Chance s-23

by Robert B. Parker

  "Lester runs a specialty limo service," Hawk said.

  "Hotels bring in some high rollers. Lester picks them up, drives them around, gets them dinner reservations, girls, or boys, or both, if they want. Makes sure they go to the casino that sponsored their trip."

  "And he owes you a favor," I said.

  Hawk shrugged.

  "He got some time free," Hawk said.

  "For pro bono work."

  Lester came back in.

  "Okay, folks, car's waiting."

  We left Robert Goulet and his companion, and went through the brief band of desert heat outside the terminal and into an airconditioned white Lincoln.

  "You folks want a little tour of Vegas on the way in?" Lester said.

  "Lester," Hawk said.

  "We ain't tourists."

  "Sure. There's booze in the bar, you want."

  "How do you know Hawk, Lester?" Susan said.

  I smiled. I knew she wasn't making conversation. Susan actually wanted to know.

  "Knew Hawk in Cuba," Lester said.

  Susan looked at Hawk.

  "Cuba?" she said.

  Hawk shrugged. Behind us a maroon Buick Regal pulled away from a pickup zone and fell in behind us.

  "What were you doing in Cuba, Lester?"

  "Little of this, little of that," Lester said.

  "Oh."

  Susan turned to look at Hawk. The maroon Buick passed us on an open stretch. Usually when that happens the car keeps going and leaves you behind. The Regal pulled in two cars ahead of us and stayed there.

  "And you?"

  "Same thing," Hawk said.

  We left the airport and headed north on Paradise Road. The Buick pulled off into the drive up at the Best Western. When we passed, it came out of the Best Western and fell in three cars behind us. There was no doubt that the Regal was following us.

  Nothing is so conspicuous as the attempt to be inconspicuous.

  The Regal stayed where it was the rest of the way. We drove down Las Vegas Boulevard, passing people in pink shorts and plastic hats walking past pirate coves and fake volcanos. A flaunting show of waterfalls and fountains danced in the middle of the desert as if they had not only defeated nature but wished to rub it in.

  Lester turned in at The Mirage porte cochere and popped the trunk. The bell staff pounced on our luggage before we were out of the car. The Regal stayed on the strip, moving slowly with the traffic. Susan looked anxiously after the luggage as it disappeared through the bell door. I reached for my wallet as Lester opened the door for us, but Hawk shook his head.

  "You got my beeper number," Lester said to Hawk.

  "I be around."

  Hawk nodded. Lester got back in the Lincoln and drove away.

  The lobby of The Mirage was positively sylvan. There were jungle plants and waterfalls, and a small bridge over a stream.

  Hawk said, "Wait here."

  He went into the guest services office and in maybe two minutes he was back with three keys. We walked across the bridge and through the casino jiving with the implacable music of the slots, to a bank of elevators next to the in-house shopping mall. In front of our rooms on the fourth floor, Hawk handed Susan and me each a key.

  "Case you get bored," Hawk said.

  "Volcano erupts every fifteen minutes, until midnight. You can see it from your windows."

  "The fun never lets up," I said.

  "Round the clock," Hawk said.

  "Got the room next door, you do something romantic try to keep the noise down."

  "I don't know if I can promise that," Susan said.

  Hawk laughed, which he does, as far as I can remember, only at Susan.

  I unlocked the door and Susan went in.

  "You make the Buick," Hawk said to me.

  "Yeah."

  "You got a thought who that might be?"

  "I'm losing track," I said.

  "You do that easy," Hawk said and unlocked the door to his room.

  I followed Susan into mine. It was a one-bedroom suite. The ceilings were high. The walls were banked with windows, the decor was multicolored southwestern mixed with Catskills. The woodwork was dark. The living room was bigger than my apartment in Boston, with a bar, a huge walnut armoire concealing a television, two red couches, four blue armchairs, a large round dining room table finished in black, and six black dining room chairs. There was pottery and there were paintings and there was beige wall-to-wall carpeting. I went across the room and opened the curtains. The volcano was there as promised. Not, at the moment, erupting. But if I were patient… the doorbell rang, and Susan let the bellhop in with the luggage. He put the bags in the bedroom. I tipped him. He left.

  Susan picked up a printed card off the bar.

  "

  "Dear V.I.P Guest,"

  " she read. "

  "Welcome to our V.I.P Level.

  Please call the V.I.P office with any requests you may have. We are at your service twenty-four hours a day."

  " "That's us," I said.

  "V.I.P guests."

  "On the V.I.P Level," Susan said.

  "Is it because you are a famous detective?"

  "No. Hawk knows somebody here that owes him something."

  "Are we paying for this?"

  "I don't think so."

  Susan went into the bedroom. In a moment I heard her say, "Oh, oh."

  I looked in. The bags were open on a black king-sized bed big enough for pony races, and the ceiling was mirrored.

  "Oh? Oh?" I said.

  "The mirrored ceiling," Susan said.

  "I'll shut my eyes," I said.

  "You'll pretend to," Susan said.

  "You can watch too," I said.

  "I'd rather go dancing with Howard Stern," Susan said.

  "Oh come on," I said.

  "It's not that bad to see."

  "And I am desperately oversexed," Susan said.

  "Yes you are."

  "And it's probably better than watching the volcano," Susan said.

  "Yes it is."

  "So." Susan shrugged, her eyes gleaming.

  "So?"

  "So peekaboo," she said.

  CHAPTER 15

  Vegas is not a big town, but if you want to gamble there, they have lots of places to do it. All we had for a plan was to cruise the casinos until Anthony appeared.

  "And if he doesn't appear?" Susan said.

  I shrugged.

  "Then we assume he's not here, and we look for him someplace else."

  "Maybe he's in New York," Susan said, "hiding out at Bergdorf's."

  We were at breakfast, sitting in a grotto of tropical vegetation, some of which was real, at the rim of the casino, soothed by the permanent harmonics of the slot machines which, when you're in Vegas, becomes like the music of the spheres.

  "Susan and I will go north on the Strip," I said to Hawk.

  "You go south."

  "What about all the joints off the Strip?" Hawk said.

  "If he's the guy I think he is, he'll be in one of the big casinos.

  Here, Caesars, MGM Grand, that kind of place. What I gather, he's got something to prove."

  "You gonna break the bank, you don't want to do it in some Motel Six in Laughlin," Hawk said.

  I nodded.

  "So first we hit the biggest and gaudiest. He's got a system. So we start with the blackjack tables. Could be something else, but most guys with systems play blackjack."

  "Can a system win?" Susan said.

  "Over a long time," I said.

  "Like most things it depends some on the guy using the system. In some places, for instance, you can surrender early dealer shows a ten card and you don't like your first two you can turn them back to the dealer and forfeit half your bet. Gives you a quarter of a percent edge on the house."

  "My God, that's not very much return on your investment."

  "About a quarter for every hundred you play. But it's sort of illustrative. There are things that will give the player a
positive edge. Most systems have to do with card counting; they can work if you play enough."

  "How long is enough?" She was eating half a papaya with some lime squeezed on it. She had cut a small wedge off one end and picked it up and took a small bite. Even when she ate with her fingers, she seemed entirely delicate and proper. After I ate, I always looked like I'd been in a food fight.

  "Two, three hundred hours," Hawk said.

  Susan looked at him with horror.

  "Two or three hundred?"

  "Gambling ain't for lazy people," Hawk said.

  "You going to make a living at it."

  "Wouldn't it be easier to work?" Susan said.

  Hawk smiled.

  "Or do what we do," he said.

  "The thing is most people don't gamble hundreds of hours," I said.

  "Most people come to Vegas, say, for a weekend. Most of them don't have a system. They just play because that's what you do here."

  "And they lose," Susan said.

  "Absolutely," I said.

  "If they didn't enjoy the experience they might as well mail in a check."

  "I'd love to try it," Susan said.

  "Blackjack?"

  "Anything. It sounds like fun."

  "You got a system?"

  "Of course I do. You and Hawk tell me what to do."

