A Door in the River (18 page)

He was walking in a dead riverbed. There was a small channel carved in the stone at his feet in which a rill of water carried along: the remainder and reminder of the old river. This was the continuation of the passage it
had carved into the fields and the bedrock over millennia before it was diverted and claimed.

As he went down, the door above him closed on its own, making a soft clicking noise followed by a mechanical sound when it was fully shut. The lights stayed on. The wires stringing them made shallow, drooping arcs between the bulbs. He hadn’t seen a camera on the way down, and couldn’t see any here, so he got the phone out.

“I’m in a riverbed,” he whispered. “Fifteen feet underground. An empty riverbed, like a cave.”

“We’ve got you on the screen here, James,” Hazel answered. “We see you. Leave the phone on, but put it away and focus.” He slipped it into his pants pocket.

The riverbed stretched out for about sixty metres in a meandering southerly direction before turning sharply to the west. Apart from the narrow cut of water in the ground, the walls and floors of the bed were dry. It smelled of the cold and the damp, though, and he was beginning to wonder what kind of casino, no matter how secret, would go to this trouble to hide itself. He needed to keep his mental compass points straight under here so he’d know, approximately, where the empty river was leading in context of the upper world. He came to the turn, made it, walked another thirty metres west, and then the bed began to curve again. It was impossible to know how many degrees off of due west he was turning, as the slow curve delivered him eventually to another door. But
now he wasn’t sure if the door opened to the east or the north. It was an elaborate entrance.

Why had they made this operation so vulnerable to detection? A taxi driving into a field to disgorge a passenger under the watchful eye of someone in a Mercedes wasn’t exactly black ops. But he’d slipped in under whatever radar they had, and judging from the interlocking hoops a person had to jump through to get here, they knew if you were a legit customer. If you weren’t, there was probably a hole for people just like you. A chill went through him. He was already adapting Hazel’s methods: jump in the water – or the river – and look for a life preserver afterwards, if you needed one. And now it was too late to shake off her influence: he was in. He’d walked about two hundred metres. In deep. As he reached the door, he turned and looked over his shoulder, and saw the riverbed rising behind him. He’d also gone down. How far though, he wasn’t sure.

The door had no handle. He stood in front of it, and after a wait that felt slightly too long to be safe, another metallic unlocking sound came from within, and the door opened. He went through it. Now he was in a manmade construction, a vestibule with a second door and a thick, Plexiglas window covered on the other side by a grey vinyl blind set in the wall to his right, with a tray like a teller’s underneath. He felt heat at last, and a male voice asked him to put any weapons he was carrying in the tray. He’d
get a tag for them, and he could reclaim them when he was leaving.

“Do I buy my chips here?” Wingate asked. They had decided back at the station house that the casino chip spoke authoritatively to what the activity was in here, and it was best, they thought, for him to go in appearing to know what he was doing. The voice behind the Plexiglas told him he could buy at the tables.
Good
, thought Wingate,
one surmise established
. “I don’t have anything you need to take,” he said, and the window slid shut. The second door buzzed open, and he went through.

And then he was in another world, a huge stone room with an imperfectly installed wooden floor and the river, now having found a second wind, meandering through the middle of it in a channel almost a metre wide. There were heating elements, like the kinds you found in the stands at amateur hockey games, hanging down and heating the frowsy space. The stream vanished beneath a particleboard wall that was at the back of the “room.” So it
was
a casino. He was amazed. He’d never seen anything like it.

No one looked up when he walked in to the bright, high-ceilinged room in front of him except for a woman occupying a concierge’s desk just in front of the door, on the other side of a very small, curving tile surface someone had cemented down onto the stonebed. “Hello,” she said, holding her hand out. He shook it. Odd. “So this is your first visit?”

“Yes.”

“Welcome, then. Food and drink is on the house. You can sit down and buy in at any of the tables.”

“Thanks very much,” he said. He handed her a Canadian twenty. She gave him a little, surprised bow.

“Welcome,” said a man, coming toward him and extending his hand. “I’m Ronald Plaskett. I’m the manager.”

“Pete Lupertans,” Wingate said.

