“You turned them away?”
“I told them what happened, but they didn’t seem alarmed so I let it go.” The girl worried with the medallion she wore around her neck, sliding it first one way then the other on the long gold chain. “Looking back, maybe I should have done something else.”
“I don’t know what.” I resisted reaching out and grabbing her hand to stop the worried motion. The girl was as twitchy as a dog with fleas. “So, Dane shows up. What happened then?” I asked even though I knew the answer.
“Mr. Dane and the woman left together. He said he could handle it from there.
***
Dane had handled it all right. And now he was trying to handle me. Not a good idea if longevity was part of his future plans. Running on high-octane adrenaline, I covered ground through the casino in long, angry strides. I hated to be played. I hated to be lied to. Guess that made me pretty normal.
Normal
—what a mediocre word—and not something I especially aspired to, which somehow made me even angrier.
But, Dane could wait.
Right now, I needed to track down Frank DeLuca before the cops rode up on my tail.
Grabbing my phone from its hip cradle, I pushed talk. “Jerry, you got a bead on Frank DeLuca?”
“Gimme a sec. I caught a glimpse of him on one of the feeds not too long ago.” Jerry sounded tired, not that I was surprised—we both were rowing the same boat.
“You think he’s still around?”
“Poker dudes are nocturnal creatures. Besides, as one of the last nine players in this weekend’s shindig—he’s basking in the attention.”
“With everything else, I’d forgotten about that.”
Jerry whistled under his breath as I waited. I could picture him scrolling through the feeds. “Yup, there he is. Garden Bar, top tier. From the looks of him, he’s been there a while.”
“Thanks.” I reholstered my phone and ran.
At this time of morning, the crowd in the casino consisted of either those too drunk to find their rooms, or those winning or losing big. Music thumped in the background. Glasses clinked in the bar, not from frivolity but from the bartender washing, drying, and putting away. Vegas might be the city that never sleeps, but the energy level did have its own circadian rhythm. Right now it faded to a low ebb allowing for regenerating, recharging, and for me to actually make it across the hotel and out the back in near record time.
The Garden Bar hung in the branches of a huge tree overlooking the pool area. Reminiscent of the Swiss Family Robinson tree house but on steroids, the bar consisted of several levels, each with a counter in the middle surrounded by barstools. A rope and mesh fence that was stronger than it looked ringed the perimeter and protected patrons from a plunge to sure disability. At appropriate intervals, two-tops cozied up to the rope enclosure.
The real trick here was not finding the place, but getting to it. A wobbly plank and rope footbridge connected the structure to the mezzanine level of the hotel. Late at night when I was feeling particularly sadistic, I loved to park myself next to the bridge and watch the patrons who had sampled too much of the local firewater negotiate a bridge that moved. Tonight my mood ran more to homicidal, so I didn’t stop.
DeLuca hadn’t moved. Slumped down in his chair, he reminded me of a ragdoll, slack and forlorn. One hand fisted around a glass firmly anchored him to a two-top next to the railing. By all accounts he was a handsome man, thick and broad, oozing virility and a hint of impishness when he smiled. Women flocked to him, eager to run their fingers through his thick, black hair or to discover the joke that lit his eyes. And, through some divine lack of spine, he’d never been able to resist a pretty face, tight body, large rack, curvaceous booty, or any combination thereof—at least, not that I’d ever been able to tell. Married several times, Frank was an eternal optimist and self-delusional to the end. He seemed genuinely surprised each time a wife would take umbrage with his dalliances.
Guileless, a child in a man’s body, Frank was the kind of guy a woman hated to love…but one they couldn’t resist. Thankfully, since I’d called him Uncle Frank for as long as I could remember, I’d been inoculated. Besides, he was my father’s age, but, as I recall, Wife Number Four had been two years behind me in school. She’d worked flat on her back under Frank for a few years, until she was certain the courts would give her a solid stake. I’d heard she’d bought a high-end jewelry store at one of our competitors, but I wasn’t sure. As far as I knew, Frank hadn’t married again.
Frank looked up when I eased into the chair across from him. He flashed me a pale imitation of his famous smile.
“You okay?” I asked, reaching across the table and squeezing his arm.
“Sorta shook, you know?” Red-rimmed, his eyes were wet. His hand shook as he wiped away any trace of a tear. “I didn’t have anything to do with that girl.” His expression reminded me of a kid trying to convince the authorities he hadn’t blown up the chemistry lab despite the M-80 in his back pocket.
“My father tells me you left his party early. That’s not the last-to-leave-Frank I know and love.”
