“Policy states you resort to the list to keep the table full only if you don’t have any qualified players waiting to play.” I raised a questioning eyebrow at the young man. “Mister?”
“Weston,” the interpreter said.
“Mr. Weston is to take the chair.” I waved to the two security guards pushing through the throng at the railing. “And the only misunderstanding is yours, Marvin. A grant of power does not include the license to abuse it. You’re finished here. And if you don’t leave now, I’ll see that you’re finished in Vegas.” I’d always wanted to say that. And, much to my delight, I sounded like a petty hood from one of those horrible old mobster movies. That wasn’t my Vegas, but I was having fun, so I went with it. However, I did resist rolling out my Robert De Niro impersonation. “But I wouldn’t go too far, the police are going to want to talk to you.”
One of the guards grabbed Marvin by the arm and urged him toward the exit.
The guy was a reptile, but he was smart enough to know my threat was far from hollow. “I’m not done with you,” the Stoneman spat as he allowed the guard to lead him away.
All eyes followed the threesome until the crowd swallowed them. No one said a word as I sighed and blew a lock of hair out of my eyes. Boy, getting to be the one who finally fired the Stoneman! I was living at the foot of the cross.
The sound of clapping broke the silence. Starting in the back of the room, at first only a few hands came together. Then, like a wave hitting the shoals, the sound grew until the whole room joined in the crescendo. Startled, I slowly rotated. Everywhere I looked I gazed into smiling eyes. The staff, the players, all stood as they applauded…me!
Rachael, the assistant Poker Room manager, rushed to my side. Not yet out of her twenties, she looked at me through red-rimmed eyes as big as saucers. Puffy and bloodshot, her eyes reminded me of long nights spent dealing with people betting more than they could afford to lose. “You have no idea what you have done,” she said, her voice breathless as if after a long sprint.
I rolled my eyes and swiped at that stubborn strand of hair once again. “I have an idea,” I sighed. What I had done was create one more major pain in the ass to be dealt with. Preferring dignity, Marvin might have left the room quietly, but he wouldn’t go without a fuss. Poker room manager was a cherry job. Most would sacrifice body parts to keep it. I had no doubt Marvin J. Johnstone was no exception…and the body parts sacrificed would be mine. The rodent would take a few bites out of my ass before I was rid of him.
Oh well, that’s why they paid me the big bucks. Not to mention, my ass could use a little whittling.
“Rachael, you are now the acting Poker Room manager. Can you handle that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said with conviction.
Youthful enthusiasm. Mine had left so long ago and so quickly I don’t even remember it packing for the trip. “You understand I don’t have the authority to make your position permanent. The casino manager will make that decision.”
She nodded curtly then turned to the room. With a few nonverbal signals, she launched her staff and they busied themselves ensuring the games currently in play resumed with the minimum of fuss. Timers needed to be reset. Cards and chips checked. And every player needed to be reminded where their game was in the betting, what the blinds were and when they would increase. Rules needed to be rigidly followed. The Gaming Control Board was sticky about that.
I turned to young Mr. Weston.
A handsome kid, he eyed me with a mixture of disdain and amusement—a hard, steely stare tempered with challenge. His arms hung at his sides. His fingers twitched as if he was muttering under his breath, aching to tell me off. One shoulder seemed to dip under the weight of the chip it carried.
Couldn’t fault him there. This called for serious sucking up.
I looked him in the eye and touched him lightly on the arm. The deaf people I knew spoke as much with touch as they did with their hands. Since he played poker, I assumed he could read lips. “I am so sorry. I apologize for the rudeness of my former colleague. Please, the seat is yours.” I pulled out the chair for him.
With a slight nod and enough hesitation to make me think he might refuse, he accepted my invitation. A steward brought a tray of chips and set it in front of him. Now all business, the kid fell to counting his chips and arranging them to suit himself. He didn’t make eye contact with any of the other players. They seemed to be ignoring him as well.
Part of the game.
