Luscious Craving (29 page)

“But he’s been winning regularly, Al,” I said. “And he’s the only amateur left. That ought to tell us something.”

“Sure,” Al said at once. “It tells us he’s damn good at poker. No, save your breath,” he continued, as I sucked one in to argue. “We’re going to do it the way I say or I’m taking this straight to
Randolph
.”

I let the breath out slowly. “That’s hitting below the belt.”

“You started it.” Al snorted. “What the hell were you thinking, Candace?”

“You want me to say it?
Fine.
I wasn’t.” I put my head down in my hands.
It was worse than that
, I thought. I hadn’t wanted to. The not thinking aspect had been part of Michael Pressman’s appeal. So I had decided the rules didn’t have to apply to me.
News flash, Steele
, I thought.
The reason they’re rules is that they apply to everyone
.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“The same thing you’ve been doing,” Al replied. “Stay close to Michael Irons.”

“He may not be so happy to see me,” I said.

Once again, Al snorted. “How you fix things is up to you,” he said. “Just stay on him.”

“Make up your damned mind, Al,” I said.

Al’s lips gave a twitch. “That’s the Candace Steele I know and love. Now, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to go home to my wife.”

New Year’s Eve is exciting in Vegas. The casinos are filled to overflowing.
Plenty of gamblers, but also just plain people looking for someone to hook up with, so they don’t have to be alone at midnight.
Booze pours into glasses like cloudbursts in the desert. The staff is looser about letting people get drunk. Everyone has a good time, except those of us whose job it is to make sure they do.

At least I was out of my
I Dream of Jeannie
uniform. For the closing night of the tournament, I got to trade in my pink velvet harem outfit for a tight-fitting black tux. The jacket was plain; the vest, sequined. Hot pants, sheer black hose, and shoes with heels a quarter-mile high completed the ensemble. I was officially assigned to the tournament table, the final round of six, but I still had to elbow my way through the crowds.

“Hey, girlie!” a man old enough to be my grandfather called out. His age was the only reason I didn’t ignore him.
“How about a drink?”
He wagged a bill in my general direction.

I gave him a smile. “I’ll have the waitress who’s in charge of this area come over as quickly as possible, sir.” I would have to give Patti the heads up. I recognized the look in the old coot’s eyes. He wanted that bill to buy more than a drink and a smile.

Balancing a tray full of drinks, I continued on toward the tournament table. The whole area had been redone. Yards of billowing fabric gave the area the appearance of a Bedouin tent. Shiny steel posts were set at the corners of a square rigging to hold the brightest lights I had ever seen. The lights were being tested, first aimed at the table and then out toward the crowd gathering on the bleachers to one side of where the commentators would be sitting.

I set my drink tray down near where the players were gathered. Michael came over at once.

“Oh, Michael,” I said. “I am so sorry.”

“Save it,” he said,
then
gave me his crooked smile. “I thought about being pissed. Okay, I did more than think about it. Then I decided turnabout would be fair play. After the tournament I’ll be the one tying the knots.”

“I guess I have been pretty naughty,” I purred. And if
he
knew the first thing about fair play, I’d eat my sequined vest. Then I added: “I did use the phone call as leverage with my boss for that time off. I told him he owed me as he had interrupted a seriously intimate moment.”

“There, you see?” Michael asked. “All’s well that ends well.”

I’ll take you up on that
, I thought.

“Excuse me, Mr. Pressman,” one of the tournament floor managers said. “They’re going to start introducing the players in just a few moments.
If I could persuade you to join the others?”

“Sure thing,” Michael said. Before I realized what he intended, he leaned down, brushed a quick kiss across my lips. “You’re still my favorite good-luck charm,” he whispered.

Don’t count on it
, I thought.

I got out of the way as the director of the cable show called for silence, then I watched as Michael and the other five players were introduced. As I had earlier pointed out to Al, Michael was the only amateur remaining. All the others were pros. There was nothing I could do for the moment. Play commenced. I went back to the bar, requested the drinks the players had ordered. I could see the tournament from where I was standing because of the raised table. I also had a good view of the main doors. If I saw anything funny on the floor, I would call in an APB to Al on the headset hidden in my hair. Everyone on the floor was wired tonight.

It didn’t take long for the first guy at the poker table to go all in to the applause and cheers of the audience. Michael called him, there was a shocked silence,
then
a spontaneous burst of applause. The regular folks were really rooting
for their own
. The first one out got up from the table, shook hands all around. He definitely handled it like the pro he was. But as he passed me when I walked back toward the table, I could see the fury and frustration in his eyes.

“You!” called the director, waving to me vehemently. “We’re taking a break, so bring in the drinks now.”

“Yes, sir.”
I tightened my hold on the tray and took a steadying breath.

In my ear, I heard Al say, “Let’s see those nerves of steel, now.”

