Death On the Flop

by Jackie Chance

  Spring played like the antifish I was supposed to emulate. She was good. Completely unpredictable, and she won some big pots because the men didn’t believe she knew what she had.

  I took mental notes and tried to keep up.

  Finally the Rock used his last chips for a blind and lost the hand. “Time to play heads up,” called the man who’d assumed the job as the dealer to speed things along for us.

  I was dealt pocket aces, both black, and was the big blind, so I raised. Spring raised her eyebrows, but raised with me. I went all in on The Flop, which was ace/heart, ten/heart and Jack/heart. All I could see were the aces. Spring had a few more chips than I did, so she called. The Turn was a King/heart and The River was a blank—three/club.

  Spring had a royal flush, beating my three of a kind handily. Frank walked in right then. “Taught her something, didn’t you?”

  Spring nodded as she collected her chips. Frank paid her a hundred and twenty dollars for first place, giving me sixty for second. I thanked everyone as they drifted out but Spring paused in the doorway. “Bee, you have an instinct for reading people. Don’t forget that when the cards are screaming at you. I imagine you might have seen me catching the flush at The Turn, but it was too late. If you’d waited to go all in until then you might have chosen not to and we’d still be playing. Be patient. Another thing, I started to trust your reads of people and use them. Be careful that others don’t do that at the tournament. When you can afford to, do something out of character: pretend a wrong read on a player and lose a hand if you catch someone at your table doing what I did.”

  I thanked her. Frank looked proud. “Where did you go?” I asked, looking at the clock and surprised to see it was already midnight. I thought I smelled whiskey, then remembered one of the men had been drinking Chivas Regal. I looked at the mess of glasses left at the bar and wondered if it were hard for Frank to be around it. I walked over and began cleaning up.

  “Snooping,” he answered finally.

  “What did you find out?”

  “That you are too damned sexy to leave alone for long.”

  Uh-oh. I peered at him. Frank was leaning against the back of the couch. His eyes were more bloodshot than they had been earlier, and he wore a goofy grin.

  “Did you have a drink or two, Frank?” I asked carefully.

  “One of the guys was getting suspicious when I was sitting at the bar with a Perrier and asking a lot of questions.” He stood and leaned across the bar to tickle the end of my braid. Whoosh. It was him I smelled, not the players’ empty glasses. “I ordered the drink to make it look right. He was a good source.”

  “I don’t even want to know what he said right now. You just need to go to bed. I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself just to find out some spare information for me.”

  “I’m not doing this for you.” He argued. “I’m doing this for you.”

  Okay. I put my arm around his shoulders while he busied himself trying to undo my braid, and guided him to his bedroom. His biceps brushed my left breast. His fingers tangled in my hair. Oh dear. I tried to get some distance between us, which was hard because half of his two hundred pounds was leaning against me. Finally we reached the bed and I snuck out from under his arm as he leaned in for a kiss. He fell onto the mattress with a groan. Even as toxic as he smelled, it was tempting, but I refused to do something at least one of us would regret in the morning.

  “Honey Bee?” He mumbled something indecipherable into the pillow. Good thing I didn’t hear it.

  “Good night, Frank.” I said, as I shut the door.

  I slept like the living dead. I guess I wasn’t too afraid that Frank would sleepwalk his way to my room and fulfill whatever male fantasy he might have entertained last night because I’d left the door to my bedroom open, which let the morning light in on my face to wake me. Of course, it wasn’t that early. I shielded my eyes from the sun and saw 9:43 on the clock.

  Gripped with sudden panic that I had only nine hours until the tournament started, I leaped out of bed and hotfooted it to the bathroom. I showered in record time, slapped on some makeup and then tackled my daily fashion dilemma. I’d packed my Lucky jeans skirt, which I had been saving. I needed to be lucky today, so I pulled it on. I grabbed a sunflower colored halter top from Bebe and fit some gold hoops in my ears and the same shoes I wore yesterday. That would have to do. I was both shocked and amazed to realize I didn’t much care if I matched or not today. Being vogue seemed to have dropped a few notches on my priority list.

