Lady Luck was back in my corner tonight and I hit several half-decent jackpots, ending the night with a gambling profit of forty bucks.
I was very careful to walk back to the Plaza on a well-lit and busy route.
The rest of the week passed in a similar fashion. I spent most of the days in my room but ventured out to the casinos for supper and slots after dark each evening.
On Sunday morning I checked out of the Plaza and moved over to Main Street Station for the final week of my holiday. I was still somewhat paranoid about Guenther Schenteck having another go at me, so I checked in as Harold Baxter and didn’t pay the deposit to activate my room phone. I wanted to remain as inconspicuous as possible.
All the scabs had now healed so I no longer had to avoid the public during daylight hours. I made sure to wear my casino hat whenever I went anywhere. Not only did it partially hide some of my lingering facial bruises but, when pulled down the hat also made it more difficult for anyone to recognize me.
Although I had kept a very low profile during the past week, getting mugged had seriously weakened my confidence. Before that incident, I had felt that I was capable of looking after myself in any situation.
Now I knew better.
CHAPTER 40 (Lifestyle Change)
Joyce Ranford counted out her money when she returned to her small apartment.
The cocaine high had worn off and sombre thoughts began to trouble her.
Joyce had come within a whisker tonight of crossing a troublesome line. She had been willing to administer a knock-out drug to Scott Baxter and then rob him while Willy planted illicit drugs in Scott’s room.
Those were major crimes.
Joyce’s record was clean. She had never been arrested for prostitution or for being in possession of cocaine.
Despite that streak of good fortune, she was still perpetually broke because of her drug habit. People she knew in town who gambled regularly were constantly short of money because of their problem. Joyce’s addiction of choice had been cocaine.
How had she allowed her life to spiral downward into the pit she now found herself mired in?
It was a miracle that Scott had eluded Joyce’s trap. Lady Luck had certainly been partnering up with that boring lawyer tonight.
As Joyce mulled over that last thought, she suddenly looked at things from the opposite spectrum. It was just as likely that Lady Luck had protected both of them tonight.
The more she thought about that, the more ashamed Joyce became about the current state of her life.
She went in the bathroom and stared at her image for the longest time.
Instead of seeing a beautiful young woman peering back at her, Joyce saw the inner ugliness that had permeated her soul ever since she had been introduced to cocaine by one of her customers.
Up until then Joyce had worked for a legitimate escort service, accompanying lonely male visitors to Las Vegas in the evenings for a fee.
The tips from the clients had enabled Joyce to afford an upscale apartment and still put aside money for the future.
That all changed with the introduction of cocaine into the mix just one year earlier.
With alarming speed, Joyce’s savings were depleted and she was terminated at the escort service.
She was soon forced to give up her lovely apartment and move into much cheaper accommodation.
At the same time Joyce began to freelance the escort work. Her cocaine habit grew as did her increasingly desperate need for money.
Nine months ago Joyce had for the very first time agreed to have sex with a client for money.
Since her contacts were limited, clients were hard to come by and Joyce was fortunate to find even a couple of “dates” in any given month. She hadn’t yet sunk to the level of actively soliciting tricks in bars. So far she had restricted her clientele to wealthy men hitting Las Vegas for a brief exciting break from their lives or their wives.
She now resided in a cheap but tiny apartment and her vehicle had been repossessed by the leasing company.
Joyce hated the person in the mirror.
Tonight she had almost hit rock bottom.
It was time for a lifestyle change.
The next morning Joyce took inventory.
She had $2,000 in cash that she had earned for her work stalking Scott Baxter.
Joyce also had a small supply of cocaine that might fetch a few hundred bucks from a guy who was a heavy user and lived on the second floor. Randy had a job and would probably appreciate the opportunity to purchase some cocaine at a discount.
She also had two “dates” tentatively lined up for later in the month. Both men were previous clients who were coming to Vegas and had made arrangements to have Joyce escort them while they were here.
Bill was scheduled to arrive on Monday and had booked Joyce for that evening plus the ensuing two nights.
Albert would hit Vegas on the 23rd for the weekend and he also had booked Joyce for both Friday and Saturday nights.
The money she would earn from those two clients would provide Joyce with a “get out of Las Vegas” fund. This town was slowly killing her.
Never in a million years had she thought when she moved to Vegas five years earlier that in such a short time she’d be a drug addict on the game.
Would it even be possible for Joyce to quit the drugs cold turkey? She certainly couldn’t afford to go to a rehab clinic. In any event, girls she knew who had gone the rehab route invariably fell off the wagon shortly after being released and began using again.
CHAPTER 41 (The Final Week)
I liked a lot of the slot machines at Main Street Station and found some Caveman Keno slots in a tiny alcove which enabled me to gamble quietly without people continually walking past me.
The mugging had completely changed my frame of mind. Instead of savoring the positive aspects that I was on vacation and avoiding the worst of the Canadian winter, I was overly cautious and anxious to get back home to the safety of my small home town.
I was scheduled to fly home a week from today.
