Molly's Game Page #10

50K buy-in,

blinds are five and one?

Yeah, fifty...

Mol?

50K buy-in?

No.

Two hundred and fifty.

That's gonna make noise.

Enough to be heard

on Rodeo Drive.

The Gold Coast of Long Island

has been home to the Vanderbilts,

Roosevelts, Whitneys,

J.P. Morgan, and F.W. Woolworth.

It's an impossible

ticket to get,

but I can talk to Molly.

Tonight was a ten-thousand

per person fundraiser

to pay for major renovations

at the East Hampton Yacht Club.

Molly's around here somewhere.

I can introduce you but

I wouldn't get my hopes up.

That's for real.

If there was a charity event

for residents of the Hamptons

who own yachts,

in my business, that's called

a target rich environment.

I have to tell you the

initial buy-in is 250,000.

250,000, that's almost as

much as my second car.

Your friends

come to the games?

Mm-hmm.

It took only seven

weeks of recruiting

to get ten players and

seven on a waiting list.

And in these circles,

that was more than enough

to start the mythology.

By morning, gamblers would

be telling and hearing

stories about this

game in London,

Tokyo, and Dubai.

All in.

At the end of that year,

I reported an income of

four million, seven hundred and

seventy-three thousand dollars.

Every square inch of it legal

and on the books.

I was the biggest

game runner in the world

All tips.

I still hadn't taken a rake.

And I still hadn't

accidentally recruited

members of a

Russian crime syndicate.

In the beginning, I was

using drugs to stay awake.

First Adderall.

Then Adderall crushed up

to defeat the time release.

Then coke, Valium, Vicodin,

Percocet, and more Adderall.

I rented a penthouse apartment

and installed plasma screens

for the sports bettors.

I had the lower-stakes

games on Wednesdays,

Thursdays and Sundays

at my place,

with Tuesday night at

The Plaza being the big game.

At seven, the dealers came,

the table was set up and polished

and ten chairs were placed around it

exactly twelve inches apart.

I used custom chips and two

dealers who worked an hour on,

an hour off, with a new crew

coming in after 12 hours.

Casinos had discovered that

certain scents make people

more likely to place big bets.

The casinos pump those scents

in through the ventilation.

I had custom candles made.

I had been working with

a new dealer named B.

Not like Beatrice, just the initial.

She'd been working on trashy

card rooms on the East Side

and we became friends.

Tone it down.

The big players

don't like fast hands.

Sarcastic dealing.

Cool.

You've gotta do it.

Not doing it is insanity.

You must be able to see that.

You've been stiffed

four or five times.

You've got hundreds of

thousands on the street,

That's money you're

never gonna see again.

B have been suggesting

it for a long time.

She was suggesting it again

because of an incident

the week before.

-Hey, Cole.

-Hey.

-Come on in.

-Thanks. You got my check?

I do.

-It's right here.

-Thank you.

Hey, can I show you

something on TV?

Uh, actually I'm...

kind of a hurry.

It'll just take a second,

have a seat.

This is last Tuesday's game.

Sh*t, Molly, if the

guys find out that

you've got cameras on 'em,

they're gonna go nuts.

Yeah. That's you in

the seventh chair.

Look at your stack of chips.

I got a cab downstairs, just--

Look at the time stamp.

1:
06 a.m.

Let's fast forward to 1:07.

1:
07 you lose the hand to Boosty.

-What is this?

-1:
08.

Our sheets say that you didn't

buy in again between 1:06 and 1:08

but look at that...

your stack's bigger.

-I can explain, this is just a--

-Okay, let's rewind.

This screen's got the

dealer changeover

while the same time

on this screen...

aaaand...

there we are.

This is why I can't reconcile

$57,000 from Tuesday's game.

A 7-11's got security cameras

on their Slushy machine,

I've got a million dollars changing

hands every two minutes, imbecile,

you don't think I've

got eyes on the table?

Relax.

-I, uh, I owe people money.

-I know.

Why isn't it coming

from the trust fund?

I need my parents'

permission to get that much.

And they'd kill me. You don't

even understand what it's like.

People just don't realize

trust fund kids are

suffering in this economy too.

I realize what I did was wrong.

Did it take a lot of soul

searching to get you there?

-I meant that--

-Okay, first of all,

the guys that are making

the counterfeit chips

are taking you for a ride.

They know that there are

signatures built in the chips,

exact weight, infrared markings--

Breathe. Second,

don't try this at

anyone else's game

because if you do, they're

gonna express their anger

in a much different

way than I am.

You owe me $57,000,

when I get it

you get the tape,

but until then

you don't play in

anyone's game.

So when Tuesday night came,

B was at it again.

Your exposure's crazy.

It's not if, it's when.

You're gonna get blown up.

Your risk is nuts.

If I took a rake, this game

would no longer be legal.

And if you can't cover,

this game will no longer exist.

You're the bank now.

You're guaranteeing the game.

If you see a hand

you don't want to carry,

just look at me,

flash me a number,

and I'll take it off the table.

Most runners cap it

at five percent.

-I'll see you out there.

-See you out there.

Two weeks later around 2 a.m.

there was a pot that was

up to 1.3 million pre-flop

Call.

with five players still in.

My hope was that the flop

would chase four of them off

200,000.

Raise 100,000.

300,000 to you, sir.

Call.

There was now

2.1 million on the table.

300,000 to you, sir.

Plus 200.

2.6 million.

Three million.

She was right,

I was extending credit,

big numbers.

And it's not like Harlan Eustice hadn't

already put the fear of God into me.

If I couldn't pay, one time,

that'd be the end of the game.

I was the house.

That's how quickly

I made the decision.

And just as quickly, B calculated

two percent of the pot

and took it off the table.

That was it.

I'd just taken a rake,

in violation of U.S. Criminal Code

1955.

It's time to introduce

Douglas Downey

'cause Downey's gonna take us

all the way home.

Downey was a drunk and he'd stay

after the game and hang out

while I did the books.

He was hard to understand

when he was drunk

and his conversation openers

would always sound

like the title of a

detective novel.

Victim of circumstance.

Yeah.

Story of, you know...

story of my proverbial...

you know...

-Life?

-life.

He'd talk about his marriage.

I married young, Mol.

I married young

and I married dull.

If I'd been born in Greenwich

instead of Flushing?

He talked about wanting

a better life.

New Canaan?

Gone to...

Rye Country Day, Princeton.

The life I'd have.

The wife I'd have.

-I'd be a playuuuh.

-Hm.

Victim of circumstance.

Mol, these are things

I only say to you.

Good call.

And he'd talk about another

game he played in.

It was the Brooklyn game.

The Brighton Beach game where

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