Nobody Move by Denis Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

worked in a casino in Vegas told me about this hippie. This hippie comes in out of the desert night, creeps into the casino all scraggly in his huarache sandals and tie-dye shirt and Hindu balloon pants, and he goes to the roulette table and reaches into this little pouch tied to his belt and comes up with one U.S. quarter. Lays the quarter on black. Little ball comes down on twenty-two black. He lets it ride, doubles again, switches to red, doubles his dollar, takes his two dollars to the blackjack and wins ten in a row, doubling every time. Ten in a row. True story. Two thousand and forty-eight dollars. He pulls his chips and heads for the craps and starts betting with the shooter, double whatever the shooter bets. Inside of two hours the house is clocking his action and he’s comped with free meals and he’s drunk on free booze, and he’s still at the craps, with a crowd around him, betting a couple hundred a throw. By three a.m. he’s stacked up over six grand off an initial investment of twenty-five cents. And suddenly, in four or five big bets, all gone—he busts out. Stands there thinking a minute . . . folks around him watching . . . He stands there . . . Everybody’s shouting, “One more quarter! One more quarter!” Old hippie shakes his head. Staggers back out into the desert after one hell of a night in a Vegas casino. A night they’re still talking about. Total cost was twenty-five cents. A night he’ll never forget.”
“For a person who doesn’t drink coffee,” Anita said, “you sure run your mouth.”
“It keeps me from thinking about things.”
“Like what?”
“Like who you are and what the fuck you want.”

    Cigarette smoke in his nostrils woke Gambol, and he coughed, and the woman said, “Sorry,” waving it away.
“Lots of folks are quitting these days.”
“What century are you in, guy? I’m the last smoker on earth.”
“How long have I been here?”
“You don’t remember yesterday?”
“When was yesterday?”
“You were walking and talking.”
“Walking?”
“And swearing. In a real creative style. I poked my head into that culvert, and you hopped right up and walked right to my car. Then,” she said, “I couldn’t get you out of the car. I had to do the whole thing in the back seat. Debrided the wound and all the rest. The back seat of a Chevy Lumina is not the place for that.”
Gambol closed his eyes. “I feel like I weigh ten tons.”
“You lost a lot of blood. A lot. I scored one liter of plasma. Nothing else but glucose and water.”
“Feels like he shot me through the bone.”
“He missed the bone. Or you’d be in the ER right now getting your leg saved and probably talking to a detective.”
“I don’t talk to detectives.”
“And he missed the big artery, or you’d be dead.”

    At the Time Out Lounge in the Oroville Mall they sat in the rearmost booth, and Jimmy who called himself Franklin only stared at her, never sipping once from his Coke. She took a long swallow of vodka-and-Seven and said, “Oh, well . . . was I on TV again?”
“How did you steal two-point-three million bucks?”
“Didn’t the TV tell you? You run a bond election for a new high school, you float the loan, turn on the computers, transfer it here and there—zip, all yours.”
“That’s greedy.”
“Then the money gets missed right away, and the list of suspects is extremely short. Then somebody gets arrested.”
“Well,” he said.
“Well, what?”
“I guess you were greedy enough to take it, but not mean enough to frame an asshole. Excuse my language,” he added, “but where I come from that’s what they call the guy who gets sacrificed—the asshole.”
She laughed without feeling amused. “There was definitely an asshole,” she said.
“If you’ve got it stashed, you’re doing it right, wandering around acting broke. That’s doing it right. But if you’ve got it, why don’t you just disappear?”
“For one thing, I’m due in court to enter a plea and take a