Authors: Beth Raymer
It was my first time in a casino but certainly not my father’s. In the early years of my parents’ marriage, he and Mom flew out to Vegas a couple of times a year and stayed at the Tropicana. In 1976, a nun from the orphanage called my parents and told them there was a two-week-old baby girl available. My parents had married young and had been trying to have kids for twelve years. They had adopted my sister three years earlier. Now there was a new baby, from a different family. Were they interested? Mom cried “Yes!” but as soon as she hung up, Dad reminded her of the tickets they had, to see Elvis in Vegas that weekend. The next morning they picked me up from Catholic Social Services, named me after the Kiss song “Beth,” which was playing on the radio, left me with Aunt Bonnie, and took off to Vegas. On the evening of the show, Dad found himself at the blackjack table, in the middle of a “hot streak.” Despite my mother’s pleading, Dad refused to quit playing, and they missed Elvis. Twenty-two years later, during their divorce,
Mom repeated this story in front of the judge as proof that my father was a problem gambler.
I finally spotted Dad (hard to miss in his red, white, and blue Ford trucker hat) at the blackjack table and took a seat beside him. It didn’t take much to realize that the gambling laws in the Bahamas were very, very loose. As long as I sat next to my dad, the dealers let me play. They taught me to motion for another card by skimming the bottom of my cards against the felt, and how to gesture “stay” by gliding my hand, palm down, across the cards in front of me. When I was dealt blackjack, Dad would yell “Bethannana! Big-banana!” and give me a high five. I’d take a sip of his beer and wiggle my toes inside my pink glitter jellies in excitement. When I lost all of my chips, Dad peeled another hundred-dollar bill from his money clip and slipped it to me, adding, “Don’t mention a word of this to your mother.”
The same words were muttered when we went to the dog track in Florida. On the Sundays Dad didn’t have to work, we took the T-tops off the white ’77 Stingray Corvette, and went to the matinee races at the Palm Beach Kennel Club. A thick humid air rushing through the car, George Jones blaring from the stereo, and the backs of my knees sticking to the red leather seats, I read the racing form I’d cut from
The Palm Beach Post
. My dad first took me to the track when I was seven, and there he taught me the basics of a racing form. Even though I knew how to tell the difference in seconds between the dog’s time and the average winning time on the track and knew enough to check up on how long it had been since the dog had last practiced or competed, these facts mattered little. My seven-year-old sensibility ruled. I was a girl; I liked girl dogs. I was skinny; I liked skinny dogs. In the time it took me to circle the names of the lightest girl dogs of all twelve races, we had arrived.
Before each race, in exchange for the twenty dollars in betting money he gave me, Dad had me run down to the paddock where the dogs could be viewed, and report back whether any of them had taken a shit. This was part of his handicapping strategy. Dad believed that the dogs that went to the bathroom right before they
ran were lighter and would therefore run faster. On the rare occasions that a dog would make too wide a turn and crash snout first into a concrete wall, or get electrocuted by faulty machinery, I brought the race form home with me. Alone in my room, I tore the dog’s name out of the form, tucked it under my Virgin Mary night-light, and recited ten Hail Marys.
Though gambling caused many fights between my mom and dad, I associated it with some of the happiest moments of my childhood. I rarely saw my father in higher spirits than when he handed the dealer a stack of hundreds, and watched the money spread into a perfectly shaped fan across the grass-green felt. It gave me a jolt too. I clapped as the dealer did this. I knew that when we returned to the hotel room there’d be a fight. But for the moment, at the tables, I was at peace. Dad wasn’t irritated or storming off to work. He was here, beside me, giving high fives to strangers. Together we were going to win enough to buy a new Corvette, a new house. These casino resort vacations top my list of good memories, right up there with running out of my room Christmas morning to find my stocking stuffed with shiny, hot pink scratch-off lottery tickets.
Those were some of the things I knew about gambling, and I told Dink all of them during the interview. After spending so much time with no one to talk to but Otis and Jowtee it felt good to talk to someone, so I went on for an hour, describing the motel I lived in and my morning routine of walking to the El Cortez for the ninety-nine-cent breakfast. I told him about my first weeks in Las Vegas and how I became obsessed with Flip It, the game where spinners flip dollar tokens up onto a shelf and a metal bar pushes an already existing stack of coins toward the edge. The coins that fall over the edge, you win. After work, I would drive to the Stratosphere, one of the handful of casinos that had Flip It, and circle each machine, peering into it at all angles. After determining which machine’s tokens would be the first to fall, I’d begin to play. One evening, the
casino manager took me aside. I thought he was going to yell at me for knocking my hip against the machine, which I sometimes did to help push tokens over the edge. Instead, the manager told me that he’d seen me the last few evenings and advised me to stop playing. Flip It was a gimmick. It was for “retards.”
