‘What is this?’ Kazakov asked, as they joined a fifty-strong line to get inside the buffet. ‘Some kind of acne sufferers’ convention?’
The three men ahead in the queue were spewing words about handwriting recognition software, which enabled James to make the link to some billboards he’d seen across town.
‘Compufest 2008,’ James grinned, as they shuffled forwards two paces. ‘It’s a whole massive conference for the computer industry.’
‘Geekfest, more like,’ Kazakov sneered. ‘Give me six weeks and I’d make real men out of them.’
‘They might not have the looks, but they’ve got the money,’ James said. ‘I wondered why there were so many Mercs and Bentleys in the parking lot.’
The buffet was worth the queue and James made a complete pig of himself, stuffing his plate with a dozen slices of roast meat, then going back for fish and pasta before finishing off with half a dozen miniature dessert pastries.
‘So,’ Kazakov said, when they were both too stuffed to eat another mouthful. ‘Feel up to another session of blackjack? That fifty-dollar maximum really cut our edge. How about we try a high-stakes table?’
‘You’ve got whipped cream on the end of your nose,’ James said, as he picked his coffee cup out of its saucer. ‘I looked on the Internet when we were staying at the Reef and for high stakes there are apparently two deck games with low penetration and high table limits at the Vancouver casino. It’s at the south end of the Strip.’
‘What are we waiting for?’ Kazakov asked.
James shrugged. ‘The only thing is, the Vancouver is a new casino so they’ll have top-notch security systems and the higher the stakes, the more closely the table will be watched. I think we rode our luck a bit this afternoon at the Wagon Wheel. We should have taken the hint the minute the pit boss put the table limit back down to fifty.’
‘OK,’ Kazakov said. ‘We turned three grand into nine this afternoon. If we triple our money again, we’re looking at close to thirty grand.’
James smiled. ‘Actually, the initial stake doesn’t matter – as long as you don’t hit a big losing streak and get wiped out. If you’re betting five hundred dollars a hand instead of fifty, your potential winnings are ten times greater.’
‘A hundred thousand dollars,’ Kazakov said, pounding his fist jubilantly on his chest. ‘I could go for some of that.’
‘Wouldn’t mind some myself,’ James said. ‘My share should be good for a nice Harley-Davidson.’
*
The Vancouver was one of Las Vegas’ newest casinos and situated at the southernmost extreme of the Strip. Its sixty-storey hotel tower was the tallest in town and its modern white décor was aimed at a hipper crowd than the marble and heavy pattern carpets in the older casinos.
James had now seen most of the big hotel casinos and despite their elaborate attempts to differentiate with themes and attractions he found that they were all pretty much the same beneath a thin veneer: big multi-storey car parks, a few thousand hotel rooms, some swanky restaurants and a massive casino at the heart of it all.
Still bloated from the buffet, James sat in the back of the car and watched the viewpoint from Kazakov’s scarf on the laptop screen. He was excited at the prospect of more winnings and confident after their success at the Wagon Wheel.
Compufest delegates were thick on the ground as Kazakov moved briskly down miles of corridors and over a spectacular glass-floored bridge that spanned the hotel’s pool complex. The bridge opened out into banks of escalators that led down to the casino floor.
No part of the mega casinos was more similar than the windowless gambling floors. The slot machines and tables were all licensed by the state of Nevada and the result was near identical machines, flashing coloured lights and bleeping identical tunes and jingles.
As Kazakov passed a Nissan pick-up truck mounted on a plinth and up for grabs by suckers feeding the slot machines surrounding it, James’ screen dropped out and the words no signal flashed up.
The picture came back a few seconds later, but the image was heavily pixelated and the sound kept breaking up. The picture stabilised momentarily, but as Kazakov sighted the high stakes area of the casino the video signal faltered for a second time.
James feared interference from a signal jamming device inside the casino, but he opened up the onscreen control panel for the video monitoring software and saw that the signal strength was way down in the red zone. He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and called Kazakov.
