Two weeks later Alan was driving to Atlantic City alone in a rented car. He had considered taking someone with him, either Chloe the au pair next door, or Megan and Leila, but thought better of it. He had more than five thousand dollars in his pocket, won from the stock brokers and high-powered lawyers at his country club last Wednesday night. He might have won more, but after a few hours nobody would play him. His dad and Mr. Van Devanter even managed to win a few hundred from side bets on the games he played.
It was nearing dusk when he reached the casino. He had stopped in New York for two Italian suits, some fancy dress shirts and silk ties, a new pair of black shoes (also Italian), and a hundred dollar haircut. "I should have sprung for a fancy watch," he thought to himself as he handed the car keys to the valet. He tinkered with his appearance on the way down, making himself look about ten years older than his eighteen year old self, matching his new papers.
He had contacted Jack through the Swiss Bank, FedEx'ing a letter and writing of his plans to make some money at the casino. Jack had telephoned back and told him to see a man in Manhattan first. This man was an "employee" of Jack's, and he provided him with a fake set of identity papers (birth certificate, drivers license, passport), a social security number, a nice credit history, and an American Express card (platinum) under his new false name.
A few hours later he was up twenty thousand dollars. He was playing blackjack, and using his power her could read the hole card of the dealer. Actually he had two methods; either he read the mind of the dealer, or he focused on the card itself, reading through it to see the concealed value. He was also careful
not to arouse suspicion. He didn't set out to win every hand, and even made some intentional mistakes, doubling down at the wrong times. He was at a $1,000 max table, and he never varied his bet, always putting down just five hundred for each hand.
"Hi, mind of I join you?" A pretty young thing sat down next to him, not waiting for his response. "I'm Lisa." She flashed him a dazzling smile. She had a tight body capped with a drop-dead gorgeous face. Alan stood and pulled out a seat for her. "You seem to have the touch tonight. I hope some of your luck will rub off on me." She leaned into him at this, her arm brushing against his as if to illustrate her point.
"Hi, I'm Carl Sutherland, nice to meet you," giving her the name on his false papers. He scanned her mind. Her name was not Lisa, it was Anne-Marie, and she wasn't a random gambler, she was from casino security. She was there at his table to see if he was cheating.
Anne-Marie Nicoletti had been with the hotel for about a year, and was well schooled in the various ways players try to con the casino. She had recently been promoted after exposing a ring of slot-machine cheats. The ring had recruited little old ladies to play machines they had first modified after breaking into them. The old women had aroused little suspicion even after a month of big takes, but she had been the one to see the emerging pattern, and the credit for the bust was hers.
She watched her target play. She had been roaming the floor when her supervisor had radioed her to check out table nineteen. In the jargon of this particular casino Alan was a "mustang," an unknown player who was doing "too well." She watched him even more closely; if he was cheating he was very good at it. She looked around as he played, checking to see if there was a partner somewhere on the floor who was signaling to him what the dealer's hole card was. Nope. She watched his hands as he bet, looking for the telltale signs of a computer in his suit. Nope. She watched the dealer for a while, checking if he was weak in some way. Strike three.
Alan chatted with Lisa/Anne-Marie as she did her job. Since she had sat down Alan had lost, intentionally, five thousand dollars. "Sorry," she said to him, "I seem to have brought you bad luck."
"It comes, it goes," he said as he grinned at her. Alan decided that since she had just seen him lose $5,000 it was time to start winning again. He upped his bets to a thousand per hand, and in less then a half an hour was up more than $75,000. "You turned out to be lucky after all," he said to her smiling. Alan looked at his watch, and seeing it was only about 10pm asked her to dinner.
"Are you staying here?" she asked him, hoping for the chance to search his room.
"No, I'm not staying the night." She was disappointed. Alan called one of the pit workers over to take care of his winnings. He was informed that the floor manager wished to speak to him in the office. Anne-Marie watched Alan go to the rear of the casino, and she knew that if he did have some sort of cheating device on him the scanners in the doorway leading to the office would betray him. As she watched him disappear into the back she went to the phone and called her supervisor.
