“Someone is doing this on purpose?” I asked, just about as stunned and surprised as I had been in years.
“Looks that way,” Stan said.
I made the next jump, to the only logical reason why anyone would be doing this purposely. “They’re trying to kill every casino on the planet.”
Stan nodded.
We both stood there in silence, the poker players and sponsors frozen around us like statues. The ideas that casinos were actually threatened just flat scared me beyond any monster, any killer I had ever faced. Casinos were my home, my place of power, the only reason I got up in the mornings.
Whoever was doing this was threatening me directly.
I turned to Stan. “The management has no leads on this?”
Management was what superheroes called the top gods.
“Everyone’s working on it,” Stan said. “I’ve been in two hundred casinos in the last few hours myself, looking for any clue, anything that might be a lead.”
I nodded. If all the casino gods and management gods were on the case, I had no idea how Screamer and I could help. We were just a couple of lowly superheroes. And that thought came right out of my mouth next.
“So what good can I do in all this?”
Stan stared at me, and when the God of Poker stares at you, you know you’ve been studied, read, and put away. Never, in all my memory have I been looked at with that kind of intensity, that kind of focus, even by the best poker players in the world.
“Actually,” Stan said after what seemed like the longest second I have ever survived, “you might be one of our best hopes. Burt told me this morning you were coming, would be working on this, and that I should help you where I can.”
“Now I am really worried,” I said.
“The managers of publicity and security have put a team together as well, a reporter and a cop. You might run into them, so help them if you can as well. All of us are after the same thing.”
“Stopping these things,” I said.
“Exactly,” Stan said. “And soon.”
I took a deep breath, glanced around at all the frozen statues of people filling the lobby at the top of the escalator, then turned back to face Stan.
“You said these ghost slots can move around when hunting, appearing and disappearing like the one I saw on that tape. Right?”
“That’s what we always thought.”
“So how can someone control something that can move like that?”
“You tell us that,” Stan said, “and we’ll know who’s doing this.”
I didn’t really want to ask the next question, but I did. “Can it be another branch of gods, you know, the death and dying ones on some sort of strange crusade.”
Stan shook his head. “No. I was there when Laverne checked with them.”
Calling Lady Luck, the woman in charge of it all, by her first name, shook me. I would never have the courage to do that. Not ever. I wanted to keep playing and winning, and even though poker was a skill game, there was still that element of luck involved, and having the top of the top Herself mad at you would be a very, very bad thing.
“So we’re dealing with someone who somehow has figured out a way to control ghost slots and wants casinos shut down. Some sort of anti-gambling nut-case.”
“That’s one of the main ways we’re following as well. But my suggestion is that you track the slots to where they live here and now. Their base, their nest, their haunt, whatever you want to call it. They have to go somewhere and you never know what you might find. And don’t be afraid to use your Unstuck-In-Time power to follow them if you have to.”
I nodded again, not completely understanding what he meant. I didn’t know I had an Unstuck-In-Time superpower, and I wasn’t sure what it might be, actually. But that was no surprise. Even after twenty years I was still discovering some of my powers.
“You mean I can do this?” I asked, motioning all the people around me. “How?”
“You can,” he said. “When you need it, you’ll know how.”
“Well, thanks, I guess,” I said. “You want me to report in to you.”
“No need. I’ll be following your progress and helping where I can,” he said.
“Thanks, Stan,” I said
“No problem,” he said, smiling at me. “This is something special where we all need to help each other. I’ll still owe you for passing up old Betty for me. Man, you got some will power. I hear she’s about as good in the sack as they come.”
With a laugh and a shake of his head, he turned away and headed back for the big room as everyone around us started moving again, and the noise pounded in like a dam breaking. I had no doubt that if I followed him in there I wouldn’t be able to spot him again. Gambling Gods could disappear like that.
I headed for the elevator, doing my best to not think about what might have been that Christmas Eve with Betty, and that wonderful skin and perfect body of hers. I had a blind woman’s husband to rescue, the entire casino industry to save, and maybe a new superpower to use. It just wasn’t the right moment for me to be thinking about wild sex.
By the time I had reached my room, I had replaced Betty’s face in my mind with Patty’s wonderful smile, brown hair, raspberry smell, and perfect mole.
But even her wonderful face and the memory of her smell couldn’t keep the images of empty casinos, boarded up and shut down forever, from filling my thoughts.
I’d have to hang up my Poker Boy jacket and hat and go to playing poker in back rooms, bars, and Elk clubs to make a living. It wouldn’t be a bad life, but it wouldn’t be a great one either.
I spent most of the rest of the night on my bed, fully dressed, with my superhero uniform still on, soaking up the energy and thinking.
Chapter Nine
TOO DAMN EARLY
SCREAMER CALLED what seemed like five minutes after I had finally managed to doze off.
Somehow, I got the phone on the second, maybe third ring, and got it to the side of my face without hurting myself. Then, before I mumbled the word “Hello,” he started talking.
