Stan smiled at me. “I think she can help you now.”
I nodded, believing him. After his little almost-slap demonstration, I had no doubt.
“Samantha, you come with me and Patty,” I said. Then I glanced at Stan and Screamer. “We’ll all meet out at the warehouse before six.”
I noticed that even Stan nodded to that. I was hoping he was going to join us out there. Having a gambling god and all his powers along for the ride wouldn’t hurt.
“Have a good lunch,” Stan said, scooting his chair back and standing. “Nice meeting you, Samantha.”
“Nice meeting you as well,” Samantha said. “And thank you again, for whatever you did to me. It’s amazing.”
Suddenly, all the sounds of the restaurant pounded back in on the table like a wave hitting a beach. Madge moved toward us, a bubble half-popped in her mouth.
Stan was gone.
“Okay, someone tell me I’m not going completely nuts or dreaming,” Samantha said.
“The gods do that to you,” Screamer said, laughing. “They can drive you crazy.”
“Gods?” Samantha asked.
“What can I get for you folks to eat?” Madge said, moving up and saving us from explaining to Samantha that there were levels of gods that existed that people prayed to all the time, but never really thought existed.
Madge stood close and towered over the table in a way I never wanted Madge to tower over me. It seemed as if the lights had gone dimmer in the restaurant. I looked up and could barely see Madge’s forehead, her eyes, and the tip of her nose over her huge breasts.
I was in a breast eclipse. No wonder the lights had dimmed.
“Roast turkey sandwich,” I said, staring at the menu instead of looking upward.
We all ordered and soon enough the light came back to the table as Madge turned and walked away.
Samantha giggled and whispered to Patty. “We’re they as big as my enhanced senses told me they were?”
Patty nodded. “Bigger.”
I started to glance at Madge as she walked away.
“Don’t look,” Screamer whispered to me.
It took every superpower I had, but I didn’t.
Chapter Thirteen
THE BOOKKEEPER
AFTER LUNCH, Samantha had taken her dog Sue for a short walk and then back to her room and left Sue there. With whatever Stan had done to Samantha’s four remaining senses, she had said she wasn’t going to need Sue as much.
When Samantha came walking out of the side door to the Horseshoe with her sunglasses on, but acting and moving as if she could see everything, I was a believer.
After the three of us were in Patty’s car, with Patty driving, me in the front seat, and Samantha in the back, Patty asked Samantha what the new senses felt like.
“Same as before,” Samantha said, laughing. “I’m still smelling, hearing, feeling and tasting like before. It’s just that the first three are very heightened, and the information I’m getting from the three senses of smelling, hearing, and feeling is being put together better in my head, forming pretty good images of things.”
I turned my head to look at her and ask a question, but Samantha pointed a finger at me. “There, I can tell you turned your head and are looking at me.” She reached forward and gently touched my cheek. “My combined senses even tell me exactly how far your face is from me.”
“Like a computer putting data together and forming a composite,” I said.
“Amazing,” Patty said.
“It is,” Samantha said. “This Stan person, whoever he was, did me a huge favor.”
“And speaking of Stan,” I said, turning to look at Patty as she headed the car out of the downtown area toward where I assumed The Bookkeeper lived. “How do you two know each other?”
She actually blushed a little.
“Oh, this might be a good story,” Samantha said, laughing. “I don’t need sight to tell she’s blushing.”
Patty actually blushed some more at that, then glanced at me, more than likely trying to get a read on how much I really wanted to know.
“Spit it out,” I said, smiling at her.
“I met Stan about eighty years ago, at a club in a town called Garden City, up in Idaho. It was a gambling town on the edge of Boise at the time, full of nightclubs and card rooms and slot machines, before Idaho outlawed gambling of that type.”
“Eighty years?” I said, staring at her, shocked. “That means you are one of the gods?”
“No, of course not,” she said, smiling at me. “I’m at your level, only on the hotel management side. I help people who need help, just like you do.”
“What do they call you?” I asked, smiling at her. “Front Desk Girl.”
“Mostly just Patty,” she said, laughing. “But I like that. I might use it.”
“Explain the eighty years part,” Samantha said from the back seat. “I have a sense you’re only in your mid-thirties, not ninety or more.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I didn’t know us superhero-types lived that long.”
“No one’s told you that yet, huh?” she said, smiling at me. “It’s one of the benefits of the job. You’re still new at this stuff. You’ll learn.”
The idea that I might live for a hundred years and look the same sort of stunned me. I just hadn’t given getting old much thought, since in poker you get more respect if you look a little older and grizzled. I’d have to talk to Patty about this after we were done stopping the slot machines.
“So, do I even want to ask how old you really are?” Samantha said, “not that I’m going to believe any of this.”
Patty smiled. “Always better to keep them guessing. Anyway, we’re almost there.”
“Nice avoidance on the Stan question,” I said.
She just smiled at me while Samantha chuckled in the back seat.
I glanced out at the older-style ranch houses we were passing. Clearly Patty and Screamer had had dealings with this Bookkeeper person and didn’t like him much.
