“About what?”
“When she sees you, she’s going to flip out. Let’s just put it that way.” He spread his hands apologetically. “I mean, you look likeâ¦uh, who’s that actress?” He started snapping his fingers impatiently, the name on the tip of his tongue.
“Julia Roberts?” I asked hopefully.
He smiled. “No. Lucy Lawless. That’s it.”
“Xena, the Warrior Princess?”
“You could be her sister,” he said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment. But why would your wife ever have to see me?”
He smiled. “She’s on the team.”
“Ahh.”
“In fact, she’s kind of the boss.” He smiled sheepishly. “Anyway,” he said. “Does tomorrow work for you?”
I nodded, and we agreed to meet in the afternoon at Bally’s, a big old casino right on the Strip, about a half mile from my condo.
After we parted ways, I closed up the office, headed out into the cool October night, and then drove myself down to Cougar’s, a gentlemen’s clubâand I use the term looselyâwhere I made most of my money. Opening up a private detective shop was my ticket out of the skin business, and at the moment, I had one high heel out the door. But the money was still too good to walk away entirely, and (I told myself) I needed to build up a stash of money for when I finally cut the cord and became an ex-stripper.
Wednesday nights were a hit-or-miss proposition. I definitely still went in to work on Thursdays and the weekend because that’s where the most money was. But Wednesdays were weird. Half of Las Vegas revolves around the convention business, and I was no different. Some Wednesdays were duds, while others, like tonight, would no doubt see a flurry of activity from not one but two technology conventions in town for the week. Technology meant men, twenty and thirtysomething men, and not surprisingly, they wanted to experience the full panoply of entertainments Vegas had to offer.
I wasn’t disappointed. Arriving just after nine, I had to share a locker with someone named Darcy, a new dancer I’d never met. Darcy had the most amazing fingernails I’d ever seenâiridescent pink with tiny little red hearts inscribed in the middle. She didn’t know who I was either. Didn’t know that seven or eight years ago, my picture had been plastered all around town on thirty-foot billboards and that men lined up to get a five-minute lap dance from me. But that was the nature of the beast. When you rely on looks and nothing else, it’s a here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of business, and I was fine with that. Or so I told myself.
None of my regular customers were in the club that night. Or if they were, they weren’t seeking me out. But I had managed to catch the eye of an entire table of app developers from Sweden, and I ended up giving private dances for half the table. Apparently, I looked enough like a famous Swedish reality-TV star that the guys opened their wallets more than I would have expected. They proved to be a very well-behaved bunch, all things considered, and I managed to make enough money from them to rationalize quitting early for the night, by which I meant two thirty.
The next day had me meeting up with Dan, my client, at Bally’s. On principle, I should have suggested a different location. You see, I’m a member of a fledgling group of eccentric locals called the Apostrophe Society, and it’s our mission to get Caesars Entertainment Corporation to add apostrophes to the names of Caesars Palace and Ballys, both of which it owns. To us, the giant illuminated signs on the casinos are an affront, a grammatically incorrect scar on the otherwise beautiful Las Vegas skyline. The truth was, I had only been to one Apostrophe Society meeting, which had proven to be little more than an excuse for a bunch of weirdos to get together and drink. I did enough drinking with weirdos already, so I had steered clear of them since then. But still, I had my principles.
I was waiting near the blackjack tables when a complete stranger tapped me on the shoulder. He had a full build, ruddy beard, dark glasses, and a camouflage John Deere hat.
“Yes?” I asked hesitantly.
He was smiling. “Ready to go?”
I crunched up my face, confused.
“It’s me. Dan.” He was smiling now.
I chuckled, finally seeing behind the disguise. “I get it now. Nice beard. Is that really necessary?”
“Heck yeah it is,” he said. “I’m not even going to play blackjack, either. But I’m banned from every casino on the Strip, so I have to do this nonsense every time I come.”
I shrugged. “Seems like a lot of effort.”
