Regret Over Mistaken Choices
Nicky Santoro: [To Frank Marino, realizing how far he's gone with his affair with Ginger]
I've fucked up, Frankie. I fucked up real good this time. I should never have started with this fucking broad.
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Distance and Deception in Business Transactions
Nicky Santoro:
I used to send Marino back home with a piece of what I made. Not a big piece, but what did they know? They were 1,500 miles away, and I don't know anyone who can see that far.
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Power and Dependency in the Underworld
Nicky Santoro: [Chewing out Sam in the Nevada desert]
Get this through your head, you Jew motherfucker, you! You only exist out here because of ME! That's the only reason! Without me, you, personally - every fucking wiseguy skell around will take a piece of your fucking Jew ass! THEN where you gonna go?! You're fucking warned! Don't ever go over my fucking head again, you motherfucker, you!
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Nicky Santoro's Defiance Against Authority
Nicky Santoro: [Chewing out Sam in the Nevada desert]
You said I'm bringing heat on you?! I gotta listen to people because of your fucking shit?! You're ordering me out?! You better get your own fucking army, pal!
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Nicky Santoro's Frustration with Agents
Nicky Santoro: [Watching the FBI plane overhead while golfing]
What the fuck is this? Where's this fucking guy gonna land, in the fairway? They're fucking agents, Frankie, look at this! $100 for whoever hits the plane.
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Addressing Disrespect in Personal Relationships
Nicky Santoro:
You know, I don't wanna bring this up, but you've been treating a lot of people with a lot of disrespect, even your own wife.
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Dependability in Ambitious Plans
Nicky Santoro:
You know I'm trying to put something really big together out here. You know what I'm talking about, huh? You know! If you're acting like this now, how can I depend on you?
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A Threatening Business Proposition
Nicky Santoro:
I think that you've gotten the wrong impression about me. I think, in all fairness, I should explain to you exactly what it is that I do. For instance, tomorrow morning I'll get up nice and early, take a walk down over to the bank, walk in and see and uh, if you don't have my money for me, I'll crack your fucking head wide open in front of everybody in the bank. And just about the time that I'm coming out of jail, hopefully, you'll be coming out of your coma. And guess what? I'll split your fucking head open again. Cause I'm fucking stupid. I don't give a fuck about jail. That's my business. That's what I do. And we know what you do, don't we, Charlie? You fuck people out of money and get away with it! Hey, you fat Irish prick, you put my fucking money to sleep! You go get my money or I'll put your fucking brain to sleep!
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Anger over loyalty and betrayal
Nicky Santoro:
Charlie M? Charlie M?! YOU MADE ME POP YOUR FUCKING EYE OUTTA YOUR HEAD TO PROTECT THAT PIECE OF SHIT?! CHARLIE M?! YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKER!
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Threats and Intimidation in a High-Stakes Situation
Nicky Santoro:
Listen to me, Anthony. I got your head in a fucking vice. I'll squash your fucking head like a grapefruit if you don't give me a name. Don't make me have to do this, please. Don't make me be a bad guy, come on.
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Admiration for Unbreakable Toughness
Nicky Santoro: [about Anthony Dogs' interrogation]
To be truthful with you, I had to admire this fucking guy. He was one of the toughest Irishmen I ever met. This son-of-a-bitch was tough. For two days and two fucking nights, we beat the shit out of this guy. I mean, we even stuck ice picks in his balls. But he never talked. In the end, I had to put his fucking head in a vice.
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Maintaining Loyalty Through Ruthless Actions
Nicky Santoro:
But I knew how to keep the bosses happy. Whenever they gave me little jobs to do, you know, to send a message, I would carry things out to a tee. Like the time Tony Dogs, who's supposed to be the new maniac tough guy in town, shot up one of Remo's bars. Here's a fucking guy, kills two of Remo's guys and a poor fucking waitress who's just working on her night off of all things. I mean, this guy's just begging to be made an example of.
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Skimming Cash in the Casino Operation
Nicky Santoro:
They had so much fucking money in there, you could build a house outta stacks of $100 bills. And the best part was that upstairs, the board of directors didn't know what the fuck was going on. I mean, to them, everything looked on the up-and-up, right? Wrong! The guys inside the counting room were all slipped in there to skim the joint dry. They'd do short counts, they'd lose fill slips. They'd even take cash right outta the drop boxes. And it was up to this guy, right here, standing in front of about 2 million dollars, to skim the cash off the top without anybody getting wise — the IRS, or anybody. Now, notice how in the count room, nobody ever seems to see anything. Somebody's always looking the other way. Now look at these guys. They look busy, right? They're counting money. Who'd want to bother them? I mean, God forbid they should make a mistake and forget to steal. Meanwhile, you're in and you're out, past the jack-off guard, who gets an extra C note a week just to watch the door. I mean, it's routine, business as usual — in, out, hello, goodbye — and that's all there is to it. Just another fat fuck, walking out of the casino with a suitcase. Now that suitcase was going straight to one place: right to Kansas City, which was as close to Las Vegas as the Midwest bosses could go without getting themselves arrested. That suitcase was all the bosses ever wanted, and they wanted it every month.
