Smith's Monthly #7

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  I was hoping the woman with the big brown eyes would be behind the main desk, and I was in luck. She looked up at me, smiled fondly, and for an instant I was lost again.

  But the feeling only lasted an instant, since I wasn’t just Conway Moore checking in, I was Poker Boy, helping a woman and her dog. Superhero duties come first, even over lust.

  The woman with brown eyes looked over at the blind woman and frowned, a worried look crossing that beautiful face. “Mrs. MacDuff, have you found your husband yet?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Samantha said.

  Clearly this woman had been involved with the paging that Samantha had done earlier.

  “So what can I do to help?” the woman asked, glancing at me.

  I knew right then that this brown-eyed employee would be a valuable assistant. I’m not sure which of my powers told me that, but I was convinced.

  “I’m hoping we could get your help, or someone’s help in the back office,” I said, smiling at her and putting on my best Poker Boy charm. “We need to find out where a certain bank of slots are in the casino. Or if they are still here.”

  “And that would help Mrs. MacDuff find her husband?”

  “It might,” I said. “It’s the only bit of information we have to work with at the moment.

  I didn’t want to get into my theory that Ben might have been taken by ghost slots. Neither of these women, or Sue the dog for that matter, would believe me. At least not yet. And I didn’t want to make myself look like a fool without some proof to back up my theory.

  The woman with the brown eyes held my gaze for a long moment, as if she knew what I was thinking, then she nodded. “All right.”

  She glanced over at a man dressed in the same uniform she was. “Dan, I’m going to help these folks for a few minutes, then head for home.”

  Dan only nodded and kept typing something into a computer in front of him. Clearly this woman was about to get off for the night. Normally, if I wasn’t working on a case, that might have interested me. Now that part of my interest would have to wait for another time.

  The woman indicated that we should move to a heavy-looking wood door off one side of the main desk. She led us inside and down a hallway to a room with big desks. I could tell at a glance that this office had been in use for the same function for a lot of years, and had more than likely been missed in the big remodeling back in the eighties and nineties.

  In all my years before becoming a superhero, I hadn’t managed to get behind the scenes once in a hotel or casino. But since becoming Poker Boy, it seemed I did a lot of wandering around in offices and secure areas that most normal folk didn’t even know existed.

  The only man in the room stood immediately as we entered. “What’s going on, Patty?”

  Now I knew the brown-eyed desk clerk’s name. It fit her, actually.

  “This is Mrs. MacDuff,” Patty said, indicating Samantha. “And Mr. Moore. This is our Manager on Duty, Bob Silvers.”

  Bob’s stern look immediately melted when he heard Samantha’s name. “No luck finding your husband yet?”

  Samantha shook her head. “Mr. Moore is helping me. It’s still too early to get the police involved.”

  “So what can we do to help?” Bob asked, glancing at me, then back at Samantha.

  I took the lead, using my nicest, most convincing voice. “Two things, actually,” I said. “First off, would it be possible to look up where a bank of slot machines were in this casino?”

  Bob sort of jerked, clearly catching my use of past tense. He turned to stare at me. “You don’t think that—.”

  Clearly Bob had heard of ghost slots. It sometimes surprised me how many people in Vegas had. But I didn’t want him blurting that out just yet, so I interrupted him.

  “I don’t know what to think just yet,” I said. “But if we know where the slots that Ben MacDuff was seen playing are located, we might be able to find something on a surveillance camera that would tell us what happened.”

  He glanced at the frowning face of Samantha, and then at the worried face of Patty, and nodded. Without another word, he turned back to his desk and grabbed two badges that said “Guest” on them in big red letters.

  “Wear these,” Bob said. “Patty will help you look up the information you need. If you don’t mind staying a little after your shift, Patty?”

  “Not at all,” she said, smiling at me as she helped hook Samantha’s guest pass on her white blouse.

  And with that look, I knew that Poker Boy had found his sidekick. I had no doubt that Patty had her own share of superpowers to bring to the case of the missing MacDuff. With Patty, the fun part was going to be figuring out what those powers might be. I would bet that most of them were hooked into those big, brown eyes.

  And the ability to make a hotel uniform look sexy.

  Chapter Four

  ONE OFFICE, NO WINDOWS, NO ESCAPE

  PATTY LED ME, Samantha, and her dog, Sue, down a well-lit back hallway of the Horseshoe Hotel and Casino to a large file room.

  The place was windowless and had a few library-like tables in the center, with old file cabinets all around the outside of the room. A number of computers filled smaller work desks at different spots around the room, and each computer had a stack of files beside it. There was no one in the room when we got there, which actually relieved me.

  Working in a room like this was my worst nightmare. The place smelled of old paper and bad air-conditioning, and I had a hard time imagining working in such a room for eight hours a day.

  I had no doubt that if I tried to work regularly in there, even just a few hours a day, the plain painted walls and pictures of old Vegas taken back in the fifties would soon close in, smashing me like a fly between the pages of a book. I would be nothing more than a blood and guts splatter over the file cabinets, my very essence merging with the dull paint and old photos.

