Nadav Kariv

Let It Ride

Nick flipped open his briefcase, and poured $1,000,000 in cash onto the roulette table at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.  “Black,” he said softly. 

The dealer nodded.  "You're covered, sir," he replied.

In a Custom-tailored three-piece suit, trim athletic build, Nick positioned himself calmly, like a man who regularly placed million dollar bets in his personal and professional life.  But on the inside…

“Oh, dear God,” Nick whispered.  “Please let me win this one last bet.  Please let it be black.” The bookies wanted their money tomorrow, and Nick knew he was not going to get an extension this time.  This bet was his last desperate chance to make up the funds.

“The bets are down,” the dealer called, and spun the roulette wheel.

“Oh, Lord,” Nick quietly prayed.  “You know how deeply sorry I am.  You know that the money I put on this table is the last I’ll ever, ever bet.  Please, dear sweet Jesus, let me win this one last bet, and I’ll pay back all the money I’ve ever gambled away. Just please, please let me win this one last bet.  Please let it be black.”

The dealer dropped the tiny silver ball into the wheel, where it danced gracefully around the long circular edge. “I’ll even do charity work,” Nick added.  “Well, I don’t know that many charities, but I’m sure there are some good ones in our neighborhood.  And what about church?  There are probably several excellent churches around.  I might even become a deacon, or an altar-man, or one of those things.”

The tiny ball bounced.  A black number, a red number, a black number, a black number, a red number, black, red, black…Perspiration collected on Nick’s thin moustache.  “Oh please, God, black, black, black,” he pleaded softly.  “Just let it be black, black, black.”

The wheel slowly stopped, and the ball came to rest.  Nick shut his eyes tight, feeling only the beat of his own throbbing veins, as he listened carefully to the all-important words of the dealer.  "Thirteen," the dealer said.  "Black."

A loud cheer erupted from the crowd that had gathered around the table.  Nick felt the congratulatory pats of strangers as the dealer dealt out one million dollars in chips, and stacked them on top of Nick’s pile.  Nick maintained a serene air, but his hands kept a tight pale grip on the table’s edge.  He felt blood slowly returning to his head.

“I did it!” he thought. “Let’s see, I lost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and then the extra million for this bet, so I need to pay back one million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  And there’s two million in the pile in front of me, so…that leaves me with a profit of $250,000!” Nick smiled, a big wide grin, his first in a long time. 

A loud voice interrupted Nick’s thoughts.  “Twenty-five.  Red.” The crowd that had gathered around the table groaned loudly, and then slowly broke up.  A few people patted Nick’s shoulders in consolation.  “Sorry,” one stranger said gently to Nick, before drifting away.

 Then Nick watched as the dealer pulled away his two million dollar bundle.

“Hey,” Nick shouted, “what are you doing with my money?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the dealer replied, as he gathered in Nick’s pile of cash.  “Although it was quite courageous of you to let your large bet ride, I’m afraid you lost it on the last roll.”

“Let it ride?” Nick exclaimed.  “Oh, no, no, no, I wasn’t letting it ride.  I just got distracted in my daydreams, and forgot to remove my money after the first bet.”  Nick then tried to grab his pile of chips.

The dealer firmly pushed Nick’s hands aside.  “When you leave your money on the table, intentionally or not,” the dealer explained, “you let it ride.  Rules of the house.”  With a small sympathetic smile, he added, “Of course, you’ve lost a lot of money with us today, so if you’d like a complementary coffee shop meal or…”

“DON’T…YOU…TAKE…MY…MONEY,” Nick shouted, and lunged at the dealer, spilling chips and markers all over the floor as he frantically grabbed for his two million dollars.  Two large security guards immediately raced over, grabbed Nick by the arms, and shoved him out the nearest exit.

            Nick did not move from the alley behind the casino, where the guards had thrown him, for over an hour. He just sat there going over what had just happened in his head. He could not believe it. “This is fucking ridiculous,” Nick thought to himself. “I actually won the bet but it gets taken away on some stupid ass rule. I’m so stupid. How did I not just take the money off the table? I have to be the most retarded person in Vegas. Now I have to go tell Teddy I lost the money.”

