Smith's Monthly #10

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Then, suddenly, there were colors. Rainbows of colors, in all shapes, flowing, merging into one another like the colors gasoline makes on water.

  The lines of colors flowed in and around the buildings and over the streets, heavy and thick in some areas, light and airy in others.

  Part of me wanted to discount what I was seeing, to look up at the boat and focus on the trees and the lake I knew.

  But instead I let myself go, let myself ski back and forth and back and forth over the tops of the buildings, over the colors and the lights, staring down into the souls of the people.

  And, as in the water, I again saw my reflection in the mirror-like surface of the dead souls. Only this time I knew it was a reflection of what I might have been had I let myself completely die.

  My face was blank, my eyes empty and afraid.

  The reflection cut at my breath, twisted my stomach. It was a reflection I had seen many times in the morning mirror over the last few years and it scared me.

  I forced myself to look beyond it, deeper, until I found myself closer to the buildings and the streets, again skiing a new surface of souls, sleeping souls of people who were alive, people who enjoyed living and trying new and different things.

  This time my reflection was smiling.

  Behind and below the reflection I could see many surfaces left to ski and explore. Surfaces that I could only guess at what they were.

  But for now I felt content to be alive, so I skied the rainbow colors until my arms began to ache and my legs felt weak and limp.

  The end of the run was coming.

  I desperately tried to memorize the feelings, the power of the run so that I could return. As the rope started to go slack and my speed dropped, I took a deep breath and looked up, following the line of the rope toward Edward.

  I expected to see the boat, the lake, and the mountains beyond.

  Instead, I saw the inside of the Penthouse Bar.

  My dad was perched on a bar stool next to Edward and the wall of celebrity photographs was behind them. The yellow rope hung between us. They both held it.

  And both were smiling the biggest damn grins I had ever seen.

  I could feel my speed dropping. The rope between us almost touched the carpet.

  “Nice run,” Dad said. “Keep practicing. Keep searching.”

  Edward nodded in agreement.

  The rope touched the floor and I sank into the cold water of the lake.

  SIX

  THE BOAT WAS empty and idling in neutral.

  I looked around, trying to figure out where I was. It looked as if I was about a mile down the lake from the cabin. I swam toward the boat, pushing the ski along the surface of the water in front of me.

  “Edward,” I called out, as I tossed the ski into the back of the boat and pulled myself over the side.

  But the boat was empty, as I had half expected it would be.

  The lake around me completely smooth, as if the boat had not crossed it, as if I had not skied it.

  I stood in the back of the boat, feeling alive, gazing out over the mirror-like water and the reflections of the mountains and morning sky.

  Dad had been right all those years ago. There was always more than one surface.

  All I had to do was look for them.

  I dropped into the driver’s seat and turned the boat toward the cabin, letting it cut slowly through the mirror waters, just enjoying the moment and the memory of skiing over the city.

  And enjoying the feeling of really being alive.

  Way back in 2005 I wrote a thriller with the name Dead Money. It starred Doc Hill, a professional poker player. I had every intention when I wrote the thriller to continue to write more Doc Hill stories, but because of the strangeness of publishing at the time, I put the novel in a drawer and pretty much forgot about it.

  Fast-forward to 2013 and a meeting with the publisher of WMG Publishing, Allyson Longueira, and my wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Kris brought up Dead Money, the long-stored thriller, and suggested I take it out, dust it off, and sell it to WMG Publishing.

  After rereading Dead Money and coming to remember and like the characters again, I decided to write a new Doc Hill story for Fiction River Special Edition: Crime. This story is the first of many to come.

  Eyes On My Cards

  One

  I PUSHED BACK from the table and stood, disgusted.

  I needed a break.

  I left my chips in my spot indicating to the dealer I would be back. I wasn’t down any of the five hundred I had bought in for, but I sure wasn’t up either.

  But for a change, winning money wasn’t the reason I was at that table.

  Around me the noise and lights of the Grand Casino and Hotel on the Las Vegas strip seemed muted and flavored by the slight smell of popcorn, like I was walking in a carnival instead of a casino. I moved between the empty poker tables, away from the no-limit game, and toward the larger part of the casino and the gaming tables.

  To my right three tourists in shorts and bright shirts stood, laughing at something, and beyond them Webster stood in his dark silk suit, his hands crossed over his chest, his eyes missing nothing on the gaming floor around him.

  B. B. Webster, the head of Grand Casino operations was the man who had hired me. He was the reason I was sitting in this mid-level no-limit game in his casino. He had asked a favor and I had agreed to help.

  He had a suspected cheater working his poker room, a guy in a dark golf shirt and Reds’ baseball cap. Webster wanted me to tell him how the guy was doing it.

  And after an hour at the table with the cheater, I had no idea.

  Not one, which had me totally frustrated. I had spent all that time at the table and couldn’t spot a thing. Yet I too was convinced he was cheating.

