The Big Gamble Read online

eyes locked with Middleton's for just a moment, and as they dragged me toward the Canal St. exit, I kept my eyes on him the whole time.

  Outside, Kilkenny shoved me toward the steps. When I turned around, he moved in front of me. The hand with the roll of quarters in it came up about chest high, and I knew he was going to level me if I took another step.

  “Am I blackballed?” I said.

  He grinned.

  “Stay gone for a month. Come back after that, we'll let bygones be bygones.”

  I turned around and went down the steps and back to my motel. There was a gun in the safe in my room, and I knew what I was going to do.

  Harrah's puts the big winners up in the Westin Hotel. It's right by the casino and close to the River Walk. I knew some of the staff there – had met them, and even gone to bed with a couple of the cleaning ladies. Hey, sex is easy when you're not picky. Of course, maybe they weren't that picky, either. But I was on good terms with a few of them, and I used a five-hundred-dollar chip to bribe myself one of the magnetic cards that accessed the elevator to the penthouse.

  So here we were, Middleton and me. He was in his boxers and robe, bleeding quietly on the floor from the gunshot wound to his shoulder and the gun butt to the temple. I pinched him a couple of times on the inside of his skinny, pale thigh to try to bring him around. When that didn't work, I stepped hard on the bleeding shoulder.

  He groaned and tried to move. I dug my foot in a little harder, and Middleton opened his eyes. I took him by the hair and yanked him up into a sitting position. He began to slump over, and it took both of us working to get him positioned against the couch so that he could sit up and talk to me.

  “What do you want?” He said. His voice was slow and thick, like it cost him a great deal to dredge it up from the bottom of his throat.

  “My money.”

  “Not ... yours,” he said, and passed out again.

  It had seemed so simple. Go up to his suite and get my money. But on the way up I had gotten so worked up, so angry, that I'd tried to kill Middleton the moment he opened the door. The winner's suite was nice. Two floors, and the smoked glass walls on the second story let you see the city in 360 degrees. The Mississippi River and the big bridge that spanned it (I had never learned its proper name) were beautiful from this distance. But that was illusion. Any city looks beautiful from a distance. But the very nature of a city makes promises it can't afford to keep. Up close, a city is messy and filled with problems – just like life.

  I didn't really want to kill Middleton. I wanted my money. All I could see in my head were those flashing lights shouting WINNER! And if Middleton was the winner, what did that make me? I thought about it for a long time, and then I thought about going back down to my machine and putting my money in. Spinning slots for another year or maybe more? With no guarantee that it would pay out again? I couldn't do it. No, I was committed. Couldn't back out if I wanted to.

  I went back to Middleton, and snapped my fingers along the underside of his nose. He came out of it slowly, and I remember thinking he either had a concussion or maybe a cracked skull.

  “Please,” he said. “I have a family.”

  “And my money,” I said. “Are you ready to make your wife a rich widow?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “Good. Are you ready to pay me the money?”

  He shook his head slowly again.

  “Here is the plan. You pay me, I go away. You get your head checked, get the bullet taken out of your shoulder. I go to some deserted beach in South America, someplace they don't have an extradition treaty.”

  This time he paused to think about it.

  “How much?” He said. I laughed. This was good. This wasn't robbery. This was a negotiation.

  “All of it,” I said.

  “Two million,” he said.

  “Is that all your life is worth to you?” I said. “I'll tell you what. You insult me again, and I'm going to shoot you in the head, right behind the ear. Little bullets like these bounce around in your skull. And then I'll get your wallet and go find your rich widow.”

  I let the threat hang in the air for a minute.

  “I want it all,” I said.

  “I won that money,” he said. “It was your machine, sure. You played it a lot?”

  “Quit stalling,” I said.

  “I'll give you four mil,” he said. “That's nearly a quarter of the money.”

  I cocked the revolver. I didn't need to because it was a double-action, but cocking it is a hell of a dramatic move. Middleton's eyes widened.

  “Half,” he said. “I'll give you half.”

  Hell of a deal. I took it. We spent the rest of the afternoon together – part of the time with him on the phone to his bank. Eight million in cash is heavy, too heavy for one man to carry. So we arranged nine bearer bonds to be sent to the penthouse. By the time the bank courier was there, I had Middleton up and dressed. We plugged the gunshot wound with a thick, small bath cloth and I bandaged his head with supplies from the hotel-issued first aid kit under the kitchenette sink.

  The courier checked Middleton's ID while I stood out of sight behind the penthouse door. When he closed the door, I took the bonds from him and examined them closely. Eight million dollars.

  “You really think you're going to get away with this?” Middleton's mouth was pulled down in a grimace. It wasn't pain—not the physical kind, anyway. I'd have frowned like hell if eight mil of my money was walking out the door, too.

  “I already have,” I said. “You got a nice life somewhere, and this way you get to keep it. The way I look at it, you got half of my money. You're getting off easy.”

  Middleton didn't say anything. He just stared at me with an intensity that built and built. I knew if I didn't get out of there soon, he'd make a jump for the gun. If I really wanted to kill him, that was my chance. I took the gun by the barrel and slugged Middleton with it again. But I was nice about it – I hit the other temple this time. He was out before he hit the floor, and that was the last I thought about the guy.

  I spent seven months in Brazil, keeping a low profile and renting local girls by the hour. It was a routine license check on the way out of Sao Paulo that got me. They ran me through the computer, and I didn't come up. Out came the handcuffs, and into custody I went. I don't feel bad about it. ID is harder and harder to fake, even when you have millions. But I had enough money for a good lawyer. I figured I would be okay. But something had gone wrong somewhere. I'd been in the can three days and no lawyer – not even a mention of one. Every day the cops would question me. It would start off easy and then get more and more tense. At the end of the first day, I had been sweating and trembling like a used-up racehorse. The next day, they'd been questioning me for an hour or so, with my hands locked to a metal ring in the center of a drab steel table in the middle of a drab, cramped interrogation room.

  That's when John Middleton came through the door. He had thinned down in the months that had passed. Before he had looked well-fed and happy, probably like any other middle class American citizen.

  Now he looked hungry.

  Middleton held out his hand to one of the officers in the room. The cop unsnapped his holster and handed his big 9-millimeter automatic to Middleton. Middleton reversed the gun and took it by the barrel.

  I could see it coming, but I couldn't move. I was locked down to the table, and I guess I knew it was payback. He swung, and stars exploded in my skull. The big bang. I could feel blood trickling down my face as my temple started to swell. From somewhere in another galaxy, Middleton said, “You stole my money.”

  END

  Thanks for taking the time to read this short story. If you enjoyed it, please leave a comment on the site where you got your copy. The story is free—the only price I ask is that you leave feedback. Thanks again, Dear Reader. If it weren't for you and people like you, my words would have no meaning at all.

  It's interesting. Of the first two short stories I decided to publ
ish independently, both deal with winning—and losing—large amounts of money. Maybe it's just an idle brain at work, but I've always wondered what I would do if I ever won big, either at a casino or in the lottery. I'm afraid I might be more like some of these characters than I'd like to admit.

  Thankfully, though, I've already won. I've got a great wife and a beautiful son. Everything else is just gravy.