Gods of Mischief by George Rowe

in late December. The desert was cold as a penguin’s cooch that time of year. So I piled into my pickup, cranked up the heat until the cab was nice and toasty, then followed the Hemet Vagos as they rode out of town and started north on the I-15, bundled against the cold with their cuts worn over leather jackets.
    A few more chapters joined the pack as it rumbled through Victorville and roared toward Barstow in the High Desert. From there it was a frosty two-hour grind through the empty Mojave all the way to State Line.
    The Primm casinos came into view miles before you arrived, rising like mirages above the desert landscape. And you couldn’t miss BuffaloBill’s. The place had this crazy amusement park vibe going, with a giant roller coaster twisting around the hotel and a Ferris wheel off to one side. Walk through the hotel and head out back and you’d even find a giant buffalo-shaped swimming pool.
    As I stepped onto the casino floor, I could feel the fever coming over me again. In those days I had a gambling addiction that could have gone toe-to-toe with Terry the Tramp’s. Entering a casino was goddamn intoxicating: the cheers from the craps tables, the flashing lights, those ringing bells.
    Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
    Man, it was like the Sirens calling Ulysses to the rocks.
    The place where I’d blown most of my money was an Indian-owned casino that sat a few hundred yards from the banks of a cement river channel north of Hemet. To reach Soboba Casino, I used to drive off-road, charging eight miles up that channel when the water ran low just so I could spend my money faster.
    Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
    I have no idea how much wampum I donated to that tribal den, but it was a shitload. There were Fridays I couldn’t meet the Family Tree Service payroll because I’d blown it all on slots. I’d have to tell my six-man crew, “Sorry fellas, I’m flat busted this week . . . see you on Monday.” All those poor bastards could do was shrug their shoulders and pray I wouldn’t blow their paychecks again the following week. Sure, I’d occasionally hit the jackpot, but more often than not I’d walk out of Soboba like a whipped dog with my tail between my legs.
    The situation wasn’t much better at home. I was with Darlene when the gambling bug first bit, and that poor woman did everything but chain me to the bedpost to keep me from donating her life’s savings to the Indians. I remember one day when I was supposed to be at work but snuck over to Soboba with Old Joe instead. When we finally left the casino, the sun was down and I was in deep shit.
    I needed a good excuse to hand Darlene, but the best I could come up with was some lame-ass tale about my truck getting stuck in themud. To sell that ridiculous lie—and despite Joe’s angry protests—I had us both rolling around in the river muck like a couple of moon-touched fools. At one point the current caught my shitfaced partner and swept him half the length of a football field, which really messed with his vodka buzz. In the end it was all wasted time because Darlene had already come out to the casino’s parking lot and found Joe passed out in the truck.
    As I wandered through Buffalo Bill’s, I noticed a Vagos entourage surging across the casino floor. This was the first time I laid eyes on Terry the Tramp, the big man himself. The club’s international president was being escorted through the warren of slot machines by six patched bodyguards. I remember thinking the man looked nothing like I’d pictured him—nothing like a commander in chief.
    Tramp was short and rotund, with an ample beer gut and shoulder-length white hair sprouting from either side of his bald noggin. To me the head Vago looked more like a circus clown than the leader of California’s largest outlaw motorcycle gang. But Tramp was not a man you laughed at. Who knows how many badass hombres