The Wheel

The tall, handsome, tuxedoed man nodded back at Mr. Cantini, and it was obvious that he knew what to do. With his very polite manners he asked Liam and Eve to follow him.

“Mr. Cantini is very grateful for what you have done, finding his car, and he would like me to take you on a short tour to show you this—his place—the best nightclub in town. You can order anything in the bar if you like, and for you the bar is free tonight.”

Eve peeped up at the man like she was checking him out, while Liam didn’t react at all.

“Free, free. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah,” Eve jabbered to herself, and then she pushed Liam in his side a bit to get his attention as they walked away.

“There, there. The bar, there. We go there, it’s free. Yeah, yeah,” she said to both the tall man and Liam.

Liam didn’t mind; it seemed like he could have been taken anywhere.

“Okay, here we go,” Patrick heard Tobias say as the threesome on the screen changed course.

It became obvious that all the staff in the nightclub now had gotten Mr. Cantini’s message and that most of the other guests also knew what was in Eve’s knitted bag. As they approached the bar, people moved aside to give them space. Both Liam and Eve were short, but the kind, tall man helped them each up on a bar stool that he wound up higher so they could reach the bar top properly.

Another nice young man behind the bar, one of the bartenders in a white jacket, showed up to serve them. Eve smiled…

“Yeah, yeah. Free, free,” she jabbered.

Both she and Liam were given a small cocktail book with lots and lots of drinks listed. Eve was quick to open her book. “Look, look,” she pushed Liam in his side. “It’s pictures, they have picture drinks here,” she exclaimed out loud in surprise.

The other guests at the bar giggled, and after that Liam started to open his cocktail book too. So what to choose?

“I can recommend…” the bartender tried to start a conversation.

But it was no use. Liam had already gotten stuck looking at various pictures in his usual thorough manner, taking his time. Eve, however, was quick, turning page after page, really digging in. After Liam had turned two pages he started to talk, pointing at a picture of a drink.

“I like purple…. There,” he said making some kind of odd, happy face when pronouncing the word purple.

He repeated this on a couple of pages with Eve adding, “Yeah, yeah,” approvingly each time.

“Do you want me to make you a purple drink?” the bartender tried to ask him.

Liam looked up from his book at the bartender happily, nodding up and down so forcefully that his back joined in.

“I like purple,” Liam repeated.

Eve turned back some pages in her book and pointed at a picture. “Red, red, I like this red. There, there!” she pointed out to the bartender, who smiled back at her.

“So, we’re all settled then,” the tall tuxedoed man said from right behind them.

“I like purple,” Liam repeated once again, and Eve jabbered her usual “Yeah, yeah,” approvingly.

The bartender moved away to make the drinks.

At this point on the tube display in front of Patrick and Tobias, all the staff in Mr. Cantini’s nightclub had been marked by frogman with a different color. Liam and Eve had been labeled purple, and I wonder why. Those people running the tube displays had put on some of those strange headsets and spectacles Patrick saw before.

“Now they can access people by their color,” Tobias explained to Patrick, pointing. Patrick nodded back, but his particular interest now was about what that barman was up, to mixing Liam’s and Eve’s drinks. Patrick now intensely followed his every move on the display before him.

Mr. Cantini’s orders to his staff were clear: Liam and Eve should be drugged, taken to the main roulette table—“The Wheel”—and made to lose all the money they had been given. That way, fully open and in front of everyone, nobody could blame him for winning the money back. So the bartender was now going to add something extra into Liam and Eve’s drinks.

Before he could do the deed though, the bartender spilled the contents of his small, hidden bottle when he dropped it, because it suddenly became too slippery to hold. When he bended down to pick up the bottle, he felt a push, which made him drop it again and spill the rest. How the bottle got so slippery and where that push came from he had no idea, and he looked around himself and at his fellow bartenders in bewilderment.

He searched for a new one of these small bottles, but he couldn’t find any; as if by some coincidence all those small bottles had gotten lost, almost like magic. The two glasses he had put forward for Liam and Eve’s drinks were still empty, and the other staff, including that tall tuxedoed man standing behind Liam and Eve watching his clumsiness, threw angry looks back at him.

