Reefer Madness - The Flying Wedge

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

Backdated to yesterday night. The Decoy and his team wind up in Atlantic City in an attempt to win the money they need to pay off the hippies' debt.



"Okay. Okay." The Decoy said nervously, prone to repeating himself as he marshaled his thoughts. Back at the camp, his plan to raise the money to pay back their 'investor' seemed sound, and in one sense, even inspired. Now, standing in a casino hotel room, surrounded by stone mutant teenagers, planning to neutralize casino security and run a mathematically complex card counting scheme seemed a little more of a challenge than before.

"Okay." He shook his head, the graying ponytail waggling back and forth like a cat toy. The Decoy gulped another cup of coffee before going on. "In 1962, Edward Thorp released 'Beat The Dealer', a book that detailed the very first computer driven analysis of the game of blackjack, and the statistical facts about the odds of winning. In blackjack, Thorp focused on the fact that the odds of winning are not based around making twenty-one, but by making a higher hand than the dealer, and using the house rules to anticipate the dealer to bust."

He started to grow a little more confident as he spoke, his long fingers tracing absent patterns in the air. "In the game of blackjack, the player has a 48% chance of winning any given hand, against the house's 52%. Which means, in the long run, a person playing blackjack regularly will give two dollars out of every hundred on the table to the house. The system first outlined in ‘Beat The Dealer' can allow a good player to shift those odds up to four percent their way. When used together as a team, those odds can be pushed even further."

Julian was starting to grow more lucid as the hippy continued his diatribe about how to beat the house and how their plan was going to work. The small amount of sunshine that was filtering through the two layers of curtains that covered the window was splitting his head. Shutting his eyes he leaned his head onto Inez's who was sitting on the end of the bed next to him. He was hungry and his mouth was dry, but he still felt pretty good. Raising his hand to ask a question, he began to talk anyway, leaving the hand in the air. "Okay, but, dude," he began, pausing to open one bloodshot eye, "how does that happen?"

Inez giggled, shoving her shoulder against Julian and sending him tumbling off the bed. "Silly! Dealers have to play by rules, remember? And you can use those rules to beat them, amirite?"

"Er, right." The Decoy shook his head. He had decades of experience with drug addled groups of people, but none of them he'd ever been counting on to win a lot of money off of a sharp eyed casino dealer before. "The key to blackjack is that the cards are arranged in a six deck shoe. This means that there are only six aces of spades, and so on. Each person at the table will use up those cards at similar rates, regardless of the size of the bet. So if you're attentive and counting, by the time you get to the middle of the shoe, you have a good idea of the respective ratios of the remaining cards, and the relative probability of being dealt a particular card."

The Decoy stopped, and gulped down the rest of his now tepid coffee, wishing he could have smoked a little to soothe the jagged edges of his nerves. Unfortunately, he needed to be sharp at the table. "Does anyone here know what a flying wedge is in football?"

Fred raised his hand, and then looked at it, idly wondering who had raised their hand to answer the question. After a few beats, he remembered it was his hand, and began to stutter out the question while holding his fingers up in a 'V', "It's, uh....the linemen make a V - shape around the outfield...and...uh....right?"

It was only through his dedicated passivity and belief in karmic goodness that kept the dismay off of the Decoy's face. "Well, right... sort of. You form a 'V' around the ball carrier, so you protect him while focusing your power into a single point. It's a very heavy kind of thing in sports, so they banned it. But in cards it makes sense."

He waved at Meggan and Nori. "Let's say we're at the table. I'm betting five hundred every hand, and both of you are only betting five. We still use up the deck. So, mid to late in the shoe, if we've been counting properly, we know that the odds are we're going to get, say, a ten or a face card and I happen to make a nineteen. We use your hands to draw cards, not caring whether they win or go bust, in order to give the dealer the highest percentage to draw what is worst for his hand. So if he's sitting on an eight, his first draw likely puts him below me and the second likely busts him out. So, for the loss of ten dollars, we make five hundred. Simple, right?" He finished with a hopeful expression.

