Loaded Dice

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.