Read 2 Double Dip for Free Online Page A

Thatch, and had seen him dozens of times from across the casino (you couldn’t miss him), but none of my Bellissimo assignments had taken me anywhere close to working around him. He’d been in the ballroom one minute, and already his name was being shouted from every corner.
    Matthew Thatcher was the Bellissimo’s resident Master of Ceremonies. If a microphone was ever turned on Thatch was at the other end of it. He emceed all contests, drawings and promotional events, including, it would seem, slot tournaments. Twice a week, a brass cage the size of a car was rolled to the middle of the casino floor. Based on points earned, gamblers were given entry slips to drop into the cage. Every hour on the hour, Thatch, with a lot of hoopla, pulled a name out of the big brass hat. The prizes varied: cars, cruises, free casino money, spin the wheel, scoop up cash. Everyone knew him, loved him, and begged him to call their name. His resident rise to fame had happened well before I arrived on the scene and while I was aware of the Thatch Phenomenon, I’d never seen it up close. Until now.
    A well-dressed woman at least twenty years older than me had taken a seat at the table next to mine. She was alone with a cup of coffee waiting, I assumed, like me, for her turn in the tournament. I caught her eye. “What is the big deal about this guy?” I asked.
    She glazed over. “Isn’t he something?”
    Something was busy working the crowd. Had there been babies, he’d have been kissing them.
    “They say,” the woman didn’t take her eyes off Thatch, “that if he walks by you, you’ll win.”
    “Really?” I half-laughed.
    “He’s like,” she sighed, “a lucky charm.”
    Apparently, I wasn’t immune. All of a sudden I was overwhelmingly dizzy; the room spun around me at warp speed. It was like someone had turned off all five of my senses, and I wondered if it might be possible to faint while sitting down.
    “Are you okay?” It was a voice from a thousand miles away. “Should I get someone?”
    The cloud began to lift and I heard a loud siren ringing in my ears. My vision slowly cleared and it seemed I’d lived through whatever had just happened without having to be picked up off the floor. Ten very long seconds had elapsed, but it felt like ten hours. When was the last time I’d eaten anything? What in the world was wrong with me?
    Oh.

FIVE

    My paycheck is ridiculously large. I have two jobs, so I receive two salaries, but just one check every other Friday. Direct deposit money dump every other Friday. Once or twice a month, I pull up my banking information just to stare at the big numbers.
    The negotiations had gone down shortly after my release from prison earlier this year.
    “At this point, Davis, you know what I expect of you in the corporate realm.” Richard Sanders was on his side of the desk. I was in the hot seat across from him.
    “Yes, sir.” Under No Hair’s supervision, our team solves pesky internal problems that are part of the fabric of day-to-day casino operations. Simply put, cheating at games probably dates back to dinosaurs in cahoots with pterodactyls who spotted for them during boulder bowling for a cut in on the bucket-of-turtles jackpot. Today, with the eleven thousand cameras and a security staff of one-eighty at the Bellissimo, things hadn’t changed much. All players want an edge, and there will always be those who are willing to go over it.
    Surveillance systems are in place for the small-time casino cheat. Purse snatchers, chip scoopers, past-posters, and dice sliders are expected. They show up regularly and are promptly shown the door, where they’re introduced to the Biloxi Metro Police. Tough sentences discourage apprentices; time served for emptying out a bank vault runs neck-and-neck with time served for marking cards at a blackjack table in Mississippi.
    There is, however, another layer of cheating, the one No Hair, Fantasy, and I wallow in. The Bellissimo employs almost four