Homemade Sin (10 page)

Dee Dee's gaze took in the gambling boat, scanned the room, and came to rest on the cash register. She needed some money to get the fuck out of there.

Just then they heard a sharp ding as someone slapped a palm on the little silver bell by the check-in desk.“Guests,” said Roland. He migrated from the behind the bar and started toward the hotel lobby.

Cutter and Hussey were standing at the front desk looking impatient as Roland slid behind the check-in desk.

“Need a room?” Roland said.

“Just for the night,” Hussey said. “My genius boyfriend is going to find a better place tomorrow while I finish up the stuff I have to do at medical school.”

“University of South Florida?” Roland placed a check-in form on the desk in front of them. “It's a good school, you going to be a doctor?”

“Neurologist.” Hussey met his eyes for the first time.

Roland was struck by her eyes; they were a sparkling hazel, the color of the Gulf in the sunlight. He let his gaze drift down as he took in her face and her body.

She noticed the drift of his eyes and smiled at him, apparently enjoying the impressed look on his face as he soaked her in.

“What is that boat docking out there?” Cutter nodded through the window at the paddle wheeler that had just docked and was emitting a stream of gamblers. A man in a captain's uniform was standing beside a yellow rope stretched about fifty feet down the pier. A line of people waited behind the rope for the exiting passengers to depart for their turn to board.

“It's a casino boat,” Roland said without taking his eyes off Hussey. She blushed as he smiled at her. “The boat takes on passengers every evening around six and crosses the bay to Tampa to pick up a crowd over there, then it heads back and docks again at ten and takes on another group. It runs back and forth across the bay until dawn.”

Cutter bent to the desk and filled in the check-in sheet while Roland selected a key from the pegboard behind the desk. “You'll be in number eight,” he told Hussey. “I can help you with your bags.”

“That'd be great,” Cutter said. He slid the form across the desk toward Roland.

“And how do you want to pay?”

Cutter raised his eyebrows at Hussey who dug in her bag and found a credit card. As she passed the card across the desk Roland extended his hand to retrieve it. For an instant their fingers touched. Roland could almost hear the chemical crackle and felt a tingle of electricity shoot up his arm as they brushed fingertips. She must have felt the same thing, Roland thought, because she looked shocked for a moment. Then she cocked her head at Roland as if to say ‘What the hell was that?'

Roland caught the look as he swiped the card through the machine. “Must have been static electricity,” he said, loud enough for Hussey to hear.

Hussey took the card back from Roland and purposely touched his fingers. They both felt the electric tingle again and smiled at each other.

“Look,” said Cutter to Hussey, “this guy will to help you with the bags, so why don't you get settled in? I've got to run out and do some stuff. I may have a line on an apartment in St Pete, I forgot to tell you. The guy said I could look at it tonight, but I need to go now.”

“Why didn't you tell me that before?” Hussey said. “I'll go with you.”

“No, no … you get settled in. I'll check it out and if it's nice, you can see it tomorrow. You need to rest up for your admissions stuff.”

“Well, OK ….” Hussey said. Cutter was already headed for the door to the parking lot. “Just don't fuck up!”

“Don't worry babe,” Cutter said over his shoulder. He smiled as he patted the ATM card in his pocket again and headed for the casino boat.

When Cutter was out of sight, Dee Dee said to Roland, “I only have a couple of bags. I can handle them.”

“Your boyfriend is a piece of work,” Roland said and shook his head. Hussey smiled a cheerless smile and scooped up the room key from the counter. She picked up the bags Cutter had placed by the desk and headed for the door to the row of rooms.

“If you need anything dial ‘0',” Roland said, with a magnum of sincerity and a shot of flirtatiousness.” I'll be at the bar for a little while longer. After that, the phone rings over to my room.”

“Good to know,” said Hussey. She wore a flattered smirk as she disappeared around the corner lugging the suitcases.

Dee Dee caught a glimpse of Cutter heading for the casino boat from beside the dumpster where she deposited the most poisonous fish and shellfish cuttings. Now there's a hottie, she thought as she stepped through the kitchen and into the bar.

“I don't think we will be getting any more customers tonight” Roland told Dee Dee as she crossed to the sushi bar. He slipped a beer mug under the tap and poured himself a beer. “Why don't you call it a day?” He removed a cash box from beneath the bar and started counting ones, fives, tens and twenties into the register till for their opening day tomorrow. He closed the register and removed another wad of bills from the cash box waving it at her. “I'll be at the front desk for a while; I need to finish up some paperwork. Then we can catch dinner at a place on the beach if you like. I put fresh sheets on the bed in our room this afternoon.”

“We need to talk about that,” Dee Dee said. “Maybe I should have a room to myself tonight.” She sighed. “I'm very tired and I need some time alone to think.”

“I understand.” Roland downed half the beer in one gulp; he really didn't understand. In Key West she couldn't wait to get him in bed; now she seemed indifferent to him. He had felt her cooling off all afternoon and now she was practically arctic. He would be sleeping alone tonight.