‘Whaddya mean no signal?’ Kazakov said irritably. ‘You’re a kilometre away at most. We were getting six times that coverage at Fort Reagan. Are you sure you’ve got it set up right?’
‘I’m sure,’ James said. ‘Fort Reagan’s open country. You might not be far away, but I’ve got three layers full of cars parked on top of me and you’re underneath a sixty-storey hotel tower.’
‘Damn,’ Kazakov growled. ‘A signal booster would probably do the trick, but I only brought what I thought I’d need inside Fort Reagan.’
‘We could try another one of the smaller casinos,’ James suggested. ‘Or the old casinos on Freemont Street.’
‘There must be another way,’ Kazakov said. ‘You need to get closer. A toilet cubicle or something.’
James tutted with frustration. ‘The casinos have guards and video cameras everywhere. Come back to the car, we’ll drive back out to one of the smaller joints.’
‘Let me think a minute,’ Kazakov said. ‘I’ll call you back.’
James threw his mobile down on the empty seat beside him and sighed. He was the brains behind the operation, but at times Kazakov was treating him like a kid.
He watched the screen for a few more seconds, but as Kazakov moved deeper into the casino the signal dropped out completely. Almost ten minutes passed before James’ mobile rang.
‘I’ve found your spot,’ Kazakov said. ‘Bring the laptop and meet me at the business centre.’
‘Business centre?’ James said, mystified.
James found it close to reception after a five-minute walk. The glass-fronted area contained several dozen desks, surrounded on three sides with privacy screens. There were also banks of fax machines, laser printers and a few more obscure machines like laminators and binders.
‘Hey, miss,’ Kazakov said, smiling to a smartly dressed receptionist standing behind a counter as James approached. ‘Here’s my boy. He needs a desk to get this history project done and I know if I leave him upstairs in the room, he’ll be watching TV, playing Nintendo and stuffing his fat face from the mini-bar.’
The receptionist gave James a smile. ‘Homework gets you down, doesn’t it?’ she said.
‘If he wants a good college place, he needs to pull his finger out,’ Kazakov growled.
‘OK then,’ the receptionist said cheerfully. ‘The business centre is forty dollars for the first hour, twenty-five after that. Service includes desk, Internet access, printing, faxing and telephone calls. Overseas calls and colour printing are extra.’
Kazakov paid for three hours with cash. ‘Do your work,’ he said firmly as the receptionist led James into the business centre. ‘No MSN.’
‘Good luck at the tables, sir,’ the receptionist said sweetly.
37. LIMITS
The receptionist smiled warmly as James picked out a desk in the farthest corner of the deserted office suite.
‘Surprised it’s not busier with the big computer conference in town,’ James noted.
‘They’re all way in advance of us,’ she said. ‘They have their Blackberries and smart phones. I get quite a lot of jobs printing and binding contracts, but nobody uses the desks during Compufest.’
James flipped up the lid of the laptop as the receptionist walked away.
Once the computer was plugged in and booted up he opened the surveillance software. The signal strength was on nine bars out of ten. The picture was bright and the sound clear, but he almost flew up out of his seat as the receptionist put a tray
with jugs of coffee and orange juice and a small plate of biscuits on the table beside him.
‘Brain food,’ she smiled. ‘Let me know if you need any help using the printers or anything.’
‘Cheers,’ James said. ‘I really just need to be left alone. You know, get my head down and get the homework over with.’
He felt slightly uncomfortable as he watched Kazakov on screen. The Ukrainian bought eight thousand dollars’ worth of chips from the cage before heading into the high-stakes gaming area.
One of the main ways James had justified his criminal activity up to now was by the fact that while Kazakov was running the risks inside the casino he’d be in a parking lot hundreds of metres away and the chances he’d get caught were practically zero.
But now he was in the casino too, and while Kazakov only had a discreet camera and a vibrating signal device stuck to the back of his watch, James had a wireless receiver unit, a laptop loaded with surveillance software and images from a blackjack table on the eleven-inch screen right in front of him.
