Jackpot

Chapter 34

Bronco drove into Reno. There was not a cop in sight. The police had formed roadblocks on the highways, and were inspecting cars trying to leave town. He knew this because a dumb disc jockey was broadcasting it on his traffic report.

Pulling into a gas station, he got out and popped his trunk. Karl Klinghoffer’s uniform was balled up in the back, and he rifled the pants pockets and found Karl’s wallet and driver’s license. Memorizing the address on the license, he went inside, and found a helpful attendant. He repeated the address, and the attendant gave him instructions.

Karl lived on the fancy side of town. Ten minutes later Bronco parked across the street from the address. The street was lined with old three-story Victorian homes, many of which had been restored and looked like something on a Hollywood movie set. It seemed out of a prison guard’s price range. Then, Bronco spied the dwelling behind the house. An old converted garage with an outside staircase. That was more like it.

He shuffled across the street, doing his best old man impersonation. He’d always been good at acting. A woman he’d stolen jackpots with in Las Vegas years ago had coached him. She’d had professional lessons and could play any role; lonely spinster, drunk, innocent country girl. Her acting was so good she’d flown under every casino’s radar. The last Bronco had heard, she was in Hollywood, acting on a popular TV sitcom. He walked up a path to Karl’s house. Reaching the garage, he pressed his face to the glass cut-out on the door. The interior was dusty, and a white SUV plastered with bumper stickers was parked inside. One said, HE IS RISEN. Another said, THE LORD LOVES ME — HOW ABOUT YOU?

He took the stairs to the second floor. He hadn’t pegged Karl as the religious type, but it made sense. Religion scared people into being good, but it didn’t mean they were good. It just meant they were more afraid of the consequences of being bad.

He reached the landing, and stopped to watch a police cruiser pass on the street. When it was gone, he found himself staring at the houses to either side of Karl’s. Many had swimming pools and backyard barbecues and all the trappings of the great American dream. It had been his dream once, too — he’d accepted long ago that he couldn’t steal from the casinos his whole life — but then his dream had been taken away from him. He got angry thinking about it, and rapped on the door.

No answer, so he rapped loudly again. Earlier that day, when he’d escaped from jail, he’d had Karl’s keys in his hand, but had no idea where they were now. Lifting his leg, he kicked the door. It was flimsy and easily gave way. He stuck his head in.

“Anyone home?” he said in an old man’s voice. Still nothing. Going inside, he shut the door behind him.

He entered the kitchen, a cold, impersonal room with yellow linoleum and bare counter tops. He was hungry, and opened the refrigerator to find milk, eggs and a loaf of Wonder Bread. He tried the pantry, and found it filled with canned goods and bags of rice. Maybe that was Karl’s problem; his wife didn’t feed him.

There was a small table in the kitchen’s center covered with sheets of paper filled with a child’s handwriting. Bronco picked up a page, and stared at verses from the Bible that had been painstakingly written, then glanced at the header. It said HOMEWORK. He placed the page back on the table, then saw a coloring book. Opening it, he stared at a kid’s drawing of a bearded man in a robe that he guessed was Jesus Christ. Jesus was holding a sign which said: Abortion. Big People Killing Little People.

“Drop it, mister,” a woman’s voice said.

Bronco dropped the coloring book on the table, and glanced over his shoulder. Rebecca Klinghoffer stood in the open doorway, aiming a handgun at him with both hands. He stared at the diamond pendant dangling around her neck, then into her eyes. She looked scared out of her wits. He stepped toward her.

“Give me the gun,” he said.

“I’ll do no such thing. You think you can break into my house and start ordering me around? Well, you’ve got another think coming, mister. I’m going to call the police and have them lock you up. You’re going to rue the day you ever decided to rob me.”

She looked about thirty, sounded about fifteen. Bronco said, “The gun.”

“Keep it up, and you’re a goner.”

Bronco stuck his hand out. “Give it to me.”

Bronco saw a child’s pair of eyes peeking around the doorsill. Rebecca saw them too, and said, “Karl, Junior, get back to your bedroom this instant, and lock the door.”

The eyes vanished. Bronco looked at Rebecca, and saw the gun trembling in her hand. He said, “Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” she said.

“I work for the casino that your husband robbed yesterday,” he said. “Your husband stole a jackpot from my casino. We have it on a surveillance tape. I heard about your husband getting injured on the TV, so my casino is willing to offer you a deal. Just give us the money back, and we won’t have you and your husband arrested.”

Rebecca brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no. He didn’t —”

“Tell you where the money came from?” Bronco said.

Rebecca shook her head. “No. Honest, sir.”

“It came from my casino.”

She lowered the gun and started to cry. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

“Do you know what happens to people that cheat casinos?” Bronco asked. “They’re sent to federal penitentiaries where they serve anywhere from four to six years, hard time. Their homes and cars and bank accounts are seized by the state, and their kids are taken away from them, and put in foster homes. You don’t want that, do you?”

“No,” she said fearfully.

“Then give me back the money. That’s all I’m asking.”

Rebecca held up the diamond pendant and stifled a tiny sob. “He bought me this.”

Bronco stepped forward and stared at the pendant like his eyesight wasn’t so good. Scrunching up his face, he said, “You don’t have the money?”

