Midnight
His mind was turning over at top speed. Five people had left, including the woman. The remaining seven men were to place their bets, but he saw, as he approached the roulette table, that there were nine spots around the table and four chips in front of each spot. Each pile was a different colour. He had been playing blackjack for quarters, but how much were these chips worth?
The men gathered around the baize, and the croupier – a man Wingate had not seen before – started the wheel spinning. The space was closed, but there was another particleboard wall to his left, and there was a door in it. Space was tight in here, and the river in its gulley twisted at their feet before vanishing behind the second wall. As he approached the baize, he saw this was not a normal roulette layout. There were not thirty-nine squares and a couple for zero and double-zero, there were three identical strips, each numbered one to ten, in vertical columns parallel to each other. The wheel was on the right end of the table, surmounted by two walls of Plexiglas to keep people from touching it. Each man went to a monochromatic stack and waited. Wingate did the same. He was light-headed and worried a vein in his neck was visibly pounding.
“We’ve only got two lots tonight, sorry, gents. Shortage this week. Good luck to you.”
He dropped the ball into the wheel, where it hit with a worried clack and jumped up onto the polished wooden rim above the numbers. The wheel was normal, but the numbers on the baize didn’t match. How was the winner determined? Men were already putting chips out. They were only using the two numbered strips closest to the wheel. For whatever reason, they didn’t think the third strip was a good bet. Wingate mirrored them. They were moving the chips around, too, changing their minds. Wingate picked up one chip and moved it. A man across the table from him looked at him strangely. Finally, one man put a chip down in the third rank, and after he’d broken the ice, a couple of other men did as well.
Then the ball dropped.
“Hands away!” called the croupier, a little more harshly than Wingate thought was strictly necessary. “Six ninety-eight is the winner, the winner is red.”
And the man whose chips had been laid on those numbers, in that order, rasped a little yes, and the players retrieved their losing chips.
Plaskett came forward and shook the winner’s hand. “Lucky you,” he said. “Good price, too.” And he led the man away. The man was happy to be led away. Plaskett took him through the door.
The wheel was spinning again. Wingate paid more attention this time. The ball falling into the wheel was the sand running out of an hourglass. The wheel was a timer that timed the bidding activity. And the three ranks formed a number. Had 698 been the highest combination of chips? It had been. The man who went away had bid $698 on something.
“Anyone going higher than seven?” one man asked. He was using the brown chips. Nobody seemed willing to advertise their strategy.
Another man said, “Do it.”
Brown made a bid of 755. There was some approving laughter. The bidder’s friend said, “I’m not going to get in your way!”
The ball was still spinning. Another bid went down, green chips on 780. Applause. Ronald Plaskett looked at the bet and smiled. “Someone’s hungry!”
Who were these men, and what did they need so badly? And what would seven hundred, eight hundred dollars buy? Three ounces of pot? It wasn’t enough for coke, and it wasn’t heroin. These people weren’t shooting anything. Maybe it was for pills. Hazel had said she’d found Oxys in Henry Wiest’s medicine cabinet, along with the pot. Brown changed his bid to a flat 800.
“Pussy,” he laughed at Green. The ball was clacking into the partitions now. The croupier was getting ready to sweep his hand and end the bidding. Wingate put his three blue chips down: 900. The ball dropped and the croupier waved his hand brusquely over the baize. There was an atmosphere of shock at the table. “Hands away! Nine zero zero is the winner, the winner is blue.”
“Wow,” said Brown. “Nice snipe, buddy. I hope you get your money’s worth.”
Wingate felt strangely numb. He was the winner. Nine hundred dollars. Plaskett appeared at his side.
“Way to go, rookie,” he said. “Let’s go see what’s behind door number one.” He led Wingate to the door at the side of the room. He felt eyes on him. Plaskett opened the door. The riverbed continued beyond it. It was cold again. The grade began to rise, and the ground here was a mix of solid, smooth stone and earth. The walls themselves were earthen now, and here and there a filament of dead root or a furze of mould told him they were getting closer to the fields again.
“So I just pay cash?” he asked.
“Cash or chips. This is for you, by the way – ” He handed Wingate another ID. This one said René Arsenault. “I heard your card didn’t work in the door. I got you another one. Save you a trip.”
Wingate thanked him and pocketed the ID. He counted out nine hundred in twenties and fifties and held it out to Plaskett.
The man stopped dead. “Whoa,” he said. “What’s this?”
“Sorry?”
“This is nine hundred.”
“What should it be?”
“You bid nine thousand, Mr. Lupertans.” He looked at Wingate’s face. Wingate imagined he’d gone white.
“Nine thousand.”
“Feldman didn’t tell you?”
“Oh, I guess uh, I wasn’t totally clear on the procedure, you know?”
“Well, Chester bid eight thousand. I can’t take nine hundred.”
“I have more,” Wingate said hurriedly. He had to make this buy. “I have about thirty-five. Can I just have a, you know, a taste?”
“A taste?” Plaskett started walking again. The cold, dark riverbed looked like it was going to go on forever. But then Plaskett stopped at what looked like an alcove in one of the curved earth walls. Wingate came up beside him and saw Plaskett was standing beside a giant concrete slab that had been set in the side. Someone had blasted or dug a hole in the earth and plugged it with concrete. “What the fuck, Pete? – René, sorry. That’s one-third of your bid.” Wingate’s sinking feeling was only intensifying now. He had no idea what his depth was now, but he hoped his tracer was still transmitting. He might very well be on his own, and right at the moment when they were going to finally learn what was going on under these fields. Ronnie flicked his fingers at Wingate, and when Wingate didn’t move, he shoved him with tented fingers against his chest and he stumbled backwards. “Who are you?”
