Book Excerpt for The Wrong Bettor

The Wrong Bettor -- Extract

Richard Stooker

Cover graphic design by Drew at idrewdesign on Fiverr.com.

The right of Richard Stooker to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyrights and Patents Act 1988.

Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

The Wrong Bettor

The Central City Shopping Center in North St. Louis County took its name from the Central Hardware Store that originally occupied part of its space. The Central Hardware company was discarded from play during one of the great corporate shuffles many years ago and never picked up. The international super conglomerate card game continued on Wall Street, and new businesses moved into Central City.

I parked by a boarded-up storefront smeared with obscene graffiti. I went to an unmarked door, rang the buzzer and looked up at the tiny lens of the concealed closed-circuit TV. "I want some action," I said.

The door swung open. A hard face stared at me, then stepped aside. Even as a police detective I'd never been made. I stepped into Jake's Casino.

Central City shoppers could buy soup bones and strawberry astro-bread, play Total-Environment video games or swing to insipid torture-rock. They could also buy anything on the black market from a sack of wheat berries to a banned book, meet a pusher of illegal drugs, rent a hooker, drink after hours and place any kind of a bet. They could put money on the horses, pro sports, the numbers, or at the roulette and craps tables in Jake's.

Men and women with flat eyes and pasty, corpse-like complexions stood in clumps around the tables. In tattered books and tennis shoes stuffed with newspapers, they stepped lifelessly on the threadbare rugs scattered over the concrete floor, shuffling and pushing against each other as they put their chips down. Cigarette smoke hung thick in the air. Unshaded lightbulbs over each table glared through the haze.

A loanshark sat at the desk beside the cashier. If anyone runs out of money but wants to keep playing, he bankrolls them. They can take as much as they like. There is no hurry about repaying the capital, but they better not get overdue on the weekly vigorish. He is a businessman, not a charity. He must charge vig for the use of his money. If someone is able to pay it but unwilling, several muscle boys will put them in the hospital. If they are willing but unable, they may find themselves driving for a heist, fingering their employer for a shakedown, giving a piece of their business to an off-the-record partner or letting strangers into their wife or daughter's bedroom.

The broadshouldered pit boss wore a ratty brown knit hat on his head and a slouched, hung-down look on his face. I asked him, "Anybody here name of Darryl Flanigan?"

"Maybe. Who's looking for him?"

"Crain Dalton. I want to see him about a friend of his."

"Flanigan's over there." He pointed to a thin boy leaning over the craps table.

"Thanks," I said. As I headed for Flanigan, I noticed the pit boss disappear through a door marked 'Private.'

I stood behind Flanigan and watched him on the come-out. He hadn't washed his hair in a month. He shook, tossed. The dice rolled over the green felt, hit the far side and came up a one and a two.

"Craps," the operator said, yawning. He raked in the losers' chips and passed the dice to the woman on Flanigan's left. I tapped the boy on the shoulder and said, "I'd like to talk to you."

"Bang off," Flanigan said out of the corner of his mouth. "I've got to get some of my life back." He put a chip on the Pass space and collected his winnings without a smile when the thrower tossed an eleven.

"I want you to help me find Don Pennell. His father told me you're a friend of his."

"His old man hired you?"

"That's right. You're the only lead he could give me. Your mother's the one who told me you'd probably be here now."

Flanigan shrugged. "Let's go in the corner and talk. I been kind of worried about him myself."

I asked, "When was the last time you saw him?"

"Two weeks ago last night. Right here. He just hung around for a few hours. Then he said he was going over to his girlfriend's. Left here maybe about nine o'clock."

"Who's his girlfriend?"

"Lisa Drescher." He gave me her address and directions to her house. He said, "But if you go there, be careful. Her pimp doesn't like any strange men around who don't pay for her time. You heard me right. I don't know what Don sees in a tramp like that."

"What other friends does he hang out with?"

Flanigan said, "Everybody, really. Everybody he meets on the streets. He's got plenty of connections."

"And you've heard nothing at all about him in the last two weeks?"

"No. I thought he must be out of town or sick at home. But if he's laying up in his crib then his old man wouldn't of got you. So maybe he took off somewhere."

"That's been worth six hundred," I said, and pulled that amount out of my wallet. "If you hear anything else, let me know."

Flanigan fondled the three bills, turning them over in his hands. "If his luck's good, Don can make a fortune out of this on the craps table. He's a math brain. He knows all the odds. He can figure in his head while he plays, no matter how drunk or stoned or razzle-dazzled he is. He mostly plays craps here. He says he can count cards in blackjack, but this joint shaved the odds too much. His real game's Total, though. He can have those computers spinning all around him, all games, ringing up record scores, keeping track of everything even with all those lights flashing all around him, and alarms, and everything I don't understand. In craps, he's a wrong bettor. That means he always plays Don't Come and Don't Pass, betting against the thrower."

"I know," I said.

"I don't know what the equivalent is in those electronic games, but he has them all figured out too, to the last programmed decimal."

"Only the operators have the odds on their side, no matter how smart you play," I told him.