Lay the Favorite by Beth Raymer Read Free Book Online Page A

take me too long to complete these sheets and that I would miss something, I wrote mine out the night before. With the televisions turned off, the office was quiet. The only sound came from underneath the table where Otis lay, licking his paws.
    Tony, the casino runner, ogled an amateur porn site, stroking his thick beard and shifting his posture, as we all waited for Dink to arrive with his bankroll. Tony’s job was to visit several different casinos and call Dink with the lines each sports book had posted. This is what was referred to as “shopping for numbers.” Runners were necessary for two reasons. One, Don Best broadcasted the lines from just a handful of Las Vegas’s 110 licensed sports books. If Tony hustled, he was sure to find a bargain at one of the sports books elsewhere in Clark County for Dink to bet. The other reason was that betting limits were higher in person than they were overthe phone. If Dink found a cheap price on a team, why bet five hundred dollars over the phone when he could wager five thousand in person? What good was getting the best of it if you couldn’t bet the most on it?
    In addition to Tony, Dink also had a casino runner based in Reno. Her name was Louise and she was eighty-five years old. Until Dink hired her, she was having a hard time making it on her Social Security alone.
    As bet-out clerks, Robbie J and I also shopped for numbers, but instead of driving around Vegas we did our shopping by calling bookmakers or visiting their Web sites. This included the legal bookmakers, based offshore, and illegal bookmakers, based in big cities and small towns across America.
    I took out a stack of index cards that I had made to memorize this new foreign language. The part of the business that caused me the most confusion was that the method of betting varied with each sport. You didn’t bet on baseball the same way you bet on basketball, and in hockey you could bet any number of ways. There was the Canadian line, a puck line, an East Coast line, and even a line called the Grand Salami.
    I flipped an index card.
    Grand Salami: The grand total of goals scored in all the hockey games of the day. It can be wagered to go Over/Under
.
    Robbie J looked at me and raised his perfectly waxed eyebrows. Wrinkles bulged across his shaved head.
    “Flash cards?” he said, giggling.
    “I’m nervous,” I said.
    “’Cause I’m so good-lookin’?”
    Even Money:
    Flip.
    A bet in which no vigorish is laid
.
    “No. Because I keep thinking I’m gonna bet thousands of dollars on the wrong team.”
    Tony and Robbie J offered different advice, but their sentiments were the same. Dink came up with the plan, we followed it.
    “Dinky’s the architect, we’re the construction workers,” Robbie Jsaid. “Just copy what I do and try not to get too distracted by my beautiful muscles.”
    Dink held the
Las Vegas Review-Journal
sports section close to his face and underlined the box scores with his thumb. While driving. Dink drove an aqua four-door Nissan Altima. It was an ugly car, and Dink could definitely afford something nicer, but he bought it as a “self-punishment vehicle” for doing so poorly last baseball season.
    There was barely enough room in the car for both Dink and his bouffant. His belly nudged the steering wheel. He was too big to wear a seat belt comfortably, so to drown the
ding ding ding
of the seat-belt reminder system he blasted his Donovan CD. His car jumped the curb as it pulled into the office parking lot.
    He entered the office with a bounce in his step. Baseball, with its grueling five-month-long, 4,080-game regular season and its five-inning lines, alternate run lines, and strikeout propositions, had finally wound down and Dink could now focus on football, horse racing, and his beloved hockey. He carried stacks of hockey schedules and a brand-new spiral-bound
Jim Feist Football Workbook
, a compilation of ten years’ worth of results for both college and pro teams with team logs,