Busting Vega$ by Ben Mezrich

Author:Ben Mezrich
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2005-10-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

The Trump Plaza Atlantic City, New Jersey

The water was ice-cold, but burned like fire as Semyon dunked his head into the oversize, gilded sink. Even though his eyes were tightly closed, the soap stung at him, but the sudden pain was good, making him forget about the throbbing in his skull and the raw ache of his face.

He kept his head submerged as long as possible, until the last seconds of air had been used up by his lungs and he had no choice but to face the world. Then he pulled his head out of the sink and let the cold water run down his neck and soak his blood-spattered white T-shirt.

“Man, you look like shit.”

He glanced at Victor in the backlit, bathroom mirror. Victor was seated on the closed, thronelike toilet seat, legs crossed at the knees, his arms tight against his chest. He’d taken his suit jacket off and rolled up his sleeves when Semyon had first entered the four-room suite—to avoid getting blood on his clothes as he helped Semyon clean himself up—and he looked surprisingly naked in his off-white, tailored shirt and thin gray tie. He also looked surprisingly small against the backdrop of one of the biggest bathrooms Semyon had ever seen. From the massive, boatlike bathtub in one corner to the dual glass-walled showers in the other, the place looked more like a marble-tiled sanitorium than a bathroom. There were mirrors everywhere—which, at the moment, was not a good thing, considering Semyon’s appearance. The forty-minute walk back to the casino hadn’t helped matters; he wasn’t just beat-up, he was also exhausted, and his shoulders slumped forward with the very effort of keeping his head atop his neck. But it didn’t do any good to dwell on his misery. And he didn’t really want Victor’s sympathy—because he didn’t really think it was all that sincere. Although Victor’s features showed concern, his eyes communicated something else. Semyon had seen that same look when Victor was running the second technique, predicting the location of an ace by the sequence of cards that came before it. It was as if he was implying, through those eyes, that he’d predicted something like this might happen. Which, of course, was ridiculous.

“Could have been a lot worse,” Semyon mumbled, shaking the water out of his ears. He surveyed the damage in the mirror. His lower lip was pretty swollen, and there was a bright red mark on his cheek where the man had hit him. Other than that, with most of the blood washed away, he didn’t look nearly as bad as he felt. His head still ached from the window, and his back was covered in bruises from where he’d hit the asphalt. His elbows and knees had fairly deep scratches, and he’d probably need to see a dentist about the loose tooth in his upper jaw when he got back to Boston. But otherwise, there didn’t seem to be any real damage. He’d been damn lucky.

“Yeah, you could have still had our money on you.

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