The Librarians and the Lost Lamp (10 page)

“Give it to me straight,” she said. “How serious is this?”

“Well, I'd have to examine the coin personally to be certain,”
Jenkins said.
“But make no mistake, Colonel, tampering with Dame Fortune can have truly dire consequences, and not just for the foolhardy soul who is rash enough to attempt it. Our entire reality is based on probabilities, from the subatomic level to the odds of an asteroid
not
hitting our planet. Throw probability out the window, and you can potentially set off an avalanche of unlikely occurrences spreading far beyond the immediate orbit of Mr. Dunphy to affect all of Las Vegas and its environs, with catastrophic results.”

“But that's a worst-case scenario, right? What are the odds of things getting that bad?”

“Weren't you listening?”
Jenkins said archly.
“The odds don't matter if chance itself is out of order. Even the most unlikely scenario can become likely if probability is taken out of the equation. Trust me on this, Colonel, Luck is anything but a lady. More like a two-faced trollop who will stab you in the back and break your heart when you least expect it.”

“Er, you're being metaphorical, right?” Baird asked.

“Am I?”
he asked, deadpan.

 

8

2016

Cassandra winced as Dunphy rolled yet another seven. Just watching him beat the odds over and over, in defiance of anything resembling elementary statistics, made her head hurt. There
had
to be magic at work; it was the only explanation that made any sense.

“Heads up, folks.” Baird rejoined the team at the craps table, which was still drawing a large crowd of raucous onlookers. “I just spoke with Jenkins. We need to get our hands on that penny so that he can verify that it's our target.”

“Leave it to me,” Ezekiel said, confidently casing the scene. “I don't suppose anyone has a spare penny? I never bother with small change myself.”

Stone fished a penny from his jeans. “Anything else you need?”

“A distraction would be helpful,” Ezekiel conceded, “if not strictly required.”

Stone glanced around the casino. “I could start a ruckus,” he suggested, maybe a bit too readily.

“Slow down, cowboy,” Baird said. “I know how much you enjoy a good brawl, but let's hold off on that option for the time being. I'd rather not bring hotel security down on us before we even know for sure what we're dealing with.”

“Spoilsport,” Stone muttered.

“I've been called worse.” She turned toward Cassandra. “What about you, Red? You up to trying to break the house?”

“I think so,” Cassandra said. “But not at this table. The odds aren't playing by the rules here.” She massaged her temples. “It's making my head spin.”

“Fair enough,” Baird said. “Choose your game.”

Turning away from the craps game, Cassandra surveyed the gaming floor. The dizzying mix of noise, lights, and gambling threatened to overwhelm her again, but she forced herself to focus on the task at hand, tuning out any and all distractions. Odds and angles flashed before eyes, swirling in space like luminous sigils, shifting and recalibrating along with her racing thoughts. She waved her hands as though conducting an orchestra, manipulating the hallucinatory symbols and equations as needed. Hypothetical roulette wheels spun in the air. Imaginary piles of chips rose and fell according to the relevant ratios and variables. Synesthesia scrambled her senses, so equations sang like melodies in her ears and numbers tasted like … doughnuts?

“Games of chance, games of skill and chance, fifty-two cards in a deck, six sides on a die, six ways to roll a natural seven, eighty numbers on a keno card, but only twenty balls are drawn each game, two ones equal snake eyes, two sixes are called boxcars, the odds of rolling either are thirty-six to one.” She started speaking faster and faster, almost breathlessly. “
Baccarat
is the French pronunciation of the Italian word for zero, there are zero to thirty-six numbers on a standard American roulette wheel, an ace is worth ten points except when it's only worth one.…”

“Cassandra?” Baird asked. “You okay?”

“I'm fine,” she said, only slightly fibbing. To keep her brain from running amuck, she wiped each possible game from view before analyzing the next one. Games of pure chance, like keno or slots, were impossible to outwit; poker was as much about bluffing and body language as math; roulette wheels made her dizzy, and baccarat was just weird, but …

“Blackjack.” She dismissed the orbiting visuals with a swipe of her hand. “A smart player can reduce the house edge to less than one percent. With my brain, I can do even better … in theory.”

