Cheaters

by JR Carroll

  ‘Even if you’re not doing anything wrong.’

  Danny said, ‘You’re always doing something wrong if you win too often. It’s not normal. It’s against the laws of nature. They assume you have a racket going. The house is supposed to win. Even high rollers like Kerry Packer can be banned for winning too much.’

  ‘Yes, I saw something about that recently,’ Victor said.

  ‘If I played blackjack or baccarat I’d win pretty consistently too, but they’d say I was counting cards and then I’d be in the shit.’

  ‘Which you would be. Counting cards.’

  ‘Not deliberately, not consciously. But I can’t help having a photographic memory for numbers. It’s as basic as that.’

  ‘But it’s hard counting cards in blackjack, Danny. There are ten decks in the shoe. That’s five hundred and twenty cards, one hundred and sixty pictures. It’s a lot to keep track of.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He took a sip of his coffee and shrugged. ‘Last year I was playing blackjack, just for fun, at Wrest Point. I was up ten thousand and they closed the table down on me. I told them, “You can’t do that,” and the guy said, “We can do anything we like.” I asked why they were closing it and he said, “You’re winning too much, we think you’re counting.” He told me to take my money and leave. I couldn’t lose a hand that night.’

  ‘A lucky run.’

  ‘It was a miraculous run. That’s how it goes in blackjack, in runs. But it’s not my game. The odds are too heavily stacked in favour of the house. You have a situation where most of the players can be busted before the dealer even has to play out his hand. What an advantage that is. There might be five, six players at a table, and at least three or four are going to lose every time. Even if you’re sitting on twenty, the dealer is going to pull twenty-one or blackjack, nine times out of ten. Don’t ask me why, but it happens. If the dealer is on seventeen he’ll pull a four. I’ve seen it over and over. The dealer very rarely busts.’

  Victor was studying Danny closely as he spoke. There was something vaguely Asian about his face, predominantly around the eyes and cheekbones and in his jet-black hair, which was so dark it had a blue-steel kind of sheen. Yet his speech patterns, mannerisms and the air of casualness, the repeated shrugging, were Australian to a T. Interesting.

  ‘Danny,’ he said, ‘I have to say this. Your talents are wasted. You need organising. You’re crying out for it. You need a good manager.’

  ‘A manager,’ Danny laughed with genuine surprise. ‘And that’s where you come in, I suppose.’

  ‘Ever play the pokies?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Why not? You could pick up one of those linked jackpots, or a nice new BMW. They give them away all the time.’

  ‘Poker machines will pay out when they’re programmed to pay out. You can’t affect the outcome simply by feeding coins into them. You have to be on the right machine at the right time. Pokies are for losers. Dreamers.’

  ‘How about Keno?’

  Indifferent shrug. ‘Now and then, for fun. Not really interested.’

  ‘Do you know what the Keno jackpot is right now as we speak? Two point six million. It’s a record.’

  If this knowledge aroused interest in Danny, it didn’t show on his face.

  ‘It’s too hard,’ he said. ‘That’s why it’s two point six million. You’ve got to pick ten numbers.’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t as hard as it looks. Not if you have a photographic memory for them. And you go about the job systematically, with a plan. With a bank.’

  Danny didn’t say anything, but stole a glance at Victor’s postmodern watch and moved around slightly in his chair.

  ‘Danny,’ Victor said, ‘I am a professional gambler. I’ve made a good living from the ponies, mainly, but then a bookmaker who owes me a lot of money carved up last year, did a runner and left me in the lurch.’ Sensing Danny’s growing desire to leave, he was speaking more rapidly now. ‘I kissed goodbye to almost half a million. That set me back no end, but now I’ve regrouped and I’m ready for another crack at it. Look, there’s a third man involved. I know you’re anxious to go, but before you do I’d like to introduce you to a very good friend of mine. This is a guy I’ve known all my life. He doesn’t live far away. Right here in town, in fact. It’s half an hour of your time, no more. What do you say?’

  ‘Why would I want to meet your friend?’

  From his question, Victor correctly assessed that Danny’s doubts and reservations were being overshadowed by a much more potent drive: his instinctive student’s curiosity.

