Don't Look Twice (14 page)

H
auck ate by himself in the trendy Italian café, then stopped at the bar situated underneath an enormous lava rock formation outside the entrance to the casino. At a nearby table, two young couples who had clearly been having a few were cheering on a Knicks game on the overhead TV.

Hauck ordered a Booker's bourbon before heading up to his room.

His blood was still heated from his meeting with Raines and the bourbon dulled his rancor. Raines's smirk and the implication that what had happened to Sanger and Kramer was simply the way the “myriad interests” here dealt with their dirty laundry didn't sit well with him. That Hauck was dealing with forces much larger than he could confront. The consortiums that ran the place. The tribe. The state.

Law enforcement…
It would be difficult, he knew—more than difficult, maybe impossible—to tie Raines or the casino to Vega or DR-17. He could subpoena the tape Raines had shown him.
One of many,
he had said. He could look for Raines's number on Vega's cell phone.

But these people weren't exactly stupid.

He knew he would be pissing a lot of people off. Important
people. People in government. Not to mention Wendy Sanger. What he would do to her husband's reputation if he were to push this through.

What kind of man would risk all that?
he'd asked Raines, and the security man had asked him back,
I don't know. What kind of man are you, Lieutenant?

Hauck downed his bourbon, his attention shifting to the screen, where the Knicks were stumbling to another defeat in the final minutes.

He felt someone touch his arm.

He turned. It was Josie. The pretty dealer. No longer in uniform, but wearing a loose green halter top and a dangling chain around her neck, a pair of tight-fitting jeans. Which showed off the tantalizingly nice figure Hauck had suspected was there. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail with bangs falling loosely over the sides of her face. Two gold hoops in her left ear.

“Heading to the library?” Hauck grinned.

“Not tonight,” she said. “Semester break.” Her round eyes shone with some amusement. “My shift's over. Four to ten. Kills me. Sometimes Steve here spots me a rum and coke before I head out. I saw you sitting here…”

Hauck shifted over. “Sit down.”

“Sure…” Josie slipped in next to him. She nodded to the guy in the bolo tie behind the bar, who brought her her “usual.” Hauck ordered one last nightcap as well. He noted a scent on her he found really appealing.

“To higher education,” Hauck said, and tilted his drink.

“To financial aid.” She laughed, clinking his glass. She took a sip. “I don't think I have to say how incredibly nice that was of you. It probably doesn't come as a surprise that I don't regularly get three-thousand-dollar tips on the job.”

“It was his money,” Hauck said. “Your charming boss.”

“Not
my
boss,” Josie was quick to say.

“Let's just leave it that I think you earned it a bit more than me. Pretty nifty hands…Somehow I think you didn't exactly learn that in college. What are you studying, anyway?”

“Sociology.”

“Sociology!”
Hauck laughed. “Well, you've got quite a good little laboratory going for yourself here.”

“Six hours a day…” She shook her head and took a sip of her drink, her large brown eyes staying on him.

“So did you know him?” Hauck asked, taking a chance.

“Who?”

“The guy who worked here, who was killed. Keith Kramer?”

“Oh, that was horrible,” Josie said. “Sure. Everyone knew Keith. He worked my tables from time to time. A good guy. Smart. Funny. I think he was educated. Not the normal kind of guy you find around here. Always backed up my counts, never hassled me or gave me any trouble.”

“There's a story going around he might have been trying to cheat the house.”

“
Keith?
If there is, it's gone around me…So that's what you're up here for? Keith? Mr. Raines called you ‘lieutenant.' You're a cop, right?”

“I was a cop. I'm the head of detectives now. In Greenwich.”

“I was thinking you might have been FBI or something. But Feds are always married. That's a rule, you know. And I don't see a ring.”

Hauck reminded himself that he was on business up here, and a part of him was thinking maybe he should cut this conversation short and head back tonight, to avoid any complications.

Another part was enjoying hanging out with this pretty young thing.

“Divorced,” he said. They were straying a bit from false shuffles and Keith Kramer. “And almost twice your age…”

“No chance,” Josie said, sizing him up. “Anyway, you know what they say about age…Only matters when it comes to wine and cheese.”

Hauck laughed. “And right now I'm feeling a little more like an old Barolo than a Beaujolais…I think I'm going to head upstairs.” He signaled the bartender for the check.

Josie shrugged. “Your call.” There was a gleam in her eye. He felt her brush next to his arm. A charge of energy ran through him. He couldn't help it. When she leaned closer, Hauck caught an intriguing view of what was underneath. And it was nice.
“Sure?”

“Never sure.” Hauck sighed with a smile. He stood up and tossed a few bills on the counter to cover both drinks. “Just
steady
…You make sure you put those funds to good use.”

U
pstairs, Hauck unbuttoned his shirt, sat on the couch in the large room, and turned on the flat-screen TV. He flicked to ESPN. There was a college basketball game on, and Hauck went over to the minibar and took out one last bourbon and some water and sat down to watch the game.

His blood coursed.

His mind drifted to Karen, to the gulf that lay between them now. He needed to put that all behind him. Whatever was happening was happening. He flashed to Josie again, pausing over the glimpse of her breasts underneath her halter and the thought that something between them might have been fun.
Your call…
Maybe she was still at the bar. Maybe he should go back down there. He brought his feet up on the table and rested his head on his knees.

There was a knock at the door. Housekeeping, maybe, to turn down the bed. Hauck got up and cracked it open. “
Yeah?
”

It was Josie.

Staring up at him, with a steady, not-at-all innocent look that communicated something she knew they both felt, which needed no words. She pushed the bangs on her face out of her eyes.

“I was just making sure there was nothing you might have forgotten down there.”

“Like what?”

Josie shrugged. “Like second thoughts, maybe.”

He looked in her smoky eyes. “Are you really just working here while you're going to school?”

She stared back at him. “Are you really up here just looking into false shuffles?”

Hauck didn't reply, just felt this undeniable urge rise up in him and the hair on his arms rise as she brushed by him into the room.

“This is bad, you know,” Hauck said.

“Why?”

“I don't know.” He shrugged. “Just bad.”

“You know what they say about ‘bad,' don't you…” She came up to him, so close they were almost touching, and curled a smile. “Only matters in wine and cheese.”

Hauck looked at her, drew in the scent he found so intoxicating at the bar. He felt her arm go around his waist, the loose, breasts that she had been so willing to let him see pressed electrically against his bare chest. Everything he told to be quiet in himself sprang alive.

Josie's other hand draped across his cheek; she looked up at him and he kissed her. Her lips parted and her tongue gradually overcame the hesitancy of his indecision; his blood rose like a wave, surging against the feeling that he was doing something wrong to the person he loved…

Until he found his own hand sliding down the smooth curve of her back, inside the waist of her jeans. His breathing picking up and his foot shifting and the door to Room 3209 of the Pequot Woods Resort and Casino clicking shut.

H
auck opened his eyes the next morning. The light canted inside the shades, the slowly dawning sensation of what had taken place last night coming back to him like sun through a lifting fog.

Shit.

The clock read seven eighteen. He stirred. The covers were strewn haphazardly across the bed.
Oh, God, Ty, nice job.

He shot up. Josie was gone. Her clothes picked off the floor where they had been scattered in the haste that had overtaken them last night. It had been delicious. He let himself fall back against the pillow, drift back to thoughts of the dreamy night they had shared. Once he had let her in there was no turning back. He had taken her right up against the wall, against the African animal print that was shifted sideways now. Once from behind at the sink in the fancy bathroom. Then they went at it on the bed until they both fell asleep. Hauck placed his hands behind his head.

Maybe not the single most professional thing he had ever done on an investigation.

But, jeez, they were both adults. Well, at least one of them was.

And it
was
fun…He felt his cheeks stretch into a sheepish grin. Karen had pushed herself out of his life. He waited for the admonishment.

None came.

He got out of bed, shaved, and showered. He took his bag downstairs by ten of eight. Even fighting the slow jam of traffic that was bound to be going south on I-95, he ought to be at his desk by nine.

What then…?
The decisions he had to make came back to him.
Where do you take this, Ty…?

In the lobby, Hauck called for his car and stopped at the front desk to check out. An attractive Asian desk clerk named Randi waved him forward. Hauck put a credit card onto the counter. “Checking out of 3209.”

The desk clerk typed his room into the computer. She looked up and smiled. “Mr. Hauck, I see your room's been comped by the resort. You're all set.”

“Thanks, but I'd like to pay,” Hauck said. No way he was going to let the investigation be compromised or be indebted in any way to Raines. “It's okay, please…Just run me a bill.”

