Funny Money

by James Swain

Porter nodded. “Tony's the best.”

  “That's what I said. I remember when The Bombay first opened. We were getting killed at blackjack. Everybody was beating us, even little old ladies. I didn't know my ass from my elbow back then, so I tell another casino owner, and he says, ‘Call Tony Valentine. He's the best at catching cheats.' Now, I've known Tony a long time. How long has it been, Tony?”

  “Since I busted you,” Valentine said.

  Archie burst out laughing. “What a kidder. Anyway, so Tony comes in, takes a stroll through the blackjack pit, and comes up to me. He says, ‘Hey, Arch, were you born yesterday? You're using playing cards with a one-way back design. I said, ‘So?' And he says, ‘If a card gets turned around, every player at the table can track it.' So we replaced the cards, and our problems vanished.”

  Valentine sipped his soda. He didn't remember the incident, which he attributed to the fact that so many casinos had gotten ripped off back then. Atlantic City hadn't known what it was doing, and hustlers from around the globe had come running.

  Rising, Archie crossed the spacious room and stopped at the floor-to-ceiling window that faced the ocean. “You and Doyle were buddies, weren't you?”

  “That's right.”

  “I was down in Florida when he got killed. I would have come to the funeral, but business had me tied up.”

  “You buying Disney World?”

  Archie took a big fat cigar from his pocket and fired it up. “I'm buying hotels, Tony. Hotels that I'm going to turn into casinos. Florida isn't going to let the Indians have a monopoly forever. Gambling generates taxes, and taxes build roads and schools, two things Florida desperately needs.”

  Valentine nearly stood up and walked out of the room. He'd retired to Florida because it didn't have casinos. Biting his tongue, he said, “Okay.”

  Archie picked up on his hesitation. He stared at him in the window's reflection. Then said, “How would you like to finish doing Doyle's job?”

  “Depends,” Valentine said.

  The great one's eyes turned into slits.

  “My rate's a thousand bucks a day, plus expenses. I also need access to your surveillance control room. And your library of surveillance tapes.”

  Archie turned to look at Porter. New Jersey law strictly forbids outsiders inside a casino's surveillance area, and Archie would be disciplined and fined heavily if Valentine was discovered where he didn't belong.

  “We'll have to risk it,” Porter told his boss.

  “Okay,” Archie said. To Valentine he said, “Anything else?”

  Valentine was about to say no, then saw something sparkling on his shirt. He removed a tiny shard of glass that had been part of his rental's windshield.

  “A car,” he said. “My rental's shot.”

  Archie went to his desk, picked up a key ring, and tossed it to him. “This is my spare. It's in the basement. I'll call the guard, tell him to let you out.”

  Valentine glanced at the keys. They were for a Mercedes. He'd planned to go looking for the European anyway; now he was going to get paid for it, and drive a rich man's car.

  He picked up his overcoat from a chair, then went over to the window and stuck his hand out. Archie shook it, the way business had always been done in Atlantic City.

  “Nice to have you onboard,” Archie said.

  Valentine stared downward. He saw kids sledding on the Boardwalk, just like Gerry had once done. And the two guys walking on the beach, that was him and Doyle just off work, going to get a burger. You move away, he thought, but you never leave.

  “Nice to be onboard,” he replied.

  6

  Funny Money

  You're brutal,” Porter said as they descended in Archie's private elevator.

  “Just being honest,” Valentine replied.

  “Is this what I have to look forward to when I retire?”

  “They say it gets worse.”

  The elevator's walls were made of glass, and Archie's vast empire lay below. The Bombay's casino was the length of three football fields, and its Arabian Nights architecture was as gaudy as any neon-soaked building on the Las Vegas strip.

  Valentine watched a tour bus pull up to the entrance and disgorge a mob of white-haired geezers. Atlantic City's casinos preyed on the elderly, who squandered their pensions and Social Security checks playing slot and video poker machines. The elevator doors parted and they got out.

  “How does Archie think he can get gambling passed in Florida,” Valentine said. “The voters have rejected it twice.”