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The Hidden Power Behind Las Vegas Casinos
Nicky Santoro: [About the bosses]
These old greaseballs may not look it, but believe me, these are the men who secretly control Las Vegas, because they managed the Teamsters Union. The Teamsters Union was who you had to go to in order to borrow money to build a casino. And no one got approved for a loan from the Teamster's pension fund unless these guys in the room knew they were going to get their little suitcases.
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Planning for Problems in the Desert
Nicky Santoro:
Got a lot of holes in the desert. And a lot of problems are buried in those holes. Except you gotta do it right. I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about a half hour or 45 minutes of digging. And who knows who's gonna be coming along in that time? Before you know it, you gotta dig a few more holes; you could be there all fucking night!
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The Transformation of Las Vegas Casino Culture
Sam "Ace" Rothstein:
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 checking into an airport, and if you order room service, you're lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it's all gone. You got a whale show up with four million in a suitcase, and some 25-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.
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Consequences of Betrayal in Organized Crime
Sam "Ace" Rothstein:
The word was out. The bosses had enough of Nicky. They had enough. How much were they gonna take? So they made an example of him and his brother. They buried them while they were still breathing. They had other ideas for me.
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Surviving an Unapproved Attack in Casino
Sam "Ace" Rothstein: [cut to Nicky meeting up with his gang in the cornfield]
No matter what the feds or the papers might have said about my car-bombing, it was amateur night - and you could tell. Whoever it was, they put the dynamite under the passenger 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. The bombing was never authorized, but I suspect I know who lit the fuse. And so did the powers that be.
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The Downfall of Ginger McKenna
Sam "Ace" Rothstein:
After Ginger took off, she wasn't much help to anybody. She found some pimps, lowlifes, druggies and bikers in L.A.. And in a few months, they went through all the money and all the jewels. After they found her body, I hired a private doctor to do another autopsy. He said they gave her a hot dose. In the end, all she had left was $3,600 in mint-condition coins.
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The Consequences of Betrayal and Miscalculation
Sam "Ace" Rothstein:
After all the threats and all the bullshit, it turned out Ginger didn't tell em anything. But by then, the Feds didn't need her, anyway. They had all the pieces they needed. And everybody began to tumble, one after the other... just like dominoes. Between Piscano complaining on a wire. Between Nicky, Ginger, me and my license... paradise... we managed to really fuck it all up.
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Confrontation and Defiance in Adversity
Sam "Ace" Rothstein:
You wanna get rid of me? Here I am. Go ahead, get rid of me.
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Trust and Betrayal in a Fragile Relationship
Sam "Ace" Rothstein: [to Ginger, about her and Lester planning to run away with Amy]
Yeah, but I've been told that before, "We're working it out." You think that you're home... after what you just put me through with Amy, is a favor to me? So, counting the watch, let's say another four thousand for expenses over the weekend... of which you must have had a good time. I know he did. That's for sure. I know that... fuckin piece of shit had a good fuckin time. On my money. You might as well have fucked him, which you probably did anyway. (Ginger glares at him) You're lookin at me a certain way. You - you're teary-eyed, huh? You're upset. You're a good actress, you know that? Good fuckin actress. You can fuckin get that pity out of people. I'm not a john, you understand? You always thought I was, but I'm not. And I'm not a sucker. That fuckin pimp cocksucker. He's lucky I didn't kill him last time. Lucky he's fuckin livin'. And if you would've stayed with Amy... and you would've ran away... you would've been fuckin dead. Both of you. Dead. Dead.
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Desert Meetings and Uncertainty
Sam "Ace" Rothstein:
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. 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.
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The Weight of Judgment and the Past
Sam "Ace" Rothstein:
We all have a past! You have a past, I have a past, and my past is no worse than yours, but you guys think you have the right to pass judgment on me!
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Surveillance in the Casino Environment
Sam "Ace" Rothstein: [the CCTV cameras]
In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The boxmen are watching the dealers. The floormen are watching the boxmen. The pit bosses are watching the floormen. 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.
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A Choice Between Money and Consequences
Sam "Ace" Rothstein: [To a cheater, after casino thugs have broken his accomplice's hand with a hammer]
Alright, I'm going to give you a choice: You can either have the money and the hammer, or you can walk out of here. You can't have both.
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The Nature of Greed in Gambling
Sam "Ace" Rothstein: [voice over, while observing a blackjack cheat]
You can spot these assholes by watching the way they bet. Like this guy. He's betting 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.
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The House Always Wins in Gambling
Sam "Ace" Rothstein:
In the casino, the cardinal rule is to keep them playing and keep them coming back. The longer they play, the more they lose. In the end, we get it all.
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The Relentless Nature of Nicky's Revenge
Sam "Ace" Rothstein:
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 you beat him with a gun, you better kill him, because he’ll keep coming back and back until one of you is dead.
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The Essence of Trust in Love
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.
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