Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 36, No. 6, June, 1975

Sure Thing by Michael Brett

Varig was a gambling man — surely he’d bet on a sure thing, like an insurance policy on my nagging wife…

Sitting in the car next to Paul Varig I admired the precise way he drove. We were on the mountain road heading toward Lake Tahoe. Varig is a professional gambler. I recalled how we had met in Las Vegas six months ago.

My wife Martha and I had gone there for the first time on a ten day vacation. I gambled and after we were there a week I had won a thousand dollars.

Beginner’s luck. All right, I admit it. What still bugs me is that if Martha hadn’t been with me I would have run the thousand dollars up to a fortune. There was no question about it.

What happened is that we had just enough money for the stay at the hotel plus a hundred dollars for gambling. Anybody in his right mind knows that isn’t enough. A run of bad luck and you’ve had it. You’re wiped out and that’s the end of the fun.

Of course you can spend the rest of your vacation lounging around the pool and getting a tan if you’re a physical health bug, or you can even fill in the hours playing golf. And you don’t have to fly all the way to Las Vegas to do that. Martha and I had flown twenty-eight-hundred miles to get there.

I had a plan when I started to gamble. The limit I had placed on myself was ten dollars a day. I was reconciled to the idea that I’d lose the money. It had been figured into the cost of the vacation.

I played the dollar minimum at the blackjack table. My luck was good. Every time I won Martha would let out a squeal of pleasure.

At first I thought that was kind of cute. The dealer, even though he figured to be used to exuberant cries, was plainly irritated after I’d won over forty dollars. Las Vegas dealers are great at hiding their emotions, but the running argument Martha and I were having must have had something to do with steaming him up a little, the way I figured it.

It seemed I couldn’t do any wrong. I didn’t follow any system. I’d stand on twelve, thirteen and at other times I’d have the dealer hit me on seventeen and eighteen when I had a hunch that he’d go broke on his turn. I’d hit eighteen and wind up with twenty-one. That was the kind of a night it was.

The trouble started when I wanted to increase my bet by doubling up. If I had just increased my bets to two dollars I would have wound up with eighty dollars the first night instead of forty. Every time I put two dollars down Martha would say, “Now Warren, you promised. Don’t you dare!”

Frankly it was kind of embarrassing having her hang over me that way. What could I do, though? Arguing with her, or telling her to leave me alone would have ruined my time. Besides, she wouldn’t have listened. That’s the kind of woman she is. Once or twice when the dealer won she’d say, “See, Warren, what did I tell you? You would have lost double the amount. See what I mean?” Her words irked the dealer.

I could see what she meant all right. Most of all I could see that she was beginning to annoy me and without her riding herd over me I might have had a chance to win some big money.

She was unreasonable in other ways, too. At four-thirty in the morning she insisted that I quit and go to sleep. Everybody knows that you’re not supposed to walk away from a winning streak. I tried to explain that to her, but she wouldn’t listen.

“Now Warren, if you stay up all night you’ll be so tired you won’t be able to enjoy tomorrow,” was what she kept saying.

She wouldn’t stop.

There wasn’t any point arguing with her, so we went to bed. Unknown to me she stuck a Do Not Disturb sign on the door and I wound up sleeping half the next day away, when I could have been winning some money. When I awoke I was alone.

The hundred I had started with was now a hundred and forty. I dressed quickly. If I could get to the casino without Martha I’d be able to really hit them.

When I got there she was waiting for me, smiling. “Warren, you look wonderful, all rested out,” she said.

If I’d wanted rest I would have stayed home. I didn’t tell her that. She’d never understand.

I played every game there was, poker, dice, blackjack, chemin de fer, roulette, and to say that my luck was great would be an understatement of fact. It was phenomenal. From time to time I lost, but I always bounced back. I walked away winning from everything I tried.

Martha hung around my neck like an anchor. At the dice table I made six straight passes and wanted to double up on each one, but I couldn’t get rid of Martha.

She was choking me. I couldn’t breathe with her around. So to gain a breathing spell I handed her fifty dollars and told her to try her luck elsewhere. I had to promise that I wouldn’t increase the size of my bets while she was gone before she agreed to leave.

During the twenty minutes she was gone I met Paul Varig at the dice table. He was a professional gambler. I recognized him immediately, since his photograph had been in the newspapers during a recent Senate crime hearing on gambling. He had pleaded the fifth amendment no less than forty-six times.

