by Sam A. Patel
“Hey, you know where that other guy was headed?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Just that way,” I say and point up the tunnel.
Knowing Pace’s speed, he is easily at the next station by now. There is no way these guys are going to catch him. We part with a mutual grumble. The data interceptors go their way, I go mine.
12
The plan is for Dexter to wait outside in his uncle’s junkyard Buick while I run inside to fix Martin’s account with the syndicate.
“Does Martin know you’re here?” Dexter asks.
“No. He doesn’t even know I’ve been running data for the past month.”
“How could he not know?”
“He’s been preoccupied.”
Martin and I haven’t really spoken since that night. I mean, we’ve spoken the way we normally speak, but neither one of us has brought up the elephant in the room. I suppose Martin just figures I’ll have to come around when our thirty days is up, and I know I won’t have to. But that conversation is coming. Martin had to take a trip for a few days—something about meeting with some investors, I’m not quite sure about the details—but he said we’ll talk when he gets back tomorrow. Yes, we’ll talk, and then I’ll hand him his note with the syndicate. And when he asks how, I’ll show him the tattoo. He might not be too happy about it, but what can he say? Anyway, this isn’t just about Martin’s note. If I keep running, I can save up enough to pay for school. I’ve always had the brains to get into NEIT, now I have a way to pay for it too.
“Keep the engine running,” I say.
“Why?” he asks.
“In case it goes sideways.”
Dex agrees. “Say Jack, I got a special run tomorrow.”
“Special how?”
“It’s a parity run, and they’re offering triple pay for it.”
“Parity run. Don’t tell me you’re going to use Pace.”
“No way. You know he can’t handle that.”
Running data isn’t always a one-to-one ratio of cargo to runner. Sometimes you work in teams. There is of course the decoy run, where one runner carries the real cargo and the other carries a dummy load. I learned about that one firsthand. The redundancy run consists of two or three runners carrying the exact same cargo. That one is less secure because there is two or three times the chance of your cargo being intercepted on the sneakernet, but you also have two or three times the chance of making delivery. Clients use that model when the importance of making delivery far outweighs the risk of being intercepted. The parity run, on the other hand, takes the opposite approach. In a parity run, you have two runners carrying half a load each, or three runners carrying two-thirds of a load each with full mirroring so that any two put together delivers the full cargo. Clients use that model when protecting against interception is far more important than making the actual delivery, since the retrievers have to snag not one but two runners to steal the cargo.
“It’s a new client,” says Dex.
New client. High-value cargo. Parity run. That’s a lot of variables to have going for a single run. Maybe too many. I know Dex, he wouldn’t ask unless the hairs on his neck were standing straight up. “So maybe I watch your back on this one.”
“You know, I think that might be a good idea.” He turns his attention to the building in front of us. “How’re we going to stay in touch when you’re inside?”
The gambling parlor jams all signals from the outside to prevent cheating. For Dex and I to stay in contact, I’d have to sneak inside, find the signal-jamming apparatus, open a port without raising any alarms, sneak back out. Then pipe into the syndicate mainframe using that port, write a quick code to mask our transmissions by piggybacking them onto the existing wireless traffic, and finally, sync our thin screens to in-ear devices since comm shades are out of the question.
Or, we could just go lo-tech.
“Oh, that is sweet,” says Dexter when I hand him the old walkie-talkie held together with electrical tape.
“They’re staticky as hell but they should get the job done.”
Dex hits his push-to-talk button and nearly jumps at the giant burst of noise that comes through my monitor.
“It’s probably best to maintain radio silence unless absolutely necessary.”
“I hear that.”
“You good to go?” I ask.
“Eyes wide, ears back.”
“There shouldn’t be any problems. I’m just being extra cautious.”
“Don’t worry, a Dragon’s got your back. Just do what you came to do and get out. You should be fine.”
Dex is right. But even still, should is the operative word.
The gaming parlor is managed by a slobbering, sleazy, sweaty lump of flesh named Vlad.
“You come to pay me Baxter’s debt?”
I nod. The note is already on his desk. I hand him five $10,000 currency cards, all bank-issued with the seals still intact.
“Cash?” he says with surprise.
“You do accept cash?”
Now a smile creeps onto his face. Until that very second, I don’t think he actually believed I was there to pay him his money. “Do I accept cash,” he mutters with amusement.
I watch him break the seal on each card and run it through the reader on his desk. Each time he does, the full value of the card flashes momentarily on his screen and then abruptly drains to zero as the funds are deposited into the syndicate’s accounts, until all that is left is plastic.
“Are we good?” I ask.
“We good,” he says and hands me the note.
I rip it in half twice and stuff it into my backpack.
“Tell me, how a kid like you pay off such a big note?”
“I run numbers.”
Vlad laughs like I have just said something funny even though I haven’t. I guess he just assumes it’s a joke. At least it puts him in a better mood. Before I go he comps me a $10 chip.
“Here,” he says, “have a play on the house. See if your luck is any better than Baxter’s.”
