Cash Plays

by Cordelia Kingsbridge

  “You know I don’t like to be summoned,” Volkov said to Williams.

  Unlike his cousin, who had a classic American West Coast twang, Volkov spoke with a heavy Russian accent. He had one arm around a stunning young black man who defined the word twink, all slim hips and big beautiful eyes.

  “I know, sorry, sorry,” Williams said, waving his hands. “I just wanted you to meet a friend of Jess’s from church. He’s one of yours—you know.” He made an ambiguous, not-quite-offensive hand gesture.

  Volkov gave him one slow blink that spoke volumes of his exasperation before offering a hand to Dominic. “You must forgive my cousin. He means well, yes? Ignorance, not cruelty. One step at a time.”

  While Williams sputtered indignantly, Dominic laughed and shook Volkov’s massive hand. “It’s not a problem.”

  “Sergei Volkov.”

  “Michael Greene. Nice to meet you.”

  “And this is my sweet Rocco,” Volkov said, indicating his . . . boyfriend? Pet?

  Rocco beamed up at Dominic from where he was snuggled against Volkov’s side. He seemed perfectly content and at ease, as opposed to Jessica, who looked like she’d rather be shark-diving with an open wound.

  “How are you enjoying your visit?” Volkov asked.

  “It’s fantastic,” Dominic said without hesitation. “Even better than I expected. Looks like everyone’s having a great time.”

  Volkov bowed his head graciously. “You come alone? I can get you a boy. My Rocco has many beautiful friends. Not as beautiful as him, of course . . .” He brushed the backs of his fingers over Rocco’s cheek, and Rocco nuzzled into the caress like a kitten. “But very pretty, very eager to please. Reasonable rates.”

  Dominic was being offered a rentboy by a Russian mobster in an underground casino. What. The. Fuck.

  “Thank you for offering, but I have to pass,” he said, keeping his tone light and genial. “I have a partner I’m very much committed to.”

  “Ah!” Volkov clapped his shoulder with what appeared to be genuine pleasure. “So you have your own sweet little morsel. Why you don’t bring him?”

  Dominic imagined Volkov calling Levi a sweet little morsel to his face and swallowed the borderline hysterical laugh crawling up the back of his throat. “He’s not a fan of gambling.”

  “Smart boy. But you—you like to play, yes? What’s your game?”

  Dominic froze.

  “Not craps,” Volkov said thoughtfully, scanning him up and down. “Blackjack, maybe. But you look like man of skill. Poker?”

  In truth, Dominic was an equal-opportunity gambler. Table games, slot machines, sports betting, even scratch-off lottery tickets—if there was an element of risk and the outcome was uncertain, it worked for him. But if someone put a gun to his head and told him he could only gamble one way for the rest of his life, he’d choose poker.

  He glanced at Jessica. Williams was plastered up against her back, kissing her neck and murmuring into her ear. She tolerated it, watching Dominic from the corner of her eye.

  Volkov’s hand landed heavily on Dominic’s shoulder. “Come. I will get you into a game.”

  “I haven’t paid for my drink,” Dominic said in a desperate last-ditch attempt to stop careening down this slippery slope.

  “On the house.”

  “I doubt I have enough cash on me for the buy-in—”

  “I will start you off. Come, come.”

  Jessica had covered for Dominic by saying she’d invited him here. If he resisted more strenuously, he’d cast suspicion not just on himself but on her as well.

  He let himself be pulled from the barstool and escorted through the aisles, his ears ringing and his vision tunneling as he struggled to breathe. He had to find a way out of this that didn’t endanger Jessica. Fake an emergency, or . . . or . . .

  His brain, usually so good at spitting out creative solutions, came up empty. Because he didn’t want a way out of this.

  He wanted to gamble.

  He blinked and realized they’d stopped by a poker table that had just finished a hand. Volkov was speaking to the dealer, his grip still tight on Dominic’s shoulder.