He wasn’t reluctant to talk to me, however, and ride my winning streak all the way, winding up with eight thousand dollars. Myself, I made two hundred dollars.

Once when I had a lucky run he whispered, “This is unusual pal. You go a little heavier when it’s like this.”

“Well, I promised Martha,” I said. He smiled and shrugged as if to say, well, I can’t play your game for you.

When Martha returned I introduced him to her. Despite what the newspapers had to say about him being an unsavory character and all, he seemed like a nice guy as far as I was concerned. And he was.

During the rest of the vacation we stuck together and there wasn’t any question but that he made the rest of our stay more enjoyable.

At night we’d go to the other hotels for dinner and the shows and his presence was more than enough to insure us a ringside table. People were standing in line, but we’d breeze right through and were treated like some sort of visiting royalty.

I could tell right off that Martha liked him, but he was a gentleman. He never made a pass and that’s kind of unusual, since Martha’s a genuine beauty.

I’m not saying this because she’s my wife and I might be a little prejudiced. Before we were married she was Miss Runner-up in a beauty contest in Oklahoma, so I know what I’m talking about. I guess the real reason for Varig’s indifference was that he had all the female companionship he had use for. Some real beauties would smile and wave at him wherever we went.

I got to know Paul Varig well during the rest of my vacation. Once I had convinced Martha that I’d continue to gamble cautiously, she left me alone. I had ample opportunity to study Varig’s gambling habits. The one thing I noticed about him that stuck in my mind was that he always took the odds, and that when he felt they were in his favor he played heavily.

He came out winning forty-three thousand dollars during the time we were there, but in all fairness to him, he kept saying, “Warren, bet a little heavier and you’ll grab yourself a bundle.”

When Martha and I checked out of the hotel we were ahead a thousand dollars. She was delighted over it. She kept saying, “Warren, it isn’t how much you win. It’s the fact that you’re a winner that’s important.”

I let it go at that. There wasn’t any sense arguing with her. It wouldn’t change her point of view anyway.

I didn’t see Paul Varig for six months after that. But my head was filled with the good rolls and the points I’d made and how things would be a lot easier for me if I had played the way I wanted to.

I figured it out a few times and realized that if I had only placed bigger bets and doubled up a few times I would have come out winning over a hundred thousand dollars. Thinking about that, the thousand only frustrated me.

The way I saw it, Martha, with her unreasonably cautious attitude and my going along with it, had cost me ninety-nine thousand dollars. I could forgive her almost anything, but ninety-nine thousand dollars is a lot of forgiving and I didn’t have all that forgiveness.

Things between us got kind of unpleasant after a while. What made it even worse was that she wanted to spend some of the thousand. She wanted a new winter outfit, a coat, shoes and purse, only I wasn’t about to go along with that.

No sir. Since I was the one who’d won the money I figured that I was the one who had the right to spend it any way I wanted. So I told her nothing doing.

Actually, what I said was, “Forget it, Martha.” When she insisted that she hadn’t had a new coat in five years and she really needed one, I said, “Get lost, Martha,” and that was being kind of gentle the way I saw it, since I was out ninety-nine thousand dollars.

Marriage isn’t going to hold up with something like that hanging over it. I guess her background had something to do with it, too. Her father was a railroad hand and a heavy drinker back in Oklahoma and from what she’d told me she hadn’t exactly lived in the lap of luxury. She’d been working ever since she was fourteen. Maybe that accounted for her cautious attitude toward money.

Anyway, things kept getting worse between us and finally she went off to see her sister in Buffalo for a few weeks. Of course, I knew she was going to do that. You live with a woman for ten years and you get to know her habits and what will set her off and what will make her do certain things. So it didn’t exactly come as a surprise to me when she went off to Buffalo.

I planned it that way, in fact.

This time I had my plan completely worked out. I withdrew the thousand dollar winnings from the bank and caught the first available flight to Puerto Rico. I chose it over Las Vegas because the fare was less and it would leave me with more gambling money.

I called Martha and told her where I was going and that I’d be back in a week. She said, “Good luck, Warren. Have a good time.” Frankly I was kind of surprised that she didn’t put up a fuss.

I rented a car at the San Juan Airport, checked into a good hotel and that evening those guys down there nearly wiped me out. Everything I touched went sour. I bet right and I couldn’t get off more than two or three rolls before I sevened out. So I went against the dice and some bum got hot and I didn’t have enough sense to get off his roll.