This bartender was well prepared, though, and he patted his pocket for a small something that he could use instead. So first he filled the glasses halfway with liquor, lemonade, and something that made Liam’s drink look purple and Eve’s drink red. Then he turned away a bit, pretending to talk to a colleague, while in secret picking out that small foil package from his inner pocket. “But, what the…,”—the inner pocket was buttoned up by a button he never had noticed before. “Where did that come from?” he asked himself, looking stupid. The bartender’s colleague became impatient and left, giving him an angry look.

Okay, that didn’t work, but this bar was well prepared. The bartender put away those drinks he had started to prepare, as if he had a better idea for making those Liam and Eve drinks look tastier. Next he got hold of two new, fancier glasses from a glass cupboard behind him. Patrick who was watching intense guessed that they were well prepared with some invisible drug substance smeared inside the glasses or something.

As the bartender placed both glasses in front of himself to start to pour the drinks again, he felt someone tapping his shoulder for attention. He swirled around, but no one was there. Meantime the glasses in front of him and two similar ones in the glass case had been marked different colors by a frogman, and, with the speed of lightning, as the bartender turned to see who was tapping him, the two prepared glasses were exchanged with the ordinary clean ones. The barman turned back again puzzled and finished prepping the drinks for Liam and Eve.

Liam smiled innocently as he received his purple drink with a straw and mini umbrella, and Eve looked equally happy having her drink served. The drinks didn’t contain that much alcohol, as the barman had to take in consideration the drug he thought was in there. However, Liam was not used to alcohol at all and the same with Eve, so the small amount they had did make an effect.

Some impatience started to grow in the tall tuxedoed man now standing beside Eve at the bar, with a soft drink in his hand, keeping her company. Eve talked, jabbered and talked, and he just had to listen and smile to whatever she wanted to talk about. Her favorite subject—housekeeping, keeping her small apartment neat and clean— could have driven anyone crazy. Liam talked too, but to a fellow on his other side who was standing a bit away, thus making him talk loudly.

Liam had put his briefcase on the bar, and one by one he picked out his paper slips with car pictures on them, which he then was showing to the uninterested fellow who trying hard to ignore him. But it was not that easy to ignore Liam after he had drunk half of his drink. Stretching up proudly on the bar stool, he held up his paper slips high and…

“I LIKE CARS,” he proudly announced to his new bar friend.

It took quite some time for the tall, kind, still smiling, tuxedoed man to get Liam and Eve away from that bar, and in silence he promised himself never to try that again. He wasn’t sure if the drug he thought Liam and Eve had gotten in their drinks really worked because of their normally odd behavior.

So, would Liam and Eve be willing to follow him to the wheel? No problem, it turned out. They willingly, but now in a more spread-out manner than before, followed the man to another corner of the room. This time he had a harder time keeping track of his small party, as Liam after his drink obviously liked to talk to people, showing his paper slips to many as they passed. Eve wasn’t any easier to keep track of, as she was looking all over the place, diverting both here and there, checking everything out that evoked her interest.

The tall, kind, tuxedoed man didn’t smile that much anymore, but he brought two seemingly happy people to the gambling section of the nightclub and installed them at the main roulette table called “The Wheel,” right in the middle where the big money was at stake. He explained, or at least he tried to explain, the rules of the game to Liam and Eve, but he had to give it up. After a while trying, he asked for assistance from other staff members there, and they had a brief meeting on what to do.

This is how their plan panned out: Liam and Eve together received a $50,000 credit via one marker worth that amount. They wanted to exchange that marker for a purple one and make that worth $50,000 instead—at least Liam thought so.  The staff humored them.

To make things easy, the staff explained that they were to put their marker on either red or black. (And this time Liam’s “I like purple” talk was ignored.) If they placed their marker on red and the roulette marble ended in one of the roulette wheel’s red holes, they would win another $50,000. If the marble got into a black hole, they would lose their $50,000 reward. This was explained so everyone around the table could hear.

“Yeah, yeah. Win, win,” Eve jabbered back after each explanation like she understood, while Liam held on to his purple marker, showing it to everyone.

After the explanation, everyone at the table prepared for the first spin. The croupier proudly announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets please,” and people did.

“Red, red. Win, win,” Eve jabbered, and took the purple marker from Liam. With assistance from their tall tuxedoed man, their $50,000 bet was made on red.

