Hold ’Em Hostage (18 page)

I let it ring. And ring. And ring. As my heart pounded and pounded and pounded. My mouth went dry. What would happen if I didn't answer? What if it was Frank?

Finally, I picked up.

“Don't play with us, Miss Cooley. You won't like what happens when you do.”

“Maybe I want to find out if you're bluffing while I'm betting.”

“Cute card analogy. It won't be so cute when we send you your goddaughter's head in a box.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it made me believe it. Unquestionably. And I had asked for it. I blinked back tears. “Is she okay?” My voice wavered. I hated myself.

“She's alive.”

I breathed deeply for a few moments to regain my composure.

“This time we provide the cash, and you lose it all. It should improve your odds the next time you play.”

“It's heartwarming for you to be so considerate of me, but somehow I don't think that's your motivation. Losing all your money doesn't make any sense.”

“You don't understand, Miss Cooley, this doesn't have to make sense. You just have to do it. Don't go out for breakfast tomorrow, the money will be brought to your door in a room-service table. Go to the high-stakes room in Poseidon's, play at a table with a man wearing an emerald in his right ear. Lose every bit of our money, but take at least an hour and a half to do it.”

“Uh-huh. And then what?”

“And then wait for us to tell you what to do.”

“Where's Affie?”

“You don't need to know.”

I peered at the phone in my hand. The religious slap on the wrist was weird, but even the Sopranos went to church so I guessed Dragsnashark-tattooed gangbangers could too. I buried my head in my hands. What was I supposed to do now? I thought they were just using me to
make
money, but now I was supposed to
lose
their money? This puzzle had become a riddle with no answer. I needed Frank.

At the very least, I needed to know where to look for him. After I'd hung up the phone, sat down and contemplated the carpet for what seemed like hours, I finally made the call I'd been dreading.

“H
ave you ever considered that another player
might be framing you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked Joe. We sat in the suite, with our morning coffee, going through the leads he'd followed up to no avail, and my night at the table. I waited for him to expound on what seemed to be a popular theory.

“Well, it just seems strange that of the hundreds of visibly recognizable Hold 'Em players here for the Main Event, you'd be the one with a kidnapped goddaughter. You'd be the one with a knife in the felt and swimming with a dead body within twelve hours of the first deal. You are the one the good reverend decides to pick on. I mean, there are plenty of players who walk the line between right and wrong he could easily find to throw stones at. Heck, Owen Gibbs is an open devil worshipper. Why not him? Why not the guy who runs the Church of Texas Hold 'Em site—Father Ashley. He's here. No, instead it's nice but often raunchily dressed Bee Cool he chooses as his scapegoat. Why?”

“But why would another player want to do this to me?”

“You've risen in the ranks of Hold 'Em amateurs relatively quickly. Some might resent that.”

“With the advent of Internet play, lots of people have come from nowhere to land on the poker map.”

“Not a lot have gotten endorsements. Not a lot have a website with a million hits.”

I shrugged, wondering how he got that statistic when I didn't even know it. “I can't take credit for the website, Ingrid does that. And, a couple dozen free sunglasses isn't that big a deal.”

“They aren't paying you for the commercial?”

“Oh that, well yeah, but that came after all this drama at the Main Event.”

“And you
are
beautiful.”

I squirmed. “Not any more than many women who play Hold 'Em.”

He raised his eyebrows. I squirmed harder. I cleared my throat. “Really, what kind of reason is that to frame me?”

“You'd be surprised.” Joe paused for an awkward moment. “Okay,” he continued, dropping that subject, thank goodness. “Any enemies?”

I thought about the last two major tournaments I'd played. “Sure, but I think they are all either dead or in jail. Except maybe Denton Ferris, who I wouldn't call an enemy, exactly, just a weirdo.”

“He doesn't like you?”

“He doesn't like anybody.”

Ingrid burst through the door. “I can't find Smack anywhere.”

 

“W
hen is the last time you saw Jack?” I asked Ingrid,
after pouring her a glass of Perrier (she refused coffee—it was bad for her complexion) and making her sit down on the couch. She finally stopped hyperventilating. It had been fascinating to watch. Ingrid was such a control freak and I realized now that for the last year, I'd always seen her in her element—bossing people around. I'd never seen her when control had been snatched away. Add in the fact that she actually seemed to be in love with Jack and I was doubly amazed. I hadn't been convinced Ingrid possessed any deep emotion until now.

“Smack didn't come back to his apartment last night. He won't answer his phone. I've been to every poker room in town I can think of, but nobody's seen him.”

“That doesn't mean much. They don't see him when he is there.” I pointed out.

“I looked under the tables too.”

“Maybe he's with Frank.”

“I doubt it,” Ingrid said drily. I guess
everybody
thought Frank was curled up with a bottle somewhere.

I sighed. “Maybe he's with Ben.”

“Where's Ben?” Ingrid looked at Shana, who'd just come yawning out of the bedroom.

“He took off, determined to get that shark/snake/dragon tattoo and infiltrate the Medula.”

Ingrid buried her head in her hands for a few moments. With a huge sigh, she raised her gaze. You know, when I got frazzled I looked like I'd been pulled through a knothole backward then across the desert in the peak of summer by a crazed camel. Ingrid looked tragically beautiful. Her aquamarine eyes blinked liquidly with no trace of mascara streaks. Her flushed face added the perfect touch of pink to her perfect complexion. Life wasn't fair.

“Jack couldn't do that—get tattooed and run with a gang.” Ingrid breathed. “Could he?”

I shook my head to reassure her, but frankly I wasn't sure. Watching Ingrid wring her hands, completely out of character, I realized this trip had shifted us all out of our elements. No one seemed to be acting themselves. Jack, SAD sufferer, could have dyed his hair pink, joined the national Mary Kay tour and been speaking to thousands at conventions around the country for all I could guess.

“Don't panic, Ingrid,” I finally said. “Aside from reporting him as a missing person, which I think is premature, we have to just wait and hope he's busy. That's what I'm doing with Frank.”

Well…that wasn't exactly precise, but she didn't have to know what I'd done. Not yet, anyway.

“I like action,” Ingrid said, a little of her bossy self returning. “I need something to do.”

“Redo the website.”

“Too late, already did that this morning.”

“It's still morning.” I pointed out. “When did you do it?”

“Four.”

I watched her blank face sympathetically. “Couldn't sleep because you were worried about Jack, huh?”

Ingrid drew back with a strange look on her face. “I always get up at four. No one needs more than four hours of sleep.”

“Of course.” I remembered why I hated her besides her looks, the woman made me feel like a first-class slug.

“So? What else can I do? I can't sit here thinking about not thinking about Smack.”

“Okay,” I said. “While I go lose the bad guys' money at Poseidon's, you and Shana could go to the sheriff's department ostensibly to look for your “sister” and really find out what those girls in the raid on the front page of the newspaper were really doing.”

Ingrid frowned, obviously well versed with the entire newspaper in the six hours she'd been awake but not following my line of reasoning. “What do you mean? They were young whores looking for johns.”

“I don't think so. Two of those girls hit me up for an autograph and then money to get home. They might be teenage con artists, looking to do anything to score cash, but it feels like there's more to it than that.”

Shana paced next to the window, watching the carpet intently.

“Are you going to be okay doing this?” I asked, wondering if the teenage girls far away from home wouldn't tweak her heartstrings like they did mine.

“I'm not gonna lie, it'll be difficult, but, like Ingrid, I'd rather be doing something than nothing. You know that, Bee. I thought the longer she'd been gone, the easier it would be to tolerate, but I was wrong. It's like rubbing and rubbing a raw wound.”

I walked over and wrapped her in a strong hug. “You go investigate. Maybe by helping these girls, you can help ours.”

 

A
n hour later, dressed in my Ingrid-ordered day-off
fashion disaster number two—a folk-print cotton nightgown with a yolk neck and fringy hem, cinched in with a wraparound-three-times metallic skinny belt that brought the dress to mid-thigh, toe-cleavage-revealing ballerina flats in grass green, earthy red ostrich tassel bag and gypsy earrings—I was still waiting for room service, half hoping that it wouldn't show up. Surely the bad guys wouldn't hold me responsible for a letdown on their end?
Duh.
Of course they could. They were ruthless killers, kidnappers, extorters. What was a small bit of unfair blame? My mouth went dry, and my heart pounded. Should I call to make sure room service had an order for me or would that mess it up?