  ‘He’s an interesting person. You could learn something from him. I know I have. And anyhow, what have you got to lose except a small slice of your day?’

  They left the brasserie and Victor led the way past vast banks of poker machines and the crowded gaming tables that were like small ships becalmed under layered banks of cigarette smoke and the floating dust that was whipped up by frantic activity. As he walked, he whipped out a mobile phone and made a call, presumably to his friend, Danny thought. Stopping at the last table, at which a mad flurry of bets was being made even as the wheel turned, by milling, thrusting punters – Asian almost to a man – Victor said, ‘Hold on,’ and, pushing through the scrimmage, placed the three chips he had been fiddling with on number 19. Danny watched the scene with a mixture of pity and distaste. These people were placing bets with such blind fervour their very lives might have been riding on the result. There was a word for gamblers like these: desperates. They rushed from table to table, putting on last-minute bets all over the place, wherever the wheel was in spin, trying to spread their chances of coming up trumps but instead multiplying their losses. Hopelessly addicted gamblers. The wheel gradually slowed, the white ball clattered and bounced, a hush descended, then the croupier announced, ‘Zero,’ to be greeted by gnashing, guttural sounds and howls of bitter disappointment. Instantly a mountain of chips was raked from the table.

  Victor turned to Danny, palms upturned, smiled disarmingly and said, ‘House wins the whole nut. So she goes.’

  They went on out, down the steps and through the glass doors into a pleasant, breezy afternoon. Nothing remarkable about that little episode, Danny mused – bar one detail. They were two hundred dollar chips Victor had just impulsively disposed of. So what was that supposed to prove? That he was a good loser?

  The taxi ride was short: several blocks to Flinders Lane, near the corner of Queen Street. Hardly necessary to have used a cab at all, but then Victor did not strike Danny as the kind of man who walked anywhere if he could possibly ride in comfort. Something unpleasant might stick to the soles of his shiny oxbloods. Standing in the narrow thoroughfare that never saw sunshine, Danny looked up at the building Victor had approached and from which a line of snapping flags of various nationalities projected horizontally. The address in question, as he was soon to discover, was a restored shell – what real estate people liked to call an open plan New York-style loft – situated on the third floor of an old red-brick import-export building that had been gutted, sandblasted and adorned with balconies, brass fittings, heritage coach lamps and a blue-chip name on a polished plaque – Cricklewood Close – to give it the cosy, solid feel of old money. Danny was as familiar as anyone with the city’s more obscure interstices and its constantly changing face, but had never noticed this place before.

  Victor’s friend was a shortish, thickset man with an unruly head of silver hair and a camera around his neck. He at first sight looked mid-fifties, but when he spoke and moved, Danny could see he was much younger, around forty or so. He had fleshy lips and grey eyes that were bright and lively. Up close the skin on his face was amazingly flawless, utterly virginal and babylike, as if a razor had never touched it. Danny shook his distinctly feminine hand, which was held out at shoulder level like a limp offering, as if he expected it to be kissed, and which, when clasped, exerted no pressure whatsoever against Danny’s more manly grip. His name, Victor said, was Sigmund Barry.
He spoke with faint traces of an English or Irish accent and the hint of a cultured lisp, giving the impression that he was the product of British upper-class breeding and one of those famous boarding schools from hell. At the same time, however, something buried in his speech and the thick facial features – especially the lips – suggested a middle-European peasant stock, possibly Polish or Hungarian, or from that part of the world.