Meggan raised an eyebrow from where she was midway through unwrapping a candy bar. Her expression was half disbelief at all those rules, and half amusement—mixed in with a healthy dose of distraction. The munchies were calling, and she was going to answer that call very soon. Her stomach insisted on it, in fact. She chuckled, barely covering a tiny snort. “Simple? Not if you’re really, really, really new at this." She shrugged. "Not quite a card shark, am I--but I'll try?" She had never even played Go Fish before, much less Blackjack, but she didn’t really feel like pointing that out at the moment.

"It is makes sense to me," Nori said, hands tucked into her back pockets, standing still for once though she'd started to tap her toes inside her shoe slightly - she could feel the increased power flow in the casino and, though the narcotic was still depressing its effect in her brain, she knew that would wear off soon enough and she would need something else to remain stable. "How much do we have to talking to each other? I do not think casino is like cheater much..."

"Dude, she's totally right..." Inez drawled, pointing in Noriko's general direction. "How're we gonna run this wedge without them totally catching us, yo?"

"See, you can't look at it as a negative thing. It's not so much cheating, which depresses your aura, but instead neutralizing the house advantage. It's sticking it to the man, man." The Decoy looked at the blank faces and shook his head. "Never mind. What we're going to do is play as a team, with you guys rotating on an off the table I'm at. The rest of the time, you'll gamble at other tables. Because you won't show a regular pattern of winning or losing, they shouldn't get suspicious. I've had a couple of big wins here before, so it shouldn't seem odd to them."

"Now, the young lady of Asian persuasion has a point. We can't talk to each other, so what I'm going to teach you are a series of coded messages. Movements with my hands, my chips, and other actions that will show you what to bet. There are two positions on the table besides me; blockers and wingmen. Blockers chew up cards, and when they lose, make a lot of noise, distract people like any bad gamblers. Wingmen are going to play it straight, with that three or four percent advantage to pick up cash. And the cat in the hat, myself, will lay the big bets. Make sense?" He added, hopefully.

"I call Wingman!" Julian exclaimed, thrusting his hand into the air with a sudden rush of excitement. For some reason his body followed the motion and he soon found himself on his feet. Then his smile faded, "Oh damn, no, no, no... Fred should be the wingman, he's better at gambling than I am."

Fred, who had been looking dreamily at a picture of Callie on his phone, gazed up in shock at the mention of his name and looked around, trying to find the source of it, "Huh? What? I'm what now?"

The Decoy covered his face with his hands. "This is going to take a lot of work." He moaned.

***

After a quick run up to the room which had been rented and it's well stocked mini-bar and Noriko was back on the casino floor, artificial buzz firmly back in place, smoothing over the electrically charged one. Alcohol, she decided vaguely, was not as good as the marijuana - it muddled her thoughts a little more, but the general level of coherence would have to be enough she decided as she scanned the tables. There was the Decoy, already seated, but she let her attention wander over all the tables before she turned and headed casually towards his, sliding in to an open seat ahead of his on the shoe. "Deal me in, please?" she asked, flashing a smile at the dealer.

The Decoy didn't do anything more than nod at her with the other people at the table. He'd been playing conservatively for about thirty minutes, counting cards and churning up the shoe until he was ready to make a first run. Just a few more hands, and it would be time to get started.

A ten came down for Nori, and then a four, and Decoy picked up a yellow chip, tapping the table with it like he was considering his cards. It was the sign to hit, and the next card was a two. The tapping continued, and another four dropped. The chip stilled for a moment; stay. The dealer busted out on sixteen by pulling a queen, and the game had truly started.

"I'm feeling lucky, Graham." The Decoy said, and the croupier smiled at him, even as he pushed out the winnings to Nori and the Decoy.

