The Curse of the Gambling Policeman
Part 07: The Law of the Jungle
The ferocious tiger looks straight up and roars wildly. Faraday and I, locked in a life- and-death struggle, have rolled out of the shattered window high above the casino floor and now dangle, like bait on a hook, from one of the Tarzan sky show’s vines.
“Help me!” pleads Faraday, who, two hands wrapped around the vine, hangs just below me, “Please!” With my left holding tight on the vine, I extend my damaged right hand. “Grab my wrist!”
Faraday reaches up, grasps my broken finger with one hand, and lets go of the vine with the other. The pain of his whole weight is excruciating. “I’m taking you with me, Gambling!” he screams and grabs my broken finger with his other hand. “You’re going to die with me, you fuc …” The bandage on my broken finger peels off and Jungle Jim, screaming all the way down, freefalls into the jaws of the waiting Monster of Las Vegas.
My left hand starts slipping off the vine. Sometimes your worst nightmares come true.
And sometimes they don’t.
Stella, having come to, grabs the vine and hauls me up to safety.
We look down and watch Cerberus feed. It’s the Law of The Jungle: eat or be eaten.
“How did you know that Faraday was behind the suicides?”
“He told me. ‘Death shall have no dominion’ and ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ are both poems by Dylan Thomas. When he said Thomas was his favorite poet, I knew it had to be him.”
The scheduled 8:00PM suicide decides to live a day longer. We learn that the terminally ill patients had all been “recruited” from Faraday’s hospice. Desperate to leave behind something other than enormous debts to their children, they had each taken Faraday’s money to kill themselves.
Only it was Faraday who was going to make a killing. Jungle Jim had purchased short options on over 1,000,000 shares of Jungle stock knowing the suicides he had arraigned would crash the shares. Every penny Jungle stock went down would have netted Faraday a dollar.
“’The Curse of The Gambling Policeman’ was his sure thing to crash The Jungle’s stock,” says Stella. “Faraday knew after you shot their ‘Craps Killer’, that Paradise’s stock had fallen 30%. The Palace’s stock fell 40% after your knife fight with their ‘Slot Slasher.’ Faraday’s bought-and-paid-for suicides were the bait to trap you into starring in the story he was selling Wall Street.”
I ask, “What about the six-six-sixes?”
“There’s no evidence they were part of Faraday’s scheme. The suicides were all planned on the hour. They had nothing to do with the sixes.”
“How is that possible?”
“Coincidence. An infinite number of gamblers playing an infinite number of casino games all hit 666 at some point.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“I know, Henry, but maybe coincidence believes in you.”
“Las Vegas Monster Dead,” the papers report after Cerberus is put down. Faraday, the real Las Vegas Monster, was buried a day later.
I know my official report will never see the light of day. The Strip Casinos, not wanting a “Black Sox” style casino scandal, get the City to hush up the truth. Faraday’s death is termed a “tragic accident.” Stella and I are ordered to attend the funeral. We are told to look sad.
Everybody who is anybody in Las Vegas shows up. The Mayor delivers the elegy and quotes some guy named Borges, “Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.”
The Reverend delivers the eulogy and quotes The Book of Revelations, “And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion!”
As the mourners watch Faraday’s coffin lowered into the ground, I can’t help but break out into a smile. Stella pokes me hard in the ribs and I paste my sad face back on. I’m thinking of another, more appropriate, quote that sums up how I feel today. Stella says it’s from some guy named Blake, “The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.”
Copyright © 2006 Robert Arabella
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