“No, sir.”

He scratched his chin. “Would you be willing to earn it back?”

“I’d be willing to do whatever you want, mister,” she said.

Two minutes ago she’d been ready to shoot him. He hadn’t lost his touch, and he flashed the thinnest of smiles.

“Good,” he said.

“Have you ever heard of an overpay?” Bronco asked.

Rebecca Klinghoffer was driving her SUV toward the Peppermill casino in downtown Reno while looking in her mirror. Karl Junior was strapped in the backseat, watching videos on a tiny TV. “What’s that you’re watching?” she asked suspiciously.

“Just cartoons,” her son replied.

“Not Japanese cartoons?”

“No ma’am.”

“Japanese cartoons are evil,” Rebecca said, glancing at Bronco in the passenger seat, and then, finally, at the road. “What’s an overpay?”

“It’s a flaw in a slot machine’s wiring which causes it to overpay, and give away jackpots. The people who service the slot machines occasionally discover them. They’re supposed to fix the machines, but sometimes they don’t. Instead, they sell the information to someone, and that person goes and plays the machine.”

Rebecca lowered her voice. “Is that what my husband did?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bronco said.

They had reached the Peppermill’s entrance, and she pulled behind a long line of cars waiting for a valet, and threw the SUV into park. “You haven’t told me how I’m supposed to earn this money back,” she said.

“Inside the Peppermill is a slot machine which also overpays. I’ll tell you how to play the machine. You will win a jackpot slightly under ten thousand dollars, which you’ll give to me. Once you do that, we’ll be even, and I’ll disappear from your life.”

Rebecca swallowed hard. “Wait a minute. That’s stealing.”

“That’s the deal. Take it, or leave it.”

She thought it over. He had scared the daylights out of her with the talk of prison, and he saw her nod. “All right. I’ll do it. Are you going in with me?”

“I’ll be nearby with your son.”

“He can be a handful,” she said.

Bronco glanced at the kid in back. Karl Junior wore the glassy-eyed expression of a child that watched too much television, but otherwise seemed a normal kid.

“Nothing that an ice cream cone won’t cure,” Bronco said.

My baby is with a strange man, Rebecca Klinghoffer thought, sitting at a Drew Carey Great Balls of Money slot machine on the main floor of the Peppermill. It didn’t matter that Karl Jr. and the man were standing only twenty feet away, or that her son was eating a chocolate ice cream cone. It still felt wrong. Rebecca waved to her son, while thinking about what she was going to do to her husband once he got out of the hospital. She would make Karl Sr. pay, that was for sure.

She unclasped her purse while remembering the man’s instructions. Put three coins into the machine, pull the handle; then drop two coins, pull the handle; then drop one coin, and pull the handle. Once she’d done that, Rebecca was supposed to drop five coins — the maximum — and pull the handle. That would make the Drew Carey machine overpay.

She took a roll of half dollars out of her purse which she’d gotten at the cage a minute ago. She fed three coins into the machine, and heard an electronic plunk! Then she grabbed the machine’s handle. Her daddy the preacher called slot machines the Devil’s playthings, and said they were evil. She pulled the handle anyway.

The reels spun, then stopped. Two cherries and two lemons. A loser. From out of the machine came Drew Carey’s unmistakable voice.

“Step right up— we need another sucker!”

The woman playing the machine beside Rebecca started laughing. Rebecca didn’t think it was funny at all. It was more like a slap in the face. She put two coins into the machine and repeated the process. This time, three strawberries and an orange came up. Another loser.

“Don’t give up,” Drew Carey’s voice proclaimed. “We want to build another wing on the casino!”

Rebecca glanced at her son, and saw him pigging out on his cone, wearing it on his chin and shirt. She hated when he did that, but right now it seemed the most wonderful thing in the world. She deposited a single coin, and pulled the handle. Another loser. “Ohhh, I’m so sorry, I guess that means another walk to the A.T.M.!”

Rebecca wanted to kick the machine. Drew Carey’s sarcastic comments had gotten her so mad that she no longer felt bad about ripping the Peppermill off. The machine had injured her, and she was about to injure it right back. What did it say in the Bible? An eye for an eye. And then some, she thought, putting five coins in and pulling the handle.

Within thirty seconds of winning a jackpot, a team of security people were swarming around her. Rebecca remained seated, and said nothing. The woman who’d been laughing at her a minute ago had become her new best friend, and whacked Rebecca enthusiastically on the back while calling to others in the casino to come over, and see what Rebecca had done.

What Rebecca had done was to win a ninety-six hundred dollar jackpot and shut Drew Carey up, the comedian not offering a single word of praise. Slot machines were evil things that preyed upon human weakness, and Rebecca promised herself that she’d never play another one for as long as she lived.

She glanced over at her son. Karl Jr. had finished his cone, and was clapping his hands enthusiastically, the man from the casino standing behind him, his hand on Karl Jr.’s shoulder. In church, Rebecca had heard stories about parents who lifted cars off their children in order to save their lives. The minister had attributed these incredible feats to God, but Rebecca knew better. They were acts of desperation, fueled by fear.

She had not wanted Karl, Jr. to go to a foster home. Anything but that.

She blew a kiss to her son, and saw him smile.