Ford County_ Stories Part 11

His greatest weakness, far ahead of women and whiskey, was gambling. He had a long and ugly history with Las Vegas and poker clubs and sports bookies. He routinely dropped serious cash at the dog track in West Memphis and once nearly bankrupted himself on a cruise ship to Bermuda. And when casino gambling arrived, quite unexpectedly, in Mississippi, his empire began taking on worrisome levels of debt. Only one local bank would deal with him anyway, and when he tapped out there to cover his losses at the c.r.a.ps tables, he was forced to hock some gold in Memphis to meet his payroll. Then a building burned. He bullied the insurance company into a settlement, and his cash crisis abated, for the moment.

The Choctaw Indians built the only landlocked casino in the state. It was in Neshoba County, two hours south of Clanton, and there one night Bobby Carl rolled the dice for the last time. He lost a small fortune, and driving home under the influence, he swore he would never gamble again. Enough was enough. It was a sucker's game. There was an excellent reason the smart boys keep building new casinos.

Bobby Carl Leach considered himself a smart boy.

His research soon revealed that the Department of the Interior recognized 562 tribes of Native Americans across the country, but only the Choctaw in Mississippi. The state had once been covered with Indians-at least nineteen major tribes-but most had been forcibly relocated in the 1830s and sent to Oklahoma. Only three thousand Choctaw remained, and they were prospering nicely from their casino.

Compet.i.tion was needed. Further research revealed that at one time the second-largest population had belonged to the Yazoo, and long before the white man arrived, their territory had covered virtually all of what is now the north half of Mississippi, including Ford County. Bobby Carl paid a few bucks to a genealogical research firm which produced a suspicious family tree that purported to prove that his father's great-grandfather had been one-sixteenth Yazoo.

A business plan began to take shape.

Thirty miles west of Clanton, on the Polk County line, there was a country grocery store owned by a slightly dark-skinned old man with long braided hair and turquoise on every finger. He was known simply as Chief Larry, primarily because he claimed to be a full-blooded Indian and said he had papers to prove it. He was a Yazoo, and proud of it, and to convince folks of his authenticity, he stocked all manner of cheap Indian artifacts and souvenirs along with the eggs and cold beer. A tepee made in China sat next to the highway, and there was a lifeless, geriatric black bear asleep in a cage by the door. Since Chief's was the only store within ten miles, he managed a decent traffic from the locals and some gas and a snapshot from the occasional lost tourist.

Chief Larry was an activist of sorts. He seldom smiled, and he gave the impression that he carried the weight of his long-suffering and forgotten people. He wrote angry letters to congressmen and governors and bureaucrats, and their responses were tacked to the wall behind the cash register. At the slightest provocation, he would launch into a bitter diatribe against the latest round of injustices imposed upon "his people." History was a favorite topic, and he would and could go on for hours about the colorful and heartbreaking theft of "his land." Most of the locals knew to keep their comments brief as they paid for their goods. A few, though, enjoyed pulling up a chair and letting Chief rant.

For almost two decades Chief Larry had been tracking down other Yazoo descendants in the area. Most of those he wrote to had no inkling of their Indian heritage and certainly wanted no part of it. They were thoroughly a.s.similated, mixed, intermarried, and ignorant of his version of their gene pool. They were white! This was, after all, Mississippi, and any hint of tainted blood meant something far more ominous than a little ancestral frolicking with the natives. Of those who bothered to write back, almost all claimed to be of Anglo stock. Two threatened to sue him, and one threatened to kill him. But he labored on, and when he had organized a motley crew of two dozen desperate souls, he founded the Yazoo Nation and made application to the Department of the Interior.

Years pa.s.sed. Gambling arrived on reservations throughout the country, and suddenly Indian land became more valuable.

When Bobby Carl decided he was part Yazoo, he quietly got involved. With the help of a prominent law firm in Tupelo, pressure was applied to the proper places in Washington, and official tribal status was granted to the Yazoo. They had no land, but then none was needed under federal guidelines.

