“Trying to take a casino is too risky,” Embers said. “You're not looking at jail time if you get caught, but a bullet in the back of the head.”
Janelle, Windell, and me were at the New Frontier scarfing up the cheap buffet. That was one good thing about Vegasâthe town was full of ninety-nine-cent breakfasts and three-ninety-nine buffet dinners. All the casinos wanted you to do was lose your shirt when you came for the cheap eats.
“No one's ever gotten away with making a big hit on Vegas. This isn't just a town and gambling isn't just an industry. The underworld tentacles reach from one end of the country to the other.”
“Nobody's been smart enough to do it yet,” Windell said.
Embers's opinion of Windell's smarts was evident by the way the old man chewed the tough roast beef as he looked at Windell, as if wondering what mud hole it had been dragged out of.
I said, “Windell's idea about hitting a bunch of clubs with marked cards and all of us running around pulling in thousands every hour at blackjack tables is impractical. I was thinking more in terms of one club, one deck, one table, one hit. If we can get a dealer to substitute marked decks for regular ones, we could easily earn six or eight thousand at a table before anyone started taking a closer look. The secret is not to get greedy. When we reach a set amount, say five thousand, we cash in. If each of us pulls that stunt once or twice a week, by the end of the month we'd have a hundred grand or more.”
Embers snorted. “By the end of the first week, you'll be in a shallow grave with coyotes digging you up.”
Â
Janelle and I had been knocking around together for three months when I made reservations at the restaurant in the Sands for Janelle's birthday. I didn't have a suit and one birthday wasn't worth laying out the bread for one, so I rented a tux. It wasn't a wedding, but I
wanted to wear a tux because I never had one on before. Janelle wore a blue sequined dress that fit her as if it was painted on and displayed her valleys, peaks, and dangerous curves. We really thought we were hot stuff. Here I was with a real tux on and going to a fancy restaurant, like we were rich people, not just a lap dancer and a guy with a pocket full of slugs.
When we came up to the maître d's desk, the guy looked at me like the Acme rental tag was hanging from my monkey suit. He had a glass of clouded liquid on the desk, the kind of stuff you feed an ulcer. There was a whispered conversation between him and a cold, pale broad wearing black lipstick who was holding menus.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Riordan, but it became necessary to rebook your reservation for tomorrow night. We have an opening at ten-thirty then.”
“Tomorrow night? I'm from New York, pal. I'll be returning tomorrow night. I made this reservation three days ago.”
“I'm sorry, but we don't have a table tonight.”
“I can see empty tables.” I was getting hot under the collar.
“Those are reserved,” the cold broad said.
“You got in high rollers and you're giving them our table,” Janelle said angrily.
“Why don't you take your business elsewhere.”
Janelle leaned across the desk. “Up yours.” She grabbed the front of the woman's dress, jerked it open and poured the iced drink down it.
I had tickets for a show, but we split with the bitch screaming hot and loud. Two security dudes came out after us onto the sidewalk and I whipped around and gave them my best sneer.
“You're off the reservation, assholes.”
“Leav'em alone, Rocco,” Janelle said. “I'll have my old man send around some of his boys to teach them manners.”
That stopped them. I didn't know if I could pass for a tough guy, but Janelle definitely had gangland written all over her.
We ended up eating hamburgers and milk shakes at a drive-in. I was still burning from the put-down. “Those dirty bastards, I'll show them someday, you wait and see, I'll shove the Strip right up their asses.”
“Don't hold your breath, Zack. They've got one thing that we'll never have.
“What?”
“Money.”
“I'll have money.”
“Not in this town you won'tâthe people who have it, keep it.” She took her purse and a straw and went to the restroom. When she came back, I could see white powder on her nostrils.
I hated when she did that, taking a hit. I tried cocaine once at a party and was dizzy for three days, so I knew I had to use it carefully. Janelle claimed she wasn't hooked on the stuff, but she was always wired or crashing. She worked two jobs, lap dancing at the Pussy Kat and dealing blackjack part-time at Halliday's, the biggest of the grind joints downtown. On the side she did private lap dances for a guy who gave her tickets for shows along the Strip. The guy was nothing more than a lightbulb distributor, but Vegas was one hell of a lit-up city. Janelle swore to me that she had never turned tricks and I didn't push it or believe her. Her background was similar to Betty'sâjunkyard trailer-park life in Modesto until she was old enough to push out on her own. She'd been in Vegas for two years, after dumping a guy she had shacked up with in Frisco, getting rid of a pregnancy with an abortion, and deciding to head for Vegas where she could earn some real money.
“One of my friends is a schoolteacher in L.A. She flies to Vegas every Friday night and returns on Sunday. Even after expenses, in two nights she earns more from dating than she does a week teaching.”
There was no question about it, sin paid more than schools. But for all of Janelle's hard work, she had nothing but some hot clothes because the money went up her nose.
I knew Janelle was hurt by the rejection at the restaurant, but she had something of the same fatalism of the poor that Betty had, the inner belief that no matter how much she tried, nothing would ever go right for her. But I was still sweltering inside. Some bastard got away with killing my mother because he had money. It was my turn to have the dough, to get a piece of Vegas besides the six-by-six pauper's plot Betty was in.
“I'm pulling a big one with Windell,” I said. “You can be part of it.”
“Part of what?”
“Windell's got a gimmick.”
“Windell's a perverted twit who probably jacks off in his sister's panties.”
“He's a genius, screwy for sure, but a real whiz at gimmicks.”