“Wonderful. Nice to meet you, Pete. Now, you got your card?”

“Yep.”

“Who tuned you in?”

“I know Feldman from way back.”

“Feldman should be getting a bigger cut, I tell you. So just show that card for chips, for food, for drink. Enjoy yourself. Roulette is tonight at midnight.”

He patted Wingate on the arm and then continued on to talk with the woman at the desk. Mr. Lupertans was going to save some of his more specific queries for the dealers and croupiers.

He walked forward into the cavelike room and he worked against the tide of fear that was beginning to rise in him. He was here now, and anything could happen. He’d not been patted down, as he’d expected to be, but even if he had brought a weapon, there was no saying he wouldn’t be patted down later. Being armed in this position was an open invitation to Murphy’s Law. He had only his wits.

Some of the men here had a day’s worth of stubble. There were tired-looking servers bringing coffee and sandwiches. One of the men – he had a tattoo on his neck of a pair of dice – drank a beer from the bottle. There was only one woman here and she was playing blackjack. She had a large pile of chips in front of her. Her eyes were unnaturally bright.

Now that he’d confirmed what was going on here, the next step was to do what a person like the one he was playing would do. And he guessed Pete Lupertans was here to have a good time and play.

He began to stroll through. There were two blackjack tables, one baccarat table, and one poker table. He now counted eleven men and one woman. There were five men at the poker table. He elected to be around as few people as possible at first, and he joined the woman and another man at a blackjack table. He got his money out. “What’s the buy-in?”

“Whatever you say it is.”

He stole a glance at the chips on the table. People didn’t have too much in front of them, he saw with some relief. Five hundred would look about right. He peeled off bills.

The dealer counted them out smartly. “Five hundred in.”

Plaskett looked over at the baize. “Go, Harry.”

“Green?” said Harry.

Twenty-fives. “Yeah, green.”

Harry pushed over a stack of twenty. “Five hundred out,” he called.

Wingate followed the lead of the other two players, putting out a single chip, and receiving his cards.

He knew enough not to ask for a card if he didn’t need one. He stuck against all threes, fours, fives, and sixes. He won a hand, and then he won another, and the other player won a bunch of hands and then he had seven hundred or so dollars in chips. A waitress came around with a tray. “Drinks or food?”

“I’ll have you,” said the man beside him.

“I’m not for sale, Ed. You want a bourbon, though?”

“Sure,” he said. He nudged Wingate. “She’s not on the menu.”

“I heard that. Can I have a beer?”

“Yep,” said the waitress. “You?” she asked the woman.

“Nothing,” said the woman.

The waitress retreated and Wingate used the opportunity to bond with a fellow drinker. “Pete,” he said, offering his hand in tight quarters.

“Ed,” said the man, shaking. “You gonna play the roulette tonight?”

“Should I?”

“I can’t tell you that, pal. It’s a matter of taste.”

The cards were going around. The roulette was a matter of taste. He let some time pass. Then he asked the man, “They got anything stronger than bourbon here?”

“What are you looking for?”

“You know. Maybe something that’ll keep me going all night.”

“Play the roulette. You won’t be sorry.”

It was just after nine in the evening. If Hazel could still hear him, she’d know that he was down for the roulette. The casino was a front for something else. Plaskett and his associates weren’t against making some scratch with it, but there was another game.

He went up and down for the next two hours, shooting the shit with Ed and drinking a couple of beers. The woman was a good player. She knew how to leverage her bets. But when midnight came, she cashed out with less than she’d had when he sat down.

“Where’s she going?” Wingate asked Ed.

“Not everyone likes the roulette,” he said. People all over the space were standing up. The games were ending. Some people were cashing in their chips, others were colouring them up to larger denominations and putting the chips away in their pockets. Maybe you could pay with the chips.

When the people who were going to play roulette were the only ones left, the back wall of the casino began to shudder as the partitions separated and turned perpendicular to the room. Behind it was a smaller section of the space they had been in. The roof of the riverbed encroached here, making the space more intimate. There was a single roulette table standing in it.

“Gentlemen,” said the hostess, “Midnight roulette. Please step forward and place your bids.”

