I could still pick winners, and I could still make money for all kinds of people back home.

But in the end, I wound up right back where I started. And where did the money come from to rebuild the pyramids? Junk bonds. After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. You get a whale show up with four million in a suitcase, and some twenty-five-year-old hotel school kid is gonna want his Social Security Number. And if you order room service, you're lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it's like checkin' into an airport. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior's college money on the poker slots. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. And the eye-in-the-sky is watching us all. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else. There are three ways of doing things around here: the right way, the wrong way, and the way that *I* do it. I mean, how much more were they gonna take? So, they made an example of him and his brother: they buried them while they were still breathing. But this time, when I heard him say 'a couple of hundred yards down the road', I gave myself 50-50. Normally, my prospects of coming back alive from a meeting with Nicky were 99 out of 100. I mean, what were they going to do, muscle Nicky? Nicky was the muscle.

When he lost, he told the bookies to go f*** themselves. Nicky's methods of betting weren't scientific, but they worked. And if you beat him with a gun, you better kill him, because he'll keep comin' back and back until one of you is dead. You beat him with a knife, he comes back with a gun. You beat Nicky with fists, he comes back with a bat. No matter how big a guy might be, Nicky would take him on. Otherwise, what's the point? And for a while, I believed, that's the kind of love I had. You've got to give them the key to everything that's yours. When you love someone, you've gotta trust them.

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