Bobby Carl had the land. Forty acres of scrub brush and loblolly pine just down the highway from Chief Larry's tepee.

When the charter arrived from Washington, the proud new tribe met in the rear of Chief's store for a ceremony. They invited their congressman, but he was occupied at the Capitol. They invited the governor, but there was no response. They invited other state officials, but more important duties called them. They invited the local politicians, but they, too, were working too hard elsewhere. Only a lowly and pale-faced undersecretary of some strain showed up from the DOI and handed over the paperwork. The Yazoo, most as pale faced as the bureaucrat, were nonetheless impressed by the moment. Not surprisingly, Larry was unanimously elected as chief for a lifetime. There was no mention of a salary. But there was a lot of talk about a home, a piece of land on which they could build an office or a headquarters, a place of ident.i.ty and purpose.

The following day, Bobby Carl's maroon DeVille slid into the gravel parking lot at Chief's. He had never met Chief Larry and had never stepped inside the store. He took in the fake tepee, noticed the peeling paint on the exterior walls, sneered at the ancient gas pumps, stopped at the bear's cage long enough to determine that the creature was in fact alive, then walked inside to meet his blood brother.

Fortunately, Chief had never heard of Bobby Carl Leach. Otherwise, he may have sold him a diet soda and wished him farewell. After a few sips, and after it became obvious that the customer was in no hurry to leave, Chief said, "You live around here?"

"Other side of the county," Bobby Carl said as he touched a fake spear that was part of an Apache warrior set on a rack near the counter. "Congratulations on the federal charter," he said.

Chief's chest swelled immediately, and he offered his first smile. "Thank you. How did you know? Was it in the paper?"

"No. I just heard. I'm part Yazoo."

With that, the smile instantly vanished, and Chief's black eyes focused harshly on Bobby Carl's expensive wool suit, vest, starched white shirt, loud paisley tie, gold bracelets, gold watch, gold cuff links, gold belt buckle, all the way down to the javelin-tipped cowboy boots. Then he studied the hair-tinted and permed with little strands wiggling and bouncing around the ears. The eyes were bluish green, Irish and shifty. Chief, of course, preferred someone who resembled himself, someone with at least a few Native American characteristics. But these days he had to take what he could get. The gene pool had become so shallow that calling oneself a Yazoo was all that mattered.

"It's true," Bobby Carl pressed on, then he touched his inside coat pocket. "I have doc.u.mentation."

Chief waved him off. "No, it's not necessary. A pleasure, Mr.-"

"Leach, Bobby Carl Leach."

Over a sandwich, Bobby Carl explained that he was well acquainted with the chief of the Choctaw Nation, and suggested that the two great men meet. Chief Larry had long envied the Choctaw for their standing and their efforts to preserve themselves. He had also read about their wildly profitable casino business, the proceeds of which supported the tribe, built schools and clinics, and sent the young people away to college on scholarship. Bobby Carl, the humanitarian, seized upon the social advances of the Choctaw due to their wisdom in tapping into the white man's l.u.s.t for gambling and drinking.

The following day, they left for a tour of the Choctaw reservation. Bobby Carl drove and talked nonstop, and by the time they arrived at the casino, he had convinced Chief Larry that they, the proud Yazoo, could duplicate the venture and prosper as a young nation. The Choctaw chief was curiously tied up with other business, but an underling provided a halfhearted tour of the sprawling casino and hotel, as well as the two eighteen-hole golf courses, convention center, and private airstrip, all in a very rural and forlorn part of Neshoba County.

"He's afraid of compet.i.tion," Bobby Carl whispered to Chief Larry as their tour guide showed them around with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

Driving home, Bobby Carl laid out the deal. He would donate the forty-acre tract of land to the Yazoo. The tribe would finally have a home! And on the land they would build themselves a casino. Bobby Carl knew an architect and a contractor and a banker, and he knew the local politicians, and it was clear that he had been planning this for some time. Chief Larry was too dazed and too unsophisticated to ask many questions. The future suddenly held great promise, and money had little to do with it. Respect was the issue. Chief Larry had dreamed of a home for his people, a definable place where his brothers and sisters could live and prosper and try to recapture their heritage.

