Dirty Dirty Games

Dirty, Dirty Games

Dave Adams

Take a wild ride with me, Dave the cabbie, and my many true stories of driving a taxi in Phoenix, Arizona; Reno, Nevada; and Lake Tahoe, Nevada; for the most part of 32 years. I tell my stories about being a hardcore gambler. I know and play the games very well—21, baccarat, poker, most of the other games in the casinos. I also am one of the best craps shooters in the world, and that’s what a lot of this book is about. Read about the DIRTY DIRTY GAMES that the casinos and the Gaining Control Agency played on me as well as lies, corruption, and violence I encountered in several police agencies.

I also tell about my experiences in the legal brothels of Nevada, including the famous Mustang Ranch, as a cabbie and a customer, and the true story about the ghost of the Mustang Ranch. The ghost, famous boxer Oscar Bonavena, who was shot to death at the Mustang Ranch in 1976, and two working girls’ encounters with the ghost as well as my encounter with the ghost with two customers in my taxi.

You’ll also learn about my experiences prospecting and dredging for gold on the Klamath River in California.

Enjoy the read,

Dave

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Dirty, Dirty Games

Copyright © 2013 by Dave Adams

All Rights Reserved

Cover Design: Brandon Swann

Published by Dirty, Dirty Games Press

Dirty, Dirty Games, LLC

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with other people, please purchase additional copies. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com for your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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THIS IS A TRUE STORY.

THE NAMES HAVE BEEN

CHANGED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY —

AND THE INNOCENT

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

About the Author

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Chapter 1

Phoenix, Arizona, 1980

WHEN I STARTED to drive a cab in Phoenix, in the training session they took us out and showed us the different cabs. Some were the older-style cabs, the Checker cabs with the flag that raised up and you clunked back down. Some of them had the newer-style meters, but the old meter in the old Checker cab had the flag that told them whether you were high-flagging or not. I drove those cabs quite a bit in Phoenix.

Phoenix was a wild town back then. A lot of drunks, a lot of partiers. I’d drive nights. I made real good money, and I was real happy with my job. I’d probably go out and make $70 to $80 a night on a good night, which was real good money for that day and age. I’d mostly do bar calls in downtown Phoenix at the Adams Hotel. That was before the Ramsey Hotel was built. Phoenix was quite a different town back then. Musty old bars from the 40’s and 50’s and older. Almost every night after 1 A.M., after the bars closed, there would be somebody wanting to go to the bootlegger to buy more beer. It seemed like the real wild, wild west in those days.

ONE TIME I was driving my Weller Cab mid-morning when I heard something going over the radio, the dispatcher saying, Where are you at? And a driver, coming through not very loud at all, sounded like he was in great pain. He said he was hit in the head and robbed, and he didn’t know where he was. He was out in the desert somewhere. It sounded like he was going in and out of consciousness, and nobody knew where he was. The dispatcher was trying to get him to describe anything around him. This went on for about two-and-a-half hours, until they found him down in South Buckeye, almost dead. They got him to the hospital. He lived, but he didn’t drive a cab after that.

ANOTHER NIGHT I picked up this guy. He went for a real short ride. I think it was $4.50 on the meter. He handed me a $1 bill with the corner cut off and a $20 corner pasted on it, trying to make it look like a $20 bill, hoping I was going to give him change for a $20 bill. He took off running and I couldn’t catch him, but I got his dollar.

I HAD A GIRLFRIEND named Angie. She was sweet and innocent, pretty much a virgin when I met her. She’d come over to my apartment, and we’d make love. I was very much in love with Angie, and I thought she would be about the only thing I would miss if I moved out of Phoenix.

THEN, AFTER DRIVING a cab for about eight months, I got sick of Phoenix and decided to move to Durango, Colorado.

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Chapter 2

Durango, Colorado, 1981

I WENT UP to Durango and got an old trailer close to the Animas River. I love to fish, so I’d go trout fishing almost every day. I told Angie before I left, You can come up and live with me, you know — and she did. She lived with me for a couple weeks at a time. She really wanted to get married, but I wasn’t ready for marriage. So I told her I just wanted to live with her, but I didn’t want to marry. She didn’t really like that, so she went back and forth to Phoenix several times, stayed two weeks or so with me, then back to Phoenix.

MY FIRST JOB in Durango was pushing logs on a pond at a sawmill working the graveyard shift. My boss was an old redneck. He seemed like an okay boss at first. We could get away with smoking joints at work. He knew, but didn’t seem to care. The water in the pond was black and nasty. I remember one night the other guy that pushed logs with me slipped and went headfirst into the black pond. When he came out, we laughed hard about that. Another night there was a big lightning storm; the lightning was real close and intense. My redneck boss told me to get out there and push the logs on the pond with a 15-foot aluminum pole while it was raining hard, lightning everywhere. There was no way out of going out there with that lightning rod, so I told the old redneck, That’s it. I’m done. I quit right then and there.

