Loaded Dice (4 page)

“You caught them?”

Wily slapped the table. “It was absolutely beautiful. One of the guys had really long fingernails. He had a tiny
razor
beneath one of them. He was slicing up the side of the cards, marking all the nines.”

“A razor?”

“Yeah. He baked it in an oven, made it pliable.”

“How did you catch them?”

Wily laughed, really enjoying himself now. “That’s the best part. The guy must have realized we were on to him. He got scared and started tugging at his collar. Guess what happened?”

“He cut himself.”

“Sliced a fucking artery,” Wily roared. “Nearly bled to death right there on the baccarat table. Oh man, you should have been there.”

“You thought this was funny?”

Wily was holding his sides and appeared ready to fall out of his chair. The guys sitting at the adjacent table had overheard the conversation and decided to leave; so did several other patrons. Wily was oblivious to their departure, his face beet red.

“I’ve got it on tape, you want to see it,” he choked. “It’s priceless.”

6

G
erry Valentine was sweating like a hooker teaching a Sunday school class. His cell phone, which was on buzzer mode and sat in his pocket, had gone off twelve times in the past hour. Three times he’d pulled it out and glanced at the face.

His wife.

Something was wrong, and he thought he knew what. Yolanda had found the grocery bag stuffed with bills he’d hidden under the bed. That, or a creditor had started calling the house and was threatening her.

Gerry owed a lot. How much, he wasn’t entirely sure. Which was why going into his father’s business had seemed like a good idea.

His old man made some serious coin. He was pretty tight, but Gerry had a feeling that becoming a grandfather might loosen the purse strings. Then Gerry would touch him for a loan, and get the wolves away from the door.

He wiped at his brow and saw his classmates giving him funny looks. Four other people were enrolled in Bart Calhoun’s school along with him. Tara, a legal secretary from Boston who was supersmart; Getty, a gay stockbroker from San Francisco who believed ripping off casinos was more ethical than robbing pension funds; and Amin and Pash, the Indian brothers whose parents back in Bombay thought they were enrolled in UNLV’s hotel management program.
They
weren’t sweating, and Gerry guessed he was making a spectacle of himself.

“You with us, Gerry?” their teacher asked.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Gerry replied.

“Good. I was getting worried.” Calhoun pointed a crooked finger at the blackboard at the front of the room. He’d been barred from every casino in Nevada because of his ability to card-count. He was a cowboy and wore denim shirts with pocket flaps, and wide silver belt buckles. “Today our topic is Flying Under the Radar. I’d suggest taking notes, as this gets a little detailed.”

Gerry stared at the blackboard. As schools went, Calhoun’s was pretty basic. There was a blackboard with each day’s topic written on it, a blackjack table where they could practice their lessons, and that was it. Students were expected to bring their own paper and writing instruments. And Calhoun didn’t tolerate interruptions, unless someone was dying.

“Flying Under the Radar is probably the most important thing I’m going to teach you,” he said, leaning against the wall and firing up a cigarette. “Anyone can learn to count cards. All it takes is practice. The hard part is getting away with it.

“The enemy is the casino’s surveillance department. Most surveillance people learn to count. If a deck is rich in high cards, and you increase your bet, they’ll know you’re card-counting. Right?”

He blew two purple plumes of smoke through his nostrils. Part of the entertainment included tricks with cigarettes. So far, he hadn’t repeated himself.

“Wrong!” he exclaimed. “Surveillance won’t know you’re a card-counter if they’re not watching you. And surveillance hardly ever watches certain types of people. This includes women over seventy, drunks, and people with a history of losing. Those people fly under the radar. They’re there, but they’re not noticed.”

“What about me and my brother?” Amin, the older Indian, asked.

“What about you?”

“We cannot disguise ourselves to look like women, and our religion prohibits us from touching alcohol. How do we fly under the radar?”

Calhoun scrunched his face up. “Bunch of ways. Disguises, although from what your brother’s told me, you’re pretty good at those.”

Amin nodded. He and Pash were experienced counters. They had enrolled in Calhoun’s school to sharpen their skills and pick up a few pointers.

“You
could
use a ham radio to jam the frequency of the surveillance cameras, but that will only work once,” Calhoun said. “It would also mean smuggling a ham radio into the casino, which is a serious offense if you get caught.

