by Nina Barrett
Cinna sounded past exhaustion when she answered.
“Cinna, this is Tom. Please just one quick question.” He rushed past any attempt for her to get a word in.
“Tell me this. The other day you said something about having seen the Imperial’s chips, noticing how different they were. I need to know, where was it you ran across them?”
****
“Well, hello, Sleeping Beauty.” Magdalena was on the couch in her nightshirt. She found the remote and turned down the sound on the television. “I was beginning to wonder how long you were going to be in the shower.”
“Sorry to be hogging it.” Cinna took a seat on the arm of the couch, toweling off her damp hair.
“Hey, no problem. When I got in last night, you were still in your clothes, dead to the world. I apologize for sticking you with the heavy lifting. David and I spent Saturday night at the Imperial. Then he brought me back here to change and we went out to eat. Boy, is this area a disaster zone or what? We ended up down on the Strip. By the time I got back to the shop, you had left. Looks like you got quite a bit done.”
“Rosemary helped. She and her boyfriend stopped by. They were curious about damage downtown. I wish she could have seen the shop before the flood hit.”
“Yeah. Tom said they were there when he stopped in. We ran into him as we were leaving.”
Cinna wrapped her towel around her hair and shuddered.
“Cut the man some slack, girl. He was super nice to David and me, treating us to dinner at the Imperial and then giving us a suite when the deluge started.”
“You stayed overnight there?”
“A-l-l night.” Magdalena drew out the word and stretched luxuriously.
“You and…”
“Me and our visitor from the land of Kama Sutra. I’ll tell you I gave him something to think about on those lonely hikes though the Himalayan foothills thumbing his way from one tea plantation to another. And that suite!” Magdalena wiggled her hips down into the sofa and lay back staring at the ceiling.
“Three huge rooms, Cinna, whirlpool tub, floor to ceiling windows, a black leather sofa like butter. You could spend the rest of your life on it and not complain. Especially if you had company.” She giggled. “A fully stocked kitchen, surround sound, silk duvet. It, well, let’s just say it was a night to remember.” She sat up, raising her mug in salute. “Want some tea?”
Cinna shook her head, staring at the floor.
“Cinna?” Magdalena leaned closer. “What’s wrong? Are you crying?”
She swallowed, started to say something and stopped.
“You are.” Magdalena reached out a hand to touch her cheek. “What’s the matter, baby?”
“Oh, just everything.” She ran a finger under her eyes. “Everything’s screwed up. My whole messy life. The store. Tom. I hate him.”
“What happened?”
“I spent the night with him, Mags.”
“Saturday night?”
She nodded. “Only I didn’t mean to.” Her chest heaved. “I didn’t. I really didn’t. It was that horrible harmony tea. And the storm. And maybe that damned, damned tuxedo.”
“What do you mean? Tell me what’s going on.” Magdalena reached for a tissue from the box on the coffee table and passed it to her. “Sit down, honey. What’s going on?” She reached for a tissue from the box on the coffee table and passed it to her.
“He took me to his apartment after the dinner.” She crumpled the tissue in her hand. “He said it was raining so hard that he didn’t know if he could get downtown. I took a shower to get warm and when I came into the bedroom, he’d left a cup of tea there. Later he came in and…you know. Mags, he and I spent the night together.” Her body shook. “I couldn’t, I just couldn’t resist him. And oh.” She looked up and wiped her nose with the tissue. “Even if he wasn’t the father of Rosemary’s child back in Des Moines, he shouldn’t have…n-not when I was so out of it. I didn’t know what was going on.” She put her head down into her hands.
“Rosemary had a baby?”
“Yeah, but it turned out it wasn’t Tom’s. It was some lowlife ex-teacher of ours she got involved with after she and Tom broke up. She put the baby up for adoption.”
“And you think you and Tom spent Saturday night together after the awards banquet.” Magdalena sounded mystified.
“Um.” Cinna bobbed her head. “Yes, I’m sorry about it, but yes.”
