Secret of the Seventh Sons

by Cooper, Glenn

  Sam quickly dealt and gave Peter a strong nineteen, the insurance guy fourteen, the doc seventeen, the kid twelve, and the blonde a pair of jacks—twenty. The dealer was showing a six. She’s a lock, Peter thought. High count, dealer probably draws and busts, she’s sitting pretty with her twenty.

  “I’m going to split these, Sam,” she said.

  Sam blinked and nodded as she put up another $3,500.

  Holy shit! Peter was dumbstruck. Who splits tens?

  Unless?

  Peter and the doc stood pat, the kid drew a six and stayed on eighteen. The insurance man busted out with a ten and spat out in disgust, “Son of a bitch!”

  The blonde held her breath and clenched her fists until Sam dealt her a queen on one hand and a seven on the other. She clapped and exhaled simultaneously.

  The dealer flipped his hole card, revealing a king, and drew a nine.

  Bust.

  Amidst her squeals, Sam paid out the table, shoving seven grand in chips her way.

  Peter hastily excused himself and started for the men’s room in turmoil. His mind was grinding. What am I thinking? he said to himself. This is none of my business! Let it go!

  But he couldn’t. He was overwhelmed with moral outrage—if he didn’t take advantage, why should they?

  He pivoted, went back toward the cluster of blackjack tables and made eye contact with the pit boss, who nodded and smiled at him. Peter sidled up and said, “Hey, how’re you doing?”

  “Just fine, sir. How can I help you this evening?”

  “You see that kid at the table over there and the girl?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They’re counting.”

  The corner of the pit boss’s mouth twitched. He’d seen a lot but he’d never seen one player turn in another. What was the angle? “You sure about this?”

  “I’m positive. The kid’s counting and signaling her.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll handle it.”

  The pit boss used his two-way to call the floor manager, who in turn got security to play back the tape of the table’s last couple of hands. In retrospect the blonde’s stepped-up bet did look suspicious.

  Peter had returned to the table just as a phalanx of uniformed security men arrived and laid hands on the kid’s shoulders.

  “Hey, what the fuck!” the kid shouted.

  Players at other tables stopped and stared.

  “You two know each other?” the pit boss asked.

  “I never saw her in my life! That’s the goddamn truth!” the kid wailed.

  The blonde said nothing. She just picked up her pocketbook, gathered her chips, and tossed a $500 tip to Sam.

  “See you, fellows,” she said as she was led away.

  The pit boss made a hand signal and Sam was replaced by another dealer.

  The doc and the insurance guy looked at Peter with glazed astonishment. “What the hell just happened here?” the insurance man asked.

  “They were counting,” Peter said simply. “I turned them in.”

  “No you did not!” the insurance guy howled.

  “Yeah, I did. It ticked me off.”

  The doc asked, “How’d you know?”

  “I knew.” He felt uncomfortable with the attention he was getting. He wanted to scram.

  “I’ll be damned,” the insurance guy said, shaking his head. “I’m going to buy you a drink, friend. I’ll be damned.” His blue eyes sparkled as he reached into his wallet and pulled out a business card. “Here, take my card. My business runs on computers. If you need any work, just call me up, all right?”

  Peter took the card: NELSON G. ELDER, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, DESERT LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY.

  “That’s very nice of you, but I have a job,” Peter muttered, his voice barely audible above the repetitive melodies and clanging of the slots.

  “Well, if things change, you’ve got my number.”

  The pit boss approached the table. “Look everyone, I apologize for what happened here. Mr. Elder, how are you tonight, sir? All of you are eating and drinking on the house tonight and I got tickets to any show you want. Okay? Again, I’m very sorry.”

  “Sorry enough to reverse my losses tonight, Frankie?” Elder asked.

  “I wish I could, Mr. Elder, but that I cannot do.”

  “Oh, well,” Elder told the table, “you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

  The pit boss tapped Peter on the shoulder and whispered, “The manager wants to meet you.” Peter blanched. “Don’t worry, it’s all good.”