“Tell me about it. But it pays off.” He gestured with his hand. “Let’s go find a table.”
The two of us made a leisurely circuit around the casino floor. Bally’s had two banks of blackjack tables, for a total of twenty-four, but in the middle of the afternoon, only half were in use. Most of them had table minimums of ten dollars, with a couple at twenty-five. Dan was subtly checking out the dealers.
“It’s not what you’d think,” he murmured. “These young ones are the most gung ho about card counting.” He was looking at a twentysomething Asian woman who seemed to have a permanent frown etched on her face. “The old guard, that’s what you want. Some guy who’s been dealing for twenty years. In the union. Doesn’t care too muchâjust wants to get through his shift.”
I nodded, looking around. “How about that guy?” I asked, glancing two tables down the line.
“He’s perfect. And the table looks good too. Not too crowded but not empty either,” Dan said.
“Why does that matter?” I asked.
“You can’t play alone because when you change bets, it’ll be obvious. So it’s good to have some cover. And when other people increase their bets, you can just pretend you’re playing along.”
“Okay, I think I’m ready,” I lied. My heart was pounding for some reason. It was only blackjack, I told myself, a game I’d played hundreds of times. I knew how to count and how to play basic strategy, so why was my nervous system acting like I was about to storm Omaha Beach on D-day?
“You got the money?” he asked.
I patted my pocket where ten crisp hundreds were folded neatly.
“Then get in there, soldier! I’ll be off by those slots over there, watching.” He patted me affectionately on the shoulder and turned away.
CHAPTER THREE
My throat had gone dry, and my palms were sweaty. I had convinced myself that I couldn’t even add one plus two, but somehow I forced myself to sit down at a ten-dollar blackjack table. The dealer’s name was Terry. Terry had a paunch that stuck out over the table, an awful 1980s uniform that had been spot cleaned too many times, and a wispy gray mustache. He also had gray eyes, and they were boring into mine.
“Are you going to play or just sit there?” he asked.
In my terror, I had completely frozen, forgetting to place any money on the table.
“Sorry,” I said. “Long day.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the hundreds, placing three of them neatly on the table. I hoped no one had noticed my hands shaking.
With practiced ceremony, the dealer took the bills and laid them out next to each other so the cameras overhead could have a clear view and then counted out twelve green chips, each worth twenty-five dollars.
“One stack of red, please,” I said softly.
The dealer, nonplussed, pulled back four of the green chips and counted out a much taller stack of reds which were worth only five dollars each. I wasn’t quite ready to commit to betting twenty-five bucks every hand, so the reds would give me some flexibility. The other three players at the table, two middle-aged men and an older Korean woman, watched the dealer’s hands with practiced indifference. I was sitting in the left-most seat or what Dan had called “third base.”
Terry’s hairy hands began sliding the cards out of the shoe and onto the table. He flipped each card over and laid it down with an authoritative thwack in front of each player. I tried to tune out everything except the numbers. The cards came out seven, four, jack, an ace for me and then the do
wn card for the dealer. And then another seven, queen, three, and a four for me. The dealer was showing a nine. I had ace and 4, a ho-hum hand but one that required a decision since the ace could be treated either as a one or an eleven. Against the dealer’s nine, I would treat it as a one. I made that decision in a split second and tried to focus on the others’ cards. The woman with two sevens took a hit and busted when she drew a nine. The next guy drew a lucky six to get twenty, but his buddy wasn’t so fortunate when a ten busted his thirteen. I was happy to hit and draw a four, giving me nineteen against the dealer’s nineâa reasonable chance to push or even win.
We pushed. The dealer showed a king in the hole to give him nineteen as I’d predicted. My eyes scanned all the cards on the table to recheck the count. A number of tens had been playedâevery face card counts as tenâso the deck was slightly unfavorable now. But since they were already half through with the shoe, I had no idea what had already been played. I wouldn’t start counting for real until the next shoe.
