“Leave it to Bagger to get morons to line up for that crap and then drop their paychecks in his casinos while they’re getting fat and drunk,” Leo snarled.
“Jerry collects chumps; that’s the lifeblood of the casino business.”
“I remember when the first casino opened here in ’78,” Leo said.
Annabelle nodded. “Resorts International, bigger than any Vegas casino at the time except the MGM. Paddy ran some crews here for a while at the beginning.”
“Well, your old man never should have come back with you and me!” Leo lit a cigarette and pointed down the line of casinos. “I started out here. The casino crews back then were mostly locals. You had nurses, garbage truck drivers and gas jockeys all of a sudden dealing cards and running craps and roulette tables. They were so bad you could run any scam you wanted. Hell, you didn’t even have to cheat. You could make money just off their mistakes. That lasted about four years. I sent both my kids through college on the money I made back then.”
She looked at him. “You never talked to me about your family before.”
“Yeah, like you’re a real blabbermouth when it comes to that stuff.”
“You knew my parents. What could I add to that?”
“I had kids early. They’re grown and gone and so’s my old lady.”
“Did she know what you did for a living?”
“Hard to hide it after a while. She liked the money, just not the way I earned it. We never told the kids. I wasn’t going to let them get near the business.”
“Smart man.”
“Yeah, they still ditched me.”
“Don’t look back, Leo, too many regrets start popping out.”
He shrugged and then grinned. “We had a helluva roulette thing going here, didn’t we? Any con can past-post craps and blackjack, but only real pros can do it long-term at roulette. It’s as close as you can get to a long con at a casino table.” He looked at her admiringly. “You were the best claimer I’d ever seen, Annabelle. You could bring the heat or the cool. The pit bosses melted every damn time. And you saw the steam coming before any of us,” he added, referring to suspicious casino employees.
“And you were the best mechanic I ever worked with, Leo. Even when some rook cut into your move, you still nailed it before the dealer turned back around.”
“Yeah, I was good, but the fact is you were just as good a mechanic as me. I think sometimes your old man kept me on because you said to.”
“You give me way too much credit. Paddy Conroy only did what Paddy Conroy wanted to do. And what he ultimately did was screw us both.”
“Yeah, and leave us for Bagger to feed on. And if you hadn’t been cat-quick about it and made him miss by a couple inches?” He looked out toward the ocean. “Maybe we’d be out there somewhere.”
She plucked the cigarette out of his mouth. “And now that we’re done patting each other on the back down memory lane, let’s get to work.”
They started toward the casino entrance and then abruptly stopped. “Let the cattle drive get by,” Leo warned.
Each casino had a bus drive where the charters would start lining up at eleven o’clock in the morning. They’d disgorge their usually elderly passengers who’d spend all day in the casino running through their Social Security money and eating junk food. Then they’d hop back on the bus and head home with little to live on for the rest of the month, but certain that they would be back when their next government check rolled in.
Leo and Annabelle watched the senior citizen brigades charge into the Pompeii in time for the first eruption of the day and then wandered in after them. They spent several hours walking the place and even played a few games of chance along the way. Leo had a nice ride at craps, while Annabelle stuck to blackjack, winning more than she lost.
They hooked up a little later and had a drink at one of the bars. As Leo watched a curvy thong-wearing waitress carry a load of drinks to a hot craps table three deep with bettors looking to ride some action to riches, Annabelle said in a low voice, “Well?”
He munched on some pecans and sipped his Jack and Coke. “Blackjack table number five. Looks like we got a little monkey business coming out of the shoe,” he said, referring to the device that held the packs of cards.
“Dealer in on it?”
“Oh, yeah. How about you?”
Annabelle took a swallow of her wine before answering. “Roulette table next to the spinning car, we got a four-person past-posting team dragging and doing an okay job of it.”
“I thought they taught the dealers to really case their bets now. And how about all the sophisticated eyes-in- the-sky and microcameras they got these days?”
“You know how crazy the roulette table is, that’s why it’s past-posting Mecca. And if you’re good, anything’s possible despite all the high-tech stuff.”
He touched his drink against hers. “Don’t we know that?”
“How’s security look?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. I’m assuming the vault’s under a thousand tons of concrete surrounded by a million guys armed with machine guns.”
“Good thing we’re not going that route,” she replied dryly.
