Another Ebook Preview

Here is a sneak peek of a section of my Ebook that I hope to have for sale soon.  Thanks for your patience.  Tony

Welcome to Atlantic City, faded seaside resort city and east coast Vegas, want to be. Playground to every jet setter, high roller, high stakes Poker playing smuck, sleazebag and little old grey haired lady trying to get a piece of the gamblers dream to make that one big score. This is my territory; my name is Frank Vagola, Atlantic City P.I. I’m an ex-cop from the New York suburbs of Ridgefield Park New Jersey.  After putting in my 20 years of service to qualify for a full pension I retired from the police force.  Things were getting too corrupt for my liking anyway.   Also New Jersey Policies were starting to get to me.  Over time we public servants have lost any amount of respect from the public, we are paid to serve.  Being there have been many scandals involving crooked cops I see why this is.   These days I spend my time in private practice as a private investigator, have an office above my garage in a small house I rent in Absecon New Jersey.  It’s not glamorous but it pays the bills and keeps me out/in trouble on a daily basis.  Mostly spend my time following cheating spouses around to motels alone the major highways of New Jersey.  Speaking of which I have lived in my whole life and intend on dying here too.

 If you tell people, from other parts of the country, that you are from New Jersey they make some bad joke by stating, “Oh yea, which exit”?  This  joke is referring to the fact that Route 95, called the New Jersey Turnpike, is the main road most people associate with our great state.  The reason for this is that the Newark airport is located on the New Jersey Turnpike.  Also that area is full of many chemical plants that emit bad smells and tons of pollution into the atmosphere.  So when people are driving or getting driven out of the airport they pass through this area and it makes a bad first impression on them.  We all know how hard it is to change a bad first impression of anything.  This is why it’s so important for restaurants to look clean and well maintained on the outside.  If it looks bad from the outside people won’t even give it a chance. So New Jersey is like a rundown restaurant that may never get a chance to show off how good their food is being the bad first impression ruins it.  Anyway I have gone off on a tangent about my lovely state of New Jersey back to the story of how I almost got killed investigating another routine case of a couple getting intimidated by mobsters they owed money too.   So I thought it was going to be another easy routine case for me.  I didn’t know what I was getting myself involved with for this case until it was almost too late.

Ebook Progress

Finally making some progress on editing my book. Here is an old unedited excerpt from it.  Enjoy Tony


Tommy Tootoria was having a bad week and he was in a foul mood.  Just hearing the name makes my skin crawl up!  Tommy lived in a suburb of Atlantic City called Absecon, where I happen to live in also.  It is a small town with some really nice expensive sections and some cheap ones filled with motels on Route 35, which is the area I happen to live in.  Tourists/Gamblers use these motels to avoid paying $200 plus a night to stay in an actual Casino.  Unless of course you are a high roller/big spender who gets their rooms comped, paid for by the casino.  Of course if that’s the case you most likely lose 10 times the price of the room in order to qualify for it for free.  Worse yet many of the motels in Absecon are paid for on a monthly rate by down and out gamblers.  Also some are used to deal drugs or by prostitutes to conduct their “business”.  So Absecon is a real contradiction in status.  On the one side of town you have $1.5 million plus houses and on the other side you have roach motels.  Back to Tommy, he’s a vice president of a company that got the contract to pick up Atlantic City’s garbage.  The contract was huge for $26 million a year and companies fight for a chance to win it.  You have to wonder why everyone wants the contract being garbage pickup is done all by Union workers some of which can’t be fired and make over 100K a year!  Not bad for unskilled labor.   So Tommy’s Company won the contract and on the surface it looked like he was on top of the world, just rolling in the dough.  Behind the scenes things for Tommy were anything but great.  In the previous football season he got totally beaten down.   Losing a huge sum of money for the last 8 weeks straight of the regular NFL season.  Then he chased his loses trying to make it back in the playoffs, only to fall deeper into a hole.  The Super Bowl was no better when a last second Interception caused his team to not cover the spread by a single point.  That point put Tommy so deep into the hole that his house or life might be lost to the bookies.  Of course he owed the money to one of the biggest mobsters in Atlantic City, NJ, and actually the whole country.  The head of the Bubouts family the infamous Vinny!  Indicted for every crime you can think of including 4 murders but none of them have ever stuck to him.  Maybe it’s because the witnesses always had a way of changing their minds or disappearing at very opportune times.   Tommy was in serious trouble the kind that your body could end up deep in the New Jersey Pine barons to maybe never be found again.  He could end up like Jimmy Hoffa, rumored to be buried in cement under Giants Stadium in East Rutherford New Jersey, but only the people responsible for his disappearance know for sure

Carbon Comeback

I am rebuilding my bank roll at Double or Nothing Sit-N-Gos in Carbon Poker.  Things have turned around and I'm back winning 80% of the ones I play in.  Bad streaks happen, just have to play thru them and keep your tilt in check.  Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables.  Tony

Carbon Double or Nothing

Lately I am running so bad at Double or Nothing Sit-N-Gos on Carbon Poker.  Think I cashed in 3 out of the last 10 I played!  Historically I have cashed in 80% of them for a huge ROI.  Variance is the name of the game in Poker.  I consider the Double or Nothing Sit-N-Gos to have the lowest variance for me.  That is why this streak, while short term, is annoying me.  what can you do but play thru it?  On a brighter note the Statue of Liberty re-opened today.  It's been closed due to damage from Hurricane Sandy.  Happy 4th of July to everyone.  Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables.  Tony