All or Nothing Read online

  Ah, Mom. You just don’t understand gamblers.

  DEGENERATES

  I used to be a heavy gambler. Now I just make mental bets.

  That’s how I lost my mind.

  —Steve Allen

  11.

  This other guy, let’s call him the professor. You rarely see him play.

  He hangs out at the slots and he cheers you on, sometimes. Sometimes he lectures you. Though he can be annoying at times, we let him get away with it.

  He says, “Gambling is illegal in Florida, right? So what is this? What are we doing? We are not gambling—we are playing scratch-offs. That’s right, scratch-offs. If you look at your tax receipts whenever you win, you will see the words Winner of video pull-tab jackpot. The implications of this are interesting. You think that you are playing a slot machine, which implies random numbers are falling, and random numbers will win. It only looks like that on the surface. What’s really happening is that you are electronically scratching off on electronic scratch-off tickets. See? No? Okay, look at it like this: I purchase a scratch-off ticket in the grocery store. The ticket says I have a one-in-a-million chance of winning $100,000, right? But what if the winning ticket is up in Orlando? You see? I can scratch off all of the tickets I want down here in Miami, and I will not win because the winner never made it down here. In other words, the winner was printed and sent somewhere—could be here, could be there, could have fallen out of the bag and into the garbage can—scratch all you want, but you cannot win. Now, since these are video scratch-off games, what does that mean? It means that when the computers were programmed, a winner was designated, a winning machine, a winning hour, and a winning minute of the day. If you are not playing on that machine, at that time, on that day, you cannot win. The winner has already been determined. The numbers you put in are just an illusion to make it fun and keep you playing. People are superstitious about numbers, so the programmers put in numbers, but they could just as easily have put in signs that say You win or You lose. It’s all the same thing. Now, if these machines were truly random, as they most certainly are not, every machine, potentially, could hit at the same time. Think about it. If we all flip a quarter, isn’t it possible that all of them might land on heads? Yes, because the coin flips are random and independent of each other. But not these machines …” On and on he goes. He really is more fun when he’s cheering us on. “Yes! Yes! Hit it. Take some money from these gosh darn Indians. Yes! Come on, baby, hit those sixes.”

  He’s even more fun when he’s handing out hundreds.

  You’ll hear him behind you: “Come on, man, those sevens have to play. They have to. Come on.”

  You’ll say, “They’re killing me today. They’re beating me like a drum. I’m down to my last dollar.”

  He’ll say, “Don’t worry about it, friend, I got you covered.” And he’ll open his wallet and slide you a hundred.

  The professor doesn’t discriminate. He gives to black, white, Latino, Chinese, men, women, gays—it doesn’t seem to matter. As long as you let him yak without telling him to shut up, you have a good chance of him sliding you a hundred. He’s a smallish white man, youthful in appearance, but severely balding. He is always immaculately dressed in a pressed shirt and pressed pants. Sometimes he wears a jacket and tie. His shoes are always shined.

  I’ve gotten a peep inside his wallet on several occasions. It’s nice. He has a wad of hundreds in there, but he rarely plays, and when he does, he quits if he doesn’t hit something after the first twenty. Such discipline is enviable. One day he watched me go to the ATM ten times before he stopped me. He said, “How much did they beat you for today, friend?”

  “Professor,” I said, “they beat me bad. I’m down $900.”

  Putting his hand on his chin to mull it over, the professor said, “That’s quite a bit. Hmmm. What if I gave you $500? Would you go home right now? The only reason you continue to play is to make back the money you lost. You are tired, broke, and you probably need to be somewhere else right now. You probably have more important things to do. Do you have kids? A wife?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You should be home with them. It’s almost midnight.” He took the $500 out of his wallet and placed it in my hands, then closed my fist around it. “Take this. You don’t owe me anything. Go home to your wife and children before midnight. Go home before you hit that ATM again and do more damage to your finances. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  “And don’t let me see you in here again tonight.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you. I’m going home.”

