The meeting had been arranged through a Virginia law alumnus who was now a partner in a New York megafirm, which in turn was counsel to a gaming group that operated Canyon Casinos across the country. Contacts had been made, favors exchanged, arms twisted slightly and very diplomatically. It was in the delicate area of security, and no one wanted to step over the line. Professor Atlee needed just the basics.
Canyon had been on the Mississippi River, in Tunica County, since the mid-nineties, arriving in the second wave of construction and surviving the first shakeout. It had ten floors, four hundred rooms, eighty thousand square feet of gaming opportunities, and had been very successful with old Motown acts. Mr. Jason Piccolo. a vice president of some sort from the home office in Vegas, was on Piccolo was in his early thirties and dressed like an Armani model. Barker was in his fifties and had the look of a weathered old cop in a bad suit.
They began by offering a quick tour, which Ray declined. He'd seen enough casino floors in the past month to last him forever. "How much of the upstairs is off-limits?" he asked.
"Well, let's see," Piccolo said politely, and they led him away from the slots and tables to a hallway behind the cashiers' booths. Up the stairs and down another hallway, and they stopped in a narrow room with a long wall of one-way mirrors. Through it, there was a large, low room filled with round tables covered with closed-circuit monitors. Dozens of men and women were glued to the screens, seemingly afraid to miss anything.
"This is the eye-in-the-sky," Piccolo was saying. "Those guys on the left are watching the blackjack tables. In the center, craps and roulette, to the right, slots and poker."
"And what are they watching?"
"Everything. Absolutely everything."
"Give me the list."
"Every player. We watch the big hitters, the pros, the card counters, the crooks. Take blackjack. Those guys over there can watch ten hands and tell if a player is counting cards. That man in the gray jacket studies faces, looking for the serious players. They jounce around, here today, Vegas tomorrow, then they'll lay low for i week and surface in Atlantic City or the Bahamas. If they cheat or count cards, he'll spot them when they sit down." Piccolo was doing the talking. Barker was watching Ray as if he might be a potential cheater.
"How close is the camera view?" Ray asked.
"Close enough to read the serial number of any bill. We caught a cheater last month because we recognized a diamond ring he'd worn before."
"Can I go in there?"
"Sorry"
"What about the craps tables?"
"The same. It's a bigger problem because the game is faster and more complicated."
"Are there professional cheaters at craps?"
"They're rare. Same with poker and roulette. Cheating is not a huge problem. We worry more about employee theft and mistakes at the table."
"What kind of mistakes?"
"Last night a blackjack player won a forty-dollar hand, but our dealer made a mistake and pulled the chips. The player objected and called the pit boss over. Our guys up here saw it happen and we corrected the situation."
"How?"
"We sent a security guy down with instructions to pay the customer his forty bucks, give him an apology, and comp a dinner."
"What about the dealer?"
"He has a good record, but one more screwup and he's gone."
"So everything's recorded?"
"Everything. Every hand, every throw of the dice, every slot. We have two hundred cameras rolling right now."
Ray walked along the wall and tried to absorb the level of surveillance. There seemed to be more people watching above than gambling below.
"How can a dealer cheat with all this?" he asked, waving a hand.
Piccolo said, "There are ways," and gave Barker a knowing look. "Many ways. We catch one a month."
"Why do you watch the slots?" Ray asked, changing the subject. He would kill some time scatter-shooting since he'd been promised only one visit upstairs.
"Because we watch everything," Piccolo said. "And because there have been some instances where minors won jackpots. The casinos refused to pay, and they won the lawsuits because they had videos showing the minors ducking away while adults stepped in. Would you like something to drink?"
"Sure."
"We have a secret little room with a better view."
Ray followed them up another flight of stairs to a small enclosed balcony with views of the gaming floor and the surveillance room. A waitress materialized from thin air and took their drink orders. Ray asked for cappuccino. Waters for his hosts.
"What's your biggest security concern?" Ray asked. He was looking at a list of questions he'd pulled from his coat pocket.
"Card counters and sticky-fingered dealers," Piccolo answered. "Those little chips are very easy to drop into cuffs and pockets. Fifty bucks a day is a thousand dollars a month, tax free, of course."
"How many card counters do you see in here?"
"More and more. There are casinos in forty states now, so more people are gambling. We keep extensive files on suspected counters, and when we think we have one here, then we simply ask them to leave. We have that right, you know."
"What's your biggest one-day winner?" Ray asked.
Piccolo looked at Barker, who said, "Excluding slots?"
"Yes."
"We had a guy win a buck eighty in craps one night."
"A hundred and eighty thousand?"
"Right."
"And your biggest loser?"