  “Ready for your big day?”

  Frank sat in front of his laptop, tapping on the keys. He took one hand off the keyboard and pushed a coffee cup toward me then went back to typing. I wondered how long he’d slept. As I reached for my cup, I could see he’d shaved and he smelled like fresh Dove. He wore his requisite Levi’s and a black T-shirt. He didn’t meet my eyes. Guess we were going to ignore last night.

  Men.

  I sipped my coffee without answering. Frank kept typing. “Nervous?”

  I made a noncommittal sound. “What are you doing?”

  “Snooping.”

  Oh great. We were back there. I bet he didn’t even remember what he’d heard last night. I had to try. “What have you found out since we last reconnoitered?”

  Frank looked up with a raised right eyebrow. Wrong choice of words considering what he wanted to do last night, but I held his gaze coolly. He closed down his computer. “There’s plenty of time to compare notes. Let’s go to the Galaxy and see if any of the staff over there remembers when Stan was a working man.”

  The Galaxy was on the northern side of The Strip. We rode down the elevator in silence, a chasm between us. I wondered if it was because he was embarrassed about drinking or whether he’d found something out he didn’t want to tell me. Either way, we had to clear the air—I just didn’t know how to start. Frank was as intense in his stony silence as he was in his unflagging interrogations.

  We stopped at the bakery for another coffee and croissant that we ate under one of the coconut palms outside the casino. I think Frank chose the table adjacent to the waterfall so its roar would preclude any opportunity for conversation.

  I tried to let the incident go, as he most certainly preferred, but my resolve lasted only ninety seconds before I couldn’t stand it any longer. I would never be able to live with myself if my dilemma was to blame for pushing Frank back to booze. I leaned forward and raised my voice over the cascading water. “Frank, I’m worried about what happened last night.”

  He looked up sharply, a hint of surprise showing in his eyes before he hid it. “Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”

  Uh-oh. What wouldn’t happen again? He wouldn’t make a pass at me again or he wouldn’t drink again? I didn’t want to close the door on the attraction building between us, so I figured I should clarify. But, what if he meant the drinking and didn’t remember making a pass at me? I tried some careful semantics. “I just don’t want you to sacrifice yourself to help me.”

  “It wouldn’t be any sacrifice to make love to you, Bee.”

  Oh dear. My face flushed as tingles spread through my torso, igniting small fires that I tried to put out by squirming in my seat. That only made them worse. His dark eyes danced as he sipped his coffee poker faced. He was better at this game than I was. I finally looked down at the bottom of my coffee cup and mumbled, “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Good,” he answered succinctly.

  I didn’t have the guts to pursue the conversation further, so we finished our croissants in silence.

  We’d started back toward the Galaxy before Frank spoke again. “They ruled Felix Quinn’s death a homicide.”

  I stopped in my tracks and nearly took out an octogenarian couple behind me. Frank caught the old gal before she careened into the street. The old man grabbed my right boob and righted himself with a grin so wide, I didn’t feel guilty. I apologized, and they tottered off. “What killed him?” I stage whispered.

/>   Frank’s mouth was tight. His eyes smoldered. “Smothered to death. They are looking for the call girl he was last seen with who goes by the initial B.”

  That was what I got for being nice. Damn that note. And guess I should burn the eggplant suede. I swallowed hard and tried to stay cool. “How did you find out?”

  “I called our buddy, Dr. Vassey, who was more than happy to tell me. And then I listened to the morning news.”

  “Are they saying who last saw him with a call girl?”

  “Not exactly. They are saying an anonymous witness. I think it’s a smoke bomb, designed to flush you out so Conner can find you.” Frank paused. “How do they know your first initial? Is Conner guessing, or have they forced it out of Ben?”

  “I, uh, left a note to Felix.”

  Groaning, Frank hit his head with the heel of his hand. “Why?”

  “I felt sorry for the old guy. He was so lonely.”

  Frank just shook his head. “You’ve got to stop thinking about everyone else and worry about yourself.”

