There’s no explaining why I gave it to him, and I didn’t even intend to tot up what he owed me because I knew I would never get it back.
“You’re a sport,” he gushed, pocketing the notes with lightning speed. “You’re a sport and the Goddess of Luck will reward you.”
“Repayment?”
“Next week, next week. I have a scheme.”
We all had a scheme, and the pity of it was that none of us knew what the scheme was. It was there somewhere in the back of our minds, but it was perpetually obscure to us.
When Yo Yo returned, we went out to the canal and rode for a while in a gondola under a honeyed moon. It was just like Venice, as it is intended to be, with the water slapping the stones and the moon above gilding insignias and crenellations and gothic devices. Adrian said nothing and Yo Yo and I talked in Chinese, and as we spoke I knew that it was Adrian’s luck that had failed to deliver the natural and not mine. I had no idea why I was so sure of this. Eventually we went our separate ways and after a snack at the Florian I walked off back to the Lisboa, and as I was passing through the main doors I caught sight of Adrian sitting at one of the baccarat tables with Yo Yo behind him, his face distorted and blushing, losing with the alacrity and lack of style with which he always lost. So there it was. One loses and one wins, and one submits to the law of sports and pastimes, but I, on this occasion, was off the hook.
SEVENTEEN
The following morning a letter was delivered to my room by the Lisboa management, carried there by a bellhop in full regalia. Unusually for me I was up early, taking my Earl Grey and toast in the room where I was reading the South China Post. The mood of happiness from the night before was still upon me, and I felt a kind of self-assurance that was quiet and intimate. It was, if you like, a quiet self-confidence, a sense of being a little bit superior to my circumstances. People with inferiority complexes often feel this way after a few hours of unexpected good luck. The note, meanwhile, was from one of the senior managers of the hotel and invited me to stop by his office later in the day to discuss the unusual scale of my winnings the night before, on which I was congratulated in the politest terms. It is, he wrote, normal procedure when a customer of ours has won such a sum. My ass, I thought. They always singled me out.
I told the messenger to say that I would be down within an hour. But as it turned out I was stopped by an elegant young Chinese executive as I made my way to the elevators. He asked me to step into a private office on the floor above. It was, in fact, the writer of the note, a Mr. Chang Souza, and he was as full of charm and precision as an executive can be, in his official Lisboa tie and his cuff links shaped like black dice and his black oxfords with tooled caps. We went into an office opened with a magnetic key and paneled with red wood. There was a juniper bonsai on the desk and a photograph of a small girl in a sailor suit, and Mr. Souza placed himself behind it with a comfortable ease and assurance that seemed intended to make his task easier. On his computer he brought up the transactions in which I had been involved two nights before, and there was a look of surprised consternation on his face as he neared the summit of my considerable tally. “Nine naturals in a row,” he said, breaking into a frigid smile. “Never been seen before.”
“Not by me, anyway.”
“Lord Doyle, you are a lucky man.”
“Luck?”
It made him smile. He scanned down my winnings and I was sure that he was skimming through some surveillance videos at the same time. Every moment of every game is filmed; they can be recalled on the company computers in a second. Millions of such moments were captured daily and stored for future use, and they formed an encyclopedia of our gaming experiences. Souza’s face was still young, untarnished by pleasure. His eyes, enlarged behind wire-frame spectacles, seemed as if they were blue when they were nothing of the sort.
“As far as we can see,” he began, “there is nothing illegal about your winnings. We have been puzzling over it for some hours. I wonder if you are aware of the statistical odds of scoring nine nines in a row?”
While we drank a pot of oolong tea, he asked me if I had played at other casinos around the world before coming to Macau. Monte Carlo, Las Vegas, the Genting Highlands? Or Caracas, the dreadful places in Pailin?
“I expect,” he said, “you are a globetrotter, a high roller on several continents, a sharp on the loose.”
“Not at all,” I objected.
But he laughed; he liked the idea. A lord on the loose. A rogue of the baccarat tables, winging his way around the globe on Bruno Magli slippers. What could be more fine?
For the deskbound managers who actually ran the casinos, such a figure was bound to be irresistibly mysterious. One saw such figures painted on all the walls of the casinos, proud and erect on their Arabian horses, and so when one saw the real thing it was a pleasant surprise. Mr. Souza was one of these sedate managers. For him the world divided into the humdrum — factories, offices, work, labor, sweat salt mines, and mortgages — and the magical sphere of privileges.
He was quite bright with curiosity at this point. His eyes sharpened like needles that will prick their way under skin.
“I’ve never been anywhere,” I said, “except the casinos of Pailin. They were not to my taste.”
“No indeed. Khmer Rouge, eh?”
“I was once in Las Vegas. I lost everything.”
“They are crooks in Las Vegas, too, I have heard. Terrible, terrible people. But I imagine,” he said tentatively, “that you played privately at Oxford, or some such?”
“Yes, privately. Poker.”
He sat back and held his teacup between two slender fingers.
“I’ve always imagined Oxford gentlemen playing poker. Before I was posted here I was running a casino in Jordan for Steve Wynn. A casino frequented by Palestinians.”
“Palestinians?”
“Yes. They shot it up in the end.”
“Did they?”
“It was against their religion.”
“Ah.”
“It was a hard experience for me and my family. We were happy to come back to China. Here, as you know, everything is more reasonable. You can pay for anything and get it. Everything is for sale on some level. Do you know what I mean?”
“It’s a real talent.”
“I think so — sometimes. They call us the Jews of the East. Except that there are one point four billion of us. Imagine one point four billion Jews.”
I threw up a hand, and he sensed that he had said enough.
He poured my tea.
“Miss Silva ran a background check on you. She found nothing at all. It is quite puzzling. It’s as if you stepped one day out of nowhere, out of a different dimension, and into our little town and brought nothing with you. They tell me there is a code of secrecy among you gamblers, and perhaps you want to keep it that way.”
Souza then put down his cup and adjusted his glasses. I had not, as he had hoped, offered any background information about myself, and he had to proceed anyway. I said that he understood my position. Being a foreigner in a strange land, even so denatured and cosmopolitan a place as Macau. He comprehended it to the fullest degree. There was nowhere to turn. One had to be secretive, and he understood it.
He twirled his pen in his hand and looked at me frankly. What did I think I would do with my winnings? I could leave Macau for the mainland and live a lot better for less. I could fly off to Bangkok and live well for a while. The East was my oyster.