Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein

When you love someone, you've gotta trust them. There's no other way. You've got to give them the key to everything that's yours. Otherwise, what's the point? And for a while, I believed, that's the kind of love I had.

In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I'm watching the casino manager. And the eye-in-the-sky is watching us all.

No matter how big a guy might be, Nicky would take him on. You beat Nicky with fists, he comes back with a bat. You beat him with a knife, he comes back with a gun. 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.

Listen to me very carefully. There are three ways of doing things around here: the right way, the wrong way, and the way that *I* do it. You understand?

The town will never be the same. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. Today it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior's college money on the poker slots. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it's like checkin' into an airport. And if you order room service, you're lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it's all gone. 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. After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. And where did the money come from to rebuild the pyramids? Junk bonds. But in the end, I wound up right back where I started. I could still pick winners, and I could still make money for all kinds of people back home. And why mess up a good thing? And that's that.

It just didn't sink into his head what the Black Book is and what it meant, not being banned from every casino is just one thing but being this book gets you into the brains of every cop and FBI agent in the state, I mean you're listed in there with Al Capone, but Nicky didn't care.

In the casino, the cardinal rule is to keep them playing and to keep them coming back. The longer they play, the more they lose, and in the end, we get it all.

he had a fool-proof scheme, all right. It wasn't very scientific but it worked. When he won, he collected. When he lost, he told the bookies to go fuck themselves. What were they gonna do? Muscle Nicky? Nicky was the muscle.

The bombing was never authorized, but I suspect I know who lit the fuse. And so did the powers that be.

Ward, you're pissing me off. Now you're insulting my intelligence; what you think I am, a fuckin' idiot? You know goddamn well that someone had to get into those machines and set those fuckin' reels. The probability of one four-reel machine is a million and a half to one; the probability of three machines in a row; it's in the billions! It cannot happen, would not happen, you fuckin' momo! What's the matter with you? Didn't you see you were being set up on the second win?

Whoever it was, they put the dynamite under the passenger's side. But what they didn't know, what nobody outside the factory knew, was that that model car was made with a metal plate under the driver's seat. It's the only thing that saved my life.

Normally, my prospects of coming back alive from a meeting with Nicky were 99 out of 100. But this time, when I heard him say "a couple of hundred yards down the road", I gave myself 50-50.

The Feds were watching Nicky play golf for so long that they ran out of gas. Just what I needed, right in front of the control board.

And what happens next? I can't believe it. Who the hell would believe that the FBI had a wire in the place looking for some information about some old homicide about some guy who was whacked out God knows when over God knows what. Would you believe such a thing could happen? Every FBI man across the country had their ears open, this guy basically sunk the whole world.

Before I ever ran a casino or got myself blown up, Ace Rothstein was a helluva handicapper, I can tell you that. I was so good that when I bet, I can change the odds for every bookmaker in the country. I'm serious. I had it down so cold that I was given paradise on earth. I was given one of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas to run: The Tangiers, by the only kind of guys that can get you that kind of money. Sixty-two million seven hundred thousand dollars. I don't know all the details.

Who could resist? Anywhere else in the country, I was a bookie, a gambler, always lookin' over my shoulder, hassled by cops, day and night. But here, I'm 'Mr Sam Rothstein'. I'm not only legitimate, but running a casino. And that's like selling dreams for cash.

And, along with making us legit, comes cash. Tons of it. I mean, what do you think we're doing out here in the middle of the desert?

You're askin' me for twenty-five thousand. I'm not out to make you feel bad. I want to just be able to trust you. You now, it's about trust. I have to be able to trust you with my life. Do you understand? Can I trust you? Can I trust you? Can I trust you? Answer me. Can I trust you?

They never know what hit them. And if, and when, they do find out that they just got zapped by a cattle prod, they wish they really did have a heart attack.

But one thing I could just never understand was how she could have everything under control but her old pimp Lester Diamond.

Ginger had the hustler's code… She knew how to take care of people. And that's what Vegas was all about… It's Kickback City… She took care of the dealers… pit bosses, floor managers… But mostly… she took care of the valet parkers, the guys who could get you anything and take care of anything… Ginger took care of the parkers because they took care of the security guards, who took care of the metro cops, who let her operate.

Nicky being Nicky, he made his presence known. Especially at the casino, where he definitely did not work, people got the message.

You can spot these assholes by watching the way they bet. Like this guy. He's bettin' lavender chips at five hundred each with only one little problem. He's always guessed right. If he wasn't so fuckin' greedy, he'd have been tougher to spot. But in the end, they're all greedy.

Meeting in the middle of the desert always made me nervous. It's a scary place. I knew about the holes in the desert, of course, and everywhere I looked, there could have been a hole.

And that's that.