So Steve & Joey were called back east. After an intense and grueling 4/5 months of working 1 or 2 evenings a month and hanging round the pool the rest of the time, New York was a’calling. And they promised to reveal the secrets of ‘the locked room’. And with it, hopefully, kind’a explain what the fuck they’ve been doing in LA other than tanning. Which is why we’d assumed they were hit-men. Loads of money, did nothing that even vaguely resembled work, and even then not very often.

But they weren’t hit-men. They weren’t ‘family’, nor ‘connected’ other than, as it turned out, rather peripherally. So when the room was finally opened, there was no plastic lined torture chamber, no chopping block and axe, not even any guns.

What there was…

was a blackjack table, a roulette wheel and a craps table. All beautiful dark wood and green velvet, casino quality. Steve and Joey were croupiers. Based in Atlantic City. Where gambling is legal. Which it certainly ain’t in Los Angeles. That’s why god made Las Vegas, a mere stone’s throw away. If you can throw a stone about 200 miles.

Ahhhhhh, croupiers. And this is what happened.

Steve and Joey’s boss? mate? colleague? would sit at a table in Vegas. At a big casino in a high stakes game. And he’d chat to the other players. Who were all generally businessmen over in LA, who loved to gamble. And, particularly if they were Orientals, who just looooooove to lose money, he’d kind’a, just, sort’a mention, that if Mr Kim, or Mr Son or Mr Cheng would like a game before returning to… the East, he knew of a ‘private casino’ right in LA. In Hollywood in fact. You know, where Andy lives? Right in that block. Ahhhh, sohhhh…

No-one ever enters a casino and thinks; ‘when I’m 20 grand up I’m gonna stop’. No. People, even habitual gamblers, are wise enough, or perhaps stupid enough, to set limits according to what they’re prepared to lose. And lose it they will. Whether it takes 30 minutes or 7 hours, they’ll just keep on until its all gone. So all Steve and Joey did was to facilitate that process. Make them comfortable, give them drinks, make them snacks (after a ‘work night’ we’d always go up to their flat which would be fully laden with wonderful things that had to be eaten within 3 days), and let them gamble. The tables were real, the wheel proper, the cards unmarked. But the house always wins. Even if that ‘house’ was in fact 1886 Hollywood Boulevard, appartment 317.

So although our croupiers were the loveliest guys you could meet and ‘no-one got hurt’, it was illegal. Which doesn’t bother me. You can own a gun anywhere in America but you can’t put 5 bucks each way on ‘Son of a Bitch’ to win the 3.30 at Hollywood Park. Yet that illegality makes you wonder. About who organises such a thing.

When I left LA, on the way home I stayed with Joey for a couple of weeks on Long Island. It was like living with The Sopranos. And one night we borrowed his ‘uncle’s’ car. And in the boot was a whole load of dynamite. My uncle’s car in England had a spare tyre (remember them?) and some jump leads. Joey’s; dynamite. Which, of course, we had to ‘try’ and after a rather boozy night at a club, we found a portaloo on a building site and tested Alfred Nobel’s contribution to society. Which, let me tell you, definitely works. Not sure it would win any peace prize though.

How many 65 year old men have a boot full of dynamite? I may have asked some questions, but certainly received no answers.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx