Against The Odds (Anna Dawson #1) (14 page)

“If you’ll excuse us,” Detective Botz said and he and Jack left the room.

I looked at my boys, what remained of them, as they looked at each other. It reminded me of their glances at each other at the Sourdough the morning after Danny had been shot.

Only this time the looks weren’t “could it be you?”

They were “who will be next?”
 

“I’
ll be right back,” I said to the others and followed the cops out into the hallway. As soon as the door had fully shut I called out to them. They turned and waited for me to catch up.

“What’s going on ?” I said to Jack.

“We need to make some calls. Check some things out.”

“What things?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the case,” Jack said in his cop voice.

I raised my brows at him—I still couldn’t pull off the one brow like him. He’d certainly seemed willing to discuss the case with me at Danny’s funeral—when he thought I could help him.

I didn’t say that though, figuring that would piss him off and possibly not set well with his partner. But I didn’t need to say it; he could see it in my eyes.

“Miss Dawson, thank you for the information about this article,” he said, holding up the magazine.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “That seems like such a long shot. Unless there’s something more?” I looked at them both. Nothing. I tried again. “Just what was your ‘reason to believe’ that made you make the connection between Danny and Gus?”

The two men looked at each other. There was a questioning look from Jack to his partner. Detective Botz finally shrugged and gave a small nod toward me.

“We think it’s a very viable lead and one we’re going to follow up on.”

“Why?”

“A piece of Pittsburgh memorabilia was found at both crime scenes.”

“What? Why don’t we know that?”

“It’s part of an ongoing investigation. We don’t give out that kind of information. And certainly not to…”

“Potential suspects,” I finished his thoughts and at least he had the good grace to seem a tiny bit embarrassed.

“At the time, yes. Besides, would it have made any difference?”

“Maybe,” I said, though I couldn’t really see how. Although… “If we’d known about the Steelers thing after Danny’s death, maybe one of us would have connected it to the SI article.”

“And we’d be exactly where we are now,” Detective Botz said.
 

“But maybe Gus wouldn’t have been shot,” I said, though I didn’t need to, I could see they were both thinking the same thing.

If I looked at it logically, I really couldn’t blame them. It was a piece of evidence and cops don’t discuss evidence with outsiders, let alone possible suspects. But I didn’t look at it logically. I couldn’t with Danny dead and Gus in a surgery recovery room.

A memory from the night at the morgue came back to me. “You were hinting around that night about Danny being from Pennsylvania. You were trying to find some connection.” Jack nodded.

“Detective Botz isn’t even from Philly is he? He was just trying to get Ben on the Pennsylvania track.” I said, anger building.

“Peoria,” the detective admitted.
 

Okay, this was getting us nowhere. They’d followed procedure and Gus was shot. Might have been shot even if we’d made this connection earlier. We’d never know.

The thing to do now was concentrate on finding the big loser from Pittsburgh.

The men turned, headed away from me, most likely planning to do just that.

“Wait,” I said, and they turned once again. “What Steelers piece was found at the scenes? Was it the same thing at both?”

They nodded. “It was a piece of cloth with the Steelers’ logo on it. The crowd whips them around at the games.”

I knew what they were. “The Terrible Towels,” I whispered, turning around to go to my boys.

Chapter Eleven

“J
immy, can you get me in to a back room game in Pittsburgh?”

“Yeah, sure, Anna.”

“You’re sure? Short notice? People who would know the players in town. Big rollers, Jimmy.”

Jimmy shrugged. “I know a guy.”

Of course he did.
 

We walked down the hallway of the hospital, Ben shuffling in his walker a ways ahead of us. Lorelei and Saul were staying for now. I’d bring back Ben later, after he’d rested for a bit, and we’d trade off with Lor and Saul.

Jimmy would come and go, I suspected. Probably after a quick trip to a book room.
 

I didn’t blame him, the itch was eating me up too.

“When you wanna play?” he asked. Bless him, he didn’t ask more than that, but he had to suspect what I was up to.

Part of what I was up to, anyway. “I need to check a couple of things first. Can I get back to you?” He nodded.

I thought of the four days left before my marker was due with Vince.
 

“It’ll be soon,” I added.

L
orelei was right—as usual—the Lexus SUV was just the perfect height for Ben to get in and out of comfortably.
 

When we got in the house it was just after nine at night. Ben headed right for his room. “I’m just going to take a quick nap and then we can head back.”

“Sleep as long as you can,” I said, knowing the long night ahead would wear on Ben if he insisted on staying at the hospital with Gus.
 

I peeked out of the window and was mollified, and slightly freaked, to see a patrol car parked just down the street.

I wondered if Jimmy had a tail heading to a casino with him. Something I should have checked on, but I’d been in too big of a hurry to get Ben home.

And, if I was honest, too big of a hurry to get out of the hospital. I hadn’t been in one since the time I’d met Ben, and the thought of being back didn’t sit real well with me, considering I could be back in soon as a patient.

I bypassed my room and went right to the home office Lorelei had set up for us. She’d even found one of those cool partner writing desks, she taking one side and me the other.
 

You could tell whose side was whose by just a quick glance. Lorelei’s was neat, organized, nothing on top but her laptop, phone and one of her ever-present tablets.

Mine had odds sheets strewn all over. A seldom used laptop pushed to one side. Losing betting slips, and other receipts in a shoe box that would ultimately end up with my accountant. The cost of being a professional gambler.

