Chapter 1 Theo
Eight years later
The trick to counting cards is not the counting. Anyone with a decent memory and a basic understanding of probability can keep a running tally. It's arithmetic. Elementary school stuff.
The trick is doing it while looking like you're not doing anything at all.
I push a stack of chips forward and take a sip of the club soda that's been sitting in front of me for the last forty minutes, slowly going flat.
The dealer, a woman in her fifties with quick hands and a permanent expression of mild boredom, slides cards across the green felt. Seven of hearts to the man on my left. King of spades to the woman in the red dress. Ten of clubs to me.
I update the tally in my head. The math is clean and good and it lives in a part of my brain that operates independently of everything else, the way breathing does, or blinking.
I didn't learn it. It was just always there, this ability to hold numbers in parallel and track probabilities without conscious effort while the rest of me smiles and makes conversation.
I adjust my glasses — clear lenses, no prescription, part of tonight's costume — and study my cards with the appropriate amount of hesitation. Hesitation matters. A counter who plays too fast or too confidently is a counter who gets noticed, and getting noticed is the one thing I cannot afford.
Tonight, I'm Theo Garnett. Dirty blond hair, slightly different from my paler natural color courtesy of a cheap wash-in dye I picked up at a drugstore this morning.
The glasses. A button-down shirt that's slightly too big for me, bought from a thrift store and chosen specifically because it makes me look like what I'm supposed to be: a moderately successful office worker blowing off steam on a Friday night. I’m forgettable: the kind of person a pit boss glances at once and never thinks about again.
I have rules. I always have rules.
Never win more than two thousand in a single session. Leave after ninety minutes, even if the count is running hot. Never play the same table twice in one visit. Never visit the same casino more than once every six months.
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 react at 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.
I reach for my chips.
And that's when I see the pit boss pick up the phone.
It's a small gesture. He doesn't look at me while he does it. He's facing the roulette tables, phone pressed to his ear, posture relaxed.
But I've been watching pit bosses for a long time and I know the difference between a routine call and a call about a specific player at a specific table, and this is the second kind.
There’s something in the way he turned away from me a fraction of a second before the phone went to his ear, creating distance, making it look unrelated. It's good technique. If I hadn't spent years making a study of exactly this kind of behavior, I'd have missed it entirely.
I didn't miss it.
I stack my chips, taking my time about it because rushing is suspicious.
I slide off the stool, adjust my glasses, pick up the club soda and take a final sip like a man who's in no hurry at all, and I walk toward the cashier cage at a pace that says slightly drunk office worker calling it a night. Tonight, I don’t have a care in the world.
I make it about thirty feet.
They come from both sides, which is smart. Two men in dark suits, big enough that the word security is redundant.
One of them steps into my path. The other appears at my left shoulder, close enough that I can smell his cheap aftershave.
My brain is doing what it always does in situations where my body would prefer to panic: sorting information, filing details, running calculations.
Two men, both armed if the slight bulge beneath the left suit jacket is what I think it is. Distance to the nearest exit: forty feet.
Number of people between me and that exit: at least twelve. Probability of getting there before one of these two puts a hand on me: essentially zero.
"Sir," the one in front says. His voice is polite. "If you could come with us, please."
Please. As if I have a choice.
"Is there a problem?" I ask, and my voice comes out steady, which is remarkable, because my heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in the base of my throat.
"No problem, sir. Just a conversation."
"I'm happy to have a conversation," I say. "But I'd like to know what it's about first."
The one behind me puts his hand on my shoulder. Not hard. Not aggressive. Just there.
"The owner would like a word."
I manage to keep my face still, which is the only skill that matters right now. The owner. That’s when I really start to panic.
Casino owners do not personally involve themselves with people like me. Card counting is pest control: a floor-level problem handled by floor-level staff.
You get identified, you get escorted out, your photo goes in a database, and you don't come back. That's how it works. That's how it works everywhere I've ever been and I've been to a lot of places.
The hand on my shoulder steers me forward. I walk because there's nothing else to do through a door marked PRIVATE, into a corridor with no carpet and fluorescent lighting. We move past another door and into an elevator.
We stop on the second floor and the doors open.
The two security men step back. One of them gestures toward a door. "Through there, sir."
I walk through. I am in a lot of trouble.