by Adam Carter
This attitude always gave me an edge when I played poker. The pay of a detective wasn’t great, but it was enough to be able to lose a game every couple of weeks.
It was my deal and I tried to concentrate more on the game. After all, with only three of us left, there was a greater chance of me walking away with all the money. I was already resolved to Sally J winning the game, but after a swift chip-count I determined I was probably a little way ahead of her. Watts was still winning, but I knew either of us could break him down so long as we showed a little patience. Also, since he had discovered I was a detective, he had become a little anxious.
I dealt myself pocket kings; entirely randomly, I assure you. Before any of the community cards are exposed, two kings is the second best hand you can be dealt, so I was rather happy when Sally J made an initial bet. I was even happier when Watts called it, so I raised it and was called by both players. Sally J still seemed to be focusing on Watts, but I knew better than to think for one moment her mind was off the game. Watts himself wouldn’t look at me, which was a sure sign he was some kind of criminal. But, like I said, I was off-duty and all I cared about in that moment was winning some money off him.
“Tell Matthew about the Teardrop,” Sally J said in a quiet, flat tone which made me think she may have been talking to herself.
“He doesn’t want to hear about the Teardrop,” Watts said.
I overturned the first three community cards. Two, six and king, all unsuited. Things were definitely looking up for me; at that moment I had an unbeatable hand. Sally J checked and so did Watts, so I placed a bet. Sally J folded and Watts called.
“I sure would like to hear about the Teardrop,” I said, not having any idea what it could have been. “What is that? A nightclub, a rocket ship?” I decided to throw Watts off his game as much as possible. “Kind of sounds like a new type of drug hitting the street.” I turned over the fourth community card. It was another six, which was annoying. There were also now two hearts on the table, and since I wasn’t myself holding a heart that could only work in Watts’s favour. I needed to take him out before the final community card was laid.
“It’s a diamond,” Watts said absently. “Check.”
I looked at the two hearts on the table. “Diamond? Where?”
“The Teardrop, not the cards.”
“Right.” I made a bet: a big one. “I’m assuming it’s shaped like a teardrop,” I ventured.
“Yes, and it’s worth a lot of money. Raise.”
I had not expected that and looked at the rather large stash of chips he had suddenly pushed into the centre of the table. For someone who had not made any bets on the hand up until this point, Watts was making an unusual move. I could only guess he was holding two hearts and was hoping for a flush. The only alternative was that he was holding two sixes and had just hit a four of a kind, which would have destroyed me. Or perhaps he was just a bad player and was holding a six, which meant he had struck three of a kind on the sixes, not taking into consideration I might have done the same with the kings.
Ralph Watts was either the greatest player I had ever faced, or the lousiest. If he had been playing as much live poker as he and Sally J had suggested, I was inclined to go more with the former.
But, like I said before, I can afford to lose a little money here and there. Usually it was to Sally J, but a loss is a loss. “All-in,” I said, shoving everything forward.
Watts did not hesitate and called me. If he lost, he would still have a few chips remaining, but not enough to come back into the game as a major player. Not with an opponent like Sally J. His speed of accepting the all-in bet, however, gave me cause to think he would not have to worry about anything Sally J had to throw at him.
Hesitantly, I turned over the final community card. It was thankfully not a heart; nor was it anything which could have helped either of us. I was not about to feel any relief, however, until Watts showed me he was not holding anything that could beat me. That he was holding a pair of sixes was statistically not likely, but there had to be a reason for him to have gone all-in.
Looking annoyed with himself, Watts laid down his cards. I could see the redness in his face deepening, his sweat exploding from his pores. The tension and anxiety were over for him and there was no longer anything to hold back. I saw his cards then: two hearts. So he had been going for a flush after all. He had called my all-in knowing he at the time was holding the weaker hand. I had already made my three of a kind, while he was still waiting on a card.
It was things like that which separate the good players from the bad, which make poker a game of skill more than luck. Playing the odds is all well and good, but the fact was Watts did not have the winning hand and knew it. A bad player would have gone all-in on that; only a terrible player would have called someone else’s all-in.
I realised in that moment what a truly awful poker player Ralph Watts was.
Showing my own hand, I gathered in my winnings. I now had immense chip power, while Watts was left with hardly anything. I’ve heard said that statistically you should only play one of every six hands, for poker is all about waiting for the good cards to be dealt you. Watts no longer had enough chips to wait those six hands, which meant he would be forced into playing half-decent cards, such as king-seven suited. I had no doubt at all within fifteen minutes Watts would be out of the game.
Sally J was a different matter entirely. By that point I had so many more chips than she it was laughable, but I never for one moment grew complacent about her. I had seen Sally J come back from being down to just enough chips to cover the ante.
For Watts, however, the game was over. He was a man a mile beneath the surface of the ocean holding his breath and frantically clawing in a dark direction he just hoped was upwards, knowing it wouldn’t make a difference anyway since his lungs were about to burst.
I almost felt sorry for him.
Then I remembered the Teardrop.
“Cheer up, Watts,” I said. “You still have that diamond. How much precisely is it worth?”
