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Arts & Entertainment

NoHo Noir Short Fiction: 'Fools Rush In'

In every bet there is a fool and a thief.

Danny Cheung had always been lucky. He’d been born on the most auspicious day of the year, the double 8 of August 8; born a week early because his superstitious mother had induced labor by taking evening primrose oil and drinking raspberry leaf tea. His mother had predicted great things for him and he had only disappointed her in one way—by not providing a male grandchild for her to dote on.

The trouble had started a year ago when he went to Macau on a business trip. Booked into a hotel of such lavish grandiosity that it was almost surreal, he’d wandered down to the casino at three in the morning just to look around. Three hours later, he’d dropped close to $50,000 after the worst run of bad luck he’d ever experienced.

He told Elinor he’d invested the money in a small local company that was exploring new waste reclamation technologies. He knew she’d buy the lie. She admired Zhang Yin, the Chinese paper recycling queen who’d built a billion-dollar fortune from scratch.

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The problem was that having been lucky for so long, Danny couldn’t really believe that his luck had deserted him, so he kept testing it—like poking a bruise to see if it still hurt. He’d always traveled a lot for business, but he began extending his trips to fit in the gambling.

A Friday in New York got extended to a weekend so he could hit Atlantic City. He’d tell Elinor he was flying to San Francisco and go to Vegas instead. It all worked until the morning he forgot to call her after an all-nighter at the tables and she called the hotel looking for him and left a message he never got.

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After that, Elinor had hired a private detective to follow Danny; sure his “business trips” were nothing more than dirty weekends with his pretty young assistant. She’d been horrified to find out what was really going on.

No wife can endure a gambling husband unless he is a steady winner. ~Lord Dewar

Elinor had defied her mother to marry Danny Cheung, who had never measured up to Madame Wang’s high standards. She had no wish to endure her mother’s eternal “I told you so” lectures, so she gave her husband a chance to save face and keep their marriage intact. He’d been going to Gamblers Anonymous meetings for two months when Elinor was killed.

The will had been a nasty surprise. Elinor had left him the house and the contents of their joint checking account but she’d quietly emptied their savings and put the money in an account under her own name. Their daughter got that money, along with a stock portfolio and her real estate business, which was worth millions, even in the midst of the recession. Much to his surprise, Anna had turned her back on her fledgling entertainment career and taken over her mother’s business, spurning his offer to run the place. He’d driven by the office a few times and seen Anna’s Prius parked in Elinor’s old space so he knew she was working there but she hadn’t spoken to him since they’d had an argument about him contesting the will.

Nine gamblers cannot feed a rooster. ~Yugoslav proverb

By December, Danny had a serious cash flow problem. To cover his shortfall, he’d gone back to the card clubs, maxing out on poker and moving on to the Asian games in back. Even when he won, he never had the strength to walk away from the tables, so every visit got him further in the hole. Once he’d been so desperate he’d hired a “White Cat” to stand beside him and bring him luck at pai gow, but in the end, the guy turned out to be a just another scruffy guy in a linen suit.

He emptied out his checking account. And then he maxed out his plastic. When the clubs wouldn’t give him credit any more, he turned to the private games. The men he played with gladly took his markers and happily extended him credit.

He got over-extended. He got in over his head. And eventually, what was left of Danny Cheung’s luck ran out.

If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time. ~Chinese Proverb

The men who had visited him at the house had been very polite and very business-like. They didn’t want to hear his excuses and they had even less tolerance for his pleas. His cries of pain as they broke his fingers might as well have been the background noise of cars passing on the freeway for all the notice they took of it.

Finally they’d picked up the antique urn that held the mortal remains of Elinor Cheung. “Pay us the money Danny,” they had advised him, “or we’ll pour your wife into a cement mixer and turn her into part of a condo in Boyle Heights.”

That had been two weeks ago. Since then, they’d sent him daily videos showing the urn posed in all sorts of unlikely places—atop the trash in an over-filled dumpster; sitting on a street by a refuse-clogged sewer opening; nestled next to a hospital bio-waste container. He got the message. But there was nothing he could do.

He had no hope in hell of paying off his debt.  

A Smith & Wesson beats four aces. ~American proverb.

Danny stared at the gun he’d taken from the drawer of Elinor’s bedside table. She’d bought it for protection after a home invasion down the block from them. It was loaded. He lifted the gun painfully in his crooked hands and nestled the barrel under his chin.

He shut his eyes.

 

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