Read Online No Accident by Dan Webb - Free Book Online

excitement. This could not be a coincidence. As anyone who had met the man would agree, there was only one Beto Capablanca.
    * * *
    Beto Capablanca rattled the dice between his palms in a quick, steady beat and threw them with a shout. The dice bounced off the soft wall of the craps table and tumbled to a stop with seven dots on top. Beto shouted in delight, and the gamblers around the table echoed his shout with cries of their own. Beto smiled at the congratulations they offered and took up the dice again.
    His heart always beat faster in a new gambling club. It was more than just the money at stake. Would he get cheated? Robbed? Beat up? Would he win big? Beto never smoked marijuana when he went to a new club.
    He liked this club. Everyone was classy and well dressed. It was a plush room in a basement under a Russian restaurant on a side street in West Hollywood. From the outside, you never would have guessed it was there, which was the point. He’d had some language difficulties with the big Russian who answered the door, and had wondered if he’d come to the right place.
    He’d come to the right place. After some ups and downs, he was up. He was up big, and that was changing people’s attitudes. The snooty Russian girl with the big boyfriend, the pretty one with the boob job at the other end of the long oval table—now she was smiling at him. He put an arm around the girl he had brought, Juanita was her name, and kissed her on the mouth. He told her to get him a drink.
    His usual clubs were too crowded —too many people he knew. His bookie, his ex-girlfriend—they didn’t know about his recent windfall from Jorge, and Beto aimed to keep it that way. But he couldn’t just stay home, not when luck was running his way. His good luck had started when he got drunk and overslept, and missed the job that Jorge had set up for them. If he had been more responsible and arrived on time that day, he would have been blown to bits with Jorge and the others in that accident. That’s how Beto’s luck ran. He was lucky when others weren’t. Jorge and the other guys had been paid in advance—what a rookie operation—and, being dead, hadn’t objected when Beto removed their fees from their lockers at work.
    Now, with his winnings, Beto was sitting on a pile of chips worth thousands, and most of the gamblers were betting with him rather than against him. They put more money on the table as he kept hitting his numbers. It was a random crowd. Mostly Russians, a few Latinos and others. But they were all friends now. They were all winning with Papa Beto. He flashed a smile of straight white teeth at the pretty girl and rolled another seven. Beto pictured the girl without her tight dress on, with her long black hair draped over her shoulders. She looked beautiful.
    It was his third winning seven in a row, and now the table was electric. Action at the other tables had slowed down as people stopped to watch. Two of the bulky gangsters who ran the place approached and peered sullenly over the shoulder of the croupier, a skinny young guy with bad teeth who was sweating at the temples. Beto smiled at the gangsters and winked at the pretty girl. The chatter around the table picked up as people debated strategy and directed the croupier to place their wagers. The girl’s oafish boyfriend ostentatiously placed a large bet against Beto on the Don’t Pass Line. Beto leaned over the table and wagged his finger like his mother used to do. “Don’t do that,” he said in Spanish. A couple of the Latinos laughed. The girl looked up at the boyfriend, but he stood in grim silence, ignoring her, glaring at Beto. Beto shook the dice and flamboyantly tossed them directly toward where the girl and her boyfriend stood at the other end of the table.
    The dice bounced off the wall and came up showing four. The gamblers gasped. To keep the dice, and his winnings, Beto would have to roll a four again before he rolled a seven. He’d drunk too much