  Dominic was used to being the biggest person in any given room. He could count on one hand the number of times in his adult life he’d been around men who were both taller and broader than him, and it always made him uneasy. He wasn’t enjoying it any more now that said man was a powerful crime boss.

  “Phone call for you, Mr. Volkov,” said a man who approached them from the other side. He was Latino, like the guard upstairs—though far more elegantly dressed, as suited the different environment.

  “I’m busy.”

  “It’s Ms. Park, sir.”

  Volkov’s demeanor shifted, his back straightening and his eyes darkening. He nodded, then turned to Dominic and said, “You must excuse me. Everything has been arranged here for you. Please enjoy yourself.”

  “I—”

  Volkov pulled out an empty chair and guided him into it. Dominic sat down hard.

  “Good luck, Mr. Greene.” Volkov smiled, slapped his back, and whisked Rocco away before Dominic could respond.

  The Latino man followed them, and as preoccupied as Dominic was, he wasn’t so distracted that he didn’t notice the tattoo on the side of the man’s neck.

  A vicious hornet poised to strike: the symbol of Los Avispones.

  Dominic tamped down any visible reaction. Los Avispones and the Slavic Collective working together in an illegal casino? That was all kinds of shady. And the man had said Ms. Park was on the phone—an extremely common surname, and there were probably hundreds if not thousands of Parks in Las Vegas, but there was only one Ms. Park Dominic knew of who could make a man like Sergei Volkov react the way he had.

  His thoughts were interrupted when a server placed a small tray of chips in front of him. He stared at the gaily-colored discs the way he would a venomous snake, every other concern in his mind wiped clean.

  “The game is pot-limit Omaha,” the dealer said as she shuffled the cards. “Small blind is five dollars and big blind is ten.”

  The two players to her left put in the blinds, the starting bets that ensured some heft to the pot, and the dealer began passing cards clockwise. Dominic looked over his shoulder.

  Jessica and Williams were still canoodling at the bar, completely wrapped up in each other; Volkov was nowhere to be seen. Dominic could probably make some excuse now, leave his chips untouched, and get away clean.

  If he did that, though, his cover would be irrevocably blown. He’d have to hand the Miller case over to another PI at McBride. Worse, he’d have to explain why. He’d never find out what was going on here. And there was no telling how the consequences would affect Jessica.

  “Mr. Greene, is everything all right?” the dealer asked, jerking his attention back to the table. The others were all waiting for him impatiently.

  “Uh . . . yeah, fine.”

  Dominic swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and reached one trembling hand toward his cards.

  Sometime before dawn, Dominic lurched through his apartment door in a stupor. He barely managed to disarm the wireless alarm in time, and engaged the various locks on autopilot. Ignoring Rebel’s energetic greeting, he made a beeline for the sideboard in the living room, where he grabbed the Knob Creek he kept there for Levi.

  He unscrewed the cap and drank straight from the bottle, downing gulp after burning gulp of bourbon until his eyes stung and his throat was on fire. Only then did he lower the bottle, coughing and gasping for air.

  He had no idea what time it was. He didn’t even remember driving home.

  What he did remember was every microscopic detail of every single hand he’d played that night for hours on end, only folding when the casino had closed down and politely kicked him out. He remembered every card, every bet, every decision, because he couldn’t stop reliving them. His mind raced in obsessive circles, reviewing the strategies he’d used, flushing him with pride
one moment when he remembered outbluffing an opponent, only to plunge him into self-reproach seconds later with the memory of a hand gone bad and what he could have done if he’d just—

  “Fuck.” Dominic smacked the heel of his free hand against his forehead. “Stop.”

  He was still swimming in the kaleidoscopic mix of emotions that made gambling so addictive for him, the high he’d chased for years while his life collapsed around him like a house pulled into a sinkhole. The only thing he wanted was to go back out and keep gambling.

  Two years of arduous, exhausting abstinence, and now it was like he’d never stopped gambling at all.

  “Goddamn it!” He spun around and threw the bottle of Knob Creek against the far wall. It exploded against the kitchen cabinets, spraying glass and bourbon in every direction.

