Loaded Dice by James Swain Page B

by a movie studio, and the casino was filled with famous black and white movie stills.
    Nearing the blackjack pit in the back, he saw Amin. Amin was playing third base—the last spot at the table. The seat next to him was open.
    Gerry’s seat.
    “This seat open?” Gerry asked, putting his coffee down at the empty spot. The dealer nodded and so did Amin. Gerry took the seat and tossed two hundred dollars in wilted twenties onto the green felt.
    “Changing two hundred,” the dealer called out.
    Soon Gerry was gambling, ten bucks a hand. He played Basic Strategy and never deviated. His role in the scam was simple. Try not to lose his money too quickly. That was all he had to do.
    Amin, on the other hand, was on another mission. He wasn’t supposed to
win
too much. He could win thousands of dollars an hour if he wanted, but then the people staffing the eye in the sky would start studying him and, if they didn’t like what they saw, place him under “Special Ops.” They would scrutinize his every move, run it through a computer, maybe even start to harass him. It was as much fun as being chased by a police car.
    So Amin played it safe and won five hundred dollars an hour. It was a grind, but it rarely drew heat. The system he used was called the Hi-Lo. By assigning +1 and –1 values to the dealt cards, he could determine when the game was favorable to the player, and when it was favorable to house. He would bet accordingly, and almost always come out ahead.
    Amin executed Hi-Lo flawlessly. He
always
knew the game’s exact count. Bart said even the best counters were only 70 percent accurate. Not Amin. The man was focused.
             
    By ten PM , Gerry was down to fifty dollars and sweating through his clothes.
    Amin was up. Way up. To hide his winnings—something gamblers called “rat-holing”—Amin had been palming his hundred-dollar chips, then dumping them in Gerry’s half-filled coffee mug. If anyone in surveillance had been paying attention, they would have noticed that Gerry’s drink was growing as the evening progressed.
    Amin had also started dumping chips into Gerry’s jacket pocket. That was okay, except there were so many that Gerry could feel the chips pulling down his coat. Amin was acting so blatant that Gerry almost felt like he was being set up. Finally, he rose from the table, leaving his remaining chips, and said to the dealer, “Where’s the john?”
    The dealer gave him instructions. Left, right, left, you can’t miss it.
    Gerry marched through the casino, holding his filled coffee cup, afraid to drink the liquid and expose the chips shimmering just below the surface.
    The john had photos of famous Hollywood actors hanging on the walls. He found Pash standing at the urinals and sidled up next to him. Pash was staring at a photo of Cary Grant and said, “The first movie I ever saw was with Cary Grant. It was called
Gunga Din
. He played a character named Archibald Cutter. Have you seen it?”
    Gerry shook his head. “Look, we need to talk about Amin.”
    “The theater was wonderful. You paid for a ticket, walked through a lobby, then went outside into a courtyard and watched the film beneath the stars. I was six years old. When I first saw Cary Grant, I thought to myself—
This is the man I want to grow up to be!”
He burst out laughing. “It was so funny. I thought that as I grew older, I could change my skin and hair color, and look like Cary Grant!”
    “Your brother is fucking up,” Gerry said through clenched teeth.
    Pash pulled up his fly and glanced over his shoulder. The johns were the only place in the casino where there were no surveillance cameras. It was against the law. But that didn’t stop people in security from occasionally popping their heads in and having a look around.
    “How?” Pash asked.
    Gerry showed him the chips in his pocket and his coffee cup.
    “Is anyone else at the table winning?” Pash asked.
    “No, and that’s the problem,” Gerry