Robert Walker - Extreme Instinct

It wasn't luck that befell any hapless one. This regardless of the housewife who steps into a 7-Eleven, purchases a ticket, and wins the lottery. There was no luck involved, only random chance. Jessica believed luck to be a conscious lifestyle, a choice.

She finished her unpacking and checked the time: six-forty. Still a good hour remaining before the registration and reception downstairs. She returned to the window and stared out beyond the Strip to the gorgeous, fire-red mountains in the distance.

On the plane and on their way in from the airport, she and J. T. had seen how the city sprawled and crept like an octopus from this central crown, how an entire world of schools, hospitals, malls, neighborhoods, housing developments, and suburban areas now filtering into neighboring valleys and snuggling amid the outlying mountain ranges had grown up around Bugsy Segal's Flamingo Club. Here, as in any city in the United States, there were buildings given over to governmental affairs and offices, politicians, judges, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and "normal" people leading "straight" lives but whose jobs, while on the surface independent of both the casino trade and the tourism industry, were inextricably entwined with these trades. For underlying every brick of public improvement, every referendum, every move made, if you were a Vegas homeowner, franchise owner, doughnut salesman, or car mechanic, gambling was not only in your face, it also represented the elixir-as important as water-that kept this town alive amid a desert. Gambling purchased and brought in more electrical power and water than any city in the United States, and here, in the midst of one of the driest deserts on earth, every man, woman, and child had more water to waste on their lawns, cars, and themselves than any other place on the planet-all due to the mighty dollar and the thing that brought it here, greed and a healthy dislike for laws that attempted to legislate against human nature and addiction.

Jessica's mind's eye took in the cityscape, the shapes and the florid lights, and it said to her, "This is a city created on the premise that if you are artful and a dodger, if you can play exquisitely well on the weaknesses of the human animal, then you can become rich beyond all reason, and if you can convince those you are fleecing that they are having a good time in the bargain, then all the better. It is a city where the hotelier puts you up for a price, allows you to gamble within his walls, to shovel over any funds you'd like for the privilege, feeds you at a price then and there, and finally offers you a grand Broadway-style musical or revue, again for a hefty sum, all under one roof. A thing of beauty for those in control, and the house never loses, for even when it might lose, like some pagan god, it wins on…"

In fact, there was nothing in Vegas that didn't carry a, price tag, but millions of Americans a year were convinced that anything in Vegas was worth its price, including the fun of losing.

Cabbies depended on the good graces of those whom they carted between gaming tables and big-ticket shows. And gambling table people depended equally on tips. No one working in Vegas at such jobs was making a killing; most were barely eking out a living, in fact. Neither showgirls nor hotel clerks, hairdressers nor prostitutes, were paid well. It was a right-to-work state-no unions; those who lived and worked in Vegas did so at the mercy of employers, and there was always someone waiting in the wings, anxious for your job.

Jessica kicked away her shoes. She continued to undress, trying to get the dust of this evolving city off of her, and trying to get its problems out of her head. But even as she tried, her concerns beat an anthem in her brain.

Beneath the surface of the blinding neon rivers over which she again looked, of light-fed mosaics and facades, she saw the poverty-stricken and the homeless out there, while inside this hotel everyone else fed the slots. This fantasy-world denial of so much misery even beneath the flood of light and golden crowns, silver columns, rainbow arches, pink pinnacles, and onyx pyramids simply bothered Jessica to no end.

And it was to no end that she worried about such matters. Nothing short of a new species of Homo erectus would ever change people, and any attempt to legislate smoking, drinking, or gambling or drugs-what people loved-was doomed to failure, even in the face of facts such as those telling people about the connection between heart disease and cigarettes, about black lung, or that more than half of all vehicular fatalities came about by drugs or drinking and driving. Gambling, even if it was with their children's lives at stake, in one form or another, existed in every state, in every household, in every life. People gambled with the rent money in D.C., with their brains on drugs in Chicago, with the last vestige of clothing on their backs in Seattle.

The U.S. government couldn't do a damn thing about such people, and had in fact sanctioned preying on the weak, the deluded, and the poor with its own brand of gambling. State governments had long since bought into lotteries to raise revenues, doing exactly what Bugsy Segal and every gangster since him had done, preying on weakness. What man or government could stand in the way of progress? And who or what could stem the tide of human ignorance, with its underlying cousin, avarice, and sister, poverty, and brother, powerlessness?

Like pornography, it all fell under that umbrella catch-phrase that Jessica saw as a ridiculous oxymoron, adult entertainment. Yet here was an entire, brazen city dependent on all of this. If it existed anywhere else in the world, Americans would scream out for an air strike against the immorality of it all. But here it was king, and it was proud; the most famous monument to gambling, greed, and so-called adult entertainment ever known to man, sprawled across the desert landscape like some giant Babylonian whore.

Maybe she was getting too moralistic in her old age, she gibed herself. Maybe J. T. was right; maybe she should lighten up, if only she could.

It still seemed an odd place for a scientific gathering of the minds, with or without her moralizing. Certainly it was the last place on earth she would have placed a convention of her peers, but the Forensic Science Association of America wasn't always gifted with precognition or simple foresight, and like any cross section of America, it was not without its share of gamblers, drinkers, druggies, and womanizers.

She now located and unlocked the dry bar and sampled a wee bottle of wine, which she sipped from a plastic cup. She then returned to the window again, standing there in her bra, her alone time fleeting. She again located her best evening gown, which she intended to wear tonight at the reception, and upset with the fold lines still clinging to it, she took it into the bathroom and hung it on the door. A hot shower would do both her and the dress some good, she reasoned. Half undressed for her shower, she was startled by her ringing telephone.

Jim, she wondered, hoped, her heart leaping.

Who else knows I'm here? she silently asked on the second ring, making her way toward the phone. Or was it J. T. already calling her to go downstairs? She'd asked for a little time, some privacy. On the third ring, she lifted the receiver.

"Yes?"

"Is… is'sis Doc-tor… Doctor Jess-i-ca Cccor-Coran?"

"Yes, it is. Can I help you?" She didn't know the strident, panting female voice on the other end. The caller sounded tearful, as if she must choke out every word.

"Doctor… I… I'm suppose' to tell you… tell you.." The woman sounded as if she were on something, every word labored.

"Yes?" Damn it, girl, Jessica thought, spit it out.

"… my name."

"Please do." Was she dealing with a child?

"It's… it's… C–Chris…"