Conrad Whitlock

Conrad Whitlock is 66 and the tournament director. Tall and a little stooped, with thin white hair combed back, a long, wrinkled face and pale eyes that squint to see, he is formal and proud and speaks of the laws of bridge as of sacred scripture. He has directed tournaments for forty years, and it was he who ruled on the board 23 appeal.

He lives in a two-story house in a suburb north of Chicago, with a study of shelves to the ceiling, full of dark-covered rulebooks, a pendulum clock he sets himself and a permanently set-up bridge table of green felt, where he plays solitaire on Sundays. On the wall, photos of old tournaments, all framed the same way.

He wears a navy-blue blazer, a director's badge on his chest, a loosened burgundy tie and, under his arm, a metal clipboard he never lets go. He speaks slowly, choosing each sentence like someone reading a statute aloud, and ends with a small nod, as if minutes had just been drawn up.

He explains patiently how the screen that cuts the table in half works: each player sees only the opponent on his side, the bidding goes back and forth on a tray beneath the gap and, when it ends, the screen rises a hand's breadth and the table becomes one again. He ruled on the appeal by the laws of the game, he states, and not by what he was asked.

When the question suggests he gave the victory as a gift to one of the teams, Conrad answers that it is forty years of refereeing and that nobody has ever said that to his face. He asks that the question be asked again when there is proof and drums his fingers on the metal clipboard: the pride of an untouched referee or the rigidity of someone who prefers the rulebook to eye contact?