The three guys split; they practically flew out of the parking lot. Dropping the knife, I turned back toward the hotel. I was still plenty thirsty.
Inside I found a coffee shop with an elevated counter that overlooked the casino floor. The place was hopping. Then again, it was a weekend night.
My waitress was a heavy middle-aged woman, with a sad but knowing expression. I ordered a large Coke. She hesitated as she took the menu back.
“You want ice with your cola?” she asked.
“Sure. But I want Coke, not Pepsi.”
“We’ve got cola, sister. One kind, take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it.” She was calling me sister the same way Wing had. Just before he’d attacked. Thinking back, I realized it had only been when I had demonstrated that I could fight that he had switched to calling me Mother.
Once he knew I was connected.
Whatever that meant.
My cola came and it tasted enough like Coke that I couldn’t complain. Drinking it hungrily, I ordered a second and turned in my chair to study the casino. The coffee shop offered a clear view of the main floor. From where I was sitting, I could see plenty of action: the poker tables, the slots, the dice pit, the blackjack tables. Only the twenty-one tables looked odd. I had to study them a moment before I realized what was wrong.
They were not playing twenty-one.
They were playing twenty-two.
The sign above the tables didn’t say BLACKJACK.
It said RED QUEEN.
“Oh, Lord,” I whispered, a phrase that sounded funny coming from my own mouth. I had meant to say, “Oh, God.” I never said, “Oh, Lord.” Of course, I never sat drinking a “cola” in a casino where twenty-two was the most popular game around.
When my waitress returned, I asked her about the twenty-two tables. She looked annoyed. “What’s wrong with them?” she said.
“Where are the blackjack tables?”
“The what?” she asked.
“They’re playing twenty-two! What happened to twenty-one?”
“You fooling with me, sister?”
“I most certainly am not.”
The woman shook her head impatiently. “There ain’t none of that played here. We play twenty-two, like we always have.”
“That’s insane.”
“I wouldn’t say that so loud if I was you.” She nodded as she spoke, sort of as a warning. Yet there was something about my face that puzzled her. Perhaps something in my eyes that made her wonder if she should take me more seriously. But she appeared to shake the fear off. Once again her tone grew brisk. “You going to pay for those drinks?” she asked.
I took two twenty-dollar bills from my purse and handed them to her. “Keep the change,” I said as the woman’s eyes swelled.
My drink in hand, I headed toward the twenty-two tables. I wanted to see how they played, if the rules matched what Russ had taught me.
That was the first time I had thought of Russ in a long time.
Damn him, I thought, a half hour later, after having observed the dealer work through three shoes worth of cards. There was no denying the bizarre connection. Russ had taught me the identical rules this casino was using.
Twenty-two was the best hand you could get. It paid double. Aces were worth only one, not eleven. The queen of hearts and the queen of diamonds were the most important cards—worth eleven each.
No one talked or joked while sitting at the red-queen tables. It seemed Russ had been right about that as well.
“The game’s older than blackjack. It has a rich tradition. It’s never played just for fun, and no one is ever supposed to break the rules.”
I saw what happened to a player who tried to evade the rules. He was a young man, kind-looking, definitely out of place in the company he was keeping. He was playing with a small amount of chips when the dealer got twenty-two. Like Russ had done to me in his hotel room, the dealer took all the bets off the table and demanded an extra 100 percent of each bet from each player. Everyone paid up quickly, including the guy in question.
But then the dealer got twenty-two again, and he not only gathered all the bets, he demanded that the players pay him another 100 percent of their previous bet. For most of the players that was a lot of money because, as Russ had demonstrated, the rules forced a player to immediately try to win their money back. So their bets were now four times what they had originally been.
The shock of two huge increases hit the players hard. The young man not only ran out of chips, he was suddenly in debt to the dealer. He stood as if to leave, but the dealer quickly pushed a button. A pit boss the size of King Kong appeared out of nowhere and stopped the guy.
“Is there a problem?” the pit boss asked.
The dealer nodded to the young man, who stood fidgeting, obviously scared. “I got hit with two naturals,” the guy stuttered. “I can’t cover it. I mean, I can but I have to go to my room to get the cash.”
The pit boss nodded politely but his cold eyes said, You ain’t going nowhere, mister. “Where are you staying?” he asked.
“The Dunes,” the guy replied. I had heard of the Dunes but thought the hotel had been torn down years ago.
“Show me your room key,” the pit boss said.
The guy searched his pockets. “I don’t have it on me. My wife has it.”
“Where is she?”
“Next door. Please, let me go and I’ll return in a few minutes.”
The pit boss gave him a hard stare. “We’ll need insurance that you’ll return.”
By now the guy was shaking in his shoes. “I have none to offer, sir.”
The pit boss stretched out a heavy arm. “Come with me.”
The guy took a step back. “No, a moment, sir, please. I can get the money. My woman has it.”
I don’t know what prompted me to intercede, except for perhaps three small facts: the guy was lying; the pit boss knew he was lying; and the pit boss hated liars but loved to deal with them harshly.