Bobby Carl was dreaming too, but his dreams had little to do with the glory of a long-lost tribe.

His deal would give him a half interest in the casino, and for this he would donate the forty acres, secure financing for the casino, and hire the lawyers to satisfy the hands-off and distracted regulators. Since the casino would be on Indian land, there was actually very little to be regulated. The county and state certainly couldn't stop them; this had already been firmly settled by prior litigation around the country.

At the end of the long day, and over a soft drink in the back of Chief's store, the two blood brothers shook hands and toasted the future.

The forty-acre tract changed owners, the bulldozers shaved every inch of it, the lawyers charged ahead, the banker finally saw the light, and within a month Clanton was consumed with the horrific news that a casino was coming to Ford County. For days, the rumors raged in the coffee shops around the square, and in the courthouse and downtown offices there was talk of little else. Bobby Carl's name was linked to the scandal from the very beginning, and this gave it an air of ominous credibility. It was a perfect fit for him, just the type of immoral and profitable venture that he would pursue with a vengeance. He denied it in public and confirmed it in private, and leaked it to anyone he deemed worthy of spreading it.

When the first concrete was poured two months later, there was no ceremonial shoveling of dirt by local leaders, no speeches with promises of jobs, none of the usual posturing for cameras. It was a non-event, by design, and had it not been for a cub reporter acting on a tip, the commencement of construction would have gone unnoticed. However, the following edition of the Ford County Times Ford County Times ran a large front-page photo of a cement truck with workers around it. The headline screamed: "Here Comes the Casino." A brief report added few details, primarily because no one wanted to talk. Chief Larry was too busy behind the meat counter. Bobby Carl Leach was out of town on urgent business. The Bureau of Indian Affairs within the DOI was thoroughly uncooperative. An anonymous source did contribute by confirming, off the record, that the casino would be open "in about ten months." ran a large front-page photo of a cement truck with workers around it. The headline screamed: "Here Comes the Casino." A brief report added few details, primarily because no one wanted to talk. Chief Larry was too busy behind the meat counter. Bobby Carl Leach was out of town on urgent business. The Bureau of Indian Affairs within the DOI was thoroughly uncooperative. An anonymous source did contribute by confirming, off the record, that the casino would be open "in about ten months."

The front-page story and photo confirmed the rumors, and the town erupted. The Baptist preachers got themselves organized, and the following Sunday unloaded vile condemnations of gambling and its related evils upon their congregations. They called their people to action. Write letters! Call your elected officials! Keep an eye on your neighbors to make sure they don't succ.u.mb to the sin of gambling! They had to stop this cancer from afflicting their community. The Indians were attacking again.

The next edition of the Times Times was laden with screeching letters to the editor, and not a single one supported the idea of a casino. Satan was advancing on them, and all decent folk should "circle the wagons" to fend off his evil intentions. When the County Board of Supervisors met as usual on a Monday morning, the meeting was moved into the main courtroom to accommodate the angry crowd. The five supervisors hid behind their lawyer, who tried to explain to the mob that there was nothing the county could do to stop the casino. It was a federal issue, plain and simple. The Yazoo had become officially recognized. They owned the land. Indians had built casinos in at least twenty-six other states, usually with local opposition. Lawsuits had been filed by groups of concerned citizens, and they had lost every one of them. was laden with screeching letters to the editor, and not a single one supported the idea of a casino. Satan was advancing on them, and all decent folk should "circle the wagons" to fend off his evil intentions. When the County Board of Supervisors met as usual on a Monday morning, the meeting was moved into the main courtroom to accommodate the angry crowd. The five supervisors hid behind their lawyer, who tried to explain to the mob that there was nothing the county could do to stop the casino. It was a federal issue, plain and simple. The Yazoo had become officially recognized. They owned the land. Indians had built casinos in at least twenty-six other states, usually with local opposition. Lawsuits had been filed by groups of concerned citizens, and they had lost every one of them.

