Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [87]
Three hours later, with a big grin on his face—and shaking hands all around, to make sure there are no hard feelings—he gets up from the table with sixteen hundred dollars.
Sixteen hundred! Christ, it would take us almost six weeks to make that kind of bread! Now we’ll be able to take another room at the Princess to handle the wives and kiddies.
But Dean’s ambitions go a lot higher than an extra room at the Princess. “Now that we’ve got a little money in our pockets, why don’t we go check out the Turf Club,” he tells me.
The Turf Club was a spiffy private establishment just off the main drag: You had to have a member invite you inside, and you had to have a jacket and a tie, not to mention at least $200 for tips. I tell Dean the tab alone will kill us, but he says that that kind of worrying is for chumps. So one night after our families arrive, having wangled an invitation from one of Dean’s new friends, into the Turf Club we march with wives, children, bottles, and strollers, and ask the headwaiter for the best table in the house.
He stares at us for a moment, but after Dean slips him a twenty, he leads us to the perfect table. This is the night I learn how far you can get by greasing a palm.
Then I discover what Dean has known all along: The Turf Club is a gambling club. Dean and Betty and Patti and I are having drinks, and the children are behaving nicely, when Dean whispers, “Come on, Jer. I’ll show you the real world.”
As we glide up the stairs, leaving the families to order, I suddenly realize we are heading for trouble. And I swear as the Almighty looks down upon me, we aren’t in that gambling hall for eight minutes before Dean has lost eleven hundred dollars at the craps table—and he hasn’t even thrown the dice! When they finally come around to him, he whispers, “Watch this, kid!”
Oh, I watch, all right, and I become ill before Dean even tosses the dice. We both know who runs this joint, and as funny as my partner and I might be, these guys have no sense of humor. Whatsoever. This is where they make their living. It isn’t personal, just business!
Dean proceeds to throw three crap rolls, and we are officially out of funds.
He hands me the dice, only because he didn’t seven out yet. So we’re still alive—without a sou. My partner asks for a $500 marker—a loan from the house—and, because the pit boss knows who has invited us, Dean gets his chips. He lays $250 on the front line, and I throw the dice.
They come up seven. We win!
I throw another seven. We win again!
Now Dean puts a hundred on the hard eight—a sucker bet; you get eight to one if you throw two fours.
I throw two fours.
We win eight hundred bucks, plus the front line, which was three hundred. We now have eleven hundred again, and I can’t lose. I throw a six. Dean bets it back, and I make the six. We win the six bet and the front line once more, and we collect more money than I ever knew existed anywhere in the world, or even Europe. Christ, we’ll never have to work again!
We now have $3,700 of the house’s money, and the pit bosses from all the other tables are crowding around. They’re curious as much as anything else: They rarely see anyone throw nine passes and still stay at it! But they’re nervous, too: They have absolutely no idea how to stop this crazy, screaming monkey and his handsome friend.
“Go for it!” Dean shouts.
“Yeah!” I answer. “Let it roll!”
We’re now getting close to the house limit, which is a thousand dollars a bet. Holy Christmas—I just threw a ten, made all the bets you can make on that tough number, and now I throw the ten right back.... And all we can do is laugh, while the men around the table glare at me like IRS agents.
One hour and fifteen minutes later, we go to the cashier and collect $23,000 ... all hundreds ... hundreds ... hundreds!