"That's good, Danny. Haven't seen you for a little while around here." The Decoy was known as a steady, decent gambler and client at the casino.

"Karma. Swinging back my way." The Decoy grinned back as more of his wedge reached the table.

Meggan knew that if she were in charge of this, the operation would fall apart like a fragile house of cards, due to her lack of gambling experience. A rather apt analogy going by where they were. She briefly wondered just how Kurt and Amanda would react if they all brought back a truckload of money, before her focus returned to the table.

Fred stared at the tables. He was good at cards, all things equal, but his head was still buzzing, his skin still... weird from what the pot had done to his calm. And poker was his game, not blackjack. Still... the principles were pretty easy... right?

Inez could barely recognize Meggan, but the signals that the Decoy had taught them were clear. Count, pass the signal, do the math, then follow whoever had the lead. Hit, hit, pass - and then pick up the winnings. After a few hands, she had to remember the rule to let the house win every so often, throw a hand so as not to arouse suspicion. And leave the table when the signal came.

Suddenly feeling a lot more confident, Inez swept her stack of chips - much larger than when she started, off the table and walked away, her seat soon occupied by another gambler.

Julian stayed and smiled flirtatiously at Meggan across the table while watching for the subtle signals that indicated the strength of their hands. He'd already played a few hands and was actually up a bit, but that was the point, if he recalled correctly- he hoped he recalled correctly - to make money slowly. "Hit me," he told the dealer, rolling a blue chip over his knuckles, the signal that his cards were weak. With a slight frown a nine came down, bringing his total up to fifteen, which was definitely a grey area. Tapping his chip on the table a few times he considered things carefully before letting it ride, "Hit me," he said with a chuckle. An ace fell, which made him stay. "That'll do me."

The Decoy occasionally looked over at the slightly spasmodic gestures of the younger man. He guessed that he was trying to signal, and the Decoy made a note to make him the Blocker next time he cycled back to the table. He couldn't actually tell what he was trying to say, but at least he was guarding his chips properly, when not flirting with the other girls.

Decoy swore if he got out of this alive, he'd never, ever make a deal with the uncool elements of pot distribution again. Or spend time with anyone under the age of forty.

***

Meggan knew that when this was finished, she would never participate in cheating at a game of cards ever again. There were just too many signals to remember, along with what little she had gleaned from watching the others. She casually glanced down at her hands for a moment, noticing that she had accidentally appeared younger for a moment. Glancing next to her with her face carefully blank, she knew that nobody else had realized she was younger than she was making herself look.

Noriko liked numbers. She didn't let on much in math class because, well, it was school, and plus Ms. Frost would be less than amused if she showed up to class drunk just to make the word problems more comprehensible, but numbers themselves? Straightforward and unchanging. Didn't matter if she was counting in English or Japanese or Spanish or Swahili, the numbers stayed the same, and so keeping track of the count in her head now was easy, particularly with the empty martini glass at her side.

Inez winked at the mark across the table as she called for another card. The eight made fifteen, but everyone else was showing high cards... what did that mean again? Hit or stay? How many cards would bust her hand, and how many of them were still in the deck? Decoy had told them how to do this, she'd been doing it all afternoon, why was it so hard to remember?

"Hit me," she said without thinking about it. The next card flipped across the table to her. "Four to the lady," said the dealer. Inez smiled.

"I'll stand."

On an average day, Julian Keller enjoyed gambling a great deal. In fact, one thing that had led him into the addictive cycle of flash games had been a virtual poker game- of course, that had led to other, more dangerous things as addictions were known to do. "Stay," he said, his cards topping off at an even twenty. Still rolling the chip between his knuckles, Keller feigned regret for his choice with a mournful sigh.

The dealer may have believed it if he hadn't been giving Julian decent cards the entire day. Or at least in his heightened state of consciousness (if the hippie was to be believed) he felt that they were fantastic cards. It struck him as odd that he was performing on such a high functioning level, given that he was still quite stoned.