Was it true that Bobby Carl Leach was the real force behind the casino? someone demanded.

The lawyer had been drinking with Bobby Carl two nights earlier. He couldn't deny what the entire town suspected. "I believe so," he said cautiously. "But we are not ent.i.tled to know everything about the casino. And besides, Mr. Leach is of Yazoo descent."

A wave of raucous laughter swept through the room, followed by boos and hissing.

"He'd claim to be a midget if he could make a buck!" someone yelled, and this caused even more laughter, more jeers.

They yelled and booed and hissed for an hour, but the meeting eventually ran out of gas. It became obvious that the county could do nothing to stop the casino.

And so it went. More letters to the editor, more sermons, more phone calls to elected officials, a few updates in the newspaper. As the weeks and months dragged on, the opposition lost interest. Bobby Carl lay low and was seldom seen around town. He was, however, at the construction site every morning by 7:00, yelling at the superintendent and threatening to fire someone.

The Lucky Jack Casino was finished just over a year after the Yazoo charter arrived from Washington. Everything about it was cheap. The gaming hall itself was a hastily designed combination of three prefab metal buildings wedged together and fronted with fake facades of white brick and lots of neon. A fifty-room hotel was attached to it and designed to be as towering as possible. With six floors of small, cramped rooms available for $49.95 a night, it was the tallest building in the county. Inside the casino, the motif was the Wild West, cowboys and Indians, wagon trains, gunslingers, saloons, and tepees. The walls were plastered with garish paintings of western battle scenes, with the Indians having the slight advantage in the body count, if anyone cared to notice. The floors were covered with a thin tacky carpet inlaid with colorful images of horses and livestock. The atmosphere was that of a rowdy convention hall thrown together as quickly as possible to attract gamblers. Bobby Carl had handled most of the design. The staff was rushed through training. "One hundred new jobs," Bobby Carl retorted to anyone who criticized his casino. Chief Larry was outfitted in full Yazoo ceremonial garb, or at least his version of it, and his routine was to roam the gambling floor and chat with the clients and make them feel as though they were on real Indian territory. Of the two dozen official Yazoo, fifteen signed up for work. They were given headbands and feathers and taught how to deal blackjack, one of the more lucrative jobs.

The future was full of plans-a golf course, a convention center, an indoor pool, and so on-but first they had to make some money. They needed gamblers.

The opening was without fanfare. Bobby Carl knew that cameras and reporters and too much attention would scare away many of the curious, so the Lucky Jack opened quietly. He ran ads in the newspapers of the surrounding counties, with promises of better odds and luckier slots and "the largest poker room in Mississippi." It was a blatant falsehood, but no one would dare contest it in public. Business was slow at first; the locals were indeed staying away. Most of the traffic was from the surrounding counties, and few of the first gamblers cared to spend the night. The high-rise hotel was empty. Chief Larry had almost no one to talk to as he roamed the floor.

After the first week, word spread around Clanton that the casino was in trouble. Experts on the subject held forth in the coffee shops around the square. Several of the braver ones admitted to visiting the Lucky Jack and happily reported that the place was virtually deserted. The preachers crowed from their pulpits-Satan had been defeated. The Indians had been crushed once again.

After two weeks of lackl.u.s.ter activity, Bobby Carl decided it was time to cheat. He found an old girlfriend, one willing to have her face splashed across the newspapers, and rigged the slots so she would win an astounding $14,000 with a $1 chip. Another mole, one from Polk County, won $8,000 at the "luckiest slots this side of Vegas." The two winners posed for photos with Chief Larry as he ceremoniously handed over greatly enlarged checks, and Bobby Carl paid for full-page ads in eight weekly newspapers, including the Ford County Times Ford County Times.

