The Wheel of Darkness (21 page)

Bracing herself, Anh walked over to the specified table. “Your drink, sir?”

“Thanks, but I didn’t—”

She joggled the tray and the drink fell upside down in his crotch.

The man leapt up. “Oh for God’s sake—!”

“So sorry, sir!”

“My new tuxedo!”

“Sorry! So sorry!”

The man plucked a handkerchief from his breast pocket and used it to brush away the ice cubes and liquid. Pendergast glided over, ready to move in.

“So sorry!” Anh repeated.

“Just forget it!” He turned to the dealer. “Color me up, I’m outta here.”

He scooped up his chips and stormed off, and as he did so Pendergast quickly slid into his seat. The dealer shuffled, laid down the deck, and handed the cut-card to Pendergast. He inserted it in the deck, and the dealer cut and loaded the shoe, inserting the end-of-play card unusually deep.

Ahn Minh hovered nearby, wondering what crazy thing Pendergast would ask her to do next.

Aloysius Pendergast looked around the table with a big grin. “How we all doing tonight? Getting lucky?” The Chinese man at third base—his mark—did not acknowledge. The two middle-aged women in between, who looked like sisters, nodded wary greetings.

“Dealing good cards tonight?” he asked the dealer.

“Doing my best,” the petite woman replied evenly.

Pendergast shot a glance across the room and noticed that the lady in the muumuu, who pretended to be chatting on a cell phone, was now spotting their table. Excellent.

“I’m feeling lucky.” Pendergast put a ten-thousand-pound chip into the betting circle, then dropped another in front, as a toke for the dealer.

The two women stared at his bet for a moment, and then advanced their own more modest thousand-pound wagers. The Chinese man pushed a chip into the betting circle—also a thousand.

The dealer pitched out the cards.

Pendergast stood on two eights. The two women played, and his mark drew a twelve and busted on a face card. The dealer drew a twenty in three cards and collected all their money.

The waitress came back with another drink and Pendergast took a good slug. “Rotten luck,” he said, laying the drink down on a coaster and advancing his next bet.

Several more hands were played, and then Pendergast failed to bet.

“Your bet, sir?”

“Going to sit this one out,” Pendergast said. He swiveled around and spoke to Anh Minh. “Gimme another gin and tonic,” he slurred. “Make it dry.”

The cocktail waitress scurried off.

The Chinese man bet again, five thousand this time. The look on his tired, middle-aged face had not changed at all. This time he stayed on fifteen with the dealer showing six, and the dealer busted.

The play moved deeper into the shoe. Out of the corner of his eye, Pendergast could see that another marked player, being spotted by the young blond man, was winning at the next table. The trick would be to force this one to lose bigger, to compensate. The slug of cards that he had tracked through the shuffle wasn’t far off, and it promised to provide some fireworks.

The spotter in the muumuu had evidently also tracked the shuffle. Now, as the play worked up toward the beginning of the slug, Pendergast’s running count was already a good plus eleven. The mark slid a pile of chips into the betting circle: fifty thousand.

A murmur rose.

“Hell, if he’s doing it, I’ll do it too,” Pendergast said, pushing in fifty. He winked at the mark and lifted his drink. “Here’s to us, friend.”

The ladies each bet a thousand, and the cards were dealt.

Pendergast stood on eighteen.

The mark drew, asked to be hit on a twelve with the dealer showing a five—a violation of basic strategy—then drew an eight card.

An
oooh
! came from the crowd.

The ladies drew a series of low cards, one eventually busting. The dealer then completed her own hand: three, five, six, five: nineteen—a win for the mark.

A few more hands were played, most of the cards coming low out of the shoe. Pendergast’s running count kept climbing. Many of the tens and most of the aces were still undealt. On top of that, they were now just into the slug that he had meticulously tracked in the shuffle, using his acute eyesight and prodigious memory. That—and the peek he’d gotten during the shuffle and cut—alerted him to the precise location of seven cards in that slug, along with an educated guess on the location of many others. His side count of aces stood at three—thirteen more were in the pack, and he knew the location of two of them. This would be his opportunity if he could get it right. It all depended on controlling the downstream flow of cards.

This deal he would have to bust, and do it in four cards.

