Craps
Steve Carr
Leon
Manzetti was
backed into a corner, a corner he found himself in when there was nowhere else
to go. The door was locked and on the other side of the room. Standing between
him and the door was Lester Earnings.
Leon had been in
another corner, but he left it and, with his back pressed against the wall, he
slid to the corner he was now in. Lester hadn’t moved; he didn’t need to. The
corners that Leon occupied were equidistant from where Lester stood. Leon was
terrified; the look in his eyes of a trapped mongrel said it all. Sweat poured
down his face and formed stains in the underarms of his white shirt. The room
smelled of urine—his—that flowed down his leg, acrid and warm, almost hot; it
stung.
Lester
was dangling
a nylon rope that was tied like a hangman’s noose.
Leon’s
teeth
chattered. He could barely get his words out. “Whaddya goin’ to do with that?”
Lester
had his eyes
locked on Leon’s. “You know what I’m goin’ to do,” he said, softly, as if
whispering sweet-nothings. The voice and the pronounced veins in his forehead
and the way his nostrils flared didn’t match. He continued swinging the noose.
“I
said I’d give it
back. All of it,” Leon said, his voice as high pitched and tight as a plucked
violin string.
“It’s
not the money.
You cheated. Your dice were loaded.”
“I
made a mistake. I’ll
never play again.” He pointed north, as if he could see beyond the room. “I’ll
leave town and never come back.”
“Once
a cheater,
always a cheater,” Lester intoned. “There’s no room for cheaters in craps.” He
finished the last knot and then held up the noose. He dangled it from his hand,
swinging it slightly.
“You
have any last
words?”
“Please
don’t do
this,” Leon screamed.
#
Thick
fog shrouded
Seattle. Lester got out of the Uber and entered the northern end of Pike Place
Market. He made his way through the gaggle of tourists and mostly upscale
Seattleites milling about the large trays of carnations, roses and assortments
of herbs sitting on large tables, and then past cases of candies and finally
past the cases of fish on ice, where salesmen standing behind them yelled out
the daily specials. He went out the door with the sign “Employees Only” and
proceeded down the wooden stairs past doorways leading to offices and storage
rooms. He wondered how the entire market had escaped going up in flames long
before this; the entire structure was mostly wood.
At the base of the
stairs, he stopped at the last door before the exit and a set of steps that led
down to the restricted beach. He knocked
and waited a minute before turning the knob and going in.
Sitting
at the back
of the large room, visible through a narrow aisle crowded on both sides with
crates and boxes, sat Marge Turnbull. The bare, dim lightbulb that dangled on
an exposed wire from the ceiling to about a foot above her head cast her fleshy
face half in shadow, hiding her eyes in darkness. She was fifty-four but in the
lighting, looked over a hundred, easy. She was sitting at a table she used as a
desk. Her hands were resting on it, clasped tightly.
He
knew she was watching
him, like a hawk watches its prey. She watched everyone that way.
He
closed the door,
returning the room to its usual darkness, except for that lightbulb, which was
always on whether Marge was sitting there or not.
“The
job is done?”
Her baritone voice was raspy. A heavy smoker’s voice, masculine.
“Yeah,
it’s done,”
Lester replied. “He pissed himself.”
“He
know why he had
to die?”
“He
knew.”
She
let out a loud
fart and waved away the smell. “We gotta get back to my games being clean and
aboveboard and weed out the cheaters. “You know who to see next?”
“Not
exactly.”
“See
if you can find
Pat Luzi. That weasel gets around.” She opened a tin box and took out a wad of
hundred-dollar bills and summoned him with a wave of the hand to come get it.
“This should cover your expenses.”
It
was then he
noticed a teenager, ragged and unkempt, obviously fresh off the streets,
standing in the shadows among stacks of boxes watching him and Marge.
Lester
took the cash
and walked out of the room without looking back to see if she was watching him,
because, of course, she was.
#
In
the Capitol Hill
area of Seattle, Lester had an early dinner at the upscale Italian restaurant
Altura. He left on top of a linen napkin a $100 tip. The napkin was twisted
into a cord, not that it meant anything, but it had become a habit. He did the
same thing at every restaurant. He walked down Broadway, stopping in front of
the only vacant shop on the street, and looked around before surreptitiously
slipping down the narrow walkway between it and the building next to it. The
heat of the day had warmed the tight space between the buildings, perfuming the
air with the scent of bricks. Around the back of the shop, the crapshoot was
already in progress. Six players were assembled in a semi-circle around the
shooter. Bills – mostly tens and twenties – were being laid down as fast as the
dice were being rolled. The shooter was having a run of luck.
