Even after a decade behind the wheel, the Starlight dealer still marveled at the incredible stupidity of roulette players.
Long-term, none of them had a prayer of winning; their only hope was to get lucky fast and get out. But few did. Most believed in some ridiculous system or other. Against all logic, they wrote down past winning numbers and studied them carefully, imagining patterns and trends. Then they used this meaningless information to project future winning numbers. As if the wheel had a memory. Or the little white ball realized that double zero was overdue. Or that it was red’s turn to win because black had been coming up just a little too often.
The Starlight Hotel and Casino encouraged this nonsense by obligingly providing system players with preprinted cards and pencils for the purpose of writing down the winning numbers. Lately they’d even added electronic scoreboards showing the results of the past twenty spins so these pseudo-theoreticians could save themselves the trouble.
For the dealer, the most galling aspect of the whole charade was having to humor his players—to congratulate them on their wins, to sympathize with them on their losses, to gravely nod his head while they spewed their moronic theories. Because the plain fact was, these retards were his lifeblood. Hustling tokes was the real name of the game as far as he was concerned—the casino paid dick and you survived on your tips. All tips were divided equally among all dealers on all games, so it didn’t matter whether you were dealing fifty-cent roulette or five-thousand-dollar craps, you still got your share. For which he thanked God because right now, seven hours into his shift, there wasn’t even a lousy quarter in the toke box.
Wearily, he thumb-squirted the white ball and launched it upon its familiar orbit. Once more, the ivory sphere whizzed smoothly around its
varnished oak path. Again, comet tails of reflected light scintillated upon the counterspinning brass hub, mesmerizing the gullible, seducing neophytes with the promise of easy wealth. Step right up, folks, the wheel hummed alluringly, get thirty-five to one on your investment! Divine the right number and you’ll be in the chips!
“No more bets,” intoned the dealer, his carny rasp as always dissolving the spell like a hypnotist’s finger snap.
Gradually, the ball slowed in preparation for reentry as centrifugal force surrendered its early lead to gravity. Inexorably, the ball’s orbit decayed. It clattered over the diamond stops and tumbled into the counterrevolving spokes of the wheel, rattling and bouncing indecisively, in one pocket and out again, up the bowl and down, losing energy, finally settling into its temporary home and dashing the prospects of the sparse crop of brightly colored chips seeded optimistically on the neighboring field of green felt.
“Thirty-two red,” the dealer droned mechanically. “No winner.” He set the Lucite marker on thirty-two, raked the losing chips into the mucker, and sighed audibly.
He was bored to distraction. Only two players had shown up during his entire shift: a couple of chatty elderly women—from Kansas, they told him—who had arrived half an hour ago. They said they were actually slot players (no shit, Sherlock, the dealer thought) and they were excited because this was their first time ever at a roulette wheel. The old broads were betting chump change: fifty-cent chips, straight up, the table minimum for inside bets. And despite the croupier’s unsubtle hints, they weren’t tipping.
He scanned the casino floor hopefully; there was still an hour left on his shift, still time for the action to pick up. Maybe some crazy Arabs would show up—they usually tipped big. Or drunken conventioneers determined to piss away their money. Just to break the monotony, he’d even settle for a table full of Chinamen with their noisy, excited jabbering. In the dealer’s private opinion, the only situation more mind-numbing than just standing behind your table doing absolutely nothing and trying to stay awake was dealing to cheapskate penny-ante players. His sole consolation during such sessions was an ability to titillate himself by fantasizing about the parade of drop-dead gorgeous chicks who regularly sashayed past his table. As a result of which, he was not concentrating terribly hard on the game.
The roulette floorman wasn’t exactly into the game, either. He trusted his dealers to make the correct payoffs and watch the tables, especially when there were only a few players in action.
Neither the dealer nor the floorman paid much attention to the well-dressed, nicely tanned gentleman who sat down at the other end of the table from the two ladies.
Like the two women from Kansas, the new arrival was playing the inside—betting the numbers straight up and sometimes splitting his bets between several numbers. And, of course, he wasn’t tipping, either; once again the dealer glumly wondered how these pikers always managed to find his table. The man was making five- and ten-dollar bets, higher than the ladies but still low enough to warrant no more than an occasional cursory glance from the floorman.
Although a casual observer would never suspect it, judging by the ladies’ squeals of delight whenever one of their bets was successful, none of the three players was really making much headway. Even at thirty-five to one for a direct hit on a straight-up number, the house edge of over 5 percent was grinding out its toll.
Then it happened. The dealer spun the wheel and the ball bounced around as usual and settled into a slot. “Four, black,” he intoned as he turned to place the Lucite marker on the winning number.
And right there, square on number four, sat a gleaming black hundred-dollar chip.
“Hey, wait a minute,” said the dealer loudly, his libidinous fantasies abruptly vaporized. “That check wasn’t there before.”
The well-dressed man appeared taken aback. “I beg your pardon,” he said.
“That black check was not on the table when I closed the betting.”
“Well, I definitely put it there before you said, ‘No more bets.’”
The croupier frowned. “Absolutely no way. I would have noticed a hundred-dollar bet.”
“Let’s just say you missed this one—an honest mistake.” The player smiled conspiratorially. “So. Here we are. I guess you owe me, what, thirty-six hundred dollars? My original bet plus thirty-five hundred?” The man paused, seemingly puzzled at the dealer’s slowness in paying off the bet. Then he grinned and winked. “Of course—stupid of me! Better throw four greens into the payoff so I can look after you—”
“Sorry, sir.” The dealer bit his lip, frustrated at losing out on his only toke of the shift but correctly reasoning that no tip was better than no job. “I’m going to have to call the floorman.”