  “And don’t go to the other casinos. If you do, and I see you there, don’t even look my way again. I’m done with you.”

  “I won’t do it, sir. I’m going home right now. Thank you.”

  He shook my hand. “Well, good night.”

  And that was it. I went home. I didn’t want the professor to be done with me. I felt like a child chastised, but I went home. I was tired. I was broke. All things considered, I could have been more broke. I went home and slept next to my wife, sparing my finances from further damage that night.

  The professor has a different game he runs with women. Women had better watch out for the professor. A lot of them know his deal, but some of them don’t. He has a room he rents out on a nearly permanent basis in the two casinos he hangs out at the most. He is rich. He used to teach math or science or something like that at one of the local universities, until he hit it big in Vegas. The story is he won like $10,000,000 in the Vegas slots, and then proceeded to give half of it back before he did two very wise things: one, move back to South Florida where the stakes are lower; and two, join Gamblers Anonymous.

  Now he has his gambling somewhat under control. But he still cruises the casinos, lecturing, bailing people out, and inviting desperate women upstairs to his room.

  “Pussy is an addiction, too,” the professor says. “And it’s cheaper. I’d rather be addicted to pussy than gambling. When you do it to a woman, it’s the same thing. It’s all about the rush. It’s all about the seduction. Can you get her to do it? Will you succeed with her? Will she buy your line? But what are you doing? I mean, what are you really doing? You see a pair of legs, or a nice set up top, and you go all ga-ga. Why do you feel a need to seduce her? You’re the one who’s going to be doing your best to pleasure her, and what do you get out of it? One quick orgasm near the end. It’s not logical. They should be trying to seduce us. We’re the ones who give, they’re the ones who receive, and yet it is we who pursue them. It should be the other way around, I tell you. But, oh, we feel so good when we do it. Our self-esteem soars. Just like in gambling.”

  On and on he goes.

  This Haitian woman, let’s call her R, didn’t know the professor’s deal. He would cheer her on or lecture her, like he did everybody else.

  But instead of sliding her the random hundred-dollar bill, he would slide her three or four hundred at a time. Hmmm.

  R was cute. She was short and stout with bright skin and pretty eyes. She loved the attention the professor paid to her. She certainly loved his money. She was quite the little flirt. It didn’t matter that she was five or six months pregnant. Her stomach was huge, but it did not detract from her beauty.

  One day R hit rock bottom—she blew close to three grand. When I got there, she was on her cell phone with her husband, trying to explain. She was frantic and crying; he was roaring back at her in an angry, deep-voiced Haitian Creole that rumbled out of the phone. The professor just stood by watching. Waiting.

  R went to him and asked for money, and we all gasped.

  Everybody knew better than to ask the professor for money. He never gave money when you asked. He only gave money when he felt like it. He might give a lecture when you asked. He might tell you he had no money on him, which was always a lie, when you asked. He might walk away from you shaking his head sadly when you asked. But if you are a pretty, pregnant, caramel-skinned Haitian woman h
e has been desiring, he might take you by the hand, look you in your honeycomb-colored eyes, and say, “You know, I have a room upstairs. Come upstairs with me. Perhaps you need to rest. Get yourself together. We’ll talk about money later,” when you ask.

  Perhaps R needed rest. Perhaps R needed to get herself together. But she did follow him to his room upstairs.

  There are women, his regulars, who have told of the things that take place upstairs in the professor’s room. He’s not a really bad man. He’s gentle, we are told, but very persuasive. And, of course, the woman always desperately needs the money. She will shower with the curtain pulled back so that he can watch. She will wear the assortment of lingerie that he has selected for her. He has a complete wardrobe of lingerie in all sizes. The woman gets to keep the lingerie, of course. The woman, when she hears the extraordinary sum that he is willing to give her, will dance for him in the lingerie to the disco music piping from his CD player. She will pose for him on his bed in the lingerie—and out of the lingerie, too. The woman, in desperate need of the money, will, most often, after seeing the pile of money that he will bestow upon her, select a condom from the professor’s vast collection and lie with him in his bed as man with wife. It has never been reported exactly how much money the professor gives the desperate women, but they often return from his room and play the machines for hours on end, feeding hundred after hundred into the greedy, greedy things.