Barker took his water from the waitress and scratched his face for a second. "Same guy dropped two hundred grand three nights later."
"Do you have consistent winners?" Ray asked, looking at his notes as if serious academic research was under way.
"I'm not sure what you mean," Piccolo said.
"Let's say a guy comes in two or three times every week, plays cards or dice, wins more than he loses, and over time racks up some nice gains. How often do you see that?"
"It's very rare," said Piccolo. "Otherwise, we wouldn't be in business."
"Extremely rare," Barker said. 'A guy might get hot for a week or two. We'll zero in on him, watch him real close, nothing suspicious, but he is taking our money. Sooner or later he's gonna take one chance too many, do something stupid, and we'll get our money back."
"Eighty percent lose over time," Piccolo added.
Ray stirred his cappuccino and glanced at his notes. "A guy walks in, complete stranger, lays down a thousand bucks on a blackjack table and wants hundred-dollar chips. What happens up here?"
Barker smiled and cracked his thick knuckles. "We perk up. We'll watch him for a few minutes, see if he knows what he's doing. The pit boss'll ask him if he wants to be rated, or tracked, and if so then we'll get his name. If he says no, then we'll offer him a dinner. The cocktail waitress will keep the drinks coming, but if he doesn't drink then that's another sign that he might be serious."
"The pros never drink when they gamble," Piccolo added. "They might order a drink for cover, but they'll just play with it."
"What is rating?" ;
"Most gamblers want some extras," explained Piccolo. "Dinner, tickets to a show, room discounts, all kinds of goodies we can throw in. They have membership cards that we monitor to see how much they're gambling. The guy in your hypothetical has no card, so we'll ask him if he wants to be rated
"And he says no."
"Then it's no big deal. Strangers come and go all the time."
"But we sure try to keep up with them," Barker admitted.
Ray scribbled something meaningless on his folded sheet of paper. "Do the casinos pool their surveillance?" he asked, and for the first time Piccolo and Barker squirmed in unison.
"What do you mean by pool?" Piccolo asked with a smile, which Ray returned, Barker quickly joining in.
While all three were smiling, Ray said, "Okay, another hypothetical about our consistent winner. Let's say the guy plays one night at the Monte Carlo, the next night at Treasure Cove, the next night at Alladin, and so on down the strip here. He works all the casinos, and he wins a lot more than he loses. And this goes on for a year. How much will you know about this guy?"
Piccolo nodded at Barker, who was pinching his lips between a thumb and an index finger. "We'll know a lot," he admitted.
"How much?" Ray pressed.
"Go on," Piccolo said to Barker, who reluctantly began talking.
"We'll know his name, his address, his occupation, phone number, automobile, bank. We'll know where he is each night, when he arrives, when he leaves, how much he wins or loses, how much he drinks, did -he have dinner, did he tip the waitress, and if so then how much, how much did he tip the dealer."
"And you keep records on these people?"
Barker looked at Piccolo, who nodded yes, very slowly, but said nothing. They were clamming up because he was getting too close. On second thought, a tour was just what he needed. They walked down to the floor where, instead of looking at the tables, Ray was looking up at the cameras. Piccolo pointed out the security people. They stood close to a blackjack table where a kid who seemed like a young teenager was playing with stacks of hundred-dollar chips.
"He's from Reno," Piccolo whispered. "Hit Tunica last week, took us for thirty grand. Very very good."
"And he doesn't count cards," Barker whispered, joining the conspiracy.
"Some people just have the talent for it, like golf or heart surgery," Piccolo said.
"Is he working all the casinos?" Ray asked.
"Not yet, but they're all waiting for him." The kid from Reno made both Barker and Piccolo very nervous.
The visit was finished in a lounge where they drank sodas and wrapped things up. Ray had completed his list of questions, all of which had been leading up to the grand finale.
"I have a favor," he asked the two of them. Sure, anything.
"My father died a few weeks ago, and we have reason to believe he was sneaking over here, shooting dice, perhaps winning a lot more than he was losing. Can this be confirmed?"
"What was his name?" asked Barker.
"Reuben Atlee, from Clanton."
Barker shook his head no while pulling a phone from his pocket.
"How much?" asked Piccolo.
"Don't know, maybe a million over a period of years."
Barker was still shaking his head. "No way. Anybody who wins or loses that kinda money, we'll know him well." And then, into the phone, Barker asked the person on the other end if he could check on a Reuben Atlee.
"You think he won a million dollars?" Piccolo asked.
"Won and lost," Ray replied. "Again, we're just guessing."
Barker slammed his phone shut. "No record of any Reuben Atlee anywhere. There's no way he gambled that much around here." '
"What if he never came to this casino?" Ray asked, certain of the answer.
"We would know," they said together.
