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Death On the Flop

Page 23

by Jackie Chance


  I cocked my head at Ben. Not only did Frank outweigh Ben by fifty pounds right now, he also was ten times tougher. “Ah, Toby didn’t really break my heart. Bruised it up a bit maybe. I don’t think it would feel this good right now if it were broken.”

  Ben shook his head and flopped down in the bed. It was a bit too deep for the man who was the president of the Slam, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am Club.

  “Why didn’t they kill you, Ben?” Frank asked.

  “Hell if I know,” Ben croaked. “I followed Stan and heard him talking to this tall guy in a suit and short sweaty fatso about problems with ‘the shipments’ and a driver who got suspicious that they had to get rid of.”

  “Rudy,” I breathed. Frank nodded.

  “Then, I followed Stan back to the Hold ’Em tables, sat next to him and during our play, told him I worked for a drug company and wanted to find an outlet for some of the drugs I lifted. I gave him my room number.”

  Frank shook his head. “Smooth, Ben. Why didn’t you just draw X’s across your head and Bee’s for them to use as target practice. Thank God she wasn’t there when they came to get you, you fool.”

  Ben shrugged and looked ever so slightly sorry. “Hey I’m a sales guy, I was trying to sell him so I could turn him over to you. I didn’t like being a suspect.

  “Anyhow, the two dudes from earlier attacked me in the room, knocking me out. I remember coming to in another room and hearing Stan tell them that we had to find out how much I knew so they could figure out how much they would have to change before they offed me. I guess I didn’t tell them enough when I was drugged. Or maybe they kept me drugged until they could question me.”

  “Stan told me they were going to make you a star,” I said softly. “I think they’d planned to use you in one of the snuff films.”

  Ben paled even more. “You’re kidding.”

  Frank shrugged. “Makes sense. They were the ultimate opportunists. That would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

  Patterson walked in, sliding his cell phone back into a holder on his hip. “That was our computer geek. He says the computer chip you found in the briefcase had what appears to be an authentic snuff film. The girl is young, Mexican, possibly a sixteen-year-old who went missing from Nogales. The man is Caucasian. Unidentifiable. You never see his face. She is strangled to death.”

  Patterson paused and we all sat there in a brief silence, lost in our thoughts, mourning a girl we didn’t know.

  I suddenly remembered Rudy’s sister and the threats against her. I told Patterson about them both. He spoke to one of the uniforms who left quickly.

  “Patterson, you also need to get a hold of Deidre, to see if this is the film she saw, if not, there are others,” Frank said, his face stony.

  Patterson nodded. “The FBI and DEA are both on their way. This investigation is far from over. Suffice it to say that the three of you have uncovered a labyrinth of crime and I imagine we haven’t even seen down most of its corridors.”

  Patterson’s phone rang. “What?” he demanded of the caller so sharply, we all looked at him. He barked some orders into the phone and hung up saying “I’ll be right back.”

  He looked at all of us. “Conner didn’t shoot Stan. His department issued bullet was found lodged in the wall behind Stan. Crime scene suspects from the blood splatter that the bullet that killed Stan came from forty-five degrees to the right of where Conner held you, Miss Cooley.”

  Twenty-Eight

  I didn’t see Frank and Ben for another six hours. Investigators, federal and local, were interrogating Ben at the hospital while he was hooked up to an IV to treat his severe dehydration. Frank was locked in a room in the Cook County Sheriff ’s Department with the FBI and DEA. I wasn’t even sure which agency was interviewing me, although I’d guess it was federal, since they seemed to have the upper hand. Patterson was cooperating, but clearly unhappily.

  I hoped the law enforcement turf war didn’t compromise the investigation. I knew there had to be others out there who knew enough about the operation to keep it going with a new smuggling venue. And, I had a sinking feeling that Stan was just a lackey himself. The real boss was still out there, somewhere. Maybe he was the one who’d pulled the trigger, killing the King of Hold ’Em.

  “Feel free to wait for Frank, if you wish,” Patterson told me, when I was finally released, dry mouthed from talking too long, thick headed from lack of sleep, yet jittery from too much coffee. “But they may keep him for the rest of the day.”

  Day? I looked out the tinted window in amazement. It had to be near noon already.

  “If you decide to go back to your hotel, I will have an officer drive you and escort you through the media, which I’m sure is not only downstairs here but waiting for you at the Lanai. We’ll slip you out and in the back ways.”

  “Thank you,” I breathed. The thought of the media sticking microphones in my face was more than I could deal with right then. I was longing for a bed. “You’ll let Frank know I’ll be at the room?”

  He nodded and motioned to a uniformed officer in the corner of the room. We went down the service elevator and to the basement where an unmarked police car was waiting for us. I nodded off before we were barely a block away. The cop had to shake me awake when we stopped in the basement of the Lanai. I felt like a zombie as we made it blessedly back to Frank’s room without encountering anyone but a few guests who gave me curious looks. I must have looked like death warmed over. Talk about bags. I bet I could trip on them.

  “You’re famous, I guess, huh?” the officer asked.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Those people looked like they wanted your autograph.”

  “I thought they looked like they wanted to give me a years supply of antiwrinkle cream.”

  The cop just shook his head and smiled. Sweet boy.

  I thanked him and let myself into our room. I threw my purse down on the couch and walked straight to my bedroom.

  “You’ve been quite busy, haven’t you, Miss Cooley?”

  I paused in the doorway and hoped I was hallucinating. That sure sounded like slick Cyrano or Ranocy or whatever his real name was. I looked over my shoulder. He was sitting in the chair with a gun pointed at my heart.

  I survived Conner only to be killed by a porn freak. That pissed me off something fierce. “What do you want?”

  “Ballsy aren’t we.” Cyrano smiled without any humor. I tried not to show the chill that slipped down my spine. “Considering I could kill you by moving my finger a millimeter.”

  “I’m low on sleep, it makes me cranky.”

  “My employees cheating me makes me cranky,” Cyrano snapped.

  Since I had turned down the opportunity to work for him, I raised my eyebrows, crossed my arms over my chest and waited.

  “Tell me what my boy Stan has done. The news is sadly misinformed. They are saying he got caught in a card scam, that Conner was in it with him. They’re stupid. There’s no card scam.”

  “Not that I know of anyway,” I said.

  “Then why have they arrested Conner? Why are they calling Stan a criminal mastermind? Gopher is more like it,” he scoffed.

  “He’s dead, Cyrano,” I said, watching him carefully, wondering how the news crews had left that part out.

  “I know that, you stupid woman, I shot him.”

  Oh. Well, then.

  “I want to know why they were after him.”

  “Lots of reasons,” I began slowly, watching his finger as his hand began to tremble slightly from the effort of holding up the gun. “Do you want to rest your hand on your leg or something?”

  He waved the gun at me. “Go on!”

  “Stan was running a smuggling operation using Fresh Foods trucks—”

  “I know that, he was running the operation for me. Porn videos on computer disks.”

  I recoiled. “You know about the snuff films?”

  “No! No! No! He was the one all this time!” he shouted,
his face red. He narrowed his eyes. “I knew Stan was double crossing me. Listen to me, he was nothing but a low level porn dealer when he worked at the Hold ’Em table at my casino. “Your casino?” I blurted.

  The Galaxy is mine, he confirmed. A money maker mostly, but in this case, if provided me the perfect opportunity to obtain my heart’s desire—an ambitious nobody to use. Stan had the buyers, I knew the suppliers down in Mexico. He used the trucks from Fresh Foods to bring in the videos and sell them. In return, I would sponsor him in his quest to be a Hold ’Em champion. I held up my end of the bargain, and he even sicced the cops on me when they came sniffing around about the snuff films. Cheating sicko murderer.”

  Cyrano had become so distracted by his fury at Stan that the gun had gone off center from me. I tried to distract him further. “Well, that’s not all. They were also smuggling prescription drugs into Mexico—the same method, reversed.”

  His face went purple. “They were cheating me there too!”