Opening my purse and reaching for my cash, I suddenly stepped between the young man and his assailant. Kissing the guy on the cheek, I glanced at the pit boss out the corner of my eye.
“Hello, honey. Sorry I’m late.” My glance at the pit boss shifted to a full-on stare. “What’s that look you’re giving me? Is there a problem?”
The pit boss studied me closely. He liked what he saw but also feared it. He bowed his head. “You this man’s wife?”
I smiled. “I ain’t his sister. What can I do for you?”
“Your husband has run up a small debt. We’d like it settled before he leaves.”
“How small is small?” I asked, although I knew the number.
The pit boss hesitated. “Five hundred even. But we’ll take four hundred in cash.”
My grin turned to ice. I thought it odd that he was trying to cheat us when my supposed husband was standing right beside me. It was like he expected a negotiation.
“I think you’ll take three hundred in cash, since that’s all my man owes you,” I said.
The pit boss backed up a step. “I thought you just arrived?”
I stepped toward him. “I’ve been here long enough. My husband owes you three hundred and not a penny more.” I paused. “I do hope you’re not thinking of cheating us, are you?”
Now it was the pit boss’s chance to fidget. “No, Mother, never. Why don’t we make it two hundred and call it even?” He added in a worried tone, “Does that sound fair to you?”
“Mighty fair.” I peeled off two hundred-dollar bills. The cash looked darker than what I was used to; there was more red in the ink than green. But when I studied the bills up close I saw the familiar Benjamin Franklin staring back at me.
I held the cash out for the pit boss to take. But before he could reach the bills I let them go, let them float toward the floor, so he had to bend over to recover them. The move was designed to make him bow to me, and the weird thing was, it felt natural.
Th
e pit boss quickly picked them up. “Thank you, Mother.”
“Thank my husband, please. And apologize.”
The pit boss bowed. “I apologize for the misunderstanding, sir. Please feel free to play here again, with your room and food comped, of course.”
“Of course,” the guy said.
“Come along, dear,” I said, grabbing the guy’s hand and pulling him away from the tables. I didn’t let go until we were near the exit. By then the guy was ready to prostrate before me.
“I don’t know how to thank you for your help, Mother,” he said. “I’m in your debt.”
“No problem. There’s just one thing I want in return.”
“Anything!”
“Don’t gamble anymore. You’re never going to win.”
He seemed to take my advice to heart. He bowed and hurried off. I also felt the urge to flee, to get out of that place and into the night air before I started screaming. I felt trapped in a spell only Russell Devon could have cast.
“Come by when you don’t know what else to do.”
He was the last person I should go see. He was the only one who knew I had been heading to his hotel in a taxi. Therefore, he must have been behind my kidnapping. The logic was simple and couldn’t be denied. I should go to the police, report him, or at the very least talk to Jimmy and Alex and let them know I was all right.
I did neither. That single remark of Russ’s continued to haunt me. I had died and been reborn in a hospital morgue. I had slipped and fallen into the Twilight Zone. And it occurred to me that he had told me that weird line because he had known I was going to end up in this exact situation. How did I know this?
Because he had taught me how to play twenty-two.
Plus I was afraid if I told Jimmy and Alex everything that had happened to me, they wouldn’t believe me. Had our places been reversed, I wouldn’t have believed them. But Russ would believe me. Even if he was a bad guy, even if he tried to kill me again, I knew he wouldn’t laugh at me. At that moment, finding a way out of this nightmare seemed almost as important as staying alive.
I walked briskly up the Strip. When I reached the Mandalay Bay, the bright gold letters on top of the casino said THE MANDY. I tried telling myself it wasn’t an issue, that a few lights had burned out. Yet the letters didn’t add up.
Inside the hotel, on the casino floor, everyone was playing red queen.
I took the elevator to the top floor. Yesterday it had been the forty-third floor. Today it was the forty-fourth, because there was no longer a thirteenth floor. Who wanted to stay on the thirteenth floor anyway? Especially here, in Las Vegas, the most superstitious town on earth.
On the top floor I exited the elevator to the left and marched down to the last room on the right. To the opulent suite that I knew overlooked the entire Strip. I could have used his key to enter—it was still in my purse—but decided to be polite and knock.
He answered immediately. It was four in the morning but he was well dressed. A dark blue suit and a red tie. More formal than the night before. He studied me with his blue eyes, which matched his suit, searching for clues. I don’t know if he found what he was looking for but there was no mistaking his relief.
“Jessica! You’re okay.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Do you want to come inside?” he asked.
“Outside is fine.”
He spoke with feeling. “It’s good to see you, Jessica.”
Jessica. That was my real name, true, but everyone called me Jessie. I had told him that yesterday.
“It’s not so good to see you, Russell,” I replied.
“Why do you say that?”
“Going to play dumb or can we skip that part?”
“You look like you’ve had a rough night.”