“I gotta call from Slim’s plane. He wanted me to meet him at the airport.”
“Why?”
“He was all riled over the political wrangling around legalizing Internet poker and bringing it back onshore.” Frank turned his glass in his hand then took a long pull. “You know they got that legislation before Congress. Everybody’s pickin’ sides. A huge pile of money is at stake.”
“We’ve all been trying to figure that one out. But why’d Slim want to talk at midnight when both of you were supposed to be at the Big Boss’s party?”
“He’d gotten wind someone was fighting dirty, trying to kill the legislation.”
“Why’d he care?”
“You know how he is, guarding the sacred game of poker.”
“The cheaters ought to be shot at dawn?” I said, smiling at the memories. How many times had I heard Slim say that as he pounded the table? “Do you know where he is now?”
“I left him on the plane. He said he was ‘hittin’ the hay,’ as he put it.” Frank motioned to the cocktail waitress hovering nearby. “I’ll take another. Lucky, you want anything?”
Needing breakfast, I nodded. “Wild Turkey 101, make it a double.” I waited until we both had our libations in hand before continuing. “So you met him at, what? About midnight?”
“A bit later, maybe half after. We talked for about an hour, I guess.”
“Where’d you leave it?” I took a sip of whiskey, looking for courage. “And where’d you go after?”
“Lucky girl, you’re getting awful personal.”
I didn’t say anything. Instead, my eyes sought his. Holding them, I didn’t blink.
Finally he broke our gaze. “I hadn’t talked any sense into him. I had the feeling he was going to be proactive, if you get my drift, with or without my help.”
“Did he name any names?”
Frank shook his head. “After that, I went home…alone.”
“You didn’t come back to the hotel?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that girl, if that’s what you’re driving at. She came on to me, you know. We met playing poker—she beat the pants off me.” He tossed me a weak grin. “Never had a girl do that to me before.”
“I bet.”
“At poker.” He gave me a semisuggestive look. With Frank, flirting was his default language. “Boy, she was a pretty thing.” He shook his head as he stared into his drink. Whatever he was looking for, I doubted he’d find it there.
“And?” I took a sip of my liquid sustenance. For some reason I wasn’t ashamed—if beer could be a breakfast food…well, this was just the natural progression.
“Nothing,” Frank said with forced casualness.
“Any idea how she came to know your code word to the security system at the dealership?”
Shock registered in his eyes turning them from a light blue to a distant gray. “The cops didn’t tell me that part.”
“You talked to the cops already?” This time the surprise was mine.
“They called me about the…murder.” He shivered. “I raced right down to the dealership. But nobody mentioned the code thing.”
My heart rate slowed. Dodged that bullet. Romeo’s was the last shit list I wanted to find my name on. “They didn’t know.”
Frank pushed himself up in his chair. “I appreciate you not telling them, Lucky. That’d make it real bad for me.”
“You understand I’m going to have to tell them eventually?”
He shrugged, his reluctance poorly hidden.
“Come clean, Frank. The sooner we catch the killer, the better for all of us.” Even the whiff of murder threw the media into a feeding frenzy. My entire staff and all their considerable talents might not be enough to keep us from being sucked into the maw of public opinion and digested whole.
“Nothing to tell, really. Me and Sylvie, we got drunk together a few times. Had some laughs.”
“Where?”
“The dealership once or twice, but home mostly.”
“And do you have your code word written down anywhere, or is it on a computer or something?” Frank was old school—I doubted he knew how to turn on a computer much less use one, but I had to ask.
“I keep all my personal stuff in a notebook in my desk drawer at home.” His brows furrowed, but he didn’t look too worried. “The drawer’s locked.”
“Personal stuff?”
“Bank accounts, brokerage accounts, the odd investment or two, the security code word, passwords, stuff like that.” Frank shrugged as if he couldn’t imagine anyone stupid enough to tamper with his stuff. Personally, I couldn’t imagine someone that brazen either. Frank might play the clown, but when it came to business, he was anything but. And he had important friends.
“And your money?”
“All accounted for. I checked a little while ago. I got this app on my iPhone.” He pulled the device out of his pocket and pushed it across the table toward me. Along with it came a Baggie containing a few recognizable blue pills, which he hurriedly grabbed and stuffed back in his pocket.
I raised an eyebrow and gave him what I hoped to be a disapproving look.
“Don’t want to go falling down on the job. I’d sure hate to disappoint the ladies with a lackluster performance.” He had the decency to blush as he grabbed his phone and pushed it into his pocket also.