“I'm afraid I can't do that, Mr. Hauck,” the desk clerk said. “It's all been zeroed out.”

“Randi…” Hauck leaned close and said nicely, “You do whatever you have to do, put it all on a minibar tab if you like, but I need to pay for my room. How much is the standard weekday price?”

The desk clerk grew a little flustered. “I'd have to look that up…” She punched it into her computer. “Two hundred and eighty-nine dollars, but—”

“Ring it up,” Hauck said, pushing forward his card. “Charge me for whatever you like. Book it for tonight. It's inside the cancellation penalty window, isn't it?”

“Yes…”

“So that's fine.”

Confused, Randi printed off a bill, which Hauck signed, and he thanked her for understanding. He folded the receipt into his pocket and was about to head out to his car when she called him back.

“I almost forgot, this was left here for you, Mr. Hauck.”

She produced a large manila envelope, taped shut, his name on it, and handed it across the counter.

Hauck tucked it under his arm. “Thanks.”

He walked away, wondering if this was some kind of good-bye from Josie. He put down his bag and slit the envelope open.

The blood left his face.

He was staring at a series of black-and-white photos. Photos of himself. Last night.

With Josie.

In his hotel room. In the throes of what they were doing. At the wall. On the bed. Josie over him.

A stomach-turning nausea rolled over in his gut.

There was a note clipped to one of the photos. Handwritten. On the hotel's stationery. As he read it, Hauck's fists tightened. Raines's contemptuous grin flashed through his mind.

“Fortunately, as the saying goes—what happens at the Pequot Woods stays at the Pequot Woods, Lieutenant…”

Hauck crumpled the note in his fist. His temperature escalated through the roof. He felt the veins in his neck bulge with anger.

He ran back to Randi. “Where is Mr. Raines's office?” he asked.

She was with a customer. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Where's Raines's office?”
He knew his voice rang out too loudly, but he was barely able to control his rage.

“Up the stairs.” Randi pointed. “Second floor. Security. All the way down the hall.”

Hauck nodded, then bounded up the wide, red-carpeted stairway, leaving his bag sitting at the desk. His blood coursed with the torrent of just how stupid he'd been.

How could he have taken his eye off the ball so completely? Allowed himself to be played like some stupid rookie in heat? He flashed to Josie. The bit about what she was studying in school. A ripple of shame shot through him. She'd done her job well. He'd damn well let her. He should have seen it coming.

It had all been set up by Raines from the start.

On the second floor Hauck ran down the hall, passing the Flight Room, where he had met Raines yesterday afternoon. He didn't know how badly he had been compromised. Or whether Fitzpatrick would still support him. He was already on the fence.

But mostly, he wondered what it was these people had to hide to make them pressure him so strongly to back off the case.

At the end of the hall, Hauck came across a double door marked
SECURITY
. He pulled it open, and a secretary looked up at him from behind a desk. Hauck looked around the rooms for an office with Raines's name on it.

“Can I help you?” the secretary asked.

“Where's Raines?”

The middle-aged woman did a double take.

“Where's Joe Raines?” Hauck said again. He didn't identify himself. He could barely control himself. He didn't know what he would even do. Arrest him. That would blow everything.
Slug him.
Hauck's pulse was racing so out of control, he knew she must be thinking he was crazy.

“Sir, Mr. Raines isn't here at the moment…,” she said, probably pressing a button for assistance underneath her desk.

Hauck dropped his badge in front of her.

“He won't be in today,” the secretary said, surprised. “He's out of the office for the day. I don't know if there's anyone else who can help you, but—”

“You give him this,” Hauck said. His eyes were fiery with rage. He took a pen from the top of her desk and scratched out a few words on the back of Raines's crumpled note.

“You make sure he gets this—today!”

The secretary looked at the card, startled, and nodded. “I will.”

“Today.”

Hauck left the suite and stood, decompressing, in the second-floor hallway. It was probably better Raines wasn't there. He knew he had behaved stupidly. But more than that, he knew he was opening up a current that could no longer be controlled.

You keep digging,
Raines had said to him,
you have no idea the forces that are at work here…

Someone had ordered those deaths. Someone clearly wanted him off the case. Hauck went back down the stairs. His blood calmed.

You wanted to know what kind of man I am
…he had written on Raines's note.

I'm the kind who risks it all.