Double Whammy (A Davis Way Crime Caper) (16 page)

*    *    *

Tonight, I was leaning on Jack Daniels and Bradley Cole. Here’s hoping these two were a better combination.

I’d taken to chatting with an eight-by-ten framed photograph of Bradley taken on a ski trip with his buddies. I kept it beside the bed, so that Bradley’s face was the last thing I saw before dreaming, and the first thing I saw upon waking. In the privacy of my/his condo, I used it as a magic eight ball of sorts. (Maybe I should get a cat or a guinea pig. Or a magic eight ball.)

I asked him, before I turned out the light, if he thought there was enough good left in the world for us to bother. His answer: without a doubt. Did he like my new look? Definitely. I asked him if he minded me redecorating his dining room with a slot machine. He didn’t. Even if I make a really big mess with it? No. I asked him if he thought my theory was right: there was some dirty, dirty business going on all around me that had somehow, someway, began with the murder of Morgan George, Jr. He said ask again later. And one last question: Did he think I could figure it out and avoid my ex-ex-husband at the same time? His sources said no.

THIRTEEN

One-tenth of the casino floor was devoted to the irresponsible gambler. It was called High Limits, where the table game minimums were weekly grocery-store budgets and the slot machines could eat an entire mortgage payment in fifteen minutes. It was elevated, smack-dab in the middle, cordoned off by brass rails, and all aisles led to it so that everyone eventually got a wistful glance and wished they had the mojo to play up there with the rich people. But off the main casino floor, in the northeast corner away from all other venues behind a backlit waterfall, there was a Ridiculously High Limit room. It was by invitation only. It was the most brutal gaming this side of Las Vegas. The draw was the anonymous geography; it was the reason so many private hangars were built for so many private jets fifteen miles away. In this room, school-teacher salaries were tips and the sticker price of luxury yachts was won and lost in seconds.

A different breed of gambler played in Private Gaming, the one they call a whale. Whales were one of these: famous, a professional athlete, a politician, or so inherently wealthy their portfolio had its own summer house in France. You might think you’d find self-made millionaires in every other seat, but Natalie told me not to bother looking for those, because people who earned their fortunes didn’t give it to casinos.

“They gamble,” she explained. “But you’ll find them playing one hand at the five-dollar tables, not two hands at the five-thousand. The only other reason someone would play in Private Gaming would be if they had something else entirely going on.” She sat back and crossed her arms. “That’d be you, Davis.”

“And you’re telling me that Eddie Crawford plays in the private room? Seriously? How could that be?” I asked.

He wasn’t famous, he wasn’t athletic, probably couldn’t tell you who the governor of Alabama was if you held a gun to his head, and his mailing address was Shady Acres Mobile Home Park, Slip 18, County Road 4, Pine Apple.

“I am,” Natalie said, “and he does. He won big money a little more than four months ago.”

“How big?”

“One point two,” Natalie popped the words.

“One point two what?”

“Million.” She said it in two syllables.

My hand slapped my own chest so hard I’m sure it left a mark. “
What?”
I shot up from the chair.

“Settle down, Davis.”

Eventually, I stopped screaming and found the chair. That son of a bitch. And it wasn’t just me; his mother drove a clunker minivan from the late eighties. What the hell was Eddie doing with that kind of money?

“Can we continue, Davis?”

I sat there quietly seething while she picked up where she left off: markers, tuxedos, women who were paid to hang out and look good. The Bellissimo Word of the Day—discretion—found its way in there several times.

“He’s playing there,” I said, “and you want me to play in there, too, right? Natalie, he’ll see me and run.”

“No, Davis. He won’t.”

“We met at the hospital when we were born, then I married him twice, Natalie. How is it you think he won’t see me?”

Her voice lowered to a whisper. “He won’t see Davis. He’ll see Bianca.”

“Mrs.
Sanders
? How does Eddie know what she even looks like?”

“Your ex-husband is Bianca Sanders’ latest whim,” Natalie said. “And he’s her third.”

“Her third what?” I was still having trouble breathing. “Whim? Her third
whim
?”

“Yes,” she said. “The two before him are dead.”

“How dead?”

“How many kinds of dead are there, Davis?”

“No. I meant how did they die?”

She inhaled sharply, her jaw clenched, and she didn’t answer.

“Natalie,” I started.

She waited.

“Natalie,” I started again.

She waited.

“Natalie, is there something going on between Eddie and Bianca Sanders?”

“You could say that.” She sniffed.

“What?”

“You could say there’s something going on between them.”

“
What
?”

She looked at me as if my last marble had just rolled out of my head, across the floor, and out of the building.

“What is going on between them?”

“That’s what I want
you
to tell
me
, Davis.”

“How do you suggest I go about doing that?”

Natalie closed the space between us. “You look just like her, Davis.
Be
her. Make him think you’re her and find out how they’re winning the money.”

Well, there you go. And what a relief. They only wanted me to weasel the game secrets out of Eddie the Ass by pretending to be Bianca. I had been entertaining much more sinister scenarios, scenarios in which I was in way over my head, and this new perspective was very welcome, with the exception of the Eddie the Rotten Rat angle.

She let me connect the dots before she asked, “Anything else?”

I left her office with a lot on my mind, not the least of which was Eddie winning all that money four months ago, right about when I was dribbling hot chocolate on the classified ads back in Pine Apple, but the most of which was that I had to find a way to get the job done and leave him out of it at the same time.

I still had secrets to keep; otherwise, I’d end up behind bars.

*    *    *

Of the hours I’d logged on the job so far, very few had been in the casino. During my three weeks of toilet scrubbing, I’d forgotten it was even there. The casino-host office gig had been adjacent, but accessed from outside the casino. It all came flying back when I hit the red and gold carpet.

It was nine o’clock on Wednesday evening, just the right time for a cocktail. I was Marci Dunlow from San Antonio, Texas again, but with a Bianca Casimiro Sanders makeover. Before I left Bradley’s place I did two things: I called my sister and described every detail of my outfit, and I checked the Bellissimo guest list and casino activity on the computer. No Eddie Crawford.

Marci was dressed in black capri pencil pants, an oversized pearly cashmere sweater on top of a white silk tank, and she was prancing around in four-inch Jimmy Choos of a dark metal color. My blonde hair, cut shoulder length, was pulled back loosely. My eyes were money green.

I wore Coco Chanel shades all the way through the casino.

When I reached the backlit waterfall that greeted the big fish, I took the sunglasses off and dropped them into my black Fendi hobo like they were a pack of Juicy Fruit. Natalie added jewelry to the mix this time, by way of two-carat princess-cut diamond solitaire earrings, a David Yurman turquoise and platinum cuff bracelet on my right arm, and a platinum and diamond Rolex on my left.

“It’s all about the shoes and the watch, Davis,” she told me. “If you’re wondering if someone really has money, check their shoes and watch.”

I was checking the fancy Rolex watch. I hoped it was waterproof, because I think I was drooling on it. “These are on loan from the jewelry store downstairs,” she said. “Do not let anything happen to them.”

I could feel all the luxury; my skin was hot beneath it. There’d never been a time in my life that I’d wanted for anything, but I had to admit that living the Fab Life gave me an entirely different attitude. Sixteen-hundred dollar shoes on my feet slowed my pace. What was the big hurry? I’d already arrived.

I felt no less than twenty sets of unblinking eyes on me, and I didn’t know if that was simply because I’d stepped into the room or they thought I was Bianca. A young man on loan from Hollywood walked up and gave me a slight bow. “Welcome, Miss Dunlow.”

I gave him a small sigh and an even smaller nod.

The whale room was more of the same and less of the same: more opulence, less people, more gaming, less noise. One thing was noticeably absent: the air of desperation. Either the waterfall sucked out the anxiety I’d seen on so many gambling faces, or these people had so much money it simply didn’t matter.

The ratio of employee to gambler in the main casino was probably one to a hundred; in here it looked to be ten tuxedoed employees per gambler. Everything in this room was cranked up a notch, or ten, and at the same time, scaled down a notch, or twenty. The waterfall, in addition to the tranquility it lent, effectively blocked the noise behind it, and this was like being on a movie set. It was decadence at its finest.

