Double Blind (25 page)

He didn’t know. What he did know was that he could not put her down, and he could not, not for anything, leave her in that office. He didn’t even let himself think about the shelter.

“We’re going to miss Billy if we stand here much longer,” Crabtree said.

Ethan held Salomé tightly, his heart hammering against her small, warm, filthy body. Then something snapped. He looked up at Crabtree, composed and collected, and he nodded. “We should get going, then.” He tucked the kitten into the corner of his arm and headed toward the stairs.

To his intense relief, Crabtree made no additional comment about leaving the cat in the office, and he reached over with a grandfatherly smile to nuzzle beneath her chin occasionally as they rode the elevator back down to the main floor of the building, exiting into the center of the casino.

Despite the shabbiness he’d noticed with Crabtree earlier, Ethan still liked the casino. It felt old and opulent but close and cozy at the same time, and he found himself walking almost in a trance down the long, red carpet that led from the elevator to the slot machines. They headed to the craps tables closest to the door and the pathway out. A large crowd had gathered there, and they were loudly cheering and whooping as a slightly overweight man dressed in white with slicked-back hair shook his hand vigorously before letting a pair of dice fly across the felt.

Another cheer went up, and a man in the center of the table wearing the casino livery boomed out, “Nine! Winner in Center Field!” There was more shouting, and other men moved to collect and pass out chips to players. The table was very, very loud, and Ethan worried that it would upset Salomé, but she seemed content to settle deeper into his arm.

“That’s Billy,” Crabtree said, pointing to the man in white. “He always plays craps at twelve-thirty before he goes to lunch. Then he takes the whole table out to dinner with him in the hotel restaurant.”

“I don’t know how to play craps,” Ethan confessed.

“Very simple,” Crabtree replied. “If you’re rolling, don’t get a seven. If you’re betting, you bet for or against the player to get either specific numbers, specific combinations on the dice, or that he’ll roll the come-out number again before ending his roll by rolling a seven. Or that he won’t. It’s the casino game with the best odds for the player, and it’s the most collegial of the games.” He nodded to the table. “Go on. Get your feet wet.” He glanced down at Salomé, then added, “Though perhaps I should watch over your young lady for the moment.”

Ethan handed Salomé to Crabtree and wandered over, slightly dazed. He stood behind a lovely blond woman at the table, but he didn’t stand there long. When she noticed him, she smiled broadly and nudged over to let him in.

“Hi,” she said, leaning in close. “I’m Karen.”

“Ethan.” He looked down at the table, taking in the sea of words and numbers—Pass, Don’t Pass, 6, 8, Field, Hardways—and he wondered how the hell he was supposed to figure this out.

“I know, it made me dizzy the first time too,” Karen said, touching his hand lightly. “Here. Let me help you.” She held up her chips then passed them to a dealer. “Five on the Pass Line, please.” She held up another five. “You want in?”

Ethan fumbled for his wallet. “I have—” He pulled out a twenty, then added a second one and laid them down on the felt. A dealer picked them up and looked at Ethan. “Change, please,” Ethan said.

Chips were pressed into Ethan’s hand. They looked like the roulette chips, color tailored to him so they could easily identify him as the bettor, and each one was stamped with the word BILLY’S! He counted out five and handed them to the dealer. “Pass Line.” He glanced at Karen. “Now what did I just bet?”

“You bet that Billy will hit the six before he sevens out,” she said.

“Okay,” Ethan said, not understanding at all.

Karen’s eyes twinkled as she held up another stack. “Want to play the Field with me?” The twinkle swished its skirts as she added, “Or bet on the Come?”

Sometimes Ethan wished there were a sign, some sort of dot or earring or tug of his hair that he could give to quietly, gently let a woman know that as much as he was flattered, she was wasting her time. He tried to communicate this with a polite, distant smile. “I think I’d best stick with the Pass, thank you.”

She blushed a little, but recovered well and placed two additional bets, one on a series of numbers marked FIELD and the long curved box labeled COME. Then the man in the middle who did all the shouting called for Billy to roll the dice, and everyone clapped and cheered and urged, “Come on, six!” as Billy hauled back and let the dice fly. They bounced off the side of the rail and landed before Ethan: a one, and a five.

The table went wild, and Ethan felt his heart beating faster, too, even though he had no idea if he’d won or not. Karen was clapping and laughing, and then the dealer was passing her chips, and then, of all things, he passed Ethan a blue ten dollar chip. He
had
won. He beamed, laughed, and even accepted Karen’s enthusiastic hug.

So he bet again.

Under Karen’s patient tutelage and his own study, he began to understand the game. Everything ended when the thrower rolled a seven—unless it was the first roll, and then it was a winner. All Pass Line bets stayed in place until either craps (two, three, or twelve) was rolled, or a seven. Craps would simply mean the loss of tokens, but seven would end the roller’s turn. It took him some time to understand the Come bets, but he eventually managed those too. It
was
fun. It was wonderfully fun, and within four throws of the dice he was suddenly holding eighty dollars’ worth of chips instead of forty.

