Always vary the disguise, nothing theatrical or anything that draws attention, just enough that the face on the old security footage doesn't match the face at this month's table.
Always pay for everything in cash. Always sit where you can see the pit boss and at least one exit.
I’ve had eight years of this. Different cities, different casinos, different names. Theo Garnett, Theo Palmer, Theo Webb. I keep the first name because it's mine and it’s harder than you think to remember to answer to a different one. Not that anyone ever uses it. I keep myself to myself. I don’t make friends. I barely make small talk. Talk to people and they remember you.
Everything other than my first name changes: the hair color, the glasses or no glasses, the style of clothing.
Last month I was a college kid in a hoodie at a tribal casino outside of Reno. The month before that, a businessman in a blazer at a riverboat in Mississippi, which was miserable because it was August and the air conditioning on the boat was broken and I sweated through the blazer before the second hand was dealt.
I hit on fifteen and catch a four. Nineteen. The dealer busts with twenty-three. The man on my left swears and throws his cards down, which is unnecessary but people are theatrical about losing money. The woman in the red dress doesn't reactat all. She's been flat-betting fifty dollars a hand all night, win or lose.
Another two hundred dollars slides across the felt toward me. I stack the chips neatly, add them to my existing stacks. Running total for tonight: fourteen hundred. I have six hundred dollars of headroom before I hit my limit, and twelve minutes before ninety minutes is up. The count is still favorable but it's been drifting downward for the last few hands. The shoe is cooling off.
Twelve more minutes, then I’ll cash out, walk to my car — a fourteen-year-old Honda Civic with a hundred and sixty thousand miles on it and drive back to the motel where I'm staying this week.
I'll eat a sandwich sitting on the motel bed with the television on low, then I'll sleep. Then I'll wake up and decide whether to try another casino in the city tomorrow or move on.
This is my life. It's small and careful and solitary and it works.
The Claremont Grand is one of the bigger operations in the city. It has high ceilings, crystal fixtures and carpet so thick your footsteps disappear into it.
It’s the kind of place that wants you to feel like you've stepped into another world, one where luck is a lady and the champagne never stops flowing.
Nobody mentions the security cameras positioned every fifteen feet along the ceiling, angled to capture every hand dealt at every table on the floor.
The seat I chose is in a slight blind spot between two overhead units. It’s not invisible, but harder to get a clean angle on. Not perfect. Perfect doesn't exist in a building with this much surveillance. But it's enough.
This is also why I won’t be back here tomorrow. The Claremont is strictly a once-a-year game at most.
I shouldn't be here. This is the city I left on a Greyhound bus years ago with the absolute certainty that if I stopped moving,the Bureau would find me and make me mate some asshole alpha and my world would end.
Coming back was a calculated risk. I've worked my way through most of the viable casinos within a reasonable driving radius of where I've been based for the past few months, and I was running low on options that didn't involve flying — which I won't do, because airports require ID and ID creates a trail.
It’s been years. A few nights in the city aren’t too high a risk and the Claremont Grand isn’t even directly in the city. It’s a few miles out, part of a hotel and restaurant complex. People come here for dirty weekends and don’t leave the hotel.
Besides, the Claremont has a reputation for high traffic and a focus on the high-roller rooms where the real money moves. I’m going nowhere near those.
I’m just boring old Theo Garnett tonight and Theo Garnett would be over the moon to get into a high-roller room, but he just doesn’t have the money or the talent. At least that’s what I’m hoping they’ll see.
Security here is stronger than it is at other casinos. There are more floor staff than you’d expect. Suits stationed at odd points around the room, watching with the kind of focused attention that has nothing to do with customer service.
There’s a man near the high-roller entrance who's been standing in the same spot for an hour without speaking to anyone, his eyes moving steadily across the floor.
I remind myself that it’s a big casino. They have different rules than the smaller guys. I’m leaving in a few minutes anyway.
The dealer shuffles a new shoe and I reset the count to zero. The shoe comes out warm. There are two low cards in the first hand, then three more, the count climbing, and I'm back in the sweet spot where the math is almost singing, this perfect convergence of probability and timing that I have never been able to resist.
This is the other thing about counting. The thing I don't tell anyone, not that there's anyone to tell. I love it. Not the money. The money is survival, nothing more. I love the math itself.
There's a purity to it that nothing else in my life has ever had. The numbers don't lie. The numbers are always, always exactly what they say they are.
I push four hundred forward on the next hand. It's more than I normally bet at this stage, but this is my last hand. It’ll be a final win and then I’ll collect my money and go.
Blackjack. Ace and a king. I pretend to be surprised and thrilled.
The dealer pays me six hundred. The man on my left whistles through his teeth and the woman in the red dress gives me a look that's somewhere between impressed and annoyed.
Two thousand even. That’s my limit. Time to go.
