by Richard Bard
Jake moved to the side so the Texan could get a good look at Lacey.
The Texan immediately grabbed the rest of his chips and placed them on the pass line with his previous winnings. His total bet was over one hundred ten thousand euros.
Jake lifted his hand from the hotel key and nodded toward the croupier.
“Mesdames et messieurs, please place your bets. The roller is coming out.”
The pent-up tension around the table snapped and players around the table exploded with bets, all but a few betting against the roller. The Texan picked up the dice, gave Lacey a nasty wink, and flung them across the table. “Read ’em and weep, sucker!”
Jake embraced the dice in his mind, adjusting their final tumbles just so…
“Two, craps. The shooter loses.”
A thunderous cheer and applause erupted around the table. Several people clapped Jake on the back. Lacey giggled and hugged him.
Jake gave her a wink as he picked up the key and slid it back into his pocket.
Several people laughed at the astonished Texan. His face flushed crimson. His clenched fists trembled as he watched his entire bet being whisked away by the banker and an equally large stack was slid in front of Jake.
Jake turned to face the man. People nearby backed away.
Even without his enhanced reaction speed, Jake would have seen the punch coming. The Texan’s right shoulder twitched backward, telegraphing his swing.
Instinct took over.
Jake sidestepped the meaty fist and brought his own right hand up and out, striking the forearm with his wrist to redirect the blow. In the same movement he double-gripped the Texan’s raised wrist, twisted under and around the Texan’s levered arm, and snapped it down with a force that spun the man into an agonizing forward somersault. He landed flat on his back with a sickening thud. Jake towered over him with his foot crammed into the Texan’s thick neck, the man’s wrist still grasped in Jake’s hands.
It was over in two seconds.
The crowd was stunned, but no more so than Jake. Sure, he remembered the moves from his training, but he’d never even been close to this good at it. His enhanced speed made all the difference. The two security guards rushed over, hesitating as they waited for Jake to release the big man.
Jake wasn’t ready to let go, but he also didn’t want to seriously hurt the guy. He hoped to use this situation to ingratiate himself with the casino, not get thrown out. He looked down at the shaking, helpless man under his foot. The sudden flip must have cut through the alcohol and knocked some sense into him. His blustering façade was replaced with genuine fear.
Jake stepped off his neck, bent over, and helped the man up. “You’re going to be okay, pal. Isn’t there something you’d like to say to the lady before you leave?” The two security guards moved in from behind and grabbed the man’s arms.
The man cowed his head. “I’m real damn sorry, miss. I was way outta line.”
Lacey gave him a slight nod and sidled back up to Jake.
As soon as the Texan and his hulking escorts left the pit area, a round of applause erupted around Jake. He smiled at the crowd, adjusted the cuffs of his shirt, and stepped back to the table. Lacey gave him a shy kiss on the cheek and clung to his arm. The croupier offered an admiring smile. Jake now had a stack of chips worth one hundred twenty thousand euros next to his original bet.
A distinguished-looking man in a tailored black suit and thin black mustache stood behind the croupier. From his bearing, Jake guessed he was upper management. The man tilted his head in a gesture of appreciation toward Jake. Jake nodded back.
The croupier slid the dice in front of Jake and announced, “We have a new roller. Mesdames et messieurs, please place your bets.”
Jake took in the crowd. All eyes were on him now. Too many eyes. He needed to switch tables, maybe switch games.
He announced, “Well, I’m not much of a roller. But I’ll try it just once.” He slid all his money over to the pass line, and an electric murmur spread through the crowd. Every better on the table rushed to join in the betting. There wasn’t a single bet against the roller.
Jake picked up the dice, toyed with them a few times in his fingers to savor the growing tension around the table, and then threw them down the table.
“Eleven, winner eleven!”
The cheer was deafening. Every bet on the table was a winner. Jake couldn’t hide his smile. Lacey jumped up and down. In spite of the loss to the house, the manager grinned.
