Days of Future Past - Part 1: Past Tense

by John Van Stry

  "Point is five!" he said.

  "Full odds on the bet," I said, I could never remember the exact amount, so I set down five, then put two dollars on the come line. I rolled a four, so I took full odds on that bet put two more dollars on the come line and rolled again. Six.

  I looked around the room as I put another two on the come line, and took odds on the six. I was the only person at this table; I was actually the only person playing craps in the place.

  "When does everyone show up?" I asked the dealer.

  "Another hour or two. Thursdays are kind of slow; most people are saving up for Friday."

  I nodded and threw the dice again, eight. More money on the table.

  The next roll was a five, so I got paid for making my point. I covered the pass line again, threw the dice, took odds on the bet, and rolled again. Six! The dealer passed me my winnings, I cover the come line again and continue.

  For the next ten minutes I never threw a seven at all. I kept making my points and making my come bets, and I kept taking come bets, at two dollars apiece. Eventually I had whichever five of the six come bets that weren't my point covered with about eight dollars each, plus my point bet. So I had forty-eight dollars on the table. I was making eight bucks every time I threw the dice, and that added up pretty quickly. I tossed in a couple of bets 'for the boys' as I had been taught to do, and after the first one paid off, they let the second one ride and looked pretty happy when it paid off the second time.

  I got a strange feeling then, and when I rolled a seven came up, and I lost all of the money on the table.

  "Shooter craps out!" The dealer said and after he took all the money off the table I looked around, it was still just me. Looking down at my money, I saw I had about a hundred and sixty dollars now. So I put down a five-dollar bet and started the process all over again.

  This time, when I felt that strange feeling come, I had them pull all the odds off of my come line bets, and sure enough, I threw a seven and crapped out, but I saved myself a good fifty dollars by doing that. They passed the dice to the next guy, two people had shown up now and I felt rather good about this guy, so I did the same thing I'd been doing. Though I didn't do it with the guy after him, when the first guy finally crapped out.

  When the dice made it back around to me, I raised my bets to ten dollars and kept playing. I knew that coyote must be helping me, somehow, and when I got a really bad feeling, so I stopped betting and just waited until I had no more money on the table and picking up my chips I tipped the crew generously and went to the cashier's cage and cashed out.

  "You had a pretty good day playing craps there, didn't you?"

  I took the money from the teller and put it in my pocket; she'd counted out sixteen hundred and eighty three, and then turned to look at the man standing there. He was in a suit and had a nametag on that said his name was Robert Jefferson, and that he was the manager.

  I smiled at him, "Yes, best I've had in some time. I'm a pattern roller and I tend to roll long." I said and then shrugged, "Of course I have had longer streaks, but usually I don't do so well."

  "Yes, we were all very impressed by how you did. You even seemed to be able to tell when you were going to throw a seven," he said eyeing me carefully. I made a mental note not to be so quick to pull my odds down, next time, and maybe to just pull them off at random as well.

  "Are you accusing me of cheating?" I said and looked him in the eye. I could see there were two rather strong looking men standing behind him now.

  "Maybe we should go up to my office and discuss this," he suggested reaching forward towards my arm.

  I took a step back, "We can discuss this right here, in front of witnesses," I said a little louder. "Or, better yet, why not call the police and we can all discuss this down at the station? I'll even offer to split the cost with you when they prove that I didn't do anything illegal."

  "I just want to make sure you're not wearing any kind of a device, anything to throw the odds," he said, "that's all. If you're clean, I won't do anything."

  I started to unbutton my shirt, "Well then, how about we do that right here?" I said.

  He looked surprised for a moment, then smiled, "That would be fine. I'm not the one getting naked in public."

  "Getting naked is a whole let better than getting beat down in your office," I replied and took my shirt off and handed it to him. Then I took off the shoes I had on, I wasn't wearing the boots today.

  Next I emptied my pockets on the table, unloaded my pistol and set that on the table, then took off my pants and handed them to him as well. He passed them to one of the guys who started to examine it. The other guy had already gone over my shirt and declared it 'clean'.

  "Underwear too?" I asked. There was a small crowd gathered around at this point and I was getting some appreciative looks from a few of the women.

  "Underwear too," He said grinning. Obviously he was enjoying it as well.

  I shrugged and skinned out of my underwear to the applause of a couple of the ladies, then I raised my arms and turned full circle for him.

  "It's all clean, Boss," one of the men said and tossed my pants on the table.

  "Let's take him upstairs, just to be sure," Robert said and lunged at me, trying to grab my arm.

  Instead, I grabbed his arm, pulled him forward, and kicked the back of his knee as he went by, giving him a hard elbow to the back of the neck, then skipping forward I gave one of his two men a crescent kick to the side of the face, then spinning around I followed it with a spinning hook to the side of his head, dropping him.

  The second guy backed off, and reached under his jacket, so I grabbed Rob, the manager, by the collar and pulled him back towards me, slamming his head into the side of the table as I did so, stunning him. Then I him between me and the other guy, and reaching inside his suit jacket, he had a gun as well, which I cocked and put to his head.