  From what Danny could see so far, the accommodation was an apartment-cum-studio with a polished blondwood floor and consisting of moveable, carpeted partitions, exposed plumbing and massive yellow central-heating ducts suspended across the ceiling. There were numerous computers, photocopiers and printers, a Betacam, a stereovision TV set with a huge screen built into the wall – turned on with the sound down, showing a tense, eyeball-to-eyeball scene from ‘Santa Barbara’ or one of the daytime American soaps – and an assortment of ultra-modern artworks that mostly seemed to be made from heavy, blown glass, copper wire or roughly machined scrap metal – pipes, flywheels, manifolds, nuts and bolts and so on. Most arresting of all was a young woman with a shaved head and the most astonishing aquamarine eyes, with matching nail polish, who sat in a laminex chair in the glare of a powerful spotlight with her legs crossed, looking bored and listless. She was buck naked except for rings in her nipples, navel and on her nose, lips, tongue and ears, and she wore a pair of black, patent leather stilettos, one of which she dangled from her toes. In the light, her skin reflected the colour and gloss of unblemished ivory. When she turned away from the light, he saw a tattoo of a question mark on her temple. There was also a raised pattern of yellow hair at the back of her head that looked like a crop circle. Danny hadn’t noticed her immediately. When he did, it was with a popping of his eyes and an involuntary double take that made Victor laugh.

  ‘And this is Pepper,’ he said, gesturing towards her. ‘She’s a model. Pepper – meet Danny.’

  ‘Will I come back?’ the woman called Pepper said, with a false, somewhat weary smile that died instantly, virtually ignoring the introduction. In fact everything about her looked virtual or manufactured to Danny. The word cyberwoman came to mind.

  ‘What a splendid idea, my love,’ Sigmund said dismissively, not looking at her but at Danny, studying him as if he were an artwork. Immediately she ripped off a latex bald wig and a lustrous crop of honey-coloured hair with blonde tips spilled loose. She shook and massaged it vigorously, then got up, flashing a cleanly shaved pubis that glistened like silver metal in the light. A picture of elegant aloofness, she flounced away with rhythmically swivelling hips and a rat-tat-tat of the stiletto heels behind one of the partitions. She was simply stunning beyond words. Danny caught the eye of Victor, who was leaning against a low windowsill with his hands deep in his pockets and a loose kind of grin on his perfectly relaxed, leading man’s face.

  ‘Victor tells me you’re something of a wunderkind at the tables,’ Sigmund said, using the correct German pronunciation.

  Danny laughed with real surprise that anyone would describe him in that way. ‘Does he? I certainly wouldn’t go that far. I’m no genius.’

  His eyes slipped away from Sigmund’s, searching over his shoulder for signs of the girl again. Moments later she reappeared wearing motorbike boots, black jeans and a black, snug-fitting leather jacket and carrying a helmet and gloves. Danny noticed that all the rings on her face were gone. The jacket was unzipped, allowing him to see she had nothing on under it. The nipple rings had gone too. He wondered if the shaved pubis had also been part of the illusion. She turned her aquamarine eyes briefly towards the three men, zipped up the jacket and murmured ‘Bye,’ unexpectedly winking at Danny, or did he imagine that? Then she was out the doorway and gone, after which there was just the sound of receding footfalls on the wooden staircase and then the front door shutting. Danny put her age at about nineteen or twenty.

  He knew two things immediately. First, he was headlong in love. Second, his life was in the process of being removed from his control, reshaped and pointed in a new direction. The sensation was not unpleasant. It was like – as he had fantasised – being taken in hand by a rich, ravishing woman with a silky touch and a body to die for, not knowing or minding what exquisite delicacies she had planned for you. Both Victor and Sigmund possessed an instantly seductive appeal that was assured, effortless and the opposite to Danny’s own world. All his senses were tuned in, mainly to the feel and smell of idle wealth and lives that were never lived in anything but ease and luxury.

  ‘I believe it’s time to open the bar,’ Sigmund said, looking at his watch. ‘Let’s be honest, any time will do. Refreshments, Danny. If you can draw your thoughts away from that pretty young damsel for a moment.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘As I thought.’ He opened a minifridge below a workbench and took out a bottle of Riccadonna spumante. Removing the foil, he said, ‘A bit kitsch, I know, but I just can’t resist the stuff at the moment. I’m going through my Riccadonna period.’ The cork popped. Victor produced three coppe, thick-stemmed, bowl-shaped glasses that were shot with blue and tubular in design, and Sigmund poured meticulously, not spilling a drop.

  When they each had a glass, Sigmund raised his and said, ‘Ah, beaded bubbles winking at the brim. Here’s to success – and romance.’ Sipping, he shut his eyes and said, ‘Mmm, lovely. Nubile, dusky handmaids frolicking in vineyards by moonlight. Now, shall we go inside and make ourselves more comfortable?’

