Read Online Double or Nothing: How Two Friends Risked It All to Buy One of Las Vegas' Legendary Casinos by Tom Breitling, Cal Fussman - Free Book Online Page A

Charge.
    That meant all we had to do was hit a key and the customer’s credit card account would be charged.
    This six-letter word dropped in a column all the way down the screen.
    Charge.
    Charge.
    Charge.
    Charge.
    Charge.
    Charge.
    Charge.
    I hit the Charge key and thirty seconds later a message came back from the credit card company indicating the transaction had been approved. I moved on to the next reservation and again hit the Charge key. Thirty seconds later, that one was approved. I sat down and kept hitting the Charge key over andover. It was like money falling from the heavens. All you had to do was hit a key.
    I couldn’t hit the key fast enough. The queue of reservations was so long I could never catch up—and it was constantly getting longer. I stayed up all night hitting the Charge key.
    When he saw what I was doing, Tim’s jaw dropped. By the time he picked it up, he already understood the enormity of what had just taken place.
    â€œTom,” he roared, “we can hire somebody else to hit the Charge key! Quick! Let’s get some more rooms!”
    Neither one of us could sleep. I had the system automated so that we didn’t even have to hit the Charge key at all and then went out to hustle up accommodations. If my foot was on the gas, Tim’s was pushing the pedal through the floorboards. Search engines like Yahoo, Infoseek, Excite, Lycos, and Alta Vista were now becoming popular. Tim started buying every Las Vegas–based keyword he could get his hands on—even with misspellings of the words “Las Vegas.”
    â€œEvery quarter we put in,” Tim howled, “comes back dressed up as a dollar!”
    We were no longer in that place where when you think you’ve got the best of it, you take dead aim and hold onto your balls. We were now like gamblers at a craps table who knew that every first roll of the dice would come up seven. Tim was pushing all our chips out on the table. Not only that, but he was frantic to get more chips so we could move to a table with higher limits.
    â€œTom, this doesn’t just work for Las Vegas,” he said. “It’ll work for hotels all around America. It’ll work for the entire world!”
    â€œLet’s go for it,” I said.
    A new company was formed. We decided to call it Travelscape.
    â€œI gotta go see Lorenzo,” Tim said, bolting out the door.
    Once again, Lorenzo was there for us. He loved the idea, and when he bought 10 percent of the company we had an infusion of cash.
    But we were growing so fast we needed much more. The beauty of being connected in Las Vegas is there’s always a chance you’ll find it. When Tim told Uncle Jack about our situation, Uncle Jack made a suggestion. Uncle Jack could always be counted on to come up with money even if it was passed along in unusual ways. When Tim was in college and running low on funds, Uncle Jack sent money through a bookmaker in L.A. known as The Roadrunner. The Roadrunner lived in a huge apartment building, but he wouldn’t let Tim come through the doorman to make a quick pickup. The Roadrunner thought that might look suspicious. Instead, at obscure times, he threw manila envelopes containing cash and clasped tight with string out the window of his high-rise. Tim would stand below waiting, and on some windy days looked like a comical outfielder trying to make a catch as the envelope blew back and forth on the currents and dropped into the hedges below.
    This time, Uncle Jack suggested that Tim go see an old friend on the East Coast: The Captain.
    Captain John Kassap is the great uncle that everybody wishes they had. A guy who sailed around the world as a young man with the Merchant Marines, who could tell you stories about Shanghai in the ’40s, who landed in Baltimore, bought a bar, ran junkets to Las Vegas, and over time evolved into an investment guru who could keep up with the sharpest minds at Goldman Sachs. The Captain had