The White Ball's Hidden Game

I had a ball. My master knew it, too.

He had me hide it for an entire night. Cui San thought it was an easy win, offered me six gold and seven, then raised the stakes to one point per kilometer.

My master tapped his knee twice with his index finger. “Two taps. That’s the killing shot.” He knocked open the gate in my heart, and after that night, every ball I played had an edge. A devastating break. Lights out. Paperwork done. By the time I’d finished, my master was gone. All that remained on the chair was a Queen of Spades. “Ten years ago, Sheng Tai. The seventh game wasn’t black gold.” That card was the same one missing from my father’s desk drawer.

Later, Wang Chen told me that what my father lost in the provincial capital all those years ago wasn’t a game of pool. It was a signature.

Qiao Manman carried a torn scrap of a contract in her arms. She said her father was the seventh man to handle affairs at Sheng Tai, and before he died, he said only one thing: “I wasn’t the one who did it.” I traced the trail from the provincial capital to Haizhou, then to Beishuo, where I listened to Tie Jun tell me about the person my master had hidden outside the door all those years ago. Before the contract was torn open, I thought it was a gambling game. Afterward, I realized it was money laundering: making the dead into guarantors and the living into debt ledgers. Under that light, Qin Zhongyuan slipped paper beneath the table, helping them catch the leverage everyone around it had left them.

In the end, Zhao Wenqu asked me to play one more rack with him. He wasn’t trying to win. He wanted to force me to choose: take the famous shot that had made my master’s name, or finish on the table the route my father had never been able to complete.

Pool is entertainment. Pool is a sport.

Gambling with pool only destroys people.

Addiction to gambling leads to ruin, bankruptcy, and broken families.

I didn’t write this book to teach people how to gamble. I wrote it so they can see the price of gambling.