At the knock a few minutes later, I flew to the door and pulled it open, yanking Joe off his feet as he slid Frank's key card in the lock. As his caiman Noconas scrambled for purchase, I grabbed the belt loop of his Wranglers to steady him. Joe was six foot three inches, two hundred and twenty pounds of pure muscle. I was a hundred and something pounds (I'm not telling you!) of semifit flab. Instead of fixing the balance, I distorted it worse. I ended up toppling on top of Joe as he bounced off the couch and hit the carpet.

Joe laughed as he helped me up. “Bee, sometimes I think you could win a war by accident.”

“Great compliment, thanks.” Joe was a nice, straightforward guy with a good sense of humor and once again I willed myself to fall in love with him instead of complicated, skeletons-in-the-closet Frank. It wasn't working. Dammit. “At least you didn't say lose the war.”

“Well, when it's by accident, it could probably go either way.”

“You should have shut up while you were still ahead,” I warned him.

I offered him something to drink and he opted for a hot cup of tea. As it brewed, I caught him up on everything except my recent visit with Trankosky. He didn't offer anything, but I didn't expect him to. Frank hated when I investigated and I'm sure he instructed Joe to tell me nothing if not under duress. I considered telling him about the Trankosky conversation to barter for what he had, but something about the innuendo made me hesitate.

As if Joe read my mind, he asked: “Bee, have you considered the police could be framing you?”

“What? The police? The Clark County guys?”

“Come on, Bee, there was a cop behind your last brush with crime in Vegas.” Joe nudged my memory, which didn't need much of a nudge. Blood, guts and gore do that to a person, especially a peace-loving individual such as myself.

“He was a dirty cop, though.”

“So? You don't think there are others? Don't tell me you're that naive.”

I was actually embarrassed to admit it hadn't occurred to me that the cops might be in on the drama unfolding around me. Yes, I'd considered I wasn't number one on their hit parade, but I hadn't thought they might be stacking the deck on purpose against me. Was that why Trankosky was trying to throw suspicion at my poker colleagues—so I wouldn't look at
his
colleagues?

Or, worse, at him?

Maybe my first impression had been right.

Or maybe this was just muddying the water, as Aunt Hilda would say.

“But what would their motivation be?”

“Motivation behind most things boils down to money, power or sex.”

“I suppose someone is pocketing all the money I made them last night. I suppose they could ask for all my WSOP winnings in exchange for Affie. But, what about losing all the money? What about that? If that is their motivation.”

Joe shrugged.

“And as for sex,” I mused, “I just can't see how that one would make sense.”

“Trankosky has the hots for you,” Joe observed drily.

My face flushed hot. I fought the urge to fan myself. “I don't think so.”

“You don't need to
think
. You know so.” He waved at my face. “Apparently.”

Joe was ticked off and not hiding it well. Frank was his best friend as well as his boss. I didn't want to let him get to me. I had nothing to feel guilty about. I couldn't help that the cop flirted with me. I tried to cloak myself in my infamous cool. After a deep breath or two, I'd tamed the blush. “You've been following me when I don't know it?”

Joe looked straight at me, unapologetic. “Someone has to. Boss' orders. Sometimes our surveillance guy has to have a break.”

“Well, sex just doesn't make sense in your scenario. Unless the cops are planning on passing me around the jailhouse, how good could it be for them with me behind bars? You think I'm the type to try to trade sex for cop favors?”

“No, Bee I don't think that,” Joe said quietly, bowing his head a bit remorsefully.
Good.
“A better scenario is he's setting you up so you feel vulnerable and scared and he steps in as a savior. Superman to the rescue. He makes all the smoke he created go away by putting out his own fire. Makes your world right again.”

Maybe I could help you, maybe I could help keep the brass from pushing this investigation so hard.
Uh-oh. What if Joe were right? Just when I thought I might have someone else to trust—was he using me to get me?

“What about power?” I changed the subject.

Joe threw me a quick look. He knew I was trying to distract him. “Maybe we should look at who the new sheriff of Clark County is. Or who wants to be sheriff.”

“What will that prove?”

“The eyes of the world are on Vegas right now with the most internationally popular game's biggest tournament underway. What better time to create a crime, one that has all the best elements of a movie—sexy game, sexier woman, innocent child, religious zealot, violent murders and millions of dollars—and then solve it to get the job of your dreams.”