Aces and Knaves

by Alan Cook

  ***

  The evening was cool and clear, with no fog in sight. I was thankful for that because it would make my walk to the home of James Buchanan more fun. Using the San Francisco street map I had acquired at the front desk of my hotel, I estimated that I had to walk between two and three miles. Since I ran five or six miles every morning, a little walk was nothing.

  Of course I could take a taxi, but I did my best thinking outside where I wasn't closed in. And getting to my destination under my own power made me feel more in control when I got there.

  Ned had driven me to my hotel and then gone directly to his business meeting, which was supposed to start at seven. Fortunately, his meeting wasn't far from my hotel or I would have blamed myself for him being late. He said he would check into his own hotel after we left James Buchanan's home. He said he had guaranteed late arrival, which meant that his room would be waiting for him even if he didn't show up until 2 a.m.

  The guarantee was made with a credit card. If I were going to start traveling I would need to get a credit card again. But I didn’t want any part of rushing from one appointment to another all day and all night. If this defined the life of a corporate executive I would stick to selling baseball cards. No wonder Ned appeared to be under stress. Maybe he was just suffering from burnout. I could understand that.

  But would my father understand a concept like burnout? I doubted it. Anyway, my job was just to find out whether or not Ned was a compulsive gambler. If not, my report to my father would be succinct. What happened next between them wouldn't be any of my business.

  My hotel was near Market Street and the Buchanan home was in the North Beach area. By detouring a little to the east I was able to walk north on Grant Avenue, one of the most exciting streets I knew. There were still crowds on the sidewalks, tourists mixed with the local Asians, even though it was after 9 p.m.

  The neon lights of the Chinese restaurants beckoned. They had delicious names like The Golden Dragon, or was it the Golden Lotus? Grand Palace or perhaps Imperial Palace or Imperial Emperor. Some of the shops selling spices, herbs, meat, chicken and fish were still open. The odors could be overwhelming to the delicate western nose.

  Store windows contained fantastic sculptures carved in jade and other semi-precious stones. And enough ivory was on display to supply most of the elephants remaining in the world with tusks. Luggage stores offered steep discounts on a variety of bags—where did they get them?—and the ubiquitous souvenir shops peddled poorly made miniature cable cars and tons of T-shirts.

  I hummed "Grant Avenue" from Flower Drum Song as I walked diagonally left on Columbus, at Broadway, where, I had been told by my father, topless dancing was popularized at the Condor Club in the sixties by a woman named Carol Doda who danced on top of a piano. She had also reportedly had her breasts enlarged, which may have started another trend. The Condor Club was still there, but Carol Doda was long gone.

  I was soon in a quieter part of town, with fewer people about, but I wasn't apprehensive. San Francisco has never struck me as being a dangerous place.

  I had time so I walked up Lombard, including the section that has earned it the title of "the crookedest street in the world." A few cars were still wending their way slowly down the steep curves, as if they were on a slow-motion ride at a theme park. I was puffing hard by the time I got to the top. I didn't have far to go, however.

  James Buchanan's home faced north and had a clear view of the lit-up Golden Gate Bridge. The room with the large picture window on the front of the house was also lit as I approached, but I couldn't see anybody inside.

  Ned had told me not to attempt to enter the house until he arrived. My watch showed ten minutes of ten. The house was large by San Francisco standards and sat on a hillside lot, above the street level. A brick stairway led up to the front door. Several luxury cars and SUVs were parked in the sloping driveway.

  I didn't want to be arrested for loitering so I walked slowly along the street, admiring the view of the bay and the bridge. After 15 minutes of this, no cars had stopped at the Buchanan house. Maybe Ned had been held up at his business meeting. I started to get restless, but I decided to give him ten more minutes.

  By 10:20 I was really restless. I am not a good waiter. I didn't know where Ned's business meeting was. I could call his hotel to see if he was there, except that since I didn't have a cell phone I would have to walk down to the commercial area at the beach where there would be pay phones. If I did that and he arrived while I was gone I would miss him.