I take the chip and try doing that thing where I walk it down my knuckles, but all I end up doing is dropping it on the floor, where it lands on its side and rolls away from me. Then as I try to grab it, I kick it even further with my toe. Finally I chase it down and retrieve it, looking far less cool than I would have if I’d just pocketed the stupid thing.
Vlad slaps his leg like he’s watching a Looney Tunes cartoon.
I hold up the chip. “Thanks.”
I can still hear him laughing behind me as I leave his office.
The gaming floor at that hour is still relatively quiet. There is a jam-packed hustle and bustle of high-stakes players that the syndicate parlor is known for, but that won’t start for hours. Right now it’s mostly scattered people playing low-limit games. The only game of real interest belongs to the suited gentleman playing heads-up poker against a house player.
It isn’t long before I pass by the roulette table and decide to throw the comp chip down on black while the ball is still in orbit. Then I wait, not for an integer but for a color, as the ball does its obligatory bounce around the spinning wheel and lands on zero. Green zero. Neither red nor black, odd nor even, high nor low, it is one of two slots on the wheel that belongs to the house. Figures.
I’m just about to head for the door when something interesting happens over at the poker table. The man in the suit pushes all-in ahead of the flop. The house player calls. At a glance it looks to be about twenty grand or so. They show their cards. Suit’s got pocket Aces, while the house player turns over a 7♣ and 2♥. I can’t even believe what I’m seeing. Seven–Two unsuited? Statistically, that is the worst hand you can start with in Texas hold’em. There’s no straight draw. No flush draw. Even a pair of sevens is likely to get beat. There are few rules in card games that are sacrosanct. In blackjack, you always split your aces and double down on an eleven. Always. In poker, you never bet a Seven�
��Two unsuited on a pre-flop raise. Never.
But surprising as this is, it’s nothing compared to the next three cards dealt up on the table. 7♦ 7♠ 2♠. The house player flops a full house that blows away the Suit’s Aces. There’s only two cards that can help the suited gentleman now. The dealer reveals the turn. A♠. Yep, that’s one of them. Aces full of Sevens beats Seven full of Twos. It’s not quite over. The house player does have one out left. One slim, highly unlikely out. The dealer taps the table, burns the top card, turns over the river. 7♥. Four Sevens to make four of a kind. Suit loses it all to the house player. What are the odds?
Actually, what are the odds? I can’t tell you the exact percentages, but I know they’re not good. Probably the same as landing a little white roulette ball in the zero. It happens. It just happened to me, and I’m sure it was just chance, but then I didn’t have twenty grand riding on that spin. If I did, would that little white ball have found the house slot by more than just chance?
I wonder, because after the man in the suit wanders away with his tail between his legs, and the dealer gathers the house’s chips and closes the table, it is not the dealer but the house player who takes up the deck of cards used in the game. That’s strange. I may not be an expert on the inner workings of gaming parlors, but I do know that house players are supposed to be treated like any other player. In no instance does a house player ever walk off with the cards when the game is done. That’s beyond strange; it’s downright suspicious.
I should just walk away. Go back out to where Dex is waiting and be done with it. But something in my gut won’t let it go. I follow him across the floor and up the steps. I trail a short distance behind him as he punches a code into a restricted entry. His fingers move quickly, but not quick enough to elude my eyes. 2–2–6–3–2.
I check to make sure no one is around and pull out the walkie-talkie.
“Dex,” I whisper.
Even with the volume turned all the way down the static that comes through the monitor is so loud I have to cover it with my hand.
“Go for Dex…over.”
“Something’s going on here. Go around back and wait for my signal…over.”
“Did you get the note?…over.”
“Affirmative…over.”
“Then what do you care what’s going on in there? Get your ass out and let’s blow this joint…over.”
“In a minute. Go around back and watch for my signal…over.”
“Signal! Who are you, Batman? What signal?…over.”
I haven’t thought that far ahead. “You’ll know it when you see it…over.”
“Roger tha….over and out.”
2–2–6–3–2. A green light grants me access. This puts me in a dimly lit hallway with a bunch of back rooms where who knows what goes on. Thinking about it now, there’s a back door in Vlad’s office that can only lead into this hall. At present, all the doors are shut except for the one at the end. I get there just in time to see the house player remove a set of contact lenses. He moves out of view. I skirt to the other side of the opening and see him disappear into the bathroom. A moment later I hear the sound of running water.
I enter.
Inside, I find an antique desk littered with the appurtenances of casino games. Single decks of cards. Two heavy wooden card shoes. A box of dice. Three roulette balls sitting idle in an ashtray. The only thing out of place is the contact lenses. I lift one to my eye and peer through it like a spyglass. There doesn’t appear to be anything corrective about it. It’s just a transparent lens, or so it appears, until I happen to pass it over the deck of cards. At that moment, a heads-up display of fifty-two playing cards splashes across the lens.
“What the—”
I turn the top card over, which matches the first one in the string. Then I quickly rifle through the rest of the deck, watching every card go by as expected. That was how the house employee did it. With these lenses and that deck, he knew exactly what was coming.
