I ring Fionn – ask him where he is. He’s across in the Bellagio – him and JP – playing roulette. I tell them I’ll be straight over.
They’re in flying form, the two of them – delighted to see me, of course – and they’ve got, like, loads of chips piled up on the table in front of them. I’ve no idea how many they storted with, of course, but, judging from the banter, I’d say they’re probably up overall.
‘Isn’t gambling a sin?’ Fionn’s asking, because JP still believes in all that, even though he’s not going to be a priest anymore.
JP’s there, ‘I think it’s pretty much down to the conscience of the individual church-goer,’ and the two of them crack their holes laughing.
They’re on the old sidecors, which is, like, brandy and triple sec. I ask a passing waitress for one for myself.
The bird spinning the wheel is a ringer for Olga Kurylenko and I can tell she has an immediate thing for me.
‘So where’s Oisinn?’ I go.
The goys are, like, suddenly serious. JP’s there, ‘We haven’t seen him.’
‘He’s not in his room,’ Fionn goes.
JP’s there, ‘I came down for breakfast at, like, eleven o’clock this morning and he was where we left him last night.’
He means playing Caribbean Stud. I ask him was he winning and he says he’s not sure, but people who don’t move off their stool for, like, fourteen hours, generally aren’t?
Fionn’s there, ‘We think Oisinn might have a problem, Ross.’
I’m like, ‘I know. JP said,’ and all I can think to say after that is, ‘Fock!’
I get a load of chips in anyway – three hundred snots worth? I scatter a few around the place. Then I turn around to the bird, holding a ten-dollar chip between my finger and thumb, and go, ‘Go on, what’s your lucky number?’
She just goes, ‘Gentlemen, please place your bets,’ totally blanking me. I suppose they have to at least pretend to be professional?
Fionn, I notice, is doing this thing where he puts one chip down on red. Then if the ball lands on black, he puts two on red for the next spin. If black comes up again, then he puts four on red, pretty much doubling his stake every time. I haven’t a clue what it’s about, but it looks pretty boring. Me, I just stick with, like, numbers?
Anyway, at some point in the evening, three or four drinks in, Fionn turns around to me and goes, ‘Ross, I wanted to talk to you about Ronan?’
I look the croupier bird dead in the eye. ‘Who?’ I go.
Fionn’s there, ‘Ronan – your son, Ross.’
‘But I’m still single,’ I tell her, ‘just in case you’re wondering.’
She doesn’t bat an eyelid. She’s good.
Fionn’s there, ‘Were you listening to what he was saying yesterday? About algorithms?’
I’m there, ‘Look, you don’t want to pay any attention to that. He’s just showing off in front of that Big Juice – he told me this morning he wants me to call him Icepick.’
‘Ross,’ he goes, ‘I was going to say this to you on the phone. I – and, well, one or two other teachers in the school – we think Ronan might be gifted.’
‘Okay,’ I go, still wondering where this is going. ‘I’m talking about really gifted. He may even have a genius IQ.’
I’m there, ‘A genius IQ?’
Then I ask the question that I suppose any father would ask in those circumstances. ‘How’s this going to affect his rugby?’
He pulls a face, roysh, like he’s losing patience with me.
He’s there, ‘All I’m saying is that he appears to display a higher than normal rate of concentration, memory and problem-solving capacities.’
‘Oh,’ I go, trying not to sound too disappointed?
‘He came to me a few weeks ago,’ he goes, ‘and said he was interested in joining the Maths Club. I set it up a few months ago for the fifth and sixth years.’
‘But he’s still in the junior school,’ I go. ‘I’m not sure if I approve of that.’
‘Well, I told him – rather patronizingly, as it turns out – that it might be a bit too advanced for a boy of ten.’
‘Good. I don’t want him turning out a geek – no offence.’
JP smiles at that. Secretly, they all love watching me hammer Fionn.
He goes, ‘That’s when he told me he’d been giving quite a bit of thought recently to the Collatz Conjecture – in other words the 3n + 1 problem. I said to him, “What do you know about the Collatz Conjecture, Ronan?” and he said, “Only that it’s one of the great unsolved problems in mathematics.” Then he went on to explain it to me in perfect detail. “Well, you let f (n) be a function defined on the positive integers, such that f (n) = n/2 if n = 0 and f (n) = (3n+1) if n = 1…”’
I’m there, ‘This is Ronan we’re talking about?’