“More money than I’ll ever see,” he said despondently. Sally J had taken up the cards and was dealing slowly.
“Why do you even have a diamond?” I asked. “Are you a collector?”
“I was, one time. The Teardrop was my crowning glory. I hired it out to a local museum on a three-year contract.”
“Is that how you make a living then?” I asked, glancing at my cards. “Buying expensive baubles and hiring them out to museums?”
“I used to, yes.”
“Used to?”
He made a show of studying his cards. There was a possibility he truly was trying to figure out whether to play this hand, but the man was already broken.
“Used to?” I pushed. “You don’t any more?”
“I’ve had some financial worries lately, Detective Matthew.”
“Detective Blake actually.” There was no need for me to say that, of course, but I figured I knew what the man meant. He had a gambling addiction, probably debts to go with it, and he didn’t want to talk about it. I’d just taken the man’s money, so I could respect his wish for silence. I tried to think of a tactful way to tell him not to play poker any more, especially since he wasn’t any good at it, but didn’t fancy being punched in the face.
“Two pair,” Sally J said. I had not even noticed, but I’d absently been calling her bets. I glanced back at my cards to see I only had a pair with an ace kicker. I resolved to pay more attention to the game else Sally J was going to quietly take all my money from me while I was distracted.
“There’s an interesting story behind the Teardrop,” Sally J said in a relaxed tone. “It’s why I fell in love with it.”
“Do tell,” I said. “Sally J seldom showed her emotions about the poker table and it was always a wonderful moment when she allowed people to gain an insight into her mind.
“There was once a princess of a faraway land,” Sally J began. “She was young, beautiful and very mu
ch in love. She was also naïve and stupid, but that’s beside the point. She fell for a knight of her father’s court, the champion of the realm. Everyone believed the king would welcome the match, for the king saw this knight as his brother. But the king was a jealous soul who would not see his daughter wed to any man. So he sent the knight on a quest to win the hand of his daughter. He was to catch a rainbow and bring it back to court.
“Naturally, the king expected him to fail. But the knight set off determinedly towards the birthplace of rainbows and waited for the right weather conditions for one to form. There are a great many tales of the perils he had to face, of the monsters he had to slay, but suffice it to say once a rainbow appeared he fought his way through everything and with one mighty swing of his sword sent such a fear through the rainbow that it leaped into his outstretched sack. The knight brought the sack back to court and as he opened the drawstrings the entire palace was filled with such wondrous light that no mortal eyes had ever beheld.
“The king had no choice but to accept the knight for his son and preparations were made for the wedding. On the eve before the marriage, however, the king paid a visit to the knight and asked to see his rainbow once more. As the knight opened the sack, the light exploded outwards and, closing his eyes to the blinding display, the king slipped a knife through the back of the knight, killing him instantly.
“The princess burst into the room to find her beloved lying dead upon the floor and the king vanished. The rainbow, cowering in the corner, saw the princess’s grief and was moved. In terror of the king’s vengeance and in sympathy for the girl’s sorrow, the rainbow entered her body and there it remained until she died many years later. Afterward, any time that the princess cried, her tears would be tiny prisms of diamond, shot through with magnificent colour by the frightened rainbow inside her.”
It was a strange story and I was sure I could see some glaring holes in it. But we were in Sally J’s house and it would have been rude to point them out.
“Lovely,” I said. “If only Jack had found her up his beanstalk instead of the goose that laid the golden eggs. Would have given both stories a happier ending.” Or was it Aesop? I wasn’t sure, but we weren’t there to discuss fairy tales.
Watts dealt the next hand and, after Sally J and I both checked, decided to go all-in. I was holding queen-jack suited so opted to call him. Sally J folded, so Watts and I both got to turn over our cards. He was holding ten-eight suited and everything went downhill for him from there. He did not even last five of the fifteen minutes I’d predicted for him.
“I should call it a night,” he said, looking nowhere near as annoyed as I had thought he would. It only reaffirmed just how used to losing the man was. “Thanks for the game, Sally.”
No one called her Sally. I don’t know why, but no one even shortened her name to Sal. She was always Sally J. Whether J was her middle initial or the start of her surname, I had no idea. But that was what people called her.
Watts gathered his coat and left the room. I had never felt so sad watching a fellow player depart.
“He going to be all right?” I asked.
“He’s had worse losses, Matthew.”
“Sure, but that man really shouldn’t be playing poker.”
“No.”
“How do you know him?”
A small smile creased her lips. “You know the rules, Matthew. I don’t tell other players’ secrets. Just as I wouldn’t tell him about your secrets.”
“That’s fine. I don’t have any secrets. Unless you wanted to get into my bad marriage, but I’m sure he wouldn’t be interested.”
“There’s always Shenna.”
I huffed. I’ve known Sally J for years and I’m always surprised by the amount of information she’s managed to wheedle out of me without my knowledge. But then, she wouldn’t be the perfect poker player if she wasn’t able to do that.
