Poker Articles

A House Full Of Death - A Poker Cop Murder Mystery

Part 12- Shootout
By Robert Arabella

We had set a trap for a poker room killer.

I, Talbot, aka "The Poker Cop," played the role of an unsuspecting victim, seated all alone in the back of the poker room, oblivious to the dangerous stranger planning to kill me.

Penelope Fallon, aka "Red Penny," seated at a nearby poker table, played the unfamiliar role of a card player pretending that her attention focused on the game, while secretly watching for the killer who had to walk by her to get to me.

Now, we waited.

The person we waited for was, for reasons known only to his sick and twisted mind, duplicating, down to the last gory detail, the night Sammy deCiprio, now deceased, carried out the worst ever serial killing in Las Vegas-The Full House Murders. Whoever this "Sammy, Jr." was, I hoped to use his obsessive-compulsive need to recreate the fourth murder exactly as it had been done years ago.

So far, his re-creations had been down-to-the-last-detail precise.

The first victim, found dead at a down-and-almost-out-of-money dive called The Hold'em Hotel, had been shot point-blank through the heart.

The second victim had been found been shot dead at the location that, years ago, had housed the old Majestic Poker Room.

The third victim was dead in the "Poker Aisle" at Bettor's Books.

At all three murder scenes, then as now, "The Death Card" had been left behind as the killer's calling card.

Now, as the time for the fourth murder drew closer, I hid my gun under a plate and waited for our bad actor to enter stage left.

In Edgar Allan Poe's classic detective mystery, The Purloined Letter, a "missing" envelope is hidden in plain sight on a messy desk. Red Penny, who would soon make a mess of my plan, was also supposed to be hidden in plain sight, pretending to be just another player at the Arcadiana Poker Room while all the while secretly watching my back.

Only, Red Penny forgot to be secretive. Not even bothering to protect the cards that she folded made her stand out like a sore thumb at the $20/$40 limit table and, after a while, the man next to her finally asked, "Why would a beautiful woman like you play in a game she's obviously not at all interested in?"

"What makes you think I'm not interested in this game?"

"In the last twenty minutes you've folded Aces, Kings, Queens, and Jacks. I'm just wondering why."

"I'm wondering how you know what cards I've folded."

"You're so busy looking over at Dagwood Bumstead over there, you're not protecting your cards. What's so much more interesting around the table than the cards on it?"

Red Penny had no idea whatsoever who "Dagwood Bumstead" was, or ought to be, and, ignoring the question and the questioner, folded her next two cards without even pretending to look before glancing over towards The Poker Cop.

The man next to her, wrongly believing they have struck up a poker table friendship, said: "I'm Vladimir. My friends call me Didi. I'd like you to call me Didi. What would you like me to call yoooooooooouuuuu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!."

Turning to say something obscenely discouraging to her dream-date, Vladimir, Red Penny saw a fleeting blink-and-you'd-miss-it shadowy figure cross between her and The Poker Cop. Without hesitation she went for her gun.

Looking down the barrel of Red Penny's gun, Vladimir (whose friends call him Didi) fell to his knees and pleads, "NO! Please Don't Shoot! DON'T ...!"

Too late. Penelope Fallon, seeing the figure's weapon pointed at the Poker Cop, fires.

I suffer from a one-of-a-kind, rare and incurable eating disorder that, if it was real, the medical types would call tabla poker nervosa. The uncontrollable compulsion, when in a poker room, to eat anything high in calories and everything high in fat. I think of it as my poker chip, potato chip, and chocolate chip diet.

If chips don't work, I move up the overeater's food chain to two-handed sandwiches like overflowing Cuban Mixtos and overstuffed Naw'lenz Moofs.

Right now I am feeding the poker munchie monster with just such a Moof.

There are only two places in the world to get a great Moof.

The first is in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.

The second is in the French Quarter Slots at Las Vegas' Arcadiana Hotel & Casino.

The Moof, or Muffuletta (pronounced either muff-uh-LOT-uh or moo-foo-LET-ta) sandwich, is an oooey-gooey two-fisted mass of olive salad, meats and cheeses on a large, round, flat loaf of Sicilian bread. If I were sitting on some death row waiting for the State to take my life, I'd order a Moof for my last meal. Sitting in the Arcadiana's Poker Room, waiting for the Full House Murderer to try to take my life, I ordered a Moof and hoped this wasn't going to be my own last meal.

I was about to take a bite of the Moof when the gun went off.

If Superman were, in fact, able to move faster than a speeding bullet, maybe the Man of Steel could have taken one more bite of my Moof before it exploded into a million little delicious pieces. Before the sandwich shreds had settled back onto the poker room floor I had my gun out and, catching-just for half-a-blink-the shooter out of the corner of my eye, I fired back.

Nothing empties a poker room quicker than a Wild West-style gunfight, which explains why, long after the smoke had cleared, the Arcadiana's Poker Room was empty. Inside the Manager's Office, LVPD Strip Homicide Detective Richard Rook, looking, I thought, like some sort of deranged Sesame Street character, seemed very upset by the number fifteen.

"Fifteen!" screams Detective Rook over and over. "Between the two of you gunslingers you fired fifteen shots! Fifteen!" Several fifteens! Later, Rook asks, "Who the hell do you think you are-Doc Holloway and Frannie Oakley?"

"Holiday," I correct Rook. "Not Doc Holloway. Doc Holiday."

"Annie," Red Penny corrects Rook. "Not Frannie Oakley, Annie Oakley."

Rook, unable to believe that we've corrected him in mid-rage, gasps, sputters, and starts screaming the number fifteen! all over again, ending with, "The two of you managed to fire fifteen shots in a Las Vegas Strip Poker Room and hit nothing! Not exactly the 'The Gunfight at the KO Corral.'"

