Joyce next had to decide where to live.
CHAPTER 43 (Bye-Bye Vegas)
The room clock buzzed at five o’clock early on Sunday morning, the 4th of March.
I quickly showered, dressed in my suit and packed the rest of my clothes.
I ate breakfast in the hotel and then caught a shuttle to the airport.
Although my flight didn’t depart until ten o’clock, I was so anxious to get out of Las Vegas that I felt compelled to arrive at the airport very early.
The shuttle made several stops at other hotels before we reached the airport.
I carried my sports bag into the terminal and printed off my boarding pass at one of the self-serve machines.
There was a lengthy line-up to get through security but it moved along relatively quickly.
I found my departure gate and sat in the front row of a completely empty area. I was obviously the first passenger to check in for this flight.
My thoughts drifted to Steve and Maria Carling. Steve’s lack of business acumen had almost ruined their lives. Presumably he wouldn’t be so trusting in the future. Getting paid up front or as a job progressed was a basic requirement of a successful venture of any sort. Steve could learn a lot from the legal profession.
I’d always been quite proactive in making sure that money was available to pay my legal bills. Of course with the real estate end of my practice, the money was always available. I could only recall two instances during my career where a client had stiffed me on a real estate deal. In the first case, the client had shown up on the date of closing slightly short of the money I needed. I knew the client’s brother quite well so closed the purchase anyway with his promise to pay me the following week but I never saw that six hundred bucks.
The second situation was truly bizarre. My purchaser client never showed with his money on the day prior to closing. When I managed to reach him late in the day, he made some excuse and promised to bring the funds in the next morning.
He was again a no-show and when I finally contacted him the next day he said that he was getting the money from his uncle. I never heard from the fellow again but a few days after the scheduled closing date, I received a call from the seller’s lawyer. My client had moved into the home with his wife. I was shocked.
I obtained the wife’s work telephone number and reached her. Her husband had told her that the deal had closed. It turned out that he had no uncle and his whole story was a fabrication. The wife was horrified to learn that the house wasn’t hers.
The seller turned out to be a kindly older lady and she permitted the wife to reside in the house for another week so that she could find an apartment.
Losing my legal fee on those two situations was somewhat understandable. Both were bizarre aberrations from the norm.
Steve’s encounter with Guenther Schenteck was something completely different. The customer had deep pockets and could easily have paid for Steve’s work as the job progressed. Steve had been foolish in so many ways and it almost cost him his business and his home.
I wondered if Schenteck actually had been responsible for my close encounter with Ellen as well as hiring the thug to beat me up. I’d never be able to prove it but at least there were lessons that I’d now learned the hard way.
Hopefully Steve had learned his lesson as well.
I was glad that I was bidding bye-bye to Las Vegas. It had not been kind to me.
CHAPTER 44 (Unexpected Encounter)
After her time with Albert had finished, Joyce had no more income to sustain her.
She tried to decide on a suitable place to live and finally settled on Omaha, Nebraska. It was her home state and the city was reasonably large but nothing like Las Vegas.
She couldn’t bring herself to ride a bus all the way there so Joyce checked out air fares. There was nothing available at a decent price until Sunday, March 4th. Joyce booked the flight.
Over the next ten days Joyce took down her website, paid off her bills and endured the entire period without succumbing to the temptation of getting high.
She managed to sell her furniture and most of her expensive clothes and that put some more welcome cash into her escape fund.
Joyce also gave notice at her apartment effective March 3rd. She spent that final night in Las Vegas at a motel near the airport and took a taxi to McCarran International Airport early on Sunday, the 4th.
She obtained her boarding pass and checked her luggage. Then she was passed through the security checkpoint and continued on to her gate area.
The overhead board indicated that her flight was going to be an hour late departing which was irritating.
She was about to take a seat when she spotted Scott Baxter sitting alone at the next gate.
Her first instinct was to hide from him but her curiosity got the better of her.
Joyce really wanted to talk to Scott.
…
I was daydreaming when suddenly a woman’s voice broke into my reverie.
“I do believe that you owe me an explanation for bailing out on me, Scott Baxter.”
I looked up in surprise to see a lovely raven-haired woman sitting beside me. For a moment I was puzzled until I realized that it was Ellen.
“Hello Ellen. Please sit down. I think I’ll just put my running off from you down to having consumed too much alcohol.”
“I’d rather be told the real reason. If you’re candid with me, then I’ll return the favor.”
