Finally, Joe muttered to the floor, “He’s done this before—fallen out of an investigation like this.”
Joe wouldn’t meet my eyes. I bit my tongue and waited. Finally, he said, “Once before.”
“When?”
“When we went after Trucek.”
“You knew him then?”
“Frank and I have been friends since we were kids.”
Bingo. I knew it! A treasure chest of information about Frank Gilbert stood in the room with me. The problem would be opening it. I watched him pace the room. I might have to hypnotize Joe to get it but I’d vowed to find out every detail.
“He drinks, almost never now, but even before, he was careful never to compromise an investigation. He’s a real pro.”
“Except Trucek’s. And now this one. Why did this one become so personal, then?”
“Besides the fact that you’re in the middle of it?” Joe asked softly but very pointedly.
Guilt shot through me. “Besides that,” I answered, remembering a third time he’d gotten lost in the bottle since I’d known him—during our last deadly trip to Vegas. I guess Joe didn’t know about that one. I’d guess no one but I knew about that one.
“I guess it was Serrano.”
“But what does Serrano have to do with all this?” Frank was allergic to coincidence, so I assumed Joe was too.
“I haven’t got a clue, but it seems weird for him to just show up like this, at your table out of the thousands of others.”
“Does he know Serrano’s murder was on the news?”
Joe nodded. “I talked to him when he was on his way to the prison.”
I asked the hard question: “Does he know he’s a suspect?”
Joe’s head snapped up. “I didn’t know that.”
“Trankosky dropped a hint or two tonight. Joe, Frank didn’t come back until after dawn yesterday.”
“I know,” was all Joe had to say.
Was that “I know, he offed the dude” or “I know, because I know what kept him out all night” or “I know, he informed me about the fact and said no more”? I opened my palms up. Joe shook his head in refusal. Joe had saved my life a couple of times, so I felt like I couldn’t get too cranky with him right now. Maybe later.
“So if he doesn’t show up in the next couple of hours, where can we assume he is? Caught by the kidnappers?”
“No way. Frank would be dead before he’d ever let himself get captured.” He paused when he saw how his comment struck me. “Oh, sorry, Bee, I didn’t mean to upset you. It should make you feel better. In other words, odds are, he’s alive and free.”
“Okay, so if that’s the case, where do we look for him?”
“If he’s bad drunk, only one person will know.”
I saw the answer in his face.
“Monica,” I whispered to myself.
Frank either went underground to avoid the cops or was curled up with a bottle of V.O. Wow. What a pair of options. Of course I wasn’t as convinced as Joe was that Frank was immune to capture, so in my mind Frank could be three places, none of them where I needed him to be.
Seventeen
I got ready for the day as Joe went off in search of information about Serrano. I’d decided that it might not have been a coincidence that he ended up at my table at the WSOP, and if it wasn’t a coincidence, what had been his purpose? Maybe it had been simply a vendetta against Frank. If so, he had terrible timing.
And he’d paid for it. But who’d made him pay—and why? In my heart I knew it couldn’t be Frank.
But my heart also would’ve argued Frank wouldn’t’ve tortured three men.
The bloody puzzle around me was becoming disconcerting. If I could see how I was tied to the events, it might not be acceptable but it would be at least logical—as our last disaster in Vegas had. I’d heard a death threat, my brother had been snatched up because of what he knew. We were obvious targets. I still didn’t know what I was the target of here—besides Reverend Phineas Paul’s moral judgment and bad karma.
Speaking of Paul, I hadn’t decided what to do with Thelma’s revelation. Maybe nothing. It depended on how seriously he pissed me off. Under normal circumstances I would’ve enjoyed challenging him to a real debate but I was distracted by more important things like kidnappings and murders.
Someone (read: tall, blonde Amazonian goddess) had invaded the bedroom while I showered and laid out my day-off outfit—a grass green and eggplant, diagonal-striped body-hugging wraparound raison minidress with some coordinated acrylic clunky jewelry. Every unintentional bulge on my body was going to be magnified by the clingy, striped fabric. Shaking my head, I went to the closet to see it completely emptied out save my shoe collection (there was a God!). My Burberry was gone.