“What?”
“Who the fuck are you? Why don’t you know how this works?”
He looked down on the hand that was pushing him backwards. There was no point coming this far and having to go back. “Fucking mumbling Feldman,” Wingate said. “I’m really sorry, Ronnie. I want to do this. But the fact is, I’ve just got thirty-five right now. Can I pay the rest tomorrow?”
“You want a taste, you ask for a taste. You don’t come in and make a deal. You ask for a fucking taste.”
“I know.”
“Show me the cash.”
Wingate removed the money as casually as he could. He had seven hundred in chips, too. Altogether he had thirty-six hundred.
“Fine, Mr.… Arsenault. You can have a taste. But don’t fuck around, okay?” There was another card reader here and Plaskett produced a card of his own and ran it through. “Your card doesn’t work in this one. In or out.” Plaskett opened the door and went through and Wingate followed. He’d never done illicit drugs. Pot a couple of times in university. Now he was going to have to put something in him and withstand it, no matter what it was. He was starting to work on the odds of his getting out of here alive. He went through the door. Somehow, impossibly, he was standing in someone’s laundry room. Enclosed with more particleboard at the bottom of a set of wooden steps. With his mouth as close to his cellphone as possible, he said, “I don’t suppose you have a cigarette do you?”
“Gene’ll give you one,” Plaskett answered.
They climbed the rickety steps. At the top, they went through into a darkened vestibule. Someone flicked a light on, and Wingate came up to see that he was standing in a living room in someone’s house. His mind was spinning. Whose house was this? There were farmhouses here and there in the fields. This had to be one of them, but which one? There were a couple of couches and a large-screen television on the wall, playing soccer mutely. There was another man here, and this one was armed with a gun of some type that was holstered on his hip.
“Hey,” said the man Wingate presumed was Gene.
“He’s just here for a taste.”
“A taste?”
“Takes all kinds. René, this is Gene.”
“Hullo,” said Gene. He offered a hand.
“Hi,” Wingate replied. He was in a movie now.
“Put him in that room over there,” Ronnie said. “I’m just going to go downstairs.”
He felt Gene’s hand take him lightly under the arm and then he was walking across a wooden parquet floor. He felt a couple of the wooden pieces shift under his step. He couldn’t calm his mind. “Mind taking off your shoes?” asked Gene. “There’s a carpet.”
Wingate slid off his shoes. An elaborate and illicit scheme was unfolding before his eyes, and he was taking his shoes off so as not to soil a carpet. The floor under his feet was cool. He held his shoes dangling from one hand. He had to be careful to keep the hidden transmitter with him. “Got a cigarette?” he said again, when Gene was on the same side as the pocket the phone was in.
“Menthols,” said Gene.
“Oh. Never mind,” Wingate replied, secretly grateful.
Gene opened a door and led him into a room. The lights were off in here; the man flicked them on.
They were in a guestroom of some kind. There was a fireplace to his right with two nice chairs in front of it, facing each other. A neatly made four-poster bed with some throw pillows on it took up the wall in front of him, and across from the fireplace, to his left, was a couch. He felt like he was in a hotel room. Gene left before he’d had a chance to get a look at his weapon, but he was pretty sure it was a little stun gun. The weapon that had killed Henry Wiest and put his wife in hospital. The connections were manifesting.
Wingate tentatively sat in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, and then went to the couch. The only light in the room came from a fixture in the ceiling, a frosted glass globe. There was no window, as there had been no window in the other room.
Gene opened the door a crack. “Just wait here.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, and he had said no truer thing of late.
Both the trace and the phone call had dropped off in the temporary office in Dublin. Forbes and Hazel Micallef had heard the footsteps after Wingate had won his bid, and then the signals had started to fray. The last thing they’d heard was the word hundred, and then his voice was gone. The tracer fell off ten seconds later. James Wingate had vanished a hundred metres north by northwest of the corner of the Tenth Line and Sideroad 6. Hazel removed the headphones.
“Jesus, he’s alone down there.”
Forbes said, “We should go in.”
“No.” She tapped the screen and tried to will Wingate’s location back onto it. “Let’s give him twenty minutes.”
Wingate heard footsteps coming closer to the door, and he stood. He couldn’t stay seated. Whatever this was, it was not going to start with him sitting on a couch.
The door opened and he straightened, seeing a brief blur of activity in the doorframe, movement that resolved into the form of a girl. There was a girl struggling against Ronald Plaskett. She was on the end of his arm, his fingers clutching her wrist. He shoved her into the room.
“Don’t go too hard on her, my friend,” he said. “She’s got a bruised cunt. If you like her, top up your bid, and you can have the fresh stuff.” He pushed the girl into the room. “You’ve got fifteen minutes.”
He closed the door, and Wingate heard the lock turn. The girl, dressed in a loose nightgown, stood in front of him with her eyes cast down, breathing hard. In his paralysis and astonishment, he could find nothing to say. The girl gave a deep sigh and reached down to the hem of her nightie and it was already over her head by the time he understood what she was doing, and what she expected him to do. She stepped forward and into him, pushing his hands away from the middle of his chest. Her eyes were empty and distant.
“I really need a cigarette,” said Wingate.