“I don’t want that number leaking to anyone,” Nina said. “By the way.”
“Thomas will need it. For Global Gaming. That’s the outfit that cuts the check,” Maloney said, nodding toward Munzinger. “But he won’t give the number out.” He was vacillating. There were powerful pressures on him from both directions.
“Ah, Mr. Maloney, Mr. Maloney,” Nina said. She cocked her head and looked him in the eye. “If there’s one thing known to an Irishman, it’s that the most sensible course isn’t always strictly the one in the regs.” She gave him a melting smile, then noticed Paul, watching from across the room, pretending to gag.
“It’s true that every jackpot is different,” Maloney said. “I suppose we have plenty of documentation. Certainly, we can get additional information later if necessary.”
“Let’s talk it all out tomorrow,” Nina said. “I’ll be at my office just waiting for your call. Now, how about the check?”
Through all of this, Jessie maintained a poker face. The gaming officials sneaked looks at her, trying to see behind the dark glasses. Maloney started folding up the paperwork, still not quite convinced.
“Why does the company that made the machine pay the jackpot?” Nina asked, to keep him from thinking any more about the documents.
“Global Gaming owns the Greed Machines,” Maloney said. “I forget that most people think the casinos make the payouts on progressive slots. Global Gaming has a control room at their factory in Reno where they keep the progressive slots running all over this country and the world. It sells the machines, keeps them repaired, and makes the payout when somebody wins. Thomas Munzinger, there, he’s the money man. Of course, the State Gaming Control Board watches over the operation. That’s Ully Miller. Been with them twenty-two years, longer than I’ve been with the service. Well, let’s get this stuff signed and sealed.”
Thomas Munzinger came over and checked his share of the papers. The dour expression on his tanned face contrasted sharply with John Jovanic’s laugh as he swapped stories on the other side of the room with Paul. Perhaps that was because Prize’s was getting a sizable publicity boost, while Global Gaming was getting an enormous mark in red ink. Kenny’s earlier second wind was showing signs of blowing out. His face wore a fixed smile, ghastly in its rigor. He faded from the group at the desk and Paul rescued him, whispering into Nina’s ear.
“Time to go, unless you want a startling show and tell from this front. His veneer’s cracking.”
“I think that’s all of it,” Nina said rapidly to the room. “I wonder if I could have copies of the signed papers. Tomorrow would be fine.” More cards were exchanged.
“Well?” Jovanic boomed. “All set?”
“So it seems,” Munzinger said.
“Then come on over here, honey, it’s time to make the payout. Andy, pop the corks. Thomas, you ready?” Munzinger left the room. Jovanic came over and put an arm around Jessie, saying to Kenny, “I’m sure you won’t mind if I do this. It’s the biggest jackpot any of us will ever see.”
Then they all drank Dom Perignon from crystal glasses as the press settled into their task of taking pictures and running videocams. The champagne worked its usual magic, making Nina want to lie down on the floor and slip into a lovely pastel-colored dreamland. But the lateness of the hour was working to their advantage, as what might have been an endless party was going to have to be abbreviated before they all keeled over.
Munzinger held up a hand and the place quieted instantly except for the reporters shifting around trying to get a good view. He walked over to Jessie, whose face, what was visible of it, looked pinched, and said, “Ma’am, in a minute I’m going to give you a real check. But first, I want to present this to you.” He unwrapped a brown-paper-covered poster of a giant check with the full amount of seven million and quite a few hundred thousand change written on the pay line in thick black marker ink. He held it up for photos and handed it to Jessie.
They all applauded vigorously amid a blizzard of flashes. He shook her hand. “Thanks for being such a good sport!” he said, inspiring scattered laughter. More flashes. Munzinger’s smile was perfect, but the eyes stayed cold. Nina looked at the other officials. The glamour and magic of their business seemed not to affect any of them. The Prize’s people, Jovanic, Andy Doig, and Gary Gray, stood together and clapped along with the rest. Gray kept staring at Jessie. Ully Miller had stepped into the background. A shadow man, tough and competent, Nina imagined.
