THE BIG GAMBLE
By Bobby Mathews
*****
PUBLISHED BY
The Big Gamble
Copyright © 2012, Bobby Mathews
*****
For Misty and Noah
*****
When John Middleton opened his hotel suite door, I shot him. The little .22 revolver popped twice, and a hole appeared in his right shoulder. I meant to kill the squirmy little sonofabitch, but he twisted away at the last second. My other shot imploded the big-screen LCD television behind him. I walked in and kicked the door shut with my foot. Middleton scrambled behind the white leather couch in the sitting room. The gun hadn't been any louder than, say, a couple of firecrackers. Up here on the penthouse floor, most people wouldn't have even heard it. Middleton didn't say anything at first, just little “huh, huh, huh” sounds in the back of his throat.
I went over the couch like a swimmer diving into the surf, grabbed Middleton by the lapels and thumped him twice with the butt of the gun. The second time I thumped him, he lay still. I wanted to keep hitting him, but instead I got up and walked to the other end of the room. There was champagne chilling in a silver bucket. I grabbed the bottle by the neck and swigged down a couple of big swallows. I'm not a violent guy – not by nature. Then I set the bottle down on a glass-topped coffee table and took the ice bucket back to Middleton. He was trying to sit up, so I helped him. The carpet was thick burgundy pile and had probably cushioned his head a little. I put a couple of ice cubes in his palm and pressed his hand against his temple where the skin had split open.
He looked up, dazed recognition in his eyes. He tried to scramble away from me, but I was right there on top of him, tapping the muzzle of the little .22 against the bridge of his nose every time he squirmed. He was already woozy from the gunshot and the beating. Pretty soon he settled down.
“You?” He said.
“You stole my money,” I said.
“Like hell,” he said. “I won it. You don't own that damn machine.”
“My name's not on the papers, but that was my machine. That was my payout you stole.”
“Go to hell,” he said. “You're not getting anything from me.”
“I already got something from you,” I said. “I got screwed.”
I hit him with the butt of the gun again, and this time he stayed out for awhile.
I knew that machine was going to pay off big. Progressive slots always do. You know the kind I'm talking about – a row of slot machines with a big board across the top showing the big jackpot in blinking LED numbers. Go into Harrah's on Canal Street, walk past the roulette, the craps tables, the blackjack and poker tables, past the penny-ante stuff that I can't make sense of anyway, and there's a row of six slots. The big board above them read $6 million and change when I started playing. That was one year, six days, three hours and eleven minutes ago. I play the second machine from the right. It's a dollar machine, and if you bet the maximum – that's three bucks a whirl – you could win it all.
In the year-plus I've been playing, nobody hit on the progressive machines. No big winners. I watched the numbers climb. On the progressive, every spin adds a few more cents to the pot. My first day in New Orleans, I won five hundred at the machine, and it had been paying out in drips and drabs ever since. I hate to admit it, but I fell in love with that machine. It was like the girl in high school who led you on but never put out. I was determined that machine was going to put out for me.
I got a room in a fleabag motel two blocks from Harrah's on Decatur. The room was grim and gray, but the towels were clean and there was cable television. I played that machine five days a week, eight hours a day. Sometimes I'd hit a hundred dollar spin, and that money would go into my pocket. One time I hit for two grand. But mostly what I won was walking-around money. It was easier than a real job. I could make five hundred a week, but that big board with its neon numbers had gotten into my head.
When I was away from the casino, all I could think about was getting back to it. I tried to work it from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. I took Monday and Tuesday off, but I had to be there on the weekends, because that was when the tourists came over from Mississippi or Alabama. I didn't want some toothless hick getting his hands on my machine. It would be like finding out your girl was cheating on you. And when I went home at night to my little grungy room, I could hear that machine calling to me.
What happened was this: I was late. No two ways about it. I was late, and that was my fault. I stopped into the motel office to pay the weekly rent. Should have done it the night before, but I'd had a little too much of the watered-down firewater they serve at the casino. I had hit the machine for a grand and decided I owed myself a good dinner. The result was that I slept for about twelve hours, only to be awakened by the manager's knock.
“You going to pay or get out,” he said. I'm assuming it was a question, but it didn't sound like one. The sun was bright outside, and I knew I had overslept. I just didn't know how badly.
“I'll pay,” I said, blinking at the bright sun. “Where the hell else could I go?”
The manager didn't know what to say to that, but he went away. I could tell I'd overslept, but I needed a shower and my mouth felt like the Chinese army had camped there on a two-week bivouac. When I was done in the bathroom, I stopped by the office and paid for the next week.
By the time I got to the casino, that little twerp Middleton was at my machine. Of course, I didn't know his name at the time. That came later, after he got his picture in the paper. It made me nervous, looking at his narrow shoulders and balding head underneath the big jackpot readout. I knew it was going to happen. Don't ask me how. Maybe it's the fatalist in me. I ordered Jack and Coke from the waitress, drank it and watched that louse spin. In the months since I had begun playing, the jackpot grew. It stood at $17 million and change that morning.
So you know how the story goes: The four diamonds rolled over, the bells went off, Middleton leaped up from his chair and screamed, and the LED over the bank of dollar slots exploded into one word, over and over: WINNER! WINNER! WINNER!
Security hustled over and confirmed that the machine hadn't been tampered with. Kilkenny, the head of security, saw me watching the show and shook his head at me, as if in apology. We'd sat in the casino bar a couple of times and had a few drinks together. Now he was escorting this little guy up to the manager's office. I ordered another drink and wondered what in the hell to do now. Around me, the neon glowed and the people played. I just stared at that backstabbing machine.
About half an hour later, Kilkenny tapped me on the arm. He sat down next to me. I was on my sixth drink by then.
“You were right,” he said. “That baby finally paid off.”
I didn't say anything.
“They'll be coming down in a minute to do the check presentation,” he said. I knew what he meant. The casino manager and the big winner would stand behind a huge fake check. The winner would be grinning from ear to ear. The casino manager's smile would be much more cramped. Casinos are supposed to take money, not give it back. Some kid fresh out of college would come and take a picture for the Times-Picayune and ask a couple of dumb questions. The winner wouldn't know what to say. I would have known. I had rehearsed it in my head a thousand times.
“It should have been me,” I told Kilkenny. He looked at me funny.
“I knew you'd see it that way. That's why I'm here. Supposed to make sure you don't do anything stupid.” He opened his right hand, big and square and hard like a stonemason's. There was a roll of quarters in it.
“If you try to do anything stupid, I'm going to slug you in the kidneys with this before you can get out of your chair,” he said. “You'll piss blood for a week. And as many drinks as you've
had, you'll ralph all over the floor.”
I nodded.
“Been keeping tabs, have you?” I took another pull of my drink.
“That's the job,” Kilkenny said. “Just stay steady. You've won some good money here. No reason to get blackballed because you think somebody owes you something.”
“Sure,” I said and ordered another drink.
So I didn't think I was going to do anything. Have you ever been hit by a guy holding a roll of quarters in his fist? It hurts like hell. But when the casino manager and John Middleton came out with that check, I couldn't help myself. I wandered over to watch, just like nearly everyone else in the casino. I was conscious of Kilkenny off to my left and a little behind me. But when the newspaper guy told them to hold up the check and smile, I shouted.
“That's my money! You were playing my machine, you little weasel!”
I was moving toward the little platform where the two of them were standing. People were turning to stare at me by the time Kilkenny got to me. When I felt his fist drive into my back, a wave of nausea gripped me and I folded like a card table. I hit the floor on my knees, and the drinks I'd had for breakfast came back up, burning and hot. Kilkenny was right there to pull me up. My