‘Yes,’ he goes. ‘Ross, he understood that when you form a sequence by performing this operation repeatedly, starting with any positive integer and taking the result at each step as the input at the next, the process will eventually reach the number 1, irrespective of what positive integer is chosen at the outset.’
‘And you’re saying this makes him a genius?’
‘I don’t know. He certainly should be tested.’
‘Fair enough. Are we talking, I don’t know, opening his actual head up here?’
He laughs in my face. He’s got balls, I’ll give him that.
‘No,’ he goes. ‘What the school would like is for Ronan to see a child psychologist, one with expertise in performing either the Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children or the Stanford Binet Test… Ross, my suspicion is that, mathematically at least, Ronan is inside the top 0.001 per cent of the population.’
Which can’t be bad.
Something suddenly occurs to me, roysh, and it must occur to Fionn at exactly the same time because he storts, like, shaking his head before I even open my mouth.
‘So, you’re saying…’ I go.
He’s there, ‘No!’
‘… that this scam he’s been banging on about – with the roulette wheel – could actually work?’
‘Ross, what I’m saying is, we owe it to him as a school to help him discover whatever extraordinary abilities he might possess and see to it that he gets an education commensurate with those abilities…’
I’m there, ‘Er, that sounds like it might end up actually costing me money. No, fock that – we’re going to take a casino for a lot of money…’
The croupier bird looks at me. ‘I’m not saying necessarily this one,’ I go.
JP gets in on the act then. ‘Ross, it’s not Rainman.’
I’m there, ‘But who says it can’t be?’
Fionn shakes his head. ‘So you’re going to exploit this talent your son has for your own financial gain?’
‘Well,’ I go, ‘sometimes you’ve got to bet big to win big. I mean, I’ve been looking at you tonight – what the fock are you doing, betting on red the whole time? It’s actually storting to piss me off.’
‘I’m playing to a strategy,’ he goes, ‘based on minimum risk and slow but steady gains.’
I’m there, ‘Yeah? Well, you play roulette like you played rugby – in other words, safe.’
Of course, I know how bang out of order that is – Fionn was one of the best backs I’ve ever seen play the game, although you’d never admit that to his face.
Even JP’s giving me daggers. It’s, like, there is a line – and he knows I’ve crossed it.
‘So what’s your strategy here?’ Fionn goes, all pissy with me now.
I’m there, ‘Me? I’m doing birthdays – mine, Honor’s, Ronan’s…’
He has the actual cheek to laugh. ‘I’ve just watched you lose three hundred dollars in ten minutes,’ he goes.
Of course, I reach into my pocket and whip out a wad bigger than he’ll ever see in his life. I go, ‘Well, there’s plenty more where that came from.’
He just, like, stares at it and, needless to sa
y, he’s bulling – focking schoolteacher.
JP goes, ‘Come on, guys, this is stupid – we’re all mates. We’re over here for Christian, remember?’
I’m there, ‘Fock Christian! Where is he tonight? Probably off having dinner with George focking Lucas. He doesn’t want to know us anymore – have you not copped that yet?’
Fionn tells me to grow up.
I peel off two twenties and slap them down on the, I don’t know, felt table. ‘Get yourselves a focking drink,’ I go. ‘I don’t want you saying that, as well as exploiting my son, I also never stand my round.’
Then I walk back to the Star Wars Casino.
Ro’s still awake. He’s actually sitting up, looking through the Yellow Pages with the little Reggie Kray half-glasses that I got him for his birthday a couple of years ago. Clear glass.
‘Alright, Rosser?’ he goes.
I’m there, ‘Cool. Nice meal with Sorcha and Erika actually – you should have come.’
‘Ah, I ate with Big Juice,’ he goes, not even looking up. ‘Doorty big steak.’
‘You are coming with us to see the dolphins tomorrow, aren’t you? We’re bringing Honor.’
He’s there, ‘Yeah,’ but he sounds kind of, like, distracted?
