Before she left she looked again at the couple on the bed. She’d like to leave a gift for them, some sort of memorial like people left her when her grandmother died, but all of her treasures were in Jennifer’s car. Then she remembered the temporary crown in its little bed of napkins in her shirt pocket. She pulled it out and dropped it near Bryce’s hand. She noticed the little pink fingernail was caught in the folds, but it looked so pretty against the white sheet she decided to leave that as well.
THE GAMBLING MASTER OF SHANGHAI by Joan Richter
Then three of us were hanging out in the kitchen that Saturday afternoon, when we heard the mail truck pull up at the end of our driveway. I’d come back from basketball practice a half-hour ago and was having a Coke. My mother was at the counter slicing vegetables for a stir-fry for supper that night. Dad was atthe table with the newspaper spread out in front of him. “I’ll go,” he said.
He was gone a while. Mom and I figured he’d probably run into the man next door, who liked to talk baseball, but as soon as Dad came back inside, I could tell something was up. His face had that tight look it gets when things aren’t quite right.
My mother heard him come in and stopped her chopping and turned around.
“It’s a letter from Shanghai,” he said, nodding at the light blue envelope in his hand. We could see he had opened it.
Mom stared at him. “From Shanghai? We don’t know anyone there.”
Both my parents had been born in China, but came to the states when they were little kids. They met one another in their last year at Northwestern and were married a couple of years after that. I was born in Chicago.
“It’s from Uncle Ho,” my father said.
My mother put down her knife and wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. “I thought Uncle Ho died in the Cultural Revolution.”
My father nodded. “That’s what I thought. That’s what everyone thought.”
By everyone, my father meant our relatives, who were scattered all over the U.S. In typical Chinese fashion we got together every few years for big reunions. The elders liked to exchange memories and tell Uncle Ho stories, which always led to talk of gambling. It seems, at a very early age, Uncle Ho had been a Gambling Master, which in Chinese lingo makes Michael Jordan a Basketball Master.
Everyone liked telling Uncle Ho stories. The relatives tried topping one another with a new piece to an old story, or an entirely new one. And since they all thought Uncle Ho was dead, it didn’t matter if the truth got bent a bit.
“Uncle Ho is coming here,” my father said.
My mother frowned. “What do you mean he’s coming here?”
“I mean here. Las Vegas.”
My mother had the next toss, but her sudden stony silence said she was deferring to my father.
The way he cleared his throat told me she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.
“He’s coming to Vegas on one of those casino-sponsored deals there’s been so much talk about.”
“You mean Uncle Ho is one of those ‘whales’?”
My mother sent me a look that would freeze Salt Lake.
I should have known better, but it just popped out. I dipped my head in apology and tried to look contrite. I did a retake on the “whales” story.
It hit the news a couple of months ago. American casino interests had decided to take advantage of the big economic boom in China and the Chinese centuries-old love of gambling. They were sending agents over there to scout for rich guys who liked high-stakes games. They called them whales. Once a whale was sighted, the only thing he had to do was offer some proof of his wealth, then the agents took care of the rest. They helped with visas, air travel, and hotels. It was only at the gaming tables in Vegas that the high rollers were on their own. And guess what? The casinos were counting on them losing big.
The media loved the story and ran all over the place with it. Reporters speculated about where the whales’ money came from, with edgy suggestions that it was hot, embezzled, or siphoned off from companies and corrupt government agencies. Another flyer was that the money came from smuggling-drugs, arms, trafficking in women.
A few reporters got to the practical question of how these rich guys managed to get their money out of China, since the country had rigid restrictions on currency going offshore. The conclusion was that a lot of people were getting paid to look the other way.
“The whole thing is going to start all over again,” my mother said.
She was a little off the point, but I knew what she meant. So did my father. He nodded.
Three years ago the relatives had come to Vegas. It was the off-season, rates were good, and we took over one of the small hotels on the outskirts of town. There was a swimming pool for the kids and a room large enough to have a real Chinese banquet on our first and final nights. The Strip offered plenty of entertainment of all kinds. The relatives weren’t opposed to gambling, in fact they loved it.
My parents never went near the casinos. They skirted theslots, which were everywhere, as if they sprayed the plague. The relatives didn’t quite believe it. Some came close enough to suggesting my parents were secret gamblers. It was in our blood, after all. It could be traced to Uncle Ho, which is what my mother meant when she said it was going to start all over again.
In all fairness, when someone moves here it’s sort of taken for granted that gambling is a big draw. I was only five when my parents made the move, so I don’t remember a lot, but I’ve heard their story enough times so it feels like it’s my own. We had been living in Chicago, where my father had a good job as an accountant, when out of the blue, through one of his clients, he was offered a partnership in a big firm in downtown Las Vegas. Mom freaked out. Sin City!
The two words became a drumbeat in her head, until she was driving home from work one day and heard a long-range weather forecast for the Midwest. The coming winter was supposed to be the coldest in fifty years. Record snowfalls, ice storms, and power outages. She started thinking about the bitter winds off Lake Michigan and soon she was on the phone checking out housing, schools for me and job opportunities for herself. She was a physical therapist. When she discovered she could line up a job before we even left Illinois, the deal was done. Vegas it was.
According to my mother, when the relatives got wind of our Nevada move, the phone lines crackled with so much gossip they could have caused a power failure all their own. It went on, not just for months, but years. It’s sort of quieted down, but it’s not a dead issue. And now Uncle Ho was coming to our town.
The relatives would have to be told. First, of course, that he was alive and then that he was coming here to gamble, at the invitation of the casinos. It was easy to see why Mom was upset.
She looked at my father and reached for the letter. He handed it to her and pulled a chair away from the table and sat down.
“It’s in English,” she said.
Dad laughed. “Did you think I’d suddenly learned to read Chinese?”
Neither of them had ever learned to read the language.
“How is it that your Uncle Ho knows English?”
I was careful not to laugh. Actually, Uncle Ho was my father’s relative. It’s a bit complicated. He was the youngest son of my father’s grandfather’s youngest uncle. It’s easier to say in Chinese.
My father shook his head. “I don’t know any more about Uncle Ho than you do. I never met him. All I know are the stories. You’ve heard the same ones I have.”
“Maybe he had someone write the letter for him,” I said.
This time my mother eyed me with approval. “That’s a possibility. You were right about something else, James. It looks as though your Uncle Ho is one of those whales. He’s going to be put up at one of those fantasyland hotels on the Strip.”