  Collapsing to the floor, he let his head thump back against the sideboard.

  Rebel, who had been watching from an uneasy distance, whined in the back of her throat. She paced from side to side, looking between Dominic and the direction he’d thrown the bottle, then padded toward the kitchen to investigate—the kitchen that was now littered with shards of broken glass.

  “No!” he said, snapping out of his funk. “Rebel, come.”

  She changed direction immediately. He stroked a hand down her back, mumbling reassurances under his breath, and she butted her head against his before licking his face.

  God, he had to call Levi. He needed—he needed—

  No, fuck, he couldn’t do that. How was he supposed to look Levi in the eye and tell him what he’d done? He’d given in so easily. How could Levi respect him, knowing how weak he was?

  Dominic tilted onto his side, lying down right on his living room floor. Rebel lay with him, and he wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in the scruff of her neck.

  It was just one slip. One tiny slip, and if that was all it was, Levi never had to know. Dominic had quit gambling once, and he could do it again.

  No problem.

  Hours later, he was still curled up with Rebel on the floor, silently shaking.

  Levi sipped his coffee, distracted once more from his computer by the blank, dark screen of his cell phone. He looked up in time to catch Martine watching him with a slowly spreading grin, but he scowled at her before she could crack a joke.

  He’d texted Dominic a couple of times this morning, but Dominic had never responded. He hadn’t heard from Dominic all last night either.

  They didn’t live in each other’s back pockets, so he hadn’t thought anything of it at first. But now it was almost 11 a.m. and he was starting to worry.

  Annoyed with himself, he tossed the phone into his desk drawer and resolutely returned to work. Five minutes of getting nothing done later, he groaned and pulled it back out, to the sound of a low snicker from Martine. Maybe he should call Dominic’s office number at McBride.

  He was thumbing through his contacts to do just that when a message from Dominic popped up.

  Sorry. Long night. Call you later.

  Levi’s brow creased. It wasn’t like Dominic to be so brusque, and coming on the heels of his extended radio silence, it was even more suspicious. Levi decided to call him anyway.

  Before he could do that, a second text came through. Love you, it said, followed by the heart-eyes emoji.

  Levi smiled. What a sappy idiot.

  “If you’re going to sext at work, the least you could do is share some details,” Martine said.

  “Dominic and I don’t sext.” Levi paused. “Do you and Antoine?”

  “Sure. Keeps things fresh and exciting.”

  “We don’t have a problem with that.”

  “Wait until you’ve been together two decades and had a couple of kids.”

  Levi shifted uncomfortably. When he considered his future with Dominic, it was always in abstract terms, with a sort of golden haze obscuring the details. He knew he wanted Dominic by his side, knew the thought of losing him felt like staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, but he wasn’t ready to confront the deeper implications yet.

  His desk phone rang. “Detective Abrams,” he said as he lifted the receiver.

  “You need to go to 3835 North Pecos Road,” said a deep, electronically altered voice he was all too familiar with.

  By now, they had a set protocol to handle the Seven of Spades’s phone calls. Levi hit a dedicated silent alarm that alerted everyone in the immediate area as well as his superiors, then put the phone on speaker. The bullpen fell silent aside from the hushed activity of those tracking the call.

  “That address is in North Las Vegas,” he said. “They have their own police department.”

  “I already called them. But they’ll be happy to cede control to you.”

  Levi didn’t doubt it. The LVMPD had a unique organizational structure in that it served not only as the police department for the city of Las Vegas, but also the sheriff’s department for Clark County. Though that could prompt some tricky jurisdictional issues, when it came to the Seven of Spades murders, other law enforcement agencies were happy to chuck the cases at the LVMPD and run for the hills.

  “You’ve never reported your own crimes before.” Levi glanced at Martine, who pointed at her computer and then shook her head. The Seven of Spades always used a burner phone to call from the thick of the crowds on the Strip, where tracking a single cell phone among the thousands of tourists texting, Instagramming, and Snapchatting was essentially impossible.