I’m there, ‘Hey what are you up to?’
‘It’s mad,’ he goes, finally looking at me over the top of his glasses. ‘Prostitution is illegal over here, but they get around it by calling themselves entertainers. Here, have a listen to this, Rosser. Slim and petite. Thin and busty. Firm and friendly. Tyra and Christy. Tammy and Barbie. Former model. Private dancer. Feminine passable. Can you believe this?’
‘Mad,’ I go, playing along. He’s only doing it to put the shits up me anyway.
He’s there, ‘Ebody dream girl. Leather fetishists. Soccer mom. Amber and Kimi. Trish the Dish…’
He storts laughing then. ‘Lusty Heather – Light as a Feather!’
I laugh along with him.
Then I go, ‘Get some sleep, Ro. We’ve a long day ahead of us tomorrow.’
‘He’s wising off at me again.’
Big Juice is back from the breakfast buffet, towering over me.
‘I wasn’t,’ I go, sounding – I admit it – like a focking twelve-year-old girl. ‘I’m actually just sitting here eating my pancakes and drinking my coffee.’
Ro goes, ‘Ah, he was flapping his mouth off, Big Juice – like he was down the precinct.’
It’s like Ro’s been given one of those dolls, where you pull the cord and it, like, says shit.
‘Sir,’ Big Juice goes, ‘how ’bout I punch your jaw loose, then pull out your fucking intestines?’
Ro cracks his hole laughing. He’s like, ‘Pull out your fooken intestines! Ah, I need to be writing these down.’
I’m there, ‘Okay, whatever. Can we be serious for, like, five minutes here?’
‘Go on, so,’ Ronan goes, still shaking his head. ‘What’s on your mind?’
I’m there, ‘Okay, that scam you’ve been banging on about – are you serious about it?’
He looks at Big Juice, like he’s trying to decide whether they can trust me or not. They were obviously discussing this over dinner last night. Eventually, Big Juice nods at him and Ronan goes, ‘Okay,’ then whips a pen from behind his ear and storts scribbling on, like, a napkin?
When he’s finished he pushes it across the table to me. It’s like:
‘This equation minimizes the sum of the squares of all the residuals,’ he goes.
Of course, I don’t even know whether I’m looking at it the right way up.
He’s there, ‘Or to put it more simply…’ and he takes back the napkin, flips it over and writes on the other side:
‘This one works with an ordinary least squares estimator,’ he goes, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you I’m storting to feel faint again.
‘Are you still with me?’ he goes.
I’m there, ‘Errr…’
He laughs then. ‘I’m only pulling your wire, Rosser. We’re not gonna be needing maths – which I have to tell you I’m pretty sad about. No, see, it’s computers these days.’
I’m there, ‘So explain to me – and imagine for a minute that you’re the adult and I’m the ten-year-old child – how it actually works.’
‘Okay,’ he goes, ‘it’s like this. Most people think that roulette’s a game of random numbers. But it’s not, Rosser. By feeding certain data into a computer about the speed at which the ball and the wheel are travelling, it’s possible for a computer to predict, with a high level of certainty, where the ball is going to land.’
I’m there, ‘Okay, first of all, how do you measure the speed of the wheel and the ball?’
‘By putting a camera on it.’
‘Er – and how do you propose to do that? These casinos have got, like, surveillance everywhere. I mean, they’ve even got their own cameras on the tables.’
‘Exactly,’ Ronan goes. ‘We’re going to use one of those.’
I actually laugh. ‘You’d need to be, like, an expert computer hacker.’
‘Or know someone,’ Big Juice goes, ‘who works in security.’
I look at him. I’m there, ‘Your mate Guido?’ and he nods.
It’s immediately obvious that it’s Christian’s casino we’re talking about hitting.
Ro goes, ‘See, we were racking our brains about how we were gonna do it. We were looking at maybe sticking a filament camera on a pair of glasses. But the picture was too grainy. Then Big Juice had a beer with Guido last night.’
‘He’s an electronics man,’ Big Juice goes. ‘Owes a fortune in back alimony.’
I’m there, ‘So he’s obviously no qualms about this?’