I looked at Ellen for a moment trying to decide whether disclosing my suspicions about her motives would needlessly upset her in case I’d been completely wrong.
“The truth isn’t flattering to you, Ellen. Perhaps it would be better left buried.”
“Please tell me, Scott. I’m a big girl and won’t get upset.”
I paused for a moment while I decided what to say and then launched into the explanation.
“When I went to the men’s room, I was greatly anticipating whatever was about to take place once we got to my hotel room until two things happened almost simultaneously.”
“What things were those?”
“I glanced in the mirror and had an epiphany. Gorgeous young women like you don’t flirt with homely old men like me. Suddenly I smelled a trap of some kind. That was my first warning sign.”
“That’s very interesting. What was the other thing?”
“I had already noticed a couple of discrepancies in what you had told me at various times. When we were playing slots, you mentioned that you had been born and raised in Los Angeles but at dinner you claimed to have been born and schooled in Iowa and thereafter moved to Los Angeles.”
“That was very perceptive of you. What else spooked you?”
“Again, earlier in the day you had said that it was your very first time in Las Vegas but later in the restaurant you remarked that you had attended a country and western concert at the Mandalay Bay last summer just a couple of months before that terrible mass shooting took place there. There was also some confusion about whether you worked for an insurance broker or a bankruptcy trustee.”
“The combination of booze and cocaine made me forget my story line that night,” Ellen admitted.
“The end result of my epiphany was that I suspected that I might be in some kind of danger so I beetled it back to my hotel and abandoned you. If my reasoning was completely faulty, then I sincerely apologize.”
“No, your conclusion was spot on. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d sunk to a new low in my already addiction-filled life. I was paid $500 per day to make myself available in case an opportunity arose to seduce you. I earned a bonus of $1,000 for having dinner with you and if you had brought me back to your apartment, I had agreed to do some disgusting things for an additional bonus of $10,000.”
I looked with shock into Ellen’s eyes. She was telling the truth.
“I’m hesitant to ask, but what did you have planned for me?”
“You’re really going to hate me, Scott. I was going t
o spike your drink in your hotel room at which point I was instructed to call a chap named Willy who would plant drugs in your room. I was also going to steal any cash in your wallet and Willy was going to take your credit cards.”
“I assume that you were hired by Willy Fraunz.”
“It was actually his boss, Guenther Schenteck who hired me. Willy was just acting on Guenther’s orders. They never told me what you had done to make them want to destroy you.”
“I can see that I dodged a bullet by the skin of my teeth,” I replied with disbelief. “Schenteck had another go at me a few days later but this time he was successful.”
“What did he do?”
“He had a big brute beat me up while I was taking a walk in the middle of the day. The chap sucker-punched me and dragged me semi-conscious behind an abandoned house where he punched me until I passed out. Fortunately he didn’t rob me or break any bones. My face is almost healed up now.”
“That’s terrible. Did you tell the police who you suspected had assaulted you?”
“No I didn’t. In fact I never even called the police. I didn’t have any evidence that Schenteck was involved and I didn’t even get a look at the man who beat me up.”
“Please believe me when I say that I’m so relieved that you weren’t permanently injured by the beat-down. I’m even more thankful that you thwarted Mr. Schenteck’s horrible plan to plant incriminating evidence in your room. You’ve made an incredible difference in my life.”
CHAPTER 45 (True Joy and Fake Joy)
I looked at Ellen with a puzzled look on my face.
“I fail to see how meeting me has impacted your life, Ellen. You missed out on the big bonus. Did Schenteck actually pay you or did he stiff you?”
“Willy paid me both the daily rate and the dinner bonus in cash.”
“The reason I asked is because that’s the reason that Schenteck was out to get me. He hired a local chap named Steve to construct an expensive piece of complex machinery and then refused to pay him the $98,000 fee that they had agreed on. It happens that Steve grew up with a friend of mine from Toronto. My friend was too busy at his law office to come to Vegas and try to collect the money so he asked me if I’d do it. I was successful and I guess Schenteck couldn’t accept the fact that he had been bested. When his attempt to lure me into danger with you failed, then he resorted to having me beaten up.”
“I only met Mr. Schenteck the one time when he first hired me. After that I dealt exclusively with Willy. I meant what I said that meeting you changed my life. I’ll be eternally in your debt for that.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Bear with me and I’ll try to explain everything although it’s not always easy to express things properly with words.”
