Aces and Knaves

Chapter 32 LOSER

I arrived at James's place in my rental car just before seven. Arrow pulled into the driveway ahead of me. We walked up the steps together. I had decided not to tell Arrow about Flora Sung because doing that would be tantamount to telling my father and the whole world.

I was feeling better about Arrow being there. I said to her, "Are you going to solve the puzzle tonight or am I going to have to do it?"

She said, "The Arrow approach is to bull your way in."

"Like Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian knot."

Stan answered our ring and I wondered whether he would let us in at all. He did, without even giving us the puzzle. Either Arrow had set a precedent or you didn't need to solve the puzzle when you were in the middle of a bet.

Stan met us at the bottom of the stairs. He gave Arrow a hug and shook my hand. I didn't detect any animosity toward me, but that didn't mean it wasn't there.

He did say to me, "I understand you're going to come to work for us."

"If he loses," Arrow said. "But he's not going to lose."

Stan laughed and said, "If we had voted for the most determined student in grad school you would have won. But I'm afraid you can't substitute determination for luck."

But my luck, or rather my skill, was working and I increased my stake to $3,000 in a relatively short time. Only $1,000 to go. At that point Arrow made me take a break, even though I was hot.

"I don't know what you mean by hot," Arrow said after we sat down. "I took statistics in grad school and I know that each trial is independent of all others. Each throw of the dice, each deal of the cards, has no relationship to what happened on the previous throw or deal. So there's no such thing as hot."

I grinned sheepishly and said, "I guess you really did learn something at Stanford."

"One thing I know that I didn't learn in school is that the longer you play the harder it will be for you to maintain concentration. Therefore, I suggest the following: Bet small until the odds swing in your favor. Then bet a thousand or whatever you need to win."

"In other words, all or nothing."

"Not quite. If you lose you'll still be ahead of your original stake."

The more we discussed this the better it sounded. I went back to the table determined to try to win quickly while Arrow kept an exact count of my chips. The opportunity came three deals later. Toward the end of the deck the odds swung radically in my favor.

I nudged Arrow. We did a quick calculation and pulled out the chips I needed to reach $4,000. If the dealer was surprised at my bet he didn't show it. He dealt two cards each to the other two players, to me and to himself. His up-card was a six.

This was the best of all possible worlds. I cautiously looked at my cards. A king and a jack. I mentally counted my money. The other players didn't take any hits and neither did I. The dealer flipped over his down card. It was a five. He dealt himself a jack. Twenty-one. I had lost.

"Are you ready for your comeback?" Arrow asked.

She had made me stop playing for a full half-hour to regain my composure. She had taken the loss much more lightly than I had, but of course she had a lot less to lose. I still had about $2,000, double my original stake, so I could have been in worse shape.

"What do you think about me betting the whole thing at the next good opportunity?" I asked.

"That would really be win or lose. No, I can't let you do that. Based on the rules of capital preservation, which you, yourself, taught me, I think your maximum bet for the moment should be $100, until you build up your capital again. Don't worry; I'll stick with you as long as it takes."

I agreed to this strategy, went back to the table and immediately started losing. I knew there was no such thing as hot or cold, but if there had been I was an iceberg. Soon I had less than my original thousand. We took another break.

"There's nothing wrong with your strategy," Arrow said. "You're playing the same game you were before. All I can think of is one of your own quotes: If you play games of chance long enough you'll see every combination that is statistically possible."

"It's very comforting that my own wisdom explains why I'm dying," I said. "Well, we might as well get it over with."

It didn't take long. I lost my last dollar as someone sang about that old Bilbao moon. Bilbao, Spain. I wished I were there instead of here. Arrow patted me on the back like a mother patting a child. She didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.

The dealer must have pushed a button or something because James immediately appeared out of nowhere. He shook my hand and said, "I'm told you played very well. The fates just weren't with you tonight. Let's the three of us sit down for a minute. I want to ask you a question."

I was too stunned to do anything but obey. We talked about the gods of chance until our drinks appeared, including a margarita for Arrow who had decided it was time to fall off the wagon.

"I have a question for you," I told James. "What is it that you're always drinking? If I'm going to work for you I have to know things like that."

"Of course you do," he said, smiling. "It's water."

"Perrier, or some other designer brand?"

James shook his head. "I reserve the Perrier for my guests. I drink tap water. I learned in school that water is water, H2O, and there's not much you can do to it, and since the city of San Francisco assures me that the tap water has no dangerous levels of carcinogens in it, why not? I drank it in Scotland and I can drink it here."

If I was going to go to work for James I needed to make arrangements with him. I was about to mention that when he started talking again.

"What I want to know," he said, "is what question you wanted to ask me that was so important that you were willing to risk having to work for me for a year to ask it. Although working for me is not going to be as bad as you seem to think."

"It doesn't matter now," I said. I was formulating a vague plan about infiltrating James' organization from the inside and solving the murder.

"Ask me the question, Karl. Who knows, I might even answer it."

Why not? What could he do, fire me? Or have me killed sooner than he would, otherwise? Actually, asking the question with Arrow there was a relatively safe thing to do. I cleared my throat and said, "What I want to know is…the question is, did you have anything at all to do with the murder of Ned?"

