Death On the Flop (29 page)

The fourth nine fell on The River.

Stan grinned and bet another fifty. I called. We showed our cards and he had a blank and a Queen kicker.

My fans howled. I guess they hadn’t had much to cheer about up to now. I’d gotten lucky, and I was counting on a lot more of that.

“At least that woke everyone up,” Stan muttered, as if he’d lost as a favor to the fans.

“Marianna, Shari and—hope so,” I said as I brought my glass to my lips.

Stan went eerily still. Slowly, he turned his Bolles on me. The air around us dropped temperature. I suppressed a shiver and grinned, even more slowly, right back at him. I hoped Frank had made it through, because if he didn’t and I didn’t find a clean cop once this game was over, Stan was surely going to find a way to kill me before I found Ben.

I could hear the commentators chuckling along about “bad blood” and “anti-fish.” “Steely Stan tapped on the aquarium and a shark popped out,” one of them chortled.

I wanted to tell them it was just one hand, guys, but I was grateful for the distraction. Stan could hear what they were saying too and I knew it would keep him from plotting exactly how to dismember me. I looked through the crowd and saw my very own Lois Lane bouncing on the balls of her feet. Beth saw me look at her, snatched a “Bee a Cool Poker Babe” sign, turned it over and scribbled something, flashing it at me.
Found Joe, phone, no Frank, bloody Lincoln,
I read before one of the security goons grabbed her by the arm and kicked her out of the ballroom. That was the last of her I’d see for a while. No one was allowed in after the round had started and everyone had to turn their cellphones in when they’d come through the doors.

Stan must have read the sign too, because he turned to me and spread his lips in an evil grin. “All alone, now, I see.”

“With nothing to lose.” I added under my breath. I forced myself to shut off the emotions that threatened to overwhelm my intellect.

“Except a game of cards and your life,” Stan reminded me as the dealer dished out our new pockets. “In that order.”

Frank might have ditched the car (after all, we’d
done that once before with good reason), but I knew he would never purposely leave his phone. That’s when I knew where Conner was, hacking Frank into little pieces and throwing him in the dumpster behind the Mirage. Or maybe driving him out to the desert and leaving him for the vultures. Or maybe he’d already pushed him into one of the palm trees at the Mirage and he wouldn’t be found for days. Ben had a worse fate before him.

When Stan had said that creepy thing about my brother being a good actor.

It all fell into place.

They were keeping Ben to act in one of the snuff films. That’s how they were going to kill him. Opportunists that they were, they’d make money on him while disposing of him. How handy. I doubted they’d waste their time with Frank—he knew too much and every second he was alive was a second they put their operation in jeopardy. Ditto with me.

Except now, thanks to Beth, I knew more than Frank did. And I was about to have the spotlight. If I could just get the cards and keep my cool long enough to talk Stan into going all in.

It took three more hands which depleted my chip store to a nerve wracking level. I had only enough chips to cover maybe four more hands worth of blinds. My fans were holding their signs more limply. The tournament president held his head in his hands. The Lanai PR flack had resorted to drinking tequila shots.

The back of my pocket cards mocked me. Stan sighed heavily and drummed his fingers on the table. The dealer shot me a sympathetic look that also meant hurry it up. The commentators were practicing their eulogy. I peeked at my cards.

Ten/heart, Queen/heart.

I calculated the odds of a flush, and a royal flush, in heads up play. I didn’t really like any of them, but knew that I had to play this hand. I called the big blind. Stan raised fifty thousand. I called. He had something in his pocket for sure.

The Flop was a King/heart, eight/diamond, Jack/heart.

I could make it with a number of cards: a heart would give me a flush, the ace a royal flush, the nine a straight flush. Five different cards would give me a simple pair. Stan could have a flush working with ace high to beat me or three of a kind.

We both checked.

Fourth street was an ace/spade. I felt the energy zap through Stan even though he remained motionless. He had pocket aces. I was sunk unless I got exceptionally lucky. He went all in. My fans dropped their heads.

I could limp off or I could stay and fight.

“All in,” I said clearly, pushing my chips forward on the table. My fans cheered.

“Decided to put everyone out of their misery a little quicker, huh?” Stan snorted.

The River was an ace/heart.

The roar from outside where the crowd watched the game on TV monitors in a closed circuit telecast shook the ballroom wall. My fans inside were dead quiet. Stan’s fans clapped. With his Bolles on me, Stan rose as he turned his cards over, ready to accept the congratulations from the crowd as he put his fist in the air for victory.

I waited a beat. Then quietly and slowly turned my pocket cards up. The roar from outside quieted like it had been turned off with a switch. All the fans, mine and his, inside the ballroom, blinked blankly, stunned.

“Royal flush wins!” The ESPN commentator declared belatedly, finally finding his voice. “Belinda ‘Bee Cool’ Cooley has done it. She’s won the first annual Lanai Hold ’Em Pro-Am, beating the great Steely Stan!”

All at once, my fans started screeching and clapping and shouting, jumping up and down on top of each other. It was bedlam outside the boundary tape. A group of Stan’s fans all wearing fake mustaches grabbed a “BEE COOL” sign from one of the Poker Babes and started dancing around with it.

“Guess I didn’t lose everything, did I?” I asked Stan quietly.