  “I’m not as worried about them knowing my name as what I look like. They could look at the security cameras and see me flying down the hallway and into his room,” I mused, wondering how this would compromise my ability to nose around.

  “And then they would see Conner coming out of the same stairwell and stopping at Felix’s room. I think it’s safe to say that he dispensed with said security tape, or reviewed it prior to reporting it ‘anonymously,’ to make sure no one could be identified with any accuracy. Still, this is a bold move on his part. He is getting desperate.”

  “Good, then maybe he’ll get sloppy and give us a chance to catch up with whatever he is cooking up.”

  Frank stopped, turned and looked hard at me. For an instant, I expected him to accuse me of really being a call girl and killing Felix. After all, he’d never met Ben. I could have fabricated the whole disappearing brother scenario. I withstood his scrutiny. “You’re tougher than you look,” he said, finally.

  “Maybe I’m tougher than I thought,” I admitted.

  He smiled then, crow’s feet crinkling. I knew we were okay again, but I really did want to have a serious talk with him about the drinking sometime soon.

  “Maybe we both are,” Frank said softly.

  Thirteen

  Walking into the Galaxy casino reminded me of the time I took my cousin’s kids to Disney World. I remember there was some tortuous rollercoaster that sped through the pitch black tunnel, dodging falling asteroids, stars, aliens and manufactured planets at the speed of light. I remember telling my nine-year-old second cousin, as she screamed bloody murder, that I had paid for this, so it had to be fun. I’d ended up wearing someone’s vomit and deciding that theme parks were designed for the masochistic. I had the same revelation as I dodged a twelve foot tall ape from Planet of the Apes who tried to hand me a coupon for an eatery.

  As Frank and I wound our way through the slot machines, my hand brushed the hand of a player. I jumped—his skin was cold, gummy and creepy. I looked down to apologize anyway and gasped. It was a Martian from Mars Attacks! Fortunately, it was a wax figure and not the real thing.

  An elderly man sitting at the opposite slot machine cackled with glee. “Watching folks do that is more fun than feeding this thing quarters. Cheaper too!”

  I rolled my eyes. Everyone has their own brand of entertainment, I suppose. Frank put his hand in the small of my back to move me on. It wasn’t the only time we passed wax figures. Chewbacca and R2-D2 were standing at a craps table. A dead ringer for Neil Armstrong, in full astronaut regalia, was sitting at the bar.

  I’d wondered a couple of times during my trip to Las Vegas if I weren’t in the Twilight Zone. Now I really was.

  “This would not be my first choice of hotel or casino on The Strip,” I told Frank.

  He shrugged, pointing at a costumed group of tourists. “There’s a lot of Trekkies out there. And, I think the alien craze is just behind the poker craze in popularity. Just think, playing poker next to an alien. Must be someone’s dream come true.” Sure enough, at one of the Hold ’Em tables was the alien that popped out of Sigourney Weaver’s stomach. I’m not kidding.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked Frank. Time to focus.

  “I’ll go ask around at the poker tables. I’ll assume that he dealt Hold ’Em but who knows.” Frank looked around. “Go over to that Space Shuttle bar and chat up the waitresses you think serves the poker tables. Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of them will have been here when Stan was dealing.”

  I nodded. Interesting that I was the one to go to the bar. He was trying. Or maybe he was just hungover.

  I wandered over. At eleven in the morning, it was kind of early for a drink, but apparently I was one of few who thought so. Only one stool was available, and of course it was next to Neil. I tried to ignore him but he was looking right at me.

  “Creepy, huh?” said a cocktail waitress wearing Spock ears and a Starship Enterprise uniform. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to herself or the astronaut. I went for a vague. “Got that right.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know how they make their eyes look so real. It’s almost as if they follow you,” she continued. “Someone told me it takes a whole month to put in their hair. It’s real, you know. Even the hair on their arms and stuff.”

  Of course I couldn’t resist looking at Neil. He was holding his helmet under his arm and seemed to be smiling at me. Hmm. His hair, shot with just a bit of gray at the temples, did look pretty real.

