Red Queen (5 page)

Alex turned to Russ and acted like she knew nothing about the game. It was Alex's firm belief that there had never been a male born who did not enjoy telling a female what to do. “Should I double?” she asked.

He shrugged. “The book says you should.”

“You're going to double, right?”

“Nope.”

Alex was surprised. So was I. Russ looked like an experienced player but his choice indicated he was not—at least, according to our card.

Alex doubled, shoving out four more chips. Russ left his grand alone.

Russ hit and got three. Now he was looking at fourteen—a shit hand. He hit again, which he couldn't have done if he had doubled down. He got a seven, twenty-one, sweet.

Alex had forty bucks riding on one hand. The dealer hit her and she got two, the worst possible card on a double down. She cursed her cards and the dealer. The latter didn't blink. Against my better judgment I took one and got an eight and bust. Alex lost as well.

Russ was the only one who won.

Then, the nerve of the guy, he let his two grand ride. It was such a ridiculous amount to bet on one hand, the rest of us didn't pay attention to our own hands. Except for Alex.
She was pissed she had lost the forty and was trying to make it back in a hurry. She put down a stack of eight five-dollar chips.

“You're throwing away your winnings,” I warned her.

“Hush!” she snapped.

I stayed at five bucks. Trucky and the Japanese couple played twenty. Our dealer hit me with another sixteen, which made me feel cursed. Trucky got twelve. The Japanese couple got nineteen again. Russ got ten. Unfortunately, the dealer also showed ten.

Alex got a miserable fifteen.

“Do I hit?” Trucky asked Russ. A few minutes ago the man had wanted to punch Russ. Only in Vegas.

“Don't ask me for advice,” Russ said.

“Come on,” Trucky insisted.

“Well, you can't sit at twelve.”

“Maybe the dealer will bust,” Trucky said.

Russ shrugged. “You decide.”

Alex appealed to Russ. “How do I get out of this mess?”

Russ didn't hesitate. “Hit.”

It was decision time. The Japanese couple stood. Trucky hit and got nine—twenty-one. He patted Russ on the back, called him a good man. Russ drew another ten for an even twenty. Alex also drew ten, which caused her to bust. She slammed her fist down in disgust.

“You told me to hit!” she complained to Russ.

“I also said not to ask me for advice,” he said.

I hit and got six and bust again. I was down to forty in chips and only had another hundred in my purse to last me all weekend. The dealer turned his hole card over. He had only seventeen. The Japanese couple had won, as well as Russ, who was already three grand ahead. Wow.

The smart thing for me to do was leave. Alex was already packing up to go. She was annoyed at Russ, at his attitude, although she should have accepted it had been her decision to bet so much at once.

“Come on, Jessie,” she grumbled.

I hesitated. “I want to keep playing.”

“You're getting shit hands every time. Let's try somewhere else.”

I glanced at Russ—who lit another cigarette—and turned back to Alex. “Go ahead, I'll catch up with you later.”

“Right.”

I nodded toward Russ. “I promise. I'll call you on my cell.”

Alex got the message. “Remember, most cells don't work inside these places. Go outside if you can't reach me.” She leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Watch out for this guy, he looks like trouble.”

I just nodded. Hadn't we come to Vegas for trouble?

We played another hour, together, and no one left the table except the dealer. The breaks he took were short. With our original dealer back at the helm, my meager bankroll began to dwindle again. Actually, the situation got serious. I dipped into
my purse and took out the hundred I'd sworn I was going to save for the next two days. I was playing with money I couldn't afford to lose. True, my room was paid for but I needed the cash to buy food and drinks.

Why was I being so reckless?

It made no sense but I felt my luck had to change. Plus I wanted to stay near Russ. I had moved closer to him, taking Alex's vacant chair. For the first time in a long time, Russ looked over at me.

“How much are you in the hole?” he asked.

“Close to two hundred.”

“Can you afford that?”

“Hell, no.” I had been watching him play. He was easily a hundred grand ahead. I thought maybe he was going to offer me a loan, not that I would have taken it. I had too much pride. He surprised me when he told me to bet everything I had left on my next hand.