“Up to you,” I said as I revised my opinion about Frank and computers—and because, not only was I fluent in sarcasm, I dabbled in innuendo as well. “You said you entertained her in the dealership. Could she have overheard you using the code word then?”
The corners of his mouth turned down. “I suppose. I’m not that careful, especially after throwing back a couple. Besides, being in the company of a beautiful woman, code words and silly shit like that weren’t exactly uppermost in my mind.”
I resisted crawling up on my soapbox. Casual sex gives me hives. And disdain for security punches my buttons. “Any idea why she would take the code?”
“Haven’t a clue. All we got in there is cars, and the keys are locked tight in a safe every night. We don’t carry much cash.”
“Anything missing?”
“No.” He sighed. “And now I’m gonna have one hell of a time unloading that car. I thought I had it sold to that amateur, but now…”
“Amateur?”
“Yeah, that Slurry kid. He test-drove it yesterday and was all hot to go. He had the jack, too.”
“If he doesn’t want it, feng shui it and sell it overseas,” I said, half joking.
“You can do that?”
“Who knows?” I waved his next question away interjecting one of my own. “You don’t know what Sylvie was doing in your dealership? What she wanted?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“Well, whatever it is, someone was willing to kill for it.”
As
promised, Jerry was still reigning over security when I pushed through the door and entered his fiefdom. Pausing for a moment to allow my eyes to adjust to the relative darkness, I casually scanned the banks of monitors that dotted the long wall opposite the door. They formed an electronic mosaic, an ever-changing glimpse of life in all parts of the casino and hotel—other than the guest rooms and the bathrooms. Don’t ever let them say there are no boundaries in Vegas.
At this time of the morning, with action across the property winding down, only a few of Jerry’s staff sat in front of the wall of monitors, searching the feeds for anything unusual. This being Vegas,
unusual
was a relative term. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they were looking for anything criminal, as were the others seated in front of a smaller bank of monitors on an adjacent wall. These were the gaming experts. More often than not, they were former cheats, experts at scamming the casinos. After paying their debt to society, they helped us ferret out those in their former profession.
Jerry stood behind his staff, his hands clasped behind his back, his feet spread like a captain manning the bridge as his ship rode the swells. A tall, thin black man with a closely shaven head, an open face, wide, warm eyes, and a ready smile, Jerry had been my port in a storm through the years. Often, he’d been a surrogate father when I thought I didn’t have a real one, doling out wisdom and keeping confidences.
Somewhere along the journey from yesterday into today, he had abandoned his suit coat and loosened his tie. His trousers and the back of his shirt were creased from too much sitting and too much stress. Even though I doubted it was possible, I swore his skin held a sallow tint from too much fluorescent light and not enough of the full-spectrum kind. Although all parts of the hotel except the casino had been declared a smoke-free environment, a cigarette dangled from his lips. He seemed oblivious to the ashes as they grew into a feathery cone then fell to the carpet.
“Finally, I found someone who looks like I feel,” I said as I moved to stand beside him.
His eyes were red and tired as he gave me the once over. “Sorry to break it to you, sweetheart, but you also look like you feel. If you feel like shit, that is.”
Pleasantries exchanged, we grinned at each other.
Jerry led me to his office, a small, glass-walled cubicle in the far corner of the room. We each took a chair in front of a single computer monitor. After I had filled him in on the high points of my evening, he cued the tape.
“You’re not going to like this,” he said as he fast-forwarded, scrolling through the time line for the appropriate spot. He stopped the tape and the screen went white.
“What is that?”
“Someone hung a paper banner in front of the camera, blocking it from recording the traffic into and out of the Ferrari dealership.”
The cheap butcher paper sign that was hanging by one corner when I left! “When?”
“Early evening. Somebody stuck it down in Maintenance. Hotel staff put it up.”
“On whose authority?” My voice had a sharper tone than I intended.
“Yours.”
The head of steam that was building vanished in a whoosh as my breath left me. “Mine?” I leaned back in the chair and cocked an eyebrow at him. “I didn’t authorize that…monstrosity.”
“They’re looking for the maintenance order now. So far, they haven’t been able to find it.”
“They won’t. It doesn’t exist.”
“So how come they think the request came from your office?”
I eyed my friend. “You really expect me to have an answer to that?”
“Well, whoever hung it added a bit of premeditation to the evening’s frivolity, didn’t he?” Jerry ran a hand over his bald pate as if smoothing the hair no longer there—an old habit not easily broken and one he resorted to when stress levels spiked. “And I checked the feeds after the poker game, just for grins. Dane and his wife split at Delilah’s. The chick headed toward the showroom. Dane ducked out of sight and he never cropped up again.”
