by Graeme Hurry
On the way to the Golden Horseshoe I could feel the hatchback’s clutch slipping. The car crawled down the freeway, eliciting quite a bit of advice from some of my fellow motorists. One, as he passed me in one of those monstrous pickup trucks I thought only existed in beer commercials, shouted a suggestion that would take a few years of intensive yoga practice to make possible. I smiled and waved at him, imagining the kind of fireworks show that 30-gallon gas tank would make if he took the exit ramp a little too fast.
My clutch did the respectable thing and held out until I made it to the casino’s parking lot – no way I was going to reward years of loyal service with the fumbling, heavy foot of some smart-ass valet.
A few minutes later I was in Carmody’s office spreading out all those neat little folders. Bill Manzanero was there, too.
As I laid out the last of the documents, he said snidely, “Hope I didn’t get in your way too much, Tom.”
“Not at all,” I said. Technically, it was true. I’d seen kids follow ice cream trucks with less enthusiasm than Bill had tailed me as I worked the investigation, but he had made an effort to keep his distance. He didn’t like them bringing in an outside guy, no, not on his turf. He’d probably been on thin ice with Carmody for a while, and whether it was intended or not my presence could have been taken as a lack of confidence in him.
Not that I was sympathetic. He was a clone of all the territorial macho jerks I’d worked with, no different from the ones who pulled that poor kid off his bike and took some artistic license with the features of his face (by the looks of it, they were cubists). Maybe the only difference was, when the fingers started pointing he wasn’t lucky enough to be facing a junkie mom who could be bought off with a few dropped possession charges. It would go a long ways in explaining why, at the tender age of thirty-five, a former cop collecting a half-pension went into the casino security business.
The Bill Manzaneros of the world were the ones that had given me a lot of looks, a lot of comments suggesting that should I be running into a burning building or shooting it out with some maniac on the freeway, help would be slow in coming – if it came at all. All because when Internal Affairs had approached me, I told the truth. Nasty habit, telling the truth. I learned that, like all bad habits, it should be practiced in moderation.
But, this was business and I wasn’t going to let my personal feelings get in the way. Bill, the guy in the pickup truck, my former colleagues – they’ll get theirs. They always do. And, with the Farquhar job nearing completion, I’d be getting mine, too. Everybody gets what’s coming to them in the end, so sayeth The Book of Maple.
I started off by saying, “Well, you guys can relax. Your people are honest.”
Bill writhed a little in his seat, fighting the compulsion to pump his fist in the air and spit an I-told-you-so at Carmody.
The latter said, “I don’t get it, then. How’s he do it?”
I took the dossier I had compiled on Farquhar and handed it to Carmody. He didn’t get past the third line before exclaiming, “Christ, he’s former FBI!”
“He spent eighteen years in The Bureau as one of those special interrogators - you know, the human lie-detectors, could tell what you ate for breakfast by the way you arched your eyebrows.”
Carmody put down the report. He smiled as the realization hit him.
“He’s reading the dealers,” he said.
“Apparently, he was a leading expert in his field until he got fired for, you’ll never guess…”
“Gambling.”
“Natch. Some of the bookies he owed were connected to those boys from Providence we all know.”
“This isn’t Texas Hold em’,” Bill said. “This is blackjack. I don’t see how reading the dealers can give him that much of an advantage.”
I took out the DVD I made from the security footage, a sort of Barry Farquhar’s greatest hits collection. We loaded it up on Carmody’s laptop and I went into part two of the presentation. I narrated the action on the screen, Farquhar playing against one of dealers, a nice girl from Idaho who went by the name of Alice.
“See here?” I said. “Alice has a face card showing, which happens in about one-third of all deals. She has to check her bottom card to make sure she doesn’t have a blackjack. This is where Farquhar’s edge comes in – if she doesn’t have the blackjack, he can tell from her reaction whether she has a good hand or not. Look:”
I draw their attention to Farquhar’s hand, a seventeen. He took a hit which, by her body language, Alice seemed reluctant to give out.