  I walked past Webster without even a nod and headed to the left of the gaming tables and toward the huge, ornate front lobby of the hotel and casino. Giant marble pillars dominated the lobby and it never seemed to be empty or quiet, no matter the time of day. And the popcorn smell faded in the big space as well, replaced by the faint smell of lilacs. Over the sounds of the people talking I could hear the fountains that lined two walls, water flowing over rocks and into pools.

  A dozen tourists stood along the large front desk on the left, talking with smiling front desk clerks, clearly checking in. Suitcases were scattered behind them like deer droppings along a trail in a forest.

  Right now it was just after midnight on a Thursday night.

  As I went around the corner to my left and out of sight of the poker room, Annie Lott joined me, tucking her arm in mine and matching me stride for stride.

  She had on a black pants suit with an open-neck white blouse and low heels that clicked lightly on the marble floor. Her long brown hair was pulled up tight on her head. She looked stunning and just having her walk with me, her steps matching mine perfectly, made me calm down a little.

  We had been together now for over a year, living together for the last six months, and I had loved every minute of it.

  And sometimes, like tonight, we worked cases together as favors for friends. She had been a former Las Vegas detective before becoming a full-time poker player. I saw things on poker tables she didn’t see. But she saw things in the real world I never noticed. It was one of the many reasons we made such a good team.

  Since our first meeting while investigating the death of my father, we had become known for being able to figure out some darned strange crimes in and around casinos. We didn’t take every request for help that came our way, but if the friend really needed help, or the problem was weird enough to get our attention, we would try to help out.

  “He’s cheating all right,” Annie said. “I can see that from beyond the rail. You figure out how?”

  I shook my head. “Not a clue and it’s driving me nuts.”

  “Yeah, me too,” she said.

  Poker was a difficult game to cheat at in a monitored casino. But it did happen, usually with so
me sort of collusion between a dealer and a player. This guy clearly wasn’t working with any of the MGM dealers, since three dealers had gone through the table in the hour I had been there. And Webster had made sure the dealers tonight hadn’t worked or dealt to the guy last night.

  And two of the dealers had actually looked at the guy funny a couple of times, as if they were picking up on something being wrong as well.

  We walked in silence past the front desk and down a very wide hallway that headed toward the parking garage. A few paces down the hall we went through an unmarked door on the left and into a reception area with a large desk.

  We moved toward a lounge area on the right that had bottled water and soft drinks in a fridge and tea and coffee on a counter. The room was comfortable, with three overstuffed couches on three walls that seemed to be from an earlier MGM Grand décor. A very red one, including strange red paintings of desert landscapes on the walls. It seemed like it would have been too much, but oddly, I found the room comfortable.

  I grabbed a bottle of water and dropped onto one couch and Annie worked to make herself a cup of black tea.

  We didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say until one of us came up with an idea as to how this guy was cheating.

  The door opened and my childhood friend and business partner, Fleetwood Korte, entered, followed by Webster. Fleet’s silk suit rivaled Webster’s and together they looked like they belonged on Wall Street, not in a Vegas casino.

  At six-two, Fleet was two inches taller than me and thicker around the waist than I was. His hair had thinned since our college days ten years earlier, but he made up for that with a huge handlebar moustache. Every time I kidded him about how Carol, his wife, liked his moustache, he would just smile and nod, a distant look in his eyes that told me far, far more information than I actually wanted to know.

  “You got anything, Doc?” Webster asked, his voice deeper and filled with a sound like gravel being washed together. He clearly had smoked far, far too many cigarettes in his day.

  “He’s cheating all right,” I said.

  “That much is clear,” Annie said as she moved over beside me and sat down with her tea. “I could see that just watching from a distance.”

  Fleet took a bottle of water and sat on another couch while Webster sort of stared at the three of us.

  “Doc, I think he’s got spotters,” Fleet said.

  I glanced at Fleet and nodded. I had thought the guy had spotters as well, but I hadn’t been sure. That’s why both Annie and Fleet were here, to scout around the table and the poker room area. “Guy in the blue tee-shirt who is pacing the hall?”

  Fleet nodded.

  “What about the woman in the green sun dress and long black hair,” Annie asked, “sitting in the room to the back reading?”

  “Possible,” I said. “But she came in with the big guy who called himself Big Ed two seats to the right of our target.”

  “And what good is a spotter going to do him?” Webster asked. “They can’t see your cards or anyone else’s cards. I’ve watched some security videos and everyone is playing down on the felt, no flashing at all.”

  I shrugged, because I honestly didn’t know.

  Webster shook his head at our silence. “Strangest damn thing I have ever seen. And that’s going some considering how long I’ve been in this damn business.”

  He headed back out the door and left the three of us sitting and thinking.

  Finally, I broke the silence. “Let me lay out what I’ve got and see if we can put any theories together before we go back in there.”

  Fleet and Annie nodded, so I went on.

  “He’s a decent player. Nothing fancy, like he has played a lot of hours in a low-level casino somewhere in a three-six game.”

  “He doesn’t know how to bet in a no-limit game,” Annie added.