The lure of instant riches was overwhelming. Business doubled, then tripled. After six weeks, the Lucky Jack was breaking even. The hotel offered free rooms with weekend packages, and often had no vacancies. RVs began arriving from other states. Billboards all over north Mississippi advertised the good life at the Lucky Jack.

The good life was pa.s.sing Stella by. She was forty-eight, the mother of one fully grown daughter, and the wife of a man she no longer loved. When she had married Sidney decades earlier, she had known he was dull, quiet, and not particularly handsome and lacked ambition, and now as she approached the age of fifty she could not remember why or how he had attracted her. The romance and l.u.s.t didn't last long, and by the time their daughter was born, they were simply going through the motions. On Stella's thirtieth birthday she confided to a sister that she really wasn't happy. Her sister, once divorced with another one in the works, advised her to unload Sidney and find a man with a personality, someone who enjoyed life, someone with a.s.sets preferably. Instead, Stella doted on her daughter and secretly began taking birth control pills. The thought of another child with even a few of Sidney's genes was not appealing.

Eighteen years had pa.s.sed now, and the daughter was gone. Sidney had put on a few pounds and was graying and sedentary and duller than ever. He worked as a data collector for a midsize life insurance company, and was content to put in his years and dream of some glorious retirement that he, for some reason, believed would be far more exciting than the first sixty-five years of his life. Stella knew better. She knew that Sidney, whether working or retired, would be the same insufferable mouse of a man whose silly little daily rituals would never change and would eventually drive her crazy.

She wanted out.

She knew he still loved her, adored her even, but she could not return the affection. She tried for years to convince herself that their marriage was still anch.o.r.ed in love, that of the long-lasting, non-romantic, deeply embedded type that survives decade after decade. But she finally gave up this fatal notion.

She hated to break his heart, but he would eventually get over it.

She dropped twenty pounds, darkened her hair, went a bit heavier with the makeup, and flirted with the idea of some new b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Sidney watched this with amus.e.m.e.nt. His cute wife now looked ten years younger. What a lucky man he was!

His luck ran out, though, when he came home one night to an empty house. Most of the furniture was still there, but his wife was not. Her closets were empty. She had taken some linens and kitchen accessories but had not been greedy about it. Truth was, Stella wanted nothing from Sidney but a divorce.

The paperwork was on the kitchen table-a joint pet.i.tion for a divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. Prepared by a lawyer already! It was an ambush. He wept as he read it, then cried even harder as he read her rather terse two-page farewell. For a week or so they bickered on the phone, back and forth, back and forth. He begged her to come home. She declined, said it was over, so please just sign the paperwork and stop crying.

They had lived for years on the outskirts of the small town of Karraway, a desolate little place, well suited for a man like Sidney. Stella, however, had had enough. She was now in Clanton, the county seat, a larger town with a country club and a few lounges. She was living with an old girlfriend, sleeping in the bas.e.m.e.nt, looking for a job. Sidney tried to find her, but she avoided him. Their daughter called from Texas and quickly sided with her mother.

The house, always on the quiet side, was now like a tomb, and Sidney couldn't stand it. He developed the ritual of waiting until dark, then driving to Clanton, around the square, up and down the streets of the town, eyes moving from side to side, hoping fervently that he would see his wife, and that she would see him, and that her cruel heart would melt and life would be good again. He never saw her, and he kept driving, out of the town and into the countryside.