“You know your little friend is banned from every casino in town? He's tried everything from triggering the payoff mechanism in the coin drop of slots to manipulating the reels with a magnet. That crazy bastard went into the Thunderbird with an enormous electromagnet and battery in a backpack and tried to control the reels. The battery started leaking and he ran screaming out of the place with acid burning him.”
“That's why I'm the boss. You know what marked cards are?”
“Yeah, they got stripes on them, prison stripes. Unless you try to use them in Vegas, then they got a skull and bones on them.”
“Cards are all personalized with a casino's logo. Windell had an idea to get to the Mexicans who manufacture the cards and get a whole shipment of cards to a casino marked.”
“Windell needs electroconvulsive therapy.”
“The idea stinks, I know. You'd need to have special dies engraved, bribe a million people, the whole nine yards. But Windell finally came up with a horse that's in the money.”
She sighed theatrically. “What's the play?”
“We know the dealer's hole card in blackjack.”
“Christ, Zack, don't you think that and every other card scam has been tried in every casino in town? Look at Embers's hands.”
“What do you mean? What about Embers's hands?”
“You don't know?” She stared at me. “You really don't know? Embers got caught cheating in a high-stakes poker game. He got his hands smashed to teach him a lesson. The grind joints keep a piece of lead pipe around to break knuckles with. That's the kind of lesson cheaters get in Vegas.”
“Jesus.” That explained a lot. Including Embers's aversion to getting involved in any schemes. Poor bastard. He loved cards. He must have wanted to win so bad that he stepped over the line.
“Look, you don't have to be part of it. I'll find someone else. I just thought you'd like to have a piece of the action. Enough money to go
back and buy that crummy restaurant we got thrown out of tonight.”
“Zack, players come up with schemes to get a peek at the dealer's hole card everydayâand get dragged into the back room by security just as fast. Didn't you read just yesterday about that dealer at the Frontier who was looking away for a moment whenever she had a high card buried? It was a signal to a player. I guarantee you they left the casino for jail or intensive care, and probably both.”
“Shut up and listen.” I stuck a French fry in her mouth. “Windell has brains. He could build an A-bomb with a kid's chemistry set. This time he didn't come up with an idea to mark cards, but to read the markings already on them.”
“Come again?”
“Cards are marked on their face, right: The painted cardsâjack, queen, kingâall have pictures, the two of diamonds has twos and a couple diamonds, ten of clubs, ten clubs on it.”
“Okay, that's what a deck of cards looks like. How's it marked?”
“It's marked by the amount of ink used.”
“Whatâ”
“Listen to me. The cards with the most ink are the painted face cards, right? Right. The cards with the least ink are the numbered cards, especially the smaller ones. There's less ink on a two than on a ten or a jack, right?
“What Windell has concocted is an
ink reader
. It doesn't read the value or type of card, but the
amount
of ink
on the face of card. When you pass a card by it, a light glows if there's a lot of ink. Aces, face cards, tens, have a lot of ink. Twos, threes, fours, so forth, have less ink.”
“You think you can sit there and pass the cards over an ink reader as they're being dealt?” Janelle laughed so hard she choked on a French fry.
“Don't laugh yet. I'm not stupid, I know the casinos have two-way mirrors with cat walks, surveillance cameras, pit bosses, and floor-men.”
“They see everything that goes on at the tables, every move, every motion.”
“That's where you're wrong. There's a hole in their system, a blind spot.”
“Where?”
“The palm of your right hand.”
“Excuse me?”
“There's a deck of cards in the glove compartment.”
She took out the deck and broke the seal.
“Now, imagine you're dealing from a card shoe at Halliday's. Do it on the seat. Show me exactly what you do.”
“I'm given six decks of cards and an empty shoe. I do the same thing with each deck, opening the box, fanning them onto the table so the players can see the deck is true, and removing the jokers.” She slipped the cards out of the box and fanned them to lay them on the seat.
“Show me how you deal from a shoe.” As she dealt, I said, “Stop. What are you holding in your right hand?”
“A card.”
“Facedown, lying across your finger. If you had something attached to those fingers that could read the amount of ink on the cardâ”
“How could I have that? The security peopleâ”
“Won't see it because it's part of your jewelry.”
“Excuse me?”
I laid it out for her. She wore very distinctive jewelry, a ring on each finger and a chain going back to a bracelet. Windell could make jewelry, taught by his old man who was a jeweler. Windell duplicated the rings she wore on her right hand and the chain that ran from the middle ring to her bracelet.
“The chain to the bracelet hides an electrical connection that goes up your arm and to a battery pack in the small of your back. The palm side of the middle ring is sensitive to ink. When a high card with a lot of ink passes over it, the top of the ring glows.”
“Security will see the glow.”
“No, they won't; Windell thought of that. You can't see the glow under normal lighting. You have to wear special dark glasses, like watching a 3D movie. It's really simple. You deal just as you normally do, drag a card out of the shoe for each payer, and then you drag out your hole card. When you deal from a shoe, you push the card out of the shoe with your right hand and then lift it with your fingers and put it down in front of you. When you lift the card with your fingers and put it down, the face of the card will be exposed to the palm side of your rings. That's the part of your rings Windell has cooked up to
be sensitive to the ink used on the face of the cards. I'm not going to be counting cards, I'm only going to be interested in whether you have a high or low card in the hole. If it's a high card, the ruby ring will glow a little. I won't know exactly what your hole card is, but most of the time I will know whether it's a high card or not. After you deal yourself the face-up card to go with your hole card, I will have a pretty good idea as to whether I should take a hit or not.”