Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) (21 page)

I squeezed my way through the crowds back over to where Mike was still standing at the craps table. I felt the eyes of the security chief following me, and when I looked his way once, I saw that he was holding the black walkie-talkie to his mouth and speaking into it. I nudged Mike in the side with my elbow. “Hey, how you doing?”
 

“Great. I’m up by two hundred.”

I tried unsuccessfully to whistle. “Wow, I’m impressed,” I said, and I was. I didn’t think anybody ever won on these gambling ships.

“Umm-hmm,” he said as he watched the dice roll down the felt.

“Mike?”

“Umm-hmm,” he said again. He wasn’t even really aware that I was standing next to him.

I grabbed hold of his upper arm. “Mike. You’ve got to listen to me for a minute.” He swung his head around, blinked a couple of times, and made a concentrated effort to focus. I got closer and put my mouth next to his ear. “Listen, I’ve found Thompson.”

“Where is he?”

My lips were nearly touching his ear. “Actually, he’s a she. I’m going up to the top deck to meet her in a couple of minutes. I just thought you should know.”

He made a surprised face, then nodded. “Got it,” he said, turning back to his game.

The women’s restroom was at the top of the stairs on the left. Before entering, I walked up to the glass door that led to the “off-limits” bridge deck. I cupped my hands to the glass and looked through to see if anyone was outside on the wing decks. Though I could see the glow of the instrument lights around the doorway to the bridge, there was no one in sight on the deck.

I was standing at the sink washing my hands when she came in. There were four stalls and when she glanced at them, I said, “I already checked. There’s nobody here.”
 

“Yeah, that’s why I chose this head. Top deck’s usually empty as long as the casino is open. There are restrooms down there and the gamblers don’t want to get too far away from Lady Luck.”

“Yeah, it’s weird. It’s like they’re possessed.”

“We don’t often see people on this ship who aren’t afflicted. I notice you haven’t played a single nickel.”
 

“Might as well come in here and flush my money down the toilet.”

Her laughter danced up and down the musical scale, and it popped into my head that she might do better singing in real casinos than working the tables here. I noticed then that she wore almost no makeup, only a touch of lipstick, and no jewelry save for tiny gold balls in her earlobes. The gold contrasted beautifully with her dark skin. Not that she needed makeup or jewelry. There was a cleanness to her beauty, something that all the cigarette smoke and alcohol and general seediness of the ship could not touch. That was undoubtedly part of what made her so successful at the tables.

“What did you want to see me about?” she asked. Again, she’d cut clean to the point. I leaned on the sink and looked at her in the mirror. “I’ve known Molly Pontus since we were kids. Last night they arrested her for Nick’s murder.”

“I saw that on the news,” she said. “I didn’t know Molly well, but she always struck me as a decent woman.”

I thought that was a good way to put it. Decent. That described Molly, and decent folks weren’t guilty of murder.

“Miss Thompson,” I started.

“Oh, please, call me LaShon.” She waved a hand in the air with a dancer’s elegance.

“Okay. I was talking to Molly and Nick’s son today, and he told me that you and Nick were good friends, that you really knew the operation on this ship.”

She shrugged her shoulders, and the hint of a smile played around her mouth, tucking in the skin beneath her high cheekbones. “Nick found out that I’m a bit of a techie. A geek, really. I grew up messing with computers. I’ve always got to know how things work.”
 

“Computers? What does that have to do with this ship?”

She threw back her head and sang out that lilting laughter again.

“Are you kidding? Everything, my friend—everything, from the engine room to the bridge, but especially in the casino. This ship runs on computers. What do you think those slots are? They’re nothing but video games.”
 

“I guess I hadn’t really thought about it. Yeah. I was still thinking of the old one-armed bandits. But they’re all electronic now. So what did you do for Nick with your geek skills?”

“He wanted me to give up dealing and work in maintenance. I said to him, ‘Are you nuts? For what pittance you pay those guys?’ ”

“Sounds like Nick would have paid you well as a computer consultant if he wanted you that bad.”