One night he pa.s.sed Chief Larry's store and down the road turned in to the crowded parking lot of the Lucky Jack Casino. Maybe she'd be there. Maybe she was so desperate for the bright lights and the fast life that she would stoop to hang out in such a trashy place. It was just a thought, just an excuse to see the action that everyone had been talking about. Who would have ever dreamed that a casino would exist in the hidebound rural outback of Ford County? Sidney roamed the tacky carpet, spoke to Chief Larry, watched a group of drunk rednecks lose their paychecks shooting c.r.a.ps, sneered at the pathetic geezers stuffing their savings into rigged slot machines, and listened briefly to a dreadful country crooner trying to imitate Hank Williams on a small stage in the rear. A few middle-aged and very overweight swingers wobbled and shifted listlessly on the dance floor in front of the band. Some real h.e.l.l-raisers. Stella wasn't there. She wasn't in the bar, nor the buffet cafeteria, nor the poker room. Sidney was somewhat relieved, but his heart was still broken.

He hadn't played cards in years, but he remembered the basic rules of twenty-one, a game his father had taught him. After circling the blackjack tables for half an hour, he finally mustered the courage to slide into a seat at the $5 table and get change for a $20 bill. He played for an hour and won $85. He spent the next day studying the rules of blackjack-the basic odds, doubling down, splitting pairs, the ins and outs of buying insurance-and returned to the same table the following night and won over $400. He studied some more, and the third night he played for three hours, drank nothing but black coffee, and walked away with $1,750. He found the game to be simple and straightforward. There was a perfect way to play each hand, based on what the dealer was showing, and following the standard odds, a player can win six hands out of ten. Add the two-for-one payout for hitting a blackjack, and the game provided the best odds against the house.

Why, then, did so many people lose? Sidney was appalled at the other players' lack of knowledge and their foolish bets. The nonstop alcohol didn't help, and in a land where drinking was repressed and still considered a major sin, the free flow of booze at the Lucky Jack was irresistible for many.

Sidney studied, played, drank free black coffee brought in by the c.o.c.ktail waitresses, and played some more. He bought books and self-help videos and taught himself to count cards, a difficult strategy that often worked beautifully but would also get a gambler thrown out of most casinos. And, most important, he taught himself the discipline necessary to play the odds, to quit when he was losing, and to radically change his bets as the deck grew smaller.

He stopped driving to Clanton to look for his wife and instead drove straight to the Lucky Jack, where, on most nights, he would play for an hour or two and take home at least $1,000. The more he won, the more he noticed the hard frowns from the pit bosses. The beefy young men in cheap suits-security, he guessed-seemed to watch him a bit closer. He continually refused to be rated-the process of signing up for the "club membership" that gave all sorts of freebies to those regulars who gambled hard. He refused to register in any way. His favorite book was How to Break the Casino How to Break the Casino, and the author, an ex-gambler turned writer, preached the message of disguise and deceit. Never wear the same clothes, jewelry, hats, caps, gla.s.ses. Never play at the same table for more than an hour. Never give them your name. Take a friend and tell him to call you Frank or Charlie or something. Make a stupid bet occasionally. Change your drink routine, but stay away from alcohol. The reason was simple. The law allowed any casino in the country to simply ask a gambler to leave. If they suspect you're counting cards, or cheating, or if you're winning too much and they're just tired of it, they can give you the boot. No reason is necessary. An a.s.sortment of ident.i.ties keeps them guessing.

The success of the gambling gave Sidney a new purpose in life, but in the darkness of the night he still awoke and reached for Stella. The divorce decree had been signed by a judge. She was not coming back, but he reached anyway, still dreaming of the woman he would always love.

Stella was not suffering from loneliness. The news of an attractive new divorced woman in town spread quickly, and before long she found herself at a party where she met the infamous Bobby Carl Leach. Though she was somewhat older than most of the women he chased, he nonetheless found her attractive and s.e.xy. He charmed her with his usual stream of compliments and seemed to hang on every word she uttered. They had dinner the following night and went to bed right after dessert. Though he was rough and vulgar, she found the experience exhilarating. It was so wonderfully different from the stoic and chilly copulating she had endured with Sidney.