“No, Cinna, you didn’t,” Magdalena said carefully.
Cinna looked at her.
“What time did you leave the convention center?”
“It was about eleven, I think.”
“Okay.” Magdalena bit her lip. “He drove you back through the rain to his apartment. Then you took a shower, went to the bedroom, drank the tea, and he came in.”
“Yes. I think it was that horrible celestial harmony tea we came up with. He used it and…” She used the fresh tissue Magdalena passed her, her shoulders shaking.
“But that can’t be, Cinna. The times don’t work. Tom spent the night at the Imperial.”
“What do you mean?”
“David and I had dinner at the Reserve, their penthouse restaurant. It was wonderful. We took our time. Sometime after eleven the area lost power. Everyone just stood by the windows watching the lightning storm over Vegas. I never saw anything like it. Lightning was arcing from one horizon to the other. There were these huge booms of thunder and transformers exploding like fireworks. You get a 360-degree view from up there. The kitchen staff came out and started pouring drinks for everyone. It wasn’t like they could do a lot else.
“Anyway, around midnight Tom came up with a guy named Ron. They had climbed the stairs checking on things. They came over to where we were. Tom talked about winning the award and said you were staying at his place for the night.”
Cinna stared at her.
“So he wasn’t with you. He couldn’t have been. He and Ron talked about utilizing the construction equipment in some part of the hotel property that’s under development. Ron thought there was an emergency generator down there. David is pretty much of a jack-of-all-trades and he offered to help them with it. Anyway about two or three o’clock, they got it hooked up and turned on. Then Tom put David and me up in one of their high roller suites. So…” She moistened her lips and looked at Cinna.
“Tom didn’t have time to take you from the convention center to his place, fix tea for you, wait ’til you got out of the shower, seduce you, change clothes, make it over to the Imperial, climb fourteen flights of stairs, and get to the Reserve by midnight.” Magdalena shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“But I remember it.” Every hard, strong line of Tom’s body was etched in her memory. The way her own had responded.
“Cinna, he didn’t go back to his apartment later either. When we were leaving the Imperial Sunday, we ran into Ron in the lobby. He talked to David and me about how he and Tom had worked on things there all through the night, about getting their pumps going.” She waited in silence a minute.
“Are you sure it wasn’t a wild dream you had? I mean like him or not, you’ve got to admit he is damned good-looking. How much did you have to drink at the dinner, honey?”
“Not that much. Barely anything. One glass of wine before dinner and then later a glass of champagne when they won their award. Oh, and a couple sips from another glass just before we left.” When she had picked up Tom’s unused champagne glass.
“Well, I don’t know, kid.” Magdalena cocked her head and looked at her. “How do you feel?” She raised her eyebrows.
Cinna drew a shaky breath. “Tired, wiped out.”
“But not sore, shall we say?”
“No.” She drew the word out. “Not that way.”
“Okay. So maybe it was the combination of the storm, being around magnificent Marco, the alcohol you did have.” Magdalena shrugged and reached for her mug again. “Whatever. But I do believe my night was better than yours.”
> ****
There seemed to be an urgency to Joe Niemeyer’s step as he hurried out of Slotz! tool box in hand.
From his position in the corner, Tom nodded to Ron. His day shift supervisor had been ready for action since their meeting the night before with Gentleman Jim. The two of them walked briskly across the floor on an intercept course, his security team following behind.
“Wait up, Joe,” he called.
The other man whirled around and started as if his mind had been on other things.
Don Dennis and Hussein Ahmed took hold of Joe’s upper arms in their practiced professional way.
“We’re going to ask you to accompany us, Mr. Niemeyer,” Don said.
“What the hell? What’s going on here?” Joe’s head swiveled from the Imperial’s chief of security to his deputy.
“We’re going to take a walk over to the business office. We need to take a look at some things.” Tom nodded at his security officers who began moving quietly, their reluctant guest in tow.