“You were addicted to Flip It?” Dink asked.
“I wasn’t
addicted,”
I answered, rolling my eyes.
“How am I supposed to trust you with my money? You’re gonna rob me to go play Flip It.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. I hadn’t realized he planned to entrust me with his money. I too began twirling my curls.
“Good. Hours are eight ’til five with a four-hour lunch break between ten and two, Monday through Saturday. Sundays we work eight to four straight. Pay is twenty dollars an hour, off the books, but you get bonuses, vacations, free meals.”
Despite the experience gleaned from my dad’s small-time gambling, I was not qualified to work for Dink Inc. Dink was a professional sports gambler. He bet on the NBA, NFL, PGA, NCAA basketball, NCAA football, tennis, WNBA, the Little League World Series, Miss America Pageants, the National Spelling Bee, and the Coney Island hot dog eating contest. He specialized in horses, hockey, baseball, and also dabbled in poker. When he spoke of money lines, run lines, ten-cent lines, spreads, odds, and propositions, it all went over my head.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You come highly recommended by someone I have a lot of faith in.”
Suddenly, a guy a little older than me walked into the office without knocking. His Y-back tank top flaunted his self-tanned, salon-waxed, well-built upper body. He tossed a wad of money onto the table. It was rubber-banded in the middle and folded in half. Dink introduced him as Robbie J, one of “the crew.” He greeted me with a wink and patted Otis on his head. I smiled hello.
“You think I’m good lookin’?” he said.
“You’re okay,” I said.
“Oh sweetie, I’m more than okay.” He flexed his biceps.
Dink’s cell phone rang. An office phone rang. The computers began to ding.
“New York’s moving, what do you want me to do?” Robbie J asked.
“Call Jazz,” Dink said.
Robbie J picked up two receivers and feverishly dialed two separate phones, simultaneously. Dink grabbed for his phone and dialed a number.
“Responsibility to come on time to this job is number one,” Dink continued. His palm cupped the receiver pushed to his ear. “You have to have the mind for numbers and be able to pick up things that have to do with numbers, number two. And
don’t steal
, number three. Most people fail at one of those.” He uncupped his hand. “Nine-nine-two Dinky, lookin’ for a line on the New York Liberty, WNBA. Over for a dime, please.”
Still seated in his office chair, Dink wheeled toward the window. “There’s more crew members, two very important ones. But one’s in a cage and one’s on a yacht in Europe.” He unpeeled two glossy photographs from the wall and handed them to me. One photo was a close-up of a fat brown hamster with watery black eyes. The other was of a petite blonde in her fifties with lips painted coral. She cradled dozens of banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills and proudly presented these bundles to the photographer, as though they were a newborn baby. “That’s Jyrki, my hamster”—named after Jyrki Lumme, a former NHL defenseman. “And Tulip, my wife.”
Dink noticed that another race was about to start on one of the televisions. “I’m gonna bet the two here. First-time starter. Could be a total zero.
“One-six-four Ivy,” he said into the receiver. “Hollywood Park, race four. The two to win for a nickel.”
The horses shot out of the starting gate and Dink bounced up and down in his chair as though he were the jockey. Robbie J continued talking hurriedly on the phones. The two horses won and Dink shouted, “I’m a genius! I’m a genius!” He hovered over his racing form like a schoolboy trying to keep other kids from cheating,
jotted something down, and quickly turned the page. “So?” he said. “You want the job?”
I had no idea what my job would entail, but it was the best interview I had ever had.
“Yes,” I said. “I want the job.”
The next morning, I drove to the casino where Dink and I were scheduled to meet. The pitiless sun scalded the floor of the High Desert. Along the shoulder, brittle branched shrubs caught the litter tossed from passing cars and nearby construction sites. In the distance, rising out of rippled sand dunes, appeared the Rampart casino, a Mediterranean mansion surrounded by fifty acres of lush landscape. It was the first time since moving to Vegas that I had seen grass. Along the entranceway, jackrabbits found shade beneath the palm trees’ sprawling canopies.
The casino’s sports book had the feel of a Fortune 500 retiree’s office. Watercolors of horses and boxers hung on the mahogany walls. In the back was a small bar with lit-up shelves showcasing highball glasses and bottles of top-shelf liquor. When I walked in, a group of old men turned and looked at me.