However, I’d played enough to know, through their feigned disinterest, every player was meticulously noting habits and expressions of his fellow warriors. During at least the first hour of play, they would play tight, going to school on each other. Each one would be looking for tells, subconscious signs a player might give that would indicate what kind of hand he was holding, whether he was bluffing or not, whether his card had come on the river, or whether he was betting the bundle on less than stellar odds.
To me, watching a poker game was as scintillating as trimming the lawn with nail clippers. But, for reasons best not explored, the game seemed to hold men spellbound.
“You may converse with Mr. Weston prior to the game starting and during the breaks,” I said to the interpreter. “In fact, it would be beneficial if you could interpret the rules as they are being given to the table. But I would appreciate it if you would not communicate while the game is in progress. One hand, one player, I trust you know the drill.”
“Understood.”
I raised an eyebrow at the game steward who was standing within earshot. He nodded in understanding.
Leaving the operation of the game to the pros, I wandered to the back of the room to observe the play occurring there. Sidling in next to the game steward, I stopped and watched for a moment. The gamesmanship was subtle, but it was there. It took guile and cojones to play poker.
Something it seemed the former Mrs. Dane had in spades.
“How long have you been monitoring play?” I asked the steward at my side.
“My shift started at midnight. I rotated to this table an hour ago.”
Stepping away from the table, I motioned for him to follow me. With a nod he summoned another steward to take his place.
“Do you remember a young woman, platinum hair, silver dress?” I asked when we were comfortably out of earshot. “She busted out of the thousand-dollar buy-in a few hours ago.”
The young man gave me a grin. “Ms. O’Toole, I’m young, male, and have a pulse.”
I fought back a grin. “I’ll take that as a yes. Did you notice anything unusual about her?”
“She wasn’t at my table, but I could tell she played pretty aggressively, for a girl.” Pausing, he blushed when he realized what he had said. “No offense, ma’am.”
“After that remark, it’s ‘sir’ to you.” At his stricken look, I said, “I’m kidding. Anything else you notice about her?”
“Well, not that jumped out, but she did cause a bit of a dust-up between Rachael and The Stone— Mr. Johnstone.” He colored at his near faux pas.
This time, when I fought with my smile, my smile won, surprising me—I thought it had gone on tour with Teddie. “Really? What about?”
“I don’t know.” The kid cast a furtive glance at Rachael. “I’m speaking out of turn here, but since it’s you.…Whatever it was, it was pretty serious. Mr. Johnstone was really angry. Rachael was crying when the silver dress lady left.”
“Did you notice the silver dress lady leave with anyone? Did anyone pay more attention to her than they should?”
“Half the room couldn’t keep their eyes off her. And she left while I was dealing with a break and a reset of the blinds at my table.”
“Anything else you notice?”
“The game broke up pretty soon after she left. The amateur cleaned everyone out. Nobody was too happy about it—excepting him, of course.” He paused, pursing his lips and narrowing his eyes in concentration. I let him think. Finally, he said, “There was one other thing. I don’t know if it’s important, but Mr. Johnstone left the Poker Room right after.”
“Left?” I crossed my arms and leveled a stern gaze on the young man. “Really? Managers don’t just abandon the room when high-stakes games are getting underway.”
“I thought it was weird, too.” The kid’s eyes widened, sincerity infused his features. “He wasn’t gone long. And when he came back, he ducked into the back for a minute. If you ask me, he looked sorta spook-eyed, like he’d seen a ghost or something.”
I struggled to keep my face a mask—news of Sylvie Dane’s fatal foot fetish was still under wraps. “Anything else leap out at you?”
The kid chewed on his lip, then shook his head slowly.
“So you didn’t happen to notice she was cheating?”
“Cheating?”
The young man’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he paled. “How?”
“What color were her eyes?”
Now, in addition to looking half sick, the steward looked confused…and a bit dreamy. “Blue. She wore sunglasses, but I’m sure they were blue,” he announced like a lovesick schoolboy.
God, responsibility was so wasted on the young.
“Yes,” I said, feeling ancient. “But not the same color of blue. One was light blue, the other a muddier blue.”
