The Moktu Indian Gaming Casino, he decided. That’s where the real trouble had begun.
It was fun and games at first, playing the dollar machines, swilling booze, getting a little high. Then he’d moved up to the five-dollar slots. Roulette and poker next.
He’d worked his way into the private poker games in a flash. The buy-in was a thousand bucks. He remembered thinking vaguely what a big chunk of change that was for a man in his profession, but he’d gotten this primo condominium from his parents. He’d shrugged off caution and taken out a large mortgage on the property.
The condo paid off, he figured he could handle a second mortgage.
Later, he cashed out his 401K.
Most of the time he’d won big at gambling, and the temptation sucked him in like an industrial vacuum. The casino opened a line of credit for him, long before he’d needed to use it. A temptation he couldn’t resist. Five thousand, then twenty, then a hundred grand. By the time his head had cleared, he owed Moktu Casino nearly two-hundred fifty thousand dollars.
Even then he hadn’t panicked. Not until the reality of owing over a quarter million G’s to a bunch of Indians, probably backed by mobsters, hit him like a ton of bricks.
Holy fuck!
Another mortgage on the condo, now almost under water, 401K depleted, his finances a ruin. No way he could afford to live in this ritzy neighborhood on his salary. He was in debt to the casino so deep he didn’t know how to get out, and he knew it would only get worse. The only solution was to run, a sure way to get killed.
So what had he done instead?
He’d laid low, making piddly-ass payments once in a while, just enough to keep the bone-breakers away from the door. All the time knowing a huge day of reckoning was just around the corner.
Like a little kid, he pretended that if he ignored them long enough, they’d go away. They hadn’t, of course. The long arm of retribution had finally reached out.
They came to him brutally – three of them, although the ugly giant would’ve been threat enough – and the knowledge of his vulnerability washed over him like a summer monsoon – without warning and very lethal. A drenching flood of dread that could only end in him dead and lying at the bottom of the ocean.
Not to worry, though, they had a proposition for him.
“A mutually beneficial proposition,” the ham-fisted brute with the broken nose and squinty eyes explained happily. The thug was a walking cliché, but it fit him like a glove, a brass-knuckles-encased glove.
After the debt-ridden man had sworn off gambling forever, explained he’d never enter the doors of Moktu again – cajoled, begged, almost cried – the giant continued calmly, “You want to make this right.”
You need to make this right, the brute had emphasized, unnerstand? He jabbed a thick finger in the air.
“My Boss is the debtor, you’re the debtee.” He leaned close and grinned as if he’d said something clever.
The man was pretty sure those weren’t the right words, but he had no intention of arguing with a six-foot-six gargantuan with a nasty face and even nastier breath. Plus, the giant had explained, the debtee was in a unique position to give them what they wanted in lieu of the cash owed.
Maybe take a year or two, but it could be done. An acceptable arrangement for both sides. Wasn’t he lucky the Boss was so accommodating?
Just to be sure the gambler understood their plans for him and the repercussions if he reneged on the deal, the thug had calmly explained what would happen to his body if he didn’t cooperate. Every bloody slice and specific blow to his weak flesh and puny muscles. It ain’t pretty, the thug declared with a wry smile but ... He lifted both muscled shoulders and let the threat hang ominously.
Fingers or thumbs, they’d said – you’ll get a choice what to lose when the time comes – if you screw us over.
But first ... a little something so you don’t forget.
The man swirled the whiskey around in his glass, calm now that the slick, smooth liquor and the oxys had taken off the edge of fear and pain. Briefly contemplated how costly disappearing would be – just getting the hell out of Dodge.
But where to? With the 401K wiped out and the condo mortgaged to the hilt, did it really matter what the cost was? He didn’t have any of it.
However, the situation wasn’t intolerable. He was perfectly capable of doing what Moktu Casino – and the mobsters supporting it – asked of him. He had the knowledge, the skill, and certainly the guts for it.
He scratched his jaw, thinking about the how and the who and the where of such a project. It was risky, but doable.
Placing the whiskey glass on the end table, he held up his left hand, palm inward and wiggled the splint on his broken ring finger, their reminder of his debt.
Chapter 25