He took a step toward me. “That’s just a game. It’s your life I’m interested in.”

As I backed away from Stan, I felt a hand at the small of my back. Expecting the tournament president to be ready to guide me to the media, I gratefully let him push me away from Stan, who gave him a heavy look, through the boundary tape and the madding crowd. Ringo gave me a noogie as I passed. I tickled Junior’s adorable belly and gave Amy a cheek for a kiss. Carey shook both my hands, with tears in her eyes.

Grateful as I was for all this support, all I could think of was Frank and Ben. I tried to push the sudden wave of sadness away. I blinked away a tear.

Carey stopped us. “Where are you taking Bee? We want to celebrate!”

Just then I smelled a waft of Iceberg Effusion.

“She has to get ready for her media interviews,” a familiar voice said, confirming my worst fear.

I started to twist out of his grasp, but Conner was too quick. His hand held my arm in a vice grip.

“Hey, mister,” Carey said, her brow furrowed in concern and confusion. “Did you know your head is bleeding?”

“It’s a rough world out there, you he-she,” he threw over his shoulder as he pushed me ahead.

“Carey, hel—” The click and cold metal pressing against the flesh under my jacket cut off my plea. Conner leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Keep walking and keep quiet or I will blow straight through your belly.”

“Isn’t slicing and dicing more your style?” I asked.

“Shut up,” he hissed. “Nobody can tie me to that.”

“Want to bet?”

Carey, who apparently hadn’t bought Conner’s insensitive blow off, began nudging her companions and gesturing toward us. I threw them a desperate look.

Looking back the way we’d come, I could see Stan sidling over to an exit door.

“Your partner gets a free ride out of here, huh?” I asked, deciding if anyone had any incentive to stop Stan it would be Conner.

Conner looked over his shoulder at Stan, paused and swore under his breath. Before he could decide whether to ditch me in favor of going after that partner, the doors Stan had been heading for flew open. Frank strode through with a phalanx of uniformed sheriff ’s deputies behind him.

“Conner!” I heard the tournament president call over the crowd. Conner paused as the president continued, “Where have you been?”

Frank, his T-shirt torn, jeans bloody and face swollen and battered, tried to locate us through the crowd. Conner pushed the gun deeper into my kidney. We were a step away from an exit when I heard Frank yell, “Let her go!”

“Go to hell,” Conner shouted back, spinning around, dragging me in front of him, drawing the gun out from under my jacket and holding it to my temple. The fans, who’d gone into an uneasy, confused quiet, now screamed and scattered at the sight of the slick black semiautomatic. Stan was taking advantage of the chaos and inching his way to a different exit, trying to shake loose of one of his “Squeezes.” The camera operators couldn’t keep up with the action. I saw the red lights flashing on their cameras and figured we were still on live TV. Guess the folks who went to the bathroom when I folded that second to the last hand would be sorry.

“Daniel Conner, you are under arrest,” a plainclothes policeman yelled. “Let your hostage go, drop your gun and put your hands in the air. We just want to talk to you about a few things. What might be no more than a misunderstanding is turning into a felony, Conner. Think about it.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Carey and her castmates behind us. Instead of stampeding toward the nearest exit along with everyone else, they’d gathered in a huddle with their heads together, whispering. They looked like they were planning to march at the ticker tape parade.

“There goes your buddy,” I told Conner. Stan was only about twenty feet from the door on the wall adjacent to us, having shoved his girlfriend into a table that collapsed under her. What a gallant fellow.

“You’d better stop right there, Stan my man,” Conner called as Stan put his hand on the doorknob.

A man with his back to us stepped forward and blocked the exit. Stan paused, indecisive.

Frank took a step forward.

Conner tightened his arm across my throat in a wrestler grip. “I’ll pull the trigger, if anyone comes any closer.”

“What good will that do, Conner?” the cop asked. “We’ll just smoke you anyway.”

“I refuse to die alone.”

Just then what felt like a ton of bricks hit us.

I hit the floor hard.

I heard a gunshot.

I braced for the blood to start flowing.

I pushed on the body above me. My left breast was pinned to the casino floor by a knobby male knee in panty-hose. The tangle of arms and legs on top of me wriggled and shifted. A hand reached into the fray and pulled me through the women’s suits and briefcases and stodgy pumps. I was face to face with Carey.

“What happened?” I breathed.

“The Wall Street Women came to your rescue, girl!” She giggled.

“Thanks everybody. I can’t believe you’d risk your lives for me.” The group, half still in disarray on the floor, gave me waves and thumbs up as they high-fived each other.

“Don’t worry about it,” Carey said, waving off my gratitude. “That guy pissed me off.”

“Where
is
Conner?” I asked, looking left and right and only seeing police uniforms.

Carey pointed. He was handcuffed face down on the floor.

“Where’s Stan?”

Carey pointed. He was lying face down in a bloody pool on the floor.

“Your cozy pal shot him through the head. One bullet square in the middle of his forehead. I bet he’s taken some target practice.”

“I guess he has.” I shook off the shiver that ran down my spine when I remembered the cold feel of the gun against my skin and the empty sound of his voice when he said he wanted to kill me. And he wouldn’t have had to aim. “He’s a cop.”