Before long, Stella had a well-paying job as an a.s.sistant/ secretary for Mr. Leach, the latest in a long line of women who were added to the payroll for reasons other than their organizational skills. But if Mr. Leach expected her to do little more than answer the phone and strip on demand, he miscalculated badly. She quickly surveyed his empire and found little of interest. Timber, raw land, rental property, farm equipment, and low-budget motels were all as dull as Sidney, especially when weighed against the glitz of a casino. She belonged at the Lucky Jack, and soon commandeered an office upstairs above the gaming floor, where Bobby Carl roamed in the late evenings, gin and tonic in hand, staring at the innumerable video cameras and counting his money. Her t.i.tle shifted to that of director of operations, and she began planning an expansion of the dining area and maybe an indoor pool. She had lots of ideas, and Bobby Carl was pleased to have an easy bedmate who felt just as much pa.s.sion for the business.

Back in Karraway, Sidney soon heard the rumors that his beloved Stella had taken up with that rogue Leach, and this further depressed him. It made him ill. He thought of murder, then suicide. He dreamed of ways to impress her, and to win her back. When he heard that she was running the casino, he stopped going. But he did not stop gambling. Instead, he broadened his game with long weekends at the casinos in Tunica County, on the Mississippi River. He won $14,000 in a marathon session at the Choctaw casino in Neshoba County, and was asked to leave the Grand Casino in Biloxi after wiping out two tables to the tune of $38,000. He took a week of vacation and went to Vegas, where he played at a different casino every four hours and left town with over $60,000 in winnings. He quit his job and spent two weeks in the Bahamas, raking in piles of $100 chips at every casino in Freeport and Na.s.sau. He bought an RV and toured the country, prowling for any reservation with a casino. Of the dozen or so he found, all were glad to see him leave. Then he spent a month back in Vegas, studying at the private table of the world's greatest teacher, the man who'd written How to Break the Casino How to Break the Casino. The one-on-one tutorial cost Sidney $50,000, but it was worth every penny. His teacher convinced him he had the talent, the discipline, and the nerves to play blackjack professionally. Such praise was rarely given.

After four months, the Lucky Jack had settled nicely into the local scene. All opposition to it faded; the casino was obviously not going away. It became a popular meeting place for civic clubs, cla.s.s reunions, bachelor parties, even a few weddings. Chief Larry began planning the construction of a Yazoo headquarters, and he was thrilled to see his tribe growing. Folks who'd been quite resistant to the suggestion of Indian ancestry now proudly claimed to be full-blooded Yazoo. Most wanted jobs, and when Chief broached the idea of sharing the profits in the form of monthly handouts, his tribe ballooned to over one hundred members.

Bobby Carl, of course, pocketed his share of the revenues, but he had yet to become greedy. Instead, and with Stella's prodding, he borrowed even more money to finance a golf course and a convention center. The bank was pleasantly astonished at the flow of cash, and quickly extended the credit. Six months after it opened, the Lucky Jack was $2 million in debt, and no one was worried.

During the twenty-six years she'd spent with Sidney, Stella had never left the country and had seen very little of the United States. His idea of a vacation had been a cheap rental at a beach in Florida, and never for more than five days. Her new man, though, loved boats and cruises, and because of this she cooked up the idea of a Valentine's cruise in the Caribbean for ten lucky couples. She advertised the compet.i.tion, rigged the results, picked some of her new friends and a few of Bobby Carl's, then announced the winners in yet another large ad in the local newspapers. And away they went. Bobby Carl and Stella, a handful of casino executives (Chief Larry declined, much to their relief), and the ten lucky couples left Clanton in limos for the trip to the airport in Memphis. From there, they flew to Miami and boarded a ship with four thousand others for an intimate jaunt through the islands.