  “Cool,” I said, again trying not to offend her since she seemed so proud. “But I guess you’ll get so used to it once you work here for a while that you don’t notice him anymore.”

  “Oh, no, I won’t,” she grinned haplessly. “I’ve already worked here five years and I’m not used to him yet.”

  I laughed more at my luck than her comment. Bingo. She’d worked here with Stan.

  “Can I get you something to drink, darlin’?” She asked. I shook my head and she did too. “Nah, you don’t look like an early morning drunk. I guess you’re just biding your time while your baby plays Hold ’Em, huh?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Not hard. Everybody plays Hold ’Em now. It’s like a national addiction. I wouldn’t be surprised if they take out half the blackjack, craps and roulette tables and put in more poker tables by next year.”

  “It sure is all over the TV anyway, especially that Steely Stan guy. Has he got charisma or what?” I winked at her.

  She leaned in with her secret. “You know he used to work here?”

  I gasped and held my hand to my chest. “Here? In this casino?”

  She nodded. “I waited on the table where he was the dealer.”

  “No kidding?” I leaned in too. “What was he like? I have such a huge crush on him.”

  “Everybody does, darlin’, at least anyone with estrogen.” She giggled. “He is even sexier in person.”

  Gag. If you like raving chauvinistic egomaniacs with spastic fashion sense, he’s a prize for sure.

  “It just seemed like destiny when he got that sponsorship and could quit and play Hold ’Em professionally. Nobody deserved it more.”

  I nodded. Uh-huh. “Who sponsored him?”

  She looked at me a little suspiciously. Wrong question. Guess I should have asked how big his schlong was instead. “Some vegetable company,” she muttered, desultory.

  I shrugged like I couldn’t care less and held my poker face. Good practice for tonight. I guess it worked, because she went back to extolling Stan’s virtues, which revolved around how many times he pinched her ass in a night.

  Vegetable company would likely translate into produce supplier. Likely Fresh Foods. But what was Fresh Foods doing sponsoring a poker player? What does a televised royal flush do for spinach sales?

  Even though it didn’t make sense yet, this was a big break, a connection that might mean something someday.

  I wanted to jump up
and down and wave my arms at Frank, but instead I had to keep the dingy waitress in conversation for another ten minutes until someone at a table did just that to get her attention for a drink. She trotted away with a promise to return with more about Stan.

  Since I figured I’d already gotten all she knew of value, I made a break for it. Frank was playing at a table in the dead center of the room, so I loitered as close as I could get and tried to catch his eye. He looked everywhere but at me.

  He was either learning a lot of good stuff or he was winning. Either way it looked like I would be cooling my heels for a while. I visited the gift shop, but since a Martian toe ring didn’t particularly appeal to me, I wandered on. What did people who didn’t gamble do in Vegas, anyway? I guess one could go to see Cirque du Soleil or Carey in the Women of Wall Street, but if I just went from show to show I think my butt would get sore from overuse. Of course, come to think of it, poker playing involved a lot of sitting, but maybe the adrenaline rush of winning would provide a brief aerobic interlude. I suppose there was shopping here, but unless you came from the Ozarks, I can’t imagine they would have shops here that you couldn’t find within a couple hundred miles of your own hometown. I took the elevator up to the fifteenth floor for the heck of it and tried to catch a peek in a room to see if the beds were in the shape of flying saucers.

  When a security goon ambled by and gave me a long look, I decided I’d worn out that form of entertainment. I hightailed it to the elevator lobby, hoping the news didn’t have a full description of the call girl killer. I didn’t know how ballsy Daniel Conner would be.

  I jumped in the elevator before the doors even fully opened and scurried to the far corner, nearly impaling myself on the cart that the poor bellboy tried to pull out of the way. I murmured an apology. We traveled in embarrassed silence until the doors slid open on the second floor. No one got on, and I couldn’t see anyone waiting from where I stood, but I could hear a man’s urgent whisper. “I told you, I just need a little more time.”