Super Casino by Pete Earley

Author:Pete Earley [Earley, Pete]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-42973-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2000-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Keith Uptain, Casino Shift Manager

Just after 9 P.M., the surveillance team that operated the cameras in the ceiling of the Luxor casino called Keith Uptain on his pocket telephone.

“It’s bad, boss,” the caller said. “You’d better come down.”

Uptain hurried into the Luxor’s basement and tapped on an unmarked door with a peephole in it. The two men inside played a videotape for him without comment. The black-and-white image flickering on the screen had been recorded fifteen minutes earlier from a camera directly over a roulette table. It showed a dealer spinning the wheel in one direction and tossing a pearl-like ball around its rim in the opposite direction as players hurriedly leaned over the table, putting down bets.

In roulette, gamblers try to guess where the ball will land on the wheel. There are thirty-six numbers around the wheel, not in sequence, plus a zero and a double zero. The odd numbers are red, the evens are black, the zeros are green. The players put different-colored checks—often incorrectly called chips—on the roulette table on numbers that correspond with those on the wheel. These thirty-six numbers are arranged on the table in a rectangular grid made up of three vertical columns and twelve horizontal rows. The first row contains the numbers 1, 2, and 3. The next continues with the 4, 5, and 6, and so on. The zero and double zero are at the top of the three vertical columns. The payoff depends on how a bet is positioned on the table. If a gambler is trying to pick a specific number, he puts his check directly on that number. This is called placing a “straight up” bet, and the gambler will win thirty-five checks for every one that he risks. A “split” bet means betting two numbers at the same time by putting a check on the line that connects the two; a “corner” means betting four numbers. The more numbers that are bet with a single check, the lower the payoff. Besides trying to pick a specific number, a gambler can bet colors—red, black, or green—or bet whether the ball will land on an odd or an even number. He can also bet entire columns by placing a check at the very bottom of one of them.

So far, Uptain had not noticed anything unusual about the game he was watching. But when the ball began its last three revolutions around the wheel, the dealer leaned forward with her right arm extended and swept her palm over the numbers on the table as a signal that all betting had to stop. Just as the ball was about to drop on the wheel, a player lunged forward and dropped several checks on the number five. The dealer quickly picked them up, explaining that it was too late to place a bet. But the man could be seen on the tape arguing with her. By this time, the ball had dropped on number twenty-four and as the dealer scanned the table,

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