Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime

Twenty-four

For Vegas anytime was the shank of the evening. If I’d been on the clock I would have been in my pit, trying to keep high rollers happy while at the same time trying to keep the casino from losing too much money. It’s a delicate balancing act, and I believed that one day it would be two very specific jobs in Vegas casinos. Let the pit guy concentrate on the game, and let someone else keep the gambler happy.

I decided to go and take a look at my pit and see what was going on. The blackjack tables were full, with only an occasional empty seat. A couple of my big-money guys were there, which meant their wives would be on a slot machine somewhere.

Pete Dawson played a hundred dollars a hand minimum, often bumped it up to five hundred. But there was never any rhyme or reason that I could see when he would bump up the bet. It seemed to take place on a whim. It used to drive me crazy until I found his wife at a slot one day and decided to ask her about it ….

Her name was Lisa Dawson, and she had probably been a heckuva looker twenty, maybe ten years ago. These days she was a blowsy forty-five or so, her once taut figure now full, almost sloppy. She hadlarge breasts and dressed to show them off. Her black hair came out of a bottle, and her once pretty face was mottled from drinking and heavy with pancake make-up to hide it. And yet there was a sexy, slutty quality to her. More than once she’d offered to take me to a room while her husband played blackjack, but I always declined.

The day in question was no different. I had been relieved in the pit and in passing a bank of slot machines had seen her there. I detoured and walked over to her.

“Hello, Lisa.”

She looked up from her machine, annoyed that someone would interrupt her, but when she saw it was me she smiled widely.

“Eddie G,” she said. “Come to take me up on my offer to let me fuck your brains out while my husband loses all our money?”

“He never loses it all, Lisa,” I said, “and if I did let you fuck my brains out it would probably ruin me for other women.”

“Well, you’re right about that,” she said, with a wicked smile. She turned to face me, giving me a clear view of her plunging neckline. I had to admit her breasts looked inviting, and that shadowy cleavage was intriguing. The gold lame dress she wore clung to her lovingly, but I was sure she was firmly corseted into it. I didn’t want to be in the same room with her when she got undressed and removed it. Suddenly, the air of intrigue was gone.

“I just wanted to ask you a question about your husband.”

“Oh,” she said, “him.”

“I’m wondering about his strategy.”

“Strategy?” she asked. “What strategy?”

“Well, he bets a hundred or two hundred most of the time, but every so often he jumps the bet up to five hundred. I was wondering if there was a strategy behind it?”

She studied me for a moment, then dropped a coin in the slot machine and pulled the handle. The reels went around, flashing red, yellow and orange, and then stopped with a lemon between two cherries.

“If I tell you,” she asked, “would it help you beat him?”

“Well, no-maybe, but-”

“Just say yes,” she said. “I’d love to see him lose for once.”

She was right. Even though I couldn’t see a strategy to his play, he seemed to win all the time.

“Okay,” I said, “it would help.”

She looked around, then crooked her finger at me and leaned forward.

“He bets five hundred every time a pretty girl comes to the table or walks by.”

“What?”

“It’s true,” she said. “Any time a pretty young girl is around he tries to impress her by betting five hundred dollars.”

I stood straight up.

“That’s it? That’s his strategy?”

“That’s it,” she said. “Can you use that?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “If that’s all it is then it’s a matter of luck.”

“Can’t your dealer do something when they see a pretty girl? Deal from the bottom?”

“Sorry, Lisa,” I said. “That would be cheating.”

“Oh,” she said, “and the casinos don’t cheat, right?”

“Not while I’m in the pit,” I told her, and walked away ….

I watched Pete play a few hands and saw that he’d stopped betting five hundred, even when a pretty girl passed. I looked around for Lisa but she wasn’t anywhere to be found. Maybe she’d stopped coming with him to the casino. Not that I minded.

I nodded to Tom Huston, who was manning my pit in my stead, and moved on. I made a slow circuit of the casino floor, comparing it in my mind to the Riviera. All-in-all I preferred the ambience of the Sands to those of the Riv, the Sahara and some of the other properties. We didn’t have as many slots, since Entratter was on the same wavelength as me and didn’t think the one-armed bandits were going to become as popular as other people in the business were saying. Or maybe I was just more comfortable there after so many years. It was, after all, my home.

I stepped outside. The heat had relented a bit, but we were still inthe middle of the desert. The temperature didn’t drop significantly until after the sun actually went down.

I’d had a full day already, running around after Lou Terazzo and Carla, finding a dead body. I was tired. I decided to go home, maybe stop someplace for a bite to eat. Danny might have found something out during the day, or even Mike Borraco. One of them might call me and I thought I should be home if they did.