by James Swain
“Made it with a minute to spare. You want something to eat?”
“A drink would be fine,” Valentine said, following him over to the food stations. A stern-faced woman wearing a hairnet smiled at Ricky as they approached. Without having to be told, she took an Orange Crush soda from a chest and said, “What will your friend have?”
“Diet Coke,” Ricky said.
Valentine felt his face burn and watched the woman take out a sixteen-ounce bottle of his favorite drink and unscrew it with a twist. How had Ricky found that out? He’d been in the newspapers a lot the month before; probably one of them had mentioned it after they’d run out of interesting things to say. Ricky had really done his homework.
“Thanks,” Valentine said to the woman.
The sound of someone tapping a finger on a microphone shushed the room, and everyone turned to face the stage. In its center stood a guy in his mid-thirties wearing a carnival barker’s outfit: porkpie hat, paisley bow tie, and a red sports jacket that looked a size too small for his lean, angular body. He spoke with a loose smile on his lips.
“Good morning, folks, my name’s Vernon Hudsinger,” the barker said.
“We know what your name is,” someone in the crowd called out.
“I bet you do! It’s my privilege to officially welcome you to the annual Slippery Rock May Day Fair. Sorry for the cloudy day, especially after this rotten winter. Which is why the grand prize of this year’s festival drawing is most appropriate. A week’s paid vacation at the fabulous Mauna Kai resort on the beautiful island of Oahu. Let’s give a big Slippery Rock thank-you for the folks at Tripp Travel for donating this fabulous prize.”
Half the people in the cafeteria clapped their hands. The other half stomped their feet. The sound reminded Valentine of a hockey game. It lasted for about three seconds, and then everyone stopped on cue. Then there was a hush and everyone started laughing.
“What did I miss?” Valentine said.
“It’s an old tradition,” Ricky said.
“Now,” the barker continued, “let’s get this show on the road. I’m sure all of you know how this works. Our own town librarian, Mary Alice Stoker, is going to come out with a paper bag filled with Ping-Pong balls. I’m going to roll up my sleeve, and stick my hand down inside that bag, and pull out five Ping-Pong balls. Each Ping-Pong ball has a number printed on it. If the five numbers I pull out match the five numbers on your ticket—and remember, they can be in any order—you win the grand prize. If no one hits five, the person who has four numbers wins, or three, or two, or I just do it over. Although I don’t think that’s ever happened before.” He stepped back, and through the backdrop said, “Hey, Ms. Stoker, we ever have a do-over before?”
“Not that I can recall,” a voice behind the stage called out.
“So there you go,” the barker said. Walking to center stage, he pulled off his jacket as Mary Alice Stoker made her appearance to a smattering of applause. The librarian was white-haired, smartly dressed in a floor-length dress, and had perfect posture. Holding a brown paper bag between her hands, she was the picture of small-town grace.
Vernon dropped his jacket on a nearby chair, then rolled back his sleeve. For effect he wiggled his fingers, and a bunch of people in the crowd laughed. “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “let me introduce my helpers. Come on out, kids.”
Five kids who couldn’t have been more than ten came trotting out and got a huge round of applause. The boys wore ties and jackets, the girls Sunday dresses, their hair done up in bows. Standing in line, they smiled nervously at the audience as video cameras whirred.
“Ready, kids?” Vernon said. “Okay, here’s the first number.”
Sticking his hand into the bag, Vernon shut his eyes and swished his hand around for a moment, then pulled a Ping-Pong ball out and handed it to his first helper. The little boy stared at the Ping-Pong ball.
“Tell them the number,” Vernon whispered to him.
“It’s a number six,” the boy said loudly.
The kid’s parents burst into applause. Ricky, who’d been swigging his soda and laughing at everything Vernon had said, pulled his ticket from his pocket and shoved it a foot away from Valentine’s face.
“One down, four to go,” he said.
Valentine stared at the six in the center of the five numbers. He looked back at Vernon and saw him pull a second Ping-Pong ball from the bag. Valentine’s eyes were still pretty good when it came to distances, and he saw the number on the Ping-Pong ball clearly. It was a twelve. Valentine stared at the twelve on Ricky’s ticket.
“I’m so hot I’m steaming,” Ricky said.
The next number was twenty-three. It was also on Ricky’s ticket. By the time the fourth and fifth numbers were drawn, Valentine had already accepted that Ricky was going to win. It was obvious he and his friend had rigged the game, and the locals were too naive to realize it.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Valentine said when Ricky raised his hand to acknowledge he had won the jackpot.
Ricky’s face turned bright red. He lowered his arm stiffly, the winning ticket clutched between his fingers.
“Are you accusing me of cheating?” he said loudly, drawing stares.
“Tone it down.”
“Are you?”
“I sure am,” Valentine said through clenched teeth. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“No, you were born five hundred years ago,” Ricky shouted at him. “The people in Las Vegas sent you, because they don’t believe I won my money legitimately. They think I’m a cheater. They don’t believe in luck. And when someone comes along who is lucky, they try to destroy him.”
