«This was the clockless hour of the losers in Las Vegas. It was acey-deucey time when the desert wind blows the sand of the gamblers night,like mean confetti tormenting the slow-coming morning. The shooters were rolloing to get out. The dealers shift was the dead nights graveyard watch.
At a table in the coffe shop of the Stardust Hotel, patient with a murmurous chivalry, Nick the Greek waited for the players to arrive for the big poker game. He smoked a cigar with an old mans serenity, a gambler of mysterious solitude and gallant legend, the most famous of his kind, the most graceful of losers, the last of a perished species, the final survivor of his unremembered breed.
He is a player, and he bets into all the dealers games. Never once , holding a million stashed in a stachel or flat pocket, has the Greek ever bought a piece of a dealers hand. He comes to challenge the house in the licenced casinos now, just as he went up against Arnold Rothstein in the lofts above garages and in the hotel suites of the bootleg age.
Gambling has never been a business with him but a prolonged ecstasy. He plays as a monk must pray. He has bet fins on punks hustling one ball in hick poolrooms, and blown a million at least a dozen times.
No one knows where it came from. He is a loner, and he cherishes jis allofness, a hermit who lives in crowds. He has always worked a single hand and, ever since the beginning, they have wondered who stakes him. Theyre still guessing. No one counts his money. Ive heard guys claim the King of Greece bankrolled him and also Dutch Schultz, the bootleg hoodlum, a syndicate of old country Greeks, a shoe manufacturer, and a owner of a movie studio.
At acey-deucey time, in the casino without a clock, Nick the Greek walked toward the poker table and bought a hand. Outside the desert wind disturbed the sand. The Greek drew two cards and bumped the raise. At the crap table the dealer told the shooter he was coming out for nine»
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