Lester
recognized only
one of the men, Pat Luzi, a small-time thief, mostly purse snatching and dime
store burglaries. Pat was skinny to the point of looking emaciated, and tall,
as if his body had been shaped in a noodle-making machine. The bright pink scar
that ran down his left cheek was put there courtesy of Lester. That
was back in the days when Lester was a master with the switchblade, before he
took up the noose which he found to be cleaner, less bloody; he
also liked watching how, with the noose, his victims squirmed.
Pat had made a crack about Marge that didn’t sit well with Lester. Say what you
will about him, but be careful what you say about Marge. It was the last time
Pat made a crack of any kind about Marge. He was lucky that Lester hadn’t
killed him.
Lester
could feel
the dice in their royal purple felt case inside his back pocket wanting to get
out and join the game, and he was salivating to get in on the action. But the
crapshoot would have to wait. He
tapped Pat on the shoulder, leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “Marge
says you know who’s been using loaded dice at her high stakes crapshoots.”
When
Lester breathed
on you, it wasn’t just warm air that came out of his mouth; it was hot, like
having a lit match applied to your skin. Pat stood bolt upright, and, without
looking at Lester and still watching the dice being rolled, said, “I didn’t
know anyone was cheating.”
“Marge
is losing
money, and as you know, Marge doesn’t like to lose money.”
Pat
gulped audibly.
“ I don’t know nothing, I swear.”
Lester
patted him on
the back. In any other circumstances, it would have been seen as a friendly
gesture. Lester wasn’t the back-patting friendly type.
Pat’s
knees buckled
slightly. “I know nothing first-hand, just rumors, you know, street chatter.”
“Tell
me about the
chatter.”
The
two of them
stepped back from the others. Pat told Lester everything he had heard. Lester
gave him a hundred dollar bill—“for your trouble”—and made his way back out to
the street. It was growing dark. In the
back, the boys would soon be rolling the dice by flashlight until the middle of
the night.
#
“A
cheater at dice,
a cheater at everything else,” Marge once told him. Her husband had just
deserted her for his girlfriend and headed East. Marge found in his sock drawer
a box of loaded dice, some of the spots on them changed in such an obvious way
that she wondered how he had gotten away with it. For the next ten years, Marge
played the craps, cleanly, not even a hint of cheating, and amassed a lot of
money. She was good. Lucky. When she found Lester trying to hustle tourists out
of a few dollars and looking as wild as a feral cat, she took him under her
wing and taught him everything she knew about rolling the dice. He was sixteen
at the time. She was forty. There was nothing sordid or sexual about their
relationship. They regarded each other the same as a patron of the arts regards
a protege.
The
salted taffy and
pecan bon bon export company that she ran from Pike’s Place Market was just a
front for her crapshoot activities that involved some of the wealthiest dice
players in Seattle and men and women who came to Seattle from all over the
world just to play in one of her games.
Lester
was her chief
lieutenant. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do if she asked him. She paid him
handsomely and had taught him everything she knew about shooting craps. If he
ever set out on his own, she had prepared him for it. He was better at rolling
the dice than anyone knew, including her. He played craps all over Seattle but
managed to keep his skill with the dice a secret.
Connie Mateo was one
of those people who embodied what Marge thought about cheaters and cheating. She had money to
burn and played in one of Marge’s games on those occasions when a man she was
interested in was also going to be there. Her husband was too busy running an
international tech software company out of Vancouver to worry about what his
wife was up to.
Lester
had called
her earlier to arrange to meet her at her mansion in the Medina suburb, the
wealthiest part of Seattle. He didn’t need to tell her why he wanted to see
her. She made her own assumptions about the reason.
She
opened the door,
dressed in an expensive flesh colored negligee. It was tight, revealing and
practically see-through. It was hard to tell where the negligee left off and
her skin took over. “I gave the staff the evening off,” she cooed. “The place
is all ours.”
“That’s
good,” he
replied. “I don’t think we want word getting around that I paid you a visit.”
