Lay the Favorite (12 page)

I tried to act uninterested in Dink but I couldn’t. Two cups of coffee and the huge stack of money made me giddy. Dink owed a bookmaker in Costa Rica eighty grand. The bookmaker owed the same amount of money to Yitzhak, a customer of his from Tel Aviv who happened to be visiting Vegas. To make everything easier Dink would give Yitzhak the money he owed the bookie. That’s where I came in.

Using just one hand, Dink counted the money. The stack lay in his palm and with a flick of the thumb, he shot the bills onto the table like cards from a deck. He kept count of eighty thousand while simultaneously reading the
USA Today
sports section. Veteran gamblers talk a lot about
feel
. They say that with time they get a feel for the market, the lines, the money. I felt like I was watching feel in action. Dink was so cool.

“I understand it’s a little weird, bringing this kind of cash to some stranger,” Dink said. “But you get over it. After two or three times you trust I won’t send you to some mob casino manager in the back of a Dumpster somewhere.”

He handed me the package. “Count and make sure it’s all there.”

On the floor, I sat on my heels and put the bills, all of them hundreds, into neat stacks of ten. Eighty thousand. Check. I scooped the piles up with one hand and, like a bouquet of roses, brought them to my nose, inhaled, and smiled.

Tulip’s face contorted in disgust and she grabbed her car keys. Watching her storm toward the door, I noticed she was pigeon-toed.

“Okay,” Dink said. “Yitzhak, Israeli, short. He’ll be at the roulette table at the Paris. Go.”

“Wait,” I said, stuffing the money into my backpack. “So, I just go up to him and say, ‘I have your money’?”

“The whole thing seems weird until you realize the stranger’s just like you. You know, goofy stranger.”

“Goofy, like awkward?”

“Goofy like harmless. Goofy like he probably enjoys smelling money too. If you want, we can meet in the Stardust parking lot afterward and go to lunch.” He smiled, bashfully, and handed me three dollars for the valet’s tip.

It was just past nine a.m. Inside the Paris casino, cocktail waitresses in skimpy French police uniforms hurried past me, delivering
Bloody Marys and cups of coffee to hungover tourists at the blackjack table. The jingle of coins beat an unsteady rhythm from the rows of slot machines. A casino employee dressed as a peasant sold eight-dollar pastries from a wooden cart. Next to the roulette table two middle-aged men in Ohio State sweatshirts drank thirty-two-ounce strawberry daiquiris from Eiffel Tower–shaped glasses. Beside them stood a short guy in his late thirties. His bangs were black and slippery. The collar of his pink polo was folded up.

I tapped his shoulder.

“Yes?” he said. His bright brown eyes met mine.

“I have your money,” I said. He was cute. I giggled nervously.

His hands dug into his pockets. “Okay, we go to the suite to count.” His head motioned toward the elevators.

Dink had mentioned nothing to me about going up to Yitzhak’s suite to count the money. But in the two seconds I considered it, it seemed like normal procedure. How did he know I didn’t skim some bills off the top between the time I left Dink and arrived at the casino? How did I know he wouldn’t take the money from me, pocket some, and then call Dink and say that the package was short? Plus, Yitzhak was five-foot-seven and wearing pink. He certainly didn’t come off as a threat.

The elevator climbed to the soundtrack of
A Chorus Line
. One singular sensation and the doors opened to a four-thousand-square-foot suite with wraparound panoramic windows and a domed ceiling painted sky blue with a fresco of fake clouds. Israeli men sat at a lavishly decorated banquet table, feasting on smoked salmon, tomatoes stuffed with scrambled egg, and poppy seed pastries. In the center of the table, atop a silver tray, a cow’s tongue unraveled over red apples and celery stalks. At the other end of the table sat two black guys in oversized jeans and sweatshirts. White desert light shot over the mountains, through the window, and reflected off the tops of their smoothly shaved heads. Stacked on the china plates in front of them were Belgian waffles doused in syrup and snowcapped with powdered sugar.

The group’s personal cocktail waitress welcomed me with a mimosa.

“Everyone,” Yitzhak announced, “meet Bar.”

“Beth,” I said, to the maraschino cherry at the bottom of my champagne glass.

I took a seat next to the Israelis, who talked among themselves in Hebrew. Shiny black chest hair curled out the top of their unbuttoned golf shirts. On their fingers were huge gold rings set with bright jewels the size of jawbreakers.

