Devil's Arcade

by Robert Bucchianeri

I thought about Paxton, the pit boss, and realized I didn’t bear him ill will at all. It was nice that Alexandra had kissed him on the cheek. That was a pleasant feeling, and I was happy that he’d had the chance to experience it.

  Around about then, I noticed the hot tub. I hadn’t been in a hot tub since a little trip to Big Sur back a decade or so ago with a woman named Jennifer, who was nice enough to wash all my dirty places with a loofah sponge while we soaked.

  A hot tub suddenly felt more than just a little appealing.

  I stripped naked, pushed a few buttons resulting in a gurgling, bubbling froth overtaking the surface of the tub, and slipped my body into the warm water.

  It felt marvelous.

  I settled back with my bare ass sliding along the slippery bench seat and let my head loll back across the top of the tub. I closed my eyes, and every muscle in my body seemed to release itself from the clutches of stress and worry. I sighed as warm beads of perspiration broke out on my forehead.

  Troubling thoughts strived to break through to the surface of my consciousness, but I didn’t let them bother me.

  The door to the hotel room opened.

  “Uh-oh,” I mumbled, a sudden realization that I was acting like a naughty boy.

  A drunken fool. A high-as-a-kite trickster.

  “Max!” Alexandra cried, when she spotted me all naked in the hot tub.

  “Hi, babe,” I said.

  “Is this your boy—” a voice behind her said, stepping forward, her eyes doing a double take as they roamed over me.

  “What the hell—” she cried, once she registered my identity. The hair and mustache hadn’t fooled her for more than a moment.

  She looked at Alexandra, who had her mouth open in shock, and then back at me. “What’s going on…?” Jewel started backpedaling, and I started to realize what was really going on. I scrambled to get out of the tub.

  Alexandra scampered back to the room door, a step before Jewel, and placed her body back against it.

  “Out of my way, bitch,” Jewel hissed, dropping her handbag on the floor at her feet, plunging her hand inside to remove a small snub-nosed revolver.

  I was out of the tub, standing naked, watching, trying to yank my mind out of its own personal summer of love.

  As Jewel made to lift the gun, the toe of Alexandra’s stiletto shoe kicked it right out of her hand. It skittered across the floor toward me and plopped into the hot tub where it sunk beneath the bubbling water.

  I was overwhelmed. I yelled, “I love you, Alexandra!” and rushed to wrap my arms around Jewel, wrestling her to the ground. She screamed. I clamped my hand over her mouth, rolling on top of her.

  There was no doubt that this move might be considered more than a little abusive—a wet, naked man holding down a woman against her will.

  “Max,” Alexandra said. “You don’t have any clothes on.”

  She was right. As always. I was a jerk. But I stayed all naked all over Jewel feeling guilty for lots of reasons.

  Jewel was mumbling obscenities into the palm of my hand, trying to wriggle away. She suddenly bit down hard, catching the edge of my right finger, clenching, twisting her head back and forth like a tiger with a fawn’s neck in its jaw.

  I muffled my own scream and twisted away, wrenching my hand out of Jewel’s mouth, blood streaming from the wound.

  A moment later, Alexandra dropped onto Jewel’s chest, holding Jewel’s shoulders down with her thighs.

  Jewel struggled but couldn’t escape, beating Alex’s legs with impotent fists.

  “Max,” Alexandra cried, “do something. And put on some clothes.”

  The woman was a marvel.

  A little while later, we were all fully clothed, which I could tell was a welcome relief to the women, sitting not-so-politely in the well-appointed living room.

  I’d tied Jewel’s hands together in front of her, using a torn of piece of the high-thread-count sheets I’d ripped off one of the beds. I’d settled her into a high-backed dining room chair that I’d also tied her ankles to.

  Alexandra and I were seated in matching leather seats right in front of her. I was drinking copious amounts of coffee, trying to clear my head. I told Alexandra about the pain pills that Marsh had given me. She cursed me and him, but when I told her about the pain that I’d been desperate to relieve, I thought I detected a tiny dollop of sympathy flash across her face before she wiped it away.