Flinging open the door, I hollered: “Ingrid! Bring back my suitcase! Now!”
Shana, on the couch, going through more personal knickknacks to take to Moon for her psychometry, blinked at me innocently. Ben spoke into his cell phone, “I know. I’ll tell her.” He covered the phone with his hand. “Ma says if you were nicer to your friends, you’d have more of them.” He looked down at Shana. “She says you’re a saint for putting up with such a prima donna.”
“Now Ma’s talking about you,” I shot back.
“I don’t think so,” he sang, going back to his conversation.
I slammed the door and looked at the outfit again. Ugh. Why me? This would be one I wouldn’t mind going straight to eBay. At least I wouldn’t be facing any TV reporters today. I couldn’t bear to see the camera add ten pounds to me in this atrocity.
I tied myself into it and mulled over which shoes would minimize the damage. I chose the gold, pointy-toed ballerina flats, sucked in a breath, threw open the door, and Jack fell into the bedroom.
“Jack!” I watched him flail on the floor, then scramble to his oversize feet. “What were you doing there?”
Hyperventilating, he stuttered for a few moments incoherently, blushing madly, sweating profusely. Mostly his social anxiety disorder stayed in remission when he was around me, but every now and then I was reminded of what Jack was like when I first met him—under a table, hiding from the world. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Take a deep breath. Another. Another.”
Finally, Jack hung his head and mumbled, “I-Ingrid w-wanted me to be sure you wore what you were s-s-supposed to.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I see. You’re the one doing her dirty work.”
“Bee! She asked m-me.”
Shaking my head, I immediately forgave him. Ingrid’d better stay true to him or she’d have me to contend with. Over time I’d come to like her and even trust her but she remained an enigma. “I won’t ask how hearing me dress was going to help you keep me on the straight and narrow.”
After I’d gotten over my mad, we decided to lunch at The Refuge—a quiet restaurant a block off The Strip where we could compare notes.
Jack spoke first: “At first I thought I was getting somewhere with the talk of collusion but that was pretty much a dead end. Every time I turned a corner I got shut down. But, by accident, I started finding out about this Paul character, like where his church is based, what version of Christianity he preaches.”
My gosh, he had the Thelma disease. I shook my head. “Jack, I think you might just be wasting your time.”
“Nah, Bee, don’t worry about it. I already got the go-ahead from my editor to work on a piece about the protest for the next issue, and Diane called.”
“Whoo-hoo,” I whistled as I high-fived him. Jack blushed again. Ingrid kissed him on the cheek.
“Anyhow, they want a spot on GMA to run in conjunction with the last day of the WSOP. They are planning a live broadcast from The Strip that day.”
“Really? Poker’s going major network. Huh. That will make Paul’s week,” I muttered, glad for my friend but hating that the creepy preacher was getting any attention to justify his cause. I blew out a breath. “Go for it, then, Jack. Dig up the dirt. You might become Diane�
�s right-hand man. Watch out, Chris Cuomo.”
Ingrid arched an eyebrow, looking like she might have an issue with that.
The poker room at the Mellagio is usually a full house—the managers do a good job of keeping things moving. Personally, I like the atmosphere, businesslike—productive, quiet and generally respectful. Most who sit down there want a solid game. For that reason, sometimes it is hard to win there if you aren’t getting cards, because there aren’t usually a lot of jackals. Even the fish tend to bail if they aren’t drawing well. Each poker room on The Strip has its own unique character, drawing its own unique type of clientele. It’s a chicken and the egg deal—I don’t know if that is the type of client the casino seeks or whether that is the kind that has gravitated to the room and therefore the atmosphere follows. There are some poker rooms I won’t play unless I’m trying to make a point, because they disrespect women. There are some poker rooms I won’t play because it’s a bunch of pro hard timers who live next to Moon and are out to make the rent by the end of the business day. There are some I won’t play because they are full of young guns, there on Daddy’s dime, dripping money. They want to win wild and big and loud and lose the same way. Some capable poker players like that kind of room, because it’s an easy win for a patient Rock who likes to squish a table of cocky fish. I play poker—usually—for fun and that isn’t part of the fun for me, so I avoid those situations.
