Nobody Dies in a Casino (3 page)

An intense guy on one side of Charlie played a roll of hundred-dollar bills, three at a time, instead of chips. The woman to her left sat whimsically relaxed, seemingly daydreaming, checking her watch as if passing time until a companion arrived to take her to breakfast. But blackjack is a fast-moving game, and her signals to the dealer were on time and to the point.

The dealer was of the silent, stoic variety Charlie preferred. She found the chummy, garrulous types a distraction.

Lights flashed, zipped, and careened around the room, glinting off crystal facets. Metal tokens clanked into slot trays, and a few levers ratcheted. Whistles, calliope bleeps. Vacuum cleaners buzzed before the true crowds descended again. And this was one of the more staid of Vegas's casinos. No wonder nobody died in these places. No quiet place to do it.

Charlie's overly acute hearing, the result of her inability to indulge in loud music as a teen due to tone deafness, could be both a boon and a vexation.

Her aging, horny boss, her close call with his lusty entertainer, even what they could possibly be doing at this moment, the body in the gutter last night, Evan Black the important. Had he insisted Charlie talk to the police again, she would have. But he'd acted disappointed that she wouldn't and reluctant to have her do it. Granted, by the time Evan saw the pilot, he was not readily identifiable. And Caryl with the peekaboo nipples—they all faded as the game took hold. Mercifully, the background noises blended, then receded.

And yet Charlie registered the pit boss's belt buckle, silver and turquoise, with a finger ring to match, the hair on the back of his hands as he turned to keep watch on the dealers at various games around him. The way those hands flexed at his side as if surreptitiously exercising, the crooked seam in one pant leg.

The low cards were playing out. And the kings.

The eye in the sky, circled with crystal lashes, kept watch on the pit boss and the placing of chips at the tables. Charlie did not have the memory to be a card-counter, but with a six-deck shoe that would probably only be played down four decks anyway, she didn't know how anybody could tell how many face cards might be left.

The black globes pocking the crystal and two-way mirrored ceiling offered a decorative contrast, reminding Charlie of alien bug eyes. They held camera eyes instead, taping people and activities in the crystal cavern. No wonder there weren't any murders in the casinos—they'd be documented in the process.

The best places for blackjack were downtown on Fremont, the original Glitter Gulch, where there were casinos that advertised single and double decks. That's where the dedicated locals played.

The reason Charlie and Richard and everybody at Congdon and Morse used to prefer to stay at the Vegas Hilton was the relative absence of children. Now, with the new Star Trek Experience wing, there were more families evident. But here in the old casino, one rarely noticed them. And Richard had some kind of deal on rooms at this hotel. Even if she lost money gaming, it was a cheap vacation.

Charlie was aware on some level of the odors of stale tobacco, spilled beer, dead perfume, sweat, and the chemical deodorizers out to kill them all.

The guy next to her ran out of hundreds and left the table, muttering something about this “filthy town” and the “blasted world.” Charlie couldn't tell if he was a Kiwi or an Aussie. She'd never doubted she could lose at gambling. But she also thought she could win. Gamblers are optimists. The shoe was emptied and refilled with brand-new decks, the pit boss peeling the cellophane wrappers off himself.

After the next deal, Charlie, with an ace and a five, scratched for a hit and so did the woman on her left, but by pointing at the table in front of her. She wore her bangs heavy to cover the wrinkles on her forehead, had her hair colored that sandy brown so popular these days, and sported a bemused smile that only toyed with her lips but fairly sparkled in her eyes. She dressed in loose-fitting cream slacks and jacket over a cream silk shell, gold chain necklace, and earrings. The only contrast, the deep tan of her skin and the blue shading on her eyelids.

The woman in cream and gold began to win and she began to play with two and then three black chips at a time and then stacks of the hundred-dollar tokens. The bemused smile turned to silent laughter. She straightened in her chair.

The dealer grew more tense than formal now. The pit boss settled behind him and stayed.

Everybody's guilty until proven innocent in Vegas.