By twelve o’clock there was a sickness like a rock in my stomach. I went back to my room, shaved, showered, changed my clothes and returned to the gambling room, and this time I tried playing it carefully, betting a dollar or two, no more. When the casino closed I had recouped five hundred dollars.

The next night was different. The dice could do no wrong and as I kept winning, I kept increasing the size of my bets. At one-thirty I left the gambling tables, went back to my room again and realized that I had won eleven thousand dollars. With a bankroll I knew that I had a chance to win the big money. So I returned to the dice tables and in an hour I had lost over a thousand dollars.

There’s a theory gamblers have that win or lose it’s all the same, just as long as you’re playing. It doesn’t apply to me. When I lose it bugs me and when I win I feel great. And I had the certain feeling that my luck had run out here.

The next morning I was on a plane back to New York. I went straight to my apartment and found Martha and Paul Varig. They were both sitting in the living room having coffee when I came in and I guess I surprised them as much as they surprised me by being there.

Martha seemed happy to see me. She told me why her visit to her sister had been cut short. Her brother-in-law, a traveling salesman, had to make a trip to the west coast, and her sister was going along with him, sort of making it a business and pleasure trip. And since Martha didn’t want to stay in the apartment by herself she had decided to come home.

Varig had come to see me because he was going back to Las Vegas and he wanted to know if I wanted to go with him. He jokingly explained that the fix had been in on a few college basketball games, he was suspected of it and that the district attorney and certain other officials had made things uncomfortable for him around the metropolitan area. He was off to Las Vegas where the heat would be off.

I didn’t tell Martha how much I’d won in Puerto Rico, but when I handed her a thousand dollars and told her to spend it on herself, her eyes lit up. I made one condition, though. I wanted to make this trip to Las Vegas without her. She agreed. I guess the thousand dollars helped her get over her disappointment.

On the plane, after Varig and I had a few drinks, he told me that he’d made a bundle on the basketball games. The fix had been in and he’d arranged it, but he wasn’t worried about it. Nobody had enough guts to testify against him, he said.

“The trick is, Warren, you got to bet on the sure thing. That’s the only way you can win.”

I had heard this statement before. Walk around any racetrack listening to the comments after a race. Listen to the boys who speculate on the stock market. Listen to the winners, listen to the losers.

“When you bet on a sure thing, you win.” The statement was elemental, naive and obvious. Frankly, I was a little surprised that I heard it from Paul Varig, but on second thought I could see where a professional gambler might gear his pattern of play to this philosophy as a matter of survival.

By the time we got to Las Vegas I had forgotten all about it. All I wanted was a whack at the dice tables and a good run of luck. That’s asking a lot and I knew it.

There was a vast difference in the way Varig and I gambled. I never left the tables, while Varig spent most of his time in the lounge, or sunning himself at the pool. When he did play it was heavily and for short periods. I observed him standing around a table making mental bets for an hour before he placed his first real bet.

He was a cautious man, I thought, as cautious as a gambler could be and still manage to play.

That first day we arrived in Las Vegas at four p.m. By midnight I was ahead twenty thousand dollars. It was all systems go. I made the numbers the easy way and the hard way. When it runs that way all the percentages go out the window. On a hunch I hit three twelves on three consecutive rolls.

Varig came over and we went to the lounge for coffee and a sandwich. I hadn’t eaten anything since the meal on the plane.

Varig regarded the huge stack of chips I had piled in the center of the table. “If you’re smart, you’ll cash those in, go to sleep and check out first thing in the morning,” he said.

“There’s a chance I can double this.”

He laughed. “You’ve got the fever, Warren. Maybe you can double it. But twenty will get you fifty that if you stick around you’ll give it all back.”

“You’re right,” I said, and I quit for the night. He was really a nice guy.

In the morning there was a line at the checkout desk. I waited in the gambling room and grabbed off a little action. In ten minutes play I knew that checking out of the hotel this morning would be a mistake. Twice I sevened out and miraculously the dice rolled off the seven. I was betting ten dollars.

Varig came over. “I thought you’d be on the plane by now,” he said.

“There’s another one this afternoon,” I told him.

“Go on, Warren, make a run for it. You’re a winner,” he said.

My turn to roll the dice came around. I picked them up and said, “I want to bet twenty thousand.”

A curious look appeared on Varig’s face. “You’re crazy, pal.”

There was a small consultation between the pit bosses and one of them said, “All right, Warren.” I had a bet.

I caught a seven on the first roll. I had forty thousand dollars. I bet ten dollars on the next roll. My point was eight. I didn’t make it.

I had forty thousand dollars.