  "Stop or I'll kill him," I yelled.

  Everyone stopped.

  "Now, drop the gun!" I said to the other one, and scanned the crowd for other security. There were a half dozen guards.

  "And the rest of you, put the guns down as well, or I'll kill your boss here."

  "Put the guns away," Rob, the manager said a little groggily.

  "Someone toss me a bag," I said.

  One of the cashiers slipped a bag out of the cage, so I had Rob hold it open as I put everything of mine in it.

  "Now, we're going to leave," I told him. "Once I'm sure I'm not going to get shot, I'll give you your pistol back, and we can part ways. Understand?"

  "You're not going to get away with this," he grumbled.

  "If you want to call the police, I'll be more than happy to wait here and let them sort it all out," I told him. "However I won't be paying half, you'll be paying for all of it when they realize that I cooperated and you tried to assault me."

  "And why would they believe your word over mine?" he challenged.

  "Because I'm dating a cop," I told him, "and everyone knows that officer Mays won't hesitate to sell out her own boyfriend if he's in the wrong."

  A couple of people laughed at that, including the other guards. Apparently Mays had a much bigger reputation than I had realized.

  With all my stuff in the bag, we went outside, and I had him hail a cab. Then I got in the back, and I unloaded his pistol and handed it back to him.

  "If you don't mind my asking, just how did you do that?" He asked rubbing the back of his head as he put the unloaded gun in his pocket.

  "Years of martial arts practice," I told him.

  "Not that, the cheating!"

  I shook my head, "I didn't cheat. I've just had a long run of absolute shit luck, and I figured that the universe owed me a little payback. Turns out I was right. Who knows, if you had let me go back to playing, I probably would have lost it all back."

  I turned to the driver, "City hall," I told him.

  "You're not pressing charges, are you?" Rob asked.

  "Just taking
out insurance," I told him as the cab pulled away.

  "Bit of a misunderstanding back there?" The cabbie asked as I started digging my clothes out of the bag and got dressed.

  "Yeah, they accused me of cheating, and after I proved I wasn't wearing a wire or anything, they attacked me."

  "You might want to toss that bag out the window. Sometimes they rig them with trackers, or worse."

  Nodding I quickly dumped out the contents of the bag. Sure enough, there was a lump of some sort sewn into the bottom, so I tossed it out the window.

  It exploded in a bright green cloud behind us.

  "Son-of-a-bitch!" I swore.

  "I think I'm going to be making a report," the cabbie said. "That dye can't be scrubbed out, if it had gone off in here, I'd have had to replace the interior, plus my own clothes!"

  I just shook my head and got dressed, then recounted the money. I'd lost forty bucks somewhere in the process, but that was okay, I still had over sixteen hundred dollars.

  The police station was an interesting experience, I told them everything that happened, paid a fifty-dollar filing fee, and then the guy working the desk asked me what I wanted to do next.

  "Excuse me?" I said, "What do you mean?"

  "Do you want to file charges against the casino, the manager of the casino, or any of their employees?" He said.

  "Isn't what they did illegal?" I asked.

  "Probably," he agreed. "However, unless you file charges and pay for the court to take action, nothing will be done, as all of it took place on the private property of the Casino, and not in general public."

  "So, you're not going to do anything?" I asked.

  "Well, we will fine them on the dye bag explosion, that will have to be cleaned up, and it could have damaged an un-involved third party. But what happens on private property isn't our concern unless a capital crime is committed."

  "They attacked me!" I said, a bit flabbergasted.

  "Yes, but they appear to have probable cause to believe that you were cheating," he looked up at me, "Not that I'm accusing you of cheating."

  I shook my head. "So what happens next?"

  "I take it you don't have experience with the legal system here?"

  I shook my head, "I just got here a few days ago."

  "Oh! Well, let me explain then. Unless you pay for an investigation, because it was not a capital crime like murder, rape, or kidnapping, nothing will happen. Because it was a felony, if you do pay for an investigation, if you prevail, fines will be assessed and you will get a portion of that. If you lose, you will have to pay any and all fines and settlement costs."

  "Sounds expensive," I sighed.

  "Yes, it can be."

  "So, what would you advise?" I asked.

  "Don't set foot in there again, or even go near there. Inside the place, because they're a casino, they have certain rights and abilities, because they deal with large sums of money and games of chance, which people often attempt to rig.

  "But because you are no longer inside, they can't do anything. For all intents and purposes, you got away with it. If you had actually committed a crime, unless they wanted to pursue it here, using the same options you have, they can do nothing."

  "So, they won't come after me? They won't hire someone to rob me or beat me up?" I asked.

  "Normally, no. It's just not worth it. They will just chalk it all up to the costs of doing business. Besides which, you did strip for them, so they know you weren't using any kind of gear on them. The house mage didn't detect anything..."

  "Wait a second," I interrupted, "house mage?"

  "All casinos employ mages and other means to detect if someone is using magic or similar techniques to cheat. If they had proof you were cheating, they would either have dealt with you themselves, in front of witnesses, or called the police."