  Cyrano paused and narrowed his eyes. “Was Conner in on this?”

  “Apparently so,” I said, pleased to see the gun had drifted so far to the left I couldn’t see down the barrel anymore. Whew.

  “I’ll kill him,” Cyrano hissed. “He was paid to keep the force from sniffing around the sales. He was paid to protect the DVD shipments. And instead he was becoming his own entrepeneur.”

  Cyrano looked at me with a sudden shocking realization. “Is Conner talking to police?”

  I shrugged. No way was I telling him Conner lawyered up. That would give Cyrano time to find someone behind bars to kill him, and the whole operation could go unpunished. “I don’t know, Cyrano, Conner sure knows how to work the system. I guess he could pin it all on Stan, but I’m guessing if Conner goes down, everyone goes down with him. You will be the big boss, he was just taking orders from you and Stan. Conner just strikes me as that type. And you do have the history with the cops as being a porn dealer. You’re the one who told me about that.”

  “I’m going to have to go to prison.” Cyrano suddenly looked lost. “I can’t go to prison!”

  “Bee!” I heard Frank yell on the other side of the door.

  It all happened at once—the gunshot, the glass shattering, another gunshot, and two bodies hurling through the room, one out the window.

  I don’t think I moved. Except for my heart, which pounded a thousand beats in that one second.

  Frank stood at the shattered window, looking down. Cyrano was gone. Spinning around and meeting my gaze, he rushed at me and gathered me in his arms, squeezing me so tightly I could barely breathe. We could heard sirens floating up the twenty five stories.

  I heard Ben’s voice, still gravelly, from the doorway. “Damn, did someone just jump out the freaking window?”

  “Are you okay?” Frank demanded of me. He put his hand under my chin and tipped my face up, kissing the tip of my nose. “Did he hurt you?”

  Ben wandered to the window and looked down. He made a face. “Ick. What a way to go.”

  “Why’d he do it, Bee?”

  “He didn’t want to go to jail.” I recapped what Cyrano had told me.

  Someone began to pound on the door. “Police, open up.”

  Ben opened the door for the cops, one of whom recognized us and called Patterson on his two way. Frank’s phone started to ring. He looked at the caller ID and handed it to me. I looked at the readout and handed it to Ben.

  “Hello?” Ben said curiously, then rolled his eyes at me. “Hi, Ma. Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Frank grabbed me in another hug and kissed the top of my head. As the cops began surveying the room for any evidence, Frank tipped my chin up again and kissed me on the lips. It was the best yet. The best ever. Better than the best. The whole room went away. I couldn’t hear anything but our hearts beating. I couldn’t feel anything but his lips on mine and my toes curling and my body temperature rising and his fingers sending little shocks through to every erogenous zone and . . .

  “Who was on TV, again?” Pause. “What do you mean Bee Bee won?” Ben shouted.

  Frank and I reluctantly parted. The cops paused to stare at Ben.

  Ben rolled his eyes and circled his finger in the air around his right ear like she’d gone bonkers. “I didn’t hear you right, Ma. I thought you said BeeBee, your daughter Belinda Cooley, won the Lanai Pro-Am Hold ’Em tournament. That can’t be, because she doesn’t even know how to play poker. She wasn’t even registered to play.”

  He held his hands in the air in question. Frank and I nodded. His mouth dropped open and he hung up on Mom.

  “What do you mean? You stole my seat? You won the Big Kahuna?”

  I shrugged. “I stole your seat. I won the Big Kahuna.”

  “But, how?”

  “Let’s just say she’s a quick study.” Frank put in, throwing me a proud grin. “And a bit lucky.”

  “Very lucky.” I smiled back at him.

  Ben shook his head in a combination of pride and disgust I’d seen many times before from a twin who was competitive but loyal. He liked to see his sister win, but not at something he should have.

  “Wait ’til I beat the pants off you in the next tournament. You’ll really be shaking your head,” I threatened teasingly.

  “Since you won the big money you can treat for the poker cruise I was eyeballing,” Ben said. “Some big names are playing for big bucks.”

