Coyote blue

(the latter after the famous dental hygiene cow). After normal deliveries of two more sons, Bicuspid and Incisor, she had a long, difficult labor with her largest and last son, Minty. Later, Mother Fresh swore that had the child taken one more minute to come into the world, she would have named him Mr. Tooth Decay out of spite – a fact that gave little solace to the man named Minty Fresh.
    Coyote said, "People think that it stands for motherfucker , don't they?"
    "No," Minty said. "No one has ever mentioned it."
    "Oh," Coyote said. "Can you fix this machine? When I give it the cheating number it just beeps."
    Minty Fresh looked at the cash machine, which was still blinking the message INSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH, SPANISH, OR JAPANESE. CHOOSE ONE. "You'll need to choose a language, sir." He reached down and pushed the English button. "It should be fine now."
    Coyote inserted a card and punched two numbers on the keyboard, then looked at Minty. "This is my secret number."
    "Yes," Minty said. "If you need anything at all, please ask for me personally." He turned and walked away.
    Coyote finished punching the PIN number. When the machine prompted him for an amount he punched in $9999.99, the maximum allowed by the six-figure field. The machine whirred and spit five hundred dollars into the tray, then flashed a message saying that this was the card's transaction limit. Coyote tried the card again and got another five hundred. The third time the machine refused the transaction so Coyote tried another card. After running all of Sam's cards to their limit he walked away from the machine with twenty thousand dollars in cash.
    Coyote went to the roulette table and held the four-inch brick of twenties out to the croupier, a slight Oriental woman in a red-and-purple silk doublet with a name badge that read, Lady Lihn . The croupier said, "On the table." She gestured for Coyote to put the money down. She nodded to a pit boss. "Watch count, please," she said mechanically. The pit boss, a sharp-faced, slick-haired Italian man wearing a polyester suit and a ten-thousand-dollar Rolex, moved to her side and watched as she counted the bills out on the table.
    "Changing twenty thousand," Lady Lihn said. "How would you like this, sir?"
    "Red ones," Coyote said. The pit boss raised an eyebrow and smirked. Lady Lihn looked irritated.
    "Red is five dollar. No room on table."
    The pit boss addressed Coyote. "Perhaps you'd like two hundred in fives and the rest in hundreds, sir."
    "What color are the hundreds?" Coyote said.
    "Black," Lady Lihn said.
    "Yellows," Coyote said.
    "Yellows are two dollars."
    "You pick," Coyote said.
    Lady Lihn counted out racks of chips and pushed them in front of Coyote. The pit boss nodded to a cocktail waitress, then to the stack of chips in front of Coyote, which the cocktail waitress interpreted as "Take the order." The cocktail waitress would bring strong drinks until Coyote started to get drunk, then she would bring watered drinks until he looked tired, when she would offer coffee and disappear until the caffeine kicked in.
    "Can I bring you something to drink?"
    Coyote turned to the cocktail waitress and stared into her cleavage. "Yes," he said.
    The waitress held a pen ready over a cocktail napkin. "What can I bring you?"
    Coyote shot a glance to a woman at the table who was drinking a mai tai, resplendent with paper parasols and sword-skewered tropical fruit. He grabbed the woman's drink and downed half of it, nearly taking his eye out with the plastic broadsword. "One of these," Coyote said. He replaced the drink in front of the woman, who didn't seem to notice that it had been missing. She'd been riding the alcohol-and-caffeine roller coaster for hours and was absorbed in winning back her children's college fund.
    "Bets down," Lady Lihn said. Coyote put a single red chip on black and the ball was dropped. Coyote watched the ball race around the outside of the wheel. When it slowed and dropped to the numbers he reached for his bet.
    "No touch bet," Lady Lihn snapped. In an instant the pit boss, the cocktail waitress, and two security jesters in steel-toed elf shoes were at Coyote's side. The trickster pulled his hand back. It will be hard to trick these people , Coyote thought. They talk like wolves, all twitches and gestures and smells.
    The ball dropped into a red slot and Lady Lihn placed another red chip next to Coyote's. "I win, I win, I win," Coyote chanted. He did a skipping dance around the table