Seven
On his way from Chicago to a conference in Denver, Dr. Lamar Woolsey took a side trip to Las Vegas.
The white sun blistered the pale sky. By late afternoon, a heat sink comprised of the towering hotels, the streets, the vast parking lots, and the surrounding desert had stored enough radiant energy to keep the city warm throughout the night.
In the taxi, from the airport to the hotel, Lamar watched rising thermals distort the more distant buildings, making them shimmer like structures in a mirage. In the foreground, windows and glass walls, bright with solar reflections, appeared to buckle, an illusion caused by the changing perspective of the taxi in relation to the buildings.
Illusion and reality. The former enchanted most people these days; the latter had been out of fashion for years. This city of casinos stood as proof that humanity preferred fantasy over truth.
In his hotel room, Lamar changed into white tennis shoes, white slacks, a blue Hawaiian shirt, and a white sport coat.
In a money belt under the shirt, he carried ten thousand in hundred-dollar bills. He folded two thousand more into his pockets.
Wherever he went in the world, he never gambled at a casino in his hotel. That made it too easy for a pit boss to learn his name.
On Las Vegas Boulevard South, he walked north through crowds of tourists. Most wore sunglasses, some with lenses so dark that they seemed not to be shielding their eyes, but instead to be concealing that they had no eyes, only smooth skin where eyes should have been.
He chose a casino and a blackjack table. He bought six hundred dollars’ worth of chips.
Sixty years old, with a round brown grandfatherly face that reminded people of a beloved comedian and sitcom star, with wiry white hair, twenty pounds overweight, Lamar Woolsey seldom inspired suspicion. The pit crew glanced at him and showed no interest.
The black dealer was outgoing—“Have a seat, brother”—too young to have grown bored with table talk. Of the three other players, two were loquacious, one sullen.
Lamar identified himself as Benny Mandelbrot, and he chatted up everyone, patiently waiting to learn why he was there.
Decades earlier, when the effectiveness of card counting became widely known, most casinos went to six-deck shoes. Keeping a running mental inventory of a 312-card shoe to calculate the odds in your favor hand by hand was geometrically more difficult than doing the same with a single deck, foiling both amateurs and most hustlers.
When rich veins appeared in a six-deck game, however, they could run longer and be more rewarding than in single-deck play. In three hours, his six-hundred stake had grown to eleven thousand.
The pit crew had become interested in him but not suspicious. They hoped to keep him at the table until he gave back his winnings.
He allayed suspicion with occasional bad plays. When the dealer showed a king and the deck was full of face cards, Lamar split a pair of sevens “on a hunch,” and lost. His highly calculated erratic play made him appear to be an ordinary mark on a lucky streak.
Lamar still didn’t know why he was there until, at a quarter to six, the cocktail waitress—her name tag identified her as Teresa—asked if he wanted another diet soda.
She was an attractive brunette with a spray of freckles and a forced smile. When he glanced at her to confirm he wanted another soft drink, unshed tears stood in her eyes, barely repressed.
The current dealer, a redhead named Arlene, finished shuffling the six decks. Lamar had been tipping her well, so they had rapport.
As Arlene loaded the shoe, Lamar looked after Teresa, then asked the dealer, “What’s her story?”
“Terri? Husband was a Marine. Died in the war last year. One kid. Marty, eight years old, he’s a sweetie. She loves him to death. He has Down syndrome. She’s tough, but tough isn’t always enough.”
Lamar played three hands and won two before the cocktail waitress returned with his soft drink.
Of his stake on the table, he gave seven hundred and change to Arlene. He scooped up the remaining eleven thousand in chips and poured them onto Teresa’s drink tray.
Startled, the waitress said, “Hey, no, I can’t take this.”
“I don’t want anything for it,” Lamar assured her, “and there’s nothing I need it for.”
Leaving her astonished and stammering, he followed the bank of blackjack tables toward the street entrance to the casino.
So meticulously barbered, manicured, and well-dressed that he might have been a mannequin come to life, the pit boss caught up with Lamar and stepped between two game tables. “Mr. M., wait,” he said, referring to the Mandelbrot name that Lamar had used. “Mr. M., are you sure you want to do that?”
“Yes. Quite sure. Is there a problem?”
“You were only drinking diet soda. I don’t see a problem.” Still half suspicious of some scheme, he added, “But it’s unusual.”
“What if I were to tell you that I’ve got an incurable cancer, four months to live, no need for money and no one to leave it to?”
In the fantasy world of the casino, death was the truth most aggressively repressed. No clock could be found in any casino, as if games of chance were played outside of time. Gamblers now and then petitioned God for help, but they never talked to Death.
The pit boss was disconcerted, as if the C word might break the spell that had been cast upon everyone within these walls, as if the mere mention of metastasis would transform the swank and glitter into mud and ashes. He straightened the knot in his tie, which was not crooked. “That’s tough. Take care of yourself. Good luck, Mr. M.”
Lamar Woolsey did not have cancer. He had not claimed to have it. But the what-if question served as a sufficient reminder of reality to scare off the pit boss.
Outside, in the sharply angled gold-and-orange sunlight, the world seemed about to burst into flames. Acres of neon signs welcomed the oncoming evening.
Many people in the crowds of tourists no longer wore sunglasses, but their eyes couldn’t be read behind cataracts of brilliant colors.