Still the light didn’t dawn.
“A red contact lens,” I said, dispensing with the clues.
“But that’s illegal in Nevada,” the young man said, a bit louder than I’d have liked. Heads turned in our direction. With a finger to my lips, I shushed him as I pulled him farther from the action.
“Cheating is certainly illegal. While fitting anyone with a red contact lens isn’t technically against the law, it’s certainly strongly frowned upon.” The thought made my blood simmer. A magical place, Vegas painted a pretty picture when folks colored between the lines. “She was marking cards. The red contact lens allowed her to see the mark. I know it may come as a shock, but people do nefarious things all the time here.”
He looked at me as if he didn’t know what
nefarious
meant. “But, if she was cheating, why did she lose?”
Before I could wrap my brain around that, my father’s voice sounded at my elbow and the young steward eased back toward his table. “Isn’t it a bit early for you to be causing your usual ruckus?”
A Las Vegas legend, Albert Rothstein, otherwise known as the Big Boss, had been in the casino business so long he could wax poetic about the days when the Strip was a two-lane road, the Rat Pack was the hottest ticket in town, and Sinatra used to hang out at the Garden Room at the Sands, chowing down on the ninety-nine cent special and abusing the staff. My father’s start in the business was a bit murky, adding to his mystique. But with a nose for money, an uncanny knack for managing his balance sheet, and an unerring ability to avoid even the hint of impropriety, he had risen to the top of the heap in a dog-eat-dog world. A glamorous position…if you didn’t mind mongrels nipping at your heels.
Of course, when he’d hired me as a cabana girl when I was fifteen and had lied about my age, I didn’t know he was my father. A little secret he and my mother had only recently let me in on. They’d had their reasons for keeping it to themselves and, while I sort of understood, I still hadn’t quite forgiven either one of them. But no one is guaranteed a perfect life and, all things considered, mine was darn close. Well, if you ignore my unerring penchant for picking the wrong guy. However I couldn’t blame anyone else for that—although I’d really like to.
A short man, as fit as a boxer in his prime, with a head of salt-and-pepper hair, my father exuded a quiet confidence and a steely resolve that endeared him to his employees and struck fear in the hearts of his competitors. Tonight he wore creased black slacks, Italian loafers, no socks, a starched white shirt, and a smile for me. How anyone could be uncrumpled at this ungodly hour was an enduring mystery. It wasn’t hereditary, that was for sure.
“If you’ve come down here about the girl in the Ferrari showroom…” I glanced around making sure no one was paying particular interest in our conversation, but everyone seemed to be focused on his or her own tasks.
He pursed his lips, then shook his head. “I figure you’ve got it under control. Turn it over to the police and then manage their interference. You’ve done it a thousand times.”
Well, not quite that many, thankfully, but I wasn’t going to argue. Through the years the Big Boss had seen stuff I didn’t even want to think about. “Death has become mundane, has it?” I said, trying to make light, but with my heavy heart I don’t think I pulled it off.
“As long as it’s not imminent,” my father shot back.
He had a point, I guess. Not one I could identify with, but I’d learned long ago the Big Boss was who he was. For a long time I’d wondered whether he knew where any bodies were buried. Vegas being what it is, he’d done business with the mob back in the day and the whispers still followed him. He’d never cultivated that reputation, but he didn’t work to dispel the rumors either. So, he remained surrounded by mystery—something I think he got a big bang out of. Personally, I couldn’t see my father throwing his lot in with Tony Spilotro, Lefty Rosenthal, and the boys, but, as recent history had proven once again, I was not the best judge of character—especially when it came to men. However, family was family—blood thicker than water and all that. I looped an arm around his shoulders, gave him a quick squeeze then stepped back. In heels, I had him by at least six inches—a fact that always surprised me. He just seemed…bigger.
“Poker, a game that totally eludes me.” He nodded toward the two pros now engrossed in the game the young Mr. Weston had just joined. “Give me some dice to throw and I’m all in.”