“So who is this Bookkeeper?” Samantha asked before I could.
“He’s a man who has spent his entire lifetime, and all his energy, working statistics. He sees patterns in things no one else does. He was granted longer life a hundred years back to keep studying in exchange for helping out in situations like this one.”
“Everyone’s not getting older,” I said, shaking my head.
“I think I still am,” Samantha said. “But at this point, I wouldn’t even swear to that.”
Both Patty and I laughed.
Then Patty said, “This guy is a real pig in just about every sense of the word. Don’t let him get to you, because he enjoys that. If we stay focused on the slot machines, he’ll be able to help us, I hope.”
Patty stopped the car in front of a ranch-style house that needed painting and other repairs. All the windows had been boarded over from the inside, and there wasn’t a live plant anywhere in the yard. The neighbors on both sides had put up tall fences to block out the sight as much as possible. Clearly, this was the one house that brought down the property values. There seemed to always be one in every neighborhood.
I couldn’t talk much. I hated working on lawns and gardens more than just about anything besides going to a dentist. It was one of the reasons I lived in a double-wide mobile home in a mobile home park, where for a few extra bucks a month the owner of the park hired someone to keep the outside of my place looking at least decent.
We all climbed out into the hot afternoon. I was surprised at the intensity of the heat that hit my face after Patty’s cool car. I moved to help Samantha, but it was clear she wasn’t going to need my help. She got out easily, moved around the car, and expertly stepped up over the low curb and onto the sidewalk.
“This is going to be rough,” Samantha said, turning to Patty and me. “I can smell this place clear out here.”
All I could smell was the hot afternoon desert air.
“I can leave the car running and you
can wait out here,” Patty said. “If it’s going to be too much for your new levels of senses.”
“No, it will be fine,” Samantha said. “I’ve got to learn to block some senses at times. Might as well be sooner than later. But I think all of us are going to need a shower after going in there.”
I had a quick flash of the three of us standing naked together in a shower, then pushed the image aside. Samantha was married with a missing husband, Patty was a superhero. That sort of thing just wasn’t going to happen.
“Let’s get this over with,” Patty said, starting up the front sidewalk that looked like it had been designed to weave in and around some sort of desert plants. But there were no plants, just gray gravel and dirt on both sides of the walk.
Samantha followed Patty and I brought up the rear.
Across the street, a neighbor peeked out of a closed curtain, and in the distance was the faint rumble of the freeway. Otherwise, this suburb was as quiet and dead as they came on a hot weekday afternoon.
Before Patty could even knock the door opened.
The man standing there was tiny, not more than five foot tall, with beady rat-eyes staring out over the tops of a thin pair of reading glasses. He had on gray, food-stained slacks and a dress shirt that might have been one color once, years before. For some reason, when Patty and Screamer had called this guy a pig, I had imagined him to be large and fat, not tiny and thin. He was bone thin, actually.
“Stan called ahead, told me you three were coming. Get in here before you let out all the cool air. Power doesn’t come cheap, you know.”
He turned away from the door, leaving it open for us to follow.
Patty shrugged and headed into the dark interior.
Samantha turned a little pale and followed, stumbling a little on the door step before regaining her balance.
A moment later I understood why she had stumbled. The smell coming from that open door was enough to gag a real pig. The smell was a cross between moldy cardboard, a backed-up toilet in a public restroom, and an un-emptied cat box. Samantha had been right, we were all going to need a shower after this.
I pushed the door closed and stopped waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. The smell seemed to close down over me like a thick blanket. I had this instant desire to turn, open the door, and run for the street. But that wasn’t an image of a superhero that I really wanted to give out. Superheroes dove in when all others ran. Patty and Samantha both were ahead of me, so I could make it as well.
With the door closed, it suddenly became very cool in the house, almost too cool. I could hear the sounds of a central air-conditioning system running from vents in the ceiling. The thing must have been turned up to full blast.
My eyes adjusted a little and I could see enough from the dim light coming from an adjacent room to tell the living room was packed to the ceiling with trash. And I do mean the ceiling, with stacks of paper, magazines, and books everywhere, forming a huge mound on both sides of the trail to the next room. I had read of a man in New York who had an apartment filled like this and a mound had collapsed on him and trapped him for two days.
I moved quickly down the canyon between walls of stacked paper, hoping against hope that I would brush nothing, that no stack would tumble onto me. Having Patty and a blind woman rescue me from a stack of paper might be more than my ego could handle.
I finally made it into the light area that must have been a dining room at one point. Now the entire room was filled with computers, monitors, and other electronic equipment. A big orange cat lay on the top of one computer, its tail flicking back and forth as it stared at me. So the cat explained one of the smells, the stacked paper and high air-conditioning explained the mold smell. That left the backed-up toilet smell which I had no intention of investigating.
The Bookkeeper was already in the high-backed chair in front of the computer, his fingers working over the keys as fast as I had ever seen anyone type. There were no other chairs, no place to even lean in the clutter, so the three of us just stood and watched him.