When they were out of the country, the Valentine's Day ma.s.sacre began. Sidney entered the Lucky Jack on a busy night-Stella had advertised all sorts of cheap romantic freebies, and the place was packed. He was Sidney, but he looked nothing like the Sidney last seen at the casino. His hair was long and stringy, darkly tinted, and hanging over his ears. He hadn't shaved in a month, and his beard was colored with the same cheap dye he'd used on his hair. He wore large, round tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses, also tinted, and his eyes were hard to see. He wore a leather biker's jacket and jeans, and six of his fingers bore rings of various stones and metals. A baffling black beret covered most of his head and drooped to the left. For the benefit of the security boys upstairs at their monitors, the back of each hand was adorned with an obscene fake tattoo.

No one had ever seen this Sidney.

Of the twenty blackjack tables, only three catered to the high rollers. Their minimum bets were $100 a hand, and these tables generally saw little traffic. Sidney a.s.sumed a chair at one, tossed out a bundle of cash, and said, "Five thousand, in $100 chips." The dealer smiled as he took the cash and spread it across the table. A pit boss watched carefully over his shoulder. Stares and nods were exchanged around the pit, and the eyes upstairs came to life. There were two other gamblers at the table, and they hardly noticed. Both were drinking and were down to their last few chips.

Sidney played like an amateur and lost $2,000 in twenty minutes. The pit boss relaxed; nothing to worry about. "Do you have a club card?" he asked Sidney.

"No," came the curt reply. And don't offer me one.

The other two men left the table, and Sidney spread out his operations. Playing three seats and betting $500 at each one, he quickly recaptured his $2,000 and added another $4,500 to his stack of chips. The pit boss paced a little and tried not to stare. The dealer shuffled the cards as a c.o.c.ktail waitress brought a vodka and orange juice, a drink Sidney sipped but barely consumed. Playing four seats at $1,000 each, he broke even for the next fifteen minutes, then won six hands in a row, for a total of $24,000. The $100 chips were too numerous to move around quickly, so he said, "Let's switch to those purple ones." The table had only twenty of the $1,000 chips. The dealer was forced to call time-out as the pit boss sent for more money. "Would you like dinner?" he asked, somewhat nervously.

"Not hungry," Sidney said. "But I'll run to the men's room."

When play resumed, Sidney, still alone at the table and attracting a few onlookers, played four seats at $2,000 each. He broke even for fifteen minutes, then glanced at the pit boss and abruptly asked, "Can I have another dealer?"

"Certainly."

"I prefer a female."

"No problem."

A young Hispanic lady stepped to the table and offered a feeble "Good luck." Sidney did not respond. He played $1,000 at each of the four seats, lost three in a row, then increased his bets to $3,000 a hand and won four straight.

The casino was down over $60,000. The blackjack record so far at the Lucky Jack was $110,000 for one night. A doctor from Memphis had made the haul, only to lose it and much more the following night. "Let 'em win," Bobby Carl loved to say. "We'll get it right back."

"I'd like some ice cream," Sidney said in the general direction of the pit boss, who immediately snapped his fingers. "What flavor?"

"Pistachio."

A plastic bowl and spoon soon arrived, and Sidney tipped the waitress with his last $100 chip. He took a small bite, then placed $5,000 at four seats. Playing $20,000 a hand was indeed rare, and the gossip spread through the casino. A crowd hovered behind him, but he was oblivious. He won seven of the next ten hands and was up $102,000. As the dealer shuffled the decks, Sidney slowly ate the ice cream and did nothing else but stare at the cards.

With a fresh shoe, he varied his bets from $10,000 to $20,000 per hand. When he won $80,000 more, the pit boss stepped in and said, "That's enough. You're counting cards."

"You're wrong," Sidney said.

"Let him go," someone said behind him, but the pit boss ignored it.

The dealer backed away from the confrontation. "You're counting," the pit boss said again.

"It's not illegal," Sidney shot back.

"No, but we make our own rules."

"You're full of c.r.a.p," Sidney growled, then took another bite.

"That's it. I'll ask you to leave."

"Fine. I want cash."

"We'll cut a check."

"h.e.l.l no. I walked in here with cash, and I'm leaving with cash."

"Sir, would you please come with me?"

"Where?"