The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [27]
She told him about her infamous father and her distant mother, but she did it with the smallest, oddest details. How in better times they always wore some combination of black and red so it would be easier for strangers to recognize them. How her mother sometimes called her father “Mo,” after Mozart, and how he sometimes called her “Loopa.” How her father, Chicago’s advocate general for high culture, had a secret collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks. Each time, when she was done talking, Nada would kiss Wayne on the lips and tell him she was going to sleep. And she just did, in his arms, like a light on a dimmer. She fell asleep almost before she was done closing her eyes.
Wayne had never seen anything like it. But just as quickly, Wayne had done something even more remarkable.
He had fallen in love.
Now at the blackjack table, he asked Nada, “Can you really count cards and talk to me at the same time?” As Wayne had explained to a trainee just that afternoon, the count tracks the number of face cards still in the shoe. A positive count means there are more face cards than average and the advantage shifts slightly to the player. Card counters track these numbers in their head and use the count to determine the size of their bets. Counting isn’t illegal, but the ones who get caught are banned from the casino.
Or anyway, the ones Wayne wasn’t in love with.
“For the last time, I don’t count cards.” Silent Jimmy tossed out six more—three, four, seven, jack, king, deuce, seven. “I know the cards. I remember their names. I’m intimate with them. I don’t count cards any more than an Irish mother counts her children. I can just tell which ones are missing.” Her chip spiral now reached as high as the butterfly tattoo on her right biceps, the one Wayne had traced with his thumb while she slept.
Wayne nodded at Jimmy, who waved his hands over the felt. Game over. “Before you go, give me a status report,” Wayne said.
She expelled a sarcastic sigh. “You stop me from doing my job and now you want me to do yours?” Everything normal again.
Wayne reached across her body, brushing against her with his arm, and thumbed a tall stack of her chips. “You want me to add these up? You know our deal.”
She turned her body and drew tiny circles across her sternum like a child in a playground huddle sketching out a long pass. “Three o’clock. Caribbean poker. Cowboy is pissed off that his barely legal girlfriend there spent three bills on a massage. Nothing major yet, but I’d keep an eye on his liquor. From what she says, he’s a mean drunk.”
“Okay.”
“Shooting crap. Guy in the Knicks jersey’s fond of the racist joke and says the word titties a lot. Not a crime, I guess, but it pisses me off. Feel free to roll him as a personal favor to me. And you see that NASCAR slot machine, third one from the end? Guy in the red hat is playing it.” Wayne found it. “It’s not random. There’s a pattern. In fact, it’ll pay a small jackpot in six more pulls. Watch.” They counted together. It did.
Nada pointed out three other potential trouble spots on the casino floor. Bits of conversation she’d picked up. Unpleasant details she’d observed from afar. Wayne assessed each one in his head. He’d make notes after she was gone.
“Uh-huh. Anything else?”
For fun, she identified five prostitutes, a famous movie actor in disguise, and one exceptionally attractive transsexual. “Also, you got a counting crew that’s been working the room for about an hour.”
Card counters frequently descend on casinos in teams. The person tracking the count never changes the amount of her bet, which is how most counters get caught. Instead,