"OK," I say, correcting Rook.

"OK," says Red Penny, correcting Rook.

"OK?" asks the confused and uncorrected Rook. "None of this is OK! How can any of this be OK?!" After another gasp and sputter comes more screaming about the number fifteen.

Some gunfights live on long after their participants have died off. Stories of Tombstone, Arizona's 1881 "Gunfight At The OK Corral" and El Paso, Texas' 1881 "Four Dead In Five Seconds Gunfight" are still told to this day. More modern examples of storied shootouts include Los Angles' 1974 Symbionese Liberation Army Shootout, South Dakota's 1975 Pine Ridge Shootout, Idaho's 1993 Ruby Ridge Shootout, and the 1993 Waco, Texas Branch Davidian Shootout.

And then there is the story of the Arcadiana Poker Room Shootout. Both Red Penny and I have told Detective Richard Rook and the Arcadiana Poker Room Manager, Evangeline St. Gabriel, the story, which can be summed up as "she shot at something/he shot at something," to which, after hearing it, the Detective asked, "Now tell me the truth."

"I've already told you the truth," said Penelope Fallon. "Why do you need to hear it a second time?"

"Maybe this time," I yelled from across the room, "you'll explain to the Detective why you tried to kill me."

"Shut up!" said Detective Rook.

"Don't you tell me to shut up!" answered Red Penny

"I didn't tell you to shut up. I told him to shut up."

I told Rook, "Don't you tell me to shut up!"

Which made the Detective scream, "SHUT UP!" Which is why Red Penny didn't tell him the story of the Arcadiana Poker Room Shootout a second time.

This was (leaving out the her obscenity-filled regrets that she had tried to save my life) the story she told, along with some of my comments: While seated at a poker table (where she failed to be inconspicuous) acting as my lookout, a "blink-and-you'd-miss-it shadowy figure" (more like a figment of her imagination), who she thought (incorrectly) to be the Full House Murderer, (supposedly) walked right past her and was (hypothetically) about to kill me, when she (mistakenly) drew her gun and fired in order to (purportedly) save my life, ending her story with, "I wasn't shooting at Talbot. I thought I was shooting at the Full House Murderer. That I ended up shooting at Talbot at all was just an extra added benefit."

Detective Rook rolled his eyes. "And what," he asked, after hearing what I considered to be Red Penny's full confession to my attempted murder, "did you do?"

"I fired back."

"At Miss Fallon?"

"No. I caught, just for half-a-blink, the shooter out of the corner of my eye and I fired back at who I thought was The Full House Murderer. That it turned out to be Miss Fallon was just my good luck."

"So, let me guess this straight. The two of you want me to believe that you suffered some sort of joint delusion, each seeing "someone who wasn't really there," and ended up firing fifteen shots at each other? Is that what you want me to believe?"

"Pardon, Detective," says Evangeline St. Gabriel, who had until this moment stayed silent, "I believe there is another explanation. You are calling stories of these two eyewitness accounts delusions when, in fact, it is you who are suffering from, how do you say it? Aveuglement, self-delusion."

"Pardon my French, Madame, but that's crazy."

"No, Detective Rook, pardon my French. I have not made myself plain. Monsieur Talbot and Mademoiselle Penelope may well be correct when they say they saw someone who turned out not to really be there. I have seen that someone too. It is Le fantome du chambre des cartes."

The only French Detective Rook is interested in is fries. He said, "I don't understand ... " and was cut off in mid-confession of ignorance by Red Penny who said to him, "Le fantome du chambre des cartes. The ghost of the poker room."

Rook, incredulous, asks Evangeline St. Gabriel, "The Arcadiana Poker Room is haunted?"

"Oui. A place of restless spirits. Yes."

"So. If I was to walk out into the now empty poker room I'm going to see who? The Lonesome Ghost sitting all by his lonesome? Or Casper The Poker Playing Ghost? Or ... "

"Your sarcasm aside, this is not a cartoonish fantasy. Please believe me when I tell you that sometimes, just like Monsieur Talbot's 'blink-and-you'd-miss-it shadowy figure' and Mademoiselle Penelope's 'out-of-the-corner-of-her-eye fleeting image,' I too have seen Le fantome du chambre des cartes. I sometimes think it is the ghost of my beloved Stanley who was murdered in the poker room. Is this crazy? Maybe. But no crazier than two rational people acting suddenly irrationally."

"I don't believe in ghosts," said the Detective, closing the subject, which I immediately re-opened.

"You should," I tell him. "Las Vegas is full of ghosts. Elvis. Liberace. 'Bugsy' Siegel. Howard Hughes. Tupac Shakur. Las Vegas Poker rooms are full of ghosts too. Benny Binion at the Horseshoe Poker Room. Stuey Ungar at the Bellagio Poker Room, and maybe Stanley Ladislaus right here in the Arcadiana Poker Room."

"I don't believe in ghosts," repeated Rook.

"Boo!" says Red Penny, slipping up behind the Detective.

"Maybe you should," she told him when he jumped.

"So that's your story? Ghosts. The two of you shot up a poker room because you thought you saw a ghost?"

I nodded my head, "Yes."

Red Penny nodded her head, Yes."

Detective Rook shook his head, "No. I don't believe in ghosts. What I do believe is that the two of you pretended this was the gunfight at the end of High Moon."

"Noon," I corrected Rook.

"Noon," Red Penny corrected Rook.

"Noon?" asks the still confused and uncorrected Rook, looking at his watch. "It's not noon! It's a quarter after ... "

"Fifteen?" I asked, which made Red Penny laugh, and Rook say, "Real funny. Only I'm the one that's going to have the last laugh. The two you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right ... "

Only we never found out what right we were entitled to next. There was a deafening gunshot in the poker room.

Copyright ©2007 by Robert Arabella