Walking the Floor

My old partner ended up stuck in Vegas. He called and asked to meet me there. This was in the mid-eighties, and he knew about my monthly trips to the Sands. I’d become a decent card-counting blackjack player, and for the twenty years I’d know him, he’d been a degenerate gambler.

The knock on my hotel room door didn’t surprise me. My friend had told me of his intention to drive out from the Midwestern city where he currently lived. He’d been mysterious about his reasons, but I...