Lay the Favorite Read Free

machine, peering into it at all angles. After determining which machine’s tokens would be the first to fall, I’d begin to play. One evening, thecasino manager took me aside. I thought he was going to yell at me for knocking my hip against the machine, which I sometimes did to help push tokens over the edge. Instead, the manager told me that he’d seen me the last few evenings and advised me to stop playing. Flip It was a gimmick. It was for “retards.”
    “You were addicted to Flip It?” Dink asked.
    “I wasn’t
addicted,”
I answered, rolling my eyes.
    “How am I supposed to trust you with my money? You’re gonna rob me to go play Flip It.”
    “No, I’m not,” I said. I hadn’t realized he planned to entrust me with his money. I too began twirling my curls.
    “Good. Hours are eight ’til five with a four-hour lunch break between ten and two, Monday through Saturday. Sundays we work eight to four straight. Pay is twenty dollars an hour, off the books, but you get bonuses, vacations, free meals.”
    Despite the experience gleaned from my dad’s small-time gambling, I was not qualified to work for Dink Inc. Dink was a professional sports gambler. He bet on the NBA, NFL, PGA, NCAA basketball, NCAA football, tennis, WNBA, the Little League World Series, Miss America Pageants, the National Spelling Bee, and the Coney Island hot dog eating contest. He specialized in horses, hockey, baseball, and also dabbled in poker. When he spoke of money lines, run lines, ten-cent lines, spreads, odds, and propositions, it all went over my head.
    “It’s okay,” he said. “You come highly recommended by someone I have a lot of faith in.”
    Suddenly, a guy a little older than me walked into the office without knocking. His Y-back tank top flaunted his self-tanned, salon-waxed, well-built upper body. He tossed a wad of money onto the table. It was rubber-banded in the middle and folded in half. Dink introduced him as Robbie J, one of “the crew.” He greeted me with a wink and patted Otis on his head. I smiled hello.
    “You think I’m good lookin’?” he said.
    “You’re okay,” I said.
    “Oh sweetie, I’m more than okay.” He flexed his biceps.
    Dink’s cell phone rang. An office phone rang. The computers began to ding.
    “New York’s moving, what do you want me to do?” Robbie J asked.
    “Call Jazz,” Dink said.
    Robbie J picked up two receivers and feverishly dialed two separate phones, simultaneously. Dink grabbed for his phone and dialed a number.
    “Responsibility to come on time to this job is number one,” Dink continued. His palm cupped the receiver pushed to his ear. “You have to have the mind for numbers and be able to pick up things that have to do with numbers, number two. And
don’t steal
, number three. Most people fail at one of those.” He uncupped his hand. “Nine-nine-two Dinky, lookin’ for a line on the New York Liberty, WNBA. Over for a dime, please.”
    Still seated in his office chair, Dink wheeled toward the window. “There’s more crew members, two very important ones. But one’s in a cage and one’s on a yacht in Europe.” He unpeeled two glossy photographs from the wall and handed them to me. One photo was a close-up of a fat brown hamster with watery black eyes. The other was of a petite blonde in her fifties with lips painted coral. She cradled dozens of banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills and proudly presented these bundles to the photographer, as though they were a newborn baby. “That’s Jyrki, my hamster”—named after Jyrki Lumme, a former NHL defenseman. “And Tulip, my wife.”
    Dink noticed that another race was about to start on one of the televisions. “I’m gonna bet the two here. First-time starter. Could be a total zero.
    “One-six-four Ivy,” he said into the receiver. “Hollywood Park, race four. The two to win for a nickel.”
    The horses shot out of the starting gate and Dink bounced up and down in his chair as though he were the