  “That’s right,” I said. “But somehow he knows the cards in other player’s hands.”

  “Or he’s manipulating his own cards to make sure his cards are the best,” Fleet said.

  “He’s not a mechanic,” I said, shaking my head. Beside me Annie shook her head as well as she sipped her tea.

  I went on. “The guy can barely hold his cards at times. And he’s not playing hands when he doesn’t have the best cards. But when he does play, he almost always wins. Or drops when his hand gets beat on the last card.”

  “Maybe he can read minds,” Fleet said, shrugging.

  “That would explain a ton of things,” Annie said, laughing. “But my guess is that this is some sort of very ornate scam we just can’t see yet.”

  “I agree,” I said, the frustration coming back. “The guy played for five hours last night and didn’t lose a hand he played to the end. And tonight he has kept that streak up, at least for the hour we’ve been watching.”

  “You know, if he were better at hiding what he was doing,” Annie said, “Webster or any of the rest of us would never have picked up on this.”

  I glanced at Annie and smiled. “I think you might have given us a clue. He’s a mid-level poker player, so this winning and high-stakes game is unusual to him. He flat doesn’t know how to hide what he’s doing yet.”

  Fleet shook his head. “And that’s going to help us how?”

  I ticked off three items on my fingers. “He can’t manipulate cards, he isn’t working with dealers, and he isn’t used to these levels of games. What’s left?”

  Both Annie and Fleet shrugged.

  “Mechanical,” I said. I pointed at the ceiling.

  “He can’t be working with anyone in the security room,” Annie said. “I doubt that would be possible. And Webster would have checked that first, before even calling us.”

  “The guy’s not working with anyone in the casino staff,” I said, standing. “I’m sure of that now. But I’ve got an idea how to take this guy and expose him.”

  “And how are you going to do that?” Annie asked, as she stood to join me.

  “If he’s not used to this level,” I said, smiling, “I bet he’s never dealt with a blind player.”

  Annie laughed, the sound wonderful to my ears while Fleet just looked puzzled.

  “I’ll show you,” I said to my best friend. “You just keep on eye on the spotters. Especially that black-haired woman in the back.”

  “Got it,” Fleet said, looking even more puzzled. “I think.”

  Two

  I WAITED UNTIL Annie and Fleet got back into positions so they could see the table, then I joined it again.

  The cheater with the Reds’ baseball cap had a stack of chips in front of him that looked to be a few thousand large and there were two new players in the game.

  I glanced at my cards a few times, tossing away garbage, then when the button came around to me, I decided it was time to really see what was happening.

  One guy in early position made a slight raise, the cheater called, and I re-raised just enough to not scare anyone.

  Big Ed folded quickly as did others.

  I had not looked at my cards at all. In fact, I hadn’t even touched them.

  And I knew for a fact that the cheater hadn’t noticed I hadn’t looked at them.

  The guy in early position called my raise, but the cheater was looking puzzled, shaking his head slowly.

  Finally he folded.

  The flop came and I pretended to look at my cards again, then folded to another bet from the player in early position.

  The next hand the cheater limped in again with just a call and I raised. Again I had not looked at my cards. I was playing blind.

  By the time the other players folded around to him, he looked very, very confused. Since I had not looked at my hand, he didn’t know what I had either.

  This sort of made sense if he was reading minds, but I doubted that was what he was doing.

  Finally he again folded and I knew I had him.

  As the dealer was washing the deck and putting the cards in the shuffling machine imbedded in the tabl
e, I pretended to play with my chips as I felt the underside of the rail in front of me. It took me a moment to find them, but I did.

  Very slight bumps just under the rail in the leather.

  My guess was that they were very, very tiny cameras, no larger than the size of pins stuck into the leather of the rail.

  I looked around at the other seats. I honestly couldn’t see the tiny camera heads at all, they blended in so well on the underside of the edge of the table.

  I was impressed.

  In major tournaments there were what were called “button cameras” to allow television viewers to follow along with the play. This guy and his team had cameras so small and perfectly matched with the table that they couldn’t even be seen. At least three per spot to make sure that no matter where a player looked at their cards, the camera would pick it up.

  This must have taken him and his partners a long time to set up. Days carefully installing the tiny pin cameras without seeming to do anything strange at the table.

  Webster would have to go back over a lot of footage to catch the people who had installed the little pin cameras.

  I just shook my head in disgust. Even a monkey could win at poker if he knew what everyone else held for cards. The idiot in the Reds’ baseball cap was worse. I hated cheaters, almost more than anything else.

  I made myself calm down and sit back and try to think. I had found the cameras, but how was this guy getting the information relayed to him?

  I played the next hand normal, looking at my cards and playing them like a normal mid-level player. When I did that the cheater seemed to relax again and I studied his face when he didn’t know I was watching.

  I couldn’t see a thing.

  I could read the best players in the business and this guy was a blank slate. I doubted he had a good poker face. He just didn’t think he needed to hide anything from anyone.

  In other words, this guy was not trained well and I was starting to doubt he was in charge of this.