People were staring and acting uncomfortable. Ricky pointed at the stage. “We’ve been holding that drawing since before I was born. No one cheats. You think there’s something smelly going on, come up and prove it.”
The crowd parted, and Ricky marched up to the stage. Valentine felt angry stares rain down as he followed him. They climbed the stage together, and Ricky addressed the five little kids. One at a time, they came over and handed Valentine the Ping-Pong balls they were holding.
“Here you go, mister,” the last little kid said.
Valentine examined the five balls. They appeared normal. He went over to the librarian and peered down inside the bag. Easily a hundred Ping-Pong balls were inside of it, and he pulled out a handful and stared at the numbers printed on them. Each number was different. He compared them to the five winning balls in his hands. They were the same size and had the same smooth texture, ruling out Vernon somehow being able to pull them out by touch from the bag. That was how the scam had to be done; only, no evidence supported it. The five winning balls were exactly the same as the others. He glanced at the librarian, wanting to ask her a question, and saw her stare right through him. He felt a catch in his throat. She was blind.
“So, what do you say?” Ricky asked, standing next to the barker on the other side of the stage. “Is the game clean, Mr. Valentine?”
“Yes,” Valentine said.
“Could you say that a little louder? I don’t think everyone could hear you.”
Valentine shifted his gaze to the audience. He was ready to swallow his pride and tell the hometown crowd that he’d spoken out of turn and that the game wasn’t rigged. But then his eyes fell on the camera crew standing in the front. The crew consisted of a cameraman, a soundman, and a breathless female reporter with her hair tied in a bun. He hadn’t seen them from the back, and saw the soundman point a large mike in his direction.
Valentine exited stage left and within seconds was behind the safety of a curtain. He heard Ricky exhort the crowd into another raucous Slippery Rock cheer. They clapped and stomped their feet, mocking Valentine all the way to the parking lot, where he stood in the cold, wondering how he was going to get back home.
13
Lamar had rented the basement of a restaurant for Gerry’s meeting with the Dixie Magic’s surveillance team. Th
e team consisted of twenty-one employees, who split three eight-hour shifts among them. The casino had shut down for an hour, to allow the TV crew filming the poker tournament to do a number of shots and interviews inside the casino. Heavily armed security guards followed the crew’s every move, giving Lamar the freedom to pull his staff for a quick off-site meeting.
“Okay, listen up,” Lamar said, standing at the front of the room. “As you all know, the casino is getting ripped off. The gentleman standing to my left is Gerry Valentine, a partner in the firm Grift Sense, whose specialty is catching casino cheaters. Gerry has come to the conclusion that the stealing is taking place at the tables in the form of chip scams. He’s going to give us a demonstration of this unusual art, and then take questions.”
Lamar relinquished the floor, and Gerry stepped up to a table in the room’s center. On it was a piece of green felt and a tray of chips similar to those used by dealers inside the casino. As he stepped up to the tray, he glanced at the faces in the crowd. Two women, the rest men, all in their thirties, all giving him hard looks, like they resented him waltzing in and telling them how dumb they were. His father had warned him about this. Casino surveillance people were territorial, just like cops. Be humble, his father had said.
He had inherited two things from his father. The first were his dark Italian looks, which he hadn’t liked as a kid but liked as he’d grown older. The second was his memory, which was close to photographic. Working off the script his father had given him, he said, “Good morning. Thanks for having me. There’s an old expression: Everything that’s old is new again. Chip scams have been around a long time. But they get the money, and that’s all cheaters care about.”
A man in the back row smothered a yawn. A joke, Gerry thought. He should have gone against his father’s advice and opened with a joke.
“There are three basic chip scams. Each involves the dealer in cahoots with a player. I’m sure you all know what that means.”
Now he was getting mean looks. Of course they knew what cahoots meant.
“I should also explain something. These scams are difficult to detect using surveillance cameras. Bosses on the floor can see them, but they’re usually looking the other way when they happen. Know why?”
His audience had turned to stone. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lamar staring at him like he’d grown two heads.
“The reason is because the dealer’s accomplice uses a prearranged set of signals to tell the dealer if the boss is watching the table or if he isn’t. Cheaters call this giving the office. The accomplice uses two signals: stop and go. Smart teams change signals every hour, making it impossible to read them.”
Gerry kept his eyes moving as he spoke. He’d read in an airline magazine that this was the best way to address a crowd. He saw Lamar look at his watch, and felt sweat start to trickle down his spine. Dump the script, he thought.
Taking four green twenty-five-dollar chips from the tray, he placed them into his left hand. He crumbled his fingers and showed the chips were gone. He’d been heavy into magic as a kid, and saw every face in the room light up. He showed them the four chips finger-palmed in his right hand. Then he placed them in a stack on the felt.
“Let’s pretend this is my accomplice’s bet. He wins his hand, and I move to pay him off. But before I pay him off, I size his bet.”
Gerry scattered the four chips on the felt. Only, now there were five. He pointed at the fifth chip. “Any of you see where that came from?”
“Your sleeve?” someone called out.
