Part 1 (Sue)
Part 2 (Sue)
Part 3 (Emanuel)
Part 4 (Sue)
Part 5 (Emanuel)
Part 6 (Emanuel)
Part 7 (Emanuel)
Emanuel’s bar wasn’t open on Sundays. Not for religious reasons, just simply because balls to the idea of working on a Sunday. Nevertheless, here he was. He’d barely slept all night, putting everything together in his head. It was… it was a
ridiculous theory, but it
fit.
He arrived at the bar, unlocked the door and headed inside, locking it behind him and drawing the bar back into darkness. He didn’t need the light. He knew his way around. He unlocked the door to the office on the right side of the main room and headed inside, keying in the code to switch the alarm off.
He turned on the office computer, leaned underneath it and ejected the disc from the CCTV machine, turning it over in his left hand. He reached for a bottle of cola from a nearby fridge and cracked it open, taking a sip as he waited for the computer to start up.
He inserted the disc into the drive and found the entry for 1am on the Friday morning, the night of heat three of the poker tournament. He hadn’t recorded the other two for fear of it being used as evidence against him were the bar to get raided, but after the break-in he’d decided to try to be more careful. He could always destroy the disc if he smelled the cops.
In addition, he’d also set up a microphone in the room, near the camera. It didn’t capture sound particularly well - you couldn’t make out most words in a sentence, but it picked up just about enough. The tap-taps of Dolores’s stick, for example.
He fast-forwarded to about 2am, to what he considered to be the best play of the game.
Two hours in. Two players already out.
Cards dealt.
Big blind checks. Small blind calls. Yusuf calls. Hat guy calls. Fake rolex guy raises.
Bald guy calls. Dolores folds. Big blind folds. Small blind calls. Yusuf calls. Hat guy folds.
Flop. Hesitation.
Small blind checks. Yusuf checks. Fake rolex guy bets. Bald guy calls. Small blind folds. Yusuf raises. Fake rolex guy raises. Bald guy calls. Yusuf waits.
Dolores tuts loudly and bangs her cane on the ground twice.
Bap. Bap. Impatient for him to make a decision. She taps the ground twice again.
Bap. Bap..
Yusuf raises. Fake rolex guy raises. Yusuf calls.
Turn.
Yusuf checks. Fake rolex guy raises. Yusuf raises. Fake rolex guy raises. Yusuf calls.
River.
Yusuf checks. Rolex goes all in.
Reveal.
Yusuf throws down. Two queens. One more on the flop makes that a three of a kind.
Rolex guy throws down. Face down. He’s out of his chair before the cards hit the table. Out. Busted.
Emanuel rewound the footage to just before the cards were dealt. Dolores, jabbering to herself, taps the floor twice just before the deal.
Bap. bap. Emanuel started counting. The first
bap as the ‘one’, the second as the ‘two’.
Three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. If you followed the same rhythm as the stick taps it worked out to about 75bpm, from what he could tell. He continued.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, deal, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, <check> four.
One, two, <call> three, four
One, call three, four
One, <call>, two, three, fourEmanuel kept counting. He reached the part where Yusuf pauses. Where Dolores taps her stick.
..three, four
One, two, three, four
One, two, three, four
One, two, bap, bap
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
Bap, bap, three, four
One, two, three, four.
Exactly in time. [i]Exactly in time.
To further test his theory, he fast forwarded to a random point in the game and counted off from the next time Dolores taps the ground with her cane. It was always,
always in time. Exactly on the one, the two, the three or the four, counting from
right at the start of the game from what he could tell.
He noted that, occasionally, Yusuf nods his head or moves his fingers to the same beat. Silently, yes, but if you knew what to look for…
Emanuel rewound the footage once more, back to the hand he’d first analysed.
This time, rather than counting off four, he decided to count in thirteen. One for every card in a suit.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, kingAce, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, kingYusuf hesitates. Dolores gives him the
slightest of glances.
Ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, kingAce, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, bap, bap, kingAce, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, bap, bap, kingAce, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, kingEmanuel stood up and held his head in his hands. He ran his hair through both hands as he craned his neck up towards the ceiling. He muttered two words to himself. Both included the word ‘fuck’.
He remembered picking up the cards that rolex guy had thrown away. As croupier, he wasn’t supposed to show anyone which cards had been put face down, but he was allowed to look himself. They had both been jacks. Added into the ace at the end of the flop and the one that had appeared on the river, the guy had had two pair. Not good enough to beat a three.
Dolores had given the first of her two taps on the
eleven of the beat. The jack. She’d communicated which card Yusuf’s opponent had held.
Emanuel watched another hour of footage. On every occasion, every time Yusuf went in against another player with the stakes high, there were two lots of two taps, indicating the exact card Yusuf’s opponent had. Sometimes Yusuf folded, sometimes he called. On two occasions, even, he’d folded hands which would have won, and on one occasion he lost on the river despite having been ahead through the flop and the turn. Still, there was no mistaking the advantage he’d had.