Standing in the entrance I could see, to my right, an Asian man quietly playing blackjack, with his own entourage behind him and a Bellissimo dealer and pit boss in front of him, and I could hear someone playing a slot machine on my left. It would seem that I made three.

“This way.” Hollywood held his arm out, and I felt him behind me as the Jimmy Choos sank into the thick carpet. Another tuxedoed man twenty yards away gave me a little bow and swept his right arm out like a ballroom dancer.

Half of the room was devoted to slot machines, the other half, tables. The two sides were separated by a bar and sunken seating area that fell in line behind the waterfall. I passed a short row of twenty-five dollar slot machines. They led to three rows of one-hundred dollar machines and the last two rows, five-hundred dollar machines.

“This way, Miss Dunlow,” Tuxedo Two said.

I turned the corner and came face-to-face with four slot machines that ate five-thousand dollars per push of the button, and there they were, to the left of those: Double Whammy Deuces Wild video poker progressives. Nine of them, side by side, holding up a dark wall. A small LDC display above the three middle machines quietly announced the progressive total: $1,287,059, and climbing. These were one-hundred dollar machines. A full wager cost five hundred dollars. I saw the small logo: TGT. Total Gaming Technologies. It was the same game I had played weeks ago with the sisters, and it was exactly like the one in Bradley Cole’s small dining alcove, except these weren’t open and in a million pieces. And the stakes here were definitely higher.

“How much would you like to start with, Miss Dunlow?” Hollywood asked quietly as a cocktail waitress wearing shoes every bit as expensive as the ones I had on passed me a huge cut-crystal stemless globe full of white wine. I had to hold it with both hands. I tipped her twenty dollars, and she accepted the tip without taking her eyes off me and without saying a word. Nor did she move a muscle.

Hollywood cleared his throat.

The waitress snapped to and quietly left.

“Oh,” I said to Hollywood, “ten?”

“Certainly.” He backed away and returned with two tickets on a small silver tray valued at five-thousand each. “Your marker balance for the evening is forty thousand.”

I blinked okay.

“Do you need anything else?”

I blinked no.

“Good luck, Miss Dunlow.” And he stepped away leaving me alone to blow ten thousand dollars.

The wine was positively delicious, just like the shoes, and I made quick work of it. The waitress arrived with another without me asking. She leaned down to place it beside me and whispered, “Are you her sister?”

“Whose sister?” I asked innocently.

*    *    *

I didn’t eat for four days beginning Sunday, August 28, 2005. I lived on coffee, whiskey, and very little sleep. One of those days, because my mother badgered me incessantly, I choked down three pretzels. I stayed glued to the television, then the police scanner and weather radio, then back to the television, as Hurricane Katrina sickeningly tore the holy shit out of my backyard. Eighteen hundred dead, more than one-hundred billion in destruction. Even in Pine Apple, almost two hundred miles inland, we were all but washed away, and spent more than twenty-four hours without power, wringing our hands by the glow of a lamp plugged into the generator at the station. Meredith and I slept in Eddie and Jug’s cell, Mother and Daddy on cots between the desks. My husband of less than a year and his former partner-in-crime were in their truck doing electrical things most of that time, and when he wasn’t working, Eddie was several miles away with his own parents. It was a horrifying, unimaginable, and helpless time. It got so much worse before it got any better.

“Listen, Davis,” Eddie said on the Friday morning after the Storm, the television news in the background showing scene after scene of devastation and mayhem. “Me and Jug are going to head down there.”

“Down where?”

“To New Orleans.”

I turned down the volume on the television. “Is there a humanitarian hidden somewhere in you, Eddie? Do you want to save people? Do you want to pass out bottles of water?”

He actually scoffed at the idea. That’s what a low-life he is.

“Why do you think?” He rose from his seat at our kitchen table and poured himself more coffee. “There’s so much work there, I’ll be able to retire off what I can make in the next six months.”

“You can’t even get on Interstate sixty-five,” I said. “Much less fifty-nine. How do you plan to get down there? Sprout wings? And once you do, how do you plan on getting in? Land on the Super Dome?”