Everyone was betting safely on black or red or multiple rows but that was no good to us. A bet on a colour would only double our money, whereas a bet on a single number would give us a pay-out of 35–1. And 35 x 47 would give us €1,645, and 1,645 is a handsome number. So I was feeling confident as we took our seats at the wheel.
We watched for a while, and Alberto realised he could predict the outcome only after the wheel was turning, whereas I was able to see the winning number two, three or even four turns ahead. So it was down to me. To considerable bemusement, I placed the chips down – all of them – on the number I saw, which was thirty-three.
‘It’s my birthday!’ Marta told the small crowd, in Spanish, excitedly celebrating her made-up birthday as she hugged me. ‘Tengo thirty-three años.’
‘That’s right,’ I added. ‘And she is my lucky friend! So thirty-three it is!’
And the wheel was turned, and the ball began to spin and I wasn’t even nervous. I knew a minute into the future as well as I knew a minute into the past.
So that is what happened. The ball landed on thirty-three. Good old stubborn thirty-three.
We had another go, but I knew if I placed it on an individual number people would get suspicious. After all, the odds of winning once was a realistic one in thirty-seven. But to get two numbers right in a row the odds are a lot higher because:
1/37^2 = 1/1369
The beautiful thing about roulette is the choice on offer. You can go for a single number, or two adjoining numbers, or three horizontal numbers as laid out on the felt, or a whole column, or twelve numbers at once, or do the first or second half, or all the reds or all the blacks. It is tantalising in its variety. As with life, you can weigh up the inherent risks and rewards and act accordingly. It appeals to the conservative-minded as much as the daring.
So, on Alberto’s prompting, I went for a couple of colour bets rather than individual numbers. Then, as Marta left for the bathroom, I placed a deliberate wrong bet for a lower amount on two adjoining numbers. Then bet big on the first twelve numbers. By that point we had more than fifteen thousand in winnings and had become very visible.
‘We must be more like cuttlefish, not clownfish,’ mumbled Alberto. ‘Everyone can see us.’
But then I thought again about the man I had passed in Ibiza Town. He’d not only lost the night before – when I tried to see who he’d lost to, the man he was playing had looked remarkably like Art Butler.
‘Poker,’ I whispered to Alberto.
And right on cue Marta came back from the bathroom looking like she had seen a ghost. I looked at her. Alberto looked at her. We both knew straight away.
She had just seen Art Butler. He was in the casino. He was in the poker room.
The Turn and the River
We took our chips and headed to the inner sanctum that was the poker room.
‘Wait,’ I said, before we entered.
Marta tilted her head. ‘Wait what?’
‘You shouldn’t go in there.’
Alberto backed me up. ‘Grace has a point. Elvis Presley. The radio. The wine glass. It was a warning to you. You must stay back…’
‘And you must stay with her,’ I told him, as a distant roar of applause came from the baccarat table. ‘You need to make sure she’s going to be okay.’
Marta didn’t like this. ‘But we can’t let you go in there alone.’
‘I’m a big girl. I’ll be all right.’
Alberto made a reluctant groan and gave me his chips. Then his daughter did the same. ‘Okay,’ he sighed. ‘But we will not be far away.’
And with that, I walked towards the tense quiet of the poker room and the terrifying mystery of Art Butler.
Art was sitting with the other players, wearing a crumpled linen shirt and a frown to match. He was staring at his cards with a fixed focus. But beyond that, there wasn’t much I could sense at all. It was like trying to see the image of something in a painting by Jackson Pollock. It was too tangled and hummed with prohibitive force.
This was why Christina had never known who wanted to kill her. It was because he was almost unknowable. His mind was Fort Knox.
A woman with a tangerine fan leaned on his shoulder, but he hardly seemed to notice her. He looked tired as a melted candle, but he was also clearly driven to win the game he was playing. And he did.
I took a seat and put the buy-in, a black chip worth a hundred euros, onto the green felt of the table.
Art looked at me. I still had no idea what he was thinking but he certainly acted as though nothing was up.
My plan was to win some money and try to get into Art’s mind.
Two birds, one stone.
Now, before I continue, I should say that I had never played a game of poker in my life. It was never part of my Year Nine card game lessons, and I had never been to a casino. And yet I suddenly knew I could play it. I had seen enough films and read enough books that had featured poker in some capacity that – with my enhanced mental capacities – I now knew how to play, even without having to mind-read anyone.
So.
Texas hold ’em.
Aside from me and Art Butler, there were six other players.
There was: the rich fifty-year-old Anglo-American music industry lawyer and online wellness advocate Melissa, who was currently high on cocaine. The eighty-one-year-old restaurateur José. The newly divorced German former billionaire called Dietmar, who had inherited a pharmaceutical company and had a short walk back to his yacht. The mildly drunk, sentimentally-minded American guy from Atlanta called Benjamin, who was staying on a work freebie at Art Butler’s spa hotel, and had just been dancing at nearby Pacha but was missing his dogs and his mother and his boyfriend in Milan. The insomniac Parisian called Anne, who worked in asset management and wrote erotic poems no one ever saw and who hadn’t been able to concentrate on her novel in bed at the hotel next door and didn’t want to lie awake depressed next to her husband. And an Italian art dealer called Flavio, who had triceps sculpted by Michelangelo. This was the man I had passed earlier. The one who had lost to Art last night and was back for more. And then of course there was Art Butler himself.
Right there and totally distant all at once.
The first round I had nothing and folded early. The second round went mostly the same way, and Art won big thanks to a flush of spades. I tried to read him again but there was nothing. No information, no emotion, no psychic text or context. I knew I had to beat him, because I had a strong sense that vulnerability was the way in, and there was no evident vulnerability – or anything at all – at this point.
