Funny Money

by James Swain

  “Reaction from Indian tribes across the nation has been negative. Legally, federal agents are forbidden from entering Indian reservations. Many tribal chieftains are calling upon Washington to intervene.”

  The rest of the news was blather, and he tuned it out. So Archie had gotten his wish. He felt bad for the Micanopys. He'd met Running Bear at a cheating seminar he'd done in Las Vegas and had learned a little bit about the tribe's history. They'd been treated like doormats for centuries, and he sensed they were about to get the short end of the stick once again.

  A road sign said PRINCETON, 60 MILES. His foot challenged the accelerator, and he watched the speedometer creep past a hundred miles per hour.

  Princeton University is in the center of New Jersey, the hilly landscape thick with hundred-year-old oaks and a history of higher education. The university's campus is as big as a large town, and he had to stop twice to ask for directions.

  He pulled into a spot in front of the Institute for Advanced Studies and killed the engine. The mathematics department, for which the university was world renowned, resided here, and he watched a group of students walk by. He'd never made it to college and had always regretted it. Not that being a cop hadn't been an education, but all of its lessons had come the hard way.

  He went inside. A bulletin board in the foyer announced the day's seminars. In Lecture Hall 1, physics of oscillatory integrals. In Hall 2, vorticity in the Ginzburg-Landau model of superconductivity. Hall 3, geometric analysis of Chow-Mumford. You needed a degree just to understand the language. Walking into an office, he found a receptionist sitting behind a desk, filling out a form on an old-fashioned typewriter. Looking up, she said, “Can I help you?”

  “I'm looking for a visiting professor named Juraj Havelka. He's here as a guest of the mathematics department.”

  She thumbed through a log of visiting professors. Valentine leaned over the desk, reading the upside down page she stopped at. One line caught his eyes. Juraj's sponsor was a teacher named Peter Diamondis.

  “Sorry,” the receptionist said. “But he left last fall.”

  “Did he leave a forwarding address?”

  “I'm afraid not.”

  Back in the foyer, he consulted the teacher list tacked to the bulletin board. Dr. Peter Diamondis, head of the probability department, was in Fine Hall, Room 408. He asked a student for directions and was soon hiking across campus.

  Fine Hall was what a college building was supposed to look like. Six-story, redbrick, with ivy-covered walls. Every student that passed through its doors was weighted down with books. Going inside, he took the stairs to the fourth floor.

  The climb got his heart racing. Room 408 was at the end of a cavernous hallway. He tapped on the frosted glass door, then stuck his head in. “Dr. Diamondis?”

  Diamondis sat hunched over a PC. He reminded Valentine of the absent-minded professors from the old Disney movies. A scholarly type in his late fifties with pince-nez glasses, his hair resembling cyclone fencing. Above his desk hung a photograph of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out.

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if I could speak to you.”

  Valentine entered with his business card in his hand. The professor put the card under his nose and scrunched up his face. “Tony Valentine. Your company is called Grift Sense. What's that?”

  “I'm a private consultant for the gaming industry.”

  “May I ask in what capacity?”

  “I help catch crossroaders.”

  “Is that any relation to cross-dressing?”

  “They're miles apart. May I sit down?”

  “I have a class in twenty minutes.”

  “It shouldn't take that long.”

  “Be my guest.”

  Valentine took the chair across from the desk and unbuttoned his overcoat. “Crossroaders are thieves who specialize in ripping off casinos. It's a big business—about a hundred million a year in Las Vegas alone.”

  “And you catch these people?”

  “Yes. I can sense when things aren't right on a casino floor and I just take it from there.”

  “Grift sense.”

  “That's what hustlers call it.”

  “You must be very good.”

  Valentine nodded that he was.

  “And you've come to see me because of my work on cheating at blackjack?”