“Nothing like the rush of a pure, unadulterated gamble?”
He gave me a knowing look, the sort a father shares with a child. No words were necessary. For some reason, the exchange gave me a warm fuzzy. We’d had those moments before, when I hadn’t known of our blood relation, but somehow, the father-daughter thing changed things in a subtle, insidious, heartwarming way. Working my head from side to side in an attempt to move muscles that felt like tight steel bands, I rolled my eyes at myself. What was it with me lately?
Soft
and
mushy
were not adjectives anyone would use to describe me, of that I felt certain.
I must be hormonal. Meaningful sex would be a good cure for that. But, given my lack of a meaningful relationship, that was a pipe dream. However, even a dog with a bad nose eventually found a bone, right? Easily amused, I smiled at the puns.
“What?” my father asked.
“What?” My face fell into a mask of guilty innocence.
“What were you smiling at?”
Once again ignoring the impropriety of touching my boss—it sent all the wrong messages to those who cared enough to notice—I hooked my arm through my father’s. “That you will never know. There are simply some things a father should never know about his daughter.”
“Probably so, I shock easily,” he teased.
“So, how was the party?” I asked in a deft change of topic. Each year before the Smack Down begins the Big Boss hosted a party for all the big guns in the poker world. Most of them had been longtime friends so the party usually wound up late and involved a king’s ransom in single-malt and Habanos.
“Exhausting. Back in the day I could hold my own, but not anymore. Now they leave me in the dust—even the old farts. I can’t tell you how good that makes me feel.” He shot me a grin, which took the whine out of his statement.
“Was Frank DeLuca there?”
“Sure, but he left early.”
“How early?”
My father gave me a shrewd look. “A little before midnight, why?”
“You know why. We’ve got a dead girl in his dealership. Inquiring minds are going to want to know his whereabouts between two and two thirty this morning.”
“Frank’s been around.”
I didn’t know exactly what he meant by that. I wanted to pursue it, but there was a time and a place, and his clipped tone told me this was clearly neither. “Anyone else interesting there?”
“The usual suspects.” The knife-edge slid from my father’s voice. “Funny thing though. This year Shady Slim was a no-show.”
“That’s not like him.”
“No, it’s not. And he hasn’t checked in yet…I looked into it myself.” A shadow of worry passed across my father’s face. “His health hasn’t been good, but still, normally he would let me know if he couldn’t make it.”
“I’ll follow up tomorrow.” I gave his arm a squeeze just because I felt like it. “Tonight you may be feeling your years, but I bet you were the only expectant father in the room.”
Like a kid caught out after curfew, he blanched and shot me a worried look. “Shoot, I forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“Your mother,” he said, weariness creeping into his voice.
“How could anyone forget Mona? She’d never allow it.” Another thought wiped the grin off my face. “She’s okay, isn’t she?”
My mother, the former owner of Mona’s Place, the self-styled “Best Whorehouse in Nevada,” had recently had a life-changing experience. My parents, afraid of offending those holding the keys to the kingdom—marrying an underage hooker would have catapulted my father right off the fast track, and probably have landed him in jail—had carried a torch for each other for half a lifetime. After a recent health scare and with the realization that they no longer had anything to lose other than perhaps their last chance at happiness, my parents had married. And now, after years in the sex trade, Mona found herself inexplicably with child—at an age where normal mothers are looking forward to bouncing grandchildren on their knees. Of course,
normal
was never an adjective used to describe Mother.
Call me shallow, but I took a perverted delight in the cosmic justice, the laughable irony of it all.
Except when I had to deal with her.
A one-woman weapon of mass destruction, a pregnant Mona should come with a biohazard warning label.
I took a good hard look at my father. He seemed to be holding up well. Of course, he was made of sterner stuff than his daughter.
“How exactly would you define
okay
?” my father asked with a tired grin. “She’s alive and well, propped up in bed, miserable, unable to sleep—so that means neither of us gets any shut-eye. Now she wants ice cream and something covered with mustard. I’ve been wandering around for half an hour trying to figure out what that might be.”
