The Spotted Ball a True Story by Larry Cohen c 2025
Chapter 4
“Enough of Philadelphia”
As a small-town kid, I didn’t last long in Philadelphia. I had my wallet stolen from my sports jacket right in my own office. A credit card from that wallet, I was told, ended up in Spain. I felt as though I were surrounded by mobsters. Maybe I was. I’ll never know.
I had enough of Philadelphia and left for graduate school in the Spring of the year.
My next serious encounter with gambling began in Santo Domingo. This was real gambling in a real casino. The Casino was located in the Hotel Embajador (The Ambassador) which was located directly across the tree-shaded avenue from my newly built apartment building. The Hotel Embajador was one of Santo Domingo’s oldest hotels with a historic past. The entrance was a long picturesque driveway surrounded by tall palm trees.
Inside the Hotel was, in the words of Kafka, the “castle keep”, the Casino. This casino had all of the traditional table games that, I assumed, were found in all casinos. Lacking, however, were slot machines. Slot machines were illegal in the entire country, the locals calling them in local slang, “traga moneras” or “money drinkers” On occasion, especially after a difficult exam, I would wait until 4 pm, when the casino opened, and place a few bets. At first, I would only play a game that looked like a giant spinning wheel. One time I clearly remember it looked as though the wheel was going to land on the largest payout, $80.00 So, at the last moment possible, I placed a dollar down on the $80.00 spot. Sure enough, it landed as I had expected. But, the “boss” came over to the spinning wheel girl, a nice-looking Dominican girl, and yelled at her for letting me place a bet so late. I never played the Spinning Wheel game again.
Since the hotel also had tennis courts, I was often asked to complete a doubles team late in the afternoons. At the tennis courts, I learned that the casino was actually run by a group out of Las Vegas and not locals. I was wondering where these perfectly groomed American “bosses” came from since I never saw any of them outside of the Casino. I didn’t like these bosses since they always maintained an air of superiority not only over the players but their own Dominican workers.
To be continued….