I shook my head. “Are you nuts?”

He stared at me. “I'm serious, Jessica.”

“It's Jessie.”

“Bet it all, Jessie.”

I gestured to his stacks of chips. “That's easy for you to say, you're winning like a fiend. How much are you ahead?”

“I don't know, I can't count.”

“You can't count and you can't read. What a winning combination.”

“It hasn't hurt me tonight.”

“Should I bet everything I've got?” Trucky interrupted.

Russ ignored him. He was focused on me. The dealer was demanding we place our bets. “Decision time,” Russ said.

There was something in his confidence that made me reach into my pocket and pull out my final forty. There was no point in asking him again how he knew it was time to go all out. He had said what he had to say and that was that. I could trust him or forget it. Taking a deep breath, I shoved the red chips into the white circle painted on the green velvet.

“No guts, no glory,” I said.

Russ smiled and put down ten grand. “True.”

I shook my head at the size of his bet. “You're crazy.”

“Gambling's crazy.”

“True. But you're ahead. You should quit while you're ahead.”

“Why?”

“Duh. You're playing against the odds. In the long run, you can't win.”

“I'm not playing against the odds.”

“Really?”

“I'm playing against myself.”

His remark should have been sufficiently cryptic to ignore. Except for the fact that I had watched him for more than an hour and he had won over eighty percent of his bets. A person who could play at such a high level and consistently win either
knew something the rest of the world didn't or was one lucky bastard. Hell, look at me, I was trusting him with my last few chips.

The dealer dealt once more. My first card was an ace. God in heaven, I prayed. If only my next card were a ten . . .

I got a queen of diamonds. Blackjack, which paid one and a half times my original bet. Suddenly I was sixty bucks richer and back up to a hundred. I should walk, I thought. Walk away with enough cash to maybe rent a boat on Lake Mead and go waterskiing with Jimmy, or else return to that Italian restaurant at the Bellagio with him. Jimmy loved pasta; he loved food.

But Russ was watching me with his navy blues. The sea behind them was too deep, too calm, to say no to. He wanted me to let it ride.

I left the hundred bucks on the table.

The dealer made up a new shoe and dealt. I got seventeen, an awful hand, especially when the dealer was showing a ten. I could only wait and see if he bust. I wasn't Alex, I didn't snap at Russ. I had made my own decision and I'd have to live with it.

“Hit,” Russ said when the dealer got to me. He had won his last hand and with another twenty sitting in front of him it looked like he was going to win again. His ten-grand maximum bets kept piling up.

I snickered at his suggestion. “Right. And pray for a four, a three, or a two. Those are the only cards that can help me.”

“You need a four,” he said.

None of the original players had left. For the first time, they were focused on me. They knew the hundred was all I had left.

“But the odds . . . ,” I began.

“Screw the odds,” Russ said.

“That's not what you told Alex.”

“That's because I wanted you all to myself,” he replied.

He was saying he had given her bad advice on purpose. To piss her off so she would leave. Who was this guy?

“Hit me,” I told the dealer.

I got a four—twenty-one. The table cheered loudly. Trucky wanted to hug me. The dealer turned over his card. Russ had been right, I had needed the four. The dealer had twenty.

I had won my money back. I shoved my loot toward the dealer so he could give me two black hundred-dollar chips to take to the cashier's window. But Russ stopped me.

“Change them into greens and play some more,” he said.

Greens were twenty-five-dollar chips. A person could win or lose awfully fast at that rate.

“I need to find my friend. I think she's mad at me,” I said.

“This is Vegas. No one stays mad for long here,” Russ said.

I tried arguing with him but my heart was not in it. Especially when he offered to tell me when to bet heavily. I was no fool, I could see what he was capable of. If I could make money and flirt with a cute guy at the same time, then to hell with Alex.