  “Archie's talked Florida's governor into passing special legislation so counties can decide whether or not they want casinos,” Porter said.

  “So Archie's trying to rewrite the law.”

  “You got it.”

  “Good luck.”

  “He's already spent a fortune buying up hotels in Miami and St. Petersburg. Trust me, Arch knows what he's doing.”

  They walked the casino floor. The Bombay's interior decor was one part faux India, one part Arabian Nights, the rest New Jersey schmaltz. Cocktail waitresses wore skimpy I Dream of Jeannie costumes, the dealers and croupiers silk shirts and satin bow ties. Every seat at every slot machine was taken, the room a sea of polyester and blue hair.

  “I need a cup of coffee,” Valentine said.

  “Sinbad's is our best bet,” Porter replied.

  Valentine followed Porter through the blackjack pit. Passing a table, he stopped to watch a young female dealer shuffle the cards, then deal a round. Porter edged up beside him.

  “Something wrong?”

  “She's new, isn't she?”

  “Started last week,” Porter mumbled. “How could you tell?”

  “Her hole card is a red nine.”

  “Don't screw with me.”

  “Bet?”

  “With you? Never.”

  “Then watch.”

  The players at the table played their hands. Then the dealer turned over her hole card. It was the nine of hearts. Porter pulled Valentine away from the game.

  “How the hell did you know that?”

  “She flashed a corner when she slid it under her face card,” Valentine explained. “Inexperienced dealers do that sometimes. Hustlers call it front loading.”

  Porter cursed under his breath. Every day, hustlers walked through his casino, looking for flaws in his games, or green dealers who didn't know all the rules. For every problem he didn't fix, he lost thousands of dollars, sometimes more.

  “I'll pull her off the floor right now,” he said.

  They met up in Sinbad's ten minutes later. A harem girl served them coffee in elephant-shaped mugs. Blowing away the steam, Valentine said, “So, tell me how The Bombay lost six million bucks, and you managed to keep your job.”

  Porter spit coffee on himself. “That's not funny.”

  “It wasn't meant to be funny.”

  Grabbing a handful of paper napkins from a dispenser, Porter wiped his chin. “I didn't get canned because it wasn't my fault.”

  “Why's that?”

  “I don't know if you noticed it, but The Bombay's changed.”

  Valentine had noticed. Walking through the casino, he'd gotten lost several times.

  “Back in November, Archie launched a new promotion,” Porter said. “Every customer gets a pail of special coins, called Funny Money. People gamble with it and win prizes.”

  Valentine sipped the scalding brew. He'd seen a lot of cockamamie promotions in casinos over the years, and they'd always produced the same results: the casinos lost money.

  “Whose idea was this?”

  “The Mod Squad's. They run the marketing department. At first I thought it was stupid. Casinos aren't supposed to give stuff away. But it worked, so they obviously know something.”

  “Worked how?”

  “It changed people's perceptions of us.”

  “Right,” Valentine said.

  Porter whipped out his cell phone. Five minutes later, the Mod Squad were sitting
in Sinbad's, with Brandi enthusiastically explaining the promotion to him. Up close, she was what guys of his generation called a dish, with green bedroom eyes and a soft Southern drawl, and he found himself staring a little harder than he probably should have.

  “Ninety-eight percent of people who play in a casino lose,” she said. “They have a good time, but they go home broke. The idea behind Funny Money is to let people go home thinking they won something.”

  “Change the perception,” Valentine said.

  She flashed a smile to melt your heart. “That's right. Last October, we put Funny Money slot machines in the casino. It meant reconfiguring the floor, but sometimes you have to take risks in this business if you want to succeed.”

  How old was she? Thirty-two? She talked like she'd been in the business a hundred years. Gigi, the beautiful blonde, took over. “Funny Money coins only work in the Funny Money slots, which pay out at a rate of twenty percent. The prizes are remainders we buy from the Home Shopping Network. Some of the stuff we get for free, it's so bad.”

  The three women shared a giggle. Being around them felt like a TV sitcom. Valentine laughed along, just to humor them.