“Ya lost, doll?” asked a man in his seventies. His steel-gray hair went nicely with his wire-framed glasses.
“I don’t think so,” I said, shyly. “I’m meeting someone here.”
“Who?” they wanted to know.
“Dink,” I said.
They smiled. “Dinky! Whadda ya meetin’ Dinky for?”
“I work for him. I just got hired.”
“You work in this business before?” asked a man whose eyeglasses were even thicker than Dink’s. “Bobby, by the way. Bobby the Owl.”
“No,” I said.
“You’re lucky,” said the Owl, “Dinky’s a good guy to work for. He buys his crew breakfast and lunch. If you can, try and bring us in some bagels, will ya?”
“Excellent hockey bettor, Dinky. Guy’s made a fortune off that
godforsaken sport,” said a young man at the ticket counter. Behind him, numbers flashed on an electronic board as massive and complicated as the giant train schedule in New York’s Penn Station. But instead of train schedules it listed every upcoming sporting event in the world.
“Lemme give ya your first piece of advice,” the old man said. “After you leave here, go and get yourself a pair of galoshes. Your new boss is a crybaby. He thinks there’s a black cloud followin’ him all the time. His team’s up. Score’s one hundred to seventy-two. He has minus six. Guy’s a nervous wreck. Fidgetin’ round his chair like he’s got hemorrhoids. Nice wife though. Pretty. You should meet my wife. Beauty-ful woman. If you wanna see her, she’ll be on display today at three o’clock in the high-limit slot room.”
“Dinky!”
Dink walked into the sports book, setting the room abuzz. The old men gravitated to him like reporters at a postgame interview. They wanted to know who he liked in hoops and what he thought about last night’s winner at the buzzer. And what about today’s games, was there any value in the Bruins line? Dink crossed his arms over his chest. He answered some of the questions with questions of his own, dismissed others, and tugged self-consciously on the bottom of his too-tight Caesars Palace T-shirt. A cocktail waitress passed by with a tray of coffees. She was young and blond and half naked and not one of the men turned to look at her.
“Hey, I know you!” came a voice behind me.
I turned around to see Chunky, a regular from the Thai restaurant. He used to come in and leave me hundred-dollar tips on his forty-dollar bill. Not wanting to walk the ten steps to the betting window, Chunky asked if I could make a bet for him. “Belmont, race two, fifty-dollar quinella for the five and the seven.” He handed me the money for the bet, then slipped me a hundred dollar tip.
“No, I’ll do it for free,” I said. “I need to learn.”
“Take the money,” the men sang in unison.
“Take it,” Dink said. “Chunky’s on a roll. You’re struggling in life. If he wants to give you money, let him give you money.”
“I’m not struggling in life,” I said.
“You live in the worst neighborhood in Vegas,” Dink said. “Trust me, you’re struggling.”
“I live there so I won’t struggle,” I said.
“That means you’re struggling.”
I took the money and wrote Chunky’s bet onto the back of my hand so I wouldn’t make a mistake at the window.
Above us, horses raced on each of the fourteen television screens. Each time Dink began to teach me something about placing a bet, loud cheers and moans interrupted us. After a while, we stopped talking gambling and sipped our Coca-Colas.
“Do you like music?” Dink asked. “There’s a Dink Inc. office field trip tomorrow. No one else can go. Adult responsibilities.”
The field trip included flying to San Diego, catching a Mighty Ducks game in Anaheim, and seeing Dink’s favorite band, the Old 97’s. All expenses paid by Dink Inc.
“Really?!” I shrieked. Then, in a calmer, less eager voice, I said I’d love to.
“Here,” he said. Using both hands he pulled his wallet from his back pocket. It was as thick as a Big Mac. Money oozed from its corners. He handed me three hundred dollars. “To cover field-trip-related expenses.”
The next morning I took Otis to the Courtyard animal hospital and spa and paid extra so he could have storybook hour and a suite to himself. Inside McCarran Airport, beside the Megabucks slot machines, I found Dink waiting for me. A New York Knickerbockers duffel bag hung from his shoulder; a white terry-cloth headband pushed his curls away from his face. He held his sports ticker, a beeper-sized gadget which displayed live scores, an inch from his eye. In an effort to bring the text into focus, he cocked his glasses, squinted his left eye shut, and scrunched up his nose. He peered into it with the intensity of a seventh grader looking at his first “tip and strip” nudie-girl pen. From the side of his mouth, his tongue curled upward.