The high-stakes area was guarded with a velvet rope, although money was the only criterion for entry. Fixtures were more luxurious than the rest of the casino and the staff more attentive, but the slot machines and tables were identical Nevada-state-regulated stock.
As Kazakov sought out blackjack tables, James was astonished to glimpse a man with his credit card plugged into a slot machine, losing fifty dollars as fast as the spinning cherries and melons would let him. Casinos liked to call gambling gaming and portray it as a sophisticated activity for James Bond types in dinner jackets and bow ties, but in a modern casino like the Vancouver eighty per cent of the floor space and ninety per cent of the profits came from jangling slots.
High-stakes areas were usually the emptiest parts of a casino, but Compufest had brought a lot of wealthy people into town and delegates were throwing thousands of dollars across the tables and tipping good-looking waitresses fifty dollars in return for smiles and a free drink.
Kazakov realised this was ideal: casinos only cared about the bottom line and pit bosses and dealers would pay less attention to him winning while they had a dozen other punters losing money like it was going out of style. James checked the table rules and buzzed the vibrating receiver to indicate that Kazakov should take a seat.
‘Evening gentlemen,’ Kazakov said, taking the middle stool and planting four thousand in chips on the table.
The dealer was a beautiful Asian woman in a strapless white evening dress with the Vancouver casino logo embroidered on the back. The table had a $100 minimum and a generous $2,000 ceiling, but the computer geeks were showing off their cash, constantly betting the table maximum and making a point not to care when they lost.
For the next hour James sat in the business centre, squinting at the laptop screen and counting cards while Kazakov played with complete anonymity. The pit boss – along with half a dozen bystanders and hangers-on – had his eye on a game of baccarat across the room where an Indian businessman was betting up to a hundred thousand dollars per hand.
Kazakov’s cards weren’t as generous as they’d been at the Wagon Wheel and the count kept moving against him, but card counting is about playing the odds.
The odds are slightly against a regular blackjack player, guaranteeing that the casino will always win in the long run. A good card counter has a similar edge over the casino and can expect to make an average of one per cent per hand.
It doesn’t sound like much, but a dealer can lay down sixty hands an hour, so on average a good card counter can double their money every ninety minutes. Even a careful card counter, who makes deliberate mistakes to throw the dealer and pit boss off the scent, can still expect to double their money for every four hours spent at the tables.
Kazakov was barely two thousand up after an hour, but then he hit a lucky streak: James signalled that the count had moved heavily in his favour at the same time as the other four players left the table. This meant that Kazakov got dealt all of the remaining cards in the deck, with odds leaning heavily in his favour.
Betting two thousand a hand, Kazakov won three in a row, then lost a hand, split a pair of aces and won with both of those hands before drawing a blackjack which pays odds of three for two.
James sat in the business centre, keeping a wary eye on the receptionist, who was running a batch of photocopying, and trying not to let his excitement show. Kazakov had won over ten thousand dollars in six minutes.
‘I seem to be having a good night,’ Kazakov said, lowering his sunglasses and giving the dealer a rare smile. ‘Do you think it might be possible to up the table limit to five thousand per hand?’
The pit boss came over briskly and gave the dealer the briefest of nods before turning away. He had several busy tables and didn’t much care that Kazakov was up more than thirty thousand dollars. A dozen other high-stakes gamblers were filling up the casino’s coffers, including the Indian baccarat player who was in the hole for over half a million dollars.
James glanced at his watch and saw he had less than forty-five minutes until his three hours in the business centre were up. Nobody else was doing business this late, and the receptionist was emptying waste baskets and switching off the copiers. James had positioned himself so that she couldn’t see the laptop screen, but she was clearly waiting for him to leave so that she could shut up shop and he felt increasingly conspicuous.