“No luck so far, Poker Boy. But I think I got a lead. It’s out in one of the old joints on the highway toward the dam. You want me to follow it?”
“Yeah,” I said, fighting to get my mind focused on what he was saying and not the fading dream of spending a night with a beautiful gambling god.
“Also, this is a lot bigger than we thought,” Screamer said.
That snapped me awake, remembering what Stan had talked to me about, what had kept me laying awake thinking all night.
“What do you know?”
“Looks like most of the police and the newspaper are onto this, and a lot of people have been taken, not just Ben. So far, everyone’s keeping a lid on things, but I doubt, and so do others, that lid’s going to hold much longer.”
My stomach twisted. The last thing we needed at this point was a panic, a mass exodus away from casinos and Las Vegas.
“Heard you talked to Stan last night,” Screamer said. “Did he give us any help?”
“Some,” I said, surprised that Screamer knew I had met with a gambling god. Maybe Screamer had done the same thing. “Stan told me how big this problem really is, gave me a couple of warnings and a suggestion or two.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ll chase down what leads I can, then catch up with you and Patty at the diner. How does around noon sound?”
“Perfect,” I said. “Thanks, Screamer.”
“No problem,” he said. “You just be careful. From everything I hear these ghost slots are not something to be fooled with lightly. And I doubt that if there are people behind this mess, they are either.”
“Stan said the same thing. You watch your back as well.”
“Doing just that,” Screamer said. “No worries, we’ll tackle them together.”
With that he hung up, leaving me holding the phone and very much awake. And very glad he was helping me.
The clock on the nightstand
said two minutes after six in the morning. Way too early for a poker player to get up.
Poker players are, by the nature of the game, night people. I have seen six in the morning more times than I want to think about, but always from the night side, almost never from the morning side. I don’t care what anyone says, getting out of bed before the sun comes up is just not natural.
Still, with Screamer’s words echoing in my mind, I bid a final goodbye to the last dream-thoughts of a gambling goddess, climbed out of bed and did all the things a person, or superhero, does to get ready for a day.
By seven in the morning, the sun was up, and I was drinking coffee and reading the morning newspaper in the diner across Front Street from the Horseshoe.
I silently thanked all the gambling gods that Madge wasn’t there.
The paper had three reports of people going missing, but they were scattered and buried. Only one report mentioned the fact that the person had vanished from a casino. All three were tourists and the newspaper said the police were working at their cases. The big story was staying buried.
So far so good.
At a few minutes after eight, Samantha, her dog, Sue, and Patty joined me.
Patty somehow managed to be stunning, even early in the morning. She wore no make-up, faded jeans, and a tucked-in white blouse that gave just enough hint of the white lace-trimmed bra underneath to be alluring. Her hair seemed to shine in the diner light, and she had pulled it back exposing my favorite mole for the entire world to see.
Samantha, on the other hand, looked like she hadn’t slept all night, had barely managed to get dressed this morning, and was in desperate need of coffee. Not even her black glasses could hide the rings under her eyes.
“Good morning, ladies,” I said, tossing my paper aside and standing to let them join me in the booth.
Patty gave me a beaming smile and a “Good morning to you as well.”
Then she helped Samantha into the booth and stepped back as Sue curled up at her master’s feet.
“How was your night?” Patty asked as she slid into the booth and against the wall on my side. “You or Toledo get any leads?”
“Screamer’s following one now,” I said, doing my best to ignore her wonderful raspberry smell and the closeness of her arm against mine in the booth. “He’s going to meet us back here at noon.”
“Good,” Patty said.
I kept talking because it was the only way I knew to not just stare at her.
“I talked to a friend of mine last night up in the tournament room, called in a marker, and got a little help as well.”
Patty turned sideways, moving her arm away from mine so she could look at me with a steady gaze. “Anyone I know?”
“Not unless you know some of the gambling gods,” I said, smiling at her, pretending to be joking. I often figured that the best way to tell someone something they wouldn’t believe, and get them to change the subject, was to flat tell them the truth.
“Oh, yeah, right,” Samantha said from the other side of the booth, shaking her head in clear disgust.
Patty, on the other hand, kept staring at me, then just nodded slightly.
I was starting to gain a lot of respect for Patty. Clearly my current sidekick knew a lot more about the behind-the-scenes working of Las Vegas and the gambling world than I was giving her credit for.
Plus, she was beautiful, smelled wonderful, and had hair a person could get lost in while searching closely for a mole.
“I’m going to the police again right after breakfast,” Samantha said, clearly upset, as she had every right to be. “I’m going to make them start looking for Ben if I have to stand there and just scream.”
“Good idea,” I said, turning my attention from the allure of my sidekick to the task at hand. “You never know when we might need their help.”
I didn’t tell her that I had no doubt the police were already working on finding Ben. And all of the others taken by the slots before him.
