“Fucked up way to make a living,” the guy said.
Roy stared at the greaseball. Or maybe he was staring at the greaseball’s T-shirt. Because what Roy said was, “There’s worse ways.”
The words sent an uncomfortable shiver up my spine. For a second I thought there might be trouble, but the greaseball only shrugged and pocketed his quarters. He wandered over to one of the slot machines and fed the one-armed bandit until his money was gone. Then he glanced around the room, like he was waiting for someone.
I knew how that felt, the same way I knew that this guy had made a mucho grande mistake — he’d shot his pathetic little wad and come up short one beer in his hand, so he didn’t have an excuse to hang around.
“I’ll be back,” he said, and his shadow followed him outside like a thirty-weight stain.
“Wonderful,” Roy said.
I finished my popcorn and wandered around the saloon. The slots were old, not the electronic gizmos you find in Reno, Tahoe, and Vegas. Some of ’em, I could imagine dusty miners pulling the handles. After all, the Bucket of Blood Saloon had been open since 1876.
My boots made muffled thuds against the weathered floorboards. A silver-haired lady smiled at me from behind the cashier’s cage. “Try your luck?” she asked. “How about a roll of quarters?”
I shrugged and looked down, embarrassed by my empty pockets. Then I spotted it, on the floor in front of a quarter slot machine. A single quarter, gleaming in a pool of soft yellow light.
I looked around. The greaseball was long gone. I sure wasn’t going to chase after him. Maybe he’d dropped the quarter. But maybe he didn’t. I’d watched several people play the slots in the last few hours. Any one of them might have dropped that quarter.
I picked it up and slipped it into the slot machine.
I pulled the handle.
Three plums spun into place.
The one on the right shuddered a little.
Then a buzzer sounded, because the plum held firm.
“I’m thinking maybe another bar is the way to go, ” I say. “If my luck holds in Vegas, I’ll go in on it with you as a partner. Of course, it would be your show…”
I glance over at Mitch, but he doesn’t say a word. His head hangs low. He s staring into the brimming slot bucket between his feet.
“Yeah, ” I say, backtracking in case I made a mistake. “Maybe that’s a bad idea. You’ve already got two bars. That’s nothing new for you. What we need is a challenge.”
I drive on, through Tonopah. I’m not stopping. Not for anything. All I want is Vegas, another casino, a big one with acres of slots.
Dollar machines. Five dollar machines. Ten dollar machines. ‘Movies,” I say. ‘We take one of my short stories. Do the damn thing ourselves. I write it. You produce it. We find a director who’ll get the motherfucker right. ”
I slap the steering wheel with my hand. Yeah. That’s a hell of a good idea. Mitch has the connections, too. There’s a pack of youngun movie guys who hang out at one of his clubs.
Man, I’m not even cold anymore. I honk the horn, long and loud.
I step on the gas.
I played the quarter slots for an hour. And then the dollar slots for two. Finally I ended up at a big monster of a dollar machine called THE BUCKET OF BLOOD.
God knows how many pulls on that sucker.
Fifteen of them hit jackpots.
Two hundred silver dollars. Five hundred silver dollars. Seven-fifty. A piddly seventy-five. And on like that. Enough to fill up three Bucket of Blood Saloon slot buckets.
But those jackpots were just small change. The last one was the big one. Three black buckets tripped into view, each one dripping blood.
Ten thousand dollars.
The machine didn’t pay that one, of course. Roy handed me the check. I stared at it hard.
One of the barflies laughed. “I guess you’re buying!”
“I guess I am!” I said, not taking my eyes off the check.
The barfly stared over my shoulder at all those zeros. I could smell rum on his breath, but I didn’t spare him a glance. Not when I had the check to look at.
“You won ten thousand bucks off a quarter?” The barfly’s voice trembled with awe. “You gotta be the luckiest man alive!”
I started to tell the story again. I couldn’t help myself. How I was broke… flat… busted. How I found the quarter on the floor. How I figured what the hell and dropped it into the closest one-armed bandit —
A hand dropped on my shoulder and just about spun me out of my boots.
“That was my goddamn quarter.”
Surprisingly, I recognized the voice. The words were spoken by Big John Dingo, but it was the greaseball who had hold of my shoulder. They were one in the same. It shouldn’t have surprised me. After all, the greaseball had fixed the old arcade machine. He’d obviously supplied the gunfighter’s voice, too.
His eyes seared me like a hunk of dead steak. “I want my money.”
“Fuck that.” I shook him off and stood my ground. “I won that money It’s mine.”
“You won it with my fuckin’ quarter, dickhead. Give it up or there’s gonna be trouble.”
“No way — ”
A crashing blow from a big right hand and I felt like I was headed for the promised land. My knees banged hard against the weathered floorboards and a loud creak tore the air. For a second I couldn’t decide if the sound came from the floorboards buckling or my own tired bones —
“That’s enough, Big John.”
It was Roy’s voice. I couldn’t see him. I was on my knees, looking at Big John’s belt buckle. It was probably the only thing on him that was clean. Polished silver, and I could see my reflection in it, funhouse mirror-style.
I looked more than a little perplexed. And that’s the way I felt. The greaseball’s name was Big John, same as the gunslinging dummy. It was crazy. Twilight Zone stuff. I halfway expected to look over at the slot machine and see Rod Serling standing there —
But there was only Big John. He grabbed a handful of my hair and tilted my head until my eyes found his. He drew back that right hand again and I cringed.
“You give me that money — ”
Roy’s voice again, accompanied by a sharp clicking sound. “I mean it, Johnny boy. Don’t give me a reason.”
The greaseball let me go. A couple of the barflies helped me to my feet. I turned to the bar and saw Roy standing there, a pistol in his hand.
“I want that money, pilgrim,” Big John said. “I’ve a right to it. It’s mine. If you think you’re leavin’ Virginia City without givin’ it to me, you’d better think again, you pencil-dicked motherfucker.”
