Skipping Towards Gomorrah (7 page)

A few hands after I sat down, another man joined me at the table. I didn't think my inexperience was obvious—it was blackjack, so all you have to do is count to twenty-one; how hard is that?—the experienced gambler could tell I was a novice and started offering me pointers. As it turned out, counting to twenty-one is a lot harder than it looks—the experienced gambler, who bore a passing resemblance to the actor Christopher Walken, was playing twenty-five-dollar chips. He walked me through different bets—double down, splitting my hand, playing two hands at once—while the dealer looked on, turning over cards and taking my chips from me one at a time.

“Blackjack is easy,” the experienced gambler said, lighting a cigarette. “Gambling is easy—if you take the time to learn to play the game. And if you do that, son, you'll make money. But the only way to make
real
money is to do something stupid every once in a while.”

The dealer didn't try to stop the experienced gambler from coaching me. He just kept on turning over cards, a little service-industry smile on his face.

“It's stupid time,” the experienced gambler said.

The dealer caught my eye. I couldn't read his expression; his face was a blank.

The experienced gambler started making hundred-dollar bets— hundred-dollar bets!—one right after another. He wasn't on a winning streak, though, and his stack of chips quickly disappeared. After about two dozen hands, the experienced gambler lost his last hundred-dollar chip.

“Well, that's it for me,” the experienced gambler said. He got up, wished me better luck than he'd been having, and left for the craps tables.

The dealer looked down at me and held his palms out, asking me with a gesture if I was in or out. I moved a five-dollar chip out onto the green felt.

“Don't listen to him,” the dealer said softly, leaning towards me. “Gambling isn't easy. If it was easy, they would call it
winning
.”

He turned over a few more cards and took my last chip from me.

“And just between you and me, stupid is just stupid.”

For three nights in a row, I had returned to the
Diamond Jo,
sat at the same dealer's table, and lost seventy dollars. I always arrived intending to gamble larger sums of money, but I couldn't bring myself to put more than one five-dollar chip on the table at a time. I wasn't a whale in Dubuque—just an inept five-dollar-a-hand blackjack player. The dealer was always there, and he smiled when he saw me coming. He smiled exactly like the craps dealer in Las Vegas, like a cop. The fourth night I went to the
Diamond Jo,
the dealer didn't smile—he gave me a look. He even lifted his eyebrows.

“Welcome back,” he said, gesturing to an empty chair. “Still haven't learned your lesson?”

He began taking my seventy dollars from me, as was our custom. I looked up at him, and he smiled—a real smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling up, his eyebrows rising on his forehead. He shook his head and asked me why I was doing this to myself.

“I've come to Dubuque to learn to play blackjack,” I said. “How do you think I'm doing?”

“As far as the casino is concerned, you're doing beautifully.”

I asked him if the experienced gambler, the man I played with the night before, came around often. I needed some more lessons.

“First of all, that ‘experienced gambler' sat right next to you and lost a couple of grand in twenty minutes,” said the dealer. “So I wouldn't recommend you model your game off of his. And all he taught you was how to place different kinds of bets. Which, if you don't know what you're doing with the cards, is as good as teaching how to lose money more quickly. He didn't do you any favors.”

“But how complicated is blackjack, anyway?” I asked. “You give me two cards and I ask for more until I get close to twenty-one. That's pretty simple.”

“You can play a simple game if you want to give the casino all your money,” the dealer said. “But if you ever want to leave this boat with money in your pocket, you're going to have to learn how to play a more complicated game.”

The dealer owned a used bookstore in downtown Dubuque, and he suggested I drop in sometime. He didn't think it would be right for him to give me advice, but he would happily sell me one of the paperbacks on gambling strategy that he had in stock.

I handed him my last five-dollar chip and said I'd see him in the morning.

 

C
atherine's Used Books is one of the few nonpawn, nontavern, nonbarber retail operations in downtown Dubuque. A clean, white storefront with shelves that go up to the ceiling, Catherine's Used Books had, “Over 80,000 used books in stock—come in and count them!” and had that wonderful paper-ink-rot-dust smell that only a room packed with used paperbacks ever does. In addition to used books, the dealer who urged me to learn something about blackjack before running through my money at his table—his name was Bob—also sold Native American prints, dream catchers, and knickknacks in his shop. He opened the store a few years ago with his wife, herself a retired card dealer. His daughter, a dealer, also lives in an apartment above the store.

The store was empty when I dropped in to pick up a book on casino gambling. Bob was in the back shelving, heard the bell, and came to the front of the shop. He laughed when he saw me.

“So you've come for the book, eh?” he asked. “You might have saved yourself some money if you'd come for the book as soon as you got to town.”

Then Bob asks me what I'm doing in Dubuque. I tell him the truth. I'm here to write about gambling. And sin. Bob stiffens and folds his arms across his chest.

“Don't write the same stuff that everybody writes,” he said. “Don't you go on and on about, ‘Oh, it's so awful, all these people losing their farms, their houses, all these people getting addicted.' ”

But surely some gamblers lose their houses and farms and get addicted?

“Sure. I've seen it happen. But people who don't go to casinos lose their farms, too. It happens all the time. There are farmers who drink themselves bankrupt, too, but you don't hear a lot of calls for making alcohol illegal again.”

He had a point—even if he was wasting it on me. I wasn't in Iowa to write about how awful gambling is or to call for its prohibition. Quite the contrary. I was here to celebrate the sin a bit, and to get to the bottom of gambling—what's the attraction? What's the appeal? Since the odds always favor the house, why bother? What brings people back—time and again—especially as their loses mount?

“Good jobs, jobs that pay good money.”

Bob was still talking me into casinos. He set a stool down in front of the cash register and gestured for me to sit. Then he sat at a chair behind his register, leaned back, and continued.

