"Beijing Craps" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

Beijing Craps
by Graham Masterton


Like all professional gamblers, whose days are measured only in throws, and rolls, and hands, and spins, it had never seriously occurred to Jack Druce that he would ever have to face death. But that Friday morning at the Golden Lode Casino, at the exact instant when the second-hand swept silently past 1 a.m., he shivered, and lifted his head, and frowned, as if he had been momentarily touched by the chilly breath of impending extinction.

Alert to the slightest tremor in mood at the craps table, the croupier noticed his hesitation, and said, 'Intending to shoot, sir-r-r?' His 'r's' rolled as hard as dice.

Solly Bartholomew noticed Jack's hesitation, too, but didn't lift his eyes from the layout.

Jack nodded, and scooped up the dice, but didn't speak.

He had already stacked up eleven thousand dollars' worth of chips in three hours' play. But for no reason at all he suddenly felt as if the layout had gone cold, the same way that (seven years ago) his wife Elaine had grown cold, lying in his arms, asleep first of all, breathing, then not breathing, then dead.

Jack guessed that he and Solly could make two or three thousand more. Solly was the only other professional at the table; a neat man who looked like a smalltown realtor, but who threw the dice with all the tight assurance of a practised arm. Cautiously, showing no outward signs that they knew each other, or that they were working together, he and Jack were carving up the amateurs between them.

There was money around, too. Not yacht money, for sure, but lunch money. They had just been joined by a tall horse-faced over-excited man from Indianapolis in a powder-blue polyester suit who was placing his chips on all the hardways bets, and a redhead with her roots showing and a deep withered cleavage who yelped like a chihuahua every time Jack threw a pass. Divorcee, Jack calculated, splashing out with her settlement. She wouldn't stop playing until every last cent of it was totally blown. It was a form of revenge. Jack knew all about women's revenge. Elaine had stopped breathing while he was holding her in his arms, and what revenge could any woman have exacted on any man that was more terrible than that?

Jack blew softly on the ivories, shook them twice, and sent them tumbling off across the soft green felt. 'Nine,' commented the croupier, and pushed Jack another stack of fifty-dollar chips.

'I'm out,' said Jack, and began gathering his winnings in both hands.

Solly hesitated for a moment; then said, 'Me too.'

'Aw shit,' said the tall horse-faced man.

The croupier's eyes flicked sideways toward the pit boss. Jack said, 'Something wrong, my friend?' He had spent thirty years of his life dealing with men who communicated whole libraries with the quiver of an eyelid.

'Pit boss'd like a word, sir. And-' turning toward Solly, '- you, too, sir. That's if you don't mind.'

'I have a plane to catch,' Solly complained. Solly always had a plane to catch.

'It's ten after one in the morning,' the croupier told him.

'Well I have to catch some sleep before I catch my plane.'

'This won't take long, sir, believe me.'

Jack and Solly waited with their hands full of chips while the small neat pit boss approached him. White tuxedo, ruffled pink shirt, smooth Sienese face, eyes like slanted black olives, black hair parted dead-center. The pit boss held out one of his tiny hands, as if to guide them away from the table by the elbow, but he didn't actually touch them. Players were not to be physically touched. It was bad karma.

'Mr Newman presents his compliments, sir.'

'Oh does he?' asked Jack, sniffing and blinking behind his heavy-rimmed eyeglasses. Beside him, he heard the redhead yelping again.

The pit boss smiled, and went along with the pretense. 'Well, sir, Mr Newman is the joint owner of the Golden Lode, sir. And he would like to see you.'

Jack held up his chips. 'Listen, my friend, I have my winnings here.'

Solly said, 'Me too.'