He crossed the suite and stuck his eye to the peephole. Wily stood outside, an empty cocktail glass in his hand. He looked three sheets to the wind.
Valentine hated drunks. His father had been one, and slapped him around when he was a kid. Then he’d grown up and paid his father back. In people who drank he saw weakness, and little else.
He let Wily in and offered him a chair. The head of security reeked of scotch, and he tried to keep the contempt out of his voice.
“What’s up?”
“Look at the tape yet?” Wily asked, smothering a belch.
“Yeah. I’m surprised you let her play so long.”
“You think she’s cheating?”
Valentine thought back to the tape and chose his words carefully. “It’s definitely not on the square. She always wins the big hands. Did you notice that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Whenever Lucy Price doubled down, she won. Whenever she split pairs, she won. That’s why she beat you silly. She won the important hands.”
A pained expression crossed Wily’s face. “You tell Nick that?”
“I haven’t told Nick anything. My guess is, you saw her reading the Basic Strategy card and pegged her a sucker. When she won a few grand, you credited it to beginner’s luck. When she got way up, you figured she was on a hot streak and would eventually fall back to earth. Am I right?”
Wily stared into his glass. He seemed surprised that it was empty.
“You should have been a mind reader,” he said.
Valentine found himself feeling sorry for him. Bad losses often cost security heads their jobs. He said, “Forty-nine out of fifty pit bosses would have done the same thing you did, and let Lucy Price continue to play.”
Wily brightened. “Is that what you’re going to tell Nick?”
“Yes. Tell me something. Did you interrogate the dealers who worked Lucy’s table during her streak?”
“I did better than that,” Wily said. “I had them polygraphed.”
“And?”
“They came out clean.”
Valentine leaned back and stared at the drunken head of security. Novice blackjack players did not win twenty-five grand placing five-hundred-dollar bets. The odds just weren’t there for it to happen. He hated to be stumped, and this had him stumped.
“I need to talk to this woman,” he said.
Wily gave him a scornful look. “How you going to do that?”
Valentine thought about the little dance on the balcony that morning. He couldn’t deny the magnetism he’d felt when he’d held her in his arms. But that wasn’t going to stop him from figuring out what she was doing. If Lucy was cheating, he would make her pay.
“Easy,” he said. “I’ll call her.”
He had no trouble getting Lucy’s phone number. She was a slot queen, and played in slot tournaments held by the large casinos. That meant her name, address, phone number, and preferences were stored in their databases. Calling around, he’d gotten a casino he did work for to give him Lucy’s number. It had been easy.
She had three numbers: work, home, and cell. He nestled the cordless phone into the crook of his neck and debated which to call. There was a chance she was in a local hospital under psychiatric observation, but more than likely she’d been released and was home. Las Vegas was bad that way. It had the highest suicide rate in the country, yet the treatment that everyone subscribed to was to ignore the problem.
He decided to call her house. An answering machine picked up, her voice bright and cheery. “Well, hi there. You caught me at a bad time. Wait for the beep, and don’t forget to leave your number. Bye.”
The beep came a few seconds later. Clearing his throat, he said, “This is Tony Valentine calling for Lucy Price. We met this morning at the Acropolis. I was hoping—”
His words were interrupted by a piercing sound.
“This is Lucy Price,” a woman’s voice said.
“Hello,” he said stiffly.
“Do you believe in kismet, Mister Valentine?”
“It’s Tony. No, not really.”
“I do. I’m sitting in front of my computer, staring at your Web site.”
He didn’t know what to say. Putting up a Web site had been Mabel’s idea. Good for business, she’d assured him, and cheap. Only it made him uncomfortable as hell when he was on the phone with someone and she told him she was staring at his Web site. Trying to trip me up? he wanted to ask.
“So what do you think of my Web site?” he asked when they met for breakfast at ten o’clock the next morning.
“The graphics are cool. And the articles you wrote about casino cheating for Gambling Times were interesting, too,” she said. “I never realized that there was so much cheating going on.”
He was finding it hard to take his eyes off her. He’d woken up mad as hell that he hadn’t heard from Gerry. But those feelings had disappeared when he’d set eyes on Lucy. She was a symphony in blue — a powder-blue pantsuit, a blue bow in her hair, and light blue eyeliner. Had the Web site mentioned blue was his favorite color? If not for the dark circles beneath her eyes, he would have found her beautiful.
He plunged a fork into his egg and watched the yolk burst. He had suggested breakfast, having remembered an advice column in a newspaper saying that it was a neutral meal. Lucy had agreed, and now they were sitting in the recently opened breakfast shop at Caesars Palace. She poured skim milk over a bowl of granola, then raised a spoon to her lips.
“How much is Nick paying you to check up on me?” she asked.
He blinked. Her voice hadn’t changed, but her eyes had.
“Nothing. I’m doing it as a favor.” Her eyes were burning a hole into his face, but she was still eating. He bit into his toast and said, “It’s an interesting case. You believe Nick robbed you, and Nick thinks you cheated him. Nick’s a square guy — I’ll vouch for his honesty. So that would mean you’re a cheater. Only I watched a surveillance tape of you playing blackjack, and I don’t think you are. Which means both of you are wrong.”
Lucy’s spoon hit her bowl with a plop. “How’s that possible?”
“Someone else is involved. What’s the expression? Playing both sides for the middle? I think that’s what is going on here.”
“Which makes me a dopey dame who got suckered and didn’t see it coming,” she said, standing and throwing her napkin into her bowl. “Thanks a lot, Tony.”
Embarrassed, he stood up. Only his pants didn’t come with him. He grabbed them by the waist and tugged. She smirked inconsiderately.
“Airline lost my luggage,” he said stupidly.
“So buy yourself another pair. It’s called shopping. Ask your wife.”
His mouth went dry. “Who told you I was married?”
“Your Web site has your name, and your son’s.”
“My wife died of a heart attack two years ago.” He saw something in her face change. A chink in the armor. He said, “She used to buy my clothes, pick out the colors. I don’t think I own anything that she didn’t buy me.”
“Except those pants,” Lucy said. “You an odd size?” He nodded and she said, “So was my ex. Look, Tony, I don’t know where this conversation is headed, but all I really care about is getting my twenty-five thousand dollars back. If you can’t help me, then shove off.”
Her voice had turned harsh. This was Lucy the gambler, and he didn’t like it.
“That’s pretty inconsiderate,” he said.