  I nodded, "Okay, so they are fairly certain I wasn't cheating, so they won't come after me?"

  "No. And if anything should happen to you now, well they'll be the prime suspects because you filed this report. Considering how much money the investigators could earn proving casino involvement in such a case, you can trust that they will not pursue this any further. They just have too much to lose."

  I thought about that, "So, even though they think I did something, because I got out of there and 'got away with it'" I made little quote marks with my fingers, "they won't do anything."

  "Nope, especially not for sixteen hundred dollars. Odds are the manager's boss will have words with him for creating such a disturbance for such a small amount. Especially after you stripped and gave the patrons a free floorshow," he said with a laugh. "If you hadn't come back out of that office, people would have noticed.

  "Now that casino is going to get a reputation for being a sore loser and I suspect business is going to be somewhat slow for a while."

  I shook my head, "I guess I really don't understand this place, but if you say I'm safe, then I guess that's good enough."

  The guy nodded and closed the program he was working on.

  "Just between the two of us," he asked lowering his voice, "how did you beat them?"

  I shrugged, "I was just going by gut feelings," I told him, which was actually completely true. I just didn't mention that a god was causing them. "Usually I lose when I do that."

  "Damn, and here I thought someone had found a way to beat the tables. Well, have a good day!"

  I nodded and getting up I went off in search of someplace to have a late lunch.

  - 11 -

  Both Heather and Sarah found out about what happened. Heather, because she worked for the police, and as the only guy anyone had ever seen her date, it went through the grapevine at work pretty quickly. She clued me in a little more on how the law worked and apparently had a few words with the place over their mussing up her boyfriend.

  Sarah found out because it made several of the 'news sites'. Apparently there were a lot of online news places that people liked to read, and someone had filmed most of the incident, because I'd stripped naked in public. Sarah was very impressed at my fighting abilities and quick thinking. Most of the comments on the story by the general public were not kind to the casino.

  The ones that weren't making salacious comments about my 'equipment' that is.

  The last thing that happened was that all of the casinos banned me from playing craps in their establishments; apparently they all talked to one another. While no one could prove that I was cheating, and to be honest several told me that they didn't think I was; they were all in business to make money and a guy who looked like he couldn't lose wasn't someone they wanted gambling at their establishments.

  I was at the Silver Witch and I was talking to one of the floor managers,

  "So, you're saying I can't gamble here?" I asked, doing my best to be polite. Heather had recommended this particular casino, she said it was a good mid-level place, and that a lot of the cops moonlighted here, so no one would take any unnecessary liberties with me, that they'd save them for her instead.

  "You can gamble here, Sir. You just can not play any of the table games, especially not craps," he said with a polite smile.

  "So, what else is there?" I asked him.

  "Are you familiar with poker, Sir?"

  "Yes," I said and nodded, "in fact I prefer it. So I can play poker here?"

  "Yes, Sir. You are more than welcome to play poker here."

  "Great," I said looking around, "a question or two if I may?" I asked.

  "Of course, Sir. How can I help you?"

  "Why am I allowed to play poker, if I'm not allowed to play any of the other table games?"

  "Because you're not playing against the house, you're playing against the other players. So whatever luck or skill you have, it's not against us, but against them."

  "Ah, so it's not your money," I said with a small nod.

  "Exactly, Sir," he said agreeing with me.

  "So, just where are the tables?"

  "If you'll follow me pleas
e, Sir?"

  He led me to a fairly large room, at the back of the casino, that had ten card tables in it. Only four of them were being used currently, but it was only an hour after lunch on a weekday, so that didn't surprise me.

  "We play Texas hold'em here, Sir. I trust you're familiar with the game?"

  I nodded and tipped him a five-dollar bill. I had played the game a lot, both growing up, and then later when I was in the air force. It was a fairly popular game, and I had even played in the casinos a few times.

  "Thank you," I told him. "And please, feel free to call me Mr. Young, or even just Paul. I don't mind."

  "Of course, Mr. Young," he said with a smile after taking the tip and left.

  I looked around at the tables, all of the tables currently open were limit tables, there was a maximum bet you could make, and there was a three-raise limit. Two of them had seats open, one was the lower end of the betting scale, and the other was at the high end. Taking one of the seats at the high end, I took out a thousand dollars and set it on the table, got some chips, and started to play.

  The first few hands I lost, but at least I didn't lose more than a couple of hundred dollars. I started to slow down after that, as I began to remember how to play.

  I'd been told by a few people over the years that patience was the most important part of this game, one guy had even told me that he always called it that himself. 'If you don't have a good hand dealt to you, then muck it and wait for the next one.' he had told me.

  Thinking about my limited funds and just how much money I needed to raise, I decided to try and pace myself. I also tried to relax so I could feel Coyote's 'suggestions' when he sent them to me.

  That helped a lot and I started to do better after that. A few times, I felt things suddenly turn sour in the middle of a hand, as the next card was dealt, and if I stayed in at that point, I lost.