“You can learn to know when surveillance is watching you. The cameras beneath the smoky domes have tiny red lights. If the camera is on, so is the red light. If you see the light, it means the camera is looking in the opposite direction.”

Amin scribbled furiously, his pen never leaving his yellow legal pad.

“You need to rethink the alcohol thing,” Calhoun said, puffing on his cigarette. “Here’s an idea. Bring a beer bottle filled with water into the casino with you. It’s a great way to blend in. Just don’t do like one dumb ass did over at the Tropicana and come in with a Corona bottle. They’re see-through, so everyone
knew
it was water.”

Pash slapped his desk. “Very good!”

Everyone in the room laughed. Pash was a funny kid, a perfect counterpart to Amin, who was often sullen and brooding. Calhoun smiled and said, “Here’s another jewel. Every surveillance department has something called ‘blind time.’ That’s when the department switches the tapes in the VCRs. This can take anywhere from several minutes to over an hour in some of the larger joints. You want to fly under the radar, that’s the time to do it.”

Amin put down his writing instrument. “That is brilliant.”

Calhoun’s leathery face seemed to crack as he smiled. “Thanks.”

“But how would you get such information? You can’t just ask them.”

Calhoun used the cigarette to light another. “Bunch of ways, actually. Check the want ads in the papers when the new casino job listings are posted. Most surveillance departments say they’re looking for technicians or investigators, instead of running blind ads. If it says, ‘Come visit our HR department for immediate consideration,’ you know they’re desperate. Go interview.”

Calhoun paused to puff heavily on his cigarette. Gerry was convinced that everyone in America walked around believing they were someone they’d seen on TV. For Calhoun, it was the Marlboro Man.

“And?” Amin said expectantly.

“Ask for a tour of the surveillance control room. This won’t sound unreasonable coming from a job applicant. After all, you have a right to see the work environment.”

“And then you ask them,” Amin interrupted.

“No, no, you don’t ask a thing,” Calhoun said.

“But how—”

“Easy,” Calhoun said. “Ask to see the room where the VCRs are stored. It’s usually pretty big, and kept cool so the tapes won’t spoil. When you go in, glance at the VCRs. On the face is an LED or LCD meter that’s constantly advancing in one-second increments. The casinos all stretch their tapes to eight hours to save money, so look at the meter and remember the time. If the meter says 4:00, you know the tape will be pulled in four hours. Add four hours to the present time, and you’ll have all their tape-change times.”

Amin seemed perplexed. “Please, explain.”

Calhoun looked at his watch. “The present time is eleven
AM.
Let’s say the time you saw on the LED was 4:00. That means in four hours, the tapes will be changed. Which means the casino changes tapes at three
PM
, eleven
PM
, and seven
AM
. That’s their blind time. Like I said, if it’s a big casino, it’s usually substantial.”

Amin looked at his brother and said something in his native tongue. Pash grinned.

“Very good,” Pash said in English.

Gerry’s cell phone was buzzing. Card-counting was hard enough without having to remember all this crap. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and stared at its face.

It was Yolanda.

He felt himself start to panic. Was she having the baby early? The women in her family had a history of that. What if she was calling to tell him that he was a father, and like a coward he was hiding from her? He’d never live it down.

Gerry looked up and saw his teacher giving him the evil eye. Calhoun hated cell phones almost as much as he hated interruptions. Gerry stood up.

“Excuse me, but I need to take this.”

Then Gerry walked out of the room.

Calhoun ran his classes out of his house, a ramshackle structure on the outskirts of Henderson, a town bordered on three sides by the desert. Gerry walked down the dirt driveway to where his rental car was parked, got in, and fired up the engine.

Out on the open road, he pushed the rental up to ninety and felt his anxiety slip away. Ever since he was a kid, he’d been good at getting out of jams: Why should this time be any different? Pulling into a mini mart, he bought a Slurpee and a bag of chips, then called Yolanda when he was back behind the wheel.

“Hey beautiful,” he said by way of greeting.

“Oh, my God, Gerry, what have you done?” his wife wailed.

He closed his eyes. With his lips he found the Slurpee’s straw and took a deep pull. “I haven’t done anything. What’s wrong? You having the baby?”

