"Not according to Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms," Larkin said. "Or the State Board of Mines, in Harrisburg."
Washington shrugged.
"I don't even have any more wild hairs," he said.
"In that case, there is obviously only one thing to do," Larkin said, and waited until the others were all looking at him. "Consult with John Barleycorn. It would not be the first time in recorded history that a good idea was born in a saloon."
Supervisory Special Agent Toner, Wohl thought, looks shocked at the suggestion. But Larkin means that, and Christ, he may be right.
"I'll drink to that," Wohl said, and pushed himself up off the couch.
****
"We don't have any luggage," Matt said as he drove up the curving road to the Oaks and Pines Lodge Resort. "That's going to look funny."
"Yes, we do," Penny replied. "And neither the bellhop nor the desk clerk will suspect that there's nothing in there but my clothes, including, incidentally, a rather risque negligee."
Matt remembered Jensen saying he would put her bag in the car. He looked in the back seat. There was a fairly large suitcase, made out of what looked like a Persian rug.
"You really came prepared, didn't you?" he asked.
"Life is full of little surprises," Penny said. "What's wrong with being prepared?"
A bellman came out to the Mercedes in front of the lodge.
"Good evening, sir," he said. "Checking in?"
"Yes."
"I'll take the luggage, sir, and I'll take care of the car. If you'll just leave the keys?"
Penny took his arm as they walked across the lobby to the desk. " My name is Payne," Matt said to the man behind the desk. "I have a reservation."
"Yes, sir, I spoke to you on the phone."
Matt handed him his American Express card.
"I have to be in Philadelphia at eight," he said. "Which means Iwe-will have to leave here in the middle of the night. Is that going to pose any problems?"
"None at all, sir. Let me run your card through the machine. And then just leave, whenever you wish. We'll mail the bill to your home."
He pushed a registration card across the marble to him, and handed him a pen. At the very last moment, Matt remembered to write "M/M," for "Mr. amp; Mrs.," in front of his name.
"Thank you," the desk man said, and then raised his voice. "Take Mr. and Mrs. Payne to the Birch Suite, please."
They followed the bellman to the elevator, and then to a suite on the third floor. The Birch Suite consisted of a large, comfortably furnished sitting room, a bedroom with a large double bed, and a bath, with both a sunken bathtub and a separate tile shower.
Matt tipped the bellman and he left.
"The furniture's oak," Matt said. "They should call it 'the oak suite.'"
"Don't be critical," Penny called from the bedroom.
"I'm not being critical. It's very nice."
"The food's good too."
"How do you know that?"
"I've been here before, obviously."
With Tony the Zee? Is this where that Guinea gangster brought you? Why not? It's supposed to have a Mob connection.
"With my parents," Penny said. "Not what you were thinking."
"How do you know what I was thinking?"
"I usually know what you're thinking," Penny said. "Come look at this."
If you're referring to the double bed, I've seen it.
He walked to the bedroom door. Penny pointed at a bottle of champagne in a cooler, placed conveniently close to the bed.
"For what they're charging for this, a hundred and a half a night, they can afford to throw in a bottle of champagne," Matt said.
"How ever do you afford all this high living on a policeman's pay, Matthew?"
"Don't start being a bitch, Penny."
"Sorry," she said, sounding as if she meant it. "I'm curious. Have you got some kind of an expense account?"
"Not for this, no," Matt replied. "What were your parents doing here?"
"Daddy likes to gamble here."
Why does that surprise me? It shouldn't. He apparently is no stranger in Las Vegas. But why the hell is he gambling? With all his money, what's the point? He really can't care if he wins or loses.
"You didn't say anything, before, when I told you we were coming here."
"I didn't want to spoil your little surprise. You said we were coming here, you will recall, before you made it clear that whatever you had in mind, it was not rolling around between the sheets with me."
"I want to get a look inside the gambling place."
"That shouldn't be a problem."
"You still hungry?"
"Always," she said.
"Come on then, we'll go have a drink at the bar and then have dinner."
"And save that for later?" she asked, pointing at the champagne.
"We could have it now, if you would like."
"I'd really rather have a beer," she said. "If you romanced me like this more often, Matt, you'd learn that I'm really a cheap date."
"Economical," he responded without thinking, "not cheap."
"Why, thank you, Matthew."
She walked past him out of the bedroom and to the corridor door.
They sat at the bar where Penny drank two bottles of Heineken's beer, which for some reason surprised him, and he had two drinks of Scotch.
The entertainment was a pianist, a middle-aged woman trying to look younger, who wasn't half bad. Much better, he thought, than the trio who replaced her when they went to a table for dinner.
And Penny was right. The food was first class. Penny said she remembered the Chateaubriand for two was really good, and he indulged her, and it was much better than he expected it to be, a perfectly roasted filet, surrounded by what looked like one each of every known variety of vegetable. They had a bottle of California Cabernet Sauvignon with that, and somehow it was suddenly all gone.
"If you'd like, we could have another," Penny said as he mocked shaking the last couple of drops into his glass. "And have cheese afterward, and listen to the music. I don't think the gambling gets going until later."