Every Achilles has his heel and Mona was my father’s.
“Is it really going to matter? She won’t be hungry when you get back, so get her a bowl of raspberry gelato, her favorite, and a big Coney dog with mustard.” My stomach roiled at the thought. “And perhaps a double hit of single-malt for you.”
“You wouldn’t like to—” My father shot me his hangdog look. I fought the urge to cave and give him what he wanted. If only there was a vaccine against handsome men.
“Do I look suicidal?”
“Well, there’s a rumor floating around that you took down the mighty Stoneman, so I had high hopes that, fortified with the thrill of victory, you might be willing to wade back into the fray.”
“Please, Marvin is a piker compared to Mother. She would be less than pleased at the comparison. I’d love to walk with you, but I still have some tidying up to do.” I caught Rachael’s eye and motioned for her to come over. My father gave my hand a quick squeeze then left to continue his mission. I didn’t envy him—a thankless, dangerous job trying to mollify a pregnant woman. “Rachael,” I said, turning my attention to the young woman as she rushed to my side. “Do you remember a blonde in a silver dress playing in the thousand-dollar buy-in?”
“The one who was cheating?” Rachael said it so matter-of-factly I almost blew right by.
“You knew?”
“Of course. The game had been in progress an hour when my shift started. I was to take over from Mr. Johnstone.” The girl stared over my shoulder, her eyes unfocused as if she was reviewing an internal tape. “I wanted to remove her from the table. That’s standard procedure,” she said unnecessarily. “But I was overruled.”
“Is that what you and Mr. Johnstone argued about?”
“He wanted to fire me. He said I was being insubordinate.” Rachael’s eyes welled up. “Ms. O’Toole, I was just trying to do my job.”
“I know you were.” I gave her a pat.
“And now she’s turned up dead and all.” A tear leaked out despite her best efforts to fight it back. “I feel terrible.”
“Dead?” I asked, feigning innocence.
“That’s what I heard.”
“From whom?”
“Mr. Johnstone.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. The lady in the silver dress had just left and her game was winding up. It was after that that Mr. Johnstone asked for twenty minutes of personal time—I had to get the high-stakes games underway myself.”
“I see,” I said, which was a bald-faced lie. “Was it normal for Mr. Johnstone to leave like that?”
“No, but we all have emergencies.” Rachael wiped her hands down her pants as she regained her composure a bit. “We all cover for each other.”
“You’re sure Mr. Johnstone didn’t notice the lady…in question…was cheating?”
“Apparently not, and he refused to question the woman about it.” Rachael worried with the end of a strand of hair, twisting it around her finger. “I would’ve been fired if you hadn’t fired Mr. Johnstone first.”
Her weak smile torpedoed mine, and my mood sank with it. I had a real bad feeling about this. “Did you call Security?”
“Mr. Johnstone was livid, but yes, I called them.” Rachael nodded. “He was here in a jiffy.”
“He?” It had been my experience that security usually came in twos.
“Yeah, it was sorta weird, but since I’d seen the guy around, I didn’t think too much of it at the time.”
“Much of what?”
“Well,” the girl again tugged at a strand of blond hair. I resisted the urge to take her hand and make her stop. “Like I said, after I called, this guy shows up real fast.”
“Can you describe him?” If she couldn’t, I’d bet all my worldly possessions that I could.
“Yes, a tall, handsome man, green eyes, brown hair, jeans—the guy with the whole cowboy thing going on. Give me a minute, I’ll remember his name.” A slightly goofy, dreamy look flashed across her features. I’d seen that look on a woman’s face before. And I knew who put it there.
“Dane?” I offered, knowing the answer.
“That’s it! How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess.” Sometimes it sucked to be right. My voice took on a murderous tone. “You said all this was weird. What exactly did you mean?”
“I don’t need to tell you, Ms. O’Toole, that security usually comes in pairs, so it was odd he showed up alone. Then, when a security team showed up a bit later, I knew something wasn’t cricket.”