“Hitting on hard seventeen would be insane,” I continued. “Unless you know that the dealer has nineteen or twenty. And, he does.”
Alice slapped the three of clubs onto the felt. Farquhar stood tight with twenty. She turned over her hole card, a nine. Farquhar’s chips nearly doubled.
“Amazing…” Carmody gasped.
“He counts cards to supplement this angle, though mostly only to know when to bet large, or pull back. He wins the majority of his money during ten or fifteen-deal streaks when the count is in his favor.”
“Our dealers,” Bill interjected. “Are trained for this sort of thing.”
“That’s where the sob-story about the sick wife comes in. Every dealer I talked to said he gives them the same shtick, but the details are a little different for each person. Sometimes he acts outright pitiful, other times he makes like he’s going to blow up if he loses a hand. He’s testing their responses. Whether it’s from sympathy or fear, he makes sure they want him to win. Then, when they check their hole cards, he reads the cues in their faces and body language.”
Carmody ran his fingers through his hair and groaned, “We’re going to have to retrain every one of our dealers. Do you know how much money that will cost?” I could relate to Carmody’s anguish. He would have to clear the plan with the bookkeepers, and accountants, more than mothers or even dentists, are masters at making every visit a guilty one.
“Not all of them,” I said. “A few of your dealers beat him pretty consistently.”
“Who?”
“Guy by the name of Chris, and a gal going by Jolene.”
At the mention of Jolene, both Bill and Carmody stifled a laugh. I made some inquiring gestures and Bill took it upon himself to explain.
“I’m not surprised about Jolene. She’s a nasty old badger. Can’t imagine she’d ever feel sympathetic, or intimidated, by anyone. Hell, in six years I’ve never once seen her change her expression.” He made a sour-looking grimace to demonstrate.
I didn’t doubt them. When I had interviewed her, she spent most of the time reminding me of how little she appreciated me coming around and making accusations. Despite my many protests to the contrary, she had made up her mind that I was there to screw her over, an attitude I often see in older, hard-bitten women who, in their defense, have spent most of their lives being screwed over.
“We’ve had to take disciplinary measures against her before,” Carmody said. I remarked that I had seen them on her personnel file. Rudeness, insubordination, a whole postbox of customer complaints - she was still on the payroll only because she was an exceptionally good earner. Most customers left her table broke and a little frightened, the first thing being the more important of the two.
“She slays Barry Farquhar,” I said. “Every time a switch puts her at his table, he moves somewhere else. In all the tape I watched, he’s never had a good night against her.”
“It’s moot, anyways. The matter is closed.”
“Damn,” Bill sighed. “He didn’t do anything illegal, so we can’t have the prick locked up. I hate to accept that we’re going to let him get away with it, though.”
“I assume you’re going to black-book him,” I said.
“Sure, but what does that do? All that money he took from us. Sixty grand – Christ! I wish there was a way to get it back.”
“Sixty Grand from you, forty from the Cabaret, eighty from the Sands. He’s been bleeding this town
dry for over a year.”
“Bastard.”
Bill seemed to be taking it personally. Knowing what I did about him, I wasn’t surprised.
“Well,” Carmody said. “I’m saddened that we don’t have any recourse, but happy that his technique can’t be duplicated. We’re just going to have to eat that sixty grand, I’m afraid.”
“Come on, Nash!” Bill cried. “We know how he operates now!”
“It’s been done before, Bill, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” I said. Both Bill and Carmody blinked at me.
“What?” Carmody said, more to Bill than me.
“Bill,” I said. “Farquhar burned you guys bad, it’s true. You and every other house in town. No reason to take punitive measures, though.”
Bill regarded me warily. Officially, my job was over and Bill, never the subtle type, clearly wished I’d just go away. I left it up to Carmody to ask for clarification.
“Again, what?”
