Chapter 2

I was at my house, going over the inventory notes that Danny and I had made when we visited the big storage shed I was renting in back of Ziggy's beer bar. I did more buying than selling, so I usually ended up with some odds and ends left over from the various deals I'd made.

My phone started ringing, and when I reached over to pick it up, it was my brother, Danny calling me.

"Jimmy, I'm glad I got you. Kaitlyn just called me from out at the rez. She said she won a big jackpot out there and they're refusing to pay her the money. She claims it's over ninety thousand. She says she hit five sevens on one of those dime progressives."

I told him I'd make some calls and get back with him after I learned what was happening out there. I called Reuben Garcia, the head security guy out at San Ramon, and he came to the phone a few seconds after I'd asked to speak with him.

"You heard about it already, Jimmy? Man, I was just about to get to the phone and call you. Your sister in law just won ninety six 'thou' on one of our machines out here."

"Danny called me and said that she claimed you weren't paying her."

"We can't pay her unless she has two forms of identification. Right now, all she has is an expired driver's license, which we can't use, and what she claims is her Social Security card number. We'll be more than happy to pay her what she has coming, just as soon as she provides us with some valid I.D."

I drove over to Kaitlyn and Danny's trailer, which was only a ten minute drive from my house. Danny was sitting in the living room, close to their phone, watching the TV and letting his three young children run wild throughout their messy trailer.

"Danny, I need Kaitlyn's passport, the one she got that time you went on the cruise ship."

"I think she keeps it with our important papers. Why you need her passport? Is she taking off with that money she won? If she does, I'm really through with that bitch this time." Danny was already getting pretty upset just from his own mistaken conjecturing. I knew I needed to get him calmed back down again.

"She isn't going anywhere, "D". They can't give her the money she won without her having some identification that proves who she is. Her licence is expired, or suspended, I'm not sure which, so they can't use that. I talked to Rueben, and he will accept a passport, and one of her tax returns showing her Social Security number. I already had a copy of last year's tax return, so all I'll need is her passport."

While I was telling him this, I was also walking back to their bedroom, heading straight for the top drawer of their clothes chest of drawers. It took less than a minute of poking through all the crap they had in there for me to locate their passports. I took both of them, putting them in my back pants pocket, closing and buttoning the flap.

As I walked back to the door to the trailer I told Danny that I had the passport, and would be back soon with Kaitlyn and the money.

"Don't let her stay out there and keep playing, Jimmy. If you do, she'll end up giving it all back to them."

"Don't worry, "D", I know what I'm doing. This is a lot of money, and there are places it needs to go. We'll be back here in less than an hour."

It took about fifteen minutes at the cashier's cage to sign all the tax forms and get the money released. Reuben let me talk him out of keeping back any of the money for the IRS after I convinced him that Danny and Kaitlyn had enough prior losses to offset any taxes that might otherwise be due for this win. He knew that Danny and Kaitlyn were both degenerate losers, and had been for many years.

When we left the casino, I had a large canvas bag with nine hundred and sixty hundred dollar bills in it. Kaitlyn was whining about needing me to at least give her what she referred to as "the extra six thousand" to spread around as tokes for the slot people and other casino personnel. That was how her mind worked, and also why she and Danny never ended up with any money left over whenever they did manage to book any win while gambling.

"There isn't any extra six grand, Kaitlyn. You two owe me over fifty thousand dollars, and that money is coming right off the top."

"Danny owes you most of that, Jimmy, not me. This money here, that's my money. You can't take my money to pay what he owes."

"Oh really? You saw who Reuben gave the money to, didn't you? You may as well just get used to the idea that you aren't going to see any of this money, not ever. After you pay off some bills you have, and we buy some other things you need, I doubt there will be a single penny left over. If you're real lucky, you'll end up being out of debt and free and clear for the first time in anyone's memory."

I almost had to fight Danny the next day when I wouldn't let him talk me out of any of the money either. They ended up a lot to the good from that unexpected windfall.

I bought their trailer that they'd been only renting before. It was only seventeen thousand, and they'd been paying almost nine hundred a month for renting the trailer and paying for the space and utility rental. After they owned the trailer, free and clear, they only had to pay four hundred a month for that same space rental and all their utilities. I also paid off Danny's truck and Kaitlyn's mini van. I had been on the hook as the co-signer on both loans, so, in a way, paying off the loans benefited me as much as it did them.

I also paid off their way past due medical bills, and gave Kaitlyn's mother back the twenty one hundred that Kaitlyn had scammed her for the year before, when she claimed she needed it as tuition for the cosmetology school she was enrolling in.