And we thought we had killed the slots.
Seems we hadn’t.
The next two hours we all sat there in the booth, trying to figure out what to do next.
A couple times Lady Luck popped out to check on something, and Stan at one point agreed to talk with the Bookkeeper to see if he could get projections on the machines, assuming no one was controlling them.
Stan said the Bookkeeper was working on it when he came back and would call if he got some results.
The Bookkeeper was a god in the numbers area who never left his house or his computers. He could work a computer and research through the internet faster than anyone in existence. And he had an amazing talent of projecting events that would happen in the future using just numbers.
If someone had learned how to control those deadly slot monsters, then nothing the Bookkeeper could do to project their appearance would help. But if, like the first time, they were just runaway machines hungry for power from those who fed them, aka humans, then they could be predicted.
And the Bookkeeper could do it.
When they took a human, they jumped back to their original location. Then on some hidden schedule that only the Bookkeeper and all his computers could project, the machines would jump again to a location, wait for another victim to sit down and pull the old handle, then with the victim trapped inside the machine, jump back to their original location.
The one limitation ghost slots had was that they could only go back to a place they had occupied in a casino at some point in the past. The problem was that in those days, slots were moved around from casino to casino all the time.
Records of slot movements were hard to find, hard to follow, or had been destroyed by now. There just didn’t seem to be much of a reason to save where old slot machines had been thirty or forty or fifty years before and in old buildings now torn down.
Finally, after two hours, Patty and I and Ben were the only three left in the booth. Madge had long since taken away my partially eaten cheeseburger and brought Patty and me another vanilla milkshake.
Lady Luck had jumped off to talk with the gods of law enforcement to see what the real total of missing people might be.
And from exactly where.
Screamer had gone with Stan to talk with the only remaining slot machine tech who had been part of that rescue ten years before. The slot repairman who had triggered the first attack of the Slots of Saturn was now dead.
The three of us were in a wait-and-think mode.
Ben looked like anyone’s standard image of the perfect grandfather. Short and square, dressed in a suit without a tie, with short gray hair and a receding hairline. He had a smile that could disarm anyone and now, after a year of working in the area of books and libraries, he had regained his strength from the centuries of being drained in the disappearance of his old job of being the God of Lamplighters.
I sipped on the remains of the milkshake and figured Patty and I needed to order something from Madge pretty soon to keep our strength up. Patty had barely touched her lunch salad as well.
Ben hadn’t eaten a thing, even though I offered to buy him something a couple of times.
Patty was sitting beside me, but staring off out the window at a Southwest airliner making an approach into the airport.
“You know,” Ben said. “Part of the solution to this might be in how you dealt with these monsters the first time.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I said. “But nothing we did back then seems to matter much this time around. At least not until we find their home and if they are being controlled.”
Patty nodded to that.
“So I heard,” Ben said, “that you two met fighting these slots. Is that right?”
Patty nodded and smiled, touching my leg, which always calmed me and excited me in a wonderful way, and this touch was no exception.
“We met slightly before we started working on beating the Slots,” I said, smiling and putting my hand over Patty’s hand on my leg, “but yes, it was the event that pulled us together.”
“So tell me about the meeting,” Ben said. “I’m becoming sort of the unofficial historian for the gods, and since you two and your team have saved us all a number of times, it seems logical for me to know how all this started.”
I honestly didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure how this would help us find the ghost slots, but at this point I trusted Ben and he seemed to think it might be a good use of our time.
Besides, there wasn’t one damn thing I could think to do otherwise at the moment.
“You tell your side, first,” Poker Boy,” Ben said. “Then Patty, you can tell your side of the event.”
“The first meeting?” I asked, glancing at Patty. “I honestly can’t see how this will help.”
“The first meeting,” Ben said. “If it doesn’t trigger something, then at least it will kill some time here while we wait.”
I nodded and sat back. With Patty’s hand on my leg, I let myself remember that first meeting with the woman of my life.
CHAPTER THREE
The Memory of that First Meeting
I love casinos. Always have.
I mean I truly love them, like some people enjoy sitting beside a calm mountain lake. Walking into a casino, it feels like I’ve stepped on an ocean beach on a warm evening with no wind, combined with the at-home feel of sitting by a fire, under a nice reading light, with a warm drink and a good book.
I admit, casinos are loud, with both machine and people noises, and are designed by experts to take a person’s money. Yet every time I step through the door into a casino, either in Vegas, Atlantic City, or in Timbuck-six North Dakota, I know I am home, that I am safe, that I am in control of my surroundings.
As I stepped through the side door of the Horseshoe that day ten years ago, I walked right into the center of at least forty poker tables. I knew at once I had once again found my own little slice of heaven.
I could feel the power flowing through me. My muscles, tense and tight from the long plane and cab ride, relaxed as if rubbed by a Swedish hot-rub expert.
Now remember, at that point I had only been in the superhero ranks for less than five years, and Stan had pretty much let me go on my own after a little talk or two. So green doesn’t begin to describe me when it comes to all this god stuff. I’m still that way.
Ben waved for me to continue, so I did.
I remember that day stopping and just taking a deep breath of the smoke-tainted air of the old casino, filling my lungs with the poisons that killed others, but gave me strength.
Stopping just inside a casino front door was a habit of mine. Still is when I have time.
That day I remember clearly that everything around me looked like a standard day in casino world. And I had no sense that anything was off.
On my right were some of the live poker games, on my left the overflow part of the tournament area, now with all the tables empty. The main desk for the hotel was beyond all the tables, and I had to get there by sort of following the yellow brick road of the pattern on the carpet, through the tables, down between the railings along the live poker tables, and then through the ropes in the open area in front of the hotel desk.
Those ropes that guard the front desks of most hotels and ticket counters in airports always make me feel like a cow being herded to the guy with the hammer who would hit me, put me out of my misery, and turn my body into prime rib and flank steaks. I’m fairly certain some hotels have almost done that to me in the past.
There wasn’t anyone waiting in line to check in at that moment. I remember clearly thinking that maybe I could avoid the ropes altogether and just go for the hammer.
I remember putting my head down and moving toward the front desk, pulling my suitcase behind me like a bad child, following the pattern on the carpet, hoping I could get checked in quickly and then take a nap.
I was there for the World Series of Poker which at that point was still held at Binion’s Hor
seshoe Casino. I remember I somehow made it all the way to the front desk without stopping.
“Good afternoon, sir,” I remember the woman behind the front desk saying as I stepped up to the polished wood counter.
I remember looking up and honestly, from that point things get a little fuzzy. It was Patty. I remember her smile actually included her brown eyes as she leaned forward a little. And what eyes they are.
“Thank you,” Patty said and squeezed my hand.
Ben motioned that I continue and I did.
I think I remember having an out-of-body experience as I studied her eyes.
I knew I could stare into those eyes forever, but I knew I shouldn’t.
Yet I remember wanting to.
I remember floating there, arguing with myself, until I finally returned to my body.
“Checking in,” I remember that I managed to say, even though my throat was suddenly dry.
“Here for the tournament?” she asked me in return.
I remember saying I was and asking if it was that obvious?
“Poker players do have a look about them,” she said to me.
I was in lust with Miss Brown-eyes behind the front desk. I wouldn’t learn her name was Patty until later that day.
I gave her one of my many false travel names.
After a moment she said, “Here is your key,” and slid the paper packet with the plastic key toward me. I reached for it and her hand brushed mine.
I remember seeing stars!
She wished me, I think, good luck with the tournament, and I thanked her somehow, I think.
Then I turned and tripped over my luggage.
I managed to miss getting tangled in the front desk rope maze as I fell.
That floor may have been carpeted, but I remember it was still hard, and it still hurt.
I remember she leaned over the desk and looked down at me like an angel, the light behind her head giving her a halo, and asked if I was all right.
I thought of staying down, staring at her until she floated over to help me up, then thought better of it.
I sprang to my feet and I somehow managed to not sprint for the elevators.
I looked at Ben and Patty and shrugged. “My side of that first meeting.”
Patty squeezed my leg. “You were so cute.”
“Falling down was cute?” I asked.
“It was,” she said, smiling at me with that same smile I had come to love for ten years.
“So, Patty,” Ben said, “tell me your side of what happened.”
I looked at her because I realized that in ten years I had never heard her side of that story.
“I knew Poker Boy was coming in for the tournament,” Patty said. “And I spotted you at once when you came through the door and stopped. I thought you were cute before you did the dive over the luggage.”
“You did?” I asked, stunned.
“Of course,” she said, again squeezing my leg. “I had heard a few things about how you had saved some people and a few dogs and stopped Stan from losing his job and all that. So I wanted to meet you.”
“Did you know about the Slots of Saturn at that point?” Ben asked Patty.
Patty nodded, which stunned me.
“My boss, Bernice, the God of Hospitality, had been dealing with the missing persons reports all over town. She and I both had a hunch we were dealing with ghost slots, but I honestly didn’t want to believe it. None of us did at that point. It was better to think of a more realistic reason than something like ghost slots.”
Ben nodded.
I just sat there, surprised.
“So when did you realize you were actually dealing with ghost slots?”
Patty looked at me. “When you and I saw them on the security tape take a customer from the Binion’s gaming floor.”
I nodded. “That’s a memory I’m not going to soon forget.”
In fact, just the memory of it right now had me sweating a little.