“Where’d he go?”
“That’s what I’m tellin’ you, girl. I haven’t a clue.”
“So he avoided the cameras?”
“Incriminating, isn’t it?”
“The way this thing is going down, Dane couldn’t be any worse off than if he’d appeared on national TV and told Katie Couric he did it.” I blew at a strand of hair while I stalled for thinking time. But thought proved elusive. “If Dane has a death wish, I can’t save him. So, let’s focus on the feed from the Poker Room. I’d like to know who was playing with our dead girl—both figuratively and literally. And, maybe we can pick up who might have been watching her.”
Lost in thought, I watched Jerry work through some pull-down menus. He shouted across the room and one of his staff rushed to push various buttons on the main console. So far we had one dead girl, married to a friend who was acting stranger than normal. The girl was cheating at a card game but didn’t win. She claimed she was in some sort of trouble—that much seemed to be true. The Stoneman was either so incompetent he shouldn’t have been allowed within a hundred yards of a Poker Room, or he was up to his ass in alligators. But what was the connection?
Beat the heck out of me.
“I’ll start the tape around one
a.m.
,” Jerry said. “That’s right after the break where your girl takes a phone call. I presume that’s the one from Dane. You said she didn’t bust out until close to two?”
“Two, right, but I said she
made
a phone call.”
“No.” Jerry shook his head and cued the feed. The monitor flashed to life. “Here, watch it for yourself.”
I’d been right, Sylvie Dane had been a real looker—style and class with just enough trashy thrown in to call attention to herself in Vegas. Pale, her face drawn, and the looked of the hunted in her eyes, she played aggressively for sure, but more than that—she played with reckless abandon. And from the reaction of some of her compatriots, they were starting to smell a rat. Bad beats were part of the game, but when one player hit a string of luck that defied the odds, the others began to get twitchy. And there were so many ways to cheat.… Of course, I knew how Sylvie did it. But, during the game, she kept her eyes averted behind glasses with lenses just gray enough to obscure the color difference in her eyes.
Jerry was right. Clearly annoyed, Sylvie fished her phone out of her handbag—the same one she’d died holding—and answered the call, cupping her hand around her mouth as she spoke. The conversation had been brief.
I wondered who had called her. “Are there any more calls?”
Jerry shook his head. “I checked twenty minutes either side. Nothing. You can always check her phone.”
“Funny enough, that was missing from the crime scene.”
His eyes widened a bit as he looked at me and took a long pull on his cigarette. He didn’t have to say anything, I could tell we were both on the same page—Dane had time to lift the phone from her purse.
One thing I didn’t know: Was lying a protective habit or a calculation with Dane?
Either way, it
so
did not work for me.
But now was not the time to think about Dane—it just pissed me off. And when I was pissed, I couldn’t think. I turned my attention back to the poker game unfolding in front of me. While Sylvie was a curiosity, I knew her story—at least I thought I did. On the other hand, a couple of the others at the table were more interesting. I tapped the screen. “That guy there.”
“Kevin Slurry.” Jerry answered as he took a pull on his cigarette then blew a ring of smoke.
I watched the ring dissipate. “They call him ‘the Hawk,’ right?”
“Yep. A big-stakes amateur who loves to slow play, then swoop in for the kill.”
“He had just bought in to the big game when I had arrived in the Poker Room and had my altercation with the Stoneman. I find it curious that he was playing the thousand-dollar buy-in before that. Doesn’t his motor run on higher octane adrenaline?”
“He doesn’t normally go for the satellite games. But, from the looks of it, he’s cleaning everyone’s clock.” Multicolored chips stacked high in rows in front of him formed a wall of money, gaudy enough to get all the attention.
“The cat who ate the canary,” I commented as one of the pros motioned the Stoneman over to the table and had a whispered conversation with him. I couldn’t tell what was said, the cameras in the Poker Room were not equipped with audio, but the conversation was heated and left the pro red faced with anger.
“What’s that guy’s name again?” I tapped the pro’s image on the screen. “I’ve seen him around.”
“Morton.” Jerry pulled on his cigarette, then gazed with narrowed eyes through the smoke at the image on the screen. “First name Felix, but no one calls him that to his face if they value their skins. Most refer to him as ‘the Professor.’ He’s from somewhere back East, I think. Chases the big money.”
“Stop the tape,” I said a bit louder than I had intended, making Jerry jump. “Who is that?”
“Where?” He leaned forward.
“There.” I pointed to a fuzzy image. A pair of jean-clad legs.
