It was four in the morning when Jack made it home from Putter’s. He lived in a downstairs one-bedroom condo off of Tropicana and Pecos. It was late enough at night and early enough in the morning that he arrived home to an uncommon silence. He welcomed it.

On the weekend, Jack’s upstairs neighbors played the Grateful Dead and other endless jam band instrumentals. If he stood outside long enough he could get a contact high from the smoke coming through the couple’s window.

Other than their choice of music though, Jack didn’t mind them. Their worst offense was smelling like patchouli. They occasionally invited him to hang out and smoke weed but Jack never accepted their invitation. He didn’t do drugs and he didn’t want to return the invite.

The only people he let in his house were Elio, Gil, and Lon.

When he was fourteen years old, Jack moved to Las Vegas to live with his grandmother Susan and her boyfriend Gil. He had grown up in Oakland with his mother but spent every summer with Susan. Between his grandmother’s affection and the lure of Las Vegas even at his young age, Jack knew where he wanted to be. When he was ready for high school, Jack told Linda he wanted to live full-time with his grandmother.

Linda agreed—too easily for Jack, but he’d never admit it.

Jack’s mother, born and raised in Las Vegas, left the city the weekend after she graduated from high school, hoping to never come back.

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Two years after she left, she was pregnant with Jack. If Linda was going to make a respectable life for herself, she’d need to lean on her mother. It was irony at its best. Linda left Las Vegas because she didn’t want to be like her mother—working in casinos, playing slot machines on her days off, eating in buffets every holiday. Linda wanted a better, traditional life. But after she became pregnant with Jack, she was forced to keep a connection to Susan and Las Vegas.

When Jack moved to Vegas, his grandmother had been with Gil for ten years. Having been around Gil since he was a toddler, Jack considered him a grandfather and Gil was happy to play that role. Susan and Gil adored Jack.

Everything Jack’s mother hated about Las Vegas Jack loved. Prime rib at the Horseshoe on Christmas Day, ninety-nine cent breakfasts at the Klondike on Sundays, wearing sunglasses to hide his age and explore the downtown casinos while his grandmother played slots. Jack enjoyed her and Gil’s stories of old Vegas and he especially liked spending time with their colorful friends.

The kind of person who has a natural attachment to a place like Las Vegas skipped a generation. Linda thought Las Vegas was a desert wasteland—Jack thought it was everything.

Chapter 2

It was just after 2:00 a.m. when Jack got to his car in the employee lot outside of the Plaza. The middle of the night at the end of August gave Jack his favorite Vegas weather. Still wearing his black-and-white dealer uniform, he kept the air conditioning off and instead rolled down his front windows to let the soft, warm air in as he headed east to Putter’s Tavern, a nondescript video poker bar on the east side of Vegas.

When he walked into the bar he saw the short man he had dealt to earlier, wearing a baseball hat, sitting in a corner booth eating a burger. “Did you order me anything?” Jack asked as he sat down next to him.

“I didn’t know what time you’d be out of there.”

“It was slow tonight, they let me go early,” Jack said. “The bosses have their heads up their asses, they don’t notice anything, but there was a hooker at the bar who had her eye on you. You’ve got to lose the Guido look when you come back in.”

“Yeah I saw her. She was above average for downtown.”

Jack’s partner was Elio—an Italian immigrant raised in London. He could play equally well a distinguished Brit or a New York Italian who’d just walked off the set of The Godfather. In real life it was hard to guess his background. Besides his British-Italian accent, Elio switched his identity so often, his speech and mannerisms left people stumped. The only thing Elio liked more than hustling casinos and one-night stands was creating new personas. His three passions complemented one another well.

Elio had been Jack’s agent for five years. Their act was seamless. Not once had they gotten heat on a play. Between the Horseshoe where Jack used to work and the Plaza, they’d cheated downtown out of one hundred thousand dollars in two years. They were the perfect team—Elio a chameleon and Jack a genius and forgettable card mechanic.

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“Are you going to go to Chuck’s tomorrow? He wants to see you,” Elio said.

“I’m gonna go,” Jack replied, unenthusiastically and with a shrug of his shoulders.

“You’re a shut-in man—more than usual. It’ll be good for you to socialize. And Chuck fucking loves you.”

“He needs me,” Jack replied.

“I need you. I’m not doing a move with him unless you’re in. He said he’s got something nice worked out for us.”

With another shrug, Jack sighed, “This is felony shit. We don’t need computers to make money.”

“Everything we’re already doing is a felony,” Elio clapped back.

“I’m fine with what we’re doing. Lon always said—Chuck is going to get the best of it no matter what the deal is. I respect him, but I don’t trust him.”