He bet a thousand.

The mark put in a hundred thousand.

Another
oooh
! from the crowd.

Pendergast was dealt a fourteen.

The mark was dealt fifteen, with the dealer’s upcard a ten.

Pendergast took a hit. A five: nineteen. The dealer was about to move on when Pendergast said, “Hit me again.”

Bust.

There were snickers in the crowd, whispers, a derisive laugh. Pendergast took a swig from his drink. He glanced over at the mark and saw the man looking at him, a sudden faint look of contempt in his eyes.

The mark took a hit and was dealt an eight: bust. The dealer raked in his hundred thousand.

A quick mental calculation told Pendergast the running count was now twenty, the true count going even higher. Almost unheard of. The dealer was seventy-five percent through the shoe and still only three aces had been played, the rest concentrated in the remaining slug of cards. This was a combination no card counter could resist. If the mark followed the Kelly criterion—which he would if he had any brains—he would bet big. Very big. The key to controlling play, Pendergast knew, would now be to stop the good cards while sending the bad ones downstream. The problem was the two ladies between him and the mark: the cards they would get, how they would play them, and all the complications that might entail.

“Ladies and gentlemen?” asked the dealer, gesturing for the bets to be placed.

Pendergast bet a hundred thousand. The Chinese man pushed out a pile of chips: two hundred and fifty thousand. The two ladies bet their thousand each, looked at each other, and giggled.

Pendergast held up his hand. “Don’t deal yet. I can’t do this without another drink.”

The dealer looked alarmed. “You want to pause the play?”

“I’ve got to have a drink. What if I lose?”

The mark did not look pleased.

The dealer cast a quizzical glance at the floorman hovering nearby, who nodded his approval.

“All right. We’ll take a short pause.”

“Waitress!” Pendergast snapped his fingers.

Anh Minh bustled over. “Yes, sir?”

“A drink!” he cried, handing her a fifty, which he dropped. As she bent down to pick it up Pendergast leapt up. “No, no, I’ll get it!”

When their heads were close, Pendergast said, “Get those two ladies off the table. Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pendergast rose with the bill in his hand. “There it is! Keep the change, but don’t you dare come back without that drink!”

“Yes, sir.” Anh bustled off.

A minute passed, then two. Word about the size of the bets had circulated and a sizable crowd was developing around the table. The impatience of the crowd—not to mention the mark—was growing. All eyes were on the tottering stacks of chips sitting on the green felt.

“Make way!” came a cry, and Hentoff, the casino manager, stepped through the crowd. He paused before the two women at Pendergast’s table, flashed them a broad smile, and opened his arms. “Josie and Helen Roberts? Today is your lucky day!”

They looked at each other. “Oh, really?”

He put an arm around each and drew them up. “Once a day, we have a little lottery—all the room numbers are automatically entered. You won!”

“What did we win?”

“Ninety-minute massages with Raul and Jorge, deluxe spa treatment, a gift basket of cosmetics, and a free case of Veuve Clicquot!” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, no! If we don’t hurry, we’ll miss Raul and Jorge! We’ve been looking all over for you two!”

“But we were just—”

“We’ve got to hurry. The prize is good for today only. You can
always
come back.” He gestured to the dealer. “Color them up.”

“With the bets on the table, sir?”

“I
said
, color them up.”

The dealer exchanged their chips and Hentoff, arm around each sister, led them away through the crowd. A moment later Anh Minh arrived with the drink.

Pendergast drained it, banged it down. He looked around the table with a grin. “Okay. I’m fortified.”

The dealer swept her hand over the table, calling for final bets, then she pitched out the cards. Pendergast was dealt two aces, and split. The mark got two sevens, which he also split. The dealer’s upcard was a queen.

The mark advanced a new stack of chips against the split hand. Now there was five hundred thousand on the table. Pendergast added his second bet, bringing his stake to two hundred thousand.

The dealer dealt Pendergast his two cards: a king and a jack. Two blackjacks.

The crowd erupted in applause, then quickly fell into a hush as the dealer turned to the mark and dealt a card on each seven.

Two more sevens, just as Pendergast had expected. “Too bad we’re not playing poker!” he brayed.