  “Funny Money machines also have a jackpot,” Gigi said, “which is a new car. General Motors gives us that for free. For the publicity.”

  “So the prizes don't cost you anything,” he said.

  It was Monique's turn. She looked like she pumped iron, and jumped right in. “But the guests are winning something, and that's what counts. They go home happy. We're changing the experience for them.”

  “And they tell their friends,” Gigi said.

  “And their friends come to The Bombay,” Brandi said.

  Their synchronization was uncanny. It still sounded dumb, but what did he know? Mencken once said that no one had ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American public, and this sounded right up Mencken's alley.

  Brandi's cell phone rang. Taking it from her purse, she flipped it open. “Yes, Archie.”

  “Where's Gigi and Monique?” the casino owner bellowed.

  “With me.”

  “Break time's over! Get your tight little asses up here, on the double.”

  Brandi dropped the cell phone into her purse. The three women's smiles faded.

  They filed out of the coffee shop, leaving Valentine to wonder how modern women liked being treated like little girls. If it bothered them, they were doing a hell of a job not showing it.

  “So this is the culprit,” Valentine said, standing next to a gleaming, six-foot-tall Funny Money slot machine, the handle glowing like a Star Wars laser saber.

  “Not so loud,” Porter said. “We've got a customer.”

  A woman wearing a jogging suit jumped on the stool and began feeding coins into the slot while jerking the handle. Physically, she was not much to look at, except for her right arm. Her pulling arm. A cross between Popeye's and Rod Laver's.

  “Having a good time?” Porter inquired.

  “You bet I am,” the woman said. “I've already won a K-Tell orange peeler and an electric foot massager.”

  “Ask her how much she lost at the tables,” Valentine whispered in Porter's ear.

  “Shut up, will you?” Porter said through clenched teeth.

  Even the best game would eventually beat you, and the woman soon ran out of coins and left. Taking her stool, Porter pointed at the ceiling. “See that eye-in-the-sky camera? Well, it used to watch one blackjack table. When we added the Funny Money slots, we had to rearrange things. Now, that camera watches two tables.”

  The practice was called double-duty and frowned upon in the gaming industry. Valentine said, “Let me guess. These are the tables where the European ripped you off.”

  Porter nodded. “Somehow he knew which tables had double-duty cameras. He waited until the other table had heavy action before starting to play. He ripped us off for months, but we only caught him on film a few times.”

  “Didn't someone notice the take was off?” Valentine asked.

  “The take wasn't off,” Porter said. “The promotion has been such a boon for business, it didn't show.”

  Something wasn't adding up. Valentine said, “If the take wasn't off, why did you hire Doyle?”

  “Having the floor rearranged bugged me,” Porter admitted. “I would look through a camera and not know which table I was seeing. So I hired Doyle to bird-dog for me.”

  “And he spotted the European.”

  “First night on the job,” Porter said.

  An elderly man with a walker shuffled over. His liver-spotted hands cradled a bucket filled with Funny Money. Porter helped him onto the stool.

  The gods of chance were smiling down. On the elderly man's first pull, the reels lined up six elephants. A buxom hostess appeared and presented him with a sixties lava lamp.

  “I always wanted one of these!” the elderly man exclaimed.

  They found an empty booth in the back of Sinbad's. Porter waved away the waitress.

  “Okay, so what do I do?”

  “A couple of things,” Valentine said. “First, accept that you've got a mole in the casino. The mole told the European which tables had cameras doing double-duty.”

  “Jesus,” Porter said. “Why didn't I think of that.”

  “Second, accept that the European will show up again. Most hustlers skip town when they get made. The European killed Doyle instead.”

  “He thinks we're easy pickings.”

  “That's right.”

  “If he does, we'll jam him.”

  Jam meant having someone arrested. Valentine lowered his voice. “For what? You can't prove he killed Doyle, and you can't prove he ripped you off. The police will let him walk, and Archie will fire you.”

  “So what do I do?”