Even the slots were becoming a bit tiresome. Lady Luck seemed to be taking a long coffee break because my luck over the past few days had been missing in action.
It amazed me how quickly the one-armed bandits could suck back my winnings.
On the morning prior to my Monday afternoon mugging, I had been up slightly more than $400 for the entire trip.
Now on Sunday evening I had given back more than half of those winnings.
I was also drinking a bit more than I liked, although the beer and spiked coffees helped keep my pain at tolerable levels and also took my mind off the humiliation of being beaten up by a complete stranger. It bothered me that I hadn’t even managed to get in one counterpunch.
My abdomen area was still heavily bruised and looked like a colorful quilt with yellows, purples and reds intermingled over the entire area.
My face wasn’t in quite as bad shape. The bruises had healed more quickly and were much less noticeable than they were even two days ago. The swelling had completely vanished.
My eyeglasses had gotten slightly bent when they flew off my face and were now somewhat loose. I tried unsuccessfully to repair them. I was overdue to see an optometrist anyway so obtaining a new set of glasses would be one of my first priorities once I was back in Belleville.
On Tuesday the 27th I woke up and felt stir-crazy. I had spent every minute inside the Main Street Station ever since checking in on Sunday.
Despite my banged-up face, I went to the main city bus terminal right after breakfast and purchased a day pass for The Deuce, a series of double-decker buses which ran from downtown all the way south to Mandalay Bay.
Today I would hop on and off the buses and check out some of the huge Strip hotels.
I found a window seat on the upper level and waited for the bus to pull away from the terminal.
The north end of the Strip looked rather forlorn. Some of the old historic hotels like the Riviera w
ere gone and there was a huge unfinished blue hotel on the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard.
When the bus approached Caesar’s Palace, I hopped off and took the moving walkway into the hotel.
The Strip hotels were monuments to wealth and luxury.
For the remainder of the day I walked through a dozen of the biggest complexes and was astounded at the opulence displayed in each of them.
My new-found fear rose up when I realized after strolling through the fabulous Venetian that dusk was settling in on Las Vegas.
I rushed to the nearest bus stop but had to wait at least ten minutes for the next bus to arrive.
The traffic was heavy and the crowded bus seemed to stop at every block. As a result night had fallen by the time I stepped off the bus beside The D Las Vegas, formerly Fitzgerald’s.
I was annoyed at myself for being scared to be out at night. That was no way to live.
I waited in line at Magnolia’s in the Four Queens and had a full supper there washed down with two huge mugs of Old Town Brown dark ale.
The booze seemed to alleviate my anxiety so I wandered up and down the Fremont Street Experience watching the sidewalk artisans and listening to a couple of free outdoor bands.
In order to avoid quiet areas, I returned to my hotel by walking through Binion’s to the next street. I only had to cross one intersection in order to enter the California. At that point there was an overhead covered walkway leading over Main Street to my hotel.
As luck would have it, the light turned red just as I made it to the intersection by the closed-up Las Vegas Club.
A man suddenly emerged from behind a pillar. My heart pounded wondering if Schenteck had sent another thug to finish the job.
I turned to confront the potential assailant. Scott Baxter wasn’t going to get surprised this time around.
Instead of attacking me, the scruffy chap said, “Could you spare a bit of change, sir? I haven’t eaten anything today.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, took out my wallet and extracted a five dollar bill which I handed to the man while I remained vigilant in case he whipped out a knife.
He thanked me profusely and darted back into the shadows.
I quickly crossed the street and was finally in total safety inside the California casino. As a change of pace, I played the slots there for an hour. My luck continued to be the pits and I lost $40 in that short time before returning to my room.
The rest of the week dragged. I couldn’t hit a slot jackpot for the life of me and because of that the slots lost most of their appeal.
I had my final session on the slots on Saturday evening but with the same sad results.
I used a pay phone to call the airline. My flight would leave tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.
When I got back to my room at nine o’clock, I was only up $33 on the trip. Despite my recent spate of bad luck, it was a real accomplishment to have spent a month in Las Vegas and to still be going home with any gambling profit.
I was greatly looking forward to getting back to Canada.
CHAPTER 42 (The Final Tricks)
Joyce knocked on her neighbor’s door on Sunday evening when she noticed that his car was now parked in his spot. Randy had been out all day.
She explained to Randy that she was going to try to quit her cocaine habit and wanted to unload her remaining stash before she was tempted to indulge.
As Joyce had expected, Randy was happy to take the drugs off her hand at a discount. Fortunately for her, Randy had the cash and as she walked back to her own apartment, Joyce was suddenly $500 richer.
By the time she went to bed a few hours later, Joyce was feeling the pangs of withdrawal and almost went back to Randy’s to buy back her cocaine.
Another stare-down at her image in the mirror convinced Joyce to persist with her original goal. No one ever said that it was easy to quit.
By Monday morning Joyce was edgy almost to the point of having the shakes. Her client Bill was arriving today and Joyce had already arranged to meet him at his hotel on the Strip at six o’clock.