Having said that, I’d never played in the high-stakes room at the Mellagio. The general poker room was set up in the corner of the casino, along an open hallway. Unlike many casino poker rooms, which were sequestered by solid or glass walls, this one had no solid barriers, so passersby could watch and hear as they walked by. It was probably a good way to draw in the crowd as well as keep players on their best behavior. I’m sure it was an intentional psychological effect that the high-stakes room was placed just off center within the main room, the floor raised five feet higher and cordoned off by half walls of frosted glass. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this at all.
I knew I had to prove my ability to play with the big boys. I’d withdrawn fifty thousand dollars from my savings account on the way. I’d almost thrown up my swordfish dinner.
“Welcome to our high-stakes room, Bee Cool.” The poker room manager came by as I checked in at the desk and shook my hand. “I wondered how long it would take you to get here.”
Forever would have been the answer if it weren’t for gangs and kidnappers and missing goddaughters. I was a natural chicken when it came to big cash games. I’d much rather invest small and win big in a tournament than the opposite, which is how I interpreted most ring games. I told him I wanted to wait for the far corner table. Rabbit’s foot and all that. He nodded, apparently used to this kind of request. “It might be a few minutes. We have a Saudi Arabian prince who’s about blown his wad.”
“What would be the size of a prince’s wad?” I whispered to Shana. Her awesome eyebrow wiggle told me she might try to find out. I was glad to see my friend showing glimmers of her hedonistic self. Because, while I might want to remake her the way I thought she should be, I still loved her for who she was.
We ambled up the far ramp and peeked behind the frosted glass at the handful of tables in the high-stakes room. There was a rail here, making us true railbirds until one of us played. I wished it would be Shana instead of me.
After watching the only table that the logistics allowed us to see for thirty minutes, I was called to play. We’d seen some big names—mostly the young geniuses who wore athletic shoes with no socks and sports jerseys, and ate their meals out of boxes at the table so as to not miss a hand—make some money. In one hand, twenty-two-year-old Jerrod Nealy had shoved in all his chips and had to grapple for forty thousand dollars in bills in the pocket of his Suns shorts to go all in. Ack. I didn’t know if I could hang with these guys. That was some people’s entire net worth. I think the other guy ended up winning 150 thousand dollars but I couldn’t count that fast.
It was heady if you were watching. Scary if you had to play.
“Good thing you have the thirty thousand Ben passed you,” Shana commented in my ear at the time.
I hadn’t wanted to take the cash Ben gave me on my way to purgatory. But I had taken it. For Affie.
Now, signaled by the room manager, I sidled over to the far table. Everybody stared at the striped atrocity I had on and the lumps under it, no doubt. I had noticed the player in the Redskins jersey first, when we’d come to the rail. If he hadn’t been there, trust me, I would have bailed. I sat down in the open seat across from him. The rest of the table (aside from Redskin) was—from what I could gather—a collection of middle-aged, extremely well-heeled American amateurs, a millionaire from Hong Kong, a South African diamond heir who passed me his card with his room number and another hard-nosed pro out of Rincon. There were only two women in the entire room. One of them was me. The other was Cyndy Violette. I was grateful she wasn’t at my table.
The sound of the chips clinking seemed magnified here, where talk was limited to a few exchanged words spaced between long silences. A sheen of sweat filmed Redskin’s face. He didn’t look too mentally stable. That probably would be bad if I’d planned to collude, but since I’d decided I was going to blow him off, it meant I could psyche him out. I hoped so anyway. I was the big blind, which wasn’t as terrible as it might have seemed. I might lose this thousand but I would get the next seven hands to read the table. The dealer finished the shuffle and dished out the hole cards. An unsuited Queen/8 was a perfect fold but I rode out my big blind through the calls of the first round. Redskin was tapping on his cards. He wore an MP3 player so I assumed in the back of my mind that he was jamming to his tunes. The Flop came an 8 of diamonds and blanks—an Ace and 3 of spades. Then I did fold—too cheap and unsure to go in for Hong Kong’s ten-thousand raise. Hong Kong had two pair, Redskin had pocket rockets.