Charlie figured most of the cameras behind the bug eyes overhead were zooming in on this table too, to make sure nobody on either side of the table cheated the house.

This was a hot shoe. There was a streak going here.

Even the security rooms and halls in “that other casino” have cameras taping everything that goes on. Charlie knew, because a few years ago two cops were taped beating a purse snatcher caught in a casino. They were taped beating and threatening to sodomize him with nightsticks. God, you couldn't even die in that mysterious security area all casinos have without being documented.

In fact, Charlie had never heard of anyone just dying in a casino, simply dropping dead of something. Older, and often hugely overweight, people were common in these places.

Charlie's other mind was making money. But nothing like the cream-and-gold woman, who laughed, never making a sound.

*   *   *

“It was awesome,” Charlie told her boss as they lay side by side on webbed deck chairs by the pool. This recreation deck on the third floor was also awesome. All eight acres of it.

“She counting?” Richard sprawled on his back, trying to hide the bruises forming there.

Charlie would save Tami for later ammunition. Tami had apparently not mentioned Charlie. “I don't think so. It's like when the shoe changed, she knew it would be hot. Like she waited for it to get dealt down less than maybe a fourth of one deck and got interested. She kept checking her watch though. Wonder if that means anything.”

“Sounds like you made your move then too. You're supposed to be the psychic—maybe she was watching your reactions.”

“No, she started it. I just went with the flow.” Charlie'd come out about thirty thousand dollars richer, thanks to the woman of the silent laughter, who must have made more like several hundred thousand. The dealer, pit boss, and hard-faced suits that gravitated toward the pit weren't laughing. “And if I were psychic, Richard, I'd be rich by now. It's not like this is my first trip to Vegas.”

“Just don't spend it all in one place.” Richard the Lion-hearted, as he was known around the office, had a hickey.

“It's all going to the college fund.”

Richard raised to an elbow to wipe the steam off his sunglasses with his towel. He had protruding eyeballs that gave him a certain air of authority for no good reason. “What, she's changed her mind again?”

“That, she's good at.”

Libby Greene, seventeen, had been waffling about college for the last three years. One time, she wanted to be an astronaut, another an archaeologist, then a stripper, then a doctor in sports medicine, your regular model, movie star, even housewife. She'd been through many careers in her mind, for most of which, neither she nor her grades qualified. Actually, Libby Abigail Greene's qualifications for model and movie star grew more apparent by the month.

Charlie would rather the kid find some rewarding skill to keep her satisfied, fed, happy, and as independent financially as she was temperamentally. Charlie had a life. She hoped the same for her daughter. “She gets her braces off next month.”

“Oh, Jesus. Don't waste your money on the college fund.”

“Think I'll get it wet.”

The water was just cool enough to refresh at the weeny end, cooled enough at the deeper end to be invigorating without being uncomfortable. I won thirty thousand dollars this morning. Saw a murder happen last night. And don't remember when I've enjoyed life more than I do this day. Something's wrong with the script here.

“You look better when you're all wet, know that?” Richard Morse told her when she returned to the lounge chairs. “Now don't get huffy on me, babe, Because I been thinking about your problem.”

“Which problem?” Charlie gathered her things, her “all wet” chilling in the dry October breeze up here, and headed for the concrete Grecian Jacuzzi, Richard trotting along behind her. Built to fit twenty-four, according to the sign—you could have crowded in another ten easy. Formed and rounded in mysterious ways to accommodate couples, the molded underwater bench rimming the tub suggested the sign meant twelve couples.

There was only one man in the Jacuzzi when they arrived, bubbles foaming almost to his chin.

She and Richard crawled down into the couple niche farthest from the man in the circle, as people do when they have all the room in the world.

“The thirty thousand problem—wait, is this before or after taxes?”

After—and I don't believe it either. “Before.”

“Oh, well … still, Charlie, you know what you should do with it?”

“Gamble it away?”

“Stock market.” The wise man with the Tami hickey nodded sagely and slid down into the frothing hot water up to his chin too.

“Same thing, right?”