  “Jewel,” I said, after downing another big dose of caffeine. I was still feeling the effects of the drug, stronger this time than when I’d taken it earlier in the day. At least I didn’t feel quite like bursting into uproarious laughter as I had when I was languishing in the hot tub.

  I felt cross with Jewel, tamping down the overall sense of love for all humanity that seemed to course through my veins.

  She’d tried to pull a gun on the love of my life. I couldn’t stand for that.

  “Look at me, Jewel.” Her eyes were everywhere but.

  “You remember me, don’t you?” She did look different than when she’d come to my boat pretending to be Bobby’s daughter. Her hair was a darker color, and she had a harsher edge to her, but that could have been the circumstances bringing out the worst in her.

  And by now, I was sure, the worst in her was pretty damn bad.

  She looked at Alexandra. “You set me up, bitch.”

  Alex looked away.

  “Look at me,” I repeated.

  She did, with venom in her eyes.

  “Were you with Carlos this morning at his house when I dropped by? Did you hit me on the head?”

  “Do you know where you are?” she said, lifting her bound hands up, waving them around as best she could.

  She was confusing me. I studied her. She studied back, a smirk on her face, one that carried equal notes of contempt and irritation.

  “What are you saying?” Alexandra asked, perhaps getting impatient with my sluggish interrogation.

  I was swimming through a toxic sludge of good feeling still, but felt I was making progress.

  “Guess,” Jewel said, with a bitter turn of her lip.

  “How are you involved with Poe?” I said.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she answered, smiling, setting her hands down on her lap, looking self-satisfied.

  She was pissing me off, messing with my Feng Shui.

  “You’re in trouble, Jewel. All your friends, your accomplices, have turned against you. Leslie and Earl and the others. They’ve told us all about the scams here. You’re going to jail. Maybe if you cooperate with us now, we can help you a little, otherwise—”

  “Bullshit. I’m not going to jail. I didn’t steal a thing. The casino’s not going to press charges against me. That’s for damn sure.”

  I didn’t like her tone of voice, but I felt a little bothersome tingle inside, afraid that her words might carry more than a modicum of truth.

  Had the biggest scam been committed against Bobby and Paula? Against me? Had I wasted not only my own time, but Marsh and Alexandra’s?

  “Even if there’s not enough evidence to get you for the casino cheats, you’re on the line for the murder of Bobby and his daughter. Leslie and Earl, and even Carlos, all but told me that you pulled the trigger.”

  I was telling tall tales out of school but hoped she didn’t know it.

  “Carlos didn’t tell you anything. He never would. He’s crazy in love with me, just like Bobby. And Earl and Leslie, if they said anything, know nothing and can prove less.” She looked down at her bound hands, shook her head, and smiled ruefully. “You’re clueless, aren’t you?”

  That’s about the worst thing you can say to a private investigator, and though I never claim to be a member in good standing in that august community, right then and there, I had the sinking feeling that she might be right.

  “Only thing I don’t get is the newspaper reporting that your body was found in that motel room along with Bobby and Paula. You don’t look dead to me.”

>   At least I had one up on her, one thing she couldn’t figure out. It seemed like that was about all I had. It was obvious that the bother of having me declared temporarily dead had not worked at all. At least not on who we thought were the likely killers.

  I struggled to determine what tack to take to get her to tell me what she knew.

  “Jewel, you’re going to have to—”

  “No. I’m not. You’ve got nothing. I’m not going to say another word to you. Just wait. Do you think you can hide out here without Poe knowing it? I’d hate to be you when he finds out what you’re doing.”

  “Tell me about Poe. Did he plan all this with you? Don’t you know you can’t trust him? You’re the one that is—”

  “Not another word,” she said and pressed her lips together forcefully, signaling that she meant it.