In L.A. he'd considered it his job for a while to stop things like this from happening to kids, but now, that didn't seem to matter. What also didn't matter was the fact that someone from the wedge had hit twenty-one and was currently accumulating the pot. Despite the unimportance, Julian flipped his cards over and pushed them away with feigned anger- no point in not acting disappointed when you had the second best cards at the table.

They were only a few hands away from the bottom third of the shoe, and the Decoy felt his fingers tingling. This was where they had to push hard, and put themselves over the top. Now, for the first time, the flying wedge was in full operation, transitioning from the group supporting his cards to him leading them on calls and betting, as the odds on the table shifted back hard in their favour. He was actually betting with a short stack, having distributed their earnings thus far during his last brief break, in order to immunize them against an unlucky hand. With table odds now at least five percent in their favour, multiple good hands would easily offset the odd statistical blip.

The Decoy allowed himself one tired smile at the thought that they were actually going to pull this off, and his thumbs were not going to be broken with a hammer before the day was out. Unfortunately, there was a problem.

The Decoy had earned his name for the combination of rotten luck and aura of police bait that he emitted. Three men loaded down with cocaine and guns ahead of him could get through airport security unmolested, but a slight smear on his visa would have him spending eighteen hours in a small metal room being interrogated with the help of a desk drawer. Once, he’d been the only one arrested at a major dope party during a trip to England. He hadn’t even been at the party, merely walking past the house it was in when a dozen heavy cops had slammed him to the pavement, allowing the house to clear and the party to fell into the night. Trouble magnet didn’t begin to cover it.

Which is why, despite not seeing the blow, the Decoy wasn’t entirely surprised when the fist crashed into the side of his head, and he was knocked sprawling on the carpet.

“I told you not to look at my wife, you sonnnuvabitch!” slurred the would be defender; a squat, big bellied man in a loud blazer. Behind him, a frosted and tanned blonde who had long passed her days as a bar belle put her wrinkled brown hands over her mouth.

“That’s not him, George!”

“Enh?” Security crashed into him at that point, leaving the other red-jacketed employees checking on the Decoy, who was out cold.

“Hey Bill,” Their croupier spoke into the phone behind the table. “Some jackhole just cold clocked Danny Kirkhope. I’ve got a couple of guys bringing him up to his room. Can you get Mary to check him out, make sure he doesn’t need to be taken down to Oakwood General? Thanks.” He hung up. “Sorry folks. Just a sudden shower of moron. You can take your seats.” The game was beginning again, but their coordinator was no longer in the game.

***


His buzz was nearly gone and, afraid that Dori would throttle him upon their return, he refused to indulge in Noriko's strategy to achieve a constant state of euphoria. "Hit me," Julian said, his head throbbing with each syllable. It was entirely likely that it was actually helping him since he was still lucid, but sweating and haggard, projecting the image of someone who was down on their luck so that the other four could leave without trouble. The opposite was true and with their goal reached, things were finally coming to a conclusion. With any luck, it would be night outside when they left, as Keller was pretty damn sure the sunlight would kill him.

It was possible that some of the high was wearing off everybody, because Nori had caught sight of Inez catching sight of her and the blonde had very decidedly moved to the next aisle over to head out of the casino. Part of Nori, the part which really only came out when she was buzzed enough to be coherent, kind of regretted the ongoing antagonism between them, but mostly she couldn't work up the energy to care. Even with the Decoy having been out of it they'd managed, somehow, enough coherence to get the last few hundred they needed and the emotional high of having pulled it off combined with the floaty good feeling of the last of her chemical high had Nori in a Good Mood that not even thoughts of Inez could break.

It was a tired and wrung out group of teens who finally met up with the Decoy, sitting with his van waiting anxiously for their return. His nerves settled, however, at the sight of their winnings, and he ushered them into the van for the drive back. Hopefully, they'd get there before his investor's collectors did.