  Valentine hesitated. He'd read just about everything written on hustling blackjack, and Diamondis's name didn't ring any bells. But sometimes it was better to keep your mouth shut and play along, so he nodded his head. He was rewarded when Diamondis removed a deck of playing cards from his desk.

  “Take out the cards and shuffle them,” the professor said.

  Valentine broke the seal on a fresh pack of Bees, the cards used at hundreds of casinos around the world. He gave them a cursory exam; no marks, crimps, or shaved ends.

  “Do it this way,” Diamondis instructed him. “Riffle-shuffle, then cut, then riffle-shuffle, cut again, then riffle-shuffle and cut again. As I'm sure you're aware, this is the same shuffling sequence used by most casinos in the country.”

  Valentine shuffled as instructed. He kept the cards tight to the table the way a dealer would, with none of the faces being exposed. Finished, he handed the deck to his host. Diamondis declined with a shake of the head.

  “I don't want to touch them,” he said. “You deal.”

  Valentine hesitated. Had he missed something?

  “What are we playing?” Valentine asked.

  “Blackjack.”

  “How many hands?”

  “Four. The fourth will be yours, the others mine.”

  Diamondis cleared a space on the cluttered desk. Valentine dealt three blackjack hands to Diamondis, one for himself. The professor played his hands, busting on two, winning one.

  “Now,” Diamondis said, “would you say that everything is aboveboard, or to use the gambling lexicon, on the square?”

  “I would.”

  “Good. On the next round, would you be suspicious if I decided to bet heavily on my hands? This is a hypothetical question, of course.”

  Valentine thought about it. He'd started with a new deck and handled the cards throughout. If Diamondis had rigged the game, he was at a loss to explain how.

  “How heavily?” he asked.

  “Say, five thousand dollars a hand.”

  “Yeah, I'd be suspicious.”

  “But you wouldn't know why, would you?”

  “No.”

  “This time, deal five hands,” his host said.

  Valentine did so, sensing that he'd been led down the garden path. The professor turned his hands over. He had a twenty, a blackjack, a nineteen, and a sixteen, which he drew a card on, and busted. Valentine flipped his own hand over. He had a seventeen. Had they been in a casino, Diamondis would have won twelve thousand five hundred dollars.

  Valentine stared at the professor's cards. Three of his hands contained aces. Juraj had drawn a lot of aces as well. In blackjack, aces were the magic cards, and gave a player a 500 percent better chance of beating the house.

  The professor stuffed a pipe with tobacco and fired up the bowl, thoroughly enjoying himself.

  “Do it again,” Valentine said.

  Valentine got burned the second time as well, but on the third go around the proverbial lightbulb went off in his head. It was the shuffle. Diamondis was having him shuffle the deck the same way every time, just like casino dealers did. It was predictable, which had allowed the professor to devise a formula to track how cards descended in the deck.

  The professor thumped his desk. “Very good! You know, I have several graduate students who spent weeks trying to figure it out. I don't suppose you have a degree in mathematics?”

  “Atlantic City High, class of '56.”

  “I'll be sure to tell my students that.”

  “I'm confused about one thing,” Valentine said.

  “And what is that?”

  “No
dealer shuffles the same. How do you know when the cards you want will come up?”

  “I cheat,” Diamondis said, puffing away.

  “How do you do that?”

  The professor grinned. He obviously enjoyed putting one over on a pro. “I have two methods. If the deck is new, the cards are in perfect order. I simply look for the cards which come before the aces. For example: The king of spades proceeds the ace of diamonds in a new deck. So, when the king of spades appears, I know the ace of diamonds is right around the corner.

  “Now, if the cards are mixed, my job is tougher. The deck has to be played, and I must memorize the cards which come before the aces. These cards act as my cues.”

  “But you don't know exactly when the aces will come out,” Valentine said. “You're still having to guess.”

  “I offset any miscalculations by playing multiple hands,” the professor said. “By playing four hands, I ensure the aces will come to me. And since aces often produce blackjacks, I often get a better payout.” The professor glanced at his watch. “I need to run.”

