“Your brother had an expensive habit,” I remarked as I followed Brian through the art deco maze of the hotel. I had a hunch the Mamounia’s casino didn’t offer quarter slots.
“There’s not much else to spend your money on down here,” he answered.
Could that have been the problem? I wondered. Could an unpaid debt have gotten the American killed? Or maybe he just owed enough that he needed to skip town. Still, neither of these theories made much sense. If he had left, why not just head back to the States? Surely a local shylock would stop at the border. And if he’d been killed, I doubted it would have been done in secret. There’s nothing to be gained by murdering someone who owes you money, except that it serves as a warning to others. Pat’s death, if he was dead, was hardly public enough to have been a statement. And where did I fit into all of this? For I was certain I fit into it somewhere.
A tuxedoed bouncer stopped us at the door to the casino, his eyes ranging across my body, no doubt taking in the shabbiness of my attire. Brian grabbed my hand, pulling me toward him.
“Wait over there, will you?” he said, nodding to indicate a nearby sitting area.
I did as I was told, keeping one eye on Brian and the man as I walked away. A couple came out of the door of the casino. The man was Asian, fat and fiftyish, in a dark suit. The woman, though making a valiant attempt to look twenty years his junior, showed the hard-edged wear of an aging film star, too much makeup on too brittle a palette. She had squeezed herself into a floor-length pink gown and sequined shoes. Her breasts were a good three cup sizes too big for her frame, some plastic surgeon’s over-the-top idea of beauty. Her hair formed a stiff blond halo around her head. They turned and headed past me, moving down the hall together like a bad impersonation of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.
Brian said something to the bouncer, and the man pulled a tiny cell phone from his pocket and made a call. He had a brief conversation with whoever was on the other end; then he looked at Brian and at me. I saw Brian reach into his pocket, pull out a neatly folded dollar note, and slip it into the man’s tuxedo. Then he looked in my direction, motioning for me to join him.
“Enjoy your evening, sir,” the bouncer said as I approached.
“Thank you.” Taking my hand, pulling me after him, Brian stepped in through the doors of the casino.
“How did you do that?” I asked as we navigated our way to the cashier.
“Let’s just say it’s guest privileges,” he answered.
“You’re staying here?”
Nodding, he pulled out his wallet and laid down a thick wad of cash for chips. “What do you want to play? Roulette? Craps? Baccarat?”
“I think I’ll just watch, thanks.”
Brian smiled. “What are you worried about? It’s not your money. Besides, haven’t you ever heard of beginner’s luck?”
I eyed him skeptically.
“C’mon,” he urged, starting across the room.
It was still early in the evening, and there was only a smattering of guests in the casino. All the patrons were non-Arabs, and with one or two exceptions, all the players were men. The women who were there mostly just sat and watched.
“It’s dead this time of year,” Brian said, as if reading my thoughts. “Ramadan keeps most of the Muslim clientele away. It’s a shame, too, because it’s the Saudis who’ve got the real money to throw around.”
We found a table, and Brian directed me to a seat, then took one himself. “Baccarat,” he said. “You know the rules?”
I looked at the green felt, the white lines radiating out from two half rings, one marked Banker’s, the other, Player’s. “You bet on either the banker’s or player’s hand,” I said. “Nine wins, and if the hand adds up to a double digit, you drop the first number.”
Brian looked over at me. “I thought you spent the last year in a convent.”
“Things come back to me,” I told him, smiling. “I must have done this before.”
I played the first hand and lost, then won the next two. Brian was right; it was easy to play with someone else’s money. I might have remembered the rules, but my skills were rusty, and I lost quickly, running through most of Brian’s chips in the first half hour.
“Let me have a hand or two,” he asked when I’d whittled his cache down to almost nothing.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly.
He smiled. “Don’t be.”
Relinquishing the game and the chips to Brian, I sat back and scanned the room. The Asian man and the woman in the pink gown were back, taking a turn at roulette. A group of loud Frenchmen were playing poker near the back of the casino.
Just a few tables away, engaged in what looked like a game of twenty-one, was a solitary figure, a man. He must have come in while I was concentrating on my baccarat, for I hadn’t noticed him earlier. He was an Arab, Moroccan from the looks of him, though I couldn’t quite see his face from where I sat. His play was businesslike, almost devoid of pleasure, dispassionate as a visit to a prostitute might be, as if he were simply taking care of some unpleasant need.
He peeled the cards back and looked furtively at them, then nodded to the dealer for another card. There was something about him, something about his gestures, that made me think I knew him. Sitting forward, I craned my head to get a better look. The dealer slid his third card out, and the man glanced quickly at the result, then flipped the cards over, obviously disgusted with himself. This way, I thought, willing him to turn in my direction, just a few inches. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigar, and cut off the tip. Then, as if obliging me, he turned his head and signaled a nearby waiter.
I was right. He was someone from my past, though not so distant a past as I might have expected. I’d seen him just the day before in the medina. It was Mustapha, the man at the Berber pharmacy, the spice seller from Pat’s address book.
“Eve?” It was Brian.
I sat back and turned to face him.
“Recognize something?” he asked, looking past me to the twenty-one table.
I shook my head and glanced down at the table. “Are you out already?”
Brian nodded. “Not my lucky night. You ready to go?”
I nodded, getting up out of my seat. Why was I lying to him? I wondered.
“Look,” Brian said. “It’s Charlie.”
Our flush-faced host from earlier that day had just stepped through the casino’s entryway. He looked worse for wear, sweaty and disheveled. Brian waved, but Charlie didn’t notice. His eyes were glued to the twenty-one table, to the pharmacist’s bulky back. He lingered for a second inside the doorway, slightly unsteady on his feet; then the spice seller turned in his chair, his eyes flicking briefly in Charlie Phillips’s direction. A peculiar look flashed across the American’s face, a strange mixture of greed and shame. Blanching visibly, he ducked his head and turned, heading out of the casino.
“Poor, pathetic Charlie,” Brian said.
It was, I thought, a generous description. “Who is he?” I asked. “The man playing twenty-one?”
Brian put his hand lightly on my back, guiding me to the door. “A local entrepreneur,” he said. “Keeps the expat community in gambling money.”
“It looks like Charlie has some unpaid debts,” I remarked.
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“And Pat?” I asked.
Brian didn’t say anything. We had reached the door, and he lifted his hand from my back and gestured to the bouncer. “Where are you staying?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard my earlier question.
“The Hotel Ali,” I told him, “just off the Djemaa el-Fna.”
Brian nodded as if he knew the place. “You feel like taking a walk?”