Loaded Dice

movie stills.

Nearing the blackjack pit in the back, he saw Amin. Amin was playing third base—the last spot at the table. The seat next to him was open.

Gerry’s seat.

“This seat open?” Gerry asked, putting his coffee down at the empty spot. The dealer nodded and so did Amin. Gerry took the seat and tossed two hundred dollars in wilted twenties onto the green felt.

“Changing two hundred,” the dealer called out.

Soon Gerry was gambling, ten bucks a hand. He played Basic Strategy and never deviated. His role in the scam was simple. Try not to lose his money too quickly. That was all he had to do.

Amin, on the other hand, was on another mission. He wasn’t supposed to win too much. He could win thousands of dollars an hour if he wanted, but then the people staffing the eye in the sky would start studying him and, if they didn’t like what they saw, place him under “Special Ops.” They would scrutinize his every move, run it through a computer, maybe even start to harass him. It was as much fun as being chased by a police car.

So Amin played it safe and won five hundred dollars an hour. It was a grind, but it rarely drew heat. The system he used was called the Hi-Lo. By assigning +1 and –1 values to the dealt cards, he could determine when the game was favorable to the player, and when it was favorable to house. He would bet accordingly, and almost always come out ahead.

Amin executed Hi-Lo flawlessly. He always knew the game’s exact count. Bart said even the best counters were only 70 percent accurate. Not Amin. The man was focused.

By ten PM, Gerry was down to fifty dollars and sweating through his clothes.

Amin was up. Way up. To hide his winnings—something gamblers called “rat-holing”—Amin had been palming his hundred-dollar chips, then dumping them in Gerry’s half-filled coffee mug. If anyone in surveillance had been paying attention, they would have noticed that Gerry’s drink was growing as the evening progressed.

Amin had also started dumping chips into Gerry’s jacket pocket. That was okay, except there were so many that Gerry could feel the chips pulling down his coat. Amin was acting so blatant that Gerry almost felt like he was being set up. Finally, he rose from the table, leaving his remaining chips, and said to the dealer, “Where’s the john?”

The dealer gave him instructions. Left, right, left, you can’t miss it.

Gerry marched through the casino, holding his filled coffee cup, afraid to drink the liquid and expose the chips shimmering just below the surface.

The john had photos of famous Hollywood actors hanging on the walls. He found Pash standing at the urinals and sidled up next to him. Pash was staring at a photo of Cary Grant and said, “The first movie I ever saw was with Cary Grant. It was called Gunga Din. He played a character named Archibald Cutter. Have you seen it?”

Gerry shook his head. “Look, we need to talk about Amin.”

“The theater was wonderful. You paid for a ticket, walked through a lobby, then went outside into a courtyard and watched the film beneath the stars. I was six years old. When I first saw Cary Grant, I thought to myself— This is the man I want to grow up to be!” He burst out laughing. “It was so funny. I thought that as I grew older, I could change my skin and hair color, and look like Cary Grant!”

“Your brother is fucking up,” Gerry said through clenched teeth.

Pash pulled up his fly and glanced over his shoulder. The johns were the only place in the casino where there were no surveillance cameras. It was against the law. But that didn’t stop people in security from occasionally popping their heads in and having a look around.

“How?” Pash asked.

Gerry showed him the chips in his pocket and his coffee cup.

“Is anyone else at the table winning?” Pash asked.

“No, and that’s the problem,” Gerry replied. “Everyone else is losing their shirts. But the dealer’s tray is being depleted. Someone in surveillance is going to notice, and your brother and I will be fucked.”

With one eye on the door, Pash took Gerry’s chips and stuffed them into the fanny pack he was wearing. “Pick me up at the Glass Pool Inn in twenty minutes. I’ll signal to my brother that we are leaving.”

“I’ll tell him,” Gerry said. “I still haven’t cashed out.”

Gerry started to leave, and Pash touched his sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Gerry wanted to tell Pash that it was okay, only it wasn’t okay. Amin was a known card-counter. If Gerry got pegged as a member of his team, he’d be photographed and have his face added to FaceScan’s database. He’d never be able to set foot inside a casino again, much less work for his father. He was mad, and Pash knew it.

“Very sorry,” Pash added.

14

Out of the corner of his eye, Amin watched Gerry come up to the table, grab his chips, wish everyone good luck, and walk away. Their eyes never met, yet Amin knew what was happening.

Gerry was running out on him.

Amin continued to play. Back in his country, men who broke their promises were made to pay, and often lost a hand, or an eye. Not here in America. It was the thing about Americans that he hated the most. They would change their minds, and their allegiances, whenever it suited them.

He glanced down at his chips. He’d been keeping a running track of his winnings in his head. Over six thousand dollars. It was a lot of money, but he needed to make up for the bag of chips he’d left in the stripper’s townhouse the day before.

Kris. Another traitor. Like Gerry, her job had been simple. Every few days, she brought Amin’s chips to the casinos and cashed them in at the cage. If anyone questioned her—and someone usually did—she would say that she received them as tips. Strippers did it all the time, and the casinos accepted it.

Only Kris had decided to pull a fast one. She wasn’t willing to accept 10 percent as her take. She wanted 20. When Amin protested, she’d threatened him.

“My boyfriend will beat you up,” she’d said, lying on the couch in her townhouse. She always wore crummy clothes when Amin came over, saving the G-string and slutty makeup for her customers. “He’ll put the screws to you.”

“Your boyfriend?” Amin had said skeptically.

“Yeah. Pete Longo. He’s a cop.”

Amin had tried to play it cool. He didn’t think a cop would be stupid enough to date this woman. Sitting on the arm of the couch, he’d said, “Ten percent is standard. Come on.”

“I want twenty.”

“I can find another girl.”

She lit up a joint and blew the disgustingly sweet smoke in his face. “Do that, and I’ll tell Pete what you’re doing.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “There is no Pete Longo.”

Kris went into the bedroom and returned with a digital camera. Loaded into its memory were a dozen pictures of her and her beau, a monster of a man with a balding head and a wedding ring and a loose smile that spelled trouble.

The last picture in the camera was of an open wallet. It showed a detective’s badge and photo ID. It was the same man in the photo. Pete Longo.

Amin liked to wear his shirt out of his pants, and he’d reached beneath it and drawn the .357 he’d purchased with Gerry Valentine’s credit card that morning. Seeing it, Kris had nearly choked.

“Amin, I was only—”

“Joking?”

Kris smiled. “Yeah.”