  On impulse, I walked up the steps to the front door and rang the bell. After a few seconds a disembodied male voice said, "Yes?"

  I located the intercom beside the door and said, "This is Ned Mackay."

  There was a pause. A video camera probably monitored me; I would be found out. I waited to be rejected.

  However, in less than a minute the voice said, "Here is the puzzle for today. A ship and its boiler have a combined age of 49 years. The ship is twice as old as the boiler was when the ship was as old as the boiler is now. What is the age of each? When you know the answer, buzz me."

  What the hell was he talking about? He couldn't be serious. Was this just a subtle form of rejection? I stared at the intercom, thinking up a sharp retort. But I wasn't in any position to make sharp retorts. Besides, how hard could the puzzle be? I was good at puzzles.

  I had a pen in my pocket and a small notebook for jotting down anything I learned. I pulled them out. Let X equal the age of the ship and Y equal the age of the boiler. The problem could be solved with simultaneous equations. One equation was easy; X + Y = 49. The other was a little more complicated and required untangling the terminology. Something about X = 2 times Y minus some quantity.

  I struggled with it for a minute and then thought, there aren't that many possibilities. I can solve it by trial and error. I tried and erred several times, but in another minute I had the answer: The ship was 28 years old and the boiler was 21. I pressed the button again.

  "Yes?"

  I gave my answer. Something clicked. I tried the door and it swung open.

  Chapter 5 THE CASINO

  The inside had the appearance of a conventional house. The spacious living room was to the right of the entryway, where I stood. It was well furnished and the large picture window, visible from the outside, was on the front wall. A stairway to the second floor rose directly in front of me and a corridor led toward the back of the house, with several closed doors along it.

  Nobody was in sight. However, I heard music coming from somewhere, and the gravelly voice of Louie Armstrong, singing, "Hello, Dolly." Was I expected to know where to go? Ned would know. I headed along the corridor, walking on the hardwood floor, toward the sound of the music.

  I came to a stairway heading down, directly beneath the other one. The music wafted up from below. Just as I turned to go down these stairs a young man appeared at the bottom. He was in his twenties, clean-cut, short hair, wearing a suit, white shirt and tie. The kind of person my father would hire.

  As I descended the stairs I looked over the polished wooden banister and a large room appeared before me, encompassing most of the dimensions of the house. Louie's voice became louder, singing some of the words and scatting the rest of the time.

  In addition to the music, I heard the hum of the conversations of several dozen men and women, who were engaged in playing games. A craps table dominated the center of the room and a blackjack table and roulette wheel stood near it. At another table people played poker and others played chess and backgammon.

  Two things distinguished this from the casinos I was familiar with: There were no slot machines and there was no cigarette smoke in the air. The customers were well dressed and an aura of affluence emanated from them. I felt underdressed for the second time that day without a tie, even though I was now wearing a sport coat.

  I immediately experienced the familiar excitement of being in the presence of gambling. The urge to feel the cards or dice in my
hands, the certainty that this was my lucky night—it all came back in a flash. I mentally reviewed the contents of my wallet—about 60 dollars—and wondered how one got started since Ned had said no money changed hands.

  In the next instant I told myself harshly that I was here to do a job and nothing else would get in the way. Then I reached the bottom of the stairs.

  "My name is Stan," the young man said, sticking out his hand.

  I shook hands with him, wondering how many hands I had shaken since morning. I almost said my own name, remembered I wasn't myself, hesitated, and ended up mumbling, "Pleased to meet you."

  "Mr. Buchanan would like to speak with you," Stan said, leading the way to a door underneath the stairs.

  I had a moment of panic as I realized that Mr. Buchanan would know I wasn't Ned Mackay, but I should have thought of that before. Stan opened the door and motioned me in ahead of him.

  The small room I entered had a sloping ceiling over part of it, caused by the stairway it was under. It was dimly lit and a number of television monitors were being watched by young men who were clones of Stan in dress and appearance. None of them appeared to be older than 30.