“A jackpot. You know Farquhar’s angle, you could set up a high stakes game, take him for everything he took you for - and more. I may not be on the payroll anymore, but let me give you some free advice: don’t try it. Sure, it works most of the time, but the risk – well, it ain’t worth it. Sorry to burst your bubble, Bill, but I’m not going to give this scheme my blessing.”
“Is that what you were proposing, Bill?” Carmody asked. Bill looked to his boss, then to me. I shook my head and mouthed the word “no” to him, which lit a fire in those big, dumb eyes.
“Why the hell not?” he said. “We have two dealers that kill him every time. Train them not to give cues – hell, better yet, train them to give false cues.”
“I don’t know, Bill. It’s illegal to influence the outcome of a game-”
“We’re not. We’re not gimmicking the deck, the cards come out the same.”
“It’s a gray area,” Carmody admitted.
“If anyone finds out, it’ll be a slap on the wrist. If anybody finds out.”
I should explain something that most people don’t know: casinos don’t make a lot of money. The overhead costs are huge, and in places where there’s a healthy amount of competition, carpet-joints like the Golden Horseshoe go under as fast as neighborhood Chinese restaurants. I could see all sorts of figures dancing in Carmody’s head, ones and zeros that he could present triumphantly to the pencil-pushers at the front office. For his part, Bill seemed happy to make good on his screw-up, the whole Farquhar debacle having happened on his watch.
“It’s worth considering, I suppose,” Carmody ventured.
I shook my head, “Well, fellas, it was nice working with you, and I wish you luck.”
“Stick around. We could use your input.”
“You’ve already got it. You know, if there’s one thing addicts like Farquhar don’t understand, it’s the first rule of gambling: you have to know when to cut your losses and walk away.”
With those words of wisdom, I followed my own advice and made for the elevator.
I met Graham in the elevator going to the ground floor.
“Tom,” he said. “How goes it?”
“Splendid.”
“Oh, Splendid!” he said in a high-throated, princely accent. He was a funny guy when you got to know him. This Graham was very different from the one I had met a week before. At first, he had regarded me warily, but a few smothered burritos and afternoons of shop-talk had loosened him up. It couldn’t have hurt that my presence made Bill Manzanero anxious as a Mormon at Oktoberfest, something Graham observed with relish.
Right on cue Bill came strutting down the hall just as the doors were sliding shut.
“Hold that elevator!” he barked. Graham winced and pressed the door open button.
Bill stepped into the elevator. He had his elbows out and we moved against the walls to accommodate him – he walked, and talked, like a much bigger man.
“Take the next one,” he said to Graham. Graham, cowed from their last confrontation, nodded meekly and sidled out. All the better, I figured. I had my doubts as to whether all of us could fit in there with Bill’s ego.
The doors closed and we began our descent.
“That was nice work you did,” Bill said, it not sounding at all like a compliment.
“Thanks.”
“You were able to get a classified dossier on a former FBI agent pretty quickly, don’t you think?”
“I have a friend in The Bureau,” I said, not at all liking where the conversation was heading.
Bill smiled.
“You know, I mentioned your name to some of my counterparts at the other houses,” he said. “And a funny thing happened: they all know you.”
“Why shouldn’t they? I live here. I’ve worked Reno for years.”
“True, true. I guess what puzzles me is how you always show up offering your services a few months after Barry Farquhar torches the place.”
“Just what the hell are you getting at?”
“How long have you known about Farquhar?”
“Let’s see,” I said, looking at my watch. “Nine days, four hours, and twelve minutes, give or take.”
“Asshole. If you was a lawyer, you’d be chasing after every ambulance in town.”
“Watch it.”
“You’ve known about him for months, haven’t you? It would take a long time to get all the information you had on him. You’ve been letting him burn us so you can scavenge from the ashes. Then – this is the part that really gets me - you actually had the balls to try and talk us out of winning our money back. You want to keep milking him at the next place he scorches.”
The door dinged open and I made to leave. One of Bill’s mitts wrapped around my arm.
