The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [50]
“The idea is to get a hand that adds up to nine points, or closest to nine points. The banker doesn’t get to check his cards until the players declare. Aces are low, house cards are zero, and you’re only looking at the least significant digit: a five and a seven make two, not twelve. The player can play her hand, or ask for another card—like that—and then—she’s turning.”
Blue-Rinse has turned over her three cards. She’s got a queen, a two, and a five. Hatchet-Face doesn’t smile as she turns her own cards over to reveal two threes and a two. The croupier rakes the chips over towards her: Blue-Rinse doesn’t bat an eyelid.
I stare fixedly at the shoe. They’re nuts. Completely insane! I don’t get this gambling thing. Didn’t these people study statistics at university? Evidently not . . .
“Come on,” Ramona says quietly. “Back to the bar, or they’ll start to wonder why we’re not joining in.”
“Why aren’t we?” I ask her as she retreats.
“They don’t pay me enough.”
“Me neither.” I hurry to catch up.
“And here I was thinking you worked for the folks who gave us James Bond.”
“You know damn well that if Bond auditioned for a secret service job they’d tell him to piss off. We don’t need upper-class twits with gambling and fast car habits who think that all problems can be solved at gunpoint and who go rogue at the drop of a mission abort code.”
“No, really?” She gives me an old-fashioned look.
“Right.” I find myself grinning. “They go for quiet, bookish accountant-types, lots of attention to detail, no imagination, that kind of thing.”
“Quiet, bookish accountant-types who’re on drinking terms with the headbangers from Two-One SAS and are field-certified to Grade Four in occult combat technology?”
I may have done a couple of training courses at Dunwich but that doesn’t mean I’ve graduated to breathing seawater, much less inhaling vodka martinis. When I stop spluttering Ramona is looking away from me, whistling tunelessly and tapping her toes. I glare at her, and I’m about to give up on it as a bad job when I see who she’s watching. “Is that Billington?” I ask.
“Yep, that’s him. Aged sixty-two, looks forty-five.”
Ellis Billington is rather hard to miss. Even if I didn’t recognize his face from the cover of Computer Weekly, it’d be pretty obvious that he was a big cheese. There’s a nasty face-lift in a big frock hanging on his left arm, a briefcase-toting woman in wire-frame spectacles and a tailored suit that screams lawyer shadowing him, and a pair of thugs to either side, who wear their tuxedos like uniforms and have wires looped around their ears. A gaggle of Bright Young Things in cocktail dresses and tuxes bring up the rear, like courtiers basking in the reflected glory of a medieval monarch; the dubious doorman Ramona fingered for her midnight snack is oozing up to one of them. Billington himself has a distinguished silver-streaked hairdo that looks like he bought it at John DeLorean’s yard sale and feeds it raw liver twice a day. For all that, he looks trim and fit—almost unnaturally well preserved for his age.
“What now?” I ask her. I can see a guy who looks like the president of the casino threading his way across the floor towards Billington.
“We go say hello.” And before I can stop her she’s off across the floor like a missile. I scramble along in her wake, dodging dowagers, trying not to spill my drink—but instead of homing in on Billington she makes a beeline towards the Face Lift That Walks Like a Lady. “Eileen!” squeaks Ramona, coming over all blonde. “Why, if this isn’t a complete surprise!”
Eileen Billington—for it is she—turns on Ramona like a cornered rattlesnake, then suddenly smiles and switches on the sweetness and light: “Why, it’s Mona! Upon my word, I do declare!” They circle each other for a few seconds, sparring congenially and exchanging polite nothings while the courtier-yuppies home in on the baccarat table. I notice Billington’s attorney exchanging words with her boss and then departing towards the casino office. Then I see Billington look at me. I take