  Luckily, I had learned how to play poker for a living and became Poker Boy so I didn’t have to sit very often in such dull rooms.

  “We’re trying to get all of the most important old information entered into the computer system,” Patty said. “But it’s taking time, and with a casino this old it’s a difficult task at best. There’s a lot of information and people only work on it during slow times.”

  “And with the World Series of Poker starting up, this isn’t a slow time,” I said.

  “Far from it,” Patty said, laughing as she got Samantha seated at a table with Sue sitting at her feet. Then Patty sat down at one of the computers and keyed in the words “Saturn Slots” as I watched over her shoulder, trying to focus on her and what she was doing instead of the room around me.

  “Nothing,” she said, shaking her wonderful, soft-looking hair as the screen came up blank. “I was afraid of that. These computer records only go back ten years on slots.”

  “And no Saturn Slots during that time?” I asked. “Or anything with the name Saturn?”

  “Nothing,” Patty said.

  “So we have to go back farther by hand,” I said, “if there are records for that.”

  “There are,” Patty said.

  I was amazed. Hundreds of thousands of slot machines must have come through this casino over the years. Clearly the state gambling board, or the IRS, made them keep track of all of them. Sometimes all the stupid regulations of “Big Brother” came in handy.

  Behind us Samantha said, “But I don’t understand why we’re looking for slot machines that are that old. Ben just disappeared today.”

  “I know,” I said, “but you did say you overheard someone saying they thought they saw him playing the Saturn Slots. Right?”

  She nodded. “But if slots like that haven’t been in this casino for ten years, how could he have been playing them. I guess I just don’t—”

  Patty interrupted. “We’re just trying to eliminate some things. It won’t take too long, I promise.”

  Samantha said nothing more, but I could tell she was very confused.


  I certainly didn’t add in anything. The idea of there being such a thing as ghost slots was crazy, yet Patty and I, without actually saying anything to each other, were both worried that ghost slots had gotten Samantha’s husband. We just didn’t want to tell Samantha that theory without some proof.

  Hell, I didn’t even want to talk with Patty about it.

  Patty stood and moved across the room to a file cabinet. I followed like a puppy on a leash, enjoying my time close to her. I had picked up a couple of details about Patty since our hike into the back room depths of the Horseshoe Casino. First off, she smelled wonderful, like a raspberry bush in full bloom. Across the front desk I hadn’t had a chance to notice that.

  Second, she had a mole on her neck that flashed in and out of sight under her hair, sort of teasing me to come closer. I’m not saying I have a thing about moles. There was nothing sexual or kinky about a parasite growing on a human, but that said, I sure hoped me and that mole would get a lot closer over time.

  I made myself stop staring at her mole as she pulled open the second drawer of the old metal cabinet and thumbed quickly through some files.

  The moment I stopped staring at the mole, the room started to close in again, so I gladly went back to my focus on her neck while she worked.

  “Here it is,” she said as she pulled out a thin file. “Saturn Slots. There were four of them in one bank.” She turned and put the file on the top of the cabinet before opening it for both of us to see.

  A colorful ball in the image of Saturn, tipped slightly to one side, dominated the area above the slots. The planet’s rings extended even higher into the air and also down, seemingly through a couple of the slot machines. It was a fine piece of old slot craftsmanship.

  Most people don’t know that the graphics and design that goes into slot machines has become almost an art form over the years. Casinos and slot machine companies have spent millions trying to figure out what attracts a player to a certain slot machine. The design, the playability, the graphics, the colors, the shapes of the box, the payouts, all have to combine to form something that is not only fun, but is easy to play, yet challenging enough to hold interest.

  I know I considered slot design an art form, but I doubted we would be seeing slot machines in any art galleries anytime soon, which was a crime. Think about it. A gallery patron could enjoy the art show, and all that caché that went along with being an art snob, while at the same time playing a slot machine, with the art gallery taking a cut of the profits, of course.

  I stared at the picture. All four Saturn Slots were the old-fashioned pull handle type, and all four looked old, like they had had some use by the time they reached the Horseshoe. On top of that, they were nickel machines. You didn’t see many of those any more that weren’t electronic and allowed a person to play twenty nickels at a time.

  “Sixteen years,” Patty said. One of her beautiful fingers pointed at a date. “We took them out sixteen years ago, after five years of play.”

  “Who leased them?” I asked, “Or who were they sold to when you got rid of them?”

  In Vegas, and in many other places, some slot machines are owned and serviced by companies that are not affiliated with any one casino. Often, the machines are just leased to the casino. This is happening a lot with the new licensing of such media products as Monopoly Games, The Adams Family, and so on. I didn’t know if the Horseshoe leased or bought their own machines. My hunch was they did both.

  “Valley Slots,” Patty said, studying the paper in front of her. “We leased them.”

  “Damn,” I said. “Valley Slots has been out of business for a good ten years. I think Standard bought part of their assets.”

  Patty nodded. “I seem to remember something about that.”

  “Does it say where these slots were on the floor sixteen years ago?”

  “Not from the records,” Patty said. She pointed to the picture. “But from the looks of that, they were set up just outside the restaurant.”