CHAPTER FOUR
Another Trip to Find a Clue in the Past
Ben asked us a few more questions about that second meeting and why we took Samantha, the blind wife of the man who was taken by the slots from Binion’s, out of the hotel and to Madge’s Diner.
That decision had started our regular meetings for years in the diner and then the design of this office when I built it two years ago.
Going to Madge’s had been Patty’s idea and my idea to bring in Screamer to help.
Ben walked us all the way through the entire events of that first battle, how we found the slots in the old Standard Slots Graveyard warehouse and how we rescued the people from inside the slots.
Then he asked a very simple question, one that I had a hunch he had been working to for the entire last half hour. “So when was the last time you saw the ghost slots?”
“I remember it clearly,” I said. “It was hot, middle of the afternoon.”
“A Tuesday,” Patty said. “With Screamer, we watched as the two hauling men and two men from Standard Slots hauled the big monster out of the warehouse and craned it up onto a flatbed truck.”
“They covered it with tarps and tied it down,” I said. “We stood and talked to the Standard men as the two haulers left with it on the back of their truck, headed supposedly to the crusher out at the wrecking yard to the east of town.”
Then it dawned on me what I had said. We had a trail, but a ten-year-old trail.
“The truck drivers kept the machine, didn’t they?” I said to Ben. “We need to find them and where they kept it the last ten years, or who they sold it to, and we’ll have our home for the machines.”
I turned to Patty. “You remember the name of the trucking company by any chance? It had a logo on the door.”
“Steven’s Hauling,” Patty said without hesitation.
Damn her memory never ceased to amaze me.
I grabbed my cell phone and dialed The Bookkeeper. Of all the people I knew, he was the best with computers and the internet and research than anyone.
“Still no schedule yet,” the Bookkeeper said when he answered the phone.
“Can you trace Steven’s Hauling?” I asked. “They picked up the slots ten years ago from the old graveyard warehouse.
“Call you right back,” he said.
I hung up and then said, “Stan, we might have a lead.”
A moment later Stan appeared with Screamer.
“We’re tracking the company that hauled away the slots,” I said to him.
“We were trying to find that information out,” Stan said, “but the Standard Warehouse Records were long gone. How did you figure it out just sitting here?”
“A short trip down memory lane for Ben,” I said, “and Patty’s great memory of the name on the truck. Steven’s Hauling. I got the Bookkeeper tracing it.”
My phone rang.
I answered it and the Bookkeeper said, “Steven’s Hauling has been out of business since 2010 when one of their trucks wrecked on the way to LA, killing both of the brothers who owned the company and did all the work of hauling off the slots back ten years ago. Three days after hauling the slots from the warehouse, they deposited three thousand in cash into their bank account that they didn’t account for. That was about the going rate for an old set of slots like that back then.”
“Nothing else?” I asked.
“All the company records were destroyed in 2012. Now, I’m going back to trying to figure out where these monsters are going to land next.”
With that he hung up.
I looked at Patty and Ben and Stan and Screamer. “Dead end. No record of who they sold it to and the brothers who owned and worked the company are dead and all records destroyed.”
“And more bad news,” Screamer said. “We’ve got twelve missing so far.”
“That the police know about,” Stan said.
All I could do was take a deep breath and just wonder what in the world we were going to do to stop this.
Again.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Got Them!
Patty and I were just about to jump to her apartment, change clothes, and head out for a quiet dinner so we could think when Screamer got a call.
He listened for a moment, then said, “Be right there.”
He slipped the phone back into his pocket and said, “Slots of Saturn are in Binion’s. Same spot as ten years ago. Police have them surrounded, so no unsuspecting customer is going to jump them at the moment.”
Instead of teleporting into a dead camera area, it was just as easy for us to head down through Madge’s Diner entrance to my office, out the front door, and across the street to Binion’s.
The three slot machines that had haunted my dreams for ten years were there, right where Patty and I had seen them on the security tape all those years ago.
And they looked exactly the same. Exactly.
Bright colors, the images of Saturn and the rings cutting across all three machines, three wooden chairs attached in front of them.
My nightmare had returned in bright, living color.
They were pulsing, dim to bright, every second or so, and I could sense the pull they were putting on people around them, including the police.
Including me.
They were hungry and if they didn’t find a victim soon, they might jump.
And when they did, we needed to somehow trace them.
I dropped us all out of time, freezing everything around us. I loved that superpower almost as much as I loved the ability to teleport. All I had actually done was take me and Patty and Ben and Screamer and Stan between instants of time.
But all the casino sounds and the sounds coming from Fremont Street stopped instantly. Also, I could thankfully no longer feel the pull from the slots.
“That thing feels like it’s about to jump,” I said.
Stan nodded and an instant later Laverne appeared wearing her most distinct black power business suit and her hair pulled back tight. A different look than the last time she had been in my office.
“Got any ideas?” she said, staring at the slots.
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