Jerry pushed buttons and searched other feeds until he found the right one to back out. Blurry but recognizable.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Jerry and I said in unison.
We looked at each other. “You first,” I said.
“The kid who was counting cards…”
I’d forgotten about that. “What time were you tangled up with him?”
“A little after two. He told me that he’d left the Poker Room because some of the players were hassling him, not letting him play.”
“Not only the players.” I crossed my arms and leaned back. “He’s the kid I fired the Stoneman over.” I would’ve said the plot thickens, but that was too much of a cliché, even for me. “He must’ve been on break from one of the other tables or he wouldn’t have been allowed to stand there.” As I said it, the steward hustled him away from the table.
But he’d been there long enough.
“You think he was in on whatever scam was going down?”
“It would be interesting to find out, wouldn’t it?”
“You done with this one?” Jerry asked. At my nod, he rekeyed the original feed.
I pointed to the man sitting opposite Sylvie Dane. “River Watalsky. I didn’t know he was back in the game.”
A muscular guy with sandy brown hair cut military short, small angry eyes, and thin lips, Mr. Watalsky had a killer instinct, and an uncanny knack to get his card on the river, hence the nickname. Unfortunately, River’s luck ran hot and cold, and he was the last one to realize when it had turned icy. He’d won and lost so many fortunes even the oddsmakers in Vegas had quit laying odds on him. When he’d been down on his luck, I’d gotten him a job or two. Last I’d heard he’d been driving a cab.
“Yeah, surprised me, too,” Jerry mumbled as he took the last drag on his cigarette—his fifth since I’d arrived but who was counting? “He’s a good guy. Nice to see luck smiling on him again.”
Tonight, from the size of the stack in front of River and the fact he had a grand to buy in, I guessed Lady Luck had visited him once more. I didn’t know who won the tournament, but from the stack of chips in front of him, I’d bet he’d at least made it into the money.
Jerry reached for his pack and shook another cigarette out. He lit it with the butt.
“I thought you’d quit.” On the theory that secondhand smoke was worse than the filtered stuff, I scooched my chair away.
“I’ve tried everything. Even some laser hocus-pocus, if you can believe that.”
“No way.”
“I knew it wouldn’t work when I saw the pile of butts in the bushes by the front door to the place, but I’m desperate. I’d try hypnosis if I wasn’t scared of what other suggestions might be implanted—I’ve seen those hypnotists on the Strip. My insurance premiums are through the roof. My wife is hounding my ass. Gotta love her, but she’s driving me crazy.”
“My kind of gal.” I tapped River Watalsky’s image on the screen. “That guy can ferret out a cheat better than anybody I know. I wonder how come he was hoodwinked by the looker.”
“He wasn’t.” Jerry let smoke out through his mouth then sucked it back in through his nose. I didn’t even know that was possible. “He got pretty steamed at Sylvie Dane.”
“Really? What’d he do?”
“Not much. The Stoneman stonewalled him, what
could
he do?”
“Take matters into his own hands?”
“Watalsky?” Jerry’s voice rose an octave as his eyebrows shot north. “No way.”
“People kill so often for money that it’s become hackneyed. You know that.”
“Yeah, but she was losing, remember?”
“True, but something was going down, that much seems obvious. So, the two were in it together and she’d get the split later. I don’t know. There’s lotsa ways this could’ve worked.”
“But Watalsky? If that guy has a mean bone, I’ve not seen it.” Jerry had dug in his heels.
I shrugged. “Farfetched, I know, but feasible.” I made a sweeping motion. “For God’s sake, the whole table knew Sylvie was cheating.”
“Seems like everyone knew except the Stoneman, the little shit.” Jerry squashed out the butt of one cigarette after lighting another from the glowing embers.
I tried to ignore his chain-smoking, but wasn’t very successful. “When did the game end?”
“They broke it up right after Sylvie left. The Hawk took the pot.”
“Thanks to Sylvie and her little game, whatever it was,” I scoffed. “I’m going to want to talk to Watalsky.”
“Sure. You pick the time and place.”
“This morning, my office.” Neither of us took our eyes off the video feed.
“It’s already morning. Better make it afternoon,” Jerry said, the cigarette held between his lips bouncing with the words. “He’s on a roll. You know him, with money in his pocket he’ll play until he’s tapped out or thrown out.”
As we watched, Sylvie hooked a finger under the chain around her neck and pulled what looked to be a pocket watch out of her cleavage. I’d heard that was a great place to stash stuff, but having no cleavage of my own, I wouldn’t know. “Can you zoom in on that?”