As I finished my mimosa, I heard bills spitting through an electronic counting machine. Across the room, Yitzhak stood in the doorway of the hall closet. With one hand on his hip, and a pointer finger hooked over his bottom lip, he stared at the machine conscientiously, as if it might steal some bills for itself if he took his eyes off it.

Approaching him, I asked if everything was okay.

“Bizarre, your line of work, no?” he said. His eyes stayed fixed on the machine. “Do you get nervous meeting strangers, carrying so much money?”

I didn’t mention that this was my first pay and collect. I repeated the line Dink had said to me earlier, that the people I met were just like me, harmless.

His Adam’s apple moved up and down as if it too were watching the bills in motion. “You are a very friendly girl,” he said. “You would be a great asset.”

I did not ask the obvious question:
to what?
Instead I blurted out,
“Really?”

The last bills shot through the feeder and the neon blue counter blinked 80000.

“I’ll walk you out,” he said.

Outside the casino, we stood by the Fontaine des Mers replica. An elderly man posed next to a sculpture of a mermaid holding a large fish that sprayed water from its mouth. A woman with a camera shouted, “Say Vegas!” and the elderly man smiled.

The wind picked up and blew warm across my face, bringing with it Yitzhak’s spicy cologne. To escape the glaring sun, he moved a step closer. Our shadows collided. “Kiss him,” I said to myself.

“My friends you met upstairs. We travel from many casinos.
Prague, London. We use lasers to operate tables, to see hands of dealers.”

I sensed that his smile was a way of pretending that he was joking, just in case I threatened to call the cops. You couldn’t work among Las Vegas gamblers without meeting people who tried to take advantage of casinos. Some of the successful card players in Dink’s circle of acquaintances started their careers as “peekers,” meaning they sought out inexperienced blackjack dealers who held their decks carelessly, making it easy to peek at the next card. There wasn’t any more to it than that. Then there were guys who used shaved coins to trick slot machines into awarding credits. One guy was known to use a powerful magnet hidden in his cigarette pack to manipulate slot-machine wheels. But I had no idea what it meant to “operate tables” and I never heard of anything like using lasers to see through cards.

“If you’re making this up you better tell me now,” I said. “I hate when people make up stories just to see if I’ll believe them.”

The lasers, he said, were planted inside their rings. The black guys were decoys.

If I understood correctly, and I think I did, Yitzhak and his crew were doing the kind of thing that landed one in jail. Or, more to the point, got one killed.

“How much money could I make?” I asked.

“I think you’d have much success,” Yitzhak said. “A no-sweat, no?”

A teenager with acne and a clipboard interrupted us. “You guys got a second to save Yucca Mountain?”

“No,” Yitzhak snapped. “We do not
got
a second.”

The teenager dropped his head and wearily made his way toward the elderly couple.

“Am I so rude?” Yitzhak said, smiling. His lips were full and his teeth crooked in the most perfect way.

“You’re not rude,” I said. I found his arrogance attractive. His accent too. And he smelled so good. Who cared if Yitzhak was robbing the casino? I liked being close to him. I wanted to hear him
talk more. But I also felt that Dink might be worried about me and that it was time to meet him.

“I have to go,” I said, then waited to see if maybe he’d ask me out. He put his arm around me and I felt my face blush.

“Okay,” he said, softly. “Maybe you don’t mention this. At least that we promise each other?”

He scribbled his phone number on a piece of paper.

“Call me,” he said. “I am really interesting in your thoughts.”

It was such a beautiful day that I left my car with the valet and walked along Las Vegas Boulevard to the Stardust, my head swarming with fantasies. Yitzhak
was
interesting in my thoughts. Operation Yitzhak was so much more glamorous than Dink Inc. I had never been to Europe, let alone casinos in Prague. With Yitzhak, I could spend my days poolside, drinking vodka infusions. At night, I’d have sex with him and his Adam’s apple, then slip on a black silk gown, my ruby-red laser ring, and walk gracefully down the mahogany spiral staircase and onto the busy casino floor. In between heists, in our tiny European flat, we would sit, shoulder to shoulder, and count the money. Then make love on the money, fulfilling one of my earliest sexual fantasies.

A swoosh of pink, white, and blue stars twinkled. The Stardust sign loomed above the parking lot where Dink’s Altima was parked. His big, curly head was silhouetted against the afternoon sun. How could I leave Dink? Prague, I’m sure, would be amazing, but nothing could be better than wandering around the arid desert in jeans skirt and tank top, meeting sexy casino cheats, assisting Dink with his affairs. Vegas is where I belonged. Where I was known, simply, as Dink’s girl. I ran across the street, excited to tell him about Yitzhak and the lasers.