“Cash me out, please,” Jake said to the groan of the crowd.
The banker exchanged Jake’s chips for higher denominations and stacked them in a portable tray. The total was two hundred forty-eight thousand euros. Jake slid a chunk of chips back as a tip before he and Lacey stepped away from the table to a round of applause from the crowd. Lacey beamed under the attention.
As they walked toward the bar to discuss their next move, the manager approached. “Monsieur, please allow me to introduce myself.” He presented Jake with a business card confirming his position as floor manager. They shook hands, and Jake offered introductions.
“On behalf of the casino, I would very much like to thank you for the manner in which you handled the situation with your…countryman. We are quite grateful. May we show our appreciation? Is there anything that we might offer you and your lovely guest?”
Jake sized him up. The Frenchman’s gracious offer seemed sincere. “Actually, I’d be pleased if you could point us in the direction of the roulette tables. I promised Ms. Laurence that we would try our hand at the wheel before we left.”
The manager smiled, at least a part of him thankful at the prospect of getting some of their winnings back. “Fantastic, monsieur. With your permission, let me escort you to one of our VIP pavilions, reserved for special guests only. It would be my pleasure if you would join us there.”
Jake smiled and gave Lacey a knowing squeeze.
The private salon was located in the east wing of the casino. The manager gave them a walking tour along the way, describing the elaborate Renaissance artwork and décor that covered the walls in each of the salons they passed through.
Glittering chandeliers lit the rooms. Everything seemed more suited to a castle than a casino. Even the noise level was subdued. This was definitely not Vegas. Lacey enjoyed the ceiling mural in the Salon Rose smoking room. It was decorated with voluptuous, cigar-smoking female nudes whose gazes, according to legend, follow you around the room. Jake smiled at the scene, thinking how Tony would have enjoyed it.
The VIP Salon Medecin had large picture windows looking over the harbor. It was luxury at its finest, with rich mahogany walls featuring stylized inlays and covered with exquisite wall hangings. There were several different tables in the room, most offering games that Jake had never even heard of: trente-et-quarante, chemin de fer, banque à deux tableaux, and punto banco. There were also two roulette tables in the room, but both of them were packed full with players.
While the manager described the history of the casino’s renovations to Lacey, Jake walked to an open-arched entrance that led to a small, private salon. The doorway was blocked by a triple braid of red rope suspended between two polished brass posts. A security guard in a maroon blazer stood by the entrance.
A lone player sat at a roulette table in the center of the private room. He reminded Jake of a young Omar Sharif, with smooth olive skin and penetrating dark eyes full of curiosity, dressed in a floor-length white shirtdress that Ahmed had told Jake was called a dishdashah. His head was covered by a red-and-white-checkered scarf, or keffiyeh, which was held in place by a braided black rope gilded with shimmering strands of gold. He had a regal bearing and an entourage of similarly dressed men standing protectively around him. Jake guessed he was in his early twenties.
The poor guy looked bored and miserable. After the last spin of the roulette wheel, the croupier placed the marker down on the number three, red. None of the young man’s bets scattered
across the felt were winners. He shook his head and sighed, no more chips left in front of him.
He motioned to a pit manager standing nearby. The manager brought a small tablet over, and the young man scrawled his signature across the page. The croupier slid four tall stacks of chips over to him.
Taking one of the stacks in each hand, he paused before placing his next bets. He turned to the men around him. “I have lost more money in the past three hours than most men make in several lifetimes! My father would not be pleased, Allah rest his soul.” The man’s English was laced with an upper-crust British accent. He gestured to the oldest man. “Muhammad, what is your advice? Upon which number shall I place this next wager?”
“My prince,” the older man replied, his English less sure, “surely Allah’s hand will guide you far better than I. But if you insist on my advice, then I suggest you might consider focusing your attention on more urgent matters at home and forget this foolishness.”
A chuckle escaped Jake’s lips.
The young man bristled. He glared at Jake. “You there, you find humor in my misfortune?”