Samantha seemed a little surprised that I had agreed with her that quickly. Clearly, she still thought we were trying to run some scam on her, and had discounted the images of her husband Screamer had put into her mind last night. I didn’t blame her. Believing that a person could be taken by ghost slot machines wasn’t easy, even for someone like me who was used to the strange happenings.
Many, many of the people I help don’t believe I can help them at first. It’s an occupational hazard of being a superhero. In fact, I bet if there was ever a convention of superheroes, and we had panels and meetings about the problems we all faced, this would be one of the main topics of discussion. After all the years, I had gotten used to it, and having a person like Samantha not believe in the real problem didn’t even surprise me.
“I agree,” Patty said, nodding to me, then turning to talk directly to Samantha. “I’ll be glad to drive you down to the main station after breakfast. I have a detective friend there that will waive the forty-eight hour waiting period for me if I ask real nice.”
I’d waive anything if she asked nice, but I didn’t say that out loud.
“Thank you,” Samantha said, some of the anger draining from her posture. “That would be really helpful.”
“Help is why we’re here,” I said. “Besides, they frown on people standing in the lobby of the police station screaming. It gives Las Vegas a bad image.”
Patty gave me a beaming smile that reached her eyes, and Samantha actually laughed as the waitress came up to take our order.
The morning waitress wasn’t a lot better than Madge in looks, but clearly younger by about twenty years, and lighter by forty pounds. Her name was Fran, her hair was bleached blonde, and her make-up heavy in the purple eye-liner department. The coffee pot in her right hand seemed to be glued there as she listened to our orders, asked the right toast and hash-brown questions, and then went off with a “Got it.”
She hadn’t written anything down, which seemed almost magical to me. How could she remember all that, plus have a conversation with the booth next to ours while refilling their coffee cups? Of course, what I do at a poker table looks like magic to some people, so I guess it’s just where a person’s focus is. And where they make their living.
Who knows, maybe Fran was a superhero in the waitressing world. Maybe she went around saving truck drivers with bad body odor with the help of the waitressing gods. I know for a fact there are such things as evil bacon, and Mexican food with a bite. So why couldn’t there be superhero waitresses who rush in to save the day like we’re trying to do with Ben?
“So what’s the plan?” Patty asked after Fran left.
“Well,” I said, “after we help Samantha get Ben officially reported as missing with the police, you and I could do some tracking. My source last night tells me the best thing to do is try to track the machines to where they live, which I assume meant where the old machines are stored.”
“You think they’re stored and haven’t been destroyed?” Patty asked.
“I would bet just about anything on it,” I said. “My source also told me they can only move around in the time frame which they existed, which means since Ben was taken yesterday, those things still exist somewhere.”
“We just have to find them,” Patty said, nodding. “Which means we have to figure out where the old Valley Slots graveyard is.”
“Wouldn’t it be owned by Standard Slots now?” I asked. “Since they bought out Valley a long time ago?”
“More than likely,” Patty said. “I called my dad last night and he gave me a name to contact at Standard Slots. But he seems to think that there is still a Valley Slots graveyard somewhere.”
“Graveyard?” Samantha asked, clearly not liking the sound of the term.
“It’s what they call the monster warehouses in which they store the old slot machines,” I said.
“Why don’t they just haul them to the dump?” Samantha asked.
I shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not one hundred percent certain, but
from what I’ve heard over the years, it has to do with their value. Some are junked, others have parts switched out to working machines, but by-and-large, they just store the things.”
“I heard it was taxes,” Patty said. “And corporate valuation. A corporation just can’t go throwing away assets, even though the assets have no real use any more. Plus, I think there are regs that make junking a slot machine more expensive than just renting a giant warehouse and storing them in mass.”
Samantha nodded, then asked, “So how many machines are in these storage places?”
“I doubt anyone knows,” I said. “I’ve seen basements full of the things, warehouses stacked with them, and hallways in the backs of hotels lined with the things.”
“Oh,” Samantha said. “And you think you’re going to find four of them from more than a decade ago?”
Patty and I sat there looking at each other, not answering her. Samantha had a point. Las Vegas was a haystack made up of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of slot machines. And we weren’t even looking for a needle. We were looking for a piece of hay.
A very old piece of hay.
Chapter Ten
A NAP AND A SEARCH
I TOOK A NAP right after breakfast. Yes, superheroes take naps. I know that blows the image built with decades of comic books and movies, but it is true. It’s just tough for those comic book artists to draw naps, and besides, when naps are done right, they’re really boring.
My nap was done perfectly.
After breakfast, Patty took Samantha down to the police station to file the missing person’s report. She was going to call me in my room when she got back.
I had intended on making a few phone calls to find out what had happened to Valley Slot’s slot graveyards, but it only took one call to a friend of mine at city hall to get the address of what he thought was the only Valley Slots graveyard left, owned, of course, by Standard Slots.
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