Somehow she managed to make it through the day without backsliding and knocked on the door of Bill’s room precisely as six.
The evening was tolerable. Joyce joined Bill for dinner in a fancy restaurant and the wine helped get her mind off scoring a fix.
Bill wanted to play blackjack after dinner so Joyce accompanied him to the table. Bill purchased $5,000 of black hundred dollar chips and handed Joyce $500 in green twenty-five dollar chips with the comment that she could keep her own winnings.
The minimum bet at the table was $25 so Joyce played just one chip at a time while Bill started off betting two or three black chips on each hand.
Bill was doing quite well to start with and soon had a growing pile of black chips in front of him.
Joyce had learned how to play the game from some of her previous clients when she was affiliated with a legitimate escort service. It was common for a wealthy gentleman to want a beautiful woman by his side while he played. Some guys preferred that their “date” stand behind them and watch. Others permitted the escort to sit beside them and gamble.
The entire table was hot and Joyce soon realized that she had tripled her money.
Bill was drinking bourbon while Joyce stuck with the white wine.
By eleven o’clock the cards began getting cold. Joyce lost three hands in a row and decided to stop playing.
She stood behind Bill but his large pile of chips was rapidly shrinking. At one time Bill seemed to have about $15,000 of chips in front of him but now Joyce estimated that less than one hundred chips remained.
As so often happened with out-of-town players, the more they drank, the more poorly they played. It was evident to Joyce that Bill was beginning to make some poor choices.
“Bill honey, let’s take a break. The cards have gone cold and my feet are getting sore.”
Fortunately Bill took her advice, lost one final hand and then scooped up his remaining chips and walked with Joyce to the cashier’s wicket.
He had made a profit of $2,500 and Joyce cashed in at $1,200, every cent of which was pure gravy.
Bill wanted to go back to the room which was fine with Joyce. Bill was quite intoxicated and Joyce fully expected him to pass out shortly after they got inside his suite.
Their arrangement had been that Joyce would be paid $200 for each hour that she was with Bill, with a minimum time of five hours guaranteed each of the two days.
Bill tried to get amorous shortly after they got into the room but he had overindulged and soon apologized to Joyce. She assured him that she had really enjoyed the evening. He paid her for six hours and she kissed him goodnight and arranged to return to the hotel the next day at six o’clock.
Bill handed her $50 for taxi fare as she left the room.
When Joyce finally crawled into her own bed, she craved a line of cocaine but fortunately had none in her apartment. She kept reminding herself that the first week was the toughest and that she had been off the coke for two full days already.
Tuesday morning was the pits. Joyce was absolutely craving a fix and it took every ounce of her willpower to avoid contacting Randy or her supplier. She had been clean for fifty-seven hours now and kept reminding herself that maintaining her resolve would be beneficial in the long run.
She was thankful that Bill was in town because it provided her with focus to get through the rest of the day.
This time when she arrived, Bill wanted to have sex before they went out. He joked that he wasn’t about to make the same mistake he had made yesterday.
Afterwards Joyce showered first and then waited for Bill to do the same.
Over dinner Bill wanted to talk about last night on the blackjack table. Joyce explained that she had dragged Bill away from the table once it was apparent that the cards had gone cold and the booze had begun to cause Bill to make some playing errors.
“At one point you were up by about $10,000, Bill. You were
fortunate to walk away with a profit of $2,500. Alcohol and blackjack are not good matches for anyone except the casino.”
“Thank you for what you did, Cindy. I’m glad that you were looking after me.”
Cindy was the name Joyce used on her website and with most of her clients. It was too dangerous to let any of the men know her real name.
Tonight Bill preferred to linger over dinner and avoid the table games.
When they finally left the restaurant at ten o’clock, Bill wanted to return to his room for an encore.
Afterwards he began talking about his family and his business. This detour into highly personal matters made Joyce uncomfortable but she was being paid to listen.
At midnight Bill paid her another $1,200 plus a $200 tip and she left.
Joyce’s craving for a line of cocaine was still heavy but not powerful enough to drive her off the wagon. She had now reached the milestone of three full days without a hit.
Her final client, Albert arrived on Friday the 23rd and Joyce spent the entire weekend with him. She had entertained Albert twice in the past and he insisted on overnighters. Joyce was fine with that because it meant that she was being well paid even when she was sleeping.
In all she spent forty hours with Albert who was a very wealthy securities trader from New York City. Her fee was a very welcome $8,000 for that time and Albert gave her a $2,000 tip when she finally kissed him goodbye at ten o’clock on Sunday morning. Albert’s private jet was whisking him back to New York that afternoon.
As Joyce stepped out of the taxicab at her apartment building, she felt that there were two major events to celebrate.
For one thing, she had now completed her first full week of drug-free life. In fact she had been clean for eight days and eleven hours.
The other positive was that she had entertained her final trick.
Her life as a cocaine-addicted hooker was now terminated.
Lady Luck Loves Lawyers Page 11