“Is that a promise?”
“Yes, it’s a promise.”
Amber shot him a murderous look. “Well, aren’t you Mr. Fucking Wonderful? ‘You have to trust me on this.’ Right. Like anyone is going to trust you. You don’t have a plan at all. You’re just bullshitting us.”
“Amber, that’s enough,” Mags said.
“I don’t care. He screwed up and needs to make things right.”
Billy started to steam. He’d given Mags his word, and in this town that was better than a contract witnessed by a dozen high-priced lawyers. Only Amber wasn’t buying it, and he wondered if his hundred-dollar haircut or the crease in his trousers had turned her off.
“We’ll probably never hear from you again, either,” Amber added.
She had called him a snake. Billy didn’t like it and decided to set Amber straight. “Your mother came to me because she knows I can fix this. How isn’t important. Once I put my mind to something, I’ll get it done.”
“You’re not that smart.”
“You don’t think I can do it?”
Amber shook her head; she had no faith in him at all.
“If I told you I was going to steal two grand from the casino, would you believe me?”
“Steal it how?”
“That’s beside the point. Would you?”
“Sounds like bullshit to me.”
“So you don’t trust me when I say I’m going to do something.”
“Not in the least,” Amber said.
“Two grand in sixty minutes.”
“Is he being serious?” Amber asked her mother.
Mags rose from the table. Her daughter had picked this fight, and Mags wasn’t going to get in the middle of it. “I’ll be outside in the car. Come out when you’re done.”
“But Mom...”
“Start timing me,” Billy said.
Billy entered SLS’s casino with Amber hot on his heels. Mags had spoken so highly of her daughter that he’d expected a polished young woman possessing loads of subtle charms. Amber was barely out of diapers and hardly knew the score.
The blackjack pit was hopping, the dealers smiling and friendly. He did a slow trawl of the tables, looking for a game that could be easily scammed. There were dozens of ways to cheat at blackjack that ranged from the obvious to the sublime. Billy had cut his teeth with these scams but over time had graduated to bigger things.
He zeroed in on a female dealer whose name tag said KENYA/CLEVELAND. Kenya was as pretty as a picture and all dolled up, her long fingernails perfectly manicured. No casino in town would have let Kenya deal blackjack, but SLS was brand new, and management didn’t know better.
He turned to Amber. “Are you legal?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Amber said.
“Are you twenty-one? Otherwise, you can’t sit down at the table with me.”
“Yes, I’m legal.”
“They’re going to want to see ID.”
“I have a driver’s license and my student ID.”
“That should work. How much time do I have left?”
“Fifty-two minutes.”
They took chairs at Kenya’s table. Billy threw down $500 and Kenya turned it into chips. He placed a fifty-dollar bet for himself, another fifty for Amber.
“Is it okay if I coach my girlfriend?” he asked. “She’s never played before.”
“Coaching’s allowed,” Kenya replied. “Good luck.”
Kenya dealt the round. Blackjack required that the dealer take the second card and slip it facedown beneath her first card, which stayed faceup. This facedown card was called the hole card. Its identity would be revealed only after the players had played their hands.
If Billy could determine the value of the dealer’s hole card, he would possess an edge over the house that would allow him to win more than he lost. It was all about the odds, and this piece of information tilted the odds in his favor.
There were several ways to peek at a dealer’s hole card. Each used a hidden device or an accomplice. Unless, of course, the dealer unwittingly gave away this information.
Dealers who gave away their hole cards were called flashers. Kenya was a flasher. As she slipped the second card beneath her first card, the nail on her manicured forefinger dug into the felt and caused the card to bow, briefly exposing its left corner. There wasn’t enough time to read the card’s value but plenty of time to determine if the card was a paint card or a number card. Paint cards had a lot of ink on their faces and were either a jack, queen, or king. Number cards were the rest of the cards in the deck.
On the first round, Kenya flashed paint. Ten in the hole. Kenya’s face card was a five, giving her a total of fifteen. A stiff.
Billy had a fourteen and waved his hand over the cards, indicating that he would not take another card. Amber had a pair of tens.
“Should I stay?” Amber asked.
“Split them,” Billy said.
Amber hesitated, then split her tens and doubled her bet. Kenya dealt a five on the first ten, a six on the second. Both hands were stiffs. Amber groaned.
“It’s not over,” Billy said.
Kenya flipped over her hole card, revealing a jack. Kenya dealt herself a third card and busted. She gave a practiced smile and paid off her customers.
“I just won a hundred bucks,” Amber said under her breath.
“You sound surprised,” Billy said.
“Do it again.”
Kenya was as easy to read as an open book. Billy took his sweet time and slowly built up his winnings. Had he won too quickly, it would have alerted a pit boss or a sharp tech in the surveillance room that something fishy was going on at Kenya’s table.
Amber said little, content to watch the scene play itself out. She was like a sponge, and little seemed to escape her attention. Glancing at her watch, she said, “Time’s almost up.”
Billy visually counted their chips. They were ahead $2,200. Rising from his chair, he graciously tossed Kenya a two-hundred-dollar tip.
“Thanks for the good time,” he said.
Casinos were designed for their patrons to lose track of time, and the blinding afternoon sunshine caught Billy by surprise as he walked out of SLS.
“I think I figured out your little scam,” Amber said. “It was based upon our dealer’s long fingernails. She kept scraping the felt, and you spied her hole card.”
Amber was sharp, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.
“What if I told you that you were wrong?” he said instead.
Her face crashed. “Then how did you do it?”
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is, if I tell you I’m going to win two grand, I’ll win two grand. And if I tell you that I’ll deal with a slimy gaming agent giving your mother a hard time, I’ll take care of him.”
“Can you really fix my mother’s problem?”
“Stop questioning me, will you?”
She briefly stared at the ground. “I’m sorry I underestimated you.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.”
“Your mother loves you more than anything in the world. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“She’d do anything for you, she loves you that much.”
“I figured that out.”
“Glad to hear it.” He took out his winnings and shoved the money into her hands. “Now, go show your mother a good time.”
“The money’s mine?”
“Yes. There’s plenty more where that came from.”
She hesitated. The good angel sitting on her shoulder said, Give the money back, it’s stolen. But the bad angel perched on the other shoulder said, Take the fucking dough and have a party, this is Vegas, kiddo. The bad angel won, and she shoved the money into her pocket.
“What’s the deal between you and my mom?” she asked.