  I asked several more questions. Jewel didn’t answer and didn’t even look at me. We sat there in silence for an interminable length of time that probably was only a minute or two.

  “Max,” Alexandra said, softly. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  She was standing just behind me, and I turned around to find her inspecting me with a concerned expression. I rose and we walked to a corner of the room, behind the now silenced hot tub, but where we could still keep our eyes on Jewel.

  She leaned in close and whispered, “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  That made two of us.

  “Are you okay?” she said, searching my eyes.

  “Sure,” I said, feeling chastened under her probing. The drug was still playing games with my thoughts and mood, but I felt I had enough control to be aware of it.

  “We’re not getting anywhere,” she said. “Do you think she’s working for Poe? Has she been all along?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt like I was back at the beginning, in Poe’s office when he first asked me to find his brother for him. Even with all the information we’d uncovered, and the players now revealed, I felt I knew as little about what had really gone down as I did back then, at least in terms of who did what to whom and why. Of course, that had been less than forty-eight hours ago, although it seemed like half a lifetime.

  Because of the drug, this didn’t impact me as much as it normally would have, but I felt it and knew the trouble we were in.

  I turned and looked at Jewel, who was scanning the room with mal-intent in her eyes. I followed her gaze for a moment, but couldn’t see anything that might help her in any way.

  “What do we do now?” She glanced up at a big clock made of glass: 8:45 p.m. “I’m supposed to meet with Paxton a little later. Do you think I should go?”

  I thought about it. I doubted he could help us at all. If he was just your standard pit boss, he probably wasn’t close with Poe and didn’t really know what had happened.

  It would be a waste of time, just like what was happening right now between me and Jewel.

  While Alex and I exchanged a troubled look, Jewel broke her vow of silence, and called out, “I’ve got an appointment in ten minutes. If I don’t show up for it, they’re going to start looking for me. It won’t take them long to find me. Not with all the security cameras around here. I sure wouldn’t want to be either of you when they do.”

  I turned to her while a needling thought tried to break through a corner of my addled mind. And when it did, when the notion flashed bright and beckoning, I didn’t know whether it was the drug or true enlightenment.

  Either way, I figured, we were in a casino, a gambling den.

  Why not roll the dice?

  Thirty-Five

  I sat back down in front of Jewel. She cracked a smile and a triumphant flash of eye.

  “Who are you meeting with?”

  She smirked.

  “If you tell me who and where, I’ll let you go.”

  “No. Why should I? I told you, if I don’t show up, it won’t take them long to find me…or you.”

  “You mean Poe.”

  She shook her head dismissively.

  “I won’t follow you. I want you to tell them that I’m here. That we’ll be waiting for them right here in this room.”

  That did the trick. “What do you mean?”

  “I want Poe to know that we’re here. I want to meet with him. If you agree to get the message to him and set up the meeting, I’ll let you go. No strings attached.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Who and where. Tell me those two things and you’re free.”

  She looked down at her hands and wriggled her fingers. I imagined they were getting a little numb. I’d tied the knot tight. “Angelique,” she said.

  I waited.

  “Same place as where your girlfriend, or whatever she is, had breakfast with me. They keep a close watch on me. We have an arrangement. Once this is all over, they’re going to let me go and give me some money to start over again someplace else. Far away,” she murmured, and her face changed. A gleam of innocence and hope, a girlish expression for just a moment.

  Now that we had an agreement, she was a font of information.

  “And you believe him?” I said, assuming that all this hopeful future was a deal with Poe.

  “Why shouldn’t I? He’s been straight with me so far. He could have really given me the business after…” Her voice trailed off. “Damn it,” she muttered.

  “After what?” I asked.

  “That’s all. I’m not going to tell you anything else. Talk to Poe. We have a deal, right?”

  I nodded. “Just one thing. Call Angelique and tell her you’re going to be a half-hour late.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “She’ll wonder why. I’m supposed to be at the casino all night.”