As their bet was placed, two things happened in secret. There was no way the gambling house was going to let Liam and Eve win; they just wanted this thing over with as fast as possible and for Liam and Eve to get out of the place. The wheel was very sophisticatedly rigged, and from a control room in the back everything was monitored and set up for a black number to come up. But from where Tobias and Patrick followed the game, something else happened. On one tube display the spinning roulette wheel was locked up, making the surrounding wheel spin instead, and very quickly a circular pattern of red light was emerging, blocking all the black holes.

Patrick smiled widely as he saw the blocking pattern instantly laid out over the wheel and even more so when the marble in the end just had to go into a red-marked hole, winning Liam and Eve another $50,000.

The tall tuxedoed man seemed to lose all color in his face, even if he was still smiling. The head croupier and the rest of his staff around the table just had to maintain their expression too. The people in the back control room were both confused and stunned as the marble dropped in a red hole in spite of their scam setup.

There was a small, amused mumble among the other players around the wheel, as this single bet was by far the highest bid most of them had ever seen.

“Yeah, yeah. $50,000. Win, win,” Eve jabbered beside Liam, whose happy expression hadn’t changed.

“I like… RED. I like red” he switched to, and accordingly he claimed another $50,000 marker, but now a red one, as if to show people that he now had gotten a hang of the game.

The croupier ordered a short break, as there was a major win that had to be taken care of, although the real reason was: what to do now? Someone from the back room showed up to give instructions, whispering that Mr. Cantini wanted his money back—they had checked their system and were going to try again.

There didn’t seem to be any problem to go another round, as Liam and Eve showed no sign of wanting to leave, and, anyhow, no one had told them when or how this game ended.

Liam got his new now RED $50,000 marker, and the word from the croupier once again was spoken: “Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets, please.” People did as before, although this time most bet with Liam.

“Red, red. Win, win,” Eve jabbered once more, now taking the red marker from Liam and urging the tall, tuxedoed man to add that to their $50,000 purple marker already in place at the table.

The tuxedoed man hesitated for a second and looked around, but he couldn’t refuse or do anything contrary with all the other guests watching.

The marble was released from a higher spot than before, and tension in the room rose up to the ceiling. Again, despite what the back control room did, the marble ended up in red.

“Yeah, yeah. Win, win,” Eve was the only one heard through the profound silence, jabbering beside Liam who again looked happily around.

“I like red,” he joined Eve after a while.

The rumor started to spread and people started to gather around the wheel. From the back control room Mr. Cantini was phoned up and informed of what was happening. He was quick to excuse himself from his guests, and then he went to the nearest back door to meet with his people who had gathered there.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” Mr. Cantini shouted loudly. “I WANT MY MONEY BACK AND I WANT THOSE IDIOTS OUT OF HERE!”

There was a ten-second silence as Mr. Cantini furiously stared at each one of them, nobody daring to speak.

“Now, you fix that table and get my money BACK. DO YOU UNDERSTAND!”

No one dared to question him, and this time Mr. Cantini followed them to the back control room just in time to witness Liam and Eve win another round at red.

“What the… GET THEM OUT OF HERE! Mr. Cantini yelled. “IDIOTS! DAMNED IDIOTS, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? Just get them out of here and bring back my money no matter what!”

“But what about the payoff? They have indeed won a lot of money,” one person seemingly in charge notified him.

That look he got from Mr. Cantini indicated no good. But still, Mr. Cantini had to control himself and his furious anger.

“Pay them. Whatever, pay them, but don’t let that money out of your sight—I want it back.”

In the silence around them, Liam and Eve were told that the game had ended and that they had won. They were given a full $350,000… in cash, as Eve insisted, and, like before, she took out all her picture envelopes and placed them before her on the roulette table, interrupting any further gambling as she thoroughly filled her envelopes with money and put them back in her colorful knitted bag in front of everyone’s eyes.

Mr. Cantini watched it all happening on monitors in the back room with murder in his eyes. Eve’s constant “Yeah, yeah. Win, win” jabbering while stuffing her picture envelopes crammed full with his money almost made him explode.

The tall, kind, tuxedoed man, now quite pale in his face, guided Liam and Eve away from the wheel and the gambling area surrounding it, back towards the main entrance. He and Mr. Cantini didn’t dare guide them elsewhere as there were witnesses all over, following Eve’s money bag and their slightest move; they had to be seen having left the building in good shape. What was going to happen thereafter, outside, in the street, was quite a different matter, and Mr. Cantini’s intention was not to let them get far.

…

To be continued next Friday.