“Good enough for me,” Baird said. “Get to it, girlfriend.”

A high-stakes blackjack table was running not far from the crowd-pleasing action at the craps table. Taking a seat at the table, Cassandra gulped at the minimum bid. Hypothetical money was one thing. Actual cash, albeit transformed into shiny plastic chips, was something else again. It dawned on her that Jenkins had never really explained how the Library's finances worked or what the limits of their expense accounts were.…

Stone procured a wad of cash from an ATM. “You ever played this game before?”

“Not in practice, but I think I've worked out a system.”

He snorted. “You and everybody else at this table.”

“But I'm not everybody else,” she reminded him.

“No, you're not.” He backed off to let her get to it. “Go to town, Cassie.”

She sat down at the table and exchanged a hundred dollars in cash for chips. It was a six-deck game, to discourage card counting, but the casino hadn't reckoned on Cassandra's special talent for visualizing odds and keeping track of what cards had already been played. Unknown to the dealer and other players, probability tables shimmered above the table, instantly updating themselves with every hand and guiding her play. She started small, making modest bets to get a feel for the game, but soon stared betting more aggressively, depending on the cards she was dealt. She could literally taste the odds in her mouth, hear them singing only to her. Her modest stakes began to build at a geometric rate, doubling, tripling, quadrupling.…

“Yes!” she blurted as the dealer busted, multiplying her winnings. “Chips ahoy!”

To her surprise, she found herself having fun. The thrill of victory settled her nerves and sent a rush of adrenaline through her veins.
I could get used to this.

“Easy does it, gambling queen,” Baird said, standing behind her. “Don't get carried away.”

It was good advice; Cassandra could see now why some people got hooked on gambling, even if they couldn't play the odds as well as she could. She could only imagine how exciting it must be for people who couldn't predict if they were going to win or lose in the long run.

As she'd hoped, her winning streak began attracting more than its fair share of attention, luring people away from the craps table.

“Way to go, Red!” a random spectator cheered her on. “Keep it going!”

A gorgeous harem girl thrust an unsolicited martini into her hand. “On the house, sweetie.”

“Um, thanks.”

She hadn't felt this popular since that time an enchanted storybook briefly turned her into Prince Charming. She understood intellectually that the casino was plying her with booze in hopes of impairing her judgment and keeping her at the table long enough for them to win their money back, but she figured a sip or two couldn't hurt.

Like Ezekiel had said before, why not live a little?

Despite the occasional loss, her winnings accumulated rapidly, especially when she started doubling down and splitting her bets. “Blackjack!” she called out as she flipped over her cards to display a natural twenty-one consisting of a queen of diamonds and an ace of hearts.

Reminds of that time we ran into the real Queen of Diamonds,
she thought.
Talk about a multifaceted individual.…

“Excuse me, miss.” A palace guard built like a bouncer squeezed through the crowd to reach Cassandra. “Perhaps you should collect your winnings and call it a day.”

“Nope,” Cassandra said. “I'm good.”

The casino employee signaled the dealer to hold off. An edge crept into his voice. “I'd strongly advise you to reconsider, miss. You've had a good run. Don't push your luck.”

He plucked the half-finished martini from her hand.

“Hey!” she protested. “I wasn't done with that.”

“Oh, you're done,” he said firmly. “Take the hint, why don't you?”

Cassandra wasn't sure how to respond. She realized, belatedly, that the casino had apparently decided to cut off her winning streak, but they couldn't just bounce her from the table, could they?

“What's your deal, man?” Stone challenged the guard, coming to her rescue. “Let the lady play if she wants to.”

“Please stay out of this, sir,” the guard said. “This is between the Palace and the lady.”

“And, what if I want to make this my business?” Stone got up in the guard's face. “You got a problem with that, Ali Bubba?”