Then a two and a five landed in the middle of the table, and there was a collective moan as most of the chips they had all placed down were collected and pulled away. Ethan, who had gotten caught up in the spirit of the game and Karen’s infectious enthusiasm, was now back down to twenty dollars with one cast of the dice.

“That’s the show, ladies and gentlemen,” Billy said, holding out his hands in casual apology. He pulled back his jacket sleeve and glanced at his watch. “I believe my table is ready. Shall we adjourn?”

Karen tried to take Ethan’s arm, but he pulled back and looked at Crabtree for guidance. But Crabtree had already fallen in place with the throng, and Ethan realized he meant for the pair of them to go to dinner. Ethan moved closer to the gangster to check on Salomé, whom he found contentedly tucked in Crabtree’s elbow. It seemed to be a place she liked.

Crabtree, however, handed her back when Ethan approached. “And what did you think of craps?” he asked.

Ethan accepted Salomé’s welcome licks and winced against her kneading claws. “A bit compulsive. It’s too easy to get caught up in the crowd.”

“One could argue,” Crabtree said, “that this is the greater payout than the chips themselves.”

Ethan had a sudden vision of Randy beside him playing craps, throwing the dice, making jokes under his breath about the Come and the Field. He could see Randy laughing and whooping and clapping, his eyes dancing, and he felt an unexpected sense of loss, because he knew that moment would never happen, not with the way Randy hated all table games but blackjack and poker.

“So we’re going to dinner with Billy?” Ethan asked, eager to change the subject. He looked at the herd moving as one through the casino. “Are all these people going? Does he actually know them?”

“He knows some. What he mostly knows is that they’re all here because of him, eager to be with him, eager to feel like they belong. Much like the craps table,” Crabtree said.

“What exactly will we be doing?” Ethan asked.

“I recommend you eat,” Crabtree suggested. “The food here is quite good.”

Ethan looked down at the kitten nesting against his arm. “What about Salomé?”

Crabtree waved a careless hand. “There won’t be any trouble.”

“Okay,” Ethan said, still not sure what he was doing or why he was carrying a kitten into a restaurant, but he couldn’t seem to make himself turn around. He realized he was walking the same path through the slot machines he’d walked with Randy, and it occurred to him that he’d been wandering helpless then too. He wondered how he had so completely lost control of his life that it had unraveled to this strange frayed end.

And then he was at the door to the restaurant, and he discovered that, in fact, Crabtree had lied.

“What is this?” The maître d’ stared in horror at Ethan and his kitten. “You can’t bring
that
in here!”

Ethan swung his gaze around to Crabtree, who blinked in the worst fake surprise Ethan had ever seen before he came forward and held out his hands. “Would you like me to take her while you eat?”

“Crabtree,” Ethan hissed, but the gangster had already taken Salomé from his hands and started back down the row of slots. Ethan tried to follow him, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. It wasn’t a friendly hand. Ethan turned to see a man who made even Ethan look short, and he was wearing sunglasses and an earpiece.

“Mr. Herod would like to see you,” the man said, and began to herd Ethan through the restaurant toward a long table where people were already sitting down. Karen waved at him as he passed, and he waved back, a little weakly, mentally cursing Crabtree all the way to the casino owner’s side.

Billy
was chatting up a busty woman who looked like a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen, and he lingered with her for a minute before turning to address Ethan. He gave Ethan an up and down scan, then said, “So you’re working with Crabtree, are you?”

Goddamn you, Crabtree.
“Not officially, no,” Ethan replied.

This did not have the effect Ethan was hoping for. In fact, it had quite the opposite. “Oh-ho,” Billy said, and there was nothing Ethan liked about the glint in his eyes. “I see how this is going down.”

“Actually,” Ethan began carefully, “I don’t think you—”

“Leave him, Arnie,” Billy said, and the sunglassed monster released Ethan. Billy pointed to the chair beside him. “Sit, sit.”

Ethan looked meaningfully at the man who was already sitting in the chair.

Billy tapped the man on the shoulder, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the man should get out. Ethan smiled, thinly, and took the man’s seat as he vacated it.

“So what are you doing for my godfather?” Billy asked before taking a sip of the martini in front of him. A waiter placed a matching drink in front of Ethan as Billy gestured to him.

Ethan ignored it and sipped his water. “Nothing yet,” he said, which was the truth. But Billy was looking at him impatiently, and Ethan realized that he wouldn’t actually be happy with the truth. He decided he might as well continue letting Billy draw his own conclusions. “I’m an investment broker,” he said.

Billy laughed. “Oh,
brilliant.
” He picked up his knife and dinged it so hard on the glass of the man across from him that Ethan expected the glass to shatter across the table. “Joe. Hey—Joe. This here is Crabtree’s
investment broker.
”

Joe, who had taken up with the busty woman when Billy had abandoned her to talk to Ethan, gave a vaguely interested smile and resumed his courtship.