two parts. It had gone from being a sparsely populated island to a neon metropolis. He had last been there in 1979 for a day. He had arrived on the hydrofoil from Hong Kong to seek his fortune at the tables. Carl left Macau that night for Hong Kong, on the last boat out, with empty pockets. The tables had not been kind.
The last time Carl had been a teenager. Now, over thirty years later, the memories were patchy. He remembered arriving back in Hong Kong and eating a cheeseburger from a fast food outlet. It was all he could afford and a novelty as the factory that made semi-synthetic food hadn’t invaded Thailand at that time. After that Carl went to the famous Bottoms Up bar and found himself unable to finish a whiskey soda. This was something he found curious indeed. Carl returned to the very cheap hotel he was staying at and went straight to bed.
Carl woke up two days later. He was bright yellow and too weak to walk to the bathroom. He remembered rallying all his strength and crawling there to vomit continuously. He somehow found the strength to get back on the bed where he passed out and didn’t come to until another twenty-four hours had passed. Whatever it was, it was very bad. Carl thought he was dying but hoped survival was not out of the question. Staying in the hotel room was not feasible. He was almost out of money and if he stayed any longer the bill would exceed his wallet. Carl decided to die in Thailand instead of Hong Kong.
He had an open return ticket to Bangkok so he called downstairs and asked them to book him a seat for that afternoon. Carl put on sunglasses to hide his yellow eyes, summoned strength from who knows where, and got a taxi to the airport. The only thing he could remember about the airport was dragging his bag across the airport floor because he had been too weak to lift it. The bag had only weighed eight kilos.
The next few weeks were a blur but even in his confused state Carl immediately made a decision to avoid all alcohol and unhealthy food for a year. He moved into a wooden shack surrounded by Bangkok’s poor due to lack of funds and his inability to work. It was not a bad year as he soon got a grasp of slum politics. Carl’s liver recovered and his Thai became fluent. He walked out of the slum community into a new decade. The year was 1980.
He had been totally penniless but that was not a problem. The first task was to survive, always survival first. He came out of his wooden shack fluent in Thai and having developed a better understanding of the intricacies of unseen Thailand. Carl returned to his old haunts, but this time he had something foreigners needed and were willing to pay for.
Carl landed at Macau airport remembering how disastrous his last visit had turned out and hoping better luck would be waiting for him. Maybe the gods of gambling would pat him on the head and say, ‘Good boy Carl, it’s your turn today’. Mere mortals create such dreams and think such thoughts.
He checked into his hotel, took a shower, and then went to the Venetian and took a walk through the poker room. The target was not there. Carl assumed that the best games started in the evening and went on through the night. They typically did. The target was probably sleeping all day and would be back to the tables later. Carl had a few hours to kill.
He left the Venetian and went for a walk in the old town to see if he could find anything familiar. He found the old square and church built by the Portuguese. Beyond that it was unrecognizable. A modern mecca for Chinese gamblers and as almost every Chinese is a gambler, no expense had been spared to lure them through the doors. Carl went back to his room at the Wynn Casino to escape the madness. A period of meditation on the art of poker before the sun went down seemed like a very good idea.
That evening he took up position outside the poker room so he could see his target arrive. Carl didn’t have to wait long. Inman walked quickly, in gavotte steps, his head switching left and right in perfect time as if his neck was wired to his feet. He was tough and wiry in the way that old soldiers are. His skin was dirty brown like old leather and he had the most piercing eyes Carl had ever seen. Like a hawk’s eyes, an old hungry hawk.
The staff and the room manager treated Inman like he owned the place. For the first time Carl felt totally alien, a complete outsider and a long way from home. He thought about leaving, getting his bag and going to the airport. Nothing was stopping him. His client was dead and he had enough money to disappear for a while. Take a holiday and forget he had ever heard of these people. Without doubt the most sensible course of action. Carl had always understood other people’s madness better than his own. If someone in a similar situation sought his advice Carl would have provided ten excellent reasons to walk away. Carl however, of course, walked into the poker room and proceeded to act like a tourist.
Carl had dressed for the part. Black soft leather Aldo Brue shoes without socks, black Gucci jeans, black Zegna shirt, and a black cashmere blazer from a tailor in Milan. He looked like a tourist planning a big night out on the town. A tourist with pockets full of money was exactly how he wanted to be perceived. The modern poker players typically wear nylon and spandex topped off with a baseball cap so it is not hard to make an impression in a poker room.
Carl went over to the board and looked at the various games that were available. Inman had been directed to the table that required a player to buy a minimum of HK$50,000 worth of chips before sitting down. Fortunately the table still had empty seats available.
Carl asked the room manager about the games and intentionally showed no interest in the low stakes seats that were available. When the room manager said there was a seat free at a larger stakes table Carl told him that would suit him just fine. The room manager had a sad-faced pockmarked boy take him to the table and seat him. ‘The game’s afoot,’ Carl thought. He liked the words and as Conan Doyle had stolen them from Shakespeare Carl didn’t mind stealing them from Doyle’s creation, Sherlock Holmes.
“Good evening,” Carl said to the six players at the table, expecting formality to cement his appearance as a tourist with money to throw away.
Five players ignored him but Inman answered.
“Welcome to the game. Is this your first time here?”
“Oh yes!” Carl told him. “I’ve always wanted to play live poker.”
“Ah, so where do you play?”
Carl needed to set up the table if he was going to get an edge over them.
“Online. I play online. Sure, I know it’s fixed, silly to play really. Does anybody actually win there?” Carl said in the fashion of the majority of disgruntled losers.
“You’re right. It must be fixed. Here is much safer,” Inman told him patronizingly. He bought Carl’s whining act and looked pleased.
Cards were dealt and hands were won and lost. The other players were all Asian. There was a Japanese, a Thai and three Chinese who had their own conversation going and ignored everybody else. The Thai player was talking to Inman and it was obvious they knew each other well. Carl noted that Inman’s Thai was pretty good, rigid and unnatural like most foreigners but his vocabulary was extensive.
They had both assumed that nobody at the table understood them so were openly discussing a land deal, Thai style. The Thai player’s face looked familiar but Carl couldn’t match the face to a name. He had a vague memory that he was somewhere on the fringe of politics, a deal maker and power broker. They were discussing how they could best steal 1,000 rai of land from the forestry department, bribe the land department to issue ownership documents, and then put it on the market for a small fortune. Inman started watching Carl with his peripheral vision and Carl realized that he was sensing that he was listening in.
He turned and stared Carl down with his hawk like eyes and asked him, “Have you ever been to Thailand?”
“I passed through a few times.”
“Thought you might have,” he said as he stared Carl down. He was very interested in him all of a sudden.
Inman and Carl were eyeing each other like two warriors across a battlefield who had lost all interest in the carnage separating them. Carl had hands, he raised and Inman folded. When he made a move Carl got out of his way.
An uneventful hour passed. Then Carl looked at his two cards and saw a pair of nines. Inman raised the bet to two thousand and Carl called with the intention of getting out quick if the flop didn’t bring another nine. The young Chinese man on Carl’s left called so there were three players in the pot. The flop came 9-4-4 and Inman bet seven thousand. Carl only called his bet to trap him and then the young Chinese man pushed all his chips into the middle of the table. Inman pondered his cards and then reluctantly folded. Carl called the bet immediately with his monster of a full house. The player to his left turned up a King and a 4, both diamonds. Carl’s full house was only vulnerable to another 4 coming, which would give the Chinese player four of a kind. The turn card was a blank and the river card was also not a 4. Carl had increased his stack of chips to around HK$110,000.
