Chapter 8: Meeting the Missus

THERE’S A SECRET to maintaining a false identity. I had three complete sets of identification I kept in my wall safe in the attic of Mrs. Prior’s house. Jason Sanborn was my Vegas identity. An identity can’t lie dormant for a decade and then suddenly become an active person. Back twenty years ago when I got out of the Navy, I established my identity in Vegas. Lars had been my CO during my naval stint. He’d made sure each of us on his intelligence team had carefully established an alternate set of identity documents. Technically, he was supposed to collect those documents before we got our DD-214. Somehow mine got overlooked.

Jason Sanborn has legal residency in North Las Vegas, a driver’s license, and accounts at four different casinos. All his other banking is conducted online. The room I rented from an old woman, who happened to be the grandmother of a guy I served with, for fifty dollars a month. It was never occupied, but I always stopped by when I was in town to see how she was doing.

It had been ten days since I left San Francisco. I decided Vegas would be where my trail ended. It was an even bet that my apartment would be under surveillance by the time I got back to Seattle.

After a good night’s sleep, Maizie and I checked in at the Flamingo Hilton for two nights.

“Mr. Sanborn, it’s nice to see you again,” the cashier at the casino cage said. “I didn’t expect to see you until September.”

“I got a nice bonus for a job I picked up at the last convention and thought I’d see if I could increase it,” I said, handing her a fresh Amex card.

“Do you want this on your account?”

“Yes, please.” I entered my PIN when she swiped the card and she handed me a deposit ticket. “Would you mind adding this to the account as well?” I asked, giving her a matching $10,000 in cash.

“Of course. Good luck, Mr. Sanborn.” She handed me another receipt and I bought another $1,000 in chips.

Here’s another secret about casinos. Higher priced games have better payouts. For example, it’s not unusual for a casino to retain fifteen percent of bets placed in penny slot machines but only retain five percent of bets placed in five-dollar machines. You might think it’s not possible to get an advantage for higher bets at table games, but that’s not true either. Blackjack or ‘21’ rules are different at different tables. It’s not impossible to find a two-dollar blackjack game in Vegas, though more and more unusual. But the two-dollar game will be dealt from a six-deck shoe. You might find a five-dollar single deck game, but chances are it pays blackjack at six to five rather than three to two. If you sit at a hundred-dollar table, you might manage ‘liberal’ rules and get the three to two payout on a single-deck game, but only be able to double on ten or eleven.

I sat at a twenty-five-dollar table, varying my bets only according to whether I won or lost a hand. It was a predictable reverse Martingale scheme that was recognized at most casinos. Sometimes known as simple ‘money management.’ Casinos are watchful for card counters but most still call system players systematic losers.

I didn’t care if I lost five percent. It was the government’s money. I wanted to change it into mine.

I didn’t play exclusively at the Flamingo. I had accounts at three other casinos and deposited $20,000 at each. Nor did I exclusively play blackjack. If you don’t play any other games, it marks you as a professional or serious player. I played baccarat and roulette and even plugged my player’s card into a couple slot machines. Maizie was a great excuse for me to get up after two hours of playing and go walk her. She wasn’t quite as popular in Las Vegas as she was in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but she still got a lot of comments.

I was offered a free night at the Flamingo if I wanted to stay, and I did. After three nights, I moved back to the cheap room in Henderson and played only twice a day. When I checked out of the Flamingo, I was down two hundred seventy-five dollars. I got them to put the balance on a couple of Visa gift cards and walked out with twenty thousand dollars that was no longer connected to the government.

Through the rest of the week, I gradually cashed out of the other four casinos. Two had similar results as the Flamingo and I was averaging about a ten percent loss for the privilege of playing. On a whim, I dropped a hundred-dollar chip on number forty-three as I passed a roulette table at the Venetian and after tipping the dealer a hundred walked away with a chit for forty-two hundred dollars. This time, the Venetian had paid for all my losses, but I had to file a tax report for the winnings, so I didn’t walk away with as much as I wanted. Jason Sanborn filed a Form 1040 EZ each year on income that was typically less than ten grand, so I was pretty sure I’d get a refund at the end of the year.

Just another part of keeping the identity active.

Of course, being in Vegas wasn’t really about gambling. I found all the information about Leslie Whiteman I could dig up. Not just online. I went to the courthouse and checked the register of deeds for the house she lived in. I drove by the school her son had graduated from the year before. I scouted the entire neighborhood where she lived and followed her to her job at a casino restaurant on the south end of the strip. A casual conversation with a neighbor revealed that she had purchased the modest little home with cash from a life insurance policy on her husband. No one in the neighborhood had ever met her husband.

I was relatively certain she hadn’t seen me anyplace yet when I walked up to her door on Saturday morning. She had already been out for her morning run with two labradoodles towing her along. The dogs barked when I rang the doorbell and I hoped I’d given her enough time to shower and dress.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Whiteman, I’m Jason Sanborn. I’ll be quite straightforward with you. I’d like to speak to your husband,” I said. I figured the best way to handle this situation was to go straight for the meat. Even if she slammed the door in my face, it would tell me something.