            Teddy KGB is the bookie that Nick borrowed his money from. Teddy is known as the most brutal of all bookies when it comes to people who don’t pay him. His sadistic tortures he learned while in the KGB are notorious throughout Vegas. Nick wasn’t worried about whether he was going to die when he told Teddy, but rather what he and his right hand man Grama were going to do to him first.   

            Nick had finally gotten up and walked out of the alley and onto the Strip, and was making his way towards Teddy’s underground betting house that was just off the Strip. Nick walked past the Bellagio and the Luxor casinos looking at all the tourists with smiles on their faces and not a care in the world. “What I’d give to trade places with one of them,” Nick thought to himself.

On his way past New York New York Casino, Nick could hear someone shouting loudly, “Tickets, tickets, who needs tickets? UNLV vs. Utah, Mountain West Championship game, it’s all sold out except for these tickets right here.” Scalpers are people who buy tickets to sporting events at face value, and then try to sell them to people who can not find tickets for over double face value, and they are as common as bookies in Vegas. The scalper was trying to sell tickets to a college basketball game.

“Oh my god, Justin!” Nick said aloud. Nick’s nephew Justin was the starting point guard for UNLV and would be playing in the game tonight. “I’ve gotta get tickets to the game, I promised him I’d be there,” Nick thought to himself. Nick started to run towards the scalper to buy a ticket when all of a sudden an idea hit him.

Nick was running at top speed through the crowded streets of Vegas trying to get to Teddy. “Never thought I’d be in a rush to see Teddy,” Nick thought to himself with a slight grin. He knew this was his last shot at getting the money back to Teddy and he needed to hurry. Out of breath, Nick finally got to the end of the Strip and turned down an alley with a door at the end of it. Nick began to get nervous because he knew Teddy was going to be upset, plan or not.

“It’s Little Nicky,” Grama told Teddy after looking through the slit in the door at Nick.

“Let him in,” Teddy told Grama

The door opened for Nick after several locks were opened on the door by Grama. As Nick stepped inside and the door was closed behind him, he wondered if that was the last time he would breathe fresh air.

“Ah, Nicky, nice to see you. It is a beautiful night, no?” said Teddy in his thick Russian accent with a slight smirk on his face. Although Teddy stood a modest 5’8” tall and 130 pounds, his piercing blue eyes coupled with his temper that few had seen and were able to tell the tale, made him one of the most feared people in all of Vegas.

“Uh… yeah it’s a… very beautiful night,” Nick stammered nervously. He did not like the way Teddy was acting.

Teddy stood up and walked up to Nick and said in a low voice, “So, does that mean you come here to give my money back?”

“Well… you see I won the money playing roulette…”

“That is good.”

“But…”

“But? There are no buts. You either have the money or no,” Teddy said calmly.

“Uh, well… uh then I guess I uh… don’t have it,” Nick managed say.

“You know you have a lot of nerve coming to me with out the money. I would have thought you would have run away,” Teddy said beginning to get mad. “So, I wonder why you come to me?”

“Well I have an idea for how to get your money back,” Nick said boldly.

“A plan? Is this plan different than the last one where I lose more money? I have hard time believing you Nicky.”

Nick was sweating profusely and the smirk that turned into a smile on Teddy’s face did not help. “Yes. It is very different. I swear to you it will work, please believe me.”

“Believe you? I don’t know. Grama what do you think?”

Grama was the exact opposite of Teddy physically. He was 6’3” and over 200 pounds. “I don’t know boss. I think we should just take care of him now before we lose more money.”

“No, no, please listen to my plan. At least listen to what my plan is!” Nick said desperately as he dropped to his knees.

“Okay, Nicky we will listen but I make no promises,” Teddy said.

“Thank you, thank you. Alright, here it is. My nephew Justin plays for the UNLV basketball team and they are playing tonight, you know?”

“Yes, yes. The championship game, continue.”

“Yeah, well they are eight point favorites to win and if you bet $1.75 million on Utah to lose by less than eight than I can tell Justin to make sure UNLV wins, but by less than eight.” The plan was out on the table and Nick prayed that Teddy would go for it.

