a Sunday. It might've been the last gasp for the white punters, but it was the start of the Chinese weekend, and they'd come out in force. Place was jammed, would be until last orders, so I reckoned I'd hang back for a while and watch the place heave.
Beale had given up trying to haul his bulk through the crush at the roulettes. Now he was over at the Caribbean Stud, picking the dandruff out of his moustache and trying to ignore the over-excited and long-limbed Chinese lads who had him boxed in. The lads looked like they were having a ball. They talked across Beale and, when he hunched over the table, behind his back. When they won, they slapped the layout and laughed like donkeys, threw loud high fives that clapped the air at Beale's scalp. Meanwhile, he sat there glowering at his cards. He had his bad drinker face on, eyes like a couple of dogs' arseholes. He hadn't seen a card all night.
He said something. The Chinese lad to his left stopped gabbing for a second and held up a hand. Beale went back to his cards.
I turned to AR Four, which had been doing its spuds all night thanks to the man sat sweating at the end of the table. He was two-belts fat and he had a habit of pushing his long grey hair back until it was slick to his head. When the dealer spun up, the fat man's eyes went from ball to layout and he became a child deep in thought, the tip of his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth. Deliberating, digesting and cogitating, just like they used to do on
Masterchef
.
Over the course of the last few hours, he'd hammered the table, hit straights and splits with the kind of unerring regularity that brought a crowd. He barely noticed them, and it wasn't like they had gathered to play – the table had just gone up to a pony minimum and most of those gathered had been getting slowly violated all night. But you could still see them edging closer, trying to suck up that errant luck by proxy. Because for a lot of punters, it was all down to luck, or the gods, or whatever it was they prayed to as they flipped chips in their hand.
From what I saw, luck didn't have anything to do with it. The house had changed dealers twice in the last hour, bumped up the experience on the wheel to a junior inspector, but it didn't matter because every dealer they'd put on that table so far had spun to sections like it was their first day. All this fat bloke had to do was watch the section, and call it before the ball landed. And he did it again, calling a Tiers by eighteen – a pony on each split and number – as the ball danced its way into a number.
Thirteen black. Direct hit. A cheer went up.
I looked across at the pit desk. Graham Ellis was on duty tonight. He had a moon face that was even paler tonight, thanks to his undertaker's suit. He was arguing with one of the dealers, a chubby little blonde who dealt the same way she probably fucked – plenty of enthusiasm, but no real talent – and he'd just managed to get her onto a table with a broken chipper when one of the slots went berserk, whooping out a hefty drop. A prehistoric Chinese lady was frozen to her stool, transfixed by the flashing win-win-win lights. All those mindless hours feeding the machine – the nudge, stay, nudge-nudge, peering at the wheels, wishing your eyes could read round corners – had finally paid off. When the machine started hacking out pound coins, she sprang into motion. She dropped from her stool, grabbed a plastic bucket and started shovelling coins with her claw hands, trying to get as much into the bucket as possible before Ellis reached her. Because even when you won, you were made to feel like you were robbing the place blind.
Ellis stumbled on the steps as he raced to the slots. He looked behind him and gestured to a line of dealers coming back off their break. Pointed at one of the senior inspectors to get on AR Four. By the time he reached the dropped machine, the Chinese lady was halfway to the cash desk with a bucket in each hand. He squatted and fumbled with the hatch keys.
I couldn't resist. I picked up my pint and went over to the rail.
"Y'alright?"
He twisted the key so hard it caught the inside of his hand. The whooping stopped with a chirp. "I'm fine."
"Doing your dough on AR Four."
"Really? Hadn't noticed." He blew on his hand and straightened up.
"Don't worry, Graham. I'll keep an eye out for you."
"You want to be looking out for your mate."
"Oh yeah? What's the matter with him? He's not winning, is he?"
Ellis laughed. "Only thing he's cleaned out is the bar."
"And?"
"And I know how he gets when he's drunk." He looked behind him at the stud table. "Especially when he gets that face on."
I took a drink. "He'll be good as gold, I promise."
"I'll hold you to that." He pointed at me. "Got enough going on tonight without him acting up."
Another cheer from the roulette table. Ellis' mouth turned into a paper cut.
"Looks like you're needed elsewhere. I'll let you get back to it, eh?"
Ellis scurried back to the pit. Scared to death the place was coming down around him, taking his cushy job and clothing allowance with it. Run, Forrest, run.
Mind you, he had a point. A tipsy Beale was difficult enough, but throw in broke and you had a misunderstanding just waiting to happen. It didn't help that he reckoned himself a proper Herbert O'Yardley. It also didn't help that he was stuck at the Caribbean Stud, a game that resembled poker the way a fart resembled a weapon of mass destruction. Throw in the heat of three hundred bodies and the way those Chinese lads were looking to bait Beale, and it was no wonder his piss was coming to the boil.
"You want to keep your hands to yourself?"
I finished off my pint and started back towards the pit. The Chinese lad who'd just knocked Beale shook his head and grinned at his mates. Probably thought there was safety in numbers, but numbers didn't really figure into Beale's thinking once his eyes turned black. Not much did. He'd gone for other punters, dealers, inspectors, even a pit boss over at the Union, and he was skimming thin ice in most of the clubs in Manchester. The only reason he hadn't broken through was the amount of money he dropped on a regular basis. Also, as much as he'd gone for staff, the fixtures and fittings had remained intact, and that was really all the house cared about.
Squeezing through the crowd, I heard laughter at the poker table. Beale's voice was quick to trample all over it.
"The fuck you laughing at?"
The Chinese lad shook his head. "Nowt."
"Nowt?"
"Honestly."
"Think it's fuckin' funny, you
nudged
us. See if you think it's fuckin' funny when I nudge you back, son."
"Sorry."
"
Sorry
. We'll see about that."
The dealer flipped out the cards. I got caught behind an old couple playing the evens on AR Two. Dawdling between red and black. Hemmed and hawed their way through two spins before I shoved them out of the way.
Beale's voice, jumping in volume: "English only when the cards are out."
"What's that?"
"You know the rules. Cards are out, you talk English, not fuckin' Chinkinese."
Beale's first strike was always racial. It was a cheap way to get to people and, true to form,
the lad's mates weren't laughing now. They didn't know what to do. They should've ignored it. After a while, it just became a kind of static that ran through his conversations.
The danger was acknowledging he'd got to you. Because that was when he pressed it.
Beale leaned in to the dealer. "That's right, isn't it? English only when the cards are out? I didn't fuckin' dream that, did I? I mean, how do I know this lot aren't cheating?"
The dealer didn't say anything. He kept his head down and smiled. The inspector's back was turned, but he wasn't watching the blackjack table on the other side.
"Who you calling a cheat?" said the lad.
Beale smiled with half his face and stared at his cards.
The lad poked Beale in the arm. "I asked you a question."