The Big Gamble by Michael McGarrity Read Free Book Online Page B

consulted a day planner. “Six weeks to the day. Joe had seven admissions here during the last four or five years. A couple of times he discharged himself before completing the rehab program. About the best we could do for him was get him through detoxification. He got kicked out of every halfway house we placed him in for drinking.”
    “Did he make any friends here?”
    “He liked to hang out with a couple of guys.”
    “Can you give me names and addresses?”
    “Sure. One of them is here right now, going through rehab.”
    “I’d like to talk to him.”
    “No problem,” Bodean said.
    “Was Humphrey homeless?”
    “No, he was more like a transient. He always stayed at one of the motels on Central Avenue where whores take their tricks.”
    “He used prostitutes?”
    “Yep.”
    “Any one in particular?”
    “That I wouldn’t know.”
    “How did Humphrey get by financially?”
    Bodean opened a desk drawer, pulled out a file, and flipped some papers. “He had a VA disability pension that paid him six hundred a month. He used to get welfare until they changed the law. This isn’t the Betty Ford Clinic. We get the alcoholics who can’t pay, and if they have a few hundred bucks, they’ll hide it to avoid paying for treatment.”
    “Do you think Humphrey was like that?”
    “I always wondered how he was able to stay off the streets on six hundred a month. Even at twenty bucks a night, a motel room would eat up his whole check. And he always seemed to have cigarette and Coke money.”
    “Did he leave any personal belongings here?”
    “We don’t allow that.”
    “Did he get close to any of the female patients?”
    “We don’t allow that, either.”
    “It never happens?”
    Bodean shrugged. “We break it up when it does. But I never saw Joe put moves on any of the female patients. And believe me, I would’ve heard about it in group therapy if he had.”
    “Did he have any enemies?”
    “Not that I know about. He wasn’t a mean drunk, or the argumentative type. He was a quiet boozer.”
    “Any personal stuff come out in treatment?”
    Bodean lifted a shoulder. “The usual: an abusive father who abandoned the family, a mother who drank.”
    “Personal, not family,” Clayton said.
    “After a tour in Nam he went to work as a helicopter mechanic. That was his military specialty. Had a busted marriage, no kids, both parents dead, no close ties with his siblings. He started traveling about ten years ago after getting fired because of his drinking. He spent winters in Arizona.”
    “Did he own a vehicle?”
    “An old Mercury,” Bodean said as he consulted his file. “Any client with a car has to park it and turn over the keys while in treatment.” He read off the license plate number.
    “Can you give me those names and addresses?” Clayton asked.
    Bodean pulled more files, read off the information, and got up from his desk chair. “Like I said, one of Joe’s buddies, Bennie, is back in treatment. I’ll go get him. You can talk here in my office.”
    “I appreciate that.”
    Clayton spent twenty minutes with Bennie Olguin, a member of the Isleta Indian pueblo just south of Albuquerque. Stocky and round in the face, Olguin wore a tank-top undershirt that exposed his muscular arms. Clayton learned the name of the motel on Central Avenue where Humphrey stayed when he was in town, got a few more names of fellow drunks Humphrey hung out with, and discovered that Humphrey liked to gamble.
    “Did he ever get lucky?” Clayton asked.
    Olguin’s smile showed broken and missing teeth. “Once, with me, that I know of, down at the casino at Isleta. From the winnings, he paid for a grande binge we went on. We were borracho perdido for days.”
    “What did he like to play?”
    “Slots and blackjack. I heard he scored a week or so ago up at the new Sandia Pueblo casino. He was estar may pesudo, rolling in money. Couple of thousand, I heard.”
    “Who did you hear it from?”
    “Maybe Sparkle told