The Korean woman seemed to believe it was her God-appointed duty to fill the entire casino with a thick cloud of cigarette smoke. I felt bad for the dealer, who had to keep turning away to cough and who wasn’t shy about brushing away any plumes of smoke that strayed into his face. She puffed on, undeterred or oblivious. Over the next several hands, my heart rate started to drop, and I began to ease into a semblance of rhythm, playing my own hand and keeping track of all the other cards. The dealer wasn’t one of the lightning-fast ones I’d seen, but he wasn’t slow, either. Lucky for me, his constant need to cough or brush away smoke gave me a few seconds to catch up when I got behind.
I sat and played for about a half hour, which was probably four full shoes. The first one was unlucky, starting out with a bevy of aces and tens, and the second and third were about average. Up a little, down a little, with no pattern at all. I varied my bets slightly, just to mix things up, but I was treading water, down about eighty bucks. The fourth shoe, though, was when my heart started pounding again. Right from the get-go, it was all little cards. As the sixes, threes, and fours splayed out on the table over and over again, I slowly increased my bets. From twenty-five to thirty-five. And then to fifty. And when I started winning, up to a hundred. And then, just as I was gathering steam, a new dealer came in and tapped Terry on the shoulder.
Dan had trained me to be paranoid (not that I needed much help), and the new dealer got my stomach heaving and churning. I was certain that someone upstairs had noticed me changing my bets to take advantage of the count, and the new dealer, a scary-looking guy named Viktor, was probably an expert on busting card counters and calling in security.
But Viktor looked as bored as Terry had, as though our cards were the least interesting things he’d ever seen. I looked around and saw other dealers being relieved, and I realized Viktor was merely Terry’s regular relief dealer. Dealers got breaks every forty minutes, and Terry was no different. Back to business. I had temporarily lost track of the exact count, but I knew there had been no shift in the massively pro-player tendency of the deck. Hundred-dollar bets were my new norm, and then $125, and even $150. Double down? You betcha. Split aces? Done. No one batted an eyelash. With adrenaline coursing through me, I raked in piles of black chips, trying to conceal them in little, nondescript mounds.
But Viktor noticed, as he was trained to do. “Let me give you purple for that,” he said in a thick Eastern European or Russian accent following one of my wins and exchanged a purple $500 chip for a few of my blacks. He still seemed bored.
“Thanks,” I whispered, my throat completely dry.
A couple more wins got me some more purple, and then an insane hand where I split three aces and drew three tens gave me 21, 21, 21 and six hundred bucks. And then the shoe was done. I couldn’t believe it was over. My hands were shaking again, but now it was from pure thrill rather than nervousness.
“You can color me up,” I said, standing up and pushing my chips into the center of the felt.
“Nice work,” Viktor muttered, flashing me a phony smile. Now that it was time for his tip, he’d suddenly become very friendly.
Everyone at the table was mesmerized by the chips being stacked in little piles and moved around. Greens and reds became black, and blacks became purples, and purples turned into $1000 yellow chips. I made sure to keep my head down, certain that the cameras would take note of so much money going out of a ten-dollar table, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the chips. Finally, Viktor pushed a small stack over to me consisting of two yellow chips, one purple, and seven black, green, and reds. Viktor had only been at the table for five minutes, but I knew it was customary to be generous, so I flipped him a black one as I left.
I turned and began walking away at random, my brain running on overdrive. Dan caught up with me as I neared the hotel lobby where a half-naked cabaret dancer with a two-foot feathery hat stood greeting new guests.
“Check this out,” I said, opening up my hands to reveal my loot.
Dan was taken aback. “Twenty-nine hundred? In a half hour? You’re good. Too good.”
“Huh?”
“I was watching. You upped your bets a little aggressively. Someday, they’re going to notice that kind of action and back you right off. And then you’ll be done.”
I nodded. I was still enjoying the afterglow of winning almost three grand for doing nothing, so I wasn’t going to let him bring me down.
“What was the count at that point?” he asked.
“Plus eleven, I think,” I said.