  Gil Flores, the floor manager of the Constellation, was sleek and urbane, and in his presence Peter felt scruffy and self-conscious. His armpits were damp, he wanted to leave. The manager’s office was utilitarian, equipped with multiple flat-screen panels getting live feeds from the tables and slots.

  Flores was drilling down, trying to figure out the hows and the whys. How did a civilian spot something his guys didn’t and why did he turn them in? “What am I missing here?” Flores asked the timid man.

  Peter took a sip of water. “I knew the count,” Peter admitted.

  “You were counting too?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a counter? You’re admitting to me you’re a counter?” Flores’s voice was rising.

  “I count, but I’m not a counter.”

  Flores’s polish rubbed off. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “I keep the count—it’s kind of a habit, but I don’t use it.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  Peter shrugged. “I’m sorry but it’s the truth. I’ve been coming here for two years and I’ve never varied my bets. I make a little, lose a little, you know.”

  “Unbelievable. So you knew the count when this shithead does what?”

  “He said he was hexed. The count was thirteen, you know, a code word for thirteen. She joined the table when the count was high. I think he dropped a swizzle stick to signal her.”

  “So he counts and decoys, the chick bets and collects.”

  “They probably have a code word for every count, like ‘chair’ for four, ‘sweet’ for sixteen.”

  The phone rang and Flores answered it and listened before saying, “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, Peter Benedict, it’s your lucky day,” Flores announced. “Victor Kemp wants to see you up in the penthouse.”

  The view from the penthouse was dazzling, the entire Strip snaking toward the dark horizon like a flaming tail. Victor Kemp came in and extended his hand, and Peter felt his chunky gold rings when their fingers entwined. He had black wavy hair, a deep tan and gleaming teeth—the sleek, easy looks of a headliner at the best club in town. His suit was a shimmery blue that caught the light and played with it, a fabric that seemed unearthly. He sat Peter down in his cavernous living room and offered him a drink. While a maid fetched a beer, Peter noticed that one of the wall monitors at the far end of the room had a shot of Gil’s office. Cameras everywhere.

  Peter took the beer and considered doffing his cap but kept it on—damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

  “An honest man is the noblest work of God,” Kemp said suddenly. “Alexander Pope wrote that. Cheers!” Kemp clinked his wineglass against Peter’s beer flute. “You have lifted my spirits, Mr. Benedict, and for that, I thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Peter said cautiously.

  “You seem like a very clever guy. May I ask what you do for a living?”

  “I work with computers.”

  “Why am I not surprised to hear that! You spotted something an army of trained professionals missed, so on one hand I’m pleased you are an honest man but on another I am displeased at my own people. Have you ever considered working in casino security, Mr. Benedict?”

  Peter shook his head but said, “That’s the second job offer I’ve had tonight.”

  “Who else?”

  “A guy at my blackjack table, the CEO of an insurance company.”

  “Silver hair, slim fella in his
fifties?”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be Nelson Elder, a very good guy. You’re having quite a night. But, if you’re happy with your job, I’ve got to find some other way to thank you.”

  “Oh. No. That’s not necessary, sir.”

  “Don’t sir me! You call me Victor and I will reciprocate by calling you Peter. So, Peter, this is like you just found a genie in a bottle but because this isn’t a fairy tale you only get one wish and it’s got to be, you know, realistic. So what’s it going to be, you want a girl, you want a credit line, some movie star you’d like to meet?”

  Peter’s brain was capable of processing a tremendous amount of information swiftly. In a few seconds of thought he worked through various scenarios and outcomes and out popped a proposition that, for him, was high impact.

  “Do you know any Hollywood agents?” he asked, his voice quavering.

  Kemp laughed. “Sure I do, they all come here! You’re a writer?”

  “I wrote a script,” he said sheepishly.

  “Then I’m gonna set you up with Bernie Schwartz, who’s one of the biggest guys at ATI. Will that work for you, Peter? Does that float your boat?”

  Joy-soaked, he exulted, “Oh yeah! That would be unbelievable!”

  “Okay, then. I can’t promise you he’ll like your script, Peter, but I will promise you that he’ll read it and meet with you. Done deal.”