The cheese was good, something the waiter recommended, something he'd never had before, sort of a combination of Camembert and Roquefort. They ate one serving, spreading it on crackers and then taking a swallow of the wine before chewing, and then had another.
Penny said she would like a liqueur to finish the meal, and he passed, saying he'd already had too much drink, and instead drank a cup of very black, very strong coffee.
When he'd finished that, Penny inclined her head toward the rear of the room.
"It's over there, if you want to give it a try," she said.
Matt looked and saw a closed double door, draped with red curtain and guarded by a large man in a dinner jacket.
As they walked to it, Penny leaned up and whispered in his ear: " You did remember to bring money?"
"Absolutely," he said, although he wasn't really sure.
The man in the dinner jacket blocked their way.
"May I help you?" he asked.
"We want to go in there," Penny said.
"That's a private party, I'm afraid, madam."
"Oh, come on. I've been in there before."
"Are you a club member?"
"I'm not, but if there's a club, my father probably is."
"And your name, madam?"
"My maiden name was Detweiler," Penny said.
That rang a bell, Matt thought, if widening eyes and raised eyebrows are any criteria.
"First name?"
"Richard. H. Richard."
"Just a moment, please, madam," the man in the dinner jacket said. He pulled open a cabinet door in the wall Matt hadn't noticed-it was covered with wallpaper-and spoke softly into a telephone. After a moment, he hung up and pushed the door closed.
"Sorry for the delay, Miss Detweiler," he said as he pulled the door open. "Good luck!"
"Mrs. Payne,"Penny corrected him, smiling
sweetly at Matt.
There were very few people in the room, although croupiers stood waiting for customers behind every table.
Do you call the guys who run the craps games and the blackjack " croupiers" too? Matt wondered. Or does that term apply only to roulette? If not, what do you call the guy who runs the craps table? The crapier?
"Roulette all right with you, Penny?"
"It's fine with me," she replied. "But I'm surprised, I thought you would be a craps shooter."
Matt took out his wallet. He had one hundred-dollar bill and four fifties and some smaller bills.
The hundred must be left over from the Flamingo in Las Vegas. I never take hundreds from the bank. You can never get anyone to change one.
He put the hundred-dollar bill on the green baize beside the roulette wheel.
"Nickels," he said.
The croupier slid a small stack of chips to him.
He placed two of them on the board, both on One to Twelve. The croupier spun the wheel, twenty-three came up, and he picked up Matt's chips.
Matt made the same bet again.
"There's a marvelous story," Penny said. "A fellow brought a girl here, or to a place like this, and gave her chips, and she said, 'I don't know what to bet,' so he said, 'Bet your age,' so she put fifty dollars on twenty-three. Twenty-nine came up. The girl said, 'Oh,shit!
"
The croupier laughed softly. Matt didn't understand. Penny saw this: "The moral of the story, Matthew darling, is 'Truth pays off.'"
He laughed.
Thirty-three came up, and the croupier picked up Matt's chips again.
"You're not too good at this, are you, darling?"
"Just getting warmed up," Matt said. He put five chips on 00.
Sixteen came up.
"Have you ever considered getting an honest job?" Penny asked.
Not only isn't this much fun, but I've seen about all of this place that there is to see. It's about as wicked as a bingo game in the basement of McFadden's parish church.
Hay-zus is off base on this one. There's nobody in this room who looks like a mobster; my fellow gamblers look like they all belong to the Kiwanis. And/or the Bible Study Group.
I will buy Penny a drink, and try to show her the wisdom of driving back to Philadelphia now, rather than in the morning. We can get back by one, maybe a little sooner.
When the croupier had removed his five chips from 00, Matt pushed what was left of his stack onto 00.
"I don't think this is my night," Matt said to the croupier.
"You never can tell," the croupier said.
00 came up.
"And we have a winner," the croupier said.
"There must be some sort of mistake," Penny said. "Clearly, God doesn't want him to win."
"God must have changed His mind," the croupier said. "Would you like some quarters, sir? That's going to be a lot of nickels."
"I think I'd rather cash out. I'm too shocked to play anymore."
A pit boss appeared, saw what happened, and nodded his approval. The croupier wrote something on a slip of paper, handed it to the pit boss, who signed it and handed it back. The croupier handed Matt the slip of paper. On it was written $2035.
"Thank you," Matt said. "Where's the cashier?"
The croupier inclined his head, and Matt followed his eyes and saw a barred window near the entrance door. At the last moment, he remembered that winning gentlemen gamblers tip the croupier. He took a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to the croupier.
"Is this what's known as quitting when you're ahead?" Penny asked.
"You got it."
He took the chit to the cashier, exchanged it for a nice thick wad of hundred-dollar bills, put them in his inside jacket pocket, and then led Penny out of the casino and toward the bar.
"Are we going to the bar?" Penny asked.
"I thought we'd have a drink to celebrate."
"We have a bottle of champagne in the room," Penny said.