SO I HAD to go home and tell Angie I lost my job. Jobs were hard to come by in Durango, but I got another job delivering oil to stores and repair shops. A few weeks later Angie went to Phoenix and didn’t come back. I went down and saw her a few times in Phoenix, but she never came back to Durango.

DURANGO WAS a wild party town. There were quite a few party bars downtown in the old part of Durango. I’d go to the bars quite often and go out dancing at Farquardt’s. At that time I worked at a resort hotel as a banquet waiter. One day I had to hitchhike to work because I had a dead battery or something on my truck. So I’m hitchhiking to work, and a good-looking girl picks me up. Turns out she’s a cocktail waitress at the same place I worked.

Several nights later I saw her at Farquardt’s, and we had a few cocktails. We decided we were going over to my house. She still had her cocktail waitress uniform on from the resort, and as we were heading through downtown Durango, she said, I gotta get this thing off. She had another outfit with her to change into. She just whipped her top off while we’re cruising through downtown Durango — and she had the biggest titties I have ever seen. I couldn’t believe it. Her name was Naryami. It wasn’t her real name; it was her given name from India, where she toured. She was actually Mexican, but she was quite a beautiful girl with huge, natural tits. We went over to my house and had a helluva good time. Great sex.

WHEN I WAS out at the bars in Durango one night I met a girl named Mara. She was from Honduras and was going to junior college in Durango. I think she was underage, but she still got in the bars somehow, fake ID or something, I’m not sure. But anyway, she was sweet and innocent, total virgin, huge titties, beautiful girl. One time she snuck me into her dorm room with her roommate still in the room. They painted me up for Halloween, and we went downtown. There were 5,000 people in costume in the streets in Durango on Halloween. Young and old, the whole town goes all out for Halloween.

ONCE I TOOK Mara up in the mountains a little way outside of Durango in my pickup truck. We were sitting there making out next to this creek in my truck, and I started getting into her top, her big titties, just incredibly firm, nice titties — and, bear in mind she was a total virgin — so she didn’t really know what was going on. I took her hand and put it over on my cock, and she started to unbuckle my pants. But before she got my pants unbuckled, I blew my load right there. I started going, Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Ahh! — and she thought I was having a heart attack or something. Scared the hell out of her. So I got out and took a piss and cleaned up. That was pretty funny, though. It was the first time I’d ever lost my load before a girl got my pants off.

ANOTHER TIME I was out with a girl I met in the bar, and they were having two-fers. I was drinking 151’s and Coke with her, and I definitely got drunk. We decided to leave the bar and go over to my place. I do not drink and drive now, but then I hadn’t learned my lesson yet. Anyway, right when we got to my truck door I started puking my guts up.

A cop drove by and saw me. When I saw him, I went, Oh, man, I’m not driving nowhere. I’ll see you later, baby. I’ll see you in a day or two. I’m going to crawl into my truck here and go to sleep. So I crawled in the front seat of my truck and went to sleep, probably four hours, and then I got up and started driving home. It was probably 5:00 in the morning. I ran out of gas on a side street and even though I had dual tanks on my truck, I couldn’t get them switched over in time so I had trouble starting the truck. Here I was on a side street, and the cop pulled in behind me and turned his lights on. I got out and talked to him.

He said, I think you’re drunk. He did a drunk test on me — walk this line, say the alphabet, etc. — and I supposedly didn’t pass the test. So he said, I’m gonna take you down to the station. Do you want to take a breath test, blood test, or a urine test? Then he said, I’m not going to give you a urine test, though.

I said, Okay, I’ll take a blood test. We went to the hospital, and the dingy nurse couldn’t get blood out of my arm. She poked the needle around in my arm for probably a minute, minute-and-a-half, trying to find the vein. I finally said, Man, this ain’t working. She said, Oh, I’m going to get an older, more experienced nurse. I told the cop, Listen, I’ll take a breath test. I’m not going to take another needle in my arm.

He said, That’s it! You’re going to jail, and I spent the night in jail. But the cops didn’t have proof that I was drunk — I didn’t refuse a test. I offered to take a blood test and offered to take a breath test, but the cop refused to give it to me. So I went to the prosecutor’s office and told them, Look, you don’t have any proof. I did not refuse a test. Why are you even trying to prosecute this case?

The prosecutor said, We’re going to go to court on this if you don’t want to plead guilty.

I said, I’m not pleading guilty. Number one, I puked my guts out. I might have been drinking, but I puked my guts out and slept for four hours in my truck. So it’s very questionable whether I was drunk. I don’t think I was. You don’t have the proof. That’s the bottom line.