“Take it off,” I said. “Or I’ll have you arrested for battery.”
Bill let go, grinning like a schoolyard bully who just got threatened with squealing to the teacher – I may have gotten my way, but I’d made myself look chickenshit doing it.
“You don’t really have a friend in the FBI, do you?”
“Talk to him yourself, if it matters that much.”
Bill took his phone out of his blazer, figuring he’d caught me bluffing.
“Go ahead. What’s the number?”
I told him the number. The phone rang five or six times before he hung up and stuck it back in his pocket.
“Straight to a voice mailbox,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll try him later. Know that if this doesn’t play out, I’ll have your license revoked.”
By then, I was ready to put a few Manzanero-shaped dents in the elevator doors. Reason prevailed and I snickered at him, “You’re one sorry specimen, Bill.” And, when I was out of earshot in the parking lot, “But not as sorry as you’re gonna be.”
The first week of November had rolled around when I got the call. The caller ID said Nash Carmody. I was making an omelet and turned the burner to low, hoping the conversation would be short enough that I wouldn’t crisp the edges.
“Hello,” I said.
“Tom?”
“Nash, what can I do for you?”
“Oh, I was just calling to see if you were busy today. We’ve got Farquhar coming down, thought you might like to see your work through to the end.”
“You’re going through with it, huh?”
“It’s a matter of losing sixty grand, or winning two-hundred. After giving it some thought, it kind of seemed like a no-brainer.”
I eyed the pan on the stove, spatula ready to lunge at the first sign of browning.
“How’d you get ahold of him?” I asked. “Even I couldn’t find a working number for him.”
“The ID checker took note of his address the last time he came in. We sent an invitation, oh you should have seen it, Tom. Expensive cardstock, a big ribbon, the whole deal.”
See? What did I tell you about the greeter.
“I’m still surprised he went for it,” I said.
“He didn’t. Not for a while, at least. We had to throw in about fi
ve grand of promotional chips to sweeten the deal. You know, the ones that can be played with but can’t be redeemed for cash.”
“What time is he coming down?”
“The game starts at six. If you can make it, we’d sure love to have you.”
“We? Bill, too?”
“Inviting you was his idea.”
Well, I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch, I thought.
“Alright. I’ll be there.”
“Thanks, Tom. The little weasel isn’t going to know what hit him.”
I ended the call, rescued the omelet from the flames, and opened a beer. Not that I’m prone to drinking in the morning, but everything was going so well I felt I owed it to myself. Vice is the currency to reward one’s self for a job well done. Lose five pounds, eat a cheeseburger. Run a mile, smoke a cigar. In my case, I deserved much more than a beer or two, but if I was going to be human by the time I got over to the Golden Horseshoe, I was going to have to pace myself.
Six beers and as many hours later I made my final trip to the Golden Horseshoe. I arrived by cab – the hatchback was in the shop getting a new clutch, and I had enough booze on my breath to make sure that, if I got pulled over, the next conversation I had would be with a public defender. By then I was a familiar sight and the greeter allowed me to go up to Carmody’s office without an escort.
Carmody was there. Bill, too. Carmody was pacing around the room, stopping every now and then to hunch over the desk and gaze at the action on the flatscreen. The TV had been hooked up to his laptop, which was streaming footage of the game from the security room. Bill was sitting in a plush chair with an adding machine on his lap, grinning like a tiger shark that smelled blood in the water. I put another checkmark on the mental list of Bill’s less charming qualities. At the rate he was going, he wouldn’t be winning the award for asshole of the year, he’d be hosting the ceremony.
Barry Farquhar was on the screen, propped up on an elbow with fingers weaved into his hair. It didn’t take someone of his unique skillset to read that body language – I’d seen it a hundred times at the track just before someone tore up their ticket and threw it on the ground. The source of Farquhar’s frustration, I could only assume, was the fuzzy, gray head of Jolene bobbing at the bottom of the frame.