“You know, much as I admired him in some ways, Nick Pontus was a cheap SOB. Not like these guys who come aboard, get all liquored up, and then start winning. I can make more in tips than most computer consultants make on salary. And I don’t have to worry about getting caught poking around in something somebody don’t want known.”

I started to ask “Like what?” when we heard footsteps along the outside corridor. We both turned to the sink and started washing our hands as the door to the bathroom swung inward and Miss Size Six from the bridge walked in. She nodded at LaShon before she entered the stall, and LaShon smiled back saying, “Hi, Anna.” The woman’s eyes passed right over me as though I did not exist.

LaShon finished drying her hands and left first. I walked out no more than ten seconds after her, but the upper deck was empty. I needed to think without all the noise and smoke from the casino below, but I didn’t really want to be standing out there when Anna exited the head so that she could quiz me about what I was doing in there with LaShon. I headed down the stairs.

Two decks down, Mike was still at the craps table. The crowd around the table was three people deep in most places. There was no way I was going to have a quiet conversation with him about my meeting with Thompson. I wandered the casino floor for a while, checking out all the people sitting mesmerized in front of their machines. I watched one guy feed a hundred-dollar bill into a dollar slot machine, and he played it away in a matter of minutes by betting on seven lines at a time. Then he stood up and headed for the cage to get more money.

Similar scenes were being repeated all over the place. For every one person I saw getting a payout, there were a half dozen reaching into their wallets for more money to feed the machines. It did not matter whether they played the nickel machines or the five-dollar machines, the slots ate the money and gave the player a certain number of credits. When people won, the machines played happy music and dinged as credits were added to the readout. Only when someone decided to cash out on a machine did one hear the familiar sound of coins dropping into the pan.

No wonder Nick and Kagan had been fighting over ownership of this casino gambling boat business. It must make millions. And, as with other offshore businesses, there was little if any government regulation or oversight.

Several of the machines up against the wall were dark, broken down. No flashing lights or catchy tunes. I sat on a stool in front of one of the broken slots and looked it over. Buttons and a video screen, just like Thompson said. The thing was a computer. I noticed that the base had a locked access door. That must be for maintenance, to get at its brain.

As I wandered around some more, I noticed one guy playing a quarter machine and he was really up. His credits numbered over six thousand, which by my rough calculation meant he had more than fifteen hundred dollars coming his way. And he was still winning. I sat next to him and watched for a while. After several minutes he turned to look at me.

“Whatcha’ lookin’ at?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bother you. I’d say good luck, but it looks like you’ve already got plenty.” I hiked my bag up on my shoulder, stood, and moved toward the crowd. I felt him looking at me as I walked away, and I shook my head. The gambling thing was supposed to be entertainment, but people seemed to be uptight both about winning and losing. Where was the fun in that?

When I wandered aft, I saw that LaShon was back at her blackjack table, and there was an open seat. She didn’t move her head, but her eyes flicked from me to the seat. I sat down, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill for her to change, and unzipped my sweatshirt. It had been so cool out on the upper deck, but down here it was too hot. And stuffy. I wondered if there was something symbolic there, and I smiled. A couple of the men at the other end of the table smiled back at me. Oh boy. This was going to get ugly. I didn’t know how to do all the cute little hand signals or what the right lingo was. Everyone at the table would soon know this was my first time.

LaShon was doing something fancy with a stack of chips, counting them by stacking and restacking them, then she slid them across the felt to me. I picked up the stack to look at them and felt something stuck to the bottom of the last chip. I set the chips back down on the table, well aware of the cameras in the ceiling, and began to play, taking the chips off the top of the stack. With help from LaShon and the others at the table, I actually won a couple of hands, but after fifteen minutes, when I was down to my last five chips, I pushed back my chair and said, “I guess I’m not much of a gambler. I’d better cash in or I won’t have any lunch money tomorrow.” I slid the chips into my sweatshirt pocket and headed over to the craps table.