“You could say that. Got picked up by a taxi driver from hell and got dropped off in nowhere’s land. Then I got a ride from a middle-aged bitch with a Taser. I never did get her name. Next thing I know I’m cooling off in a meat locker with a thousand dead steer. Spent the next hour trying to break out. But I just ended up breaking my nose and ankle. The cold finally got to me and I blacked out. Then I woke up in a hospital, which looked like a turn for the better until they assumed I was dead and started doing an autopsy on me.” I paused. “Yeah, you’re right, rough night.”
He interrupted. “A hospital?”
“You act surprised, Russell. Don’t be. The autopsy with Susan and Dave was the highlight of the night. If she hadn’t been called off to treat an ER patient, and if he hadn’t had a weak heart and an insatiable lust for teenage corpses, then I’d probably be just another disemboweled stiff in the morgue right now. Can you imagine? My brain in a jar? Hell, if that had happened then we’d have nothing to talk about right now.”
Russell looked shocked. “You’re serious? They almost cut you open?”
“Why not? According to them I was DOA. Dead on arrival.”
“I know what it means.”
“Well, that’s a huge relief.”
“How come they failed to revive you?”
“I don’t know, they couldn’t get hold of Jesus?”
“But why . . . ?”
“They couldn’t revive me because I was dead. Dead!”
“Jessica.”
“Quit calling me that! It’s Jessie!”
“Why? You keep calling me Russell.”
He was right. I hadn’t noticed. I was doing it automatically, even in my mind.
“Would you please come in,” he said when I didn’t answer.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you were the only one who knew I was coming over here yesterday afternoon. And when I think about it, I can’t help but recall how the first taxi that drove up at the MGM refused to let me in. I had to take the taxi after that. Because that taxi was waiting for me. And it was when I got in that cab that my wild ride through hell started.” I paused. “Is that enough reason not to come inside?”
He checked his watch. “If you don’t want to talk, then why are you here?” he asked.
“You tell me.”
“You’re here for answers.”
“Yes. Give them to me. Why did you have me kidnapped?”
“I had nothing to do with you ending up in that morgue.”
“What about the meat locker?”
Russell glanced down, studied my dusty shoes, ignored my question. “You look like you walked here,” he said.
“Well, I sure as hell wasn’t going to get in another taxi, was I?”
“How did you walk here on a broken ankle?”
His question threw me for a loop. I wasn’t sure how badly I had hurt my nose but my ankle was another matter. When I had leaped and missed the meat hook, it had definitely snapped. It was possible it hadn’t broken, but at the very least I had sprained it so bad I shouldn’t have been able to walk on it.
Yet I had just stormed up the Strip on foot.
Russell could see I was confused, probably because I didn’t know what to say. He spoke in my place.
“Who are you going to talk to if you don’t talk to me? To James? To Alexis?”
“How do you know about Jimmy?”
“I know him.”
“How?” I demanded. “And why do you call Alex Alexis? And Jimmy James?”
“Come inside and I’ll explain.”
“No! You sent those psychos after me!”
“Those people were interested in you long before we met.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He opened the door wider. “It’s a long story. Come in.”
“How do I know you won’t try to hurt me again?”
Russell did an odd thing right then. He smiled as if I had said something silly. “How could I possibly hurt you?” he asked.
“You could cut my throat. You could shoot me.”
His next question threw me for an even bigger loop. It was almost as if he had witnessed my encounte
r with Moonshine, Wing, and Squat.
“Wouldn’t you be able to protect yourself?”
Again, I was stumped. He had all the answers; I was just a warmed-up corpse with possible brain damage. “They’re playing red queen downstairs,” I said.
“I know.”
“Twenty-two. Not twenty-one.”
“I know.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Nope,” he said.
“Why did you teach me that game?”
“So you would know to come here.”
“When I didn’t know where else to go?”
“Exactly.”
I hesitated. “Are you connected?”
“Yes. Now you’re connected. Please come in, Jessica.”
He had me, I had nowhere else to go. Except into the suite of the man who had arranged my kidnapping. I stepped through the door and he closed it at my back.
CHAPTER NINE
THE SUITE APPEARED THE SAME as the previous night. His laptop was open and running on the dining room table. A neat pile of his firm’s leaflets sat beside it. However, the coloring of the brochures was different. I needed to study one up close to be sure, but the black and red lettering looked like a fresh touch.
I sat on the same leather chair as before. He sat across from me, on the love seat. He took a cell phone out of his pocket.
“May I call some friends of mine and tell them you’re here?”
I snorted. “Not!”
“These people are important. You’ll want to meet them. They’ll be able to answer questions that I can’t.”
“Are these the people who orchestrated my kidnapping?”
“They wouldn’t call it that, but yes.”
“Forget it,” I said.
“I have to call them at some point.”
“Fine. Call them when I’m ten miles from here.”
“What if I told you that someone close to you is with these people?”
“I would assume you were lying.”
“I have tried hard not to lie to you, Jessica.”
“Gee, Russell, why do I have trouble believing that?”
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