“Didn’t you get my messages?”

“I’m incognito, remember?”

“I’m your wife, goddamn it!”

Gerry felt the icy drink shoot up the back of his head. “You’re not having the baby.”

“No.”

“So what’s so catastrophic that you had to call me twelve times?”

The line went quiet.
That was a stupid thing to say,
he thought. He opened his eyes and stared at the painted landscape. The desert led to mountains, which pointed at the endless sky. He could understand how people fell in love with it out here. Every time he looked out the window, it made him feel better. “Sorry,” he said.

Yolanda said, “I called because a collection agency is calling every hour, and the bank is calling because you bounced ten checks—including one to my mother in San Juan—and I found a stack of bills underneath the bed, and I wanted to know how you planned to support us when the baby is born.”

The straw in his Slurpee made an offensive sound as he sucked his drink dry.

“What was that?” she snapped.

“The car,” he replied. “Look, I spoke to the bank, and I’m going to wire them the money. It’s no big deal. I sent the bill collector the money two weeks ago—why he hasn’t gotten the check, I have no idea.”

“What about all these bills?”

“It’s under control,” he said calmly. “You need to relax, stop worrying about this stuff. I’ll admit things are a little tight, but once I start pulling my weight with my father, we’ll be swimming in dough.”

“Oh, God, Gerry, I hope you’re telling the truth.”

“Why wouldn’t I be telling you the truth?”

“Gerry, my mother was crying when she called. She
lives
on the money we send her.”

Gerry stared at the midday sun. It was a pale disk in a creamy vanilla sky. He watched rays of light dance on the snow-covered mountaintops. Yolanda was a doctor. Her parents had nearly gone broke putting her through medical school. By knocking her up, he had inherited her financial obligation to keep them afloat. It hadn’t seemed like such a scary proposition, until now.

“I overnighted you money yesterday,” he said. “When you get it, send some to your mother.”

“Oh, Gerry,” Yolanda said, “what are you doing out there? You don’t return my calls, and now you’re sending money? Where did you get it?”

Gerry felt his cheeks burn. He loved Yolanda more than anything else in the world, but he had to get off the phone right now.

“I’ve got to get back to class.”

“Why won’t you answer me?”

“I did answer you. Everything is under control. You’ve gotta trust me.”

“I love you,” his wife said, suddenly sounding frightened.

“I love you, too. Good-bye.”

He killed the connection. Soon he was on the highway driving back toward Calhoun’s house. This time he kept under the speed limit while his mind wrestled with his situation. In the last six months, he’d maxed out ten different credit cards. On top of that, there was the overdue mortgage and car payments. He guessed he owed fifty grand on top of what he’d sent Yolanda yesterday.

He took a deep breath as he pulled down Calhoun’s bumpy driveway. He could get his hands on the money, but it wouldn’t be easy.

It never was.

7

W
ily and Valentine finished their coffee and walked to the front of the Acropolis. By the front doors was the garishly lit alcove that housed One-Armed Billy, the world’s biggest slot machine. A bus tour of blue-hairs stood on line, waiting to take a crack at the thirty-million-dollar jackpot.

“You know,” Wily said, “the best thing that ever happened to us was Nola Briggs and Frank Fontaine trying to rip Billy off.”

“Business that good?”

“Billy’s is. The tour buses bring a thousand retirees a day. You’re a hero to these people.”

Valentine laughed. The attempted heist had been made into an asinine TV movie. A young Hollywood actor with wavy hair and bulging muscles had played Valentine’s role. He had watched half the program before turning it off.

They entered the alcove. Joe Smith—all seven feet, three hundred pounds of him—sat on a stool next to Billy. Joe had been there during the heist and been diverted away from Billy by a staged fight in the casino. Joe had gotten to play himself in the TV movie and looked like he was enjoying his newfound celebrity. Eight-by-ten glossies, signed and framed, were on sale on a table beside him.

“Hey Joe, how’s it going?” he said.

Joe smiled. He was getting his picture taken with an elderly fan. Picking up a mike off a table, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special guest with us. The man responsible for stopping the heist in the movie
Grift Sense
. The one and only Tony Valentine.”