Sucker Bet
James Swain
Ballantine Books • New York
For Thomas Swain
It’s morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
CANADA BILL JONES
Special thanks to Deborah Redmond,
Shawn Redmond, and my wife, Laura
THE TURN OF A CARD
The mark’s name was Nigel Moon.
Jack Lightfoot recognized Moon the moment he stepped into the Micanopy Indian reservation casino. Back in the eighties, Moon had played drums for an English rock band called One-Eyed Pig, his ransacking of hotel rooms as well-publicized as his manic solos. Unlike the other band members, who’d fried their brains on drugs and booze, Moon had opened a chain of popular hamburger joints that now stretched across two continents.
As Moon crossed the casino, Jack eyed the delicious redhead on his arm. She was a plant, or what his partner Rico called a raggle. “The raggle will convince Moon to come to your casino,” Rico had explained the day before, “and try his luck at blackjack. She’ll bring him to your table. The rest is up to you.”
She looked familiar. Jack frequented Fort Lauderdale’s many adult clubs and often picked up free magazines filled with ads of local prostitutes. The raggle was a hooker named Candy Hart. Her ad said she was on call twenty- four hours a day, Visa and MasterCard accepted.
“Good evening,” Jack said as they sat down at his empty table.
Moon reeked of beer. He was pushing fifty, unshaven, his gray hair pulled back in a pigtail like a matador’s
“Table limit is ten dollars,” Jack informed him.
Moon made a face. Candy touched Moon’s arm.
“You can’t bet more than ten dollars a hand,” she said sweetly. “All of the table games have limits.”
Moon drew back in his chair. “Ten bloody dollars? What kind of toilet have you brought me to, my dear? I can get a game of dominos with a bunch of old Jews on Miami Beach with higher stakes than that.”
Candy dug her fingernails into Moon’s arm. “You
“I did?”
Moon smiled wickedly. “Oh, yes. A moment of weakness, I suppose.”
“Shhhh,” she said, glancing Jack’s way.
Moon patted her hand reassuringly. “A promise is a promise.”
Moon slid five hundred dollars Jack’s way. Jack cut up his chips. During a stretch in prison, Jack heard One- Eyed Pig’s music blasting through the cell block at all hours, and he knew many of the lyrics by heart.
Jack slid the chips across the table. Moon put ten dollars into each of the seven betting circles on the felt. Jack played a two-deck game, handheld. He shuffled the cards and offered them to be cut.
“Count them,” Moon said.
“Excuse me?” Jack said.
“I want you to count the cards,” Moon demanded.
Jack brought the pit boss over, and Moon repeated himself again.
“Okay,” the pit boss said.
Jack started to count the cards onto the table.
“Faceup,” Moon barked.
“Excuse me?” Jack said.
“You heard me.”
Jack looked to the pit boss for help.
“Okay,” the pit boss said.
Jack turned the two decks faceup. Then he counted them on the table.
“What are you doing?” Candy asked.
“Making sure they’re all there,” Moon said, watching intently. “I ran up against a dealer in Puerto Rico playing with a short deck and lost my bloody shirt.”
Jack finished counting. One hundred and four cards. Satisfied, Moon leaned back into his chair.
“A short dick?” Candy said, giggling.
“Short
“And you figured that out,” she said.
“Yes, my dear, I figured it out.”
Jack saw Candy’s hand slip beneath the table and into Moon’s lap. Moon’s face lit up like a lantern. “You’re
Jack reshuffled the cards. For Moon to have figured out that a dealer was playing with a short deck meant that Moon was an experienced card-counter. Card-counters were instinctively observant, and Jack realized that he was going to have to be especially careful tonight, or risk blowing their scam before it ever got off the ground. He slid the two decks in front of Moon, who cut them with a plastic cut card.
“Good luck,” Jack said.
Then he started to deal.
Jack Lightfoot was not your typical card mechanic.
Born on the Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico, he’d been in trouble almost from the time he’d started walking. At seventeen, he’d gone to federal prison for a string of convenience store robberies and spent the next six years doing hard time.
The prison was filled with gangs. Jack had gravitated to a Mexican gang and hung out in their cell block. The Mexicans were heavy gamblers and often played cards all day long. They liked different games—seven-card stud, Omaha, razzle-dazzle, Texas hold ’em. Each game had its subtleties, but the game Jack fell in love with was blackjack. And whenever it was Jack’s turn to deal, blackjack was the game he chose.
