“So?” Mags said.
“You broke his neck, Mags. Don’t you remember?”
“Serves him right for smacking me in the face.”
Slyde guessed the pills had wiped out her memory from last night, and that she’d forgotten there was an outstanding police warrant with her name on it. She was so far gone it wasn’t funny.
“What’s the deal with the cards?” Slyde asked.
“I talked to Rand Waters last night. He wants me to come to LA and take a screen test. I’m going to play the part of a lady hustler and perform a scam.”
“No shit. What scam you got in mind?”
“It’s called Hey Baby. You know it?”
“That’s a new one. How’s it work?”
“Take out a deck and I’ll show you.”
Slyde peeled the plastic off a deck of Aria playing cards and removed them from the box. The back design was lattice red with the casino’s distinct logo on both ends.
“You know how to muck a card?” Mags asked.
“I’ve been mucking since I was in diapers, baby.”
“Muck one of the aces and stand behind my chair. Bring the deck with you.”
Slyde removed the ace of spades from the deck and palmed it in his right hand. He rose from his chair and moved around the table until he was behind Mags’s chair. She placed her fork onto her half-finished meal and shoved the plate to the side.
Slyde gave her the Aria deck. From it, Mags removed the ten of hearts and the six of spades, and dropped the two cards facedown on her place mat.
“A lot of casinos have gone back to letting players touch their cards during blackjack,” she said. “They stopped for a while because of all the cheating that was going on, but now the casinos have decided to go back to their old ways.”
“Got to keep the customers happy,” Slyde said.
“Let’s pretend I’ve been dealt these cards. You’re standing behind me, pretending you’re my boyfriend. You’ve got the ace palmed, and your hand’s resting on my chair.”
“Easy enough,” Slyde said.
“I take a look at my cards and see I’ve got a stiff. So I palm out the six like this.”
Mags picked up the two cards and glimpsed them. Slyde watched her expertly steal out the six of spades and drop her hands into her lap. Years of practice and self-denial had gone into that little move, and Slyde realized that Mags had skills he’d yet to tap into. Like an unfinished meal, she was going to be thrown away before she was done.
“What happens to the six?” he asked.
“My open purse sits on the floor between my legs. The six gets dropped into the purse, which I close with my feet. It’s the perfect cleanup.”
“So what do I do?”
“That’s the good part. The moment the six leaves the table, you say, ‘Hey baby, you’ve got blackjack.’ Your hand picks up the ten and adds the palmed ace. You turn them faceup and toss them on the table. The surveillance cameras don’t spot a thing.”
Slyde gave it a try. He picked up the ten while adding the ace concealed in his hand, and tossed the two cards faceup onto the table. “Hey baby, you’ve got blackjack,” he said.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Mags said.
“Piece of cake.”
Slyde returned to his seat. Mags knew all the angles and wasn’t afraid to steal the watch off your wrist, and Slyde told himself he needed to get this over with before he changed his mind. He stuck a straw into his iced tea and took a sip.
“Shit. I ordered sweetened, and this is unsweetened. You got any sugar?”
“Coming right up.”
Mags went into the kitchen to fetch the sugar. When she was gone, Slyde removed a vial of sleeping medicine from his pocket and dumped it into Mags’s tea. She returned with the sugar bowl and Slyde made a big deal of adding a heaping teaspoon to his drink. Lifting his cup, he offered a toast.
“Here’s to Hey Baby,” he said.
Mags resumed eating. Her eyes did not leave Jimmy’s face. Back when she was a little girl, her mother had taught her about intuition. Her mother believed that intuition was the messenger of fear and was a woman’s best defense. Right now, Mags’s intuition was telling her Jimmy wasn’t being square with her, and she tried to figure out why.
She’d known Jimmy for a few months, and like most men she’d known, Jimmy was as predictable as a wasp on speed. Jimmy played the same rap music when he drove, wore the same cologne, and ordered the same items off the menu when in a restaurant. Nothing ever changed.
Mags put her fork down. She’d found the thing that was bothering her. Jimmy always took her out to eat. Not once had he brought takeout to her place. So why had he this time?
Her mouth had gone dry, and she picked up her tea. Floating on the top of her drink was a tiny bit of white powder. She nearly screamed. The son of a bitch had spiked her drink. But why? If he’d wanted to sleep with her, all he had to do was ask.
She gave her guest a hard stare. His forehead was covered in sweat. Sex wasn’t on his mind, far from it. He was here to harm her. That was why he’d mentioned Dolan — to justify killing her.
She bunched up her napkin and rose from the table. Jimmy’s eyes rose as well.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“My stomach’s bothering me. I’ll be right back.”
She ran down the hallway to her bedroom and locked the door. Entering the bathroom, she locked it as well, then sat down on the toilet seat. She wished like hell she owned a gun. She’d considered purchasing one but never had, fearful she might one day use it on herself.
Out came her iPhone. She couldn’t call 911: It would only lead to her getting arrested for breaking Dolan’s neck and thrown in jail. There were her girlfriends, but they worked during the day in the casinos and would probably urge her to call the cops.
She had run out of road, and she stifled the cry in her throat. Crying was for losers, and she told herself she wasn’t a loser. A knock on the door made her jump.
“You okay in there?” came Slyde’s voice.
“How the hell did you get into my bedroom?” she shrieked.
“I carded the door. I thought maybe you were sick.”
“Get out or I’ll call the police!”
“You ain’t calling the police. Open the door, Mags.”
“I said get out, before I blow your brains out, you dirty bastard!”
“You don’t own a gun. You told me that the first time we met. Now, unlock the door and make this easy on yourself.”
“You fucking bastard!”
Slyde’s shoulder hit the door, causing the hinges to sag. Mags frantically typed out a text on her cell phone. There was only one person left who could save her from Slyde, and that was Billy. She’d come back to Vegas to punish him, but now she realized that was only because she had feelings for the little shit. Her cell phone slipped from her fingers and hit the floor. Fear had started to take hold, and she heard her mother’s warning that no man could be trusted.
Slyde’s shoulder hit the door again. A large splinter appeared in its center.
Mags grabbed the cell phone off the floor and hit send.
Forty-Six
Billy was a big fan of reality TV, and he regularly taped episodes of Survivor, Big Brother, and anything involving the Kardashians. The shows were supposed to be real, yet the episodes were in fact scripted, with each line of dialogue written to obtain the maximum impact.
Cheating a casino was a lot like an episode of a reality TV show. The scam had a script with lines of dialogue for each participant. If each participant adhered to the script, the scam would run without a hitch. If a participant deviated from the script and made a crack out of turn, the scam would unravel faster than a roll of toilet paper in a hurricane.