Майкл Бретт - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 36, No. 6, June, 1975

Anyway, things kept getting worse between us and finally she went off to see her sister in Buffalo for a few weeks. Of course, I knew she was going to do that. You live with a woman for ten years and you get to know her habits and what will set her off and what will make her do certain things. So it didn’t exactly come as a surprise to me when she went off to Buffalo.

I planned it that way, in fact.

This time I had my plan completely worked out. I withdrew the thousand dollar winnings from the bank and caught the first available flight to Puerto Rico. I chose it over Las Vegas because the fare was less and it would leave me with more gambling money.

I called Martha and told her where I was going and that I’d be back in a week. She said, “Good luck, Warren. Have a good time.” Frankly I was kind of surprised that she didn’t put up a fuss.

I rented a car at the San Juan Airport, checked into a good hotel and that evening those guys down there nearly wiped me out. Everything I touched went sour. I bet right and I couldn’t get off more than two or three rolls before I sevened out. So I went against the dice and some bum got hot and I didn’t have enough sense to get off his roll.

By twelve o’clock there was a sickness like a rock in my stomach. I went back to my room, shaved, showered, changed my clothes and returned to the gambling room, and this time I tried playing it carefully, betting a dollar or two, no more. When the casino closed I had recouped five hundred dollars.

The next night was different. The dice could do no wrong and as I kept winning, I kept increasing the size of my bets. At one-thirty I left the gambling tables, went back to my room again and realized that I had won eleven thousand dollars. With a bankroll I knew that I had a chance to win the big money. So I returned to the dice tables and in an hour I had lost over a thousand dollars.

There’s a theory gamblers have that win or lose it’s all the same, just as long as you’re playing. It doesn’t apply to me. When I lose it bugs me and when I win I feel great. And I had the certain feeling that my luck had run out here.

The next morning I was on a plane back to New York. I went straight to my apartment and found Martha and Paul Varig. They were both sitting in the living room having coffee when I came in and I guess I surprised them as much as they surprised me by being there.

Martha seemed happy to see me. She told me why her visit to her sister had been cut short. Her brother-in-law, a traveling salesman, had to make a trip to the west coast, and her sister was going along with him, sort of making it a business and pleasure trip. And since Martha didn’t want to stay in the apartment by herself she had decided to come home.

Varig had come to see me because he was going back to Las Vegas and he wanted to know if I wanted to go with him. He jokingly explained that the fix had been in on a few college basketball games, he was suspected of it and that the district attorney and certain other officials had made things uncomfortable for him around the metropolitan area. He was off to Las Vegas where the heat would be off.

I didn’t tell Martha how much I’d won in Puerto Rico, but when I handed her a thousand dollars and told her to spend it on herself, her eyes lit up. I made one condition, though. I wanted to make this trip to Las Vegas without her. She agreed. I guess the thousand dollars helped her get over her disappointment.

On the plane, after Varig and I had a few drinks, he told me that he’d made a bundle on the basketball games. The fix had been in and he’d arranged it, but he wasn’t worried about it. Nobody had enough guts to testify against him, he said.

“The trick is, Warren, you got to bet on the sure thing. That’s the only way you can win.”

I had heard this statement before. Walk around any racetrack listening to the comments after a race. Listen to the boys who speculate on the stock market. Listen to the winners, listen to the losers.

“When you bet on a sure thing, you win.” The statement was elemental, naive and obvious. Frankly, I was a little surprised that I heard it from Paul Varig, but on second thought I could see where a professional gambler might gear his pattern of play to this philosophy as a matter of survival.

By the time we got to Las Vegas I had forgotten all about it. All I wanted was a whack at the dice tables and a good run of luck. That’s asking a lot and I knew it.

There was a vast difference in the way Varig and I gambled. I never left the tables, while Varig spent most of his time in the lounge, or sunning himself at the pool. When he did play it was heavily and for short periods. I observed him standing around a table making mental bets for an hour before he placed his first real bet.

He was a cautious man, I thought, as cautious as a gambler could be and still manage to play.

That first day we arrived in Las Vegas at four p.m. By midnight I was ahead twenty thousand dollars. It was all systems go. I made the numbers the easy way and the hard way. When it runs that way all the percentages go out the window. On a hunch I hit three twelves on three consecutive rolls.

Varig came over and we went to the lounge for coffee and a sandwich. I hadn’t eaten anything since the meal on the plane.

Varig regarded the huge stack of chips I had piled in the center of the table. “If you’re smart, you’ll cash those in, go to sleep and check out first thing in the morning,” he said.

“There’s a chance I can double this.”

He laughed. “You’ve got the fever, Warren. Maybe you can double it. But twenty will get you fifty that if you stick around you’ll give it all back.”

“You’re right,” I said, and I quit for the night. He was really a nice guy.

In the morning there was a line at the checkout desk. I waited in the gambling room and grabbed off a little action. In ten minutes play I knew that checking out of the hotel this morning would be a mistake. Twice I sevened out and miraculously the dice rolled off the seven. I was betting ten dollars.

Varig came over. “I thought you’d be on the plane by now,” he said.

“There’s another one this afternoon,” I told him.

“Go on, Warren, make a run for it. You’re a winner,” he said.

My turn to roll the dice came around. I picked them up and said, “I want to bet twenty thousand.”

A curious look appeared on Varig’s face. “You’re crazy, pal.”

There was a small consultation between the pit bosses and one of them said, “All right, Warren.” I had a bet.

I caught a seven on the first roll. I had forty thousand dollars. I bet ten dollars on the next roll. My point was eight. I didn’t make it.

I had forty thousand dollars.

“You can still make the plane,” said Varig.

I didn’t answer him.

“Watching you lose it will be too painful,” Varig said. “I’m going to get some sun at the pool.”

When I saw him three hours later, I had lost it all.

We sat in the coffee shop. I asked him if he could lend me some money, maybe a thousand dollars.

“Forget it,” he snorted.

“My luck’s going to change. I know you must have heard a thousand guys say the same thing. But I can feel it.”

He thought about it a long time. “Well,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of things happen around a gambling table. I’ve even seen guys make a comeback. One thing I know for sure. You’re going to need more than a thousand if you want to regain a forty thousand dollar loss. The way I figure it you’ll need about ten grand.”

Nobody was going to give me ten grand. I said, “A thousand is all I need.” That sounded like a much more realistic possibility.

He shook his head. “A bad run and you’re out of action. You’ll lose it. Ten grand is what you need, Warren.”