  “Did you ever try this out? I mean, in a casino?”

  “Of course.”

  “How much did you win?”

  “A few hundred dollars. I'm not much of a gambler.”

  A bell rang and a hundred pairs of shoes clattered noisily past the office. Shoving papers into a battered leather satchel, Diamondis headed for the door. Valentine grabbed his overcoat off the back of his chair and followed him.

  They joined the throng of students in the stairwell and descended to the first floor. The professor entered an oval-shaped lecture hall that was quickly filling with students. Climbing onto the stage, he put his satchel down beside the podium. Valentine was right behind him. “One more question. Your system is limited to dealers who break the cards dead center and riffle evenly.”

  “A colleague posed the same problem to me,” Diamondis replied, checking the podium's microphone. “So I devised a schematic for all known blackjack shuffles. It requires some mental gymnastics, but it works.”

  Was his name Juraj Havelka? Valentine nearly asked, but thought he knew the answer.

  “I published my findings last year,” the professor said. “Would you like a copy?”

  “I'd be honored.”

  Diamondis removed a stapled manuscript from his satchel and handed it to him. The Devil's Playthings. A Mathematical Examination of Riffle Shuffles, their Cycles and Descents. Several students had approached the podium, trying to get his attention. Valentine slipped the manuscript under his arm. “Thanks for being so generous with your time.”

  “Good luck catching whoever you're trying to catch,” the professor said.

  Valentine tried to hide his surprise. “Who said I was trying to catch someone?”

  A smile flickered across the professor's otherwise serious countenance. “It's what you do for a living, isn't it?”

  22

  True Love

  It had taken Gerry five minutes to squander his father's hundred bucks in The Bombay's casino.

  Luckily, Yolanda hadn't seen him do it. She'd gone to play Funny Money, convinced that she'd duplicate her sister's good fortune and win a brand new car.

  Gerry had lost his father's money playing keno. According to a tent card on the bar, keno was an ancient Chinese game, and had been used by the Chinese government to pay for the Great Wall. What the card didn't say was that it was a game for suckers, the house advantage an astonishing 35 percent.

  Sitting at the bar, Gerry had bought a ticket, called a blank, from a cute runner in a miniskirt. Using a crayon, he picked ten numbers from the eighty on the blank, then gave the runner the blank and his money. Going to the keno lounge next door, the runner gave the blank to the keno writer who recorded the wager, then returned to the bar and handed Gerry the duplicate.

  And stared at him.

  Gerry squirmed. Taking fifty cents off the bar that another patron had left, he handed it to her.

  “Good luck,” she said icily.

  He sat and waited. And dreamed of winning the jackpot.

  A buzzer went off, signaling the winning numbers were being drawn. He stared at the electronic keno board above the bar. Yes, yes, yes! he thought, getting the first three right. Visions of Italian sports cars and Rolex watches filled his head. Then, No, no, no!, the last seventeen numbers betraying him like a jilted lover, his father's hundred gone in a blink of an eye. He tore up the worthless blank.

  A man entered the bar and came toward him. His nose was zigzagged by white adhesive tape, his eyes ringed black. Gerry got off his stool.

  “Get lost.”

  “I want to show you something,” Joey Mollo said.

  Gerry followed him across the casino to the front doors. A veil of snow had dusted the cars in the parking lot. A black Lincoln blinked its lights. Gerry stared. Big Tony and Little Tony sat in the two front seats. Sandwiched between them was Yolanda. Her eyes were filled with fear.

  My old man is gonna kill me, he thought.

  Valentine drove back to Atlantic City in an hour and a half, the New Jersey highway patrol cruisers conveniently parked on the other side of the turnpike. He sang with the radio most of the way, a hot wire igniting his blood.