“You can’t—”
“Actually, we can.” Ron’s voice rang with confidence. “If you check the State of Nevada Revised Stature 465, you’ll see it grants casinos the authority to detain suspects on suspicion of cheating.”
“What? Cheating? What are you talking… Hey!”
It only took a minute to navigate the back hallway to the accounting office. Between Ron, Gentleman Jim, and him last night, they had come up with a plan designed to avoid notice as much as possible.
The counting room was secure; few casino employees were allowed to enter. In hindsight, perhaps, the limited approved list had been one of the problems.
Joe seemed more than ready to sit when Hussein and Don got him to a chair as though his legs couldn’t be depended on.
“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.” Tom nodded to Ron as he placed Joe’s toolbox on the table in front of him. The Lotsa Slots owner stared at it as if he didn’t recognize it, swallowing convulsively as Ron popped the latch. Under the overhead lights, Joe’s forehead gleamed.
The top drawers held a variety of miniature tools—screwdrivers, timers, wrenches, calibrators, and spanners. Ron lifted out the drawer to reveal cleaning rags and several plastic bags. He held up one containing small metal bars.
He nodded. They’d seen one of them last night.
“I don’t know wha…” Joe’s voice trailed away as Ron used the tip of a screwdriver to raise the bottom of the box.
“Well, look here. What do you think, boss?” Ron didn’t sound surprised.
“Okay, Don and Hussein, I’ll need you to verify that we have found Joe Niemeyer in possession of a number of Imperial Casino chips concealed in the false bottom of his tool box.”
“So I-I like to gamble a little.” Joe attempted a shrug. “Who doesn’t? This is Vegas, guys.”
Don Dennis was doing a quick count.
“Except employees are not permitted to gamble on company property which, as a contracted service technician, includes you. And you didn’t get these by gambling,” Don said.
“Eighteen hundred, Tom. Including…” He held a chip up.
“As the four of us will testify, we pulled the back off a slot machine last night. Imagine what we found in the bottom. Including one chip we shaved the edge on. Interesting little set-up with the magnets.”
Joe licked his lips and stared at the table.
“I want a lawyer,” he mumbled.
“Right. Well, I’m going to put in a call to gaming control.” He looked over at Ron. “Hussein and I will stay here with Joe if you and Don want to head up to the front desk and finish the rest of this business.”
“My pleasure,” Ron said. “Been looking forward to it.” He was already at the door.
****
There was root beer and ginger ale in the refrigerator along with bottled water but he didn’t know if he could make it that far. It was a good twelve, fifteen feet from the sofa plus the distance back. It seemed better to stay where he was, muscles molding themselves into the sofa back, gravity pushing down, eyelids relaxing.
He wasn’t sure if he’d heard a knock on the door or if he’d imagined it.
It came again, slight, tentative, as if unsure. What the? With his irregular schedule, he didn’t get many visitors. And he didn’t know any of his neighbors since the friendly older lady down the hall had been evicted for the interesting collection of houseplants under a grow light the apartment cleaning service had found.
He pushed himself up to his feet, wincing a little. Still sore, he held his chest and got the knob.
“Cinna?” He blinked. A figure was turning away.
“Oh, Tom.” Cinnamon was dressed in a sleeveless shift, arms and legs bare, her heavy blonde curls secured with a barrette.
“I’m sorry to bother you, I can see you’re tired. This is probably a bad time with everything going on.”
He drug a hand over his face. Did he look as bad as he felt? The last few days must be showing.
“Please come in. It’s fine. I just got home a little while ago. I’ve been laying around.”
“I’m sorry. Things must still be a mess at the hotel. Dolores said you’d be here.” She passed him, trailing a scent of girl stuff. Shampoo? Soap? Cinna? He closed his eyes and drank it in.
“I’m just…” She swallowed. “I wanted to come by to apologize. And to thank you. Magdalena, Mags told me how you put her and David up Saturday.”
