The meeting had been arranged through a Virginia law alumnus who was now a partner in a New York megafirm, which in turn was counsel to a gaming group that operated Canyon Casinos across the country. Contacts had been made, favors exchanged, arms twisted slightly and very diplomatically. It was in the delicate area of security, and no one wanted to step over the line. Professor Atlee needed just the basics.
Canyon had been on the Mississippi River, in Tunica County, since the mid-nineties, arriving in the second wave of construction and surviving the first shakeout. It had ten floors, four hundred rooms, eighty thousand square feet of gaming opportunities, and had been very successful with old Motown acts. Mr. Jason Piccolo. a vice president of some sort from the home office in Vegas, was on Piccolo was in his early thirties and dressed like an Armani model. Barker was in his fifties and had the look of a weathered old cop in a bad suit.
They began by offering a quick tour, which Ray declined. He'd seen enough casino floors in the past month to last him forever. "How much of the upstairs is off-limits?" he asked.
"Well, let's see," Piccolo said politely, and they led him away from the slots and tables to a hallway behind the cashiers' booths. Up the stairs and down another hallway, and they stopped in a narrow room with a long wall of one-way mirrors. Through it, there was a large, low room filled with round tables covered with closed-circuit monitors. Dozens of men and women were glued to the screens, seemingly afraid to miss anything.
"This is the eye-in-the-sky," Piccolo was saying. "Those guys on the left are watching the blackjack tables. In the center, craps and roulette, to the right, slots and poker."
"And what are they watching?"
"Everything. Absolutely everything."
"Give me the list."
"Every player. We watch the big hitters, the pros, the card counters, the crooks. Take blackjack. Those guys over there can watch ten hands and tell if a player is counting cards. That man in the gray jacket studies faces, looking for the serious players. They jounce around, here today, Vegas tomorrow, then they'll lay low for i week and surface in Atlantic City or the Bahamas. If they cheat or count cards, he'll spot them when they sit down." Piccolo was doing the talking. Barker was watching Ray as if he might be a potential cheater.
"How close is the camera view?" Ray asked.
"Close enough to read the serial number of any bill. We caught a cheater last month because we recognized a diamond ring he'd worn before."
"Can I go in there?"
"Sorry"
"What about the craps tables?"
"The same. It's a bigger problem because the game is faster and more complicated."
"Are there professional cheaters at craps?"
"They're rare. Same with poker and roulette. Cheating is not a huge problem. We worry more about employee theft and mistakes at the table."
"What kind of mistakes?"
"Last night a blackjack player won a forty-dollar hand, but our dealer made a mistake and pulled the chips. The player objected and called the pit boss over. Our guys up here saw it happen and we corrected the situation."
"How?"
"We sent a security guy down with instructions to pay the customer his forty bucks, give him an apology, and comp a dinner."
"What about the dealer?"
"He has a good record, but one more screwup and he's gone."
"So everything's recorded?"
"Everything. Every hand, every throw of the dice, every slot. We have two hundred cameras rolling right now."
Ray walked along the wall and tried to absorb the level of surveillance. There seemed to be more people watching above than gambling below.
"How can a dealer cheat with all this?" he asked, waving a hand.
Piccolo said, "There are ways," and gave Barker a knowing look. "Many ways. We catch one a month."
"Why do you watch the slots?" Ray asked, changing the subject. He would kill some time scatter-shooting since he'd been promised only one visit upstairs.
"Because we watch everything," Piccolo said. "And because there have been some instances where minors won jackpots. The casinos refused to pay, and they won the lawsuits because they had videos showing the minors ducking away while adults stepped in. Would you like something to drink?"
"Sure."
"We have a secret little room with a better view."
Ray followed them up another flight of stairs to a small enclosed balcony with views of the gaming floor and the surveillance room. A waitress materialized from thin air and took their drink orders. Ray asked for cappuccino. Waters for his hosts.
"What's your biggest security concern?" Ray asked. He was looking at a list of questions he'd pulled from his coat pocket.
"Card counters and sticky-fingered dealers," Piccolo answered. "Those little chips are very easy to drop into cuffs and pockets. Fifty bucks a day is a thousand dollars a month, tax free, of course."
"How many card counters do you see in here?"
"More and more. There are casinos in forty states now, so more people are gambling. We keep extensive files on suspected counters, and when we think we have one here, then we simply ask them to leave. We have that right, you know."
"What's your biggest one-day winner?" Ray asked.
Piccolo looked at Barker, who said, "Excluding slots?"
"Yes
"We had a guy win a buck eighty in craps one night."
"A hundred and eighty thousand?"
"Right."
"An............