  I looked closer. She was right. The distinctive wooden railing that led down into the basement restaurant was clearly visible to one side of the slots. Luckily, when they had done the remodeling of the casino and restaurants, they had decided to go back to how it had looked. Sometimes retrograde designs saved time and money, and in this case it helped us.

  “Well,” I said, turning to Samantha, “we found where the slots were.”

  “Sixteen years ago,” Samantha said, her disgust not well hidden in the tone of her voice.

  “Would you know exactly what time Ben left the restaurant?” Patty asked.

  “Just after one,” Samantha said. “We went down for lunch at noon, and they were a little slow. I remember checking my watch and it was one just a few minutes before he left.”

  Patty moved over to a phone sitting beside the door and dialed a five-digit number.

  I sat down beside Samantha at the table and patted her arm. Sue moved around under the edge of the table a little to nudge against my leg, clearly thanking me in dog language. Either that or she wanted to be petted. I knew better than to pet a dog trained for seeing-eye work, so I refrained.

  Around me, the room closed in even more. I was sweating and I wanted to take off my Poker Boy leather coat and special hat, but I knew better. We needed to do this research and get out of here before Poker Boy, superhero, lost it and went screaming down the hall.

  “Steward, this is Patty in the file room. I need you to pull up the security tape for the area outside the restaurant stairs. From one this afternoon to one-ten. Can you feed it to me in here?”

  She listened for a moment, then said, “Yeah, include the stairs. And set it to replay a few times would you? Thanks.” Then she hung up.

  “We’re going to know more in a minute,” she said.

  “Thank you both for all your help,” Samantha said.

  “Thank us after we find out what happened to Ben,” Patty said. She moved over to a security monitor sitting on the top of a file cabinet against one wall. She clicked it on to show a blank screen.

  I patted Samantha’s arm and stood to join Patty and her wonderful raspberry smell and attractive mole. The mole wasn’t visible at the moment, but the smell lured me closer like a flower’s nectar to a bee who couldn’t report back to the hive without filling a quota.

  “It’s going to take Steward a few seconds to get the tape up,” Patty said. “Luckily, we upgraded our entire security system this last winter. It’s now state of the art.”

  I could feel my stomach twisting. I had no idea if we were actually going to see, on tape, evidence of ghost slots taking a man. If so, we were going to be the only people to ever see this tape, of that much I was certain. It would be destroyed at once.

  There was no casino on the planet that wanted the press release about slot machines kidnapping customers. And besides, even with a tape, who would believe it. If what we thought had happened showed up on this tape, another tape, of say a quiet time ten minutes before, would replace it, all time-coded to look perfect, of course.

  And no one would dare say anything different.

  That was why the general public didn’t know about ghost slot machines, or a dozen other strange things that went on in Las Vegas. It just wasn’t good for business. But anyone who was in Vegas for any amount of time, working or playing like I did, heard about these things.

  Suddenly the screen flicked to life. It was the image of the stairs down into the restaurant, and the slots around the top of the stairs, all shown from a camera in the ceiling. A time code was running on the bottom.

  There was no sign of any Saturn Slots in their old location. The slots that occupied that spot now were newer Monopoly machines.

  An older couple came up the stairs, turning and heading for the door out into the heat. A moment later a man started up the stairs.

  “That’s him,” I said.

  “You see Ben?” Samantha asked.

  “He’s on the security tape,” I said. “Comi
ng out of the restaurant.”

  Patty pointed to the area where the Monopoly slots had been a moment before. Now the Saturn Slots sat there, the image of the ringed planet in full neon, the lights blinking.

  “Oh, shit,” I said softly.

  Ben reached the top of the stairs, turned and moved over in front of the bank of Saturn Slots, fishing in his pocket for change as he went. The old machines didn’t take bills, but he dug a role of nickels out of his pocket.

  Then he sat down into one of the chairs attached to the front of the Saturn Slots, dropped a coin into the slot, and reached for the handle.

  As he pulled it he seemed to freeze.

  The old wheels on the slots spun, but from the angle of the camera, I couldn’t see what they showed.

  Ben seemed to shake for a moment, his hand still holding the arm of the machine.

  A moment later the Saturn Slots faded away, taking Ben with them.

  I somehow managed to take a deep breath, staring at what were normal, modern slots where the Saturn Slots had been a moment before.

  “I never thought I’d ever see it happen,” Patty said, her voice hushed.

  “What?” Samantha demanded from where she sat at the table.

  A moment later the phone rang as the tape cut off, not repeating as Patty had asked.

  Patty picked up the phone and listened. Then she said, “I understand.”

  She hung the phone up slowly before turning off the monitor.

  “We never saw that?” I asked.

  “We never saw that,” she said.

  “Would one of you please tell me what just happened?” Samantha demanded. “Do you know where Ben is?”

  The silence in the room got so loud I thought the door might burst outward from the pressure.

  Patty and I just stood there, staring at the blind woman and her dog, Sue. How do you tell someone her husband was kidnapped by a gang of old nickel slot machines?

  How do you tell someone that one of the urban myths of Vegas was true, and had just been caught on film, which was being destroyed as we stood there letting the silence get louder and louder.