“No one ever writes about that—the good jobs,” said Bob. “The casino was the best thing that ever happened to me. I went from ten-dollar-an-hour district manager for a retail company to fifteen dollars an hour with the tips as a card dealer. Dealers in Chicago make more than that. Some make a lot more. You can have a life on a dealer's income.”

But surely there were other good jobs in Dubuque before the casinos came to town?

“The only two good jobs in town were at the John Deere plant and the meatpacking company,” said Bob. “John Deere hasn't hired anyone in twenty years, and the meatpacking company went out of business two years ago. Some people say it's not dignified work, that Iowans who used to make a living building things or farming have been ‘reduced' to dealing cards. That's a city person's perspective. It's
hard
to make a living farming. And dealing is all that helps some people hold on to their farms.”

But surely some people don't like dealing?

“They don't last, the ones who don't like it. They don't last! And what they don't understand is that they've got the best job in the world.
You get paid to play cards!
You're not working in a factory floor; you're not gutting pigs. You're out there on the floor, interacting with people, playing a
game
. And all people gamble—all human cultures have their gambling games. You want to talk about a sin? Talk about the lottery. Do you know what your odds are when it comes to a state lottery? Three hundred million to one. A casino owner would go to jail for offering odds like that. And the commercials on TV for the lottery make it look like it's only a matter of time before you win the lottery, if you just keep playing. That's a sin.”

Bob and I are getting on like a house on fire—until I ask him to give me some pointers on improving my game.

“Oh, no, no, no.” Bob shook his hands and held them out in front of himself, the way dealers do at the end of a session, to show that they have nothing in them. “No can do, no way, no how. I'd lose my job in a flash. Like that—” He snapped his fingers. “If the casino managers found out I was coaching gamblers in my free time, I'd be out a good-paying job. I'll sell you a book, that I can do. They sell that book in the gift shop at the
Diamond Jo,
so they can't be mad at me for selling you a used copy here. But I can't coach you, sorry.”

Bob was nice guy, a wonderful guy, and I didn't want to get him in trouble with his boss. So I thanked him for the book and stepped out onto the street.

“You know what?” Bob called to me, leaning out of the door to the store. “The establishments around here are full of dealers. Dealers, retired dealers, fired dealers. That's just a fact I'm telling you.”

 

“M
an goes into a casino, loses four thousand dollars playing blackjack. Walks over to a slot machine, puts a dollar in, wins four thousand dollars. Is he even?”

Yes.

“No!” The old dealer slapped his hand down on the bar for emphasis. “Casinos have to report the names of people who win more than a certain amount. So that guy is going to get a note from the IRS telling him he owes them almost half of that money. So he's still two thousand dollars in the hole!”

Three old-time dealers—one hired, one fired, one retired—were trying to teach me a few things. I was sitting at a long, nicotine-stained bar, drinking Hamm's and talking cards while a sports show blared from one television and Fox News blared from the other. When I first walked in, I felt slightly suspect. It was a bright sunny day in late fall, but it was pitch-black inside the bar, and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. There were only two other men in the bar besides the bartender, and they were sitting together at one end. The rest of the bar was deserted. I sat on a stool at the other end of the bar, and the bartender ignored me for a few minutes, as if he hoped I might go away. When he finally walked over, he asked if he could help me—not if I wanted a beer, but if he could help me, as if I were lost and needed directions out of his bar. I asked for a beer, which I sipped at after the bartender returned to his other two customers.

Ten minutes later, the bartender looked over at me, and I raised my eyebrows, the international sign for “I need something.” He acknowledged my raised eyebrows with a quick nod and then turned back to his other customers. I was confused. Was he ignoring me? Would he be right over? What should my next move be? When the bartender looked over at me again, I raised my eyebrows again. “I need something,” my eyebrows said. The bartender sighed, told his other customers he'd be right back, and then walked over to my end of the bar.

“Something you need?” he said.

I asked him if he knew any card dealers who might be interested in giving a novice blackjack player a few pointers. He stared at me for a long, long time.

“Anyone want to teach this guy blackjack?” the bartender announced to the men at the other end of the bar. Two minutes later, the two other men in the bar—both dealers, as it turned out—were sitting beside me. The bartender stood and listened to our conversation, leaning against the back bar, his arms folded across his chest, one foot up on the beer cooler under the bar.

I had been playing blackjack at the
Diamond Jo
every night for almost a week, I explained, and I'd lost all my money every night for a week. I came to town to learn to play blackjack, and I had only two nights left, and I wasn't getting any better. I had to be doing something wrong, but I didn't know exactly what.

“The first mistake is showing up,” said the bartender. “If you want to keep your money, don't show up.”

“What are you doing?” asked the older of the two old dealers, fingering a cigarette. “What's your strategy?”

“You try to get to twenty-one, right? Isn't that everyone's strategy?” I said.

The two old dealers laughed; the bartender smirked.

“Blackjack is about busting the dealer,” said the older of the two dealers, a man who looked like he could be Wallace Shawn's greatgrandfather. He had the unmistakable pallor of the lifelong smoker: gray skin, deep lines on his face, yellow eyes. He didn't seem sickly; indeed, he was the very picture of health—relatively speaking, of course, and I only ever saw him in a dimly lighted bar. I felt like I was in the presence of the proverbial old smoker, the lifelong nicotine addict constantly invoked by young smokers who refuse to quit. (“I know a guy who's ninety-two years old, and has been smoking two packs a day for seventy years, and he's never been sick a day in his life!”)

“If you're thinking about getting yourself to twenty-one,” the old smoker said, “you're playing your own hand, and you're not going to get anywhere playing your own hand.”

Whose hand am I supposed to play?

“The dealer's hand,” the old smoker said.