It must kill Lorelei not to straighten my side, but she never did.

I really have to do something to show her how much she means to me. To Ben. To our little family. If I’d learned anything this past week it was you never knew when you’d lose the people you loved.

I quickly found what I was looking for. It was a mess, but I knew where everything was, as most slobs will tell you.

I searched through the entire NCAA basketball schedule that Lorelei had found online and printed out for me last fall until I found what I was looking for.

Pitt was at home this Sunday against Louisville.

Yes. All the stars were aligning.
 

I pulled out a bunch of my old editions of sports magazines, doing some quick research on both teams, although nothing was new to me. I do extensive research at the beginning of every season.

Every betting season.

I turned on my laptop. Navigating the thing like Lorelei had shown me—a thousand times it seemed—so that I could get on both Pitt and Louisville’s websites and read any news on the teams that hadn’t been in my research.

Louisville was leading the conference, trouncing most of their opponents by over twenty points. Pitt was in the middle of the pack.

Louisville, it seems, depended solely on the play of their big man in the middle. A seven-footer, who was almost as wide as he was tall, accounted for eighty percent of the team’s points throughout the season. They called him the next Shaq.

This was going to be easy.

I called Paulie to see if Vince would see me. Vince never discussed payment arrangements on the phone. Paulie said he’d call back. I took the phone with me to my bedroom, threw off my shoes, socks and pants and crawled in to bed.

It was Ben who woke me up before Paulie called back. “Hannah, darling, are you awake?” he said quietly.

“Ben? Are you okay?” I said, coming out of what was surprisingly a deep sleep complete with dreams about handsome men that just kept running and running, while I stood frozen in place.

“Can we go back to the hospital now, dear? Saul must be awfully tired.” I looked at the clock. One thirty in the morning. I checked my phone, seeing if I slept through Paulie’s call, but I hadn’t.

“Sure. Give me a few minutes to shower and throw on some clean clothes, okay.”

“Of course, dear. I’ll go put some coffee on,” he said, leaving my room.

P
aulie called as we entered the hospital a half hour later. I let Ben walk ahead of me, down the long corridor to the waiting room near Gus’ room where the nurses told us Lorelei and Saul had moved.

“Can you meet Vince tonight?” Paulie said with no preamble when I answered.

“I need to get Ben situated here, then I can,” I answered.

“Where are you?”

“The hospital. Gus was shot.”

“Gus Morgan?”

“Yes. He was in surgery for a long time, but it looks good now.”

There was silence on the phone, then, “You sure you want to do this tonight?”

“The clock’s ticking on me,” I said and waited for him to deny it, or to give me some words of encouragement, but he didn’t.

“He’ll be at the Bellagio, in the book room for the next hour.”

“I’ll be there,” I said and hung up.

Saul and Lorelei looked beat, and had never even been able to see Gus, but everybody seemed to feel better that Gus had friends nearby.

I was trying to figure out the logistics of how to get to the Bellagio without leaving Ben alone when Jimmy walked in. He’d showered and changed, and, I suspected, placed several bets and looked all the better for it.

“Can you stay here with Ben if I run out for an hour or so?” I asked him. He nodded, probably knowing where I was headed, if not for exactly the reasons he thought.

I walked over to Saul where he and Ben were huddled together. “Saul? How about if Lorelei takes you to stop by your house? You can pick up a few things and then come and stay with us?”

I expected him to balk. Saul was adamant about his independence. Much as I suspected Ben had been before his hip surgeries had made him somewhat dependant on people.

On me. And Lorelei.

I thought I’d have to talk him into it with reasons like the police would be better able to look after him and Ben if they were in the same place, but Saul surprised me. After giving it some thought, he turned to me and said, “Yes, Hannah, that’s probably for the best.”

I turned to Jimmy. “Don’t even think about it,” he said.

Well, that was probably for the best, too.
 

I smiled, patted Jimmy on the chest. “The offer stands.” He clasped my hand and squeezed, then turned to the coffee pots against the wall.

I pulled Lorelei aside. “So, you’ll take Saul in his car? I’ll keep the Lexus?”
 

She nodded. “Is there anything else I should be doing? Should I go shopping for groceries? Are we looking at some kind of siege situation? Are we going to the mattresses?”

I looked at her and she shrugged. “Ben’s always watching
The Godfather
. I guess some of it stuck.”

I chuckled. “I don’t think we’re to that point.” I looked around the sterile room. “Yet,” I clarified.

“Do you know a service that can deliver whatever we need?”

She looked at me like I had insulted her. “Please.”

Of course she did. Much as I had this town wired for gambling action, Lorelei had its domestic nooks and crannies down pat.

“Then order what we need in the morning and just stay close to Saul.”
 

She nodded, started to go, but I touched her arm to stop her.

“Lor, can you get your hands on twenty thousand in cash by tomorrow afternoon?”

“Yeesssss,” she said, a questioning look in her shrewd green Irish eyes.

“Do it. I’m going to fly to Pittsburgh. Jimmy can get me in a game there with people who might know who the big player who lost all the money is.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Really? And you’re going to just do that? Fly to Pittsburgh, spend your money to find out something that the cops could do with a few phone calls?”

“One, I don’t plan on spending the money—that would mean I lost. Two, the cops may or may not be able to get a name with a phone call. It was a long time ago. The cops that are there now may not be in tune to the Pittsburgh gambling scene of thirty years ago.”