Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos Read Online Free PDF Page A

advance.
    There was a lot of new action on Leonard, and so Tim andLittle Frank took in a lot of cash before the fight. They then turned around and used that money to bet on Hagler—along with just about every other dime they owned.
    The evening was electric, and Tim and Little Frank had seats somewhere in the rafters. From way up in row ZZ, though, it was hard to see exactly what was going on. Leonard had turned back the clock. For the first four rounds he flashed around the ring as if he were in his prime, darting in to land combinations and escaping pretty much unscathed.
    Maybe Lorenzo understood that Hagler was the type of fighter who always won the rematches big—but who had trouble figuring out his opponents the first time around. Anyway, it was pretty clear by the start of the fifth round that there were only two ways for Hagler to win. He had to take seven of the next eight rounds on the judges’ scorecards or score a knockout.
    Hagler began to impose his will in round five. Tim’s hopes swelled in six, seven, and eight. Then came the ninth round—a classic—with the two fighters trading toe-to-toe. Hagler was landing with authority, but Leonard’s flurries were like fireworks that lifted the crowd to its feet. As the bell sounded to end the round, an “oh, shit” feeling began to spread through Tim’s belly.
    Hagler pushed forward in the final rounds and drew closer and closer. Leonard seemed exhausted and out of answers as the clock wound down. It was tight. Nobody could know how the judges would score it. But everyone knew what the outcome would have been if the fight had gone one more round. If Hagler had just had a little more time…
    The decision and the championship went to Leonard.
    Tim and Frank were high school kids who’d lost every penny they owned and were now twenty grand in the hole.
    Nobody at school thought they’d show up the next day andcertainly not on Friday. But there wasn’t much compassion. The code was clear. Anyone who won a bet from Tim and Little Frank knew they would be paid in full, just as they knew they had to pay off their own losses. There was a rumor that the biggest kid in the class, Bert, made visits to anyone who didn’t pay off their debts to Tim and Little Frank. The story was that Bert had been brought into the operation as muscle, and that he’d get half of what he could shake out of any debtors. It was pure bullshit, but Tim and Little Frank never denied it because it made the collection process go much smoother.
    The stakes were high. If Tim and Frank couldn’t pay off their bets, no matter what happened down the road, that’s the way they’d be marked for the rest of their lives. They’d have broken the code. In a town that from its inception grew up outside the law, all a man has is his word.
    As soon as the decision was announced, both Tim and Little Frank (now a prominent lawyer, by the way) realized there was only one way to get that kind of money, and they headed straight for the Barbary Coast.
    There was a big postfight party at the hotel. The Barbary Coast had taken a beating on the fight, too. But a party is a party. Little Frank and Tim waited around all night trying to get up the nerve to bring up their predicament to Big Frank. At four o’clock in the morning, they sat down in the coffee shop for some Chinese food and explained the situation.
    Big Frank understood, and he backed them. It’s moments like those that explain why Tim Poster is the most loyal friend a guy could ever find.
    He showed up at school a few hours later in the same clothes without a wink of sleep.
    It certainly would have been understandable if Tim hadprefaced his payoffs that Friday with “you lucky son-of-a-bitch.” The fight was razor close and the decision controversial. But that’s not how he settled up.
    â€œEverybody loves a winner,” he sang with a smile as he counted out the