Play Dead (Part 27):
I’m Fixin’ To Play Dead (Part 27)
After not having spotted Leon’s old thieving bald head anywhere in the casino, I began to get a little niggling feeling that my former confident feeling that he was indeed here, might have been a tad premature. But I still had hope because there was one last little dim corner of the casino referred to as the “Watering Hole,” which I hadn’t checked out yet.
I figured that if Leon wasn’t gambling that he would be drinking. Concealing myself behind a bank of dollar slot machines, I not only found the bar, but I also found the low-down skunk who had run off with my 600,000 dollars. Sitting on a stool with a tall cool glass and a stack of my money in front of him on the bar, was Mister Leon Martin!
Unnoticed, I slid into a chair at a table in the shadows, but well within earshot of the bar. I wrapped my hand around an empty bottle someone had left in order to make it appear I was a patron. Then I slumped over and hung my head down over the bottle and waited.
A moment later the bartender approached Leon and said, “You want another one, Mr. Martin?”
“Great,” I thought to myself. “They know the old robbing reprobate by name.”
Leon pushed his glass across the bar and replied, “Yeah, but make it a double this time and use the same glass—just throw a few fresh ice cubes in it.”
After the bartender had refreshed Leon’s drink, he inquired as to how his luck had been in the casino tonight.
“I was snake-bit,” Leon told him. “I must have dropped a couple of grand.”
I cringed when I heard his words, and I had to restrain myself from getting up right then and throttling him.
“In that case this one is on the house,” the bartender announced as he wiped up moisture from the bar with a towel.
“And all the others had been on me,” I thought as I imagined the skin breaking on Leon’s bald head from the blow of the bottle in my hand.
He guzzled down the drink and told the bartender to charge the tab to his room and add himself a $50 tip, and that he was going up to his room and wake up his girl friend.
I leaned deeper into the second-hand bottle I was holding and watched Leon weave his way out of the bar. As soon as he was gone I abandoned my secluded table and took the stool he had left at the bar, and had already formulated my story in my mind by the time the bartender returned and asked what he could serve me.
“I don’t need a drink, I just need some information,” I informed him. I was determined not to accept any nonsense and had already extracted several hundred-dollar bills from my money belt. “That gentleman who just left, Leon Martin, he’s my uncle and my Aunt Ruby sent me here to bring him home; in fact she’s outside in the parking lot waiting for me. I just need to know what room he’s in so my cousins and I can go get him.”
The bartender eyed me suspiciously and said, “Why didn’t you take him with you just now before he left?”
“I didn’t want to cause a scene. Besides, he wouldn’t have told me his room number and we have to get his stuff out of it.”
I could see the uncertainty in his eyes so I placed two of the hundreds on the bar and said, “You see, Uncle Leon is a compulsive gambler. He left home with money that the family needs and we just want to get him home where he belongs.”
He was greedily eyeing the money on the bar, but I knew he wasn’t quite sure when he said, “Perhaps this is a matter you should take up with hotel security.”
“No, Aunt Ruby is waiting and she wants this done right away, without any publicity to embarrass the family.” With that said I slid two more hundreds onto the bar.
When I did that I could see the capitulation in his eyes. He glanced in both directions then quickly raked the money off the bar and pocketed it. Once again he made sure no one was watching us before he leaned over and whispered, “He’s is room 2012.”
When I got on the elevator my first inclination was to go up to room 2012, beat the door down, take what was left of my money and leave. Then I realized I was too exhausted to knock down anything, that my body and mind were numb, and that I needed a few hours rest before I made any decisions or took any kind of action.
Red was still sound asleep when I got into our room. Remembering Leon had said he liked to gamble all night and sleep all day, I rationalized that I had some time and could rest and take care of business when I woke up.
But just before I slipped under the covers I picked up the pen and the little note pad on the bed side stand and wrote down “Room 2012” just so I wouldn’t be fixing to forget it.