“That was exciting,” Carl said.
“You too lucky. Shit lucky,” the young Chinese man said.
“The winners make jokes and the losers say shut up and deal,” Inman chirped, happy that he had folded his cards.
Carl thought of leaving with his winnings but he was there for a reason and all he had done so far was get lucky.
“I am just a student of the game and as a mere student I often find the game bloody murder,” Carl said to the table but looking at Inman. “Do you find the game to be bloody murder?”
Inman looked at Carl curiously but did not answer. He continued to watch Carl as the game continued. Another hour passed with several dramatic hands but none involving Carl who had decided to play very tight and hold on to his money.
Then he looked down and saw a 7–8 of clubs, not much of a hand but he was the big blind so last to act before the flop. Inman raised his usual amount of two thousand and Carl was the only caller. The flop was spread in the centre of the green baize. It was a 5 of clubs, 6 of clubs, and a Jack of diamonds. Carl bet six thousand and Inman raised the bet to twenty thousand.
Carl had a monster draw. He assumed Inman had a hand like Ace-Jack, which ruled out the possibility of him having a larger flush draw than Carl. So, that meant that any 4, any 9, or any club should win it for Carl. The 4 or 9 of clubs would give him a straight flush but that seemed like overkill. There were probably fifteen cards in the remainder of the deck that would win Carl the pot. With two cards still to come that made him a sixty per cent favourite to win the hand. That, plus what was already in the pot made it a good bet, a good raise to be more precise. However, Carl still had HK$100,000 in front of him and did not want to lose it all on one hand. Carl, unlike Inman, had limited funds to play with, so he just called the bet.
The turn card was a 4 of hearts giving Carl the highest straight possible. He wanted all of his chips in the middle now! Carl decided to be patient and therefore he checked to Inman. Who, without hesitation, bet HK$36,000 and Carl happily pushed all of his chips out in front of him.
“All in,” Carl said as calmly as possible.
Inman immediately called his bet making the total in the pot HK$217,000. The huge pot that Carl had already assumed was his already.
Carl showed his hand and Inman turned over a Jack-Jack giving him three Jacks. This was not what Carl had wanted to see. There was another card to come and if that card paired anything on the table Inman would make a full house. There were lots of hands that would have had Inman drawing dead but unfortunately this was not one of them.
There were nine cards that would win him the hand, not ten as the 4 of clubs would have made his full house but given Carl a straight flush. Carl would win four out of every five times in this position. The problem was Carl couldn’t afford to lose and continue to play. If he got unlucky and lost a pot of HK$217,000 which is about one million Thai baht, he would have had to leave the game. The altitude was going to put Carl at a disadvantage if he tried to continue with scared money. The air was thin and he was already getting dizzy.
The dealer seemed to take forever to turn up the final card. He looked around the table to make sure everything was in order. It was the biggest pot of the night and he had to make sure he was not at risk of being berated by the loser. He pulled the top card and burnt it, which is what they call throwing it into the muck with the other discarded cards. A tradition going back to the Wild West where cheats often used marked cards. By throwing away the top card the dealer negated the advantage of a player knowing what it was. He then swiped the second card, let it hover for a while and then flipped it face up on the table for all to see. It was the Queen of hearts, which was a safe card for Carl. He had won the pot.
Carl had his head down, arms outstretched, pulling the enormous pile of chips towards him. The table was quiet, unusually silent. Carl looked up and saw him. Inman’s face was white, his lips had become thinner, and his eyes shocked Carl. He had read books that had described a person as having hatred in their eyes. Carl had seen anger before but not such absolute hatred, nothing like this. The ice-cold eyes were projecting total rage. They were the eyes of a devil.
“You got very lucky Carl,” he snarled.
What a voice, like something from somewhere else. The voice didn’t fit the situation. And, fuck. He knew Carl’s real name.
“But that is the last bit of luck you will ever have,” he continued.
Carl kept stacking his chips.
“You will need that money Carl. You will need it to run. Thailand is that way and you want to be going the other way.” He jerked his bony finger up and pointed west. “Try to run very fast and very far away. Life, as you know it is over. Amateurs don’t last long in my jungle.” He stared across the baize card table waiting for a reaction. He didn’t get one. Carl was patiently stacking chips.
“You are beginning to bore me now. I do hope you are leaving,” he said to Carl in a fake upper class British accent.
Then his face returned to normal. He dismissed Carl with his eyes and was done with him. The other people at the table hadn’t understood the depth or the meaning of what he had said. They must have put it down to a temper tantrum resulting from hitting a dream hand of three Jacks and still losing over HK$100,000. Which was sort of what had happened.
The game resumed. He ignored Carl completely. Carl finished putting his chips in plastic racks and carried them to the cashier’s window. He glanced back at the table and caught Inman looking at a nasty-looking Chinese male sitting at the bar. He was wearing a safari suit, had short cropped hair, a very square build, and a general look of mid-rank officialdom. Immediately after Inman had looked at him, he had looked directly at Carl. Carl converted his chips to cash and left the casino.
He directed the taxi to take him back to the street where his hotel was. Carl got out a hundred meters before the hotel and walked on the opposite side of the road to a restaurant directly across from the entrance. He was nervous and the hairs on the back of his neck were dancing the tango. Carl didn’t have long to wait. Within a few minutes a car pulled up outside the hotel and parked illegally. Two men in safari suits got out and walked into the hotel. They were cops. Carl knew what cops looked like.
He expected them to have taken up position inside the lobby waiting for him to walk in. They would be certain he would show up eventually as he had not checked out and his luggage was still in the room. Fortunately his passport was in his jacket jockeying for space with the stacks of cash he had spread between all of his pockets.
In such a situation Carl found it was always essential to establish what adversaries were expecting him to do and then do the total opposite. Carl could live without his luggage so he pulled up the collar of his jacket, left the restaurant and walked, face down, up the street away from the hotel. He would head straight to the sea terminal and pay cash for a ticket on the first boat to Hong Kong. The same boat he had left Macau on all those years before.
Chapter 12
Carl landed in Bangkok late Sunday morning on a Thai Airways flight from Hong Kong.After queuing for the standard visa formalities and an unchecked walk through customs green channel he took a limousine from the airport to the city. The car’s radio was playing North East Thailand’s version of country music. Limousine drivers, just like the taxis, played their music whether they had a passenger or not. The traffic was unusually light and the sun was shining. Carl felt good to be back in Bangkok.
Carl was contemplating spending the next couple of days by the pool when the phone rang. The screen said ‘George’ so he answered the phone immediately.
“You picked up a tail at the airport,” he told Carl.
“What kind of tail?” Carl felt a cold wave go up his spine. This wasn’t the first time he had been followed but Carl had a premonition that this time was different.
“Looks like police to me,” George said clinically.