  “They’re not crimes by any definition I recognize,” the killer said with what seemed like a hint of annoyance—though it was hard to tell because the masking algorithm they used stripped their voice of most intonation. “I don’t have time to wait for you to figure this one out yourselves. You need to go there now.”

  Rohan stood on the far end of the bullpen, listening with undisguised fascination. If he really believed Levi was the Seven of Spades, how did he think Levi pulled off these live phone calls? Did he think Levi rehearsed and recorded them in advance?

  “I’m on my way,” Levi said.

  “Thank you. And Detective Abrams?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” Levi asked, startled, but the line had already gone dead.

  The address led to a warehouse in an industrial park full of nearly identical buildings. A property search on the way revealed that this particular warehouse was under lease by a window and door manufacturer with an unremarkable history.

  Rohan had insisted on coming along, and to Levi’s great displeasure, Martine had agreed to let him ride with them. At least he was sitting in the back seat.

  By the time they arrived at a parking lot surrounded by sand and desert scrub, the North Las Vegas PD had been on the scene for ten minutes. Cop cars with flashing lights circled the blocky pale-gray warehouse, and yellow tape had been strung up around the back entrance to curb a few gawkers drawn from the nearby buildings.

  As Martine parked, they saw a uniformed officer run out the back door, double over, and vomit into the sand.

  “That’s not a good sign,” said Levi.

  Martine grimaced and looked away. She had an aversion to vomiting so severe it bordered on a phobia.

  The three of them approached the officer standing guard at the tape, showed him their badges, and signed the log. “First time you’ve seen a Seven of Spades kill?” Levi asked the officer, who was dead white.

  “You sure it was the Seven of Spades?”

  “Yes. They called me personally to report it. Why?”

  The officer shrugged and gestured to the door. “See for yourself.”

  They donned protective booties and nitrile gloves before entering the building and finding themselves in a hallway that separated the warehouse’s back offices. Even from here, Levi could smell blood. He headed for an open door beyond which came a babble of conversation and activity, crossed the threshold, and caught himself on the doorjamb with a gasp.

  The room was
a slaughterhouse.

  The five white men sitting around the table seemed to have been playing poker; there were cards and chips scattered across the surface, and a bottle of vodka was set out along with five shot glasses. Every single man was dead, throats slit like usual.

  But the Seven of Spades hadn’t stopped there. Each body had been shredded with clear and powerful rage. One man had his eyes gouged out; another’s fingers had been chopped off. A third’s tongue had been cut out and dropped unceremoniously in his lap.

  Instead of leaving the seven of spades cards on the bodies, the killer had nailed them to each corpse. The hammer had been left in the middle of the table, still coated in blood and viscera.

  Levi took a few quick steps into the room. The overpowering stench of death coated his throat and made it difficult for him to swallow.

  “Five bodies,” Martine said as she came to stand beside him. Her eyes were wide and there was a grayish cast to her skin. “This is mass murder.”

  “What was that you were saying about the Seven of Spades not being a predator?” Levi said to Rohan, who looked even more shocked than he felt.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Rohan said faintly. He walked a slow circle around the table. “The Seven of Spades has never killed more than one person at a time, and they never mutilate the bodies. That’s one of their defining characteristics.”

  “Tell that to this guy.” Levi pointed to a body where the Seven of Spades had nailed their calling card to the forehead. The man’s skull had fractured in multiple places; blood and brain matter seeped through the cracks.

  “It looks like there actually was a struggle this time,” said Martine, gesturing to each detail as she noted them. “Playing cards on the floor, a couple of glasses knocked over . . . This chair was kicked into the wall. See how hard it hit?”

  Levi took in the carnage, observing the position of each body. “It’s complicated enough to drug a single victim, especially when your goal is paralysis rather than outright overdose. Five people at once? It would be impossible to do with any kind of accuracy.”

  He zeroed in on the bottle of vodka, which was one-third full.