"Did you see anything?" he asked her quickly.
"Zip. What did the overheads get?" she asked him, referring to the ceiling-mounted cameras which watched all that transpired in the gambling den.
"Like you said, Zip. Bupkes. Less than Zip. He's coming. Gotta go."
* * *
Alan had a brief conversation with the floor manager. He was invited to the back where a cashier would count his chips and cash him out. Alan was suspicious; he had seen the Scorsese movie "Casino" a few years back, and the scene with the cattle prod and the bal peen hammer came forward in his consciousness. The man led him to his office and began to tote up the chips. Alan scanned his mind, relieved that his motive was not to do violence, but to simply keep him in the casino, in the hopes
that Alan would lose back his money to the house. Alan gave the manager the information required to have his winnings transferred to his Swiss bank account, and he saw the man's eyes widen at this, the fact of Alan's status as a "player" becoming ever more clear. This eased his tensions, and he was about to tell the floor manager that he had to leave, but the man told him that if he wanted to spend the night his room would be comped. He also told Alan that anytime he came back her would be allowed into the VIP room.
Alan accepted his offer, and told the man that he was thinking about dinner, and then perhaps another trip to the tables. The man lifted the phone on his desk and got Alan a table at the hotel's best restaurant. As he went back out into the casino he saw "Lisa" and again invited her to join him for dinner.
They sat down at the table and talked while waiting for their drinks. Anne-Marie gave him her cover story, that she was visiting the casino with her rich father, a real estate developer from Ohio who was playing high-stakes poker in a private room. Alan gave her his cover story, that he was an international business consultant based in Geneva and New York, spending a day or two in Atlantic City because he had a few days off between one engagement in Philadelphia and another in New York.
They ate and drank well. The casino management had a bottle of wine brought up from the cellar. "Lisa" excused herself and called her boss for instructions.
"He's not in any if the black books," Peter Milburn told her. This meant they had no good reason to ban him from the tables.
"What do you want me to do?" she asked him.
"Code 14."
It was now Anne-Marie's task to get Carl back to the tables. Statistics had shown that the more a player played, the worse his odds got. Keeping him at the table was the paramount task then.
"It's still early," she told Alan as they rose from the dinner table. She noticed that he had left a five hundred dollar tip, cash, but tried not to stare. "I'm going to keep playing. Want to join me?" she asked flirtatiously. Alan knew what she was doing, and played along. As he returned to the casino, a pit boss led him and Anne-Marie to the VIP Room, a smaller and quieter chamber right off the main floor. It was like a smaller version of the main casino, but without the loud noises caused by the slot machines. Alan sat down at the table and signed for $25,000 in chips, all in hundreds, and the room manager went to the cashier and drew them. There were no limits at the tables in here, and Alan bet either one or two thousand per hand. On hands he knew he was going to win he bet two grand about two-thirds of the time. On hands he knew he was going to lose her bet one grand almost every time. Soon he was up more than $200,000, and he increased his bets to either five or ten thousand. Anne-Marie and the rest of the casino staff watched with increasing dismay. As Alan passed the half a million mark she feigned fatigue and told him she was done for the evening.
As the dealer set to counting Alan's chips the pair chatted off to the side. "So, what's your secret?" she asked him. The scanner in the doorjamb of the floor manager's office showed nothing, but she wasn't 100% sure he wasn't concealing some sort of gear on him. As he played in the VIP room she watched his hands to see if they were entering data on a miniature computer. One of the advantages of the room was that cell phones and other radio transmitters could not penetrate its walls, so had he been using a partner on the outside and been receiving signals he would have been cut off. But he kept on winning. She had to find out how he managed to do it.
"Secret? What do you mean?" he answered her feigning innocence. He smiled at her as he said this, and for the first time that night Anne-Marie looked at him as a person, not as quarry; she really hadn't noticed before how handsome he was.