Kazakov celebrated the raised table limit with a five-thousand-dollar bet on the first hand with the freshly shuffled decks. The dealer won and James stuttered as he realised that he’d just lost a year’s pocket money on the turn of a playing card.
On the next hand Kazakov only bet two thousand, but lost again. Ten thousand up one minute, seven thousand lost two minutes later. James’ eyes were getting bleary after watching cards for more than two hours. In his head he knew that the maths of card counting were identical whether the bet was ten dollars or a million, but his nerves struggled with Kazakov betting the price of a second-hand car on each hand.
But probability always wins out and Kazakov kept listening to James’ signals to raise or cut the bet when the odds were in their favour. James got a grip on himself and Kazakov won a couple of hands. More people joined the table again, but they were betting between two and five hundred a hand, which wasn’t good because it made Kazakov’s larger bets the centre of attention.
The count went nowhere, but Kazakov rode his luck and came out a few thousand up. James checked his watch when the dealer shuffled and realised this would be their final run through the decks. The count moved their way and Kazakov started betting the five-thousand table limit every hand.
Kazakov won eight out of ten, including one blackjack: thirty-two and a half thousand dollars in eight heart-pumping minutes.
‘I’m closing up and heading home,’ the receptionist said. ‘If you want your homework printed out or anything, you need to do it now.’
James was so enraptured by their sudden run of luck, that he’d not noticed the receptionist come up behind and look over his shoulder.
‘Oh, right …’ James stuttered, looking back anxiously while trying to keep one eye on the cards. ‘I’m practically done. Don’t worry, I can print the work in my room when I get home.’
‘What have you got up there?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Doesn’t look like homework.’
James hastily pushed down the lid. ‘It’s private,’ he babbled. ‘Internet, web cam …’
This sounded horribly suspicious, but James wasn’t sure how much the receptionist had seen. Had she just caught a glimpse and realised that he wasn’t typing a history essay, or had she seen enough to realise that he had a camera trained on a blackjack table?
The receptionist wasn’t huge and James considered knocking her out to ensure she didn’t snitch. But she didn’t look flustered as she backed off and walked across the carpet to switch off the last of the laser printers.
James grabbed his phone and called Kazakov. ‘Ca
sh your chips, get the car,’ he whispered quickly. ‘I’m probably being paranoid, but the receptionist might have seen something and I don’t want to chance it.’
‘Where do you want me to meet you?’
‘Just get the car and get out,’ James said nervously, as he looked over his shoulder and saw to his horror that the receptionist was back out front, speaking into a telephone. ‘I’ll tell you where to meet me once I’m sure nobody’s on my tail.’
38. RAILS
James stuffed the laptop in his backpack and smiled at the receptionist as he headed briskly out of the business centre. He’d followed his training: donning a pair of sunglasses and a blue Nike baseball cap and looking down to make sure he didn’t get picked up by security cameras.
‘Thanks for your help, miss.’
Still on the phone, she looked up and nodded at him, her expression unreadable.
James’ head spun: maybe the receptionist had barely glimpsed, or maybe she’d seen everything. Maybe she’d called casino security to grass him up, or maybe she’d called her boyfriend to tell him that she couldn’t knock off early because she was waiting for some dumb kid to finish his history homework.
Whatever the truth, James couldn’t risk hanging around to find out. They’d entered the casino from the parking lot at the rear and Kazakov would need a good ten minutes to go to the cage and turn his casino chips back into dollars, plus another five or six to get to the car.
Even if casino security had been informed, it would take longer than that to watch the surveillance footage from earlier in the evening and match Kazakov to the description given by the receptionist. Even if they caught Kazakov he’d have ditched the camera and signalling device long before, making it impossible to pin anything on him.
In most hotels reception is next to the main entrance, but Las Vegas has its own rules and casinos maximise gambling opportunities rather than convenience. James stopped by a sign with arrows pointing towards theatres, parking, attractions, restaurants, health spas and various hotel towers, but there was nothing so obvious as a sign pointing the way out.