Casino

When you love someone, you've gotta trust them.

There's no other way.

You've got to give them the key to everything that's yours.

Otherwise, what's the point?

And, for a while, I believed that's the kind of love I had.

Before I ever ran a casino, or got myself blown up,

Ace Rothstein was a hell of a handicapper, I can tell you that.

I was so good that whenever I bet,

I could change the odds for every bookmaker in the country.

I had it down so cold that I was given paradise on Earth.

I was given one of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas to run,

the Tangiers,

by the only kind of guys that can actually get you that kind of money,

$62, 700,000.

I don't know all the details.

Nobody knew all the details, but it should have been perfect.

I mean, he had me, Nicky Santoro,

his best friend, watching his ass

and he had, Ginger, the woman he loved, on his arm.

But in the end, we fucked it all up.

It should've been so sweet, too.

But it turned out to be the last time that street guys like us

were ever given anything that fucking valuable again.

At that time, Vegas was a place where millions of suckers

flew in every year on their own nickel

and left behind about a billion dollars.

But at night, you couldn't see the desert that surrounds Las Vegas.

But it's in the desert

where lots of the town's problems are solved.

Got a lot of holes in the desert

and a lot of problems are buried in those holes.

Except you gotta do it right.

You gotta have the hole already dug

before you show up with a package.

Otherwise, you're talking about

a half hour or 45 minutes of digging.

And who knows who's gonna be coming along?

Before you know it, you gotta dig a few more holes.

You could be there all fucking night.

Who could resist?

Anywhere else in the country I was a bookie, a gambler,

always looking over my shoulder,

hassled by cops, day and night.

But here, I'm Mr. Rothstein.

I'm not only legitimate but running a casino

and that's like selling people dreams for cash.

I hired an old casino pal, Billy Sherbert,

as my manager and I went to work.

...and this is Ronnie who takes care of the card room.

For guys like me, Las Vegas washes away your sins.

It's like a morality car wash.

It does for us what Lourdes does for humpbacks and cripples.

And along with making us legit

comes cash, tons of it.

What do you think we're doing in the middle of the desert?

It's all this money.

This is the end result of all the bright lights and the comp trips,

of all the champagne and free hotel suites

and all the broads and all the booze.

It's all been arranged just for us to get your money.

That's the truth about Las Vegas.

We're the only winners.

The players don't stand a chance.

And their cash flows from the tables

to our boxes, through the cage

and into the most sacred room in the casino.

The place where they add up all the money,

the holy of ho lies, the count room.

Now, this place was off-limits,

even I couldn't get inside, but it was my job

to keep it filled with cash, that's for sure.

They had so much fucking money in there

you could build a house out of $100 bills.

And the best part was that the Board of Directors

didn't know what was going on.

I mean, to them everything looked on the up-and-up.

Right? Wrong.

Verify $5,000.

The guys inside the counting room

were all slipped in there to skim the joint dry.

They'd do short counts, they'd lose fill slips.

They'd even take cash right out of the drop boxes.

And it was up to this guy here,

standing in front of about $2 million,

to skim the cash off the top without anybody getting wise,

the IRS or anybody.

Notice how in the count room nobody ever seems to see anything.

Somebody's always looking the other way.

Look at these guys. They look busy, right?

They're counting money.

Who wants to bother them?

God forbid, they should make a mistake and forget to steal.

Meanwhile, you're in and you're out.

Past the jag-off guard who gets an extra C-note a week

just to watch the door.

I mean, it's routine, business as usual.

In, out, hello, goodbye.

That's all there is to it.

Just another fat fuck walking out of the casino with a suitcase.

That suitcase was going straight to one place,

right to Kansas City,

which was as close to Las Vegas

as the Midwest bosses could go

without getting arrested.

That suitcase was all the bosses ever wanted

and they wanted it every month.

Now, this old Mormon fuck here,

he had to fly in with suitcases once a month, nice and easy.

Something smells good.

They made us something to eat.

The bosses came from all over the place,

Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee,

all over the Midwest.

And they would meet in this produce market in Kansas City.

I mean, nobody even knew it.

One of the guys made his mother do all the cooking.

You ever see that Jerry Steriano?

Now, these old grease balls might not look it, but believe me,

these are the guys who secretly control Las Vegas.

Mama, that man's here again.

Because they control the Teamsters Union

and that's where you had to go

if you wanted to borrow money to buy a casino.

Nobody got a Teamsters' loan unless the guys in this room

knew they were gonna get their little suitcases.

Guys like this antique over here, out of Detroit.

Or especially guys like Remo Gaggi, the outfit's top boss.

You got a round figure on it?

The most important guy in this room.

About 20 pounds. So?

That's around $700,000.

Uh-huh. Good.

I know it's a little early for Las Vegas,

but I want to welcome the ladies

and gentlemen of the gaming industry...

As far as the world was concerned,

Andy Stone, the head of the Teamsters' pension fund,

was a legitimate guy.

A powerful man.

He even played golf with the President.

On behalf of the Teamsters' pension fund, it's my pleasure...

But Andy also took orders.

And when he was told to give a loan to Philip Green...

...for $62,700,000 for the new Tangiers.

...he did what he was told.

Here was the perfect front man.

What else could he be?

He didn't want to know too much,

especially that the bosses made the Teamsters lend him the money.

He believed the Teamsters gave him

that money 'cause he was smart.

I know full well how much competition we have in this great city.

And where they got Green from?

Who the fuck knows?

All I know is that Green was a real estate hustler,

who barely had enough gas money

to pick up his own fucking check.

And it was the bosses' man, Andy Stone, who gave all the orders,

not the chairman of the board Philip Green.

I understand. I understand.

Now they needed somebody they could trust to run the casino.

And who better than Ace?

He was already in Vegas a couple years

and he had the fucking place clocked.

But typical Ace, give him a shot at running a casino

and he tries to talk you out of it.

I don't know if I could do this.

The Gaming Commission would never give me a license.

I have two dozen gambling and bookmaking pinches on me.

You don't have to have a license to work in a casino.

All you gotta do is apply for one.

State law says you can work in a casino

while they're processing your application.

They got a 10-year backlog.

And when they do find out?

Why would they want to find out?

We're putting $100 million into this desert.

Why lock us out?

Besides, they'll never find out.

Just keep changing your job title.

Like, from Casino Executive to Food and Beverage Chairman.

They take your application, they put it at the bottom of the pile.

I know guys been working there for 30 years don't have a license.

It's a tough proposition, Andy.

If I did it, I'd have to run it my way.

You got it.

I'm serious, no interference.

Nobody's gonna interfere with you running the casino.

I guarantee it.

Everybody start to sing La-di-da

And that's how they got Ace to take over.

They wanted him because Ace ate, slept and breathed gambling.

They worked out a real cute job title, too,

Tangiers Public Relations Director.

But the only thing he ever directed was the casino.

He made his first bet when he was 15 and he always made money.

But he didn't bet like you or me,

having some fun with it, shit like that.

Where the hell did you learn how to deal?

He bet like a fucking brain surgeon.