“It was the least I could do. Please have a seat.” She looked uneasy. What was going on? She sat down on the edge of the couch, avoiding his gaze, twisting her fingers in her lap.
“It was the least I could do,” he repeated. “Between David, Ron, and me, the three of us got the emergency generator up and going and enough power for essential services. The whole downtown area blacked out around midnight.”
“That’s what Magdalena said. They were at the Reserve having dinner when it happened.”
“We were lucky to have the generator available at the construction site. Witheroe’s done a bit of everything in his travels. Ron and I provided the unskilled labor. Dave is an expert on more things than tea.”
She looked at the floor, not quite repressing a shiver.
A topic to avoid? What was going on? With Cinnamon, there seemed to be land mines he couldn’t anticipate. He cleared his throat. It seemed he needed to change the subject.
“Well, we solved one mystery today at the Imperial.”
“What’s that?” She raised her head to look at him. There were shadows under her eyes.
“We’ve been losing money. Not a lot, but a steady drain we couldn’t explain. It was enough to keep us in the red and our investors unhappy. You remember the question I called up to ask you?”
“And I almost bit your head off.”
“Right.” He raised an eyebrow. “I wanted to know where it was that you first saw chips from our casino.”
“And I told you one time when I was making a delivery at Lotsa Slots.”
“You had mentioned Joe Niemeyer being a steady customer of yours. How he started his Monday mornings with a double Darjeeling and almond biscotti.”
“You have a good memory.”
About you, oh, yes.
“But you hadn’t been in the Imperial yet when you mentioned our chips. That was before your trip over when you met Gentleman Jim. Why would you see our chips out somewhere, off casino property? Chips aren’t legal tender anywhere except in the casino that issues them. I was curious about where you’d run across them.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Joe had them out on his counter one morning when I stopped in with his order. They caught my eye because they were so different. I mean I know the colors are always the same in every casino. The one dollar chips are always white and fives are red and so on, but yours were stamped with the St. George’s cross on the back of one, St. Andrew’s on another, the Union Jack on something. They were distinctive, but I didn’t think any more about them.�
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“No, but Imperial employees aren’t permitted to gamble on our premises and, as one of our contracted technicians, that includes Niemeyer. It raised a question about how he got them. Had someone passed them to him, or had he obtained them illegally?”
“Illegally? From the slot machines?”
“He showed up Sunday morning to service the machines. It was his regular time, but it seemed odd that he’d come in when we were hip deep in cleaning up from a flood. Servicing the slots was the last thing on my agenda. I sent him home and got to wondering about it. It wasn’t like he didn’t have other things to do. Anyway, Ron and I pulled the back off one of the machines yesterday afternoon to take a look at it.”
“Was it rigged?”
“Big time. Joe had installed a small weak magnet. Just enough to hold the opening open a second longer when someone hit a jackpot. The jackpots aren’t progressive. They pay fixed amounts. When one hits, the chips fall down into the cup for the player. Except with Joe’s magnet holding the chip dispenser open a second longer, an extra chip would fall down the back of the machine after the opening to the hopper closed and our service technician would get a nice payoff every Sunday when he came in to service the slots.”
“And he’d take the chips back to his store.”
“Concealed in his toolbox. But he still had the problem of cashing them. As an Imperial employee, he didn’t dare do it himself and attract attention. It was your friend Magdalena who clued me in to what was happening.”
“What do you mean?”
“I ran into her and David as they were leaving the Imperial yesterday. She said something about having to live off tip money until you two could reopen. How tip money added up to real money.”
“Okay?”
“Casino chips are legal tender only in our gaming venues. They can’t be used in the restaurants, bars, gift shop, or anywhere else. But guests do tip the dealers with them. Most players leave a tip when they stop playing a game. It can be cash or chips, but everything goes into a drop box that’s collected at the end of a shift. The boxes are collected and taken to a count room for accounting. Dealers share tips based on amount of hours they work.”