Jake gave a short, deferential bow while he considered how he might spin this opportunity.
He chose to answer in Dari. “Please accept my apologies, Your Highness. I was certainly not laughing at you. To the contrary, my mirth was born of the unwillingness of your trusted advisor to provide you with a simple answer to your question, especially when the answer is so plain to see.”
The prince looked surprised and not a little intrigued at Jake’s command of Persian. Ahmed had told Jake that many Arabic aristocrats were fluent in several languages.
Lacey sauntered up and looped her hands around Jake’s arm. The prince seemed to sit up a little straighter. He answered Jake in English. “Is the answer so obvious? Would you and your guest care to join me and let me in on your secret?”
“It would be my pleasure, Your Highness.”
After introductions, Jake and Lacey sat down at the table next to the prince. Jake learned that the prince was a distant cousin to the crown prince in Kuwait. He had just graduated cum laude from Oxford University and was on his way back home to assume the reins of his recently deceased father’s holdings. He had stopped in Monaco for a bit of excitement before surrendering to the regimented routine that awaited him. He had an easy way about him, and Jake found him immediately likable.
“I have been here for two days,” the prince said. “All I have done is gamble and lose a considerable amount of money. I had hoped for a little more fun in the process.”
Jake could only imagine what a “considerable amount” was to the prince. The denomination of each of his chips was ten thousand euros, and he had been playing nine or ten at a time.
“It sounds to me like maybe you should have stopped in Vegas instead of Monte Carlo, Your Highness. The ambience is a bit thin here, if you know what I mean. After all, I’ll bet you’ve never heard the phrase, ‘What happens in Monaco, stays in Monaco.’ Am I right?”
“Right you are, indeed, Mr. Bronson. And please call me Phillip. It was my nickname at Oxford.” He motioned warily toward his entourage. “When I get home, the nickname will be buried once and for all, for appearances’ sake. But I am not home yet.”
“Phillip, it is. And I’m Jake.”
“Don’t forget me!” Lacey said.
The prince blushed noticeably. “Miss Laurence, there is little chance that I will ever forget you!”
They all laughed.
“So you want to have a little fun, Phillip? Why don’t we liven this place up a bit, Vegas style? You game?”
“Absolutely!” The prince grinned.
Jake called in his favor with the casino manager, and ten minutes later the room was filled with energy.
The rope barricade was removed from the doorway, and a deep, thrumming beat of dance music was streamed into the hidden speakers throughout the room. Extra bartenders and cocktail waitresses were brought in, and word was spread that free drinks were flowing in celebration of the prince’s graduation. The room filled quickly with revelers from the main casino.
The prince’s bodyguards couldn’t hide the panic they felt as the crowd grew. Although they still hovered nearby, they were under strict instructions not to interfere. The prince’s elderly advisor was slumped in a chair in the corner, a look of utter defeat on his face.
Jake, Lacey, and the prince had just downed their second shots of top-shelf Herradura Seleccion Suprema Anejo tequila, another treat that the prince would have to forego when he returned to the strict traditions of his Muslim home. Jake had sampled more than his share of tequila over the years, but nothing came close to the smoothness of the forty-euro-per-shot Herradura. The prince agreed as he ordered another round. He was beaming. Seventy virgins with scrub brushes wouldn’t be able to wipe the smile off his face.
Jake was ready to make his move. He unloaded his chips from the portable tray and placed them on the felt. “So, shall we see if we can win some of your money back?”
Jake placed a fifty-thousand-euro bet on black. The prince smiled and matched the bet.
The croupier snapped the ball around the rim of the wheel.
Jake blocked out the energy of the room and watched the spinning wheel. He snickered to himself as an old rhyme popped into his head: Round and round it goes and where it stops nobody knows. Hah!
The ball started its sloping descent into the rows of numbers. Jake focused as it bounced and skipped from number to number. When its momentum was nearly spent, he gave it a nudge, settling it onto four black.