I watched James' face closely. He looked flabbergasted at first. Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face and he started to chuckle. Finally, he turned sober and said, "I'm glad we got this out in the open. What kind of an animal do you think I am? Okay, it's true that I prey on people, on their dreams and hopes and fears. On their abiding faith that they can beat the odds. But I don't kill them. That wouldn't be sporting."

He sounded so sincere that he had me convinced, at least for the moment.

Arrow said, "Karl isn't the only one who has considered that possibility. I have, too. Can you prove you didn't kill Ned?"

James became irritated. "Do you mean, do I have an alibi? As Karl can tell you, I was here with him around the time it happened. But that doesn't mean I couldn't have ordered it done. If I had I probably wouldn't have told people that the drugs found in Ned's car looked like a setup. Why would I help to refute my own misleading evidence?

"But more than that, I had no reason to kill Ned. As you two know, we grew up together, worked together, played together, even shared Elma." He smiled. "I might have had a better motive to kill him then than I do now. It's true that Ned and I were talking about Dionysus. We had our differences and might not have reached an agreement. But that's business.

"If I killed people because of business disagreements I'd be the leading serial killer of all time. Besides, Ned started acting a little crazy before he died and I wasn't sure I even wanted to do business with him."

"So you won't have me killed if I don't deliver Elma's proxy," I said.

James smiled again and said, "No. But I might ask you to work for me for an additional year. I suspect that you and I can make a lot more money together than that baseball card is worth. You have good instincts and you're not afraid to take chances. All I have to do is train you to take chances when the odds are in your favor."

"I completely screwed everything up." I didn't say this directly to Arrow, although she was the only person within earshot. It was a general statement to the universe. We were standing next to Arrow's rental car, after having left the casino.

"Talk to your father, Karl. Tell him that you didn't try to get Elma to change her proxy. You didn't undermine him. He'll respect that."

"Even if he believes me, how can I explain why I'm working for James when I won't work for him?"

"Lots of kids don't want to work for their fathers. You haven't done anything to hurt Dionysus, that's the main thing. In fact, you have been trying to solve Ned's murder. And you and I gathered the evidence that swung Elma's proxy over to Richard."

My behavior had been Jekyll-and-Hyde toward my father, toward Dionysus. I wasn't proud of it. In addition, I had ethical questions about working for James, even though I knew I would learn a lot. I needed time alone. My head was a swirling mass of confusion.

I said goodnight to Arrow. She patted me on the shoulder again. She had become my mother. After she drove away I checked my rental car to make sure it wasn't blocking anybody. I didn't feel like driving; I needed to walk.

The route to my hotel went steeply uphill at first. That was good. It would get my heart pumping, help me exhale the poisons from my body. Soon I was panting in fine style.

My mind went back to what James had said. Could I believe him? If he wasn't Ned's murderer, who was? Maybe I could find out more by working for him. If there was anything to find out. But it would give me a purpose in working for James.

I went over the top of the hill and down the other side. After a while the road became less steep. A car drove slowly past me and stopped some distance ahead, in a driveway, since the legal parking places were filled. The driver got out and came up on the sidewalk. He stood there in the dark. I would have to walk past him.

I thought about Ned. Was this man a mugger? No, Ned was killed by the gangbangers. Still, mugging was always a possibility. Did muggers drive late-model German cars? Only if they had stolen them.

I had to make a decision about turning around or crossing the street. Then I recognized Stan. Or thought I did. He moved and a ray from a streetlight shone on his face. It was definitely Stan.

As I approached he said, "Why are you walking? Let me give you a ride."

"Did you follow me?" I asked.

"I saw your car at the house after you left. I figured maybe you had car trouble and decided to walk rather than bother us. I knew your approximate route because I drove you back to your hotel before. So I took a chance. At first I didn't recognize you because the parked cars blocked my view. Then I got a good look at you in the rear-view mirror."

"I'm walking on purpose," I said. "There's nothing wrong with my car."

"But how will you get your car?"

"I'll pick it up in the morning."

"Well, I've come this far so let me take you to your hotel. It's dangerous to walk this late at night."

He had a point. Suddenly, I felt very tired. I got in the car when he opened the door. As he started it I said, "Nice car. Is it yours?"

"Of course. Whose did you think it was?"

"When you drove me back to the hotel before, I guess I somehow assumed it belonged to James."

"Why should I drive his car when I can afford my own? With Tartan stock doing so well I've made a ton of money on my options. You will too. Didn't James talk to you about stock options?"

"He mentioned them." It hadn't occurred to me that working for James might actually make me rich. Or that all the young men who worked for him were rolling in money. But it made sense. I looked at Stan with new eyes. "Why are you living in his house, then?"

"It's a nice place to live. Better than an apartment. Cheaper, too, since I don't pay rent. But I could afford to pay rent if I wanted. Or even buy a house."

Stupid question. My suspicions about Stan and James must be correct.

"Did James invite you to the team-building exercise over the weekend?" Stan asked.

"He mentioned it and said I was invited. I'm going to talk to him tomorrow to get more details about my job, but perhaps you can tell me what that's all about. Team-building. It sounds like spring football practice."

"It's definitely along the same lines. James believes in teamwork. We all have to trust each other, work together, fit together like cogs so that the company runs like a well-oiled machine. That sort of thing. We climb cliffs and belay each other with ropes. Stuff like that. You're an outdoor person, anyway, so you'll enjoy it."