  “Tell her you got a little sick. You’re in the ladies’ room recovering. That you’ll be okay, you just need a little more time.”

  Jewel frowned and said, “That’s crazy. But okay.”

  “Tell her and Poe that we’re going to be right here waiting for them until 10 p.m. Tell them that after that, all bets are off. Tell them we’re going to the police with everything we have.”

  Jewel and Angelique would be meeting at 9:30 p.m., so that wouldn’t give Poe much time to think or to get here. Which I hoped would give us a teensy advantage. It also presented a problem for the good guys. I didn’t know if Portia could do the thing she does so well in that narrow window of time. I was counting on the fact that she would be available at this time of night. She was obsessive about her work and, as far as I could tell, had no life outside it.

  I turned to Alexandra and said, “Give her your phone and make sure she says exactly what I just told her to say and nothing more.”

  “Got it?” I said, giving her the sternest eye I could manage.

  “Yeah,” Jewel said, “I got it.”

  Then I went into the bedroom and made a call to Marsh.

  Thirty-Six

  After Jewel bid us adieu, Alex turned to me and repeated, “Max, are you out of your mind? That drug has made you even crazier than you already are.”

  That was one possibility.

  Jewel had left the room, still pissed off, but with a gleam in her eye, as if she’d pulled off a coup.

  Maybe she had.

  As I said, we were in a gambling den, and I’d taken a risk.

  And we didn’t have a whole heck of a lot of time to prepare. By delaying Jewel’s meeting by thirty minutes, the most I felt I could ask for, I’d improved our odds from zero to dismal.

  “I need you to go, Alex,” I said.

  “I’m not going anywhere. Tell me the plan. Tell me you have one.”

  “It’s going to get hairy. You have to go.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone here to face those people.”

  “I won’t be alone. There isn’t anything you can do to help us.”

  “I think I helped you with Jewel,” she said and mimicked kicking Jewel’s gun again.

  “You were mag
nificent. But this is different. If all goes well, it’ll just be an intense talk. That’s what I expect. But don’t worry, either way, I’ll have Marsh covering my back.”

  “Still,” she said.

  “Go home and see Frankie. She needs you. I’ll call you as soon as it’s over.”

  With that, she stepped close to me, looked up into my eyes, and said, “Okay. But if anything happens to you, I’ll never forgive you.”

  She touched my hand, kissed my lips, and left me alone.

  It was 9:32 p.m.

  There was nothing else I could do until closer to 10 p.m.

  But in those final few minutes before the scheduled meeting, I’d be packing in a load of chills and thrills.

  I readied myself, as I often do, by sitting on the floor in a lotus position, quieting my rioting mind.

  Thirty-Seven

  At precisely 9:54 p.m., I opened the door of Room 1001 on the tenth floor of the Wayward Tower, the one and only high rise at the Pirate’s Cove Resort Casino Complex.

  I stepped out onto the lucky jackpot rug floor, and into the atrium with the elevators and stairwell, where I found the fire alarm. I flipped open the plastic cover over the red metal alarm, ignored the instructions that said, In Case of Fire, and pulled where it said, PULL.

  The screaming alarm and flashing lights that followed were certainly attention getting.

  I raced all the way down the ten flights of stairs to the hotel lobby with the alarm ringing in my ears threatening to kick up my headache again, but I was too amped up on adrenaline to worry.

  I slowed down as soon as I hit the traffic jam around the elevators, people milling about wondering what to do in light of the possible fire.

  I knew it wouldn’t take the powers that be long to rule out a real fire. I assumed the fire department would show up and check things out and hoped that it would tie up Poe for a little while.

  I crossed through the lobby and casino floor and exited out the wall of revolving glass to the porte cochere fronting the entrance. I walked around it and down a concrete path and then cut over a skirt of grass and entered the five-story underground garage. Across from me were several automated exit doors and a small glassed-in office that was empty.