Big Juice laughs, like it’s the stupidest question ever. ‘We pick any table in the house,’ he goes, ‘and he can have the live CCTV feed diverted straight to a laptop computer.’
‘I got a programme,’ Ronan goes, ‘Nudger and Gull got it for me, that’ll study the feed…’
I’m there, ‘Nudger and Gull? Is this what you goys have been doing in the den?’ and suddenly, them hiring Big Juice to look after Ro makes a lot more sense to me.
‘The programme will calculate the speed of the wheel, and, by observing, say, a hundred spins, where the ball is likely to land when travelling at different speeds…’
I’m actually getting excited listening to this. It’s kind of like one of the Ocean’s movies?
‘I’m going to be sitting in our room,’ Ronan goes, ‘with the laptop. Big Juice is going to play the table. The ball spends an average of fifteen seconds in the outer rim of the wheel before the croupier says, “No more bets.” The computer will give us the number in approximately five seconds, which leaves us with ten seconds to get a message to Big Juice and for Big Juice to cover the predicted number.’
‘And how do you propose to do that?’ I go.
‘There’s a broad I know,’ Big Juice goes. ‘Name’s Chelsy. Works as a cocktail waitress. Ronan’s going to talk to her on a radio mic. Most casinos sweep for these things, but only the gaming floor, never the bar. I’ll be able to see her from the table. We’ve worked out a system of signals – a combination of cocktails and trimmings – covering every number on the wheel. Three variant glasses, multiplied by three colours of liquid – clear, red, dark – multiplied by four trimmings – umbrella, one straw, two straws, cherry – gives us thirty-six combinations.’
‘If it’s zero,’ Ronan goes, ‘she puts nothing up on the bar.’
I shake my head. They’ve certainly got it all worked out. ‘So, like, how much do you reckon you could actually win here?’
Ro looks around him, I suppose for, like, dramatic effect? ‘Depends how we want to play it,’ he goes. ‘Do we just bet big on the predicted number and risk them smelling a rat? Or do we extend the chord by two or three numbers on either side and buy ourselves more time at the table?’
‘And, hey,’ Big Juice goes, ‘it also depends o
n the stake, of course.’
I’m there, ‘Okay – what could you do with, like, twenty Gs?’
Now it’s their turn to be impressed. They both look at each other, then back at me, their mouths wide open.
‘You heard me right,’ I go. ‘Twenty focking grandingtons – what could you do with it?’
Big Juice turns to Ro. ‘Even in a brand new casino, I reckon we got a four-, five-hour window before they figure something’s up. In that time, playing cautious, we could turn that into… two million?’
Ronan nods, I suppose you’d have to say, thoughtfully?
End of focking conversation. I stand up. I’m there, ‘I’ll go get you the focking money.’
As I’m walking away, roysh, Ronan goes, ‘You’ve no problem with it being this casino?’ meaning Christian’s casino.
Big Juice goes, ‘There’s no better time to make a run on a joint than in the first week it opens. They’re worrying about all sorts of other shit, see. The fucking paint job in the lobby.’
I think about it for, like, three seconds. ‘Look, it’s not even Christian’s money?’ I go. ‘It’s George focking Lucas’s. And it’s not like he’s short of a few bob.’
I tip upstairs then to get the old man’s cord from the safe in the room. It’s as I’m keying in the combination that I happen to notice the phone book, lying open on the floor, still on Entertainers. My eyes for some reason fix on Lusty Heather – Light as a Feather. The words obviously, but then the face. And I laugh. I actually can’t stop laughing, because I realize that I know her.
I whip out my phone and ring Sorcha. I tell her I’m feeling a bit Moby and would she mind taking Ro and Honor to see the dolphins without me. She goes, ‘Oh my God, poor you! Although, don’t forget, your mum and Trevion are arriving this afternoon. And so are Helen and your dad. We’re all meeting in the cocktail lounge at six.’
Which I already know. MTV want to talk to us about the so-called wedding tomorrow.
‘You poor thing!’ Sorcha goes. ‘Maybe try and get your head down this afternoon.’
I could say something funny in response to that. In the end, I don’t.
I tell her I hope she doesn’t mind me saying this, but she doesn’t dress like a hooker?
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