  Hawk looked at me without expression.

  "Be a first," Hawk said.

  "She won't do what we tell her," I said.

  Susan smiled.

  "I will if I want to," she said.

  In the lobby bar a young woman with a tight red dress and a blonde ponytail was belting "Hey Look Me Over" to three guys at the bar and one woman sitting near the lounge feeding coins into a nickel slot. I looked at my watch. It was 7:45 A.M.

  Susan and I stood for a moment outside The Mirage watching Hawk move away down toward the Strip. He was wearing a white straw planter's hat, a dark blue linen shirt, white slacks, and blue suede loafers. People studiously avoided looking at him until he was past them. Then they stared at him over their shoulders.

  "People notice him," Susan said.

  "Yeah."

  "He frightens them."

  "Yeah."

  "Have you ever figured out why?"

  "They know," I said.

  "Yes," Susan said.

  "They do."

  We stood for another minute watching the Hawk's progress.

  Then the tram from Treasure Island arrived and we were swarmed with heavy people in colorful shirts. We fought our way through them and went first for a look at the white tigers in their climate controlled habitat. Then we backtracked, and looked at the people lounging by the pool.

  "It's amazing that no matter how small women's bathing suits get, they still manage to cover all they're supposed to," I said.

  "Do I hear disappointment in your voice?" Susan said.

  "Yes."

  The desert air lived up to its cliches. It was hot, but the dryness made it seem less hot. We moved north along Las Vegas Boulevard, casino by casino. The hotels were garish, but the north side was less so than the south. It was Hawk who got to go into Caesars Palace, which looked like ancient Rome, and the Luxor, which looked like a pyramid, and Excalibur that looked like a fortress, and MGM Grand, which looked like Oz. We had only Treasure Island, which looked like a Caribbean seaport, though we did get the live pirate show where one ship sinks another in the Treasure Island Lagoon, while the mist machines on the perimeter cooled us down. The rest of the hotels on our part of the strip looked like big ugly hotels, a fifth-grader's dream of luxury, and nighttime excess, shopworn in the unblinking Nevada sunlight.

  The street crowd was mostly the same kinds of people who dream those kinds of dreams, people who'd decided this year to come to Vegas instead of Disneyland, people who looked like they'd just come from a square dance, people who looked like they'd just arrived on a freight car, pink shorts, small plastic mesh baseball hats, small children, Instamatic cameras, white boots, large bellies, plaid shirts, high top sneakers, camcorders, just married, street peddlers mostly black and Hispanic, private security people wearing black shorts and yellow shirts, riding bicycles, and carrying Colt Python revolvers, people in pointed shoes and checked sports coats with dark glasses and their shirts unbuttoned, a little guy with a big nose, wearing a flowered shortsleeved shirt and a Panama hat, and a perfectly dressed sophisticate from Boston with his stunning companion.

  Inside the hotels, the casinos seemed interchangeable: air-conditioned, windowless, artificial light, no clocks, the pinball colors of the slots dominating the room, the carnival chatter of the slots overpowering all other sounds. We stopped at a blackjack table, watched some games, moved on to the next table, watched some games. The little guy in the Panama hat was better on foot than he was in a Buick. He wasn't obvious, but, if you're looking for a tail, there's not much the tail can do to avoid being seen. He was in the casinos when we were in them, lingering near the exit. He was on the other side of the street, down a ways, when we were strolling between casinos.

  "Would he play poker?" Susan said.

  "Might. But in poker you play against the other players, not against the house. I have a sense that Anthony wants to bust the MGM Grand or somebody."

  "Not only money, but notoriety," Susan said.

  We checked the poker tables. Only two were in use this early.

  The blank-faced dealers expertly distributed the cards, presiding over a game in which they had no stake. We strolled past the blackjack tables again on our way out.

  "No one seems to smile here," Susan said.

  "It's about money," I said.

  "Of course," Susan said.

  "No wonder they're so serious."

  "Want to play?" I said.

  "Certainly," Susan said.

  "If you'll stay beside me and tell me what to do."