The next three hands I folded straight away. Redskin was still tapping. Somehow that tapping looked familiar. After a royal flush draw Flop and King on The Turn, he folded too, but accidentally flipped over his cards at the end of the hand—once more, he had a pair. Hmm. He accidentally fumbled over his cards again on hands six and nine—one a flush draw and another a straight draw. He was chastised by the dealer and made an excuse about having some sort of neurological condition that made his hands go numb.
Sure.
It had taken ten hands for me to figure out that Redskin was actually tapping out a morse code of his cards—the way we were supposed to collude.
Two hours later, I was finding it difficult to ignore his tapping, so I struck up a conversation with the South African who had the hots for me. It was going to be difficult to extricate myself from some extracurricular plans he’d have for later tonight, ones he kept alluding to, but I had to worry about one pain in the ass at a time. Right now, I just had to win a bucket full of money. This was a tough table in one sense while being an unusually cool one in another sense, because the only one at it who saw me as a woman (and therefore handicapped) was South Africa. The rest just took me as a player. I wasn’t used to that.
It made playing a bit more straightforward even though I got less gimme opportunities from being underestimated. The pots made me extremely nervous, though. I’d held my own, even was ahead a bit, but only by betting when I had the nuts. I had yet to take a single chance.
“I never pegged you for a Mouse, Bee Cool,” the Chicago hotelier commented. “I always marveled in the Big Kahuna, then when they broadcast the Gambler tournament, how predictably unpredictable you play and still consistently win.”
I smiled. “Maybe this room intimidates me. And the stakes. Tournaments seem so much safer—just lose chips and your entry fee, not real greenbacks.”
They did play with real cash, if the chips ran out during a hand. In one I thankfully had folded, Hong Kong and the California investor went heads-up on a royal straight flush draw. Hong Kong dug in his pocket for forty thousand-do
llar bills. Ack.
“It’s all in the mindset. You just have to imagine this is your local brick-and-mortar with dollar bills, or your twenty buck sit and go. Then, you can judge the cards fairly, read everyone’s tells with the proper perspective.”
Nodding, I thanked him. It was excellent advice. I laid a bad beat, winning forty-three thousand dollars on the next hand with four of a kind—fives—I wouldn’t have stayed around to play an hour before.
“Hey, what kind of secret did you tell her?” Hong Kong argued.
The hotelier smiled, despite losing a fifer to me. South Africa sulked, since twenty-five thousand of that had been his. I guess we weren’t going to as nice a place for the dinner he had already invited me to.
Redskin was seriously sweating now. I wasn’t responding to his signals, and it was making him crazy. If I could figure out his motivation, I might get a lead on Affie. Probably midtwenties, he was white as they come—blond, blue eyed and corn raised. He didn’t talk much, but I could’ve sworn I heard a Midwest accent. No visible tattoos, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have one. I just didn’t see him hanging with Dragsnashark; he looked more like a skinhead candidate, but of course so had Happy Ending. I was developing an alarming headache. I excused myself to go to the restroom and stopped to talk to Shana. “Where’s Ben?”
“The tattoo creep came around, and he followed him.”
My heart seized. “What? How did he know it was him?”
“That snake/dragon/shark thing on his neck is hard to miss.”
“Why didn’t he call Joe and have him do it?”
“He said Joe needs to be here for you.”
I looked around nervously, noticing a couple of others brave enough to skinny along the narrow ramp and belly up to the high-stakes rail. The casino didn’t make it inviting, so you either had to know someone playing or have balls enough to try to look over a million-dollar player’s shoulder, waiting for a pit boss to breathe down your neck. Neither railbird revealed the telltale tattoo. “Look, Shan, I’d feel better if you played a little at a table down in the poker room. At least you’d be in the middle of things and not easy to snatch up if someone wanted to.”
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