“He was addicted.”
“Of course,” Ava said softly.
Maggie Chew sensed doubt in the reply. “No, really, he was. He became completely irrational.”
“Then what was all this nonsense with Costa Rica?” Ava asked.
“The Costa Rica thing is, I think, part of a bigger puzzle. Ava, would you believe me if I told you that my father was cheated?”
In her own life Ava had heard more than enough of the lies and rationalizations that helped the Chinese gambler sleep at night. “I would like to,” she said.
“I think he was.”
Ava sat quietly. The lump in her chest stopped throbbing. Money that was gotten illegally is money that needs to find its way home, she thought. “I’ll need more than your opinion.”
Maggie stroked her right cheek. “We’ll have to go to my condo in Yaletown. There’s a guy named Jack Maynard you need to talk to. He can explain what went down, or at least what he thinks went down. If you believe him, you can come back to West Van with me and I’ll let you sit with my father.”
“Why would you do this?” Ava said slowly.
“If the money was stolen, then you can get it back, right?”
“And what makes you think I can do that?”
“Louis Marx — he heard them talking about you. He said that’s what you do. He said you’re the best.”
Ava nodded and thought, One phone call.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go to Yaletown.”
(15)
Yaletown was on the opposite side of downtown Vancouver from Ava’s hotel. Once an industrial area, its proximity to False Creek had been a lure for developers in the late 1980s. The rows of brick warehouses had been converted into trendy offices and loft apartments that sat on top of restaurants, art galleries, bars, and boutiques.
“The parking spot costs me five hundred dollars a month,” Maggie said as she pulled her car into the underground garage off Mainland Street. “I have classmates who spend less than that on accommodation.”
They took the elevator to the top floor of the four-storey building. As Ava entered Maggie’s open-concept loft she was struck by the living area’s sixteen-foot ceilings and ten-foot wall-to-wall windows that flooded the space with light. The kitchen counters were empty, the walls were bare, and the only furniture in the living room was a beige leather couch and matching chair and a glass coffee table.
“We’ll call Jack from my study,” Maggie said, motioning Ava to follow her.
Ava walked into the room and was visually assaulted by piles of books and paper strewn everywhere. Pictures of Maggie’s family covered every wall and framed the flat-screen television. Empty mugs and glasses lined the windowsill next to the desk, which held a large Mac. Ava stood by as Maggie leafed through some papers spread over a loveseat. “Sorry for the mess. I kind of live in here,” she said. She held up a sheet of pink paper. “Here we are.”
“Just a second,” Ava said. “Before you call, why don’t you tell me a little about Jack Maynard.”
“Sure. Do you want to sit down?”
Ava sat on the loveseat. Maggie took the office chair and rolled it closer. “He’s a young guy, late twenties maybe, and he’s a professional poker player. Believe it or not, he graduated from MIT with a master’s in math. He started playing, strictly online, while he was in university, and he discovered he was very good at it. He’s well known in the professional gambling world. A couple of the poker magazines rate him among the top twenty online players in the world.”
“How much did he tell you he lost?”
“Just under six million, and there were two other regulars who lost in the three- to four-million-dollar range.”
“Not as severely damaged as your father.”
“They’re professionals, not addicts. They knew when to stop.”
Ava nodded sympathetically. “I remember when my mother made my sister and I sit in the car in a casino parking lot for five hours while she lost her monthly household allowance playing baccarat. My sister asked her why she did it, and she said that she just couldn’t help herself.”
“My father took my mother and me to Vegas once, dropped us off in a room, and then disappeared for four days. She said he almost lost the house.”
“If this Jack Maynard is so good, how did he lose all that money?”
“That’s exactly what he’s going to explain to you.”
“One other thing before you call him,” Ava said. “I know next to nothing about Texas hold’em poker.”
“You understand something about poker, though?”
“Just the basics. I mean, I know how the hands are ranked.”
“We’ll look online,” Maggie said.
She turned on the computer and clicked an icon that looked like a waterfall. “This is The River, the gambling site that my father and the others played on.” She signed in and opened up a page that listed table after table of hold’em poker options. She hit one that read $10/$20. “We don’t have to gamble at a table to be able to watch it. Jack told me that when my father and the others were playing, there would be several hundred onlookers. Morbid fascination, I guess.”
There were six people at the table, each with an avatar. “People don’t use their real names?” Ava asked.
“No. Jack played under the name Brrrrr, and my father was Chinaclipper.”
“Then how did they get to know each other’s real identity?”
“Maynard was so famous that everyone knew who was behind Brrrrr. My father was just an anonymous player until he and Maynard and some of the others began to share personal information on the chat line. Over six months they got to know each other quite well.”
As Maggie was speaking, Ava watched the play of cards and quickly began to understand the basics. Each player got two cards, face down. Five cards were then turned face up in the centre — first three, and then one and one. Players bet after they had received their first two cards, then after the first three cards were turned over, and then again after each of the single cards was exposed — four betting rounds in all. Players could use any of the seven cards to make a five-card hand.
The table she was watching was no-limit hold’em. That meant that players could bet every dollar they had in front of them at any given time. She was amazed by how quickly some of the pots grew. At the $10-$20 table they were watching, two pots were raised to more than a thousand dollars each. She began to grasp the multiples that must be involved at tables with antes of $1,000 and $2,000.
“Let’s call Maynard,” Ava said.
Maggie punched in the number and turned on the speaker. “Maynard lives in Virginia,” she said.
“Hello? Is that you, Maggie?”
“I’m here, Jack. I have you on speaker phone. I’m with that woman I mentioned to you this morning. Her name is Ava Lee.”
“Ms. Lee,” he said.
“Call me Ava.”
“Maggie tells me you’re some kind of special accountant.”
“I guess you could call me that.”
“She says you recover money for people.”
“Sometimes I can, but not always.”
“Just how do you that? Get it back, I mean.”
“Persuasion,” she said.
He laughed, more disbelieving than amused.