  After that day, the Haitian woman, R, became a regular visitor to the professor’s room upstairs. She never had to worry about money anymore. With the professor watching her back, she could have all the fun she wanted.

  Then they had a falling out of some sort. He wouldn’t talk to her. She wouldn’t talk to him. These things happen. As time went on, the professor changed his mind and he wanted to make up, but R would have nothing to do with him. She didn’t need him anymore because she had recently hit a big jackpot of her own, $20,000.

  She told him to buzz off, and he didn’t talk to her for a while, and everybody thought it was over. But one night R was playing the machines, when the professor came up behind her. He is reported to have whispered, “The truth is, I think I love you, R. I just want to love you.”

  She whispered back urgently, “Get away from me, you fool. My husband’s here with me tonight!”

  Before the professor could slip away, there was a heavy hand on his back.

  “You!” R’s husband roared.

  The big, dark Haitian man spun the little professor around with ease.

  R dropped her head into her hands, expecting the worst.

  R’s husband said to the professor excitedly, “You! Shame on you!

  Ha-ha-ha! What are you doing in a place like this, professor?” Then the big Haitian man said to his wife, “Honey, this is my old professor from college! He taught me in college, can you believe it? Honey, cash out, I want you to meet this guy. This guy is great!”

  What was the poor pregnant girl to do? She had no choice.

  At the insistence of her husband, R cashed out and shook hands with her lover. Then the trio, led by the big, black, joyously cackling husband, went to the casino’s bar to talk about old times over drinks.

  Quite a few of us at the machines knew what was really going down, so we snickered a little bit, but we didn’t let on. Gamblers don’t like that kind of trouble.

  Furthermore, the professor was our hero. We wanted to be just like him when we grew up.

  12.

  In general, you’re pretty safe at a casino. The owners make sure that no car thieves, pickpockets, muggers, and other assorted bad guys make an easy target of you. It happens, yes, I know it happens, crime is everywhere these days, but I have watched security escort a longtime dealer off the premises—fired and banned for life—for stealing 35 cents from a customer. I have seen little old ladies with wads of hundred-dollar bills in their frail hands. Get too close to them, and security is on you in a split second. I’ve lost my wallet, ATM cards, hard cash, and jewelry at various times in a casino and had them all returned to me safe and sound. No problem. Casino owners protect you because you are their cash cow.

  Yes, I know, there was that woman who was killed a few months ago after leaving a casino. Someone followed her home, hit her across the head when she got out of her car, and took the $4,000 in cash that she had won that night. She died, and for a few weeks the media made a big deal about how careful you have to be when you leave a casino after winning.

  Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re wrong. I’ll tell you this: I think that lady getting smacked in the head and dying is a fluke. It says more about what kind of crime we have in Miami than how dangerous winning money at a casino can be. Are they crazy? People sometimes walk out of a casino with a $100,000 and nobody smacks them across the head.

  I mean, well, it is kind of unsafe to walk around late at night with several thousand dollars in your pocketbook. I’m no fool. When I win big, I always ask for a check. The casinos will pay you up to $10,000 in cash if you ask for it. They’re hoping that you will put it right back into the machines before you leave—and I’ve seen this happen. I’ve seen people win like five or six thousand dollars, take their winnings in cash, put it right back into the machines, and lose it all back. Not me. I like mine in a check.