A waitress dropped off another whiskey for Elio and took Jack’s order. When she left, Elio tried to lighten the mood. “Don’t be so cocky, Jackie, you aren’t even Chuck’s first choice. He wanted Lance Burton but he’s busy.”

Jack groaned. Lance Burton was a magician headlining at The Hacienda on the south end of the Strip. There was some crossover between the magic community and card mechanics. Elio was friendly with some of the magicians. But Jack loathed them. Not only did he think his skillset was far superior, he was bothered deep down that guys like Lance Burton were thought of as experts in their craft. Put Burton or any other magician in Las Vegas behind a blackjack table and they’d freeze up. Nothing more than clowns, Jack thought.

Elio kept going, “Hacienda’s sign does say Burton is a World Champion.”

Jack was sizing up a blonde hooker at the bar—more out of habit than judgment. On looks alone she was an eight. Put her on the Strip at Caesars and she’d be a six. But looks aren’t the defining factor for a hooker’s success, it’s their hustle—that’s what kept Jack interested.

Whenever Jack was on a dead spread, he’d clock the girls working. The best ones knew which guys to approach and which were a waste of their time. A pair of old guys in plain button-down shirts having beers at the bar were a waste of time. Most likely waiting for their wives to finish playing slots. An older, single guy, two drinks in, taking a break from the tables was a high priority spot.

It was Friday night and Jack was dealing on a quarter-min blackjack game. It wasn’t considered high limit, but the twenty-five-dollar minimum table was the biggest that night at the Union Plaza in downtown Las Vegas. He had only been standing at the dead spread for five minutes when a short guy, about forty years old, dark chest hair sticking out of the top of his partially unbuttoned silk shirt, sat down. He had a gold pinky ring and greasy hair. He laid out five one-hundred-dollar bills and said, “Give me all green, kid.”

Jack wasn’t a kid, but he looked like one. At twenty-eight years old he had a childlike, chubby, round face. His dark brown hair was flat and parted to the side. Like everything else about him, it was plain.

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Jack called out to the floorman beside him, “Changing five hundred.” The boss looked over to verify, said okay, and Jack pushed forward a stack of twenty, twenty-five-dollar green chips. The player pulled them closer, grabbed an ashtray, gently put two green chips into his betting circle and as Jack dealt the cards, he lit a cigarette.

Everything about this guy made him a good target for a prostitute. He had money, he was alone, and he looked like he was in the casino to blow off steam. Jack could see the blonde he was just clocking at the bar eyeing the player. She spotted him as potential meat before he even sat down.

Jack had been dealing at The Plaza for three years. He was a reliable dealer, never making mistakes or asking for special favors. There wasn’t much that seemed to bother him.

One of the usual complaints among the dealers was having to deal Pai Gow Poker. Pai Gow players were exclusively Asian men who didn’t tip, chain-smoked, and spoke to each other rapidly in Chinese or Vietnamese. Jack didn’t mind that type of gambler though. He appreciated that the Pai Gow players weren’t there to chat—they were there to gamble. He was fine to just shut up and deal.

Jack wasn’t a particularly social guy, but he would sit with the other dealers in the break room and laugh at a good joke. To everyone at The Plaza, Jack was nothing special. He clocked in, clocked out, and didn’t give anyone anything to worry about.

In about twenty minutes of sitting down, betting between $50 and $100, the player with the overflowing chest hair was up almost one thousand dollars. Jack just kept busting and the player had gotten lucky with three blackjacks. “I quit,” the player said as he pushed forward a stack of chips. He pocketed the black one-hundred-dollar chips he won and Jack colored his green twenty-five-dollar chips up and called out, “Coloring up six black,” for the floorman to verify. Without much fanfare the player grabbed the chips, carelessly tossed Jack a green chip as a tip, and walked away from the table toward the sports book. Jack could see the blonde at the bar follow the player with her eyes. She’d wait a beat then follow behind to see if she could corner him at the sports book and try and pick him up. She didn’t know that the player was headed for the side door.

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It was just after 2:00 a.m. when Jack got to his car in the employee lot outside of the Plaza. The middle of the night at the end of August gave Jack his favorite Vegas weather. Still wearing his black-and-white dealer uniform, he kept the air conditioning off and instead rolled down his front windows to let the soft, warm air in as he headed east to Putter’s Tavern, a nondescript video poker bar on the east side of Vegas.

When he walked into the bar he saw the short man he had dealt to earlier, wearing a baseball hat, sitting in a corner booth eating a burger. “Did you order me anything?” Jack asked as he sat down next to him.

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