We have to go to the room anyway to get her bag. And there will be no one in the room, as there would be at the bar, to eavesdrop on our conversation, and wonder why a healthy-appearing young man was trying to talk a good-looking healthy blonde out of spending the night in a hotel.
"I forgot," Matt said as he nudged her toward the elevator.
While they had been downstairs, the bed had been turned down.
There was a piece of chocolate precisely in the center of each of the pillows.
"Open the champagne," Penny said as she went into the bathroom. " See if it's still cold."
It was still cold. Whoever had turned down the bed had also refilled the cooler with ice. As he wrestled with the cork, he could hear the toilet flush and then water running.
The cork popped and he poured champagne into the glasses. He sipped his.
Nice.He looked at the label. California champagne, a brand he'd never heard of.
Methode Champagnois, whatever the hell that means. What did you expect, Moet et Chandon?
He heard, or at least sensed, the bathroom door opening, and turned with Penny's glass extended.
She had-Jesus, how did she do that so quickly?-taken off her clothes and changed into a negligee-or peignoir, whatever a pale blue, lacy, nearly transparent garment of seduction was called- and brushed her hair so that it hung straight down to her shoulders.
The light in the bathroom was still on, which served to illuminate the thin material of her negligee from the rear. She was, for all visual purposes, quite naked.
"Jesus, Penny!"
"I figured, what the hell? Matt knows all my secrets. What have I got to lose?"
She came into the bedroom, took the champagne glass from him, and walked to the draped window.
"I guess it didn't work, huh?" she said after a moment.
What the fuck am I supposed to do now?
I can't see through her nightgown anymore. Jesus, that made my heart jump!
He saw her raise and drain her champagne glass, and then she turned.
"Go and wait in the other room," she said, her voice flat and bitter. "I'll get dressed, and we can go."
She walked toward him.
"Go on, Matt. Get out of here."
Tears were running down her cheeks.
He put his hand to her face.
"Don't," she said. "Don't pity me, you sonofabitch!"
"It would be stupid, Penny."
"Lifeis stupid, you jackass. It's a bitch, and then you die."
He chuckled.
She raised her eyes to his.
And then her hand came up and touched his cheek.
****
"What are you thinking, Matt?"
"You don't want to know what I'm thinking."
I am thinking that I could cheerfully spend the rest of my life like this, with my arm around you, my fingers on your backbone, your face on my chest, your absolutely magnificent breasts pressing on me, the smell of your hair in my nostrils. Feeling the way I do. Jesus, what made it so good? The champagne?
"Yes, I do."
"Great set of boobs on this broad."
"Fuck you!"
"We've already done that."
"And no, comment about that? You usually have an opinion about everything."
Matt kissed the top of her head.
She raised her head.
"Is that in lieu of a comment?"
He kissed her. It was exquisitely tender. She shifted her body against his, so that her mouth was in his neck.
"The reason I'm curious," Penny said softly, carefully, "is because I really don't know what it's supposed to be like."
"I don't understand."
"There was Kellogg Winters," Penny said softly. "And then Anthony. And now you."
"Kellogg Winters? He's an ass."
Is she telling me I'm the third?
"Yes, he is. But I was seventeen, and I wanted to, so I let him. In the back seat of a car at Rose Tree Hunt Club. It was his birthday."
"And I thought, if this is what everybody's so excited about, that's really much ado about nothing."
Without thinking, horrified as he heard his own words, he asked, " And Tony the Zee? What was that like?"
He felt her body tense, and then relax.
"Different. Better."
"And Matthew Payne?"
"It was not like anything else. Is it always like that for you?"
Oh, shit!
Tell her the truth. If you make a four-star ass of yourself, so what?
"It has never been, before, like it was with you."
For a moment she didn't reply or move. Then she raised her head and looked down into his eyes.
"Really? God, please don't try to be charming, Matt!"
"I'm not being charming, I'm trying to figure it out."
She looked into his eyes for a long moment, and then lowered her head into his neck again.
"I'm going to take an enormous chance and believe you," she said. Her arm slowly tightened around him. He held her as tightly as he could.
A long moment later, Matt asked throatily, "How would you feel about seeing if we can do the same thing again?"
"Really?" She giggled in his ear. "Could you?" Her hand slid down over his chest and stomach. "Oh, how nice!"
She rolled over on her back, and pulled him onto her.
"Look in my eyes!" she ordered. He did. He felt her guiding him into her body.
"Oh, God, Matt!" she called softly.
NINETEEN
Penny started to go through the door of the Birch Suite into the corridor, but then stopped and looked around.
"If I had my druthers," she said, "we would just stay here for a while longer. Like forever."
"We've already had that discussion. What we're going to do is take one more look around Las Vegas East, and then we go back to Philadelphia."
"You still haven't told me what we're-whatyou're -looking for."
"I really don't know. I think this is a bum lead, but I want to be sure before I go back and say so."
"That doesn't make much sense," she said as she walked past him and out into the corridor.
****
Matt went to the desk, settled the bill, and then handed a bellman Penny's bag and five dollars and told him to bring the Mercedes to the door.
The Assassin boh-5 Page 31