“You like broccoli?” Nick said, hefting a package.
Jason shrugged. Vegetables were all one to him. “Whatever,” he said. “I’ll see you in a minute.” He left the restaurant and padded along a thick carpet in an inner corridor, then walked down a ramp into a huge semicircular food court. Burger King, he saw in the dim light, Pizza Loco, Ragin’ Cajun, Baskin-Robbins. Plastic tables and chairs lay scattered where the earthquake had thrown them. It’s like a mall, he thought.
Somewhere near the food, he thought, there had to be a toilet. He found it, did his business, then discovered there was enough water pressure in the sink to manage some washing. He cleaned his face and neck and arms and looked at his hair in the mirror, glued into thick strands by mud and sweat. He wished there was a shower so that he could wash his hair.
Maybe, after dinner, he’d come back and try washing his hair with hand soap. It would make it stick out funny, but it was better than wearing mud for mousse.
Jason stepped out into the food court again and paused for a moment. Beyond were the gaming tables, slots and video poker machines standing in silent ranks.
He wondered if any of the gamblers had left their money behind when the earthquake hit. The thought seemed worthy of exploration. He walked into the huge central room, fingers idly exploring the coin trays of the machines as he passed. He didn’t find any money.
The blackjack tables had spilled cards and spilled chairs, but not a single spilled coin or token. Dice lay on the craps tables, and drinks sat waiting for gamblers to return, but there was nothing on any of the tables resembling currency. Jason concluded that the casino employees had done a very thorough cleanup before they abandoned ship.
Jason hopped up to one of the big roulette wheels and gave it a spin. It moved with silent ease. Two ivory balls sat waiting in a slot by Jason’s hand, and he picked one up and hefted it. He’d never seen roulette except in the movies, and he tried to remember how the croupier had thrown the ball into play. He tossed it with a flick of his wrist, but the ball bounced right down onto the spinning wheel, caromed across, bounded back, and jumped straight into one of the slots on the wheel. Not very professional. They should use a plunger and spring, Jason thought, like in pinball. There was a loud crash, the sound of breaking glass, and Jason gave a guilty start and looked up wildly. He wondered if Nick had broken something, and then he heard a loud whoop echo through the cavernous room, and he knew that he and Nick were not alone on the Lucky Magnolia. High-pitched laughter followed the whoop, and then the laughter was joined by a deeper voice. There were at least two other people aboard.
Without knowing why, Jason ducked behind the roulette table. He decided it was because he hadn’t quite liked the sound of those laughs.
He wondered what he should do. Tell Nick, perhaps. But tell him what? That there were people aboard who laughed funny?
There was another crash. Jason felt his heart give a lurch. Cackling laughter filled the air, and then Jason heard footsteps. He hunched down behind the table.
“I’m getting tired of popcorn and peanuts,” a man said.
“We shoulda brought Janine to cook for us.”
“We shoulda brought a woman for each of us,” said another voice. “They’d give us all the food and lovin’ we want, allowing as how we’re both going to be so rich.”
In the dim light Jason saw two men leave one of the darkened rooms off the main room. The sign above the door, he saw, said Paddlewheel Saloon. The two headed aft, boots crunching on broken glass. Heart in his mouth, Jason ghosted after them, keeping low. He smelled cigar smoke. Tables and ranks of slot machines helped screen him from the interlopers. As he passed the Paddlewheel Saloon Jason saw that the bar’s colorful art nouveau window had been smashed by some well-aimed beer bottles. These were the crashes he’d heard.
Talking in loud voices of matters clear only to them, the two men walked aft to the tellers’ cages, then walked behind the screen. Jason paused and wondered whether to slip back to Nick, or try to find out first what the two intruders were doing.
He thought about what might happen if Nick came looking for him, and his mouth went dry. Then he heard a series of metal banging sounds, like a hammer ringing on an anvil.
He slipped toward the last teller’s cage on the left, close by the wall. Trying not to breathe, he peered through the teller’s window and saw the two men at work.
The younger of the two men wore a T-shirt and jeans. Lank hair straggled out from behind his battered baseball cap, which he wore with the bill pointed aft. The older man revealed a substantial belly between his T-shirt and the blue jeans that were belted low on his hips. His burly arms were covered in tattoos, and a short cigar was clamped between his teeth. Spectacles glittered beneath the bill of his baseball cap. Each took a swig from a bottle of Jack Daniels as they rummaged through canvas bags filled with tools. The two were working on opening the casino safe, trying to chisel and pry open its door. They had gotten a chisel between the door and its frame, and were striving to widen the gap.
“Gaw-damn!” the older one said. “They built this sucker good, didn’t they?”
“Fill the boat with fifty-dollar chips,” said the younger one. “Good as cash any day.” Boat, Jason thought. They had come in a boat.
“Lend a hand here, Junior.” Junior, it appeared, was the older one. The two leaned on a pry bar for a moment, grunting, boots scrabbling for traction on the tile. Muscles stood out on forearms, in necks. The door didn’t move. The two relaxed.
“Gaw-damn,” breathed Junior. He bent to root in his tool bag.
The younger man laughed. “How many casinos do you reckon we can find this side of Helena?” he asked. “Ten? Fifteen? All with cash, checks, and fifty-dollar chips?” He gave a little hop of sheer enthusiasm. “Jesus shit howdy!” he said. “We’re going to have to buy a Chevy Suburban just to haul it all around.”
“We aren’t going to be able to afford a third-hand Yugo,” Junior said, “if you don’t help me bust this safe.”
Boat, Jason thought again. They have a boat.
It had to be on the starboard side of the Lucky Magnolia. He and Nick had tied up to the port side and hadn’t seen another boat there.
He crept to the starboard side, keeping crouched down below the ranks of poker machines, then slid along the side. The main entrance wasn’t hard to find: it was huge, a twenty-foot-tall glass alcove set into the side of the riverboat, leading to a ramp and white plastic tunnel that clearly led to the shore. Two sets of glass doors blocked the entrance, but one door in each set had been smashed open. More confirmation, if any were needed, that this was the way to the intruders’ boat. The area in front of the alcove was wide open, and light coming in through the glass walls lit it well. Jason waited until he heard the ring of hammers on metal again, then ran for daylight, fast as his feet could carry him. His sandals grated on broken glass and then he was in the tunnel, sprinting down the ramp into fresh air and freedom.
The tunnel opened onto a wide pontoon pier against which the gambling boat was moored. The pier was held against the levee by steel cables, and connected with a foot ramp that led to the levee’s crown. A row of flags snapped overhead in the cool breeze. Jason looked wildly for a boat, and had no trouble finding it at all.
It was moored bow and stern to the upstream side of the pier. It was longer than the bass boat, maybe twenty feet, with a windscreen and cockpit and a white canvas top. A big hundred-fifty-horsepower Evinrude outboard was fixed to the stern, which was filled with big translucent plastic fuel jugs, each aglow with amber fuel. The motor was tilted forward to keep the prop out of the debris-filled water. Triumph sang in Jason’s blood as he gazed at the boat. He untied the stern line, then took the bow line in hand and walked the boat to the edge of the pier, where the Lucky Magnolia lay against huge rubber fenders intended to preserve its paint. Jason jumped from the pier to the gambling boat, clung for a precarious moment to the outside of the rail, then hopped the rail onto the Magnolia’s deck, the motorboat’s bow line still in hand.