CHERUB: The General (32 page)

‘This one?’ Kazakov mumbled in Russian, as he turned to face a table.

Under Nevada law every gaming table has to clearly display all the rules and table limits. Casinos have a reputation for sneaking in extra rules that turn the odds even further in their own favour. After scanning the rules quickly, James pressed the laptop’s F5 key twice to activate the vibrating receiver under Kazakov’s watch and indicate that it was OK to sit down.

The centre stool was taken, so Kazakov sat one place to the left. The three other gamblers were elderly women. Kazakov played the table minimum, $10, just to get a feel for things as one of the old timers told him that she loved his accent and had a cousin who’d worked as a diplomat in Odessa. Distractions at the table are one of the most difficult things for a card counter to deal with, but Kazakov didn’t have this problem because James was doing the difficult part of the job for him.

Back in the parking lot, James sat in the back seat behind the tinted glass with Kazakov’s mini laptop drawing power from the cigarette lighter socket. The cards were fairly easy to watch and banter between the three women and the dealer slowed the game down.

Kazakov played solid basic blackjack strategy and won his first three hands, but James was disappointed to see lots of high cards flying across the table. The count quickly dropped to minus five, stacking the odds heavily in favour of the casino. Kazakov varied his bet between ten and twenty dollars, but the casino’s edge steadily took its toll and by the time the last cards were dealt Kazakov had lost his early gains and was down eighty dollars.

A cowboy joined the table and the dealer took his break and got replaced by a woman. There were now a minimum of twelve cards to count per hand and the new dealer dropped the banter and moved faster than her predecessor. But this time the count swung in Kazakov’s favour and James hit the F5 key twice, indicating to Kazakov that he should up the bet.

The odds were now in the players’ favour. Kazakov upped his bets to between thirty and fifty dollars per hand, but the cards didn’t fall his way. Counting cards and upping your bet when the count is in your favour gives the player edge over the casino, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll win any particular hand and Kazakov wasn’t getting the right cards.

When the dealer shuffled the decks to start again, Kazakov was down close to four hundred dollars, while the cowboy on his left had won two hundred playing a supposedly suicidal strategy of following his hunches.

James couldn’t see Kazakov’s face, but the instructor was fidgeting and clenching his knuckles. A pretty waitress handed a complimentary orange juice to Kazakov and a bourbon for the cowboy. Shortly afterwards the three elderly women headed off with smiles and a twenty-dollar tip for the dealer.

With just two players at the table Kazakov moved on to the centre stool so that there was space between them. He drew blackjack – a perfect twenty-one that pays odds of three for two – on the first hand bet of forty dollars. Kazakov won a couple more hands on smaller bets of ten and twenty dollars and for the second time the count swung in the players’ favour.

Kazakov upped his bet to the fifty-dollar table maximum and won seven hands out of the next eight. The count dropped back into the casino’s favour as more cards were dealt, but Kazakov rode his luck and by the time the dealer reached the end of their second run through the cards their losses had been wiped out and Kazakov was looking at a three-hundred-dollar profit.

‘It’s working,’ Kazakov mumbled in Russian for James’ benefit.

Over the next hour and a quarter, Kazakov kept playing and stacked up steady profits. Sometimes the count went against and Kazakov lost slightly or trod water, but when the count swung in their favour he upped his bet and the winnings piled up. His three thousand dollars of chips had turned into four thousand seven hundred and the pit boss – who was in charge of all the tables in that section of the casino – sanctioned Kazakov’s request to up the table limit from fifty to a hundred dollars.

James watched as the pit boss and a colleague began to hover over the table, paying attention to Kazakov’s mounting pile of chips. Blackjack dealers and senior casino staff are trained to spot card counters. Every table is viewed from above by surveillance cameras and after ninety minutes and a profit of several thousand dollars Kazakov knew someone would be in the security room paying careful attention to every move he made.

If he upped his bets every time the count moved in his favour he’d arouse suspicion and be asked to leave the casino. So Kazakov had to make the odd wrong move to throw the casino staff off the scent, but of course these deliberate mistakes all cost money.

After two and a quarter hours James began to notice the pit boss getting agitated. He changed the dealer and brought in new cards, then reduced the table limit back to fifty dollars per hand to put a cap on Kazakov’s winnings.

James didn’t want to push their luck on a first outing and after two and a quarter hours his eyes ached from being fixed on the tiny laptop screen. His brain was fuzzy and he needed food and a toilet break so he sent through the long signal to tell Kazakov to get out.

After tipping the dealer fifty dollars, Kazakov headed for the casino cage to cash out his chips. James rubbed his eyes and downed half a bottle of water before looking back at the screen. The cage had huge gold bars across the front and the host poured Kazakov’s piles of twenty- and fifty-dollar chips into an automatic counting machine.

The total flashed up on a blue illuminated display: $8,670.

‘You have a good day sir,’ the teller said brightly. ‘And be sure to put that money somewhere safe just as soon as you can.’

James had almost shat himself, risking all of his personal savings and putting his CHERUB career on the line, but now they’d won he was buzzing. His one-third share of $8,760 was $2,920, meaning he’d almost trebled his money. Kazakov’s $5,840 share meant he’d made back the $3,000 he’d lost at the Reef casino a few nights earlier.

James and Kazakov acted like best buddies as they drove the last few miles into the centre of Vegas, swapping stories about car-park security guards, evil stares from the pit boss and how James lost the count during a sneezing fit.

James turned the Ford on to the eight lanes of the Las Vegas Strip. The sun was setting behind the Stratosphere Tower at the north end of the Strip, the neon was starting to glow and an advertisement for an Elton John concert came out of a fifty-metre-high video wall.

‘I hear the all-you-can-eat buffets here are pretty special,’ Kazakov said.

James was shocked: hearing Kazakov complimenting something American was like turning up at your local KFC and finding the royal family tucking into a twelve-piece bargain bucket.

‘Bellagio has the best buffet in Vegas,’ James smiled. ‘Thirty bucks a head, all you can eat. We were gonna go the other day, but Kerry and Rat didn’t have enough cash left.’

The Bellagio was in the middle of the Strip, an upscale joint famous for the giant lake and fountains out front. Like all the main casinos it was vast and by the time they reached the buffet they’d walked through a vast parking structure and a casino the size of several football fields. Everything in Vegas is designed so that you have a long and tempting walk across a casino before you can get anywhere.

The marble-floored corridors and plush-carpeted playing areas thronged with pasty men in smart casual clothing. Thick glasses and greasy hair were abundant.

‘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.’