Dolores, of course, had an advantage too, but from what he could tell she used it sparingly, only to stay in the game, not to win.
But how. How had the old lady known which cards were which?
Emanuel got up out of his seat and went over to the bar, opening the door down to the cellar. There, at the back, was the rubbish from the last night of business. Most of the garbage from that Thursday night had been thrown away. At that moment he thanked the lord that he recycled. The waste-paper bags were collected every week on Tuesday evening. He grabbed a bag and headed upstairs.
Back in the office, he sorted through the receipts and scrap paper until he could find a handful of shreds of last week’s playing cards. He shredded them all after each poker night, just in case. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t make more. Holding a handful of shards, he went back over to the bar and took an object from the side of the till. A UV machine that was used to check if large bills were fake currency or not. He turned it on and used it to check a number of slices of card.
Nothing. Not UV.
Frowning, Emanuel took our his smart-phone and turned on the camera. The camera, too, showed nothing, because he still hadn’t turned on the lights. Turning on the torch revealed nothing had been written on the cards either. His final attempt was to turn on a the main lights in the bar, but lowering the glare to the dimmest setting.
Once again, he looked through the screen of his phone at the array of bits of card he’d strewn over the bar.
One one, written just above the logo on the botom left, there was a very definite figure, just about visible through the phone’s camera, but completely undetectable in natural light.
It was a Q.
Emanuel put his phone back into his pocket. On the way back into the office, holding his shards of paper, he remembered the old lady’s thick sunglasses and their dark red rims.
He barely even breathed as he stuffed the waste paper back into the bag, tied the top, and threw it into the corner of the office. He looked up at the footage, now showing the end of the game. The polite conversation had between Yusuf Nair and himself.
It dawned on him, properly now, that on that night he’d been talking to the man who’d broken into his bar the previous week. That shy, handsome, affable young man. Young man? Old man? Despite the short, greying hair Emanuel had no idea how old the guy was. He could have been 40, he could have been a very good fifty. He could have been 25. There was something just unplaceable about him.
He finished his coke and cracked open a small bottle of vodka, taking a sip. He looked at the time. 9.30am. Balls to it, it’s past mid-day
somewhere.
Emanuel took a second to think.
The broken door. That was to divert attention from the window, which was the real way Yusuf had gotten in and out.
The stolen alcohol. That was to divert attention from the real crime, which was doctoring the cards that would be used for the game.
The marks on the door of the office. It had been made to look like the ‘robbers’ had been unsuccessful.
Emanuel stood up again and went over to the office alarm. He checked his phone for instructions on how to see every time the alarm had been disabled. Keying in the correct codes, he got readouts that only went back as far as that Tuesday morning. He set the alarm again and closed the door for a second until it stopped beeping. He opened the door, setting off the alarm’s ‘chirp’. He entered a random code, different to the one he knew was the correct four-digits. The alarm beeped happily and shut itself off. Emanuel sighed.
The old lady. The big sunglasses. She’d been made to look like the person who would benefit from the cheating, and yet she didn’t. Emanuel knew he couldn’t let her into the final, to be held in two weeks time. He also knew he
probably shouldn’t allow Yusuf to wear sunglasses either… but what use would they be? Emanuel would be printing new playing cards and making damned sure they weren’t marked with an infrared pen.
Yusuf would be coming back to the bar in two weeks. What was his plan?
Eura Outta There
Patterick serves 'Eviction Notice' to Oslograd
Sean Patterick's fierce post-match interview included a line that was telling of the 'relationship' that existed between him and Skorji Oslograd, The Euran icon-turned-controversial EOT manager.
"He told me, in that AOCAF Cup match, that he was living 'rent free' in my head. Well he can consider tonight an eviction notice"
Audioslavia, fresh from a two month break after thrashing Muradil, looked rejuvenated as they raced into a two-goal lead inside twenty minutes, the first coming from a Moses Moxey header from an in-swinging Osario corner, the second via Marañón rounding the keeper on the counter and slotting home.
Soon after the half-hour mark, with both sides having made changes, Kyran Knudsen received the ball inside the area, cut inside Kurt Strong and finished coolly past Charlie Ross and into the far corner with the outside of his left boot.
EOT, out of form throughout the qualifiers, were able to rally for twenty minutes in an attempt to get under the Audioslavians' skin, but to no avail. The Bulls' superior fitness saw the side close out the game convincingly.
The Bulls remain six points behind Turori in first, and only marginally ahead of a chasing pack that includes Sajnur, Astograth and New Lusitania, either of which could be in the running come the tail end of the qualifiers.
Patterick's job security has improved, but the Bulls will need to traverse the final five fixtures of the first half of qualifying without another hiccup if he's to remain as Audioslavia manager come the end of qualifying.