Ch 471 - Dropping the Ball

The man in white shook with anger, and the portly man stood staring into the roulette wheel. Everyone around was in shock about what had happened. Alex stood tall and looked at his adversaries with a triumphant smile on his face. One more spin, and it would be over with.

The director stood gaping, and the man in white was turning blue. He glared at Alex with a deep anger in his eyes.

"Last round," Alex said.

The man in white snatched the ball out of the wheel and held it in his closed fist. He stared deep into Alex's eyes. "Same bet?" he asked.

Alex thought for a moment. "How about sixty million dollars this time?" he finally answered. "If your casino can afford that much."

The crowd erupted in a stunned murmur. "You're joking," the director exclaimed, but there was worry in his eyes. The man in white looked as if he wanted to stomp Alex into the ground right then and there. Then he gave Alex a sinister smile. He had accepted.

"Good," Alex said, without waiting for an answer. "I bet on black."

The man in white gave the director a reassuring look, and then he nodded for the portly man to begin spinning the wheel. As he readied himself to throw the ball into the wheel, Alex stopped him. "Wait," he said. "I'll pick someone else to do it this time. Just so we know there's no funny business."

He looked out over the crowd, and his eyes fell on a small but well-dressed man who stood on the other side of the table. He was trembling from the suspense, and he was sweating nervously. 

"You do it," Alex said and pointed at the man. He came over to Alex's side of the table, took the ball from the man in white with a trembling hand, and threw it into the spinning wheel.

Everyone's eyes were fixed on the ball as it spun around the rim of the roulette wheel. It seemed to stay there for an eternity, but then it fell into the middle of the wheel and bounced around among the numbered fields. After a few seconds, the bounces of the ball became shorter and shorter, and before long it had stopped completely. Everyone leaned forward to see where it had landed. It had landed on red.

The entire casino hall erupted. Everyone had assumed that Alex had some trick up his sleeve, but they appeared to have been wrong. He had won twice, against the odds, but now they knew that he had just been lucky. They jeered and glowered at him.

The director of the casino stood laughing in the midst of the commotion. "You lose, little boy," he said derisively and clapped his hands together. He seemed to be thanking God for having saved the casino.

The man in white stayed completely calm and looked contemptuously at Alex without showing a shred of excitement or relief. "I guess you should have gone for red," he said. "But I suppose you're not as good at this kind of thing as you thought you were. Now, pay us the money you owe us, and then we'll take care of the rest of your punishment."

The crowd went silent at his words. They looked at Alex as if he was a dead man. Which, to them, he was. In only a few minutes, the man in white would have his hands crushed and throw him into the ocean. They all grew uneasy, and some started moving away from the roulette table. They didn't want to stay and watch the aftermath.

But Alex only smiled. Then he began to laugh. He laughed louder and louder, so loud that the attention of everyone in the room was drawn to him. When he stopped laughing, he stood and looked around the room with the brightest smile on his face that any of them had ever seen. He seemed to revel in the moment.

The people around him grew even more uneasy. They couldn't understand Alex's behavior, and they started to think that maybe there was something wrong with him. The director smiled gleefully, but then his eyes shifted back down to the roulette wheel. His whole body went cold.

The well was now on black.

The shy little man who had spun the wheel leaned over and inspected the wheel. "It's…" he began. "It's on black. Black wins!"

Alex clapped his hands and rubbed them together. The room was silent as the grave. The director stared at the wheel in horror. Nobody had touched it. Nobody had even come near it. The ball must have moved on its own. One final bounce, while they had stopped watching.

Alex looked at the man in white. "What were you saying about not being as good as you thought you were?" he asked slyly.

The man in white seemed unable to speak. The director gave Alex a quizzical look. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

"I mean that if you're going to be in the casino business," Alex answered, "then you should know not to count your chickens before they hatch. You were all waiting desperately for a result, and you so hoped that it would come out a certain way, that you jumped to conclusions. Well, you lost. I'll take that money now, please."

Alex shone with contentment at the puzzled faces. It amused him how clear it was that they couldn't begin to understand what had just happened. And he wasn't about to explain it to them.

The man in white's face grew a color to match his clothes. His hands were tied. Alex had been standing far from the wheel, he had chosen people at random to spin and throw the ball, and nobody had had the opportunity to change the result after the fact. Even if Alex had cheated, he couldn't refuse to accept the result. The credibility of the casino was at stake.

Alex turned to the director. "I won three games in a row, as we agreed," he said. "I believe I'm cashing out at 120 million dollars. Should we settle downstairs?"