Back in the Dublin Community Policing Office, Hazel said, “Bids?”

] 23 [

Midnight

His mind was turning over at top speed. Five people had left, including the woman. The remaining seven men were to place their bets, but he saw, as he approached the roulette table, that there were nine spots around the table and four chips in front of each spot. Each pile was a different colour. He had been playing blackjack for quarters, but how much were
these
chips worth?

The men gathered around the baize, and the croupier – a man Wingate had not seen before – started the wheel spinning. The space was closed, but there was another particleboard wall to his left, and there was a door in it. Space was tight in here, and the river in its gulley twisted at their feet before vanishing behind the second wall. As he approached the baize, he saw this was not a normal
roulette layout. There were not thirty-nine squares and a couple for zero and double-zero, there were three identical strips, each numbered one to ten, in vertical columns parallel to each other. The wheel was on the right end of the table, surmounted by two walls of Plexiglas to keep people from touching it. Each man went to a monochromatic stack and waited. Wingate did the same. He was light-headed and worried a vein in his neck was visibly pounding.

“We’ve only got two lots tonight, sorry, gents. Shortage this week. Good luck to you.”

He dropped the ball into the wheel, where it hit with a worried clack and jumped up onto the polished wooden rim above the numbers. The wheel was normal, but the numbers on the baize didn’t match. How was the winner determined? Men were already putting chips out. They were only using the two numbered strips closest to the wheel. For whatever reason, they didn’t think the third strip was a good bet. Wingate mirrored them. They were moving the chips around, too, changing their minds. Wingate picked up one chip and moved it. A man across the table from him looked at him strangely. Finally, one man put a chip down in the third rank, and after he’d broken the ice, a couple of other men did as well.

Then the ball dropped.

“Hands away!” called the croupier, a little more harshly than Wingate thought was strictly necessary. “Six ninety-eight is the winner, the winner is red.”

And the man whose chips had been laid on those numbers, in that order, rasped a little
yes
, and the players retrieved their losing chips.

Plaskett came forward and shook the winner’s hand. “Lucky you,” he said. “Good price, too.” And he led the man away. The man was happy to be led away. Plaskett took him through the door.

The wheel was spinning again. Wingate paid more attention this time. The ball falling into the wheel was the sand running out of an hourglass. The wheel was a timer that timed the bidding activity. And the three ranks formed a number. Had 698 been the highest combination of chips? It had been. The man who went away had bid $698 on something.

“Anyone going higher than seven?” one man asked. He was using the brown chips. Nobody seemed willing to advertise their strategy.

Another man said, “Do it.”

Brown made a bid of 755. There was some approving laughter. The bidder’s friend said, “I’m not going to get in your way!”

The ball was still spinning. Another bid went down, green chips on 780. Applause. Ronald Plaskett looked at the bet and smiled. “Someone’s hungry!”

Who were these men, and what did they need so badly? And what would seven hundred, eight hundred dollars buy? Three ounces of pot? It wasn’t enough for coke, and
it wasn’t heroin. These people weren’t shooting anything. Maybe it was for pills. Hazel had said she’d found Oxys in Henry Wiest’s medicine cabinet, along with the pot. Brown changed his bid to a flat 800.

“Pussy,” he laughed at Green. The ball was clacking into the partitions now. The croupier was getting ready to sweep his hand and end the bidding. Wingate put his three blue chips down: 900. The ball dropped and the croupier waved his hand brusquely over the baize. There was an atmosphere of shock at the table. “Hands away! Nine zero zero is the winner, the winner is blue.”

“Wow,” said Brown. “Nice snipe, buddy. I hope you get your money’s worth.”

Wingate felt strangely numb. He was the winner. Nine hundred dollars. Plaskett appeared at his side.

“Way to go, rookie,” he said. “Let’s go see what’s behind door number one.” He led Wingate to the door at the side of the room. He felt eyes on him. Plaskett opened the door. The riverbed continued beyond it. It was cold again. The grade began to rise, and the ground here was a mix of solid, smooth stone and earth. The walls themselves were earthen now, and here and there a filament of dead root or a furze of mould told him they were getting closer to the fields again.