Chapter 14

We can always get another stocker.

We have the watch.

The drive back to Davis–Monthan Air Force Base was different. We picked 1964 as a good time ... and of course we drove to LasVegas. My turn. I went to April 1st and watched the High Roller pit. There was a girl there who looked a lot like June.

She didn't play, she just watched from the rail above the pit. I noted the time on the Casino wall and the time of every roll of the little marble ... this table had a minimum bet of a thousand dollars and two double zero slots on the wheel. Double zero paid 35 to one if you bet on it.

There seemed to be an inordinate number of falls on double zero. Of the 35 spins I watched, double zero captured the ball seven times. Time to try a different Casino.

I wandered off ... on the way out the door I spied a new machine; twenty dollar slots. People were stopping by and playing it once ... like a last gasp to win something. What the fuck ... I fed a twenty to the one armed bandit. I had already laughed and turned away when the machine went crazy. I won a million dollars.

Security went berserk. The manager came out with a photographer and a big cardboard check. I got my picture taken about a million times and a cashiers check ... and a tax document.

"You should ring off the win," a cute girl suggested.

"How to I do that?"

"Stick a twenty in it and pull the arm."

"Ok."

I did like she asked ... the wheels spun ... I turned away ... Flashing lights, sirens, horns ... I'd won again. The manager ... who hadn't left yet ... got all bug eyed. He whispered to the cute girl and she took off. She was back in a few minutes with a second check ... and the tax man ... he wanted twenty eight percent of both checks.

This time, the cute girl stuck a twenty dollar chip in the machine and pulled the lever. In the next ten years, that machine never paid off ... not even the hundred dollar pot. Not once. Amazing. I walked off down the street followed by the taxman.

Nevada Bank took my two million dollar checks and gave the taxman two checks ... two hundred eighty thousand dollars each. The bastard didn't even thank me. I got something new ... a prepaid credit card for the balance ... and they only charged me two grand to do it ... whoop-te-do!

The Sands had a 21 story high rise addition that opened last year. June was sitting in the car feeding a meter at the last Casino. What the hell ... I got us a fourteen hundred room ... rooms ... suite ... whatever. I walked back to the car.

The back was off the million dollar slot machine and two techs were asshole deep in the guts. June thought it was pretty funny. We drove out in the desert, pushed the stem ... timed us to the year we started ... reset the watch and drove back to Lost Wages.