  One morning, I hit a coverall for $5,000, and I asked for it in a check. The woman working the floor misunderstood what I said and brought back a thick wad of bills to pay me off. It was still early morning, like 5 a.m., and I had 50 hundred-dollar bills bulging my wallet. As I left the casino, two young guys came up and tried to bum a few bucks from me. I told them no and instead of going to my car, I went back into the casino. I just didn’t feel comfortable. To kill some time, I went back to the machines and I put a few bucks back in—lost it, of course—then I waited until the sun came up before I went to my car. I drove straight to a grocery store, since it was a Sunday morning and my bank was closed, and I bought five cashier’s checks for about a thousand dollars each, drove to my bank’s ATM, and deposited the cashier’s checks. I felt better after that. In retrospect, I don’t think the young guys who approached me outside the casino had been planning to rob me, but it had spooked me a little bit.

  You have to be careful when you’re carrying around that kind of cash, and that’s one of the problems with gambling—you forget the value of money. You think, Five grand? That’s no money. Who would steal five grand from me?

  Gamblers lose all perspective on the value of money when they are in a casino. Money is a toy to us, something that we play with. It’s not real like it is for most people. Money only becomes real again when we leave the casino and we have to buy a hamburger or gas up the car. We can’t believe how expensive everything is—because, you see, it is our gambling money that we have to spend to buy gas, and we don’t like to spend our gambling money on anything but gambling. It’s weird. We’ll blow thousands in a casino and think nothing of it, but afterwards drive from station to station to find the cheapest gasoline.

  I don’t know about other casinos around the country, but down in South Florida the most dangerous thing you will encounter in a casino is one of the syndicates, or teams of gamblers, who occupy a bank of machines when they think it is about to pay off a jackpot.

  I didn’t even know the syndicates existed until I bumped into one on a 24-hour binge. My wife and kids were out of town at a church retreat, so I was free to indulge. The machine I was banging was paying and taking it back and paying, and before I knew it a full day had passed. In my mind, my machine was hot, so I was focused on that and not much else. I missed that the bank of machines had filled up and that every machine was taken and that everybody was playing the MAX BET, $20 a pop. I was still playing for a quarter, and sometimes raising it up to 50 cents, or maybe a dollar. Finally, my machine went cold as it always does eventually. After surviving for a full day, I went from $500 to three dollars in ten minutes. As soon as I got up to go to the ATM, a little Chinese lady plopped down i
n my seat.

  I said, “Excuse me, but I’m playing here. See? I still have money in the machine.” I pointed to my screen, which read, $3.

  She got up from my seat, very upset and muttering, “But you only playing for quarter. Everybody else playing for jackpot. You wasting seat.”

  What? How dare she say that? I have no problem with the Chinese, even though they are the worst degenerates in the world—I mean, they are sick—you see them all over the casino, every casino. They spend hours on the machines, they hog the machines. They seem to have unlimited money, and they’re always winning the jackpots. Every time you look around, a Chinese man or woman is winning. There are so many Chinese in a casino. There are hardly any Chinese in Miami, but go into a casino and they’re all over the place. In fact, half the dealers are Chinese. How is that possible? It’s crazy. Like I said, I have no problem with the Chinese, but I took offense at the lady’s attitude and retorted, “It’s my damned seat. I play how many damned dollars I want.”

  The Chinese lady rolled her eyes at me, then turned to another woman standing near her and said, “Go tell the doctor.”

  The doctor? I had no idea what she was talking about. I went to the ATM, withdrew another $40, and then came back to my machine, where I found the doctor waiting for me.

  He was a tall, elegant man with intense eyes and smooth black skin. He looked like someone who should be wearing a top hat and white gloves and sporting a gold-tipped cane. When he spoke, his accent was African. I later learned he was Nigerian. He said to me, “Hurry and finish.”

  I had been there a whole day. I was hungry, sleepy, grouchy. I was miffed some Chinese woman had tried to snatch my seat. My mood was foul. Shit, I grew up in Carol City. You don’t wanna mess with me. My first impulse was to send my fist through his teeth. But I didn’t get a chance to because the doctor walked away. Lucky for him, I thought smugly.