Actually, two of us watched him and Samantha did her other-senses thing.
After a long moment of typing he said, “I was wondering when you people would come talk to me. I had something like this happening projected years ago.”
The man’s voice was high and shrill, and even though he had said nothing really annoying, I felt annoyed at him anyway.
“You sent the note to the Sun?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, still typing. “Had to get some of you idiots on the right track.”
“And exactly what is the right track?” Patty asked, her voice low and very pointed.
Right at that moment, I decided I never wanted her angry at me. Not only did I have no idea what superpowers she had, the feeling of anger in her voice was enough to freeze this already cold house.
“Ghost slots,” the little man said.
“We already knew that,” I said. “We’ve already seen them in their home warehouse. What more can you help us with?”
“Well good for you,” the little guy said, still typing while he looked up with a sneer on his rat-like face. Then, without looking he hit one key and pushed back. A moment later a high-speed printer spit out two sheets of paper. The little man handed the sheets to Patty.
“The exact times and locations the machines will appear over the next two days. That help?” He stared at me, daring me to say something.
I nodded at him, holding his gaze with mine. “A lot. So tell me, are there patterns in who these machines have been taking?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve plugged in sixty-three names, including the name of this woman’s husband.”
He pointed to Samantha, then went on.
“No patterns in the victims.”
“No one controlling them?” Patty asked.
The little man flicked the papers Patty was holding. “If there was outside control could I tell you when and where they were going to appear?”
“Not unless you knew who was controlling them.”
“You’re a funny man,” he said, staring at me, his tiny black eyes seeming to dig right under my skin. “No one controls ghost slots, but they are machines and their actions can be predicted. If you aren’t smart enough to stop them with that, I can’t help you. Show yourselves out and close the door behind you tightly.”
With that, he turned back to the computer screen and started typing.
“Contact Stan if you come up with something more,” I said.
“There is nothing more.”
Without another word, I led the way back through the towering stacks of paper and garbage to the front door.
Outside, I was hit in the face with a blast of hot, clean-smelling air. In all the years of being in and out of Las Vegas, I never thought I’d hear myself say I was glad to breathe the air there. But at that moment, any air besides the putrid cold air inside that house seemed like a drink from a mountain stream.
As Patty closed the door Samantha said, “Now I wish I had waited in the car.”
Patty took her elbow and led her down the sidewalk toward the car.
“You going to be all right?” I asked as she slid into the back seat.
“If I don’t throw up on the back of your head going into town, I’ll be fine,” she said.
Patty looked worried and Samantha just sat in the back seat looking green. I sat beside Patty, holding the two sheets of paper and staring at the locations of the future appearances of the ghost slots, not having a clue what to do next. I always figured that superheroes always came up with a plan after discovering important information.
I was plan-less.
At least I had another superhero beside me that might bail me out.
Halfway back to town I broke the silence and asked her. She had no idea what would be the best thing to do with the information either, besides giving it to the police.
Two plan-less superheroes and a nauseated blind woman. Not exactly the best team
to save the entire casino industry and a whole bunch of people’s lives.
Chapter Fourteen
THE TROOPS ARE GATHERED
I COULDN’T REMEMBER a shower that had felt so good. It was as if the smell from The Bookkeeper’s house had stuck to me like a paste. I could almost see the water washing the smell off, sweeping it down the drain in a thick, gooey mess.
I stuffed the clothes I had been wearing into a plastic bag for hotel cleaning, and after I got out of the shower I called the front desk to come pick the bag up. I couldn’t imagine leaving those clothes in my room.
I ran a wet wash cloth over my Poker Boy leather coat to clean it off both inside and out, then switched to a different hat, leaving the first one to air out beside the window. I still needed my superhero uniform for my powers to work, and no smell was going to stop that.
On the way down the elevator to the front desk area, I had this intense desire to just hit the second floor button, get off and go play some poker. I had come to Las Vegas for the tournament and hadn’t done much more so far than just walk through the tournament area a few times.
Of course, I couldn’t let the ghost slots keep taking people. I had the location of where they were going to show up next, and if The Bookkeeper was right, we could now at least save anyone new from getting taken.
Was Samantha’s husband and the others who were taken still alive? Could these monsters be stopped? Those two questions alone were enough to get me right on past the World Series of Poker tournament area and down to the lobby.
I guess I was a superhero first, a poker player second.
Patty and Samantha were both standing near the front desk. Patty looked refreshingly clean, her skin almost glowing, the smile back on her fantastic face. She had her wet hair pulled back off her head, exposing my favorite mole. She had changed into black dress slacks and a Horseshoe employee’s shirt that she had tucked in, shaping every wonderful thing about her body.
Her raspberry smell was strong enough to greet me like a hug as I joined them. She had said she was going to use the employee locker room to clean up. Clearly, she must have stashed a bottle of her favorite shampoo in her locker. Either that or the raspberry smell was just her natural smell. I was fine with either way.
Smith's Monthly #7 Page 16
