***
After a long night, I was looking forward to going home. The limo was on time, but we were all a little late. I told the others I had one more stop to make before I left. I walked up to the cashier window and laid down eight grand in chips, all five hundred dollar denominations. The floor manager came over to supervise the transaction while the young trainee cashed me out. The manger was making small talk with me – the kind of small talk cops make when they’re trying to catch you in a lie. Eight thousand dollars was not a lot of money to a casino in Vegas, but still they would rather you not walk out with their money.
"You catch the lucky ladies?” the floor manager asked. I didn’t say anything, I just smiled and winked at him. A few minutes later, the teller counted out eighty one hundred dollar bills and placed them in front of me.
“Do you have an envelope?” I asked. The teller said ‘no’, but handed me an elastic band. I immediately folded the stack of bills in half, wrapped the elastic band around it twice, and shoved it into my pocket. I did a small lap around the floor to make sure no one was following me, then made my exit.
I finally left the casino and was surprised to see the sun coming out. I looked at my phone to check the time; it was a little after 7:00 a.m. With all the oxygen being pumped through the casino, I didn’t feel exhausted at all.
We piled into the limo and flopped on separate seats. The energy in the limo was a lot lower than it was on the drive in from the airport twelve hours ago, but we were all happy to relive the events of last night. We shared stories all the way back to the airport. I was up around eight grand so my trip was a success. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for some of the others.
The Art of the Hustle Page 51