Jessie didn’t seem inclined to hold it up herself at first, but she finally held it up in a way that covered most of her face.
The cameras went nuts. Nina could hear several reporters making live transmissions. “Congratulations,” voices babbled all around. Jessie continued to smile valiantly. Nina hoped she wouldn’t collapse. Fatigue swept through her, bringing visions of her down comforter and thick pillow. She couldn’t wait to pour herself a glass of water, brush her teeth, and climb into her own bed.
“Come on, Thomas,” Jovanic said loudly. “Now give her the real thing!” Lots of laughing and bonhomie.
This time the check was regulation-sized. Munzinger drew it out of his wallet—it seemed an extraordinarily ordinary place to keep it—and handed it to Jessie in a gesture so offhanded it was almost an anticlimax.
“Global Gaming congratulates you,” he said. He gave another cold smile for the cameras, which faded as he stepped back.
Much more applause. General backslapping. Then John Jovanic was back for another photo op with Jessie, shaking her hand and congratulating her. Doig and Gray, both looking happy for Jessie, were next. Ully Miller came last. He shook hands nicely, saying, “It’s an incredible win,” with a perhaps unconscious stress on “incredible.” Nina thought, I’ll bet they tore that machine apart as soon as Jessie left, trying to find a malfunction so they could void it out. He still didn’t seem to believe it.
Jessie’s jackpot had cast an unsettling spell over the room full of men in suits, rattling their imperturbability. They looked like people struck by a semi, disheveled and surprised to be there.
Nina hoped there wouldn’t be trouble, knew there would be, and looked again at Jessie, who stood alone in the middle of the circle of interest, an aura around her, mysterious and aloof, scared and triumphant.
It took another fifteen minutes, but the four of them finally made it to the parking lot, this time accompanied by an entourage.
“Whew!” Jessie said. Her smile widened into a grin. Her white teeth gleamed. “I won! I’ve never had such luck. Until the moment he handed over that check, it didn’t seem real.”
“We did it!” Kenny said. He held out a palm and Jessie slapped it.
“What now?” Nina said. “Kenny, where’s your car?”
“Over there.” A black Lexus sat in the far corner of the lot, splendid in its solitude. “But I don’t want . . .” He didn’t finish, but it seemed to Nina that he didn’t want the show to end, that he was afraid to have it end and to separate himself from them.
“They can’t drive off in separate cars,” Paul said, eying a few lingering press people at the edge of the lot. “Wouldn’t look good.”
“I’ll come with you,” Kenny said eagerly.
“We’ll all go in the Mustang,” Paul said. “Nina, you can leave the Bronco here and we’ll pick it up in the morning. Okay? Joya, your wheels are back at the Starlake Building. . . .”
“I just want to get in my car and get out of town,” Jessie said.
“And go where?” Nina said.
“Close. I’ll come to your office on Tuesday if you need me to.”
“Why not later today?” Nina said.
“I’m so tired. I’ll call you when I wake up. We’ll see.” She yawned. This set them all off on a mass yawning fit. Nina didn’t want to let her go, but she had to.
They all climbed into Paul’s Mustang, which sagged so low to the ground Nina was afraid they’d scrape the asphalt. He took the California exit out of the lot. There we
re several cars behind them.
“They got their pictures. What else do they want?” Jessie said.
“To talk to you,” Nina said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to talk to them,” she said.
“We have the check. The hard part is over. Everybody have their seat belts on?” Paul said. They took a screaming left behind a gas station and headed off into the forest on a side road. They took the second right and went up a short dark gravel path that seemed to head right into the mountain behind the casino. Paul cut the motor.
Distant engines, getting more distant.
“It was so easy,” Paul said. Just then they saw a Ford Explorer turn onto the road.
“Damn!” They U-turned and roared down a residential street. Turning here and there, they finally came out on Pioneer Trail. The first pale streaks of dawn were coming over the mountains.
“The Starlake parking lot will be staked out,” Paul said. “I don’t see how she can just get into her car and drive off.”
“But I have to have a car,” Jessie said. “How can I get home? How can I get back to see you?”
