Thursday, May 29, 2008

Shark Chum LuAnne I: Fish to Fry

The hustle was on. Randal Breaux put down the phone after thanking the travel agent that he now owed a big check to. It was a simple squeeze really, Luanne DuBois was coming to town, and the room was going to be a feeding frenzy of sharks, looking to take her money... little did they know, Randal thought, the fishing on the coast this week was shark meat.

Luanne Dubois, was chum, pure and simple. Sharkbait that'd bring all the deep pockets into a casino. She led a legendary life and news of her impending arrival would make it around the coast in no time. Her husband had died young, to her he was a wannabe, a gambler with a trust fund who had enough of a bankroll to impress her, but little else. And soon enough, that bankroll wasn't enough. She was tired of him after she got finished saying the words, "I do," and it didn't surprise many that he died under strange circumstances in the French Quarter after a terrible run in a private game. There were too many suspects from all the money he ended up owing but there were also plenty of secret fingers pointed at LuAnne.

The one thing Luanne got out of her marriage and inherited from her husband was his love of cards. It was a parting infection. She also got a couple hundred thousand in insurance money but that didn't last long. She felt rich. And she played poker to prove it. She blew through the insurance money quickly at the casinos in New Orleans, the inept gold digger had become a great hole digger. She tried to dig her way out of the hole, because as much as she enjoyed cards even the casual players agreed she couldn't play for shit.

You'd think she was pretty unlucky in life. Tried to marry up, trading in her boring given name Stubing for DuBois, only to find out her husband was a denegerate and probably the black sheep of a family she never met. He was burning through the remains of his wealth buying her gaudy trinkets and trying to earn a living on the felt. To make matters worse, their boring and lifeless marriage, came to an end with his early demise. She lamented her bad luck wondering how opponents always held better hands and were given better lots in life.

When she was finally dry, without a cent to spare in her bank account, she endured two months, two long months, and she had a tough go. Friends she looked down upon when she thought she was ascending society's ladder now dismissed her without a second glance. She was an outcast and a tragic story whispered about in poker rooms. She borrowed money to eat, but would lose most of it on the tables. She tried to laugh it off, poverty was the best diet she ever had. Still, she thought she was one slot machine hit from turning it around. Her reckless spending was replaced by reckless pawning as the jewelry her husband probably couldn't afford to give her, but she insisted on receiving, became deals of the century for shrewd pawnshop owners who could smell her desperation when she walked in the door the first time. The third or fourth time they were simply stealing from her.

So yes, she was unlucky. Then in the third month after burning through the insurance money, and losing friendships over borrowed money, and three full years after her husband's passing, and having reached the bottom of the hole that could go no deeper, because she literally had nothing left, an attorney found her just as she was reading the eviction notice on her apartment.

She asked for dinner if he wanted to meet with her. He agreed, then he told her the unfortunate news of her father-in-law's recent death. He read a emotional letter written a few years before that spoke of a life of missed opportunities between father and son. It reminded her of the American Pie song by Don McClean. She was bored by the sorrow, and now only resented her passed husband even more for making her suffer through this meeting and listening to his "tragic" relationship.

Yet, within moments, instantly American Pie became her new favorite song because when the attorney finished the letter, he abrubtly stated the DuBois fortune was now hers. Fortune? She thought her husband had already burned through the lot. The lawyer told her, her father-in-law always was wealthy, and had willed his son, her dead husband, half despite his personal failings and their lifelong tension. Even better, her dead husband was to get the other half if his sister had passed. She had. Leukemia. LuAnne knew none of this. Then there was the caveat she or their nonexistent children would get the inheritance if something happend to her husband Vince DuBois.

Luanne, of course, had happenend to Vince DuBois. She asked, "Am I a millionaire?" The attorney responded she was a billionaire. While she took this in, he confided how astonishingly lucky LuAnne was because somebody as brillant as Vince's father had never ammended his will.

"Perhaps, it was from the sadness of losing his wife and children," the lawyer said. "Maybe, not changing the will didn't make their loss real. Maybe that's why he never reached out to her. The letter tears at me. They spent a lifetime in conflict and only in death could they reach out to one another. Yet, the son died first." He shook his head. She didn't respond with an obligatory expression of sadness, instead she pelted the lawyer with questions about her new money.

The lawyer, the dutiful lifelong attorney for the DuBois family, was of course disgusted by this interloper's aquisition of the fortune and though in private he schemed of ways to get a piece himself, he was angered by her unworthy windfall. He wanted to spit venom at her. He had half an idea to sue on behalf of a trust he could say Mr. DuBois had wanted to start with... him at the helm. He could forge documents, he could make it happen, but instead he gave a waxy, thin smile and realized perhaps fighting Ms. DuBois wasn't the easiest way to get his. Within ten minutes he was her new lawyer and advisor. He left his law firm with a terse phone call to the partner he thought was stealing the most from the firm and called an accountant friend of his with flexible policies.

So, unlucky LuAnne was suddenly lucky again. She was one of the wealthiest women in New Orleans and suddenly the owner of an international corporation. She was lucky because she was so wealthy and the corporation so stable it would take even her years to waste that kind of money or bankrupt the organization. Her lawyer, who was stealing a mint from her, was also business savvy enough to keep her in line and was determined to keep her from losing all of her vast fortune too quickly or to anybody but him. Plus, the more she made the more he did.

He convinced her to move to New York, to make gambling an excursion, to take up world travel and to satisfy her need to piss money away to give generously to charities. It was cheaper that way. She did give generously but not because she was charitable but because it got her on the society pages. Still, when LuAnne DuBois, went on her gambling excursions, she didn't piss money away she hemoraghed it. Like a recovering alcoholic on his first bender, the dam would come bursting open and whoever was lucky enough to play with her would get drenched.

When she came into town, poker players that couldn't get loans from anyone, could get loans from everyone if they could get a seat at her table. Sure, her chasing of hands sometimes broke even the richest pros when her miracle cards would hit and their bankrolls would be on the table, but for the most part it was Christmas on the coast. Literally her mere presence would turn an average night in the poker room to an event.

Ms. DuBois was coming to the Belle Riveria in Biloxi, and once Randal Breaux got the word out so was everybody else. Randal had some more phone calls to make. It was time for the team to come out of retirement.

1 comment:

Goondingy said...

Nice start I'm liking it...sorta sounds like another story I saw but different.

Amazon Items