“Interesting, very interesting,” Teddy said sitting down at a table thinking hard. “Tell me, Nicky, how do I know that your nephew will do this?”

“I promise. He’ll do it for me, I’ll convince him. I promise.”

“Okay, fine. Let’s go meet Justin.”

Nick , Teddy and Grama were making there way inside the arena after Teddy placed the bet and bought them tickets from the same scalper Nick had heard before. Nick was calling Justin on his cell phone in order to meet him to tell him what he needed.

“Hey Justin, its Nick.”

“Hey, what’s up uncle. You here yet?”

“Yeah, you bet. Hey you think you could meet me outside the locker room for a second?”

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll be right out.”

Justin is 5’11” only 155 pounds, but his speed and shooting ability propelled him to Division I basketball. “Hey, good to see ya Nick,” said Justin, giving Nick a hug. “So what’s up.”

“Well I’ll cut to the chase, I need your help,” Nick said while looking over his soldier at teddy and Grama. “I’m in some trouble with the wrong guys.”

“Damnit! Why you always getting into trouble man? Alright, so what do you need.”

“Well I owe those guys a lot of money, and I need you to win this game but by less than eight points. Can you do that for me?”

“You want me to shave points in the championship game? You gotta be kiddin man.”

“Please, please Justin. You can still win but just not by more than seven alright? You know I wouldn’t ask you this if I didn’t need it.”

Justin took a long hard stare at his uncle and then at the two men standing behind him. “Alright, Nick, you got it. Just don’t go screwing up again after this ‘cause I ain’t gunna save you.”

“Oh thank you so much Justin.”

Thirty minutes later the game started and Nick was so nervous he spent the entire first three quarters of the game in the bathroom with Grama standing by just incase he tried something funny. However, it didn’t seem Nick was going to have to do anything crazy because UNLV was winning by only one point entering the final quarter. With two minutes left in the game and UNLV up by three, Nick finally sat down next to Teddy in the first row behind UNLV’s bench.

“Well, well, well. Nicky, it looks like you’ll be free man tonight. Just a couple minutes to go,” said Teddy.

“Yeah, well let’s hope the score holds up,” Nick said nervously. Just then UNLV hit a three-pointer making their lead six point with a minute to go. After trading off missed shots, there was fifteen seconds to go when Utah brought the ball down the court and heaved a desperation three that did not go. UNLV got the rebound with two seconds left to go and Nick jumped in joy as the clock ran out. “Yes,” Nick shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Foul on number 23. Two shots for UNLV,” one of the refs said.

“What, are you fucking kidding me?” said Nick. UNLV was up by six and they had two free-throws, and if they made both Nick would lose the bet.

To Nick’s horror the player that got fouled was not his nephew, and was UNLV’s best foul shooter. He went to the line and easily drained the first shot. Nick looked in horror to his left at Teddy who had a similar look on his face. Grama was right next to him digging in his pockets for something Nick could not see. Then the player stepped to the line and shot the second free-throw. The balled hit the backboard and danced around the rim for what seemed like years to Nick. Then all of a sudden the ball stopped, and went through the hoop. UNLV won the game by eight points. Nick dropped to his knees in disbelief. “I’m going to die,” Nick thought to himself. Grama pulled Nick up by the collar and pulled out the object he was searching for before from his pocket. Nick closed his eyes as Grama slammed the object into Nick’s stomach. “I’m dead,” he thought to himself. But after a couple of seconds of nothing he opened his eyes to see Grama and Teddy laughing at the top of their lungs. Nick looked down into his stomach and saw a piece of paper. It was the slip for the bet Teddy placed, but it said UNLV to win by eight or more.

“You see, Nicky, I figured your luck was so bad that if I bet against you I was sure to win,” Teddy said laughing. Teddy then took the slip from Nick, patted him on the back and walked out of the arena, never to be seen by Nick again.

It took Nick a couple of minutes to realize what had happened, but when he did, he collapsed into an empty chair, put his head in his hands and though to himself, “I gotta get out of Vegas.”