Baird shot him a cautionary look. “Stone…”

The guard scowled. “Don't make me evict you, sir. For the record, the management reserves the right to eject any player suspected of card counting.”

“Card counting?” Cassandra asked incredulously. “With six decks in play? Do you even realize how ridiculously impossible that would be? I can run the numbers for you if you like. Six decks equals three hundred and twelve cards, which means twenty-four possible face cards, and approximately a one in a hundred chance of any particular value card turning up in any given hand, and—”

“Save it.” Stone raised his voice so everybody in earshot could hear. “Don't shut her down. Let her play.” He threw out the question to the spectators. “You all want her to keep playing, right? So let her play.”

The crowd and the other players picked up the chant.

“Let her play! Let her play!”

Cassandra smiled slyly. This was working out even better than she'd hoped.

You wanted a distraction, Jones?

*   *   *

“Hey, what's going on over there?” Dunphy asked, noticing the commotion at the blackjack table, which was now drawing an even bigger audience than his craps game. “Where's everybody going?”

Ezekiel took advantage of the thinning crowd to ease up behind Dunphy. “Some gal is on fire playing blackjack. It's a pretty impressive run. You should check it out.”

“Really?” Dunphy sounded curious. Still playing with his lucky penny, he stood up to get a better look, craning his neck to try to see over the heads of the crowd. “Good for her.”

“Not that you aren't killing it yourself, mate.” Ezekiel flashed the gambler his most winning smile. He held out his left hand, even though he was right-handed. “Put it here. Maybe some of your luck will rub off on me.”

“Uh, sure, I guess.”

Still distracted by the hoopla a few tables over, Dunphy popped the penny into his jacket pocket in order to shake Ezekiel's hand. The thief tried to not smirk too obviously.

“Excuse me, Mister Dunphy,” the dealer asked. “Are you still betting, sir?”

Ezekiel wondered why the casino hadn't terminated Dunphy's winning streak yet. Maybe he was spending his proceeds on high-priced accommodations and amenities as quickly as he was raking it in? That penthouse suite didn't come cheap.…

“Hold your horses, Jerry,” said Dunphy, who was apparently on a first-name basis with the dealer. His attention was split between his own game and the action at the blackjack table, so that he barely noticed Ezekiel at all. “Me and my chips ain't going nowhere.”

“You tell him, mate!” Ezekiel threw an arm over Dunphy's shoulder and thumped him on the chest. “You're a real high roller, anyone can see that. You're calling the shots here, am I right?”

Like taking candy from a baby,
he thought.

“Damn straight I am.” He retrieved
a
penny from his pocket and blew on the dice in his other hand. “Just get a load of this.”

“No need, mate. You've obviously got this covered.”

Ezekiel sidled over to the blackjack table, where a squirming palace guard was facing a small-scale insurrection. Chants of “Let her play!” indicated that Cassandra had already generated her own fan club. Confident in his own awesomeness, Ezekiel was perfectly fine with sharing the spotlight. He was just glad that Cassandra's brain hadn't short-circuited again.

He sidled up to Baird and slipped the
real
coin into her hand.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he said. “No, don't tell me. You're thinking how truly grateful you are to have a world-class thief and pickpocket on your side.”

“And a mind reader, too,” she said dryly. “Amazing.”

“I know!” he said, grinning. “Sometimes I even astound myself.”

Baird leaned forward to whisper to Cassandra. “Objective achieved. You can call it quits now.”

“Already?” Disappointment showed on her face. “But I was still winning.”

“This is not the game that matters,” Baird reminded her. “We have the penny. That's the important thing.”

Cassandra sighed. “I know, I know.” Generously tipping her dealer, she collected her winnings and stepped back from the table, to the audible dismay of the spectators. “Thanks for your support, everybody, but, on second thought, maybe I ought to take a break. Give somebody else a chance to win.”

The besieged guard looked relieved.

“Want me to hold on to your chips, Cassandra?” Ezekiel asked.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” she replied. “I'm sure I can find a good home for these winnings, like maybe a deserving charity or a cancer research project.”