  Valentine wrote his cell phone number down on a napkin and slid it across the table. “Call me.”

  “No police?”

  Valentine slid out of the booth and put his overcoat on. Sinbad's was empty, and he slipped the Glock out of his pocket and laid it on the table. Porter swallowed his Adam's apple.

  “No police,” he said.

  7

  A Tree in the Forest

  Archie's spare car was a Mercedes SL 600 coupe. It had more amenities than most third-world countries, and while sitting at a traffic light, Valentine played with the different buttons on the dashboard.

  He hit the button for the CD player and was assaulted by a throbbing rap song. The lyrics were about abusing women and killing cops, and he ejected the offensive music. Archie was of his generation—big band, Sinatra, the other crooners. This crap wasn't him at all, and Valentine tossed the CD into the glove compartment.

  His motel room had been cleaned, the tread marks fresh in the carpet. The red light on the bedside phone was blinking, and he dialed into voice mail. Two messages awaited him.

  “Hey, Pop,” his son said. “I just got a call from my bartender. Big Tony took over this morning and fired everybody. He's running my bookmaking operation and has some scary colored guys collecting bets for him. I've got to get him the money. Call me, will you?”

  Valentine couldn't believe his son's nerve. The bar was his, and he wasn't going to pay for it a second time. He erased Gerry, then played the second message.

  “Tony,” Mabel said. “I need your help. Please call me.”

  He glanced at his watch. It was nearly eleven thirty. He had promised to call Mabel every morning at nine sharp and hadn't done so once. He dialed his house.

  “Grift Sense,” she answered.

  “Hey, kiddo, how's it going?”

  “There you are. You must start leaving your cell phone on. I've got another panicked customer on the line.”

  “Who?”

  “Frank Beck.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He's the new head of security at Harrah's in Lake Tahoe. He's holding on the other line.”

  Harrah's was a good customer, and he sat on the edge of th
e bed and unbuttoned his jacket. “What's the problem?”

  “Beck thinks he has a dice cheater in his casino. This player wins money every time he bets. Beck can't figure out what he's doing.”

  “Ask Beck if the guy is throwing the dice, or just a bettor.”

  Mabel put him on hold, then came back. “Beck says he's just betting.”

  “Ask him to describe the type of bets the guy is placing. This might get a little complicated, so you'd better write it down.”

  She was gone a little longer this time.

  “This is so exciting,” Mabel said when she returned. “The man is in the casino right now. Beck says he always puts $1,000 on the Field bet, $600 on Place bet on 10, $600 on Place bet on 9, $200 on 12 ‘On the Hop,' $200 on 11 ‘On the Hop,' and $600 on any 7. Whatever that all means!”

  Valentine closed his eyes and ran over the bets in his head. Opening them, he said, “Tell Beck I'll call him right back.”

  Mabel put him on hold. When she returned, she said, “Do you have any idea what this man is doing?”

  “Yes. He's part of a crew. They're laying sixes. It's one of the oldest dice scams in the world.”

  “Why didn't you have me tell him?” she asked, sounding a little miffed.

  “Because I didn't want to embarrass him.”

  “Why would that embarrass him?”

  “Because if Beck knew anything about craps, he would have made the scam. Only he doesn't, which means he's new.”

  “If Beck doesn't know anything, how did he get his job?”

  “He must know somebody upstairs. That happens a lot in casinos. It's called having juice.” Valentine glanced at his watch. A minute had passed, and he had Mabel give him Beck's phone number. Then he said, “You still liking the job?”

  “It's very exciting,” his neighbor said.

  “Talk to you later.”

  He hung up, then punched in Beck's number. Beck answered from the floor of Harrah's casino. He was panicking and sounded a heartbeat away from a stroke. Valentine explained the scam to him. “You've got three crossroaders at your craps table. One member throws the dice, but palms one in his hand. Another member at the opposite end of the table places a late bet and leaves a duplicate die on the layout with the six up. A third member does the betting and always makes the bets you described to my office manager. The bettor wins money on every outcome except an eight. Which is an 84 percent winning percentage.”