“I’ve
had my eye on
you for some time,” she said. “I was wondering when you’d come to see me.”
He
walked in, closed
the door, and after a moment of being
stunned by the garish lavishness of the foyer and winding glass steps leading
to the second floor, he adjusted the gloves he was wearing and said, “Word has
it you’re not always on the up and up with the dice you been rolling.”
She
looked stunned.
“That’s a lie. I know better than try to cheat in one of Marge’s games.”
“Do
you? I have a
reliable source that says otherwise.”
“Hey,
what’s this
all about? I thought you came here so that we could become better acquainted.”
“We’re
getting
acquainted,” he replied. He had a thin nylon cord noose tied around his waist,
the loop hidden in the back. He deftly took it off and held it up, the loop
dangling at the end of the rope. “You know what this is?”
She
knew exactly
what it was and what it meant. “Okay, you’re right. I have used loaded dice on
a couple of occasions. Just for kicks. I can give the money back to Marge.
There’s no reason to threaten me.”
“This
isn’t a threat.
It’s a death sentence.”
She screamed, turned and ran up the steps. He
wasn’t going to give her a chance to get her cellphone, and took off after her.
He caught up with her at the top of the stairs, lassoing her with the noose. He
tightened the noose as he pulled her close.
“Please
don’t do
this,” she begged. “I’m sorry. Please stop and tell Marge it won’t happen
again. I don’t know why I did it.”
“Some
people just
can’t help themselves.”
Strangling
her was
easy. She struggled and clawed at him at first, but with her windpipe cut off,
she dropped to her knees and remained there until she died. He removed the
noose and threw her body over the railing. It landed with a soft thud on the
marble floor.
#
His
name was Cooper.
Marge had saved him from being arrested for vagrancy, giving the cop about to
arrest him a bribe to hand the teenager over to her. “You ever shoot craps?”
was the first thing she asked him.
“No.”
“I’ll
teach you
how,” she said. “You do everything I ask and you can lead a very comfortable
life.”
“Yes,
ma’am.”
He
had watched when
Lester arrived the first time, curious about the guy who Marge said would teach
him everything he needed to know about shooting craps in Seattle.
Lester
entered Marge’s
“office” in Pike’s Place Market to report to her that another cheater had been
eliminated. She introduced him to Cooper who was casually sitting on the end of
her desk.
“I
found Cooper on
the streets just like I found you,” she said. “Show him the ropes.”
“What’s
he going to
be doing?” Lester asked.
“Eventually
the same
thing as you.”
Cooper
followed
Lester out of the market and stood back while Lester hailed a taxi.
“Where
we going?”
Cooper asked as they got in the back seat.
“Alki
Beach,” Lester
told the driver.
They
rode in silence
all the way there. Lester led Cooper to one of the trails.
“We
haven’t done it
yet, but you must know. Does she like her sex kinky?” Cooper asked, trailing
behind Lester.
Lester
had already
made up his mind what was going to happen to this punk, this nobody, this kid
who Marge threw in his face and had now insulted her. He knew cheaters and
cheating and this had all the earmarks of that. He removed the cord from around
his waist, turned, and in a matter of moments he had the noose around the kid’s
neck. “Marge is too good for the likes of you,” he said to Cooper as the teen’s
eyes bulged out, his face turned bright red, and then he stopped breathing.
Two
hikers told
police everything they had witnessed.
#
A
year later, as
Lester was led to the gallows, escorted by two guards, each holding on to one
of Lester’s arms, he couldn’t help but smile at the conversation they were
having.
“We’ll
use my dice,”
one guard said. “I don’t trust you.”
“I
don’t cheat when
it comes to rolling the dice,” the other one replied.
“What
you guys
rolling for?” Lester asked.
“High
roller gets
the stuff you leave behind. It’s crazy what people will pay just for a smelly
pair of your underwear.”
“Since
Washington is
one of the last states that allows hanging, your things will bring in higher
prices,” the other guard interjected.
In
the courtyard
where the gallows had been erected, the guards marched Lester up the gallows
stairs, stood him on the trap door, and lowered the noose. Lester refused to
have his head covered, preferring to see the noose slide down past his eyes to
his neck. One of the guards
rolled the dice; Lester watched them intently as they tumbled near his feet. They
came to rest a second before the trapdoor
opened.
Snake eyes.
