Dead Money (6 page)

A skinny guy with a bleached streak ran up as the ball slowed and stuck two large column bets. The dealer gave him a foul look and called it in as the ball dropped squarely between the two bets. Any punter worth his salt would've kicked off, but the skinny guy was already off to the next table to do the same thing.

Beale was already down to a stack and a half and his face had pinched up. If he lost that other half, he'd take it out on the dealer. It spiced up the game for him, knowing he was pecking someone's head at the same time. If it wasn't the dealer, it'd be another punter.

I bought in for a stack of colour, flipped a couple of loose straight-ups across the layout as the dealer spun up.

A line of dealers and inspectors emerged from a side door, trooping back towards the pit. At the front of the line was Stevie. I nudged Beale. He grinned. The dealer spun up without Beale's bets.

It didn't matter. Stevie took off the current inspector. Beale kept his head down, and I realised that the rest of my chips were as good as lost because I wouldn't be able to keep track of the game now Beale had a sympatico inspector on the table. He started with the late bets, then moved on to announce bets that made no sense – a nine-ten split, a three-six corner – before muttering, stuttering and mumbling his way through the rest. When the dealer refused to take any more, Beale got clumsy, knocking chips from the numbers as he put his own bets on. So the dealer had to take the announce bets again, and they were always wrong because Beale never threw the right number of chips and if one of the numbers hit, then that was the one he always doubled up.

The dealer took it all in his stride, even though you could see he was boiling inside. He knew he didn't have Stevie for support after he was forced to put an even-number neighbours bet with seconds to go on the ball, so he used his own tricks to get back at Beale. First he pretended not to hear the announce bets until it was too late. Then he placed everyone else's bets before he took Beale's and stuck it on the wheel with a call. When Beale won, he passed weak-base stacks so they toppled when Beale touched them, and spun up as quickly as he could.

If I didn't know better, it looked as if the dealer came out victorious because Beale was the first to moan. "Jesus, Stephen, do you have any decent dealers in this place?"

Stephen – the name on Stevie's badge.

"Still cursed with the trainees."

The dealer flinched. He hadn't been a fish for a good few years, and these lads took pride in their work.

The ball hit twenty-two black. Beale had hammered twenty-one, but it was the opposite end of the row above. "Jesus fuckin' Christ, is there a dealer in here who can hit a simple fuckin' number?"

"Maybe you'll have better luck with the twenty-one over on the blackjack."

"Smart arse." Then, to the dealer, "Cash us in, fishy. I've had enough of amateur hour."

I cashed in at the same time. Over in the card room, it looked as if they were getting ready to take names for the comp. I nudged Beale.

"See you later, Stephen," he said.

"Not if I see you first."

And for a second there, he looked as if he meant it.

6

An Asian bloke with an inhalator and nicotine patches up one arm took me out of the comp with a freak flush that shouldn't have appeared anywhere but the bastard's dreams. When I checked on Beale, he was bucking the odds by making it through to the final table. Normally Beale was dead money in the tournaments. With his temperament and tendency to go on tilt, he was better suited to the no-limit tables than he was to the comps. While I waited, I did another fifty on the craps and then spent the rest of the time slumped in the bar. Beale hit the final pot, and squeaked out of there with a healthy profit. Part of me wished he'd crashed and burned just so he'd forget about the dealer game, but the near-win was enough to get him excited.

"Should've seen us tonight, Alan, I was on fire, man."

I nodded, but didn't say anything. On the radio, a warm-sounding DJ told me to get a tattoo of the station's name on my arse. If I did that at this special place, they'd pay me five hundred quid. Then he rattled off an address I wouldn't even visit for a grand, never mind trust them with needles. Mind you, the address Stevie had given us wasn't much better. Miles Platting, sandwiched between Collyhurst and Ardwick. Tower blocks and promises of regeneration that were never going to be kept.

"That final table, that was some fuckin' competition. There was people there'd been on the telly and everything."

It was bleak round here. I kept seeing movement in the shadows that could have been people but was more likely my brain being a dick. The closer we got to Miles Platting, the less I felt like leaving my Rover unattended. I needed the car; the car was my life-line. Anything happened to the car, I'd be up the proverbial creek.

"So I'm holding Jack Queen suited, right? I'm one off a flush on the first three of the flop, so my balls are twitching."

"Christ's sake, Les."

"Next flop card's no good to me – ten of clubs – but it's use to the fucker next to us, right? I'm thinking he's tripped. So everything's telling us I should chuck it in, but I don't. Can't do it – you know how it is – so I keep raising."

Peering out into the gloom, nothing much to see out here but a homeless bloke pissing against a lock-up.

"So I'm raising hard and fast, clipping ‘em off one by one except this fucker with the tens. Mickey something. You know him, he's got that tuft of hair."

I glanced at Beale, shook my head. I didn't know him.

"Yeah, you do. He's like almost bald an' that, but he's got this daft tuft of hair right in the middle of his head. Fuckin' unicorn-looking bastard."

I nodded blindly, finally saw a sign up ahead. Underneath all the spray tags, it looked as if it read JANSEN COURT.

"We're here."

I pulled the Rover in by the front of the block, peering through the windows, in both mirrors. There didn't appear to be anyone about, but the kids round here blended into the shadows like commandos.