“You can still make the plane,” said Varig.

I didn’t answer him.

“Watching you lose it will be too painful,” Varig said. “I’m going to get some sun at the pool.”

When I saw him three hours later, I had lost it all.

We sat in the coffee shop. I asked him if he could lend me some money, maybe a thousand dollars.

“Forget it,” he snorted.

“My luck’s going to change. I know you must have heard a thousand guys say the same thing. But I can feel it.”

He thought about it a long time. “Well,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of things happen around a gambling table. I’ve even seen guys make a comeback. One thing I know for sure. You’re going to need more than a thousand if you want to regain a forty thousand dollar loss. The way I figure it you’ll need about ten grand.”

Nobody was going to give me ten grand. I said, “A thousand is all I need.” That sounded like a much more realistic possibility.

He shook his head. “A bad run and you’re out of action. You’ll lose it. Ten grand is what you need, Warren.”

“It would give me a better chance,” I said.

He regarded me curiously. “You could lose ten grand as easy as a thousand, Warren, still you never can tell. You might be able to do it.”

“I haven’t got ten grand. I haven’t even got one grand.”

He laughed. “If you’re hinting that I loan it to you, forget it. I make\ it a policy never to lend money to gamblers.”

“Well,” I said. “I guess that’s it,” and started to rise.

He waved me down. “Take it easy, Warren. Maybe I can introduce you to a guy in Lake Tahoe. He’s in the money lending business. But you’ll have to come up with some kind of security for ten grand; house, car, stocks, bonds, things like that.”

“Nothing,” I said.

Varig shrugged and smiled. “So you take the next plane home and you forget about it. You pretend you never owned the forty grand.”

“That won’t be easy,” I said, and studied his face, and wondered what his reaction would be to what I was going to say. “There’s a life insurance policy on Martha for twenty thousand dollars. There’s a cash equity. Maybe your friend in Lake Tahoe..”

He nodded. “Yeah, he’d go for that. Have you got the policy with you?”

“Right here in my pocket,” I said, and produced it.

He read it. “Yeah, this is a little more like it. At least it is a sign of good faith. If he gives you ten grand against it, you’ll have to pay him fifteen grand for it.”

“Five thousand dollars interest? That’s a lot of money.”

He burst into laughter. “If he gives it to you that’s a lot of risk he’s taking to earn it. He’ll only give you the money on my say-so anyway. In other words I’m guaranteeing your loan. So there’s something you’ve got to tell me. Suppose you lose. How are you going to repay the money?”

“I’m not going to lose.”

“I’ve heard that before, more times than I can count. You still haven’t answered my question.”

I leaned forward and said quietly, “I’m the beneficiary named on the policy.”

He considered what I’d said. “I’ve been in this racket a long time. I thought I’d seen everything.”

I thought it wise to say nothing.

He finished his coffee before continuing. “All right Warren, now I’ll take you to my friend in Lake Tahoe, and let me tell you something. The only reason I’m doing it is because of what you just said about being the beneficiary on Martha’s life insurance policy.”

He spoke in a matter of fact voice. An outsider hearing him would never believe that he was discussing the possibility of my killing Martha to gain twenty thousand dollars in the event that I lost the money I was going to borrow.

But it wasn’t going to come to that. I was sure that I was going to win back the money I had lost. If I didn’t, I’d cross that bridge, getting rid of Martha, when I came to it.

“When can I see your friend?” I said.

“We’ll drive over there now,” Varig said.

So here we were, heading for Lake Tahoe. Varig drove. When we were about halfway to our destination, I couldn’t believe it when he stopped the car, drew a gun and walked me off the road into a thicket.

“What are you doing?” I said, and couldn’t believe what was happening. I found myself saying “why,” over and over again.

“Martha has a policy on you for twenty thousand dollars. She’s the beneficiary on that one.” He winked. “I’ve been paying the premiums on that one for the last six months.”

“You and Martha?” I asked incredulously.

He nodded. “Why not? That kid’s got class, only you’re not smart enough to see it. You’re not even in her league and you were ready to kill her for the policy money.”

“I would have won.”

“You had to lose. It was a sure thing. The trouble Warren, was that you were playing in a different game and you didn’t know it. There were only two players, you and me. Like that there’s only one winner and one loser.”

“But why did you keep telling me to go home when I was ahead forty thousand dollars?”

He shrugged. “Words. I knew you couldn’t do it.”

I said, “Now wait a minute!”

He said, “So long,” and raised the gun.