More like nerves of marshmallow
, I thought.

Michael and the other players were still seated at the table, chatting as if they were old pals. But I could see the way they were appraising one another.
Watching for any sign of weakness.
Michael had his glasses tilted up on his head, as did a couple of the others. One of the reasons the glasses were such a great idea is that lots of players wore them.

“Heineken?”
I asked the first player, who had long dark hair and a black cowboy hat. I set the glass on the ledge under the table and smiled as he put a hundred-dollar bill on my tray.
You are my new best friend
, I thought. Not just for the hundred, but for supplying the perfect prop for what had to happen next.

The player to the right of Michael had a Bud Light. I set it on the ledge,
then
straightened up. As I did, I let the hundred
flutter
to the ground. I made a dive for it, bobbling the tray. In the process, I clipped Michael sharply on the side of his head. His glasses soared off and hit the floor.

“Hey!” he cried. “Watch what you’re doing.”

“Oh, sir,” I gasped out. “I am so sorry.”

I stepped back quickly, as if to get out of his way, and heard a satisfying crunch. I had driven one of my impossibly high heels straight through the closest lens. I bent down, as if horrified, slid off my shoe,
then
yanked the glasses off, cracking the frame right across the bridge in the process.

“What have you done?” Michael’s eyes narrowed with fury. He pushed back his chair and started toward me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said once more. I was hopping up and down on one foot now, trying to put my shoe back on. The very picture of a
hapless,
startled cocktail waitress, who knows she’s seriously in the shit and will do anything to save her job.

“It was a terrible, terrible accident,” I said. “Let me get you another pair. I’ll go to the gift shop right now.”

The shoe restored to my foot, Michael’s glasses firmly in hand, I began to push my way through the crowd. Michael started after me, his hands balled into fists.

“Places!” I heard the director call. The last thing I saw was the cowboy offering Michael his own glasses, while Michael slowly sank down at the table. The commentators were having a field day, really playing up poker players’ superstitions. The cameras began to roll.

“Please tell me he’s losing,” I murmured, as I began to make my way not toward the gift shop, but toward the security office.

“Hold your horses,” I heard Al’s voice in my ear. “It may take some time.”

But it didn’t. It didn’t take any time at all. By the time I was halfway across the casino, I heard a roar from the tournament crowd. Michael Pressman, the amateur who had beaten all the odds, had just gone down. And I knew why. Chet’s theory about how the glasses worked had been right on the money.

“He’s out, Nerves,” Al said.
“Nicely done.
Now hurry it up. I’ve got a couple of the boys ready to head off Mr. Pressman,
aka
Mr. Irons, at the pass. I want you and the evidence you’re carrying to be there when we confront him.”

“My pleasure.
You got it.”

Finally
, I thought.
Score one for our side
. Al would ask Michael a few questions, which Michael probably wouldn’t answer. We would show him the evidence, and he might talk.
Or not.
We’d leave the rest to the cops. But we had nailed him, caught him red-handed. Or maybe that should be red-eyed. That was all that mattered. I reached the
slots,
let the happy shouts of all the big winners buoy me along.

Hey, wait a minute
, I thought. There were too many happy shouts.

Slots are a casino’s bread and butter. They are notorious money-eaters when it comes to those who play them. So what was all the happiness about? Before I could answer my own question, I heard voices in my earpiece.

“Al, Jones here. There’s something going on over here by the Round-Up slots. Everyone seems to be winning.”

“Al, Vogel here. Can you send someone from the computer room over here to the video poker? These slots are paying out like ATMs over here.”

More voices jumped in, canceling one another, so only bits and pieces came through. Putting my fingers over the earpiece, holding it more tightly in my ear as I tried to sort out the alerts, I looked around. Not
all
the machines were paying out. Some people were sitting there, stunned, as everyone around them won.

I watched a gray-haired woman turn to the young man beside her. She shoved a card into his machine’s slot and pressed the button. The wheels whirled and stopped on three 7s. Bells rang, joining the cacophony.
Top prize.
He pressed the button, and the same thing happened again.

When the gray-haired woman withdrew the card and put it in her own slot machine, she hit the button. The wheels rolled and stopped, and the bells started clanging on top of that machine, too.

The man grinned as he hit the button again on his machine. The wheels whirred…and he didn’t win.

It was the card!

The Magic Carpet Club card!

I knew instantly what was going on. Michael hadn’t been collecting cards to take me to dinner. Another one of his lies! He and his friends had collected a bunch of the cards and had gone from machine to machine, using the cards to reprogram the slot machines’ computers. Somehow they were able to change the coding on the magnetic tape on the back of the cards to change the odds of the slot machine. Basically, it was no more complicated than installing a computer virus.

Knowing there wasn’t anything I could do standing by the slot machines, I hurried toward the security office. Suddenly excited shouts came from the craps and blackjack tables, too.