  Rarely did cheaters come up with new ways to beat the house. In twenty years he'd seen it only a handful of times. Yet Juraj Havelka—with Peter Diamondis's aid—had done just that. And he'd added a clever twist. Juraj was never at the blackjack table very long, which meant Anna was tracking the aces. When the deck was primed, she signaled for Juraj to come over. That way, Juraj drew no heat. A perfectly orchestrated scam.

  No wonder no one had caught on.

  Archie Tanner was hurling things off his desk at the giant screen TV in his office when Valentine walked in a short while later. Cowering behind him were Gigi, Monique, and Brandi. Today's color was blue, and the three women wore matching Chanel outfits. They appeared ready to flee at any moment.

  Valentine glanced at the screen. CNN was showing highlights of Indian uprisings taking place around the country. In a rare showing of unity, tribes from Connecticut to California had vowed to expel U.S. government officials from their land if the Micanopys were not given their casino back. The governor of Florida had issued a terse statement, vowing to remain firm.

  “Fucking redskin tribal leaders haven't spoken to each other in two hundred fucking years,” Archie roared. “Now, they're rallying around the totem pole because Chief Running Bear is defying whitey!”

  Valentine fielded a paperclip holder as it flew past. “We need to talk,” he told the irate casino owner.

  Archie nearly came over the desk at him. “For Christ's sake, can't you see I'm busy?” Doing a one-eighty in his chair, he faced the three women standing behind him. “I want you to call the TV stations and threaten to pull my ads if they don't stop running this Chief Running Bear horseshit.”

  The women looked stunned. It was Brandi who found the courage to answer him. “You mean the New Jersey stations?”

  “I mean the national stations. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox.”

  “But Archie, we can't do that.”

  “Don't ever use that word around me.”

  Her face darkened. “We shouldn't.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because we'll create a worse public relations nightmare.”

  “You think so?”

  Brandi nodded. The casino owner shifted his gaze to Gigi and Monique to see what they were thinking. Both women nodded their heads in agreement.

  “You want to wait tables at Sinbad's? Or deal blackjack? Or do one of the hundred other crummy fucking jobs that pay minimum wage in this casino?”

  The question was aimed at all three of them. Wisely, Brandi shook her head no, as did Gigi and Monique.

  “Then make the fucking call.”

  Eyes downcast, the women walked out of the room. Stopping at the door, Brandi glanced over her shoulder. “Are you sure about this?”

/>   “You'd look good in one of those little keno runner skirts,” Archie told her.

  The pirate's door rattled on its hinges. Picking up the remote on the desk, Archie jacked up the TV's volume. CNN's Wolf Blitzer was interviewing Chief Running Bear from his hideaway in the Florida Everglades. Running Bear wore camouflage fatigues and appeared ready for a long haul.

  Valentine stood with his jacket in his hand, waiting. Finally Archie looked up at him.

  “Can't this wait?” the casino owner asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Tell one of the girls about it,” he said, staring at the TV.

  Valentine nearly told Archie to go to hell. Only this was a job, and he intended to finish it, just like any other job. He walked into the reception area and saw Brandi waiting for the elevator. He touched her sleeve.

  “Archie said I should talk to you,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  They went downstairs to Sinbad's and found an empty booth in the back.

  “It's real simple,” Valentine explained after they'd been served. “Your blackjack dealers need to shuffle the cards more. Five times should do the trick. The cards will be closer to a random order, and your tables will be safe from anyone tracking the cards during the shuffle.”

  “Is this a new method of cheating?”

  “It sure is,” he said.

  Brandi smiled, clearly impressed. She'd ordered a cup of herbal tea and now spooned in a teaspoon of honey. “I'm sure Archie would have appreciated hearing this, if he wasn't so preoccupied.”

  “I'm sure he would have,” he said.

  “This will cost the casino money, though.”

  “How's that?”

  “The extra shuffles. Anything that slows a game down costs the casino money. That's how Archie sees it, anyway.”

  “Look at it as insurance,” Valentine said.