We’re still going to prosecute you. There’s no way you can win this case, said the prosecutor.

There wasn’t anything I could do. So I decided, I’m not going to get a lawyer — I can beat this case on my own.

They changed the court date on me several times. One day when I was in talking to the judge about my case, he said, Oh, by the way, did you know you’re supposed to be in court tomorrow?

I said, No, I didn’t know that. The dirty bastards were trying to catch me on technicalities, rescheduling a court date and not sending me a notice about it. So I got a hold of the police report, which turned out to be full of shit. The cop said in the police report that I was squealing my tires, and when I put it in reverse he had to put his car in reverse to avoid a collision. This was nothing but bullshit and lies because I knew my truck didn’t have enough power to squeal the tires. So I subpoenaed my roommate, Nick, into court as a witness because he’d driven my truck and knew it didn’t have enough power to squeal the tires. So the cop was a liar.

When I got into court it was jury trial. I got the cop on the stand and asked him if everything in the police report was true, and the cop said it was. Then I got Nick on the stand and asked him if he’d ever driven my truck before. He said, Yes, several times. I asked him if he thought my truck had enough power to squeal the tires. He said, No, absolutely not. There’s no way you could squeal the tires with that truck. So I made a liar out of the cop in court.

The prosecutor they had in there was a rookie, a real wormy guy who just didn’t have a clue what he was doing. He kept asking me really funny questions when he had me on the stand. For example, he asked me, Isn’t it true that you’re a paranoid person? I said, What? Your Honor, I object! The judge basically told him to shut up and told the jury to disregard that question because it was inappropriate.

So the jury went into deliberation. The courtroom was so Mickey Mouse I could hear the jury deliberating in the next room. I heard this one Texas lady going, Wellll, ah I think we ought to give him an impaired (an impaired would be the second charge down from a DUI) and another guy saying, No, no. He didn’t refuse any tests. He actually offered to take two tests, and he’s right, you know, they don’t have the proof. He’s not guilty.

I couldn’t hear the rest of their deliberations, but anyway the verdict was: not guilty! The judge congratulated me in court because I was probably the only person ever to beat a DUI in Durango, Colorado. But the state still took my driver’s license away for three months for refusing to submit to a chemical test. Not true. So I drove almost every day of that three months. I said to myself, Hell with them. You aren’t going to take my driver’s license if I beat a DUI. And they never caught me driving during those three months. Kind of a payback.

IN THOSE DAYS I was quite addicted to fishing. I was a very good spinner-fisherman. Sometimes I’d go floating down the Animas on an inner tube, fishing all the way. Another time, mid-winter, I was fishing near the hatchery on the Animas. A game warden came down and checked my license. I had a nice 14-inch brown trout on my stringer. He said, You’re the only one I know who can catch fish in mid-winter in the Animas. He wanted me to keep records of the fish that I caught. He also wanted to take a picture of me and my fish at the hatchery. So I stopped in and let him take a picture after I was done fishing.

ANOTHER TIME I was out with this girlfriend fishing in the spillway of Valleycito Reservoir where it flows into the Pine River. We were up on the edge of the spillway, and you could see the trout swimming around down below. Several times when I was fishing in there with a wad of worms on my hook, something would grab it and just snap my line. All of a sudden my girlfriend said, Look! There’s a giant brown trout thrashing up the water chasing a 15-inch rainbow. This is no fish story. It was a female brown that I estimated to be at least 120 pounds and five feet long. It would have been an all-time record trout, but I never caught it. That was in 1982.

I LIVED IN Durango for about four years and had a lot of good times there. My roommate, Nick, was a professional poker player. He played in a no-limit poker game day-in and day-out, and he would usually take money. I had to beg Nick to let me go with him to play in this game, and then I started playing in it almost every day. It took place in a room in this hotel from the 1800s with a saloon from the 1800s downstairs. It was an illegal game in which the guy that ran it raked a dollar off of each hand, so he made pretty good money. He’d supply all the beer and food and the room. They mostly played no-limit Texas Hold-em, but it was dealer’s choice. In 1982 most people didn’t even know what Texas Hold-em was. Sometimes we’d play low-ball, sometimes Omaha. We had some wild games. Sometimes we’d play three days straight. I played with the best players in the world there.

IN 1982, A guy named Ryan cleaned our clocks every time we played over at his house. He was just a really good player. He’d come to the other game and beat us quite often there, too. He was a very good player, a very well-respected player, and he’d never played in a tournament before. He was so good that his friends decided they were going to stake him in a tournament in Vegas. So he played in the second-biggest tournament in Vegas, Stairway to the Stars,