  “I’ll fit right in then.” I winked at Frank.

  Ben snorted then turned to Frank. “How about you, Frank, I think she owes you something for teaching her to play Hold ’Em. What about cards on the high seas?”

  “We can’t assume Frank can get off work as you or I can. What is your work again, Frank?”

  Frank opened his mouth.

  “Besides security.” I put in.

  Frank shut his mouth.

  I looked at Ben who just shrugged. The testosterone was banding together. Patterson walked in just then and said, “I swear I can’t leave you people alone for five minutes. Haven’t you had enough death and destruction for one day?”

  “We’ve had enough for a lifetime,” Frank said, turning to me and pulling me to him again. “Sign me up for the poker cruise. It’s time for a real vacation.”

  Bee’s Buzz

  Texas Hold ’Em Tips

  from the Recently Clueless

  Listen, how many books out there brag about tips on Texas Hold ’Em from experts? You could get old and gray reading all the advice from the poker pros on the Net—only about ten percent of which makes any sense to someone who’s never played poker before. Ask yourself, how many of these guys (and yes, most of them are guys) really remember when they didn’t know the difference between a spade and a club?

  See? That’s where I come in. I remember being there. Let’s face it, people, winning the pot in your neighbor’s Friday night game is a long way from raking in millions at the World Series of Poker. A long, long way. And even though I DID manage to beat out the pros at my tournament, I’m far from expert. It’s going to be a while before I play in the big time again, since I’ll be honing my skills in between bouts of keeping my lousy brother out of trouble.

  It wasn’t so long ago—okay, really just days ago—that I was a total poker novice, barely learning to crawl. All the what-the-hell-does-that-mean’s are painfully fresh in my mind. So I’m going to cull from my recently mastered basics and my surprising inherent skills and let you all in on a few poker secrets.

  If you’re as clueless as I recently was, consider these tips from one of your own. If you already know your way around the table, good for you. But I can guarantee there are some points in my list that you won’t see in any poker tip site or read in any “Win at Hold ’Em” book out there . . . Read and learn.

  1. Know the math, but master the psychology: Dress the part. Ladies, if you have good legs, wear short skirts; if you have breasts at all, wear a miracle bra and plunging neckline. (Caveat: If you are a man with breasts, don’t foll
ow this advice.)

  2. Calm down, feminists. If you learn to play like a woman, you’ll win more than most average men. Trust me on this one. It’s the only way to play your way to the top. And I like it on top, don’t you?

  3. Men, that goes for you too: If you have broad shoulders, wear a nice blazer; if you have big biceps, bust out that muscle tee! But don’t ever unbutton more than the top two buttons of your shirt, or you’ll put yourself at an automatic disadvantage. Some people dislike the sight of a hairy chest so much, it’ll be enough to motivate them to take uncharacteristic risks, act like a Maniac and bump you out of the game just to clear the aesthetics of the table. (See #7.)

  4. Wear mirrored shades most of the time, but take them off or let players see around them at certain times—like after you just strategically folded. You want them to think they are getting some secret insight into your psyche, but what you’ll really be doing is misleading them.

  5. Focus only on the table. This is one of the major reasons why men are statistically more successful at poker than women. We are good at multitasking. Men are good at compartmentalizing. Girls, you need to ignore everything outside the table, and multitask within the compartment, (i.e. the table) to beat men at their game. If you have a reason to fold, use the time to study your opponents for “tells” instead of finding other ways to occupy your active mind, like trying to figure out if the woman at the next table is wearing Manolos or Jimmy Choos.

  6. Play games at a full table as much as you can in the beginning. A full table will allow you more opportunities to read people, more chances for better cards, more time to place your bets and longer play outside the blinds. And, of course, better odds of finding a date. (But only after you’ve drained his pockets. You can afford to pay for dinner.)

  7. Get caught bluffing a couple of times between winning hands—it will make your important bluff all the more effective. (And don’t forget, it’s impossible to bluff a “calling station,” a player who calls all bets without thinking.)

 

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