“Not at your age, babe. You think you're independent because you have a job and a mortgage. Take those away and you're on the street, and your kid too. Time you began to think about compounding.”

Richard Morse, the second bane of Charlie's life, her mother being the first, was nothing if not mysterious. Her daughter was just young, and there was always some hope for improvement in that quarter. “Compounding what?”

“Dividends. DRIP. Face it, babe, we're in a risky business here.”

“Who isn't?” Take your hunk pilots, for instance.

“Yeah, but we know it. We need to plan for the future. Charlie, you listening to me? What's wrong with you?”

Charlie belatedly figured out what was wrong. That other guy in the Jacuzzi with them? He was one of the two heads who'd walked away from a murder on the Strip last night.

CHAPTER
4

“G
EORGETTE, HOW WONDERFUL
to see you again.”

The outdoor café at the Flamingo Hilton had real flamingos in a garden-pool-courtyard paradise and other exotic feathered and leafy things. It also had paths and nature signs for the educationally inclined and trash music that drowned out miniature waterfalls and surviving birdsong. They sat at a table shaded by the monstrous backdrop of the Flamingo, an umbrella, and a wilting palm imported from California.

Georgette was Georgette as always, bones and skin, with occasional lumps that identified her gender and osteoporosis. Bright red hair and a face that had given up on its lifts, leaving the boldly capped teeth to go where her expression could no longer follow.

“So? I understand you put this kid's manuscript up for auction,” she said around the prominent caps. “Reynelda somebody? She was nobody—she's from Colorado, for godsake. And boom, now she's rich and famous.” Georgette raised her martini and the rocks in her rings sent facet flashes jumping all over the underside of the umbrella. “Never in all these years has an agent, including you, put a novel of mine up for auction.”

If seeing the thug in the giant Jacuzzi spa hadn't wrecked her mood, Charlie knew she could count on Georgette. Last time, it had been that her publisher was not accurately reporting her sales and was stealing her blind and it was all Charlie's fault.

“It might be Reynelda Goff's first novel, but the woman's in her mid-fifties, Georgette. She just got lucky.” And, believe me, there wasn't anybody more surprised than I was. “How did you know about the auction?”

“Lucky because you put her novel up for auction. And I knew about it because I read
Publishers Weekly,
young lady. Don't think I live in Vegas because I'm dumb enough to gamble.”

How did Georgette afford her lifestyle? And goddamn
Publishers Weekly
anyway. Authors should not be allowed near it.

The thug in the pool had stared at Charlie and finally left the spa. He was the one with curly hair. His presence had to have been a coincidence, But Charlie hadn't stopped looking over her shoulder ever since. She'd wanted to tell her boss about the pilot's death and the man who had left them alone in the spa, but Richard was too busy waxing poetic about dividend reinvestment and compounding.

“She was lucky that certain newsworthy events made her manuscript suddenly marketable. It was like winning the lotto. I mean—I thought you were loyal to Bland and Ripstop after all the years they've published you.” Bland had sent a sheaf of detailed material on the status of Georgette's sales at Charlie's request, all pretty much indecipherable, but most publishers wouldn't have bothered. Although her sales were brisk, they were mostly “special sales” to chain stores that discounted books heavily because they could get high-volume deals, which pretty much dried up the author's trickle.

“I'll remind you that three of my novels have been optioned repeatedly by Hollywood production companies. Why are my books never put up for auction?”

Because Hollywood's dumber than New York even. They'll option half of anything that makes it to bound galleys. To date, all but one of Charlie's book authors had at least one option—mostly for cable TV—but still …

Only one of her book authors had ever made it to actual produced feature film, and that author had been long dead when she hit. Her heirs were making out splendidly, however.

Charlie dearly loved being a literary agent. She used to be a New York literary agent, but now she was Hollywood. She'd just as soon dump her book authors and concentrate on screenwriters, but things never quite worked out that way. For one thing, most of her book authors wanted to write screenplays so they could quit their day jobs or get a divorce or whatever. Most of her screenwriters wasted too much time writing novels nobody could sell.