Slots of Saturn: A Poker Boy Novel

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  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.

  Samantha also looked clean and freshly dressed in a tan blouse and skirt and sandals. She had on her black glasses, but none of her movements indicated she was blind in any respect. Stan’s help with her other senses had given her back her freedom of movement completely.

  “Feeling better?” I asked her.

  “Still a touch green around the gills,” she said. “But getting better by the moment.”

  “So it’s proven,” Patty said as we all turned and headed out the door and into the warm afternoon heat. “Men do take longer in showers. I even had time to make copies of the list we got.”

  She handed me a copy.

  “I didn’t know it was a race,” I said, giving her my best disarming smile. “But under the right kind of pressure I can be pretty darned fast with a bar of soap.”

  Samantha snorted, but Patty just smiled at me and said nothing. I had no idea what she was thinking at that moment. She was impossible for me to read in any fashion.

  Right at that moment, I would have traded a bunch of my superpowers for Johnny and Geneva’s ability to be hooked up to Patty in thought. I could only hope that Patty was thinking of me in the shower, in a nice way.

  The image of Patty in the shower with me, handing me the soap with that smile of hers made me trip over the curb and stumble.

  “You all right?” Patty asked as she moved around her car.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything at that moment. Every time I turned around, this wonderful woman was surprising me, making me stumble, making me have wonderfully rude thoughts about her. I couldn’t remember the last time a woman had had this kind of effect on me.

  Maybe it was the raspberry.

  Maybe it was one of her superpowers. I sure hoped to find out at some point, after all this was over.

  With me in the co-pilot seat and Samantha in the back, Patty expertly drove her car out the old Boulder Highway toward the warehouse where the ghost slots lived. The next location The Bookkeeper said the slots would show was in an old casino out on the same highway at a little after seven this evening.

  I planned on giving a copy of the list to Johnny so that he could have the area in that casino guarded to keep anyone else from being taken. But I really hoped to find a way to stop the machines before then.

  We rode in silence through a few stop lights, then Samantha asked, “Do you think Ben is still alive?”

  Patty glanced up into the rearview mirror, then at me.

  I turned as much as my seat belt would let me turn to face Samantha. “I don’t honestly know,” I said. “What does your gut tell you?”

  “That he is,” Samantha said.

  “Trust that feeling,” Patty said.

  “I agree,” I said. “There’re a lot of things in this world that happen and are not easily explained. One is the connection between a couple in love. It’s as powerful a sense as the ones you are using to see without your eyes. Let that feeling come forward and you’ll know your answer.”

  Samantha was nodding, clearly lost inside her own head.

  “The connection is real,” Patty said. “If you know he’s still alive, then he is.”

  “Thank you,” Samantha said, her voice quivering a little. “And thank you both for helping me.”

  “It’s what we do,” Patty said as she accelerated the car away from a stop light, weaving through traffic like an expert.

  I turned back around to watch the road ahead. The last thing I needed at this point was to get motion sickness. A car-sick superhero wasn’t going to be much good to anyone. Facing backward in a car always made me carsick, even one being driven as smoothly as Patty was driving.

  The clock on Patty’s dashboard said ten minutes until five. We were going to be an hour early for the six o’clock gathering. I hoped Stan and Screamer would both show up early as well. The information they had gone after was going to be critical in how we stopped these machines. We needed to get the machines to spit back out the people it had taken, or find where they had been taken to, then figure out what was powering the slots, and how to turn them off.

  I had no clear idea how any of this was going to work, but my sense was to trust the team and it would all come together.

  In the warehouse parking lot the only car was a marked police car sitting directly in front of the door. When Patty pulled up and stopped, one of the officers climbed out and walked toward the car.

  Patty put her window down, letting in a blast of warm air. She smiled at the officer. “I’m Pa
tty Ledgerwood.”

  She indicated me, then Samantha. “This is Conway Moore, and Samantha MacDuff.”

  The officer nodded. “Detective State says you have clearance to go in. He’s on his way here. Should be arriving in less than ten minutes.”

  Patty glanced at me, then smiled at the officer. “We’ll wait for him out here.”

  “I’ll tell him,” the officer said, then turned and headed back for his car as Patty slid up her window and turned up the air conditioning to cool the car quickly.

  “Nice in here,” Stan said from the back seat.

  “Cripes!” Samantha said as Patty and I spun around to see Stan sitting next to Samantha in the back seat.

  “Ring a bell or something next time,” Samantha said, both her hands on her chest. “Not sure if my heart can handle that again.”

  Stan laughed. “Sorry about that.”

  For the first time, I actually thought that moving up the ranks to one of the gods might be a good idea. Stan’s ability to pop in and out and move around without cars and planes would sure save a lot of time and money. I could play in the World Series and sleep at nights in my own bed. But I doubted the trade-off would be worth the politics and infighting that went on among the gods.

  “How are the enhanced senses working for you?” Stan asked Samantha.

  “Perfectly,” Samantha said. “I hope you’re not going to take them away after we solve all this.”

  Stan laughed. “Of course not. But we may ask you to help us once in a while in trade.”

  “That’s a deal I can live with,” Samantha said.

  “Power?” I asked Stan. “Any idea what is powering those ghost slots?”

  “Nothing from this plain of existence,” Stan said. “Bernie in maintenance tried to trace the power from the things in there, but couldn’t do it. It’s like the power circles back in from inside.”

  Bernie was the gambling god in charge of casino maintenance and operations. I had heard his nickname was Back-up Bernie.

  “So shutting the power off to those things from the outside isn’t an option,” Patty said.

  “Afraid not,” Stan said.