I asked for another Cuba libre and gulped it down. Russ ordered us both more drinks and we lined up our chips and prepared to do some serious gambling. He had finally stopped to count his chips. He was up a hundred and fifty thousand. He told me with a straight face he wanted to win half a million. He tipped our dealer ten grand—the guy finally smiled—and then he appeared to change our strategy and instructed me to bet low for a few bets. That meant I had to cash in two greens for ten five-dollar chips.

I lost the next five bets. Naturally, I was relieved I was playing at the casino minimum. But as soon as the dealer whipped up a fresh shoe—there were actually six decks of cards in the shoe, all mixed together—Russ told me to bet a hundred. That was more than half what I had left, but there was no saying no to him. Especially with Trucky begging for help on the far side.

“Why are you helping her and not me?” he demanded when I won the next hand.

Russ turned to him. “You want some advice? Leave the casino now and don't come back.”

Poor Trucky, Russ had hurt his feelings. “What did I do to you? I stopped complaining about your smoking.”

Russ ignored him and focused on the game. The dealer tossed out the cards with practiced ease. I bet another hundred and got a twenty, which made my heart skip. Especially when the dealer ended up with nineteen.

Suddenly I was up two hundred. Ten minutes later I was
a thousand ahead. It was just the start. Russ varied his bets between one thousand and ten thousand, nothing in between. After I had won more than three thousand, he told me to vary my bets—either five hundred or fifty.

Of course, Russ told me when to place the big bet. But that didn't stop my hands from shaking every time I pushed it out.

I assumed he was counting the cards, but based on what Ted had told us, he was winning far too often for an ordinary counter. No, I thought, he must be using another kind of system. But what?

I wasn't the only one who was stumped. His winning streak naturally attracted the pit bosses. We had at least two standing over us from the time Russ passed a hundred grand in winnings. Eventually the floor manager appeared, a big burly guy with a neck as thick as his thighs. He had “mob” written all over him.

The manager occasionally glanced up and signaled with his hands. I realized he was communicating with the “eye in the sky” that Ted had told me about. All the casinos had people watching the tables from above with special cameras, searching for cheaters, for counters in particular. Yet none of them seemed to feel Russ was counting. They let him play, even though he kept winning. I assumed they hoped his luck would change and he'd lose it all back, and then some.

I leaned over and whispered in Russ's ear.

“Does it bother you, all this attention?” I asked.

“Nah. They're like everyone else. They hate parting with their money.”

“What if they ask us to leave?” I asked.

“These are private clubs. We'd have to leave.”

The alcohol went to my brain and danced. I suspected the bar had upped the juice in our drinks so Russ would play recklessly, although to be honest, I was drinking more than he was. I was playing like a robot that had an internal happy switch broken in the on position. The money we were making made me want to sing. It felt unreal. I stared at the stacks of chips piling up in front of me and I told myself that they had not given me real chips. That I was playing with Monopoly money. The idea did not disturb me because, well, in real life no broke eighteen-year-old chick from Apple Valley ever went to Las Vegas and won huge sums of money.

Our dealer went for a break and never returned. It seemed we had a new dealer—a hard-looking fifty-year-old female who wore her makeup so thick it looked like it held her nose on her face. Russ instructed me to keep my bets low. Ten minutes later he leaned over and spoke in my ear.

“We're leaving. This woman is what's called a mechanic. Her hand and eye coordination are extraordinary. She's the best I've ever seen. She's hitting us with cards that are two, three, or four deep in the deck. Trust me, if we stay, we'll keep getting losing hands.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

The woman, along with the floor manager and pit bosses, waited for us to make our next bet. Russ pushed all our stacks of chips forward and told the dealer to count us out.

“Excuse me, sir?” the woman said, clearly unhappy.

Russ stayed cool. “Do you want to count us out here, or should we do it at the cashier's window?”

The floor manager stepped forward. He offered his hand to Russ and they exchanged names and other pleasantries. He ignored me completely. He seemed concerned that Russ didn't want to leave his winnings in the hotel vault, so he could play again at a later date. From my side, I would have brought up the fact that they were trying to cheat us with a mechanic. But Russ apparently knew better.