The two of us continued playing, neither of us mentioning Ralph Watts or the Teardrop again. Over the following hour I watched my chips slowly walk across to her side of the table, to the point that we became pretty much even. Sally J dealt me two kings so I decided to risk everything and went all-in straight away. She called, and it turned out I had three more chips than she did. It was a make or break for either of us, but I could not help feel she was going to turn over two aces.
Sally J revealed her hand: ace-king, suited. I was winning, sure, but she had one of my kings and that ace was unsettling me, as were the two spades staring up at me. I was winning, but Sally J had far too many outs for me to be comfortable.
She somehow managed to avoid hitting anything on the community cards and her game went the same way as Watts.
“Almost,” she said, leaning back as I packed away the chips for her.
“Who needs to eat anyway?”
“I’m not so sure my priorities are the same as yours, Matthew.”
God, she knew that too?
She smiled again. There was something behind her eyes which I didn’t like. She wasn’t laughing at me as such, but Sally J always knew far more about people than they knew about themselves.
I left for home and found it had started to rain. Pulling my coat more tightly about my neck, I headed for the train station. It was not a long journey back home but the train was filled with all the drunks one usually finds on any public transport after eleven. I managed to block them out and was surprised to find I was thinking a lot about Watts. I had met men like him before, knew his type well in fact. I still couldn’t figure out where I thought I’d seen him before, but by that point had decided I was just seeing him as a stereotype. So many people were torn apart by addiction, and gambling was always one of those no one seemed to be sympathetic to. I felt guilty having taken the man’s money, even though next game it would likely go over to Sally J. Everything, eventually, always goes to Sally J.
When I got home, I went to bed. It had not been a good day.
*
Work the next day was a pain, but I had already planned my workload for the day so I wouldn’t have to think too much about anything. I sat at my desk, going through the paperwork I was going to have to somehow reach the end of. I sat there for the first two hours in silence; it was only when a mug of coffee plopped on my desk that I acknowledged there were other people even alive in the office.
“Long night?” Holbrook asked.
“Yes.”
“Lose again?”
“I don’t always lose.”
“No. But you don’t always win either.”
I looked up into the playful eyes of my fellow detective, Jane Holbrook. As usual, her round face was alive with passion. I would never have said Holbrook was especially pretty, but there’s more to beauty than looks. I remember coming onto her one time I was very drunk, but thankfully she didn’t even mention it to me afterwards. We had both turned thirty, neither with any prospects, so I knew I didn’t have to feel bad about whatever terrible lines I had spun. I wasn’t sure whether my guilt made me a decent human being, or just someone who knew he was a creep.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I said, taking a sip. “Any chance of some digestives?”
“Well, if you buy some let me know.”
“You sound annoyingly happy today, Jane.”
“I have an interesting case, that’s all.”
“I’m not sure when I last found this job interesting, Jane.”
“Not every day you get to investigate a jewel heist, though.”
“A jewel heist? Which jewellers was knocked over?”
“Not a jewellers, Matt. This was a museum. When the curator was doing his rounds, he found this really expensive diamond had just vanished. No witnesses, no evidence, nothing. It’s like a ghost whipped it away.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing but there was no need to ask the obvious. “This diamond,” I said regardless. “It wouldn’t have a fancy name would it?”
“Sure it did. It’s called the Teardrop.”
I si
ghed in dejection. Of course it was.
CHAPTER THREE
It wasn’t my case, but I asked Detective Holbrook whether she wanted any help and she had never turned down an offer for help. I asked whether she had a list of suspects, and it turned out she hadn’t been exaggerating when she had said the diamond had vanished. Our first stop should have been with the owner of the diamond, but I wanted to arm myself before talking to Ralph Watts. As such, I suggested to Holbrook we speak with the closest thing we had to a witness, and that was the security guard who had discovered the jewel had disappeared. From the notes Holbrook had passed to me, it seemed the cameras in that area of the museum had been knocked out, but we only had the guard’s word that the diamond had done a disappearing act. I was not sure whether I actually suspected the guard of being a part of the theft, especially since it was too obvious, but it would still benefit the case to talk with him.
We arrived at the museum and were told he would be fetched for us, which was fine since it gave us the opportunity to examine the crime scene. The area had of course been cordoned off with a police line, with constables on guard and no access to the public. It was strange looking at the splash of colour against the otherwise stark whiteness of walls interspersed with garish paintings. It was almost as though the crime scene was a display; I could imagine there had been more than one attempt by visitors to photograph the area.
Passing beyond the police line always gave me a little thrill, I don’t know why. Perhaps it was because I was doing something only a handful of people were allowed to do, that I could then turn and look at all the gawkers and know I had got one over them. That day, however, I was not paying much attention to what was behind me, but rather the somewhat foolproof measure of protecting the diamond. The plinth upon which the diamond had rested was about chest-height, allowing onlookers to lean in for a really close look. It seemed to be formed of wood, with an expensive-looking cloth draped over the top in a tidy fashion. There was even a dip in the centre to show where the diamond had been resting. The glass casing which had surrounded the jewel was rectangular and thick, with no markings to indicate anyone had cut through it. I could see no wires, but assumed there would have been some form of alarm hooked up to the thing.