Mike was throwing the dice. The crowd was thick as ever, and each time Mike threw, they broke out in a chorus of oohs and aahs and, sometimes, boos. The superheated air was thick with cigarette smoke, and I decided to head back up to the top deck. One added benefit of being up there was the scarcity of surveillance cameras.

Once on the upper deck, I walked to the stern and pulled out the tiny circle of paper that had been taped to the bottom of the last chip LaShon had given me. It read “11a.m.—under 17th bridge east.” She must have felt nervous about talking to me on the ship. Going any further tonight would probably put her job in jeopardy. I wondered what it was she wanted to tell me.

The wind had picked up since we had first left harbor. I zipped my sweatshirt tight under my chin and pulled the hood up, both to keep my ears warm and to keep those pesky wisps of hair from whipping around my eyes and mouth. There still weren’t any swells big enough to rock the little ship, but from where I stood at the corner of the stern, I could look forward along the windward side and there was chop breaking against the hull. We were probably making only two to three knots through the water, headed due south, taking the southeasterly winds on our forward quarter. My guess was that the captain just steamed south for a while, barely making headway into the Gulf Stream, and then when it was nearly time to head in, he would turn around and steam north, making it back in a quarter of the time it had taken us to head out. We must be nearing the time to turn around.

I glanced at my watch and saw that we had been out at sea only three hours. It seemed like years. The lights of the buildings along the coast were lovely, but the view was entertaining for only so long. I never would have thought that I could be bored on any boat, but here, if you didn’t enjoy the gambling bit, there was nothing else to do. The food was lousy, and I didn’t feel like drinking anymore. It was too cold and windy out here and too hot and smoky down below.

I heard a crewman come up the crew only stairs from the lower deck, and he headed over to the side of the bar, where he helped himself to a cup of coffee from a machine along the side deck. When he had disappeared back below, I walked over to investigate. A warm beverage sounded pretty good about now.

The port side deck was sectioned off with a rope that held another little crew only sign. I unsnapped the rope and draped it over the steel bulwark as I’d seen the crewman do. A stack of cardboard coffee cups was wedged in next to the machine, and I helped myself to a paper cup and then to some of the hot black liquid.

The coffee was weak, but the taste mattered less than the heat. There wasn’t any sign of cream or sugar, but I didn’t care. I stepped to the bulwark and leaned my elbows on the rail. That side of the ship was taking the brunt of the growing southeasterly winds, and I pulled my sleeves down over my hands so that only my fingers poked out and wrapped around the cup.

Far out on the horizon, a white light appeared and then disappeared as a far-off freighter made its way north in the Gulf Stream. The seas were probably higher out there, but I noticed that our ship was beginning to roll more in the swells as well. I wondered how long it would be before some of the gamblers below started feeling the effects and rushing to the bathrooms. Although I almost never got seasick, I imagined it could happen to me down there with all that noise and the smells of smoke and liquor.

I stretched my neck out a little to see if I could see into the windows of the casino below, but the side decks where the crew worked were too wide, and the casino windows were set too far back from the lower deck’s railings. While I was extended out there, I heard the sound of footsteps below. Someone was in a hurry, running from somewhere forward and headed aft. Whoever was running was not close enough to the rail for me to see, but when he passed nearly beneath me, I heard a whoosh as though he had got the air knocked out of him, and then I heard a voice say, “What the hell?’’ I tried to balance on my tiptoes and lean way out over the railing. Another voice, lower and older-sounding, made a shushing noise and then began whispering in sharp, urgent tones. I couldn’t make out the whispered words, but I could see a blue-clad arm occasionally gesture outward, and I heard the static crackle of the walkie-talkie.

I set my coffee cup down on the deck, braced my hands on the top of the gunwale, and leaned out as far as I could, trying to see who the security chief was talking to. Though I couldn’t recognize the voice from those whispers, it had to be him. I wondered why he had punched the runner. After hearing nothing for several seconds, I wasn’t even sure they were still there. They weren’t speaking anymore. I held onto the crew only rope for balance and lifted one foot in an awkward arabesque, stretching out, trying to see what the hell was going on down below.