“Israelis are always behind things like that,” Dink said, unfazed by my story. “Pay and collects can be brutal. I’m sorry …”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “I love when things like that happen.”

The windows were down and we could hear the roar and screams of the roller coaster down the street. I reclined the seat and hung my feet from the window.

“Where are we gonna eat?” I said.

“No,” Dink said. “I’m sorry, but I have to fire you.”

He dropped a letter-sized envelope into my lap and severance pay spilled out. I never knew money could look so terrible.

I brought my feet back into the car. A lump the size of a bingo ball began pulsing in the center of my throat. I mustered a wispy “I’m sad,” which I said to people just before I cried. A kind of heads-up in case they couldn’t or didn’t want to deal with it.

Dink’s voice rose with emotion. “Beth, no crying. It’s been fun but this is not good. I can’t have Tulip start drinking again and that’s what she’s threatening to do. You’re young. You’re bright. You’ll find another job.”

My tears dropped.

“She says you’re coming between us,” he said. “And she’s right. Do yourself a favor, take the money. Let me know if you need more.”

“Why don’t you do yourself a favor,” I hollered, “and get rid of your miserable fucking wife.” Screams from the roller coaster.

“Okay,” Dink shouted back. “Outta the car.” He put his hand on my shoulder.

“I was gonna ask you to hire my dad,” I said. “I want him to move here.” My tears flew in every direction. I tried to look at Dink but it hurt to open my eyes. I snapped a piece of hair from my scalp.

“Stop eating your hair and take the money!” He leaned over me and pushed open the door. “I’m not hiring your father. I only hire people I can boss around. No crying. Out!”

“Stop being so mean!” I screamed, stepping out of the car. I wiped and wiped my eyes, but the tears wouldn’t stop. Snot trickled into my mouth.

“I’m married! What does that mean to you?”

I bit my tongue. I wasn’t a threat to their marriage. I was a threat to her lifestyle. She wasn’t afraid of losing her husband. She was afraid of losing her meal ticket. What did that mean to
him
?

“It means nothing,” I said, trying to reason with him through the window. “Pay her alimony. She can live in the guest room.”

“Beth,” he said, exasperated. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel and spoke to the floor mat. “It doesn’t always help when someone thinks you’re the greatest and you don’t think you’re the greatest.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

He mumbled, “Just give it time, all right?”

Inside the Stardust, at the entrance of the Wayne Newton Theater, I sat Indian style and counted the money from the envelope. Seven thousand dollars. The last bill was a fifty with a yellow Post-it attached. “For Otis,” it read, with a drawing of Otis, his fuzzy ears sticking out of a Yankees baseball cap.

I got out of bed, pushed play on my boom box, and then got back underneath the covers and snuggled with Otis for comfort and consolation. His snores and the hiss of the swamp cooler gave way to Gram Parsons’s “Dark End of the Street.” Upstairs, doors slammed. The steel stairway creaked. My neighbors were returning home from their graveyard shifts. A knock at my door and Otis jumped off the bed and ran in front of me,
woofing
in his deep baritone.

“How many times you gonna listen to that song, baby girl?” my neighbor asked. A clip-on bow tie hung from the collar of his unbuttoned tuxedo shirt. “It’s a pretty song and all but I don’t need you to be playin’ that again all mornin’ while I’m tryin’ to get some sleep.” He bent down to pet Otis and Otis dodged his hand.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m grieving.”

“I’d say,” he said.

We turned our attention to an overweight streetwalker hobbling by in her bare feet. The sling backs of her red high heels dangled from her fingers. Her large, dark nipples shone through her white lace unitard like coffee stains on a tablecloth. My neighbor whistled through his missing teeth.

I read the paper in the bathtub. The local story of the week was that Sandy Murphy, who was serving time for the gruesome murder of her boyfriend, gaming heir Ted Binion, was having an affair with her cellmate, Jessica Williams. Jessica was a twenty-one-year-old stripper with a genius-level IQ, who smoked pot, took Ecstasy, and later crashed into a clean-up crew on a Las Vegas highway, killing six teenagers. Now, she and Sandy had been spotted “cuddling up together, laughing, talking, whispering all night.” It made me happy that Jessica had found love—or at least intimacy—inside the Clark County Detention Center. Our ability to adapt; it’s what I love most about humanity.