  I glanced at several of the monitors and realized I had been correct in assuming that I was being watched. They were all connected to surveillance cameras, not only outside the house, but looking down on the tables in the casino room, also. The latter monitors were undoubtedly to catch cheaters.

  Stan closed the door and walked past me to a man who sat on a high stool behind the men in front of the monitors. From his vantage point he could see all the monitors. He was older, with gray hair, but it was still cut short. He was the most casually dressed person in the room, wearing a loud sport shirt and a pair of pants that appeared in the dim light to be some shade of yellow.

  "Here he is, Mr. Buchanan." Stan said to the man.

  Mr. Buchanan rotated the seat of his stool toward me and looked me up and down as he transferred a glass from which he had been drinking through a straw from his right hand to his left. Then he stepped down off the stool and said, "Hi, I'm James Buchanan."

  He was considerably shorter than I. His hand was cold from the glass as I shook it. I had another moment of panic, but I couldn't lie any more. "Karl Patterson."

  "Well, Karl Patterson," he said with a smile, "I'm glad to know your real name."

  I felt I owed him an explanation. "Ned is planning to be here tonight," I said. "He told me to wait outside, but he's late and I figured..."

  "You figured you might as well come inside. And you suspected you wouldn't get in if you used your real name. Well, at least you passed the test."

  "The test?"

  "The ship and the boiler. A favorite of mine, not because it's terribly complex, but because you have to straighten out the confusing verbiage before you can solve it."

  "You mean you wouldn't have let me in if I hadn't gotten the right answer?"

  "That's correct." Mr. Buchanan smiled at the look on my face. "I can anticipate your next question. Did everybody who is here tonight solve it? With couples, we only ask one of them to come up with the answer. We do discourage groups of more than four riding in on one person's answer, however. We want to keep the intellectual level elevated as much as possible."

  Was he serious? "May I ask you a question, Mr. Buchanan?"

  "Only if you call me James."

  "Since you obviously knew from the beginning that I wasn't Ned, why did you let me in?"

  "Because I like a good puzzle, and I wondered who you really were." However, he didn't ask me any more questions. Instead, he said, "Would you like a tour to pass the time until Ned gets here?"

  "Sure." My job was to gather information.

  "You've already seen our monitors. Let's go into the main room."

  James opened the door and preceded me into the much more brightly lit casino room. Track lighting shone down from what I was now sure was a false ceiling and kept all the tables illuminated. Some of his young men were acting as croupiers and one was dealing blackjack, from only one deck, I noticed, approvingly. Others served drinks to the patrons.

  James called a server and asked me what I wanted to drink. I said iced tea. When he came back with it a couple of minutes later I started to pull out my wallet, but James stopped me by putting up his hand. Without being asked, the waiter had also brought James another iced drink in a tall glass with a straw. It contained a clear liquid.

  We strolled from table to table. He didn't give a boring explanation of the obvious, but instead let me watch each game for a bit. I saw a blackjack player take a hit when he should have stood and the itch inside told me I could do better. I saw a woman roll three consecutive sevens at the craps table and I wished my money was riding on her.

  As we passed through the room James said hello to many of the people and joked with others. At a table where two men were engaged in a game of chess he said to one who appeared to have the worst of it, "Tom, you'd better lay off the booze. Your brain cells aren't operational tonight."

  He put his hand on the shoulder of one distinguished-looking gentleman who was playing craps with a beautiful but inadequately-covered woman beside him and said, "Jed, when Sally rolls the dice don't let her bend over too far or we'll have to put her assets back into her dress. I'd better tell one of my assistants to get a warm spoon ready."

  When I had a chance I asked, "Why don't you have slot machines?"

  James led me to one side of the room and said, "First, there is no skill in playing the slots. They're all luck. I only like games and puzzles with at least an element of skill. All the games played here fit into that category. Second, as you may have noticed, we don't use money here."