The mark split the sevens again—he had little choice—and reluctantly advanced two more piles of chips. A million pounds were now in front of him on the table.

The dealer dealt out four cards: jack, ten, queen, ace.

The crowd waited. The silence was extraordinary.

The dealer turned over her hole card—to reveal a ten.

A collective sigh rose from the crowd as it sank in: they had just witnessed a man lose a million pounds. There was no applause this time, only a high, excited murmuring, the air so thick with schadenfreude one could almost taste it.

Pendergast rose from the table, collected his own winnings, and winked again at the Chinese man, who seemed frozen as he watched his million pounds being raked away, counted, and stacked. “Win some, lose some,” he said, giving his chips a jaunty rattle.

As he exited the casino, he caught a glimpse of Hentoff, staring at him, mouth hanging open.

W
HEN
F
IRST
O
FFICER
L
ESEUR ENTERED THE BRIDGE JUST BEFORE
midnight, he immediately sensed tension in the air. Commodore Cutter was back on the bridge again, thick arms crossed over his barrel chest, pink fleshy face impassive and unreadable. The rest of the bridge complement stood at their stations, silent and on edge.

But it wasn’t just Cutter’s presence that created the air of tension. LeSeur was acutely aware that the level-two search had failed to turn up the Evered woman. Her husband had become unmanageable, tearing up and down, making scenes, insisting that his wife would never have jumped, that she’d been murdered or was being held hostage. His behavior was beginning to alarm the other passengers, and rumors were spreading. On top of that, the gruesome and unaccountable suicide of the housekeeper had badly spooked the crew. LeSeur had quietly checked Blackburn’s alibi and found it held up; the billionaire really had been at dinner and his private maid in medical.

LeSeur was pondering these problems when the new officer of the watch arrived on the bridge and relieved the outgoing watch. While the two men discussed the change of watch in low voices, LeSeur strolled over to the bridge workstation, where Staff Captain Mason was checking the electronics. She turned, nodded, and went back to her work.

“Course, speed, and conditions?” Cutter asked the new officer of the watch. It was a pro forma question: not only was LeSeur sure that Cutter knew the answers, but even if he didn’t, a glance at the ECDIS chartplotters and weather panels would have told him all he needed to know.

“Position four nine degrees 50.36 minutes north latitude and zero one two degrees 43.08 minutes west longitude, heading two four one true, speed twenty-nine knots,” the officer of the watch answered. “Sea state 4, wind twenty to thirty knots on the starboard stern, seas running eight to twelve feet. Barometric pressure 29.96, dropping.”

“Give me a printout of our position.”

“Yes, sir.” The officer of the watch tapped a few keys and a thin sheet of paper began scrolling out of a miniprinter slot in the side of the console. Cutter ripped it free, glanced at it, then tucked it into a pocket of his immaculately pressed uniform. LeSeur knew what he would do with the printout: once back in his quarters, he’d be quick to compare it to the relative position of the
Olympia
on her record- breaking crossing the year before.

Beyond the vast bank of windows that covered the forward face of the bridge, the front was getting closer and the sea was growing dramatic. It was a large, slow-moving system, which meant it would be with them for most of the crossing. The
Britannia
’s knifelike bows tore through the waves, throwing up huge frothy sprays that soared to heights of fifty feet before raining back down on the lower aft weather decks. The ship had developed a pronounced deep-ocean roll.

LeSeur’s eyes roamed over the ship’s system panels. He noted that the stabilizers were deployed at half position, sacrificing passenger comfort for greater speed, and he guessed it must be at Cutter’s orders.

“Captain Mason?” Cutter’s voice cut across the bridge.

“He’ll be here any moment, sir.”

Cutter did not respond.

“Under the circumstances, I suggest we give serious consideration to—”

“I’ll hear his report first,” Cutter interrupted.

Mason fell silent again. It was clear to LeSeur that he’d walked into the middle of an ongoing disagreement of some kind.

The door to the bridge opened again and Kemper, chief of security, stepped inside.

“There you are, Mr. Kemper, finally,” Cutter said, not looking at him. “Your report, please.”

“We got the call about forty minutes ago, sir,” Kemper said. “An elderly woman in suite 1039, reporting that her companion is missing.”