  They shook hands again. On his way out, Kemp put his hand on Peter’s shoulder in a fatherly way. “And don’t be counting cards on me now, Peter, you hear? You’re on the side of righteousness.”

  “Isn’t that interesting,” Bernie said. “Victor Kemp is Las Vegas. He’s a prince of a man.”

  “So what about my script?” Peter asked, then stopped breathing to await the answer.

  Crunch time.

  “Actually, Peter, the script, as good as it is, needs a bit of polishing before I could send it out. But here’s the bigger thing. This is a big budget film, you got here. You got a train blowing up and a lot of special effects. These kind of action films are getting harder and harder to make unless they’ve got a built-in audience or franchise potential. And you’ve got a terrorism angle which is the real killer. Nine/eleven changed everything. I can tell you that very few of my projects that got cancelled back in ’01 have been resurrected. Nobody wants to make a terrorism picture anymore. I can’t sell it. I’m sorry, the world has changed.”

  Exhale. He felt light-headed.

  Roz came in. “Mr. Schwartz, your next appointment is here.”

  “Where’s the time gone!” Bernie sprang to his feet, which made Peter levitate too. “Now, you go and write me a script about high-stakes gambling and card counters and throw in some sex and laughs and I promise I’ll read that. I’m so happy we were able to meet, Peter. You give my regards to Mr. Kemp. And listen, I’m glad you drove. Personally, I won’t fly anymore, at least commercial.”

  When Peter got back to his small ranch house in Spring Valley that night there was an envelope sticking out from under his welcome mat. He tore it open and read the handwritten letter under the porch light.

  Dear Peter,

  I’m sorry you struck out with Bernie Schwartz today. Let me make it up to you. Come over to Room 1834 at the hotel tonight at ten.

  Victor

  Peter was tired and dispirited but it was a Friday night and he had the weekend to recover.

  The check-in desk at the Constellation had a room key waiting for him and he went straight up. It was a big two-bedroom suite with a great view. The coffee table in the living room sported a fruit basket and a bottle of iced Perrier-Jouet. And another envelope. There were two cards inside, one a voucher for $1,000 of merchandise in the Constellation shopping plaza and the other a $5,000 line at the casino.

  He sat down on the sofa, stunned, and looked down onto the neon landscape.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in!” he called out.

  A female voice: “I don’t have a key!”

  “Oh, sorry,” Peter said, sprinting for the door, “I thought it was housekeeping.”

  She was gorgeous. And young, almost girlish. A brunette with an open, fresh face, firm ivory flesh pouring out of a clingy black cocktail dress.

  “You must be Peter,” she said, shutting the door behind her. “Mr. Kemp sent me to say hello.” Like many in Vegas, she was from somewhere else—her accent had a hillbilly twang, dainty and musical.

  He blushed so brightly his skin looked like it was made of red plastic. “Oh!”

  She slowly walked toward him, backing him up toward the sofa. “My name is Lydia. Am I okay?”

  “Okay?”

  “If you’d prefer a guy, that’s cool. Didn’t know for sure.” She had a charming ditziness about her.

  His voice got squeaky from laryngeal constriction. “I don’t like guys! I mean, I like girls!”

  “Well, good! ’Cause I’m a girl,” she purred with practiced artifice. “Why don’t you sit yourself down and open that bottle of champagne, Peter, while we figure out the kind of games you’d like to play.”

  He reached the sofa as his knees were buckling and went down hard on his rump. His brain was swimming in a sea of juices—fear, lust, embarrassment—he’d never done anything like this before. It seemed so silly, yet…

  Then, “Hey, I’ve seen you before!” Now Lydia was genuinely excited. “Yeah, I’ve seen you tons of times! It just hit me!”

  “Where? At the casino?”

  “No silly! You probably don’t recognize me because I’m not in that stupid uniform. My day job is at the reception desk at McCarran Airport, you know—the E.G. and G terminal.”

  The rouge drained from his face.

  This day was too much for him. Too much.