  Picking up the bottle, he led the way behind the partition where Pepper had gone to dress. It was a vast, airy sitting room, like a salon, furnished in a fashionable retro style – curved, pastel-coloured sofas and chairs in studded vinyl, a coffee table shaped like an artist’s palette, some throw rugs scattered about the blondwood floor, walls of patchy, provincial Tuscan tonings featuring flying china ducks and other adornments that looked like an unfinished paint job but which were in reality an effect achieved with textured wallpaper. There were bright silk birds of paradise and giant sunflowers in exotic-looking vases that, like the champagne glasses, were themselves works of art. There was also a feature wall painted burnt ochre with a large copper mandala mounted on it. Framed pictures of all sizes were everywhere. Giant goose-necked lampstands stood in each corner. A south-facing window, which from the absence of outside noise must have been double-glazed, gave out onto Spencer Street railway station, the Yarra River and the gigantic casino structure.

  ‘So, Danny,’ Sigmund said, when they were seated, ‘what do you think of my apartment? Some people say it’s a bit much.’

  ‘No,’ Danny said. ‘It’s … stunning. Wonderful. I like it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He sipped his Riccadonna, appraising his guest over the coppa, and said, ‘You must be thinking, what’s an old Pommy poof doing in a top pad like this, and what does he want with me? Well, my boy, I might seem like a poof, but I assure you I’m not. I like to set that straight from the start, to avoid misunderstandings. It’s just my appalling public school manner, which was beaten into me from an early age, I’m afraid. I love women. In fact I’m crazy about them. They are my great failing.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking that at all,’ Danny said.

  ‘Well, everyone else does,’ Victor said, provoking mirth in Sigmund.

  ‘Quite so. He’s right, you know. They do. However, my record speaks for itself: thrice married, thrice divorced, offspring spread all over the globe, like seed borne on the wind, paternity suits hanging over my head. Sometimes I feel like a rock star. Every gold-digger around the place claims she’s had my baby. If only. They’re all in the Sigmund Barry fan club, apparently.’

  ‘Some sort of club, anyway,’ Victor said.

  ‘Well, I didn’t put them there. Not all of them. Lord knows I would need a daddy of a wanger – one of those intercontinental extension jobs. Who knows, maybe I’ve duffed them on the web. Is that possible yet, I wonder? Probably.’

  He stood up and refilled their glasses. When he was up close Danny saw that
he had a small glittering stud that looked like a diamond in his earlobe. ‘Anyhow, I’m sure you don’t wish to be assailed with all this tedious personal detail. Let’s talk about gambling instead.’

  ‘Danny doesn’t gamble,’ Victor said.

  ‘Very wise, too,’ Sigmund said. He resumed his seat, placed his glass on the coffee table and crossed his legs, facing Danny squarely with his hands clasped on his lap. ‘I can see you have a good, sound head on your shoulders, Danny. I can see that without even knowing you.’

  Danny shrugged. ‘It’s no big deal. I just play numbers.’

  ‘Very effectively, it seems. Do you have a favourite number, or what?’

  ‘No, it’s not like that. It’s … probability. Patterns. Kind of a system.’ Looking sideways at Victor he said, with a hint of defensiveness, ‘When I said I didn’t gamble, I wasn’t trying to be a smartarse. I just meant … I try to minimise my risks. I work out what I’m going to do and stick to the game plan. But of course it’s gambling.’

  ‘This is roulette we’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So … how does it work? If you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘There’s nothing much involved. As I explained to Victor, I take the 2 to 1 odds on the third dozen. For some reason the high numbers come in clusters, I’ve noticed. When they do I bet three, maybe four times, depending on how I think it’s running, then stop.’

  ‘I see. Presumably you don’t always win, however. They’d find a way to make it illegal, or ban you if you did.’

  ‘I lose sometimes, not often. When that happens I have to double my next bet, and if that loses I double the next one, and so on, until I win. Then I stop.’

  ‘How much do you make?’

  ‘Oh … it varies. Up to a thousand a week, usually less. Sometimes nothing.’