The croupier placed a crystal marker resembling a chess piece onto the number. “Four black.”
The prince grinned as the bank matched their bets.
Lacey clapped and several people moved closer to the table to watch.
“You see, Phillip, it’s all about having a positive mind-set and following your instincts. You ready to try again?”
“Of course!” He started to spread his chips between several numbers on the table.
Jake shook his head. The prince hesitated.
“Why not start with a number in mind? Put the power of your mind to work, and make a prediction of what the number will be. Then scatter your bets in such a way that all of them will be winners if your number comes up.”
Jake grabbed a stack of his own chips. “Look at the wheel, and pick a number.”
The prince thought about it a moment and said, “Twenty-nine black.”
“Good. Now let’s make sure that every bet we place on the table will be a winner if twenty-nine black comes up.”
Jake started distributing chips around the table. “First, I’m going to put twelve thousand straight up on the twenty-nine. That pays thirty-five-to-one odds. Then a couple on each corner around the twenty-nine, eight-to-one odds.” He replenished his hand with more chips and continued, “Then ten each on both the row and the section that contains twenty-nine; they both pay two to one. And the same on black and odd, both paying even odds.”
The prince changed in some of his ten-thousand-euro chips for smaller denominations so he could match Jake’s bets. They each had sixty thousand euros in bets spread around the table.
Jake did a quick calculation in his head. “Now, if our number comes up, we’ll each win five hundred eighty-four thousand euros. If a different number comes up, with a little luck we could still win on some of the other bets. It’s a good way to cover your butt and keep you in the game. Make sense?”
The prince couldn’t keep the incredulous expression from his face. “Five hundred eighty-four thousand? You are certain?”
“Oh,” Jake said, “I forgot to mention I’m kind of good with numbers.”
“Excellent!” the prince said with a wide smile. “Let’s see how we do.”
The croupier waved his hand over the table and announced, “No more bets, mesdames et messieurs, no more bets.” He snapped the ball around the wheel.
The crowd had
grown around the table. A score of eyes pirouetted with the spinning wheel.
Jake wanted to do this slowly, so as not to arouse the suspicion of the manager, who had remained in the room to watch over the proceedings with wry amusement. Jake decided that a close call would be a good way to start.
He pushed the ball into twenty-six black.
The crowd groaned at the near miss when the marker was placed right next to the square that Jake and the prince had surrounded with chips. Jake let out an animated moan to fuel their disappointment.
Lacey chimed in, “But boys, we still won!”
Jake and the prince had lost their straight-up bet, two corner bets, and the odd bet, but all of their other bets were winners. Their sixty thousand euros were now one hundred forty-six thousand euros. Not a bad start. Time for the first big move.
The prince’s excitement was palpable as the croupier slid his winnings over. “I like your method, Jake. What’s our next move?”
“It all starts with a number. Any inspirations?”
The prince looked over at Lacey. “I would be willing to wager a year’s production from my best oil field on any number that Miss Laurence might offer.”
“Well, I do declare,” Lacey said, blushing while doing her best Southern accent. “That number would have to be seventeen. That’s how old I was when…” She bit her lower lip in a practiced tease. “Well, let’s just say that seventeen is my favorite number.”
“Seventeen, it is,” the prince said, enjoying the game.
They surrounded the black seventeen with their bets.
The cocktail waitress dropped off three more shots, and they downed them in unison. The prince’s face puckered. Lacey flushed.
Jake smacked his lips, grabbed an additional seven of his ten-thousand-euro chips, and added them straight up on the number. “What the hell, Phillip, let’s go for it!”
Not to be outdone, the prince matched the bet, and the two of them high-fived over the table.
Each of them now had one hundred thirty thousand euros on the table.
The croupier hesitated and glanced over at the manager. After a subtle nod of approval, he flipped the ball around the rim.
The crowd surged around the table, craning to get a look at the spinning wheel. Tension held their tongues.
Jake focused.