But that wasn’t necessary. Attracted by the discussion, the dealer’s boss was already on his way to the table. “What’s the problem?” he asked his subordinate.
“This gentleman says he bet the black check on four. But it wasn’t there when I closed the betting.”
“Sir, we can’t pay off on that,” said the floorman firmly. “You past-posted the bet.”
The man pushed back his stool and stood up, apparently perplexed. “Past-posted?”
“You know what I mean. You bet the hundred after the four came up.”
The player looked hurt. “Are you accusing me of cheating?”
“Take it any way you want. Maybe you didn’t understand the rules. But we’re not paying.”
The would-be winner extended his arms, palms up. “Is this the way you treat winners at the Starlight?”
“It’s the way we treat grifters.”
“You’ve made a big mistake. Please call your supervisor.”
“I’m not calling anybody. I am the supervisor.”
“If your dealer had been paying attention—”
“Never mind the dealer. You’ve been betting red checks since you sat down, and now all of a sudden you’re betting a black? And it just happens to win? That’s quite a stretch.”
“I have a system. Look at the board. Four was overdue—”
“Bullshit. You were past-posting. Take that check and get your ass out of here.”
“Hey, there’s no need to be rude. I won the bet fair and square. Maybe the dealer didn’t notice my bet. You know, black on black? Easy to miss—”
“Listen, mister, I’m getting tired of this crap. And I’m not buying your act. Now, are you leaving, or do I have to call Security … ?” He left the threat hanging.
For a moment, the two men eyed each other in silence, the floorman angrily defiant, the player evidently puzzled and hurt. The ball continued to spin silently in its black pocket; the hundred-dollar chip remained on number four.
Realizing that the player was not about to abandon his claim, the floorman turned away and reached for a phone … when he was interrupted by a
small, quavery voice from the end of the table: “Excuse me—sir? Sir?” It was one of the Kansas ladies.
“Are you speaking to me, ma’am?” Receiver in hand, he spun impatiently to face her.
“Yes, sir. Well … this may be none of our business?” she ventured, timidly inflecting the statement into a question.
“Ma’am?”
The woman hesitated. Her friend nudged her. “Go ahead, Ada,” the other lady whispered encouragingly. “Tell him.”
“Yes. Well, that gentleman really did bet the hundred dollars before the dealer closed the betting? My friend and I both noticed it and we even said, wow, that’s a lot of money to bet on one number?”
“And you’ll forgive me for saying this, sir,” added the other lady, “but the dealer wasn’t really watching the game. He seemed to be more interested in admiring the girls walking by than watching our bets.”
“We thought it was kind of rude of him?” inflected the first Kansas lady. “To tell you the truth.”
Faced with this unexpected testimony, the floorman hesitated. Maybe he shouldn’t call Security just yet. Just to make 100 percent sure of his position, maybe he’d better check with the eye. “Let me call the camera people and see what they say.” He punched in a different extension.
In a remote office behind the casino, the Starlight’s daytime eye-in-the-sky operator depressed a flashing button and picked up his phone. “Video Surveillance.”
The floorman identified himself and continued, “Roulette three. I need you to look at the last few minutes on the tape.”
The operator glanced at his bank of monitors. “I have you on camera, but we weren’t recording. I thought you guys knew we changed tapes at eleven.” At the eye, the practice was to change tapes three times every twenty-four hours: at eleven A.M., seven P.M., and three A.M. The eight-hour tapes were archived for a month, then reused.
The floorman glanced at his watch. Eleven-oh-two. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered into the phone.
“What happened?”
“Ah, we’ve got a past-poster. I’m sure of it. But the other players here back him up. Anyway, if you’ve got no tape, I’ve got no choice. I have to pay the schmuck.”
“Sorry about that, man. Do you want us to start taping right now?”
“Don’t bother. This guy is not playing here anymore. I don’t care if he’s got Mother Teresa and the Virgin Mary for witnesses—he’s history.”
Cradling the phone, the floorman turned to the dealer and curtly instructed him to pay the man his $3,600. Then he leaned over the table so that his face was inches from the player’s. “Funny how you timed your action for just when we were changing tapes in the eye,” he said intensely. “I don’t know how you did it, but I do know you screwed us. Unfortunately, we have to pay you.”
The player said nothing, but for just an instant the merest shadow of a triumphant smile flickered across his lips. The floorman caught the look, and his face darkened. The dealer had started to slide two tall stacks of black chips across the table, but the floorman held his hand out over the stacks, palm down, blocking the player from reaching them. “If I ever—ever—see you in here again,” he breathed, “I’ll make sure you leave in a goddamn basket. Understand?”
The man flicked an imaginary speck of dust from an immaculate lapel, raised an eyebrow, and said, “I hear you.”
The floorman lifted his hand from the chips and shoved them roughly toward the player, knocking the stacks askew. “Then take your money and fuck off.”
Dan Shiller calmly gathered his chips and walked away.
He was very good at his job.
In the Starlight coffee shop, Ada and Maud, the two ladies from Kansas, were excitedly discussing their adventures at the roulette table.
“What a nice man he was?” inflected Ada. “Giving us all that money to play roulette with?”
“And all we had to do was tell a little white lie about his black chip,” Maud giggled.