Dan whistled. “That’s a real heater of a shoe. That kind of thing is pretty rare. Maybe one in fifty, something like that. But you see how profitable that could have been?”
I frowned. “What do you mean? It was very profitable!” I showed him the yellow chips again to make the point.
He smiled. “I know. I know. But imagine if you had a partner. A guy with ten grand in his pocket. When the table gets red hot like that, you give him a secret signal, and he sits down and plunks down two thousand a hand.”
I nodded enthusiastically. The light bulb had finally gone off in my head. “You could make fifty grand in ten minutes,” I said.
Dan smiled. “Now you’re getting it.”
“So what’s next?” I asked, fingering the chips in my hand.
“Well, we’ve got a meeting tomorrow night. I think you’re ready for me to introduce you to the others, don’t you?”
I smiled. “I’m ready. I was a little nervous at first there, but with each shoe, it became easier and easier to keep track.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Like I said, it almost becomes second nature. Now let’s get out of here. My beard is itchy.”
Dan told me where to meet the next night, and I headed to the cashier’s cage to turn my colored plastic chips into green paper. The cashier, a middle-aged woman with a wide face and a distracted air, wasn’t particularly impressed with my haul, but I didn’t mind. The sound of all those bills shuffling between her perfectly manicured fingers was on par with any symphony.
In my job as a stripper, dealing with wads of cash was commonplace, but I’m quite sure I had never palmed a wad that had twenty-nine hundred-dollar bills in it. There was a heft to it, a presence, and it was exerting a powerful force over me. I couldn’t keep my right hand from fondling the money even after it was lodged deep in my pocket. My precious. There was something about the whole thing that felt right to me, an excitement I attributed to the fact that I had just pocketed a boatload of cash by using my brain instead of my boobs. Even though card counting wasn’t any more socially acceptable than stripping, I didn’t care. It was a start.
My brain had an annoying habit of making lemonade into lemons. True to form, my glee at winning began shifting into a vague nervousness, a creeping paranoia that everyone around meâand even the unseen security guys operating the “eye in the sky” camerasâknew not only that I was holding lots of cash but that I had won it by counting cards. I knew
it was crazy, but I just wanted to get out of there, and fast. Feeling like I’d just robbed a bank, I skedaddled out through the main hotel lobby and onto the Strip, making sure to keep my head down so the cameras couldn’t get too good a look at me, although they had already seen plenty of me at the cage where they had more cameras than an Academy Awards red carpet.
I lollygagged at home for most of the evening, succumbing to the familiar lure of my patented triple grilled cheese sandwich into which I snuck some tuna casserole, a tomato, and possibly four slices of salami. And then at nine, I dragged myself over to Cougar’s to work the Thursday night shift.
Cougar’s slayed any lingering buzz I was feeling after winning so much money at blackjack. It was the damned locker room scales. One of the few fringe benefits of working as a stripper is that you get paid to burn calories. One of the girls had calculated long ago that an average night meant a thousand caloriesâfour or five hours of pole dancing and wriggling around on guys’ laps would make those calories melt away, so you could eat just about anything and not gain weight. As my detective business had grown in recent months, I had cut back slightly on my night job. Instead of five nights a week, I was down to four and sometimes three if it was a slow week. Whoever coined the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished” was a genius. Having taken real steps to transform my life for the better, my reward was to get fatter. And fast. The locker room scale treated me as though I had been on a month-long cruise with a suite right next to the twenty-four-hour pasta bar. When no one was looking, I tried standing on the scale on the other side of the locker room, with even worse results. How was it possible to gain four pounds in three weeks just by skipping a measly three or four nights at the club?
I tried to mask my perma-scowl all night without much success. Instead of my normal twelve or fifteen lap dancesâwhich is where we make our real moneyâI was only asked to dance for a half dozen guys, and only one of whom gave me a tip worth mentioning. Was it my mood, I wondered, or had they noticed the extra four pounds?
Double Down (Raven McShane Mysteries Book 4) Page 2