  I didn't want to sound as if I were from Buttonwillow, but I didn't know how else to phrase the question. "Are you telling me all those chips don't represent money?"

  James smiled an engaging smile and said, "When you've acquired a certain amount of wealth you can do pretty much what you like. What I like is games and puzzles. Why shouldn't I be able to set my basement up as a casino and invite my friends over, if I want to? What game would you like to try?"

  My skepticism at his answer boiled over, but I didn't know what else to say. For one thing, the players were concentrating awfully hard for nothing being at stake. In any case, why not try a game? With no chance of losing money I couldn't get into trouble. A little blackjack, perhaps? No, I really needed to ask James some questions about Ned. We were standing beside a table with a backgammon board on it. I said, "Do you play backgammon?"

  "I play a bit of everything. Would you like to have a go?"

  We sat down and arranged our fifteen checker-like pieces on the designated points. As we each rolled one die to determine who would start I asked in what I hoped was a casual manner, "Does Ned come here often?"

  "Whenever he's in San Francisco. Ned's an old friend of mine. We go way back."

  I rolled a six; James rolled a one. Using these rolls for my first play, I made my bar-point, or seven-point; that is, I moved two pieces to it, creating a block.

  "What games does he like to play?"

  James rolled a 3-1 and made his five point.

  "Oh, he likes to shoot craps or play blackjack. Sometimes he plays poker."

  I rolled a 4-3 and moved two pieces to my side of the board from his twelve-point.

  "Would you say he is a compulsive gambler?"

  James rolled a 6-3 and moved a piece from my one-point, hitting one of my piecess and sending it to the bar.

  He sat, looking at the board, as if studying the game. I commanded my hand that held the dice cup to be still as I waited for his answer. He finally looked at me and said, "A year ago I would have said there was nothing compulsive about Ned. Now I'm not so sure."

  "Any special reason?"

  "Because of things that have happened."

  An enigmatic response, but I had better not push it any more or I would arouse suspicions. I rolled a 3-2, usually not a great roll
, but I got my piece off the bar with the two and used the three to hit James' piece.

  "If you don't play for money, what's the thrill?"

  James smiled a quick smile. "The thrill of playing any game, I guess. Trying to beat your opponent. Or the dice. Or the cards. Trying to excel. And we do keep rankings in each game, from the biggest winners to the biggest losers over the course of a year."

  That was still unsatisfactory, but I didn't ask any more questions. As the game proceeded, James made what I considered to be several tactical blunders in how he moved his pieces. However, the game was still undecided down to the last two moves.

  James rolled a 5-1 and bore a piece off the board with the five. He now had only two pieces remaining, on his two-point and his three-point, and he could move one of them one point. To my surprise, he moved the piece on his three-point to his two-point, leaving two pieces there, instead of from his two-point to his one-point, which would have left them on his one and three.

  There are 36 possible rolls with two dice (six times six). With two pieces on his two-point, there were ten rolls that wouldn't move both his pieces off the board on his next turn; they included every roll with a one in it except a double one, since doubles count double. But, if he had left the pieces on his one and three-points, there were only two rolls that wouldn't have cleared the board for him: 2-1 and 1-2.

  I won the game because of his mistake.

  James congratulated me and said, "Would you like to play a match to five points for a small stake?"

  "You don't play for money."

  "Not for money. If I win you serve drinks for half-an-hour. If you win I'll give you a ride back to your hotel so you don't have to walk."

  Did he know that I'd been a bartender? "Is that how you get these guys to work for you?"

  James laughed. "No, I pay them real money. They're on my staff."

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost eleven. I doubted that Ned was going to show, and I didn't have anything else to do. It was a screwy bet, but my itch was still there so I accepted.

  James' game suddenly improved dramatically. He stopped making silly mistakes. Nevertheless, I wasn't worried because backgammon is 75% luck, and luck seemed to be on my side. I was ahead in points 4-3 when we started what I hoped would be the deciding game.