THE HAMMER FILES: Jamie Diamond’s Gamble
The Gamble
The phone rang with the kind of impatience only a man in deep trouble can muster. I answered, the receiver cool against my ear. The voice on the other end was a familiar one, a voice that belonged to a man who saw the world as a game of numbers and percentages. Jamie Diamond.
Jamie was a good man in a bad business. A card shark who had the kind of mind that could do calculus on the fly, a genius for patterns and probabilities. He’d made his fortune on his wits, not his fists, and in a city full of sharks, he was one of the few who played with a moral code. I’d helped him out of a tight spot a few years back, and a debt like that gets paid in coin, but it’s held in loyalty.
“Jack,” his voice was tight, a string about to snap. “I’m in a jam. A real one.”
“What’s the score, Jamie?” I said.
“The place is called ‘The Grand Reserve.’ All velvet ropes and cocktail bunnies with more money than sense,” he said. “The game is blackjack. And the fix is in. I’ve been losing. Not just a little, but a lot. My instincts are screaming at me that something’s wrong. But I’m too close. It’s the kind of grift that needs a cold eye to spot.”
I waited for the hook. It came quick.
“I need two sets of sharp eyes, Jack. And yours are the sharpest I know.”
He’d laid his cards on the table. He was in deep, and he needed a partner. I looked out my window at the city lights, the million-dollar promises and the ten-cent truths. It was a world Jamie knew how to navigate, but it was a world where even a genius could get lost.