Nina said, “Paul will drive you home tonight. Okay, Paul?” Paul rubbed his eyes, but nodded. “And can you pick her up when she’s ready to come back?” She turned back to Jessie. “We can get you home without company, but we can’t do it if you’re in the Honda. Paul, you drive us to the Starlake Building lot. Give me the scarf and glasses.”
Paul groaned. “That trick is older than Sue the dinosaur. It’ll never work,” he said.
“Well, I’ve always wanted to try it,” Nina said. She was already pulling off her coat, and Jessie, getting into the spirit, traded her jacket. Nina wrapped herself up and adjusted the sunglasses on her nose.
“You’re about six inches shorter, Greta baby,” Paul said. “They’re gonna notice.”
“I’ll just stand tall. Here’s a pen,” she went on, talking to Jessie. “It’s time to endorse the back of the check. I’ll keep it in my home safe and take it to the bank first thing in the morning.”
“Here,” Jessie said. She handed Nina the check, which felt as heavy as if it had been all in one-dollar bills, and Nina carefully folded it and tucked it into the zipper compartment inside her bag.
“And your car keys,” Nina said. “I’ll get the check into my trust account as soon as I can tomorrow.”
“What about me?” Kenny said. “The Lexus is back at Prize’s.”
“I don’t want him knowing where I am,” Jessie protested. “He’s not coming to my home.”
“What town do you live in?” Paul asked. “Give me a clue. I may not know your name or your game, but looks like you’re going to have to spring that information, or I can’t get you home.”
“Near Markleeville.” The town of Markleeville was in Alpine County, over the seven thousand foot Luther Pass, forty-five minutes away. “But do we have to take him?”
Paul sighed. “Okay. Okay, let me think. Okay. I know. We’ll just drive all over this doggone town ’til either they or we fall down dead from exhaustion, how’s that? The Lexus is in the opposite direction from Markleeville. I just don’t think I can make it back to Stateline, then all the way across town yet another time to get us on the road out.”
“But I don’t know him!”
“You don’t know me,” Paul said.
“But I trust you.”
Kenny said, “Wrap a cloth around my eyes so I can’t see.” Even Jessie smiled at that, and he went on, “I promise I will tell no one. They can pull out my fingernails starting with the pinkie.”
“Isn’t there something else we can do?” Jessie said. She looked around, but the mental processes were shutting down one by one. Jessie’s face fell. She had realized she had no choice. Kenny would have to know, or she would be bringing home a train of reporters.
“If you tell anyone, I mean anyone, not only will you get no money, but I’ll—I’ll—”
“You’ll divorce me,” said Kenny.
They pulled into Nina’s office parking lot. Jessie’s battered Civic had company. Two vans with TV station logos, six people. Another car was just roaring up.
“It’s just showbiz,” Nina said. She got out with Jessie. They embraced. Nina got into the Civic, carrying the jumbo poster of the check, and after some difficulty started up. She pretended to be fumbling with her seat belt. She could hardly see with the shades on. She couldn’t drive that way. She wrapped the scarf tighter, pulled them off, and at last clasped the buckle. The two vans that had been waiting started up too.
Paul and Jessie and Kenny left without haste, a Mustang with nothing to hide. Nobody paid any attention to them. Nina snapped the seat belt shut and took off in the opposite direction. The Civic was chaos, full of clothes and books. Jessie could have split at a moment’s notice with all this stuff.
Nina drove home to Kulow Street in the Honda. She pulled down the short driveway and got out, removing the glasses and scarf. After marching up to the lead car idling outside the house, she handed the surprised reporter her card. “She’s long gone. Sorry,” she said. “So we can all go to bed.”
Vigilant yellow-headed blackbirds sputtered in the tree next to her house, and a long low ray of sun caught her as she pushed open the front door, weary as Methuselah must have been during his nine-hundred-and-sixty-ninth year. Her briefcase was clutched to her chest, and the check reposed within.
Morning had broken, Blackbird had spoken. It was the end of the first day.
7
“I HAVE TO hand it to you,” Paul said when he called Nina eight hours later, but in spite of this encouraging conversation opener, he sounded disturbed.