  “Your name’s not Peter! It’s Mark something. Mark Shackleton. I’m good with names.”

  “Well, you know how names are,” he said shakily.

  “I get it! Hey, none of my beeswax! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, honey. If you want to know the truth, my name’s not Lydia.”

  He was speechless as he watched her strip off her black dress, showing all her black lacy gear underneath, talking a mile a minute as she went. “That is so cool! I’ve always wanted to speak to one of you guys! I mean how crazy must it be to commute to Area 51 every day. I mean it’s like so top secret it basically makes me hot!”

  His mouth fell open a little.

  “I mean I know you’re not allowed to talk about it but please, just nod if we’ve really got UFOs we’re studying out there cause that’s what everybody says!”

  He tried to keep his head still.

  “Was that a nod?” she asked. “Were you nodding?”

  He composed himself enough to say, “I can’t say anything about what goes on there. Please!”

  She looked bummed then brightened up and started to work again. “Okay! That’s cool. Tell you what, Peter,” she said, swinging her hips, slowly approaching the sofa, “I’ll be your personal UFO tonight—unidentified fucking object. How would that be?”

  JUNE 23, 2009

  NEW YORK CITY

  Will had a devastating hangover, the kind that felt like a weasel had woken up warm and cozy inside his skull then panicked at its confinement and tried to scratch and bite its way out through his eyes.

  The evening had begun benignly enough. On his way home he stopped at his local dive, a yeasty smelling cave called Dunigan’s, and downed a couple of pops on an empty stomach. Next up, the Pantheon Diner, where he grunted at the heavily stubbled waiter who grunted back at him and without exchanging any fully formed phrases brought him the same dish he ate two to three days a week—lamb kebabs and rice, washed down, of course, with a couple of beers. Then before decamping to his place for the night he paid his wobbly respects to his friendly package store and picked up a fresh half gallon of Black Label, pretty much the only luxury item to adorn his life.

  The apartment was small and
spartan, and stripped of Jennifer’s feminizing touches, a truly bleak uninteresting piece of real estate—two sparse white-walled rooms with shiny parquet floors, meager views of the building across the street, and a few thousand dollars’ worth of generic furniture and rugs. Truth be told, the apartment was almost too small for him. The living room was fourteen by seventeen, the bedroom ten by twelve, the kitchen and bathroom each the size of a good closet. Some of the criminals he had put away for life wouldn’t see the place as a major upgrade. How had he put up with sharing the flat with Jennifer for four months? Whose bright idea was that?

  He hadn’t intended to drink himself stupid but the heavy full bottle seemed to hold so much promise. He twisted off the top, cracking its seal, then hoisted it by its built-in handle and glugged a half tumbler of scotch into his favorite whiskey glass. With the TV droning in the background he sofa-drank, steadily sinking into a deep dark hole as he thought about his effing day, his effing case, his effing life.

  Notwithstanding his reluctance to take on the Doomsday case, the first few days had been, in fact, rejuvenating. Clive Robertson was killed right under his nose and the audacity and perplexity of the crime electrified him. It reminded him of the way big cases used to make him feel, and the kicky pulses of adrenaline agreed with him.

  He’d immersed himself in the tangle of facts, and though he knew that epiphanous moments were the stuff of fiction, had a powerful urge to drill down and discover something that had been missed, the overlooked link that would tie together two murders, then a third, then another, until the case was cracked.

  The distraction of important work had been as soothing as butter on a burn. He started by running hot, pounding the files, pushing Nancy, exhausting both of them in a marathon of days bleeding into nights bleeding into days. For a while he actually took Sue Sanchez’s words to heart: Okay, this would be his last big case. Let’s ride this sucker out and retire with a big old bang.

  Crescendo.

  Decrescendo.

  Within a week he’d been burnt out, spent and dispirited. Robertson’s autopsy and toxicology reports made no sense to him. The seven other cases made no sense to him. He couldn’t get any feeling for who the killer was or what gratification he was getting from the murders. None of his initial ideas were panning out. All he could fathom was a tableau of randomness, and that was something he had never seen in a serial killer.