Ellen launched into a long explanation.
“When I got home late on the night when we had dinner, I had the money I earned that day in my purse. I had mixed feelings about having failed to get you back to your hotel. On the one hand I was disappointed because I really needed the $10,000 super bonus because unpaid bills had been piling up.”
“Despite not having earned the bonus, I was also relieved because drugging and robbing you would have constituted a new low in my life.”
“I was already a heavy user of cocaine. In fact I indulged that afternoon in the ladies room when we were playing slots and had another hit in the washroom during our dinner. Don’t be offended, but I needed to be on a drug-induced high in order to listen to your boring stories.”
I burst out laughing from Ellen’s outrageous insult. It was such an incredible put-down that it was almost funny. She continued with her own story.
“I took a long hard look at myself in my bathroom mirror and deplored what I saw. Just like your own epiphany about me in the men’s room, I had my own burst of insight. I resolved to quit cocaine immediately and to turn my life around. I’m happy to report that I’ve been clean ever since and now I’m leaving Las Vegas permanently in order to begin a new life. I’ve also quit trading sex for money. This girl beside you intends to live out the remainder of her life respectfully and productively. I owe it all to you, Scott.”
“I’m pleased to have been a tiny part of the process, Ellen but it seems to be that you’ve climbed out of your hole completely on your own.”
“You were the inspiration, Scott. Even though at first I found your fascination with the slot machine jackpots pathetic, I found myself thinking about you constantly over the past three weeks while I was trying to stay clean and sober.”
“When you hit that one jackpot of $26, the look of pure joy on your face has stuck with me. That was true joy. I came to realize that I was incapable of duplicating that feeling unless I drilled a full line of cocaine up my nose. The high that I felt when I snorted the drug was fake joy. It hasn’t happened yet, but at some point in my life I’m determined to experience the same wonderful sensation that you were able to feel with something as simple as a small win on a slot machine. You’re a very lucky man, Scott Baxter.”
At that moment an announcement came over the loud speaker that a flight was about to board.
“That’s my flight,” Ellen said. “I’m so pleased to have been able to talk with you again and tell you what an inspiration you’ve been in my life.”
Ellen leaned over and kissed me on the lips.
And then she was gone.
CHAPTER 46 (Dumped by Lady Luck)
I thought over and over again about what Ellen had said. That bastard Guenther Schenteck had really hated me.
If I had succumbed to Ellen’s advances that night I met her, then I might have been in serious legal trouble. It was highly unlikely that a foreigner from Canada would be believed by the cops after they discovered illicit drugs hidden in my hotel room.
That would have been both expensive and embarrassing. Since I was from another country, the police might have kept me in custody to prevent me from returning home.
I knew from talking to criminal lawyers in Toronto that the justice system was excruciatingly slow. It’s possible that I would have spent many months in a dirty jail cell waiting for my case to be heard.
I shuddered to think what indignities might have befallen me while incarcerated. I wasn’t capable of defending myself against the young scum who would have been my cellmates.
It was tempting to seek revenge against Guenther but I realized that I was out of his league. I would just have to console myself with the knowledge that I had righted his wrong against Steve Carling and extracted $98,000 out of Guenther’s wallet in the process.
I could also be grateful to the scumbag that he hadn’t robbed me or permanently injured me when he had me beaten up. Presumably Guenther would now be satisfied that he had carried out his revenge against me and he would leave me alone in the future.
It was also satisfying to learn that my encounter with Ellen had changed her life for the better. I sincerely wished that she would be successful in starting a new life.
The strangest thought popped in to my mind.
Lady Luck had been by my side right up to and including the night when I had supper with Ellen.
I wondered if Lady Luck had in fact left me in the Golden Nugget men’s room and transferred her good fortune over to Ellen.
Certainly nothing lucky happened to me after that night. My luck on the slot machines tanked and Lady Luck didn’t bother to protect me from the assault.
If in fact I had passed my baton of good luck over to Ellen that night, then so be it. I was an old man with most of my life behind me. Ellen was a beautiful young woman who needed Lady Luck’s help far more than I did.
I’d have to amend my old saying that “Lady Luck loves lawyers.”
I gave that matter some deep thought until the truth leapt out at me.
The answer was crystal clear.
Lady Luck had dumped me as her lover. Now she just wanted to be friends.
I can live with that.
THE END
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