She had slept into Monday afternoon. Sandy had called and woken her a half hour before Bob had busted in, back from the tennis camp she had put him in for the summer.
She was ministering to her caffeine habit out on the deck, her eyes crusty as though she’d gone through a sandstorm, the portable phone in its usual arthritis-provoking position between neck and chin. The check had been reverently placed in a small safe in a hole behind the bathroom mirror upstairs.
She could just see Bob, half-hidden in the limbs of a gnarly giant in the backyard, the only oak for blocks among the firs and pines. He sat there eating a baloney sandwich, his legs swinging, and she hadn’t had breakfast yet. Hitchcock, their black malamute, rushed around in disorderly circles under the tree, barking thunderously.
“You would have thought of it,” she said. Paul-style, he was starting with something easy to talk about. He would get around to whatever he would get around to soon enough. In preparation for that moment, she treated herself to an extralarge slug of coffee.
“The scarf and the sunglasses—yeah, I see now that you had a couple of things in mind, not just helping her avoid the reporters. You manipulated the situation so I had to drive her home,” he said.
“Guilty,” Nina said. “But thanks, Paul.”
“Even so, she got out at the entrance to the neighborhood, so I still don’t know exactly which house she lives in. Man, she is paranoid. And then I still had to park Kenny someplace and get back myself. So I just put Kenny up at Caesars where I am. On your credit card. He claimed he was broke.”
“That’s fine,” Nina said. “I’ll check with Jes—uh, Joya about the expense item, but I imagine she saw that coming. At least we can keep an eye on him there. She told me she was a Washoe, Paul, but I hadn’t had a chance to tell you. Sandy lives out that way. There’s a loose-knit colony there, although most of the tribe members live in Dresslerville out in the Carson Valley.”
“Why don’t they just call it ‘the rez,’ like other tribes?” Paul said.
“I don’t know. Maybe because there’s not a typical reservation.”
“Why not?”
“To make a long and tragic story short, so many of them had died off by 1880 that the government figured the Washoe were too close to extinction to bother even acknowledging. They weren’t officially reco
gnized as a tribe until the twentieth century. But they survived, although there are only about fifteen hundred of them.”
“If Sandy and Jes-Joya are examples, I’m not surprised they made it,” Paul said.
Damn the man’s steel-trap mind. “Oh, they’re doing pretty well these days. They finally got some land back at Tahoe, and they’re about to develop some acreage along the highway near Dresslerville.”
“A casino, no doubt,” Paul said.
“That has been suggested. Sandy tells me that there’s a company which has brought in some limited partners to try to convince the tribe to build a casino. But so far most of the tribal council seem to be leaning toward putting in an office complex instead.”
“Why not gambling? Moral qualms?”
“You’d have to ask Sandy,” Nina said. “Anyway, we know where she lives. Sort of.”
“Seen the Chronicle?”
“I’m reading it now.” The San Francisco Chronicle had somehow gotten news of Jessie’s jackpot into its Monday morning paper. Her photo was on the front page of the Datebook section, a photo from the conference room at Prize’s, being hugged by John Jovanic, lost in his bulk and Nina’s scarf. The photo and accompanying story wouldn’t give the man she was afraid of many clues. “They must have held the presses on this one,” she said. “Didn’t make the Tahoe paper yet.”
“I watched a news program on CNN at noon,” Paul said. “There she was, shrouded in glamour and your blue scarf.”
“Don’t use that word, Paul.”
“What word?”
“Shrouded.”
“Do you believe all this stuff she said? About the stalker?”
“I can tell she’s scared. She was pretty convincing. Look what she went through to avoid having her name come out.”
“Well, something’s come up. Along those lines.”
Nina stiffened.
“We have a problem,” Paul said. “The gun—Leung’s Glock—I had it in my pocket after we left the office at one A.M. In all the excitement, I didn’t lock it in the glove compartment like I should have. I left it in my pocket. I remembered it when I woke up this morning, and I checked for it. It’s not there anymore. The only good thing I can say is, it wasn’t loaded.”
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