The Trinity Game by Sean Chercover Read Free Book Online Page B

after the great man’s death.
    You’re here, you’re gone, and no one remembers.
Not a complaint, just a statement of fact. While Lamech intended to stick around as long as he could, he wasn’t afraid of melting into the sands of forgotten history when his time came. In fact, he’d already started melting.
    Time was, everyone in Las Vegas knew his name, and the important people in Chicago knew it too. Time was, he was a celebrity in this goddamn town.
Feel like a little gambling, Mr. Lamech?
A nod of his head, and a tray of checks would appear.
Dino would be honored, Mr. Lamech, if you’d drop by his dressing room at the Sands for a drink before the show.
And to have William Lamech seen in your restaurant was always worth a complimentary surf-n-turf and a bottle of your finest champagne.
    And then Las Vegas changed. Wall Street muscled out Chicago, and now corporate accountants ran the joint. Many of the better restaurants still refused to present Lamech with a bill, but outside the sports books, most of the younger casino workers didn’t know who the hell he was. They knew they
should
know, knew he was important, and always treated him with respect, but the days of widespread fawning were long past. And that was OK with him. He’d enjoyed the high profile of his middle years, but at a certain age it befits a man to gracefully yield the spotlight. Anyway, he’d never really been in it for the fame; it was always about the money.
    And he was still making a pantload of money, from both his legitimate casino operation and from the less legitimate network of backroom bookies he personally bankrolled in over a dozen cities.
    The corporate accountants now running Las Vegas didn’t much care for the old-school Chicago guys, but the sports book was theone part of a casino that couldn’t be managed by numbers alone. To maximize profit, you needed a deep and practical understanding of both gambling psychology and the dynamics of group behavior. And you needed a reliable network of informants to let you know when the fix was in, who was hiding an injury, and the sordid personal troubles of various athletes.
    Each year more than three billion dollars was wagered in Las Vegas sports books, and the books held onto 4.5 percent of it. If your hold dropped below 4 percent, you found yourself looking for a new career. If it hit 5 percent, you were a superstar. William Lamech’s sports book was one of the largest in town, with more than thirty massive screens on the wall and plush seating with personal monitors at each station. And Lamech’s book averaged a 5.6 percent hold. He was the best there was, and the corporate accountants just had to shut the hell up and kiss his ring. Much had changed in the Nevada desert, but gambling was still gambling and money was still money, and William Lamech had faced all comers for fifty-three years and hadn’t lost a fight yet.
    Whoever was behind this strange new threat had miscalculated, Lamech told himself. And whatever leverage they thought they had, it wouldn’t be enough. He was a tough old bastard; if they forced him to prove it, he would prove it.
    And woe be to them.

    “Well I think it’s bullshit,” said Michael Passarelli. “I don’t believe it for a second.”
    “I don’t buy it either,” said Jared Case. “It must’ve been recorded after the game.”
    “A new variation on past-posting,” added Pete DeFazio. Heads nodded around the boardroom table as the others murmured their agreement.
    William Lamech knew that the hardest part would be getting them to believe it. Nobody rises to the top of a sports book by being a pigeon, and these were twelve of the sharpest and most skeptical minds in the gambling business. Before playing the DVD and the decoded backward audio, he’d warned them it would seem incredible.
    “It’s not past-posting,” said Lamech, “I had the broadcast dates verified independently. He’s actually predicting the outcomes. And he’s always