Dee Dee saw the look of disappointment on his face and said, “We'll talk tomorrow.”

“That doesn't sound promising,” Roland said under his breath.

Locking the door to the bar behind them, Roland led Dee Dee to the front desk. He selected a key marked number seven from the pegboard and handed it to Dee Dee wordlessly.

Dee Dee watched where he hung the key to the bar on a hook labeled ‘bar.'

“How long are you going be at the desk?”

“If nobody shows up in an hour I'll call it a night. If you get lonely later, my room is right next to yours. Just tap on the wall and I'll come over.”

A wistful look passed over Dee Dee's face as she headed for her room.

From his perch behind the air vent grill Stinky peered out into the dark bar. He decided it was time to start putting his plan into action. He pressed his paws on to the air vent, sending it rattling to the floor. Leaping from the air shaft, he followed the vent south.

Sitting beside the beer tap, Stinky scanned the rows of potions and powders on the top row of shelves behind the dark and empty bar. Moonlight shone off the multi-colored bottles as he examined the labels: ‘hummingbird ears', ‘ground monkey paws', ‘powdered unicorn horn'. There had to be something there that would work. His gaze fell on a bottle labeled ‘zombie extract.' Thinking it sounded promising, he leapt to the shelf and grabbed the vial of powder in his teeth. As he did so, Stinky heard a click of a lock turning and the door to the bar opened. Stinky sprang off the bar and hid below the cash register, aware of creeping footsteps coming across the room.

Dee Dee crossed the bar to the cash register. She reached below it and found the cash box. Placing the cashbox on the bar she flipped open the top, revealing stacks of cash. She snatched a wad of twenties, stuffed them in her pocket, then heard a noise below the register. She looked down as a vial of purple powder rolled between her feet. She saw a black paw stretch out and pull the vial back under the register.

“Is that you Stinky?” Dee Dee said.

Stinky emerged from beneath the counter and stared up at Dee Dee in the dark. They exchanged conspiratorial glances.

She stared at the kitty and heard a voice inside her head say, “Stealing isn't right.”

“Who said that?” Dee Dee scanned the room. “Where are you?”

“Down here,” said Stinky. He smiled up at her, his green eyes glowing in the moonlight.

“So you can talk?” Dee Dee whispered.

“Yes, and I can tell Roland his new chef is a thief.”

“Why didn't you talk to me before?”

“Because I didn't have anything to blackmail you with … before.”

Dee Dee could hear the tone of superiority in the voice. “I'm just borrowing it,” Dee Dee said. “When I win at the casino boat tonight I'll put back what I borrowed and keep the winnings. I'm gonna win tonight, I can feel it. And, besides, I can tell him you're stealing his voodoo stuff,” countered Dee Dee, nudging the glass vial with the toe of her shoe.

“I'm just borrowing it,” Stinky mocked.

Dee Dee and Stinky stared each other Mexican-standoffishly.

“OK, crazy fish cutter,” said Stinky. “I'll keep your secret if you keep mine.”

There is some subconscious instinct, some unwritten rule that says you must squander ill-gotten gains as quickly as possible. Some strange force compels people, who have been successful in stealing, winning, or conning the universe out of a wad of money, to piss it away on a whim … like lottery winners who somehow manage to squander millions in a matter of months and end up worse off than before their winning number came up.

Or maybe it's just stupidity.

Whatever the motivation, later that night Cutter Andrews still sat at the poker table, twelve hours after he had first plopped down a stack of chips, visions of winning a fortune dancing in his head. The casino had queried Hussey's bank account from the joint account ATM card and advanced Cutter thirty thousand dollars against the account balance. Cutter had parlayed the money into close to fifty thousand dollars in his first two hours at the gaming table. In the following two hours he had managed to lose his winnings as well as ten thousand dollars of Hussey's money. He knew he should quit before he lost any more of it. A nagging little voice in his head told him to get up, walk over to the cashier and cash out. He stared at the twenty thousand dollars' worth of chips left stacked in front of him. Ignoring the little voice, he anteed up for the next hand.

“Why do we do it?” said Dee Dee to no one in particular as she stared at her cards. “Why do we keep fixing a beat-up old car time after time when we could have bought a new one for less? Or stay in the same rotten relationship long after we know we should have moved on? Why do we sit at the poker table when we keep losing and losing? Maybe we all are all dumber than dirt.” Dee Dee had been on a horrible losing streak all evening. She had lost all of the money she had stolen from the till and maxed out her credit card with a twenty thousand dollar advance.

Dee Dee, proudly displaying an IQ marginally above dirt, held on to her ace and dropped the other cards face down on the felt-covered table. Luckily she was breathtakingly beautiful and the universe looks out for drunks, idiots and beautiful women. And, lucky for Dee Dee, there was always someone even more stupid. Tonight the Buzzards of Destiny were shining on her. As fate would have it, that person happened to be sitting the same gaming table.