"So anyway, I go all in, and it's the river. And I look at Mickey, and he looks at me, and we
have
to go on our backs, right? Now my flush is fucked – that river's off-suit, but it is a Jack, so I'm looking at two pair, Queens over. I flip ‘em, and this Mickey looks at ‘em, and I'm thinking, he's tripped the tens, this is me fucked. But he mucks. He fuckin'
mucks
."

I looked at Beale, waiting for the punchline. Like maybe Mickey did trip the tens or hit a straight and he hadn't noticed. Because that was the point of a poker story. They were all about finding that perfect river, or about bulling your way through a tough game, or settling old scores. It wasn't about hitting two pair instead of a safe-shot Queen-high flush, especially if the other hand was a ten-high two pair. Because if that was the case, then he might as well have told me a story about going down the fucking shops. And yet, there was Beale acting like Jesse May.

I swallowed it back and said again, "We're here."

Beale took a look out the window and sucked his teeth. "Fuck me."

"Tell me about it. I'm the daft bastard leaving his car out." I grabbed the steering lock and clipped it over the wheel. Beale got out of the car and went over to the buzzers. He leaned on one. I locked up, cheeped the alarm and uttered a silent prayer that the Rover would still be in one piece when I got back.

Beale held the door open for me. "Sixth floor."

"Lift," I said.

He stabbed the button. Nothing doing. He tried the other one. Same story. We both looked at the stairs. Somewhere above us, I heard a kid screaming. Couldn't tell if it was happy or in pain.

"You better clean up tonight, Les."

There were noises from behind doors – raised voices, drunken laughter, someone moving furniture or someone being hit. I lit up a Regal on the second landing to smother the smell of bins. It became more pungent the higher we got. On the sixth floor, Beale leaned on his knees and waved one hand. Lucky we were here, or else I think I would've had to call for an ambulance. I offered him my Regal and he coughed violently.

"Come on, you fat bastard." I rang the bell. Stevie answered, still in his uniform. He nodded to me and stepped aside.

"You alright there, Les?" he said.

"You need to move out."

Stevie shoved a can of Carling in my hand. Weak as piss, but I didn't want to get too messed up if I was driving home. Into the living room and the blanket of smoke that hung in the air. Three blokes sat round a small table, and over on the settee was a pink-eyed stoner. In the background, I could hear Marvin Gaye getting it on.

This was definitely a croup's flat. Nothing but takeaway cartons, cheese-riddled pizza boxes, overflowing ashtrays and empty beer cans. A half-demolished bottle of dark rum sat on the sideboard along with a litre bottle of Red Flag vodka and a couple of others that I didn't immediately recognise. They weren't big on brands in this place.

One of the blokes I knew from the Palace, an inspector. The other two wore Riverside uniforms. Stevie introduced them one by one. The Palace inspector was short, fat and Greek-looking. He looked as if he'd just been told off, but it turned out his bottom lip stuck out like that normally. This was Phil, and he was busy shuffling the cards, a menthol cigarette in the corner of his mouth. At the Palace, he was a bastard. I had no reason to think he'd be any different outside of work. The next guy had grey speckles in his hair, weasel eyes and skin like a Ritz cracker. His long fingers molested his chips. The clicking sound would drive Beale nuts. His name was Dougie. When he opened his mouth to speak, I saw three grey teeth and heard another Scottish accent. The third bloke, Martin, wouldn't have looked out of place in a boy band, if Louis Walsh ever decided to make one entirely out of psychopaths. Had that clean, dangerous look about him, and I knew if Beale was stupid enough to kick off, this lad would be able to put him down. In fact, on closer inspection, I got the impression he would enjoy it.

So Beale didn't need muscle, but Stevie did?

"And that," said Stevie, pointing to the stoner, "is our resident waste of life."

The Waste made a little gabbing mouth out of one hand.

"Fuckin' Dead Eddie," said Beale.

That got a laugh from Phil and Dougie. I got the feeling Martin didn't laugh at anything. The Waste blew a long plume of smoke, goldfished a couple of rings.

"Dead Eddie's one of you lot, man. A drunk."

Beale looked at the stoner. Not a great start.

"Simmer," I told him quietly, and nodded at the table. "Remember why you're here."

I got settled in a chair opposite The Waste, who seemed quite happy to lie there watching a muted BBC News 24 with a Motown soundtrack. He wittered on about how Marvin Gaye was killed by his dad as the lads prepared for the game.

"So you see, it was a terrible tragedy, what happened."

First round, and Beale called. So far, so good.

"Now if Marvin Senior had smoked, it would've been a totally different story. Wouldn't have killed anyone. Stoners never killed anyone. Not one person."

Beale raked a win. He wasn't gloating yet, still on his best behaviour.

"Nicest people on earth, us. That twat over there calls us a Waste, but he's a drunk, so he's bound to be aggressive. Smoke all you want, you can't kill anyone in a car, not unless you whitey at the wheel. And if that happens, well, you probably shouldn't be hitting the bong just yet."

I must've been getting secondary smoke – my mouth was dry and my sinuses felt scraped.

"Every time there's a Budget, right, there's some Chancellor talking about raising duty on booze, but you want my opinion, he's not raised it enough. And he never will, because it's an acceptable drug, even though it's responsible for millions of pounds of damage to people and property every single year. People are stressed the fuck
out
, and that's the worst drug they could turn to, man. If people took the time to let the world pass them by for a bit instead of forever trying to catch up with it, everyone would be better off."