Christopher Moore - Coyote Blue

"Oh," Coyote said. "Can you fix this machine? When I give it the cheating number it just beeps."

Minty Fresh looked at the cash machine, which was still blinking the message INSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH, SPANISH, OR JAPANESE. CHOOSE ONE. "You'll need to choose a language, sir." He reached down and pushed the English button. "It should be fine now."

Coyote inserted a card and punched two numbers on the keyboard, then looked at Minty. "This is my secret number."

"Yes," Minty said. "If you need anything at all, please ask for me personally." He turned and walked away.

Coyote finished punching the PIN number. When the machine prompted him for an amount he punched in $9999.99, the maximum allowed by the six-figure field. The machine whirred and spit five hundred dollars into the tray, then flashed a message saying that this was the card's transaction limit. Coyote tried the card again and got another five hundred. The third time the machine refused the transaction so Coyote tried another card. After running all of Sam's cards to their limit he walked away from the machine with twenty thousand dollars in cash.

Coyote went to the roulette table and held the four-inch brick of twenties out to the croupier, a slight Oriental woman in a red-and-purple silk doublet with a name badge that read, Lady Lihn . The croupier said, "On the table." She gestured for Coyote to put the money down. She nodded to a pit boss. "Watch count, please," she said mechanically. The pit boss, a sharp-faced, slick-haired Italian man wearing a polyester suit and a ten-thousand-dollar Rolex, moved to her side and watched as she counted the bills out on the table.

"Changing twenty thousand," Lady Lihn said. "How would you like this, sir?"

"Red ones," Coyote said. The pit boss raised an eyebrow and smirked. Lady Lihn looked irritated.

"Red is five dollar. No room on table."

The pit boss addressed Coyote. "Perhaps you'd like two hundred in fives and the rest in hundreds, sir."

"What color are the hundreds?" Coyote said.

"Black," Lady Lihn said.

"Yellows," Coyote said.

"Yellows are two dollars."

"You pick," Coyote said.

Lady Lihn counted out racks of chips and pushed them in front of Coyote. The pit boss nodded to a cocktail waitress, then to the stack of chips in front of Coyote, which the cocktail waitress interpreted as "Take the order." The cocktail waitress would bring strong drinks until Coyote started to get drunk, then she would bring watered drinks until he looked tired, when she would offer coffee and disappear until the caffeine kicked in.

"Can I bring you something to drink?"

Coyote turned to the cocktail waitress and stared into her cleavage. "Yes," he said.

The waitress held a pen ready over a cocktail napkin. "What can I bring you?"

Coyote shot a glance to a woman at the table who was drinking a mai tai, resplendent with paper parasols and sword-skewered tropical fruit. He grabbed the woman's drink and downed half of it, nearly taking his eye out with the plastic broadsword. "One of these," Coyote said. He replaced the drink in front of the woman, who didn't seem to notice that it had been missing. She'd been riding the alcohol-and-caffeine roller coaster for hours and was absorbed in winning back her children's college fund.

"Bets down," Lady Lihn said. Coyote put a single red chip on black and the ball was dropped. Coyote watched the ball race around the outside of the wheel. When it slowed and dropped to the numbers he reached for his bet.

"No touch bet," Lady Lihn snapped. In an instant the pit boss, the cocktail waitress, and two security jesters in steel-toed elf shoes were at Coyote's side. The trickster pulled his hand back. It will be hard to trick these people , Coyote thought. They talk like wolves, all twitches and gestures and smells.

The ball dropped into a red slot and Lady Lihn placed another red chip next to Coyote's. "I win, I win, I win," Coyote chanted. He did a skipping dance around the table and sang a victory song.

Above the casino, in a mirrored dome, a video camera picked up Coyote's dancing image and sent it to a deck of monitors where three men watched and, in turn, watched each other watch. One pressed a button and picked up a telephone. "M.F.," he said. "This is God. Customer service on table fifty-nine. The Indian you were talking to a few minutes ago. Watch him."

"I'm on it," Minty Fresh said. He turned to the girl who was working behind the computer. "God wants me on the floor."

The girl nodded. As Minty walked by her she sang softly, "He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you're awake…."

Minty Fresh smiled. He really didn't mind being watched. Because of his size, people had always watched him. He had never blended into any background, never entered a room unnoticed, never been able to sneak up on someone. Attracting attention was as natural to him as being. And for every original-thinking dolt who asked him how the weather was up there, there was a woman who wanted to research the wives' tale of proportional hand-foot-penis size. (A tale, Minty thought, dreamed up by the unsatisfied wives of small-footed men.)

Minty spotted the Indian at the roulette table. The two security jesters had moved off a few feet but were still watching, as was the pit boss. When Minty came to the table they nodded in acknowledgment and moved off. The croupier looked at Minty and immediately looked back to the bets on the table. Minty Fresh put her on edge. It wasn't his size that rattled her, but the fact that no one was exactly sure what his job was, only that when there was a problem, he was there. He handled things.

Lady Lihn dropped the ball into the wheel. It raced, then rattled into a slot, and she raked all the bets off the table. Coyote cursed and let out a howl. The woman playing next to him staggered back and wandered away, carrying visions of her children wearing paper hats and saying, "I was going to go to college, but my mother went to Vegas instead. Would you like fries with that?"

Coyote looked at Minty Fresh. "She was bad luck. I lost half of my chips because of her."

"Perhaps you should move to a different table," Minty said. "We can open a private table just for you."

Coyote grinned at Minty. "You think you have a table where you can trick me?"

"No, sir," Minty said, a little embarrassed. "We don't wish to trick you."

"There's nothing wrong with tricking people. They pay you to be tricked."

"We like to think of it as entertainment."

Coyote laughed. "Like movie stars and magicians? Tricksters. People want to be tricked. But you know that, don't you?" He picked up his chips and walked to a crap table.

Minty thought for a moment before following the Indian. He prided himself on being able to handle any situation with complete calm, but he found dealing with this Indian made him nervous, and a little afraid. But of what? Something in the eyes. He moved in behind Coyote, who was throwing chips on the crap table.

"You can't bet the numbers until the point has been made, sir," said the stickman, a thin, balding man in his forties. He pushed Coyote's chips back across the table. The stickman looked over Coyote's head and nodded to Minty Fresh before pushing the dice to the shooter. "Place your bets," he said, and the dealers working at either end of the table checked the bets on the felt. "New shooter coming out," the stickman said.

A blond woman in a business suit and perfect newswoman makeup picked up the dice and blew on them. "Come on, seven," she said. "Baby needs new shoes."

Coyote twisted his neck to look at Minty Fresh. "Does talking to them work?"

Minty nodded to the table as the woman let fly with the dice, rolling a two.

"Snake eyes!" the croupier said.

"Lizard dick!" Coyote shouted back.