  "Of course," I said.

  Susan bet five dollars. She got a seven and a nine. The dealer had a ten showing.

  "Stay," I murmured.

  "Hit me," Susan said.

  The dealer gave her a jack.

  "I lost," she said.

  "Un huh."

  We played for another fifteen minutes in which Susan lost a hundred dollars. She paid no attention to what I told her to do. On the fourth hand I said nothing. She glared at me.

  "What should I do?"

  She had a three and a five.

  "Hit," I said.

  She got a ten.

  "Stay," I said.

  "Hit," Susan said.

  She drew a five.

  "I hate losing," she said.

  "Well, I don't mean to be critical," I said.

  "But why are you taking a hit with eighteen?"

  "I don't want to just stand there," Susan said.

  "Of course you don't," I said.

  We didn't find Anthony that day, or the next one. But Susan did locate something called the fashion mall, down past Treasure Island.

  "Maybe they have a Victoria's Secret in there. You could buy one of those seductive floral nighties."

  "You know I don't wear nighties," Susan said.

  "We've known each other a long time now. It's okay, I think, for you to see me naked."

  "Oh good," I said.

  "But not right here," Susan said. c'Give with one hand, take with the other," I said.

  CHAPTER 16

  I came trudging back in the late afternoon of day three. Susan had taken the afternoon to explore the shops in Caesars Palace next door, and I had cruised the casinos alone, swinging off the Strip this time just to vary the monotony. The little guy in the Panama hat stayed with me. I wasn't expecting to find a Vegas Buster at the Debbie Reynolds Hotel. And I didn't. The little guy had trouble at the Debbie Reynolds Hotel. The lobby casino was too small to be unnoticed. He did his best, feeding quarters into one of the slots aimlessly, while I was not finding Anthony.

  "Debbie'll sign her book for you," the clerk said.

  "Comes ri
ght out every night after her show and talks with people." He gestured toward the coffee shop.

  "Right outside there. I can sell you tickets.

  Show starts at eight."

  I thought about getting two tickets, one for me, and one for the little guy, but decided that I wasted too much time being self amusing When I came into the lobby of The Mirage, I was thinking about beer. At the casino entrance on the rude bridge that arched the artificial flood, Hawk was leaning on the rail, looking at the water.

  "Anthony's here," Hawk said. He nodded toward the casino.

  "Blackjack?"

  "Un huh. He a guest here."

  We started toward the blackjack tables.

  "You know that for a fact?"

  Hawk looked at me.

  "Of course you do," I said.

  "It pays to have contacts."

  "You know you got a tail," Hawk said.

  "Little guy, big beezer, Panama hat," I said.

  "Un huh. You don't want to brace him?"

  "No. Let's let it play out." I said.

  "See what happens when he sees us with Anthony."

  "You figure he's from Gino?" Hawk said.

  "Or Julius, or Marty Anaheim, or all three, or Wayne Newton, for all I know. But I figure it's Anthony he's trying to find."

  In person Anthony was better-looking than his wedding picture.

  He was taller, more graceful. His nose was less pronounced. His eyes looked less beady. He was nicely dressed in a collarless white shirt buttoned to the neck, and a tropical-weight tan blazer that fit him well. He was standing at a $100 blackjack table, his face blank, watching the cards come out. Hawk and I separated as we approached and stood to either side, a little out of the game, spectators. There was nothing unusual about Anthony's play. He was as serious as any other hundred-dollar player. As I watched I counted cards for a while. Plus one for the low cards, minus one for the high ones, zero for the rest. After maybe half an hour I had a very low count, which meant that a lot of high cards had come out. That left a lot of low cards, which favored the dealer. Anthony looked at his watch, handed in his cards, picked up his chips, and left the table. Hawk and I followed him to the bar. He ordered a scotch and soda, and idly fed a dollar coin into one of the poker machines set into the bar. He won three dollars. He played it again and lost. Hawk sat down on one side of him, and I sat down on the other. He looked sideways at me, then at Hawk, and fed another coin into the machine.