“No. I palmed it out of the rack,” Gerry said. “Then I added it to my accomplice’s bet. This is called sizing in high. I pay the player off, and we steal fifty dollars of the house’s money. This is hard to detect because every action looks normal.”
He demonstrated the scam two more times. Once slow, and once at regular speed.
“Show us another,” a black guy in the back of the room said.
“Sure,” Gerry said, giving him a smile. The black guy didn’t smile back. He had a hard face and wore a navy blazer with faded elbows. The jacket was hanging partially open, exposing the shoulder harness and gun strapped beneath his armpit. Gerry swallowed hard. Casino employees weren’t allowed to pack guns unless they were guards. Maybe this guy had some kind of special permit.
Gerry picked up four green chips and split them into two piles. He placed them on the felt. “Another common scam is to use a losing bet to cap a winning bet. The dealer picks up the losing bet and pretends to put it in the tray. In fact, he clips the chips between his fingers and immediately adds them to the winning bet.” He turned his palm over, showing the clipped chips. “If the bets are small, this is hard to detect.”
The black guy said, “Do it again.”
Gerry obliged him. This time, the man nodded approvingly. Gerry snuck a glance at his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed. It felt like an hour.
“The third common chip scam occurs when the accomplice asks for change,” he said. “It’s common for players to throw high-valued chips down and ask for them to be changed into chips of lower value. The dealer picks up the chips and adds chips palmed in his hand. He always adds enough chips to make the stack even. That way, he can break it into two even piles, which looks nice for the camera.”
Gerry placed six green chips on the felt, then demonstrated the move, adding two additional green chips in the act of cutting the stack into two piles. From the front, it looked like a magic trick, the chips instantly growing before everyone’s eyes, and he saw the unfriendly looks leave their faces.
“Those are the three basic chip scams,” he said. “There are countless variations, but all rely on these same elements. Distraction, signals between the accomplice and the dealer, and a boss on the floor looking the other way. Any questions?”
A dozen hands went up. Lamar pointed at one of the females in the group. She was pretty, had flaming red hair, and looked French. Gerry assumed she was from Louisiana, and saw her flash a sly Southern smile.
“Yes, Isabelle,” Lamar said.
“How do we catch these sons of bitches?” she asked.
Isabelle leaned forward in her chair. So did everyone else in the room. Gerry thought back to the phone conversation with his father. His old man had a theory about what was happening at the Dixie Magic, and Gerry decided it was time to return to the script.
“Lamar said you’re losing four grand, twice a month,” Gerry said. “Most chip teams steal four hundred a session. That’s about ten plays. Any more would draw heat.
“Divide four hundred into four thousand, and that gives us ten teams. That’s a lot. My guess is, they’re all working together. They may even have a member who serves as the ‘turn.’”
“What’s that?” Isabelle asked.
“The turn’s job is to turn the floor boss’s attention away from the action. It usually comes in the form of a question. Turns are usually attractive females or older people with hearing problems.”
“Why hearing problems?”
“Because it forces the floor boss to repeat everything he says.”
His father had promised Gerry that at some point in his presentation, he would win the group over. Gerry had taken his words as fatherly encouragement and was pleasantly surprised when he saw everyone start smiling and nodding.
“The next question is, how do you identify the team?” he went on. “You have sixty blackjack dealers on every shift, and you have three shifts. Which ten dealers are dirty?” He paused, and let his eyes glance across their faces. “What you look for is some other connection. Perhaps they all live in the same apartment complex. Or they worked together before, or served in the military. There has to be a link.”
“Why is that?” Lamar asked.
“Because the hardest part of working in a team is trusting your partners. That trust has to be there from the start. Nearly all cheating teams have some type of shared past.”
A dozen more hands shot up. Gerry realized he had
run out of things to say and glanced at Lamar. As if reading his thoughts, the head of surveillance came up beside him and placed his hand on Gerry’s shoulder.
“I think this was very illuminating and has given us a lot to work with in catching these folks. What do you say we show Gerry our appreciation?”
And with that, his audience burst into long and loud applause.
Lamar drove Gerry back to the Holiday Inn. Lamar had held up his end of the bargain and arranged through the casino for Gerry to meet Tex “All In” Snyder, who was also staying at the hotel. Pulling up to the front entrance, Lamar said, “Well, here’s where we part ways. I appreciate you taking the time to do this. I hope your meeting is worth it.”
Gerry started to get out of the car. He had expected Lamar to mention hiring his father’s firm and was disappointed that he hadn’t. Then he remembered the guy at the meeting who was packing a gun. He got back in, looked Lamar straight in the eye.
“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”
Lamar stuck his tongue in his cheek. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I just spoke to a roomful of cops.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because there wasn’t a fat one in the bunch. And one of them was packing heat. They’re working for you, aren’t they?”
“Maybe,” Lamar said. “You see a lot.”
Gerry looked through the windshield at an orange tour bus disgorging a gang of elderly passengers. He’d seen them leaving the hotel for the casino, all hearty and full of pep. Now, they looked tired and beat up. Not a winner in the bunch, he thought.
“You have a real problem, don’t you?” he said.
“Yes,” Lamar said.
“How many games are getting ripped off?”