But that wouldn’t matter in a game of blackjack. The dealer has to hit according to the rules, not by choice, so seeing the next card wouldn’t benefit him in any way. I turn the lens to the blackjack shoe, but all I see is the back of the next card. It doesn’t matter. Even if the cards aren’t transparent, I know it has to be fixed in some other way. I take a moment to examine it. On the outside it’s indiscernible from every other blackjack shoe on the gaming floor.
I slide out the next card. 6♥. Then a few more. 8♦ 7♣ 6♠ 9♦ 9♣ 6♣.
That’s weird. Seven cards in a row without a single high or a low. I go to draw another card and happen to catch the edge. Not much, just enough to slide it back a few millimeters, but that’s enough to reveal the tiered edges of two other cards hiding beneath the top card. I know at once what I’m looking at as I reset the top card. Then, just like a pro, slice it back and draw the card directly beneath it. The mechanism is so smooth you can’t even see it happen, but it does. 2♥. I do it again knowing they’ll all be low. 3♦ 4♠ 2♣ 5♥. Then I draw from the slot beneath that one, knowing before the first card is even turned over that they will all be a Ten or an Ace. Sure enough. 10♦ K♣ Q♥ A♠ J♦ 10♦ A♥.
This is the reason Martin lost. He wasn’t beaten by thirteen decks; he was taken by a rigged shoe.
I rifle through my bag and find my LED torch just as the water in the bathroom cuts out. The only window in the room faces out the rear of the building, which is where Dex should already be waiting. I press it to the glass and flash three times. Dex and I haven’t agreed upon an actual signal, or what it would mean, but I figure he would know enough to be ready for me. I slip out of the room just in time to avoid the house player coming out of the bathroom.
But now I have a different problem: the sound of voices coming down the hall in the direction from whence I came. I can’t go back that way. Not to worry, there is an emergency exit at the end of the hall. I hurry to it and throw my hip into the release bar, only to slam the entire side of my body into a door that does not budge. I push it again. Same result. I survey the door looking for a catch or a pin or a release—something, anything—but find nothing.
Not good. I pull out the walkie-talkie. “Dex,” I whisper. “Dex, I’m in trouble here.”
A blast of static sounds like it contains a voice but it’s so faint I can’t make it out.
“Dex, the door won’t open!”
The voices turn the corner and become three shadowy figures. The round one in the middle can only be Vlad. There’s no point hiding it now. I turn the knob all the way to the right and call for Dex again, but this time the static contains nothing.
“Dex cannot hear you,” says Vlad as he steps close enough for his silhouette to take on color. In his oversized hand he holds a mechanical jammer, the kind that also works on radio signals.
I try the door again. Again. Again and again.
“That won’t open. These doors have all been locked by remote security. Why you come back here?”
Okay think, I tell myself. If I can’t get out of it, I may as well get some answers. “You cheated in Martin’s game. I saw the shoe.”
“Cheated,” he says. “No, not cheated. Martin Baxter always come to gaming parlor with his math genius. I merely stabilize the game.”
“What about that guy at the poker table? Were you stabilizing his game?”
“Him? No. Somebody pay to get him into debt with us. After thirty-day grace period, we sell them his note.”
Sirens go off in my head. Suddenly Martin’s debt takes on a whole new dimension. The syndicate was just the middleman. They didn’t have any interest in him personally. So who did? “Who paid you to get Martin into debt?”
Vlad scrunches his face like he isn’t going to tell me but soon relaxes it back into a smile. “What the hell, I like you better than her.”
“Who?”
“Snooty French woman from Grumwell. Like all French. I never trust the French.”
“Wait, what French woman from Grumwell?”
“You don’t know?”
I shake my head.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “You meet her soon. She give instructions for us to detain you.”
“Detain me? Detain me for what?”
Vlad shrugs. “If pay is good, I don’t ask why. Why is…how you say…anathema to business.” Vlad and his goons inch closer. “Now I’m afraid we must detain you until she arrives.”
The bar of the door presses into my body armor as I back into it as they advance. Then, CRACK!
Wait, that isn’t me.
CRRRACK!
Vlad and his men stop cold. “What is that?” he asks.
Just then the door that won’t open is ripped clean out of its frame and dragged away by the revving engine of an old Buick.
“What the hell is this?” Vlad exclaims. “Go get him!”
But I am already through the exit and bolting for the car’s open window. Dex waits for me with both hands on the wheel and his foot poised over the pedal. Ready to slam the gas the moment I’m in.
Ten feet from the car I have to make a snap decision how to enter the window—head or feet first. There is no time to stall. I dive in headfirst and push off the door with my hands to get as much of my torso into the car as I can. Dex guns it. My armor causes me to rock back and forth in the window frame as the tires kick dirt and the car takes off, towing behind it the back door of the syndicate that is still tied to the rear of the vehicle.
Vlad’s men pull their guns. Fire.
The metallic grind of a heavy metal door being dragged along asphalt is loud enough to drown out the report, but I see the muzzle flashes through the dirt cloud near the building. They get off two rounds. One goes nowhere, the other ricochets off the car. That’s it for now. We get away as Dex speeds the car up the road.
Legs still dangling out the passenger side window, I practically have to yell over the dragging door. “That was subtle.”
