I immediately experienced the familiar excitement of being in the presence of gambling. The urge to feel the cards or dice in my hands, the certainty that this was my lucky night-it all came back in a flash. I mentally reviewed the contents of my wallet-about 60 dollars-and wondered how one got started since Ned had said no money changed hands.
In the next instant I told myself harshly that I was here to do a job and nothing else would get in the way. Then I reached the bottom of the stairs.
'My name is Stan,' the young man said, sticking out his hand.
I shook hands with him, wondering how many hands I had shaken since morning. I almost said my own name, remembered I wasn't myself, hesitated, and ended up mumbling, 'Pleased to meet you.'
'Mr. Buchanan would like to speak with you,' Stan said, leading the way to a door underneath the stairs.
I had a moment of panic as I realized that Mr. Buchanan would know I wasn't Ned Mackay, but I should have thought of that before. Stan opened the door and motioned me in ahead of him.
The small room I entered had a sloping ceiling over part of it, caused by the stairway it was under. It was dimly lit and a number of television monitors were being watched by young men who were clones of Stan in dress and appearance. None of them appeared to be older than
30.
I glanced at several of the monitors and realized I had been correct in assuming that I was being watched. They were all connected to surveillance cameras, not only outside the house, but looking down on the tables in the casino room, also. The latter monitors were undoubtedly to catch cheaters.
Stan closed the door and walked past me to a man who sat on a high stool behind the men in front of the monitors. From his vantage point he could see all the monitors. He was older, with gray hair, but it was still cut short. He was the most casually dressed person in the room, wearing a loud sport shirt and a pair of pants that appeared in the dim light to be some shade of yellow.
'Here he is, Mr. Buchanan.' Stan said to the man.
Mr. Buchanan rotated the seat of his stool toward me and looked me up and down as he transferred a glass from which he had been drinking through a straw from his right hand to his left. Then he stepped down off the stool and said, 'Hi, I'm James Buchanan.'
He was considerably shorter than I. His hand was cold from the glass as I shook it. I had another moment of panic, but I couldn't lie any more. 'Karl Patterson.'
'Well, Karl Patterson,' he said with a smile, 'I'm glad to know your real name.'
I felt I owed him an explanation. 'Ned is planning to be here tonight,' I said. 'He told me to wait outside, but he's late and I figured…'
'You figured you might as well come inside. And you suspected you wouldn't get in if you used your real name. Well, at least you passed the test.'
'The test?'
'The ship and the boiler. A favorite of mine, not because it's terribly complex, but because you have to straighten out the confusing verbiage before you can solve it.'
'You mean you wouldn't have let me in if I hadn't gotten the right answer?'
'That's correct.' Mr. Buchanan smiled at the look on my face. 'I can anticipate your next question. Did everybody who is here tonight solve it? With couples, we only ask one of them to come up with the answer. We do discourage groups of more than four riding in on one person's answer, however. We want to keep the intellectual level elevated as much as possible.'
Was he serious? 'May I ask you a question, Mr. Buchanan?'
'Only if you call me James.'
'Since you obviously knew from the beginning that I wasn't Ned, why did you let me in?'
'Because I like a good puzzle, and I wondered who you really were.' However, he didn't ask me any more questions. Instead, he said, 'Would you like a tour to pass the time until Ned gets here?'
'Sure.' My job was to gather information.
'You've already seen our monitors. Let's go into the main room.'
James opened the door and preceded me into the much more brightly lit casino room. Track lighting shone down from what I was now sure was a false ceiling and kept all the tables illuminated. Some of his young men were acting as croupiers and one was dealing blackjack, from only one deck, I noticed, approvingly. Others served drinks to the patrons.
James called a server and asked me what I wanted to drink. I said iced tea. When he came back with it a couple of minutes later I started to pull out my wallet, but James stopped me by putting up his hand. Without being asked, the waiter had also brought James another iced drink in a tall glass with a straw. It contained a clear liquid.
We strolled from table to table. He didn't give a boring explanation of the obvious, but instead let me watch each game for a bit. I saw a blackjack player take a hit when he should have stood and the itch inside told me I could do better. I saw a woman roll three consecutive sevens at the craps table and I wished my money was riding on her.
As we passed through the room James said hello to many of the people and joked with others. At a table where two men were engaged in a game of chess he said to one who appeared to have the worst of it, 'Tom, you'd better lay off the booze. Your brain cells aren't operational tonight.'
He put his hand on the shoulder of one distinguished-looking gentleman who was playing craps with a beautiful but inadequately-covered woman beside him and said, 'Jed, when Sally rolls the dice don't let her bend over too far or we'll have to put her assets back into her dress. I'd better tell one of my assistants to get a warm spoon ready.'
When I had a chance I asked, 'Why don't you have slot machines?'
James led me to one side of the room and said, 'First, there is no skill in playing the slots. They're all luck. I only like games and puzzles with at least an element of skill. All the games played here fit into that category. Second, as you may have noticed, we don't use money here.'
I didn't want to sound as if I were from Buttonwillow, but I didn't know how else to phrase the question. 'Are you telling me all those chips don't represent money?'
James smiled an engaging smile and said, 'When you've acquired a certain amount of wealth you can do pretty much what you like. What I like is games and puzzles. Why shouldn't I be able to set my basement up as a casino and invite my friends over, if I want to? What game would you like to try?'
My skepticism at his answer boiled over, but I didn't know what else to say. For one thing, the players were concentrating awfully hard for nothing being at stake. In any case, why not try a game? With no chance of losing money I couldn't get into trouble. A little blackjack, perhaps? No, I really needed to ask James some questions about Ned. We were standing beside a table with a backgammon board on it. I said, 'Do you play backgammon?'
'I play a bit of everything. Would you like to have a go?'
We sat down and arranged our fifteen checker-like pieces on the designated points. As we each rolled one die to determine who would start I asked in what I hoped was a casual manner, 'Does Ned come here often?'
'Whenever he's in San Francisco. Ned's an old friend of mine. We go way back.'
I rolled a six; James rolled a one. Using these rolls for my first play, I made my bar-point, or seven-point; that is, I moved two pieces to it, creating a block.
'What games does he like to play?'
James rolled a 3-1 and made his five point.
'Oh, he likes to shoot craps or play blackjack. Sometimes he plays poker.'
I rolled a 4-3 and moved two pieces to my side of the board from his twelve-point.
'Would you say he is a compulsive gambler?'
James rolled a 6-3 and moved a piece from my one-point, hitting one of my piecess and sending it to the
