Lucky Flash: A Lucky O'Toole Novella (The Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series) (6 page)

“I’m tapped out.
 
That’s sorta why Jake went after that chicken.
 
Usually he has better manners, but he’s not so good at going without.”

“This one’s on me.”

Renny brightened.
 
“Jake, too?”

“As long as security doesn’t kick us out, Jake.”
 
I had no idea what a snake would want, but, whatever it was, I felt sure the Babylon would have it.

Renny followed me off the bridge and through the arched entrance to the casino.
 
This late in the evening the vibe was still going strong; patrons ringed most of the tables three deep.
 
Occasional shouts erupted, a few groans, lots of laughter and clapping, chants of encouragement.
 
Even if folks weren’t staying at the Babylon, they came to gamble here—which was like the pot at the end of the rainbow where gaming establishments were concerned.
 

There was just something about the place.
 
I’d tried to figure it out, but I still couldn’t put my finger on it.
 
But I knew Lucky and her father, the Big Boss, had themselves the Vegas equivalent of a printing press, churning out C notes like they were bits of taffy at the fair.
 

 
The casino with its thick mosaic-patterned carpet, deep purple walls, open flames under glass providing subtle, low-light ambiance, palms softening the spaces, and bright fabric looping from the high ceilings was a welcoming, comfortable, classy yet cool place.

Everybody wanted to be seen donating money here.

Renny dogged my heels a bit too close for my comfort.
 
At any minute I was sure he’d step on the backs of my shoes, but I didn’t bother asking him to not walk so close—he’d never had been able to grasp the concept of personal space.
 
In fact, Renny didn’t understand a lot of things, but he got by.
 
He had no family that we knew of and we tried to fill that void where we could.
 
Renny lived in the storm drains.
 
He kept a very neat space next to Crazy Carl Colson, one of Lucky’s biggest fans, so Renny was in good hands.

I ignored the startled looks thrown our way and headed directly for Pandora’s Box.
 
The line of youngsters still waiting to get in filled the space against the wall behind the velvet ropes.
 
Most of them were male—the unescorted young ladies all got in pretty quickly on the theory they were the bait to attract the young men who would shell out a shitload hoping to get lucky.
 
From the looks of it, the theory held plenty of water.
 
Bottle service and a small ringside table started at ten grand.
 
How these kids got that kind of money… “Must be nice to be sperm privileged,” I muttered.
 
My dad was a dealer…blackjack, thank you very much, and my mom was a waitress.
 
Kinder folks you’d never know, but privilege wasn’t in our genetic line.
 

“What ?”
 
Renny leaned forward, bringing Jake a bit too close to my earlobe for comfort.
 
This time he stepped on my heel.
 
He didn’t say he was sorry.
 
In fact, “sorry” wasn’t a word I’d ever heard him use.

“Nothing.” I spied the man I was looking for.

Thumping electric dance music blared through the open doors as Ralph, the bouncer at Pandora’s Box, stepped through and assumed his position at the head of the line.
 
A couple of willow young things presented their reed-like arms for his perusal.
 
They must’ve had the right stamps indicating they had already been inside as Ralph nodded and pulled open one side of the double doors for them.
 
As he did so, music blared.
 
But when he pushed the door closed behind them, the sound disappeared.
 
Pretty serious soundproofing.
 
And classy, too with the thick red leather upholstery riveted to the doors with gold nails, like some secret, hidden hideaway.
 
Ali Baba’s Den of Thieves sprang to mind.
 
Not that Lucky would mind the analogy.
 
She’d be the first to admit Vegas hadn’t been built on a bleeding heart.

Ralph’s face brightened when he saw me.
 
A look darted across his face as his grin widened even further.
 
“You didn’t have to bring the snake.
 
I woulda let you in anyway.”

I hooked my thumb over my shoulder.
 
“You know Renny, right?”

Ralph nodded.
 
“A course.
 
How’re they hanging, dude?”

“Righteous,” Renny said solemnly.
 
Like I said, his social skills needed some nuance.

Ralph smiled as kindness softened his sharp features.
 
He wasn’t as tough as he was big.
 
With his dark hair gelled into a Mohawk, his pale skin with just the hint of a heavy beard showing, his bent nose, the scar under his right eye and the multi-colored tat of an eagle, its wings spread across the back of his neck, Ralph played up the scary part.
 
But, in counterpoint, his suit was pure Italian, his shirt Egyptian cotton and tailor-made, his loafers Gucci, and his watch Heublot, which said more about his personality than his flat expression and hard eyes.
 
I should know; we’d been friends since grade school.
 
He was a softie resorting to confrontation as a last resort—that’s why Lucky had hired him.
 
She was smart that way—hiring someone quick to rough up the young glitterati could have a chilling effect on business.

“What’re you two doing here at this hour? You know after four a.m. those over thirty turn to dust.”

“What makes you think I’m over thirty?”
 
I pretended to be all huffy, then I remembered we were both the same age.
 
“You know age is a state of mind.”

Ralph leveled a look at me.
 
“Then you’re too young by a long shot to get into this place.”

“Good thing it’s you I need to talk to.”

As a gaggle of giggling girls wiggled their way out of the club followed by a bunch of guys trying not to trip over their tongues, Ralph nodded to a threesome of guys waiting in line.
 
He glowered at them as he held the door open.
 
They seemed oblivious—males on the scent of willing females are the personification of stupid…but tons of fun to toy with.
 
Alas, not tonight.
 
Tonight I had smaller fish to fry.

“You still playing drums in that band?”

“You know me, music is in my blood.”
 
Ralph smiled like it was a joke, but, in truth, he had the soul of songwriter and a soft, smooth tenor that could make the ladies weep.
 
And, knowing Ralph, he always had his fingers on the pulse of the local beat.

“So what’s the deal with this scavenger hunt and a recording contract?”

His face snapped into a frown.
 
“Bunch of idiots chasing all over town.
 
Lookin’ for music artifacts, they say.
 
Man, I heard a couple got busted trying to take a booth out of the Golden Steer on account Sinatra put his fancy ass in it at some point.”

“And I just took a big sparkler off Johnny Pismo.
 
He swore it had belonged to Liberace.”

Ralph whistled.
 
“The King of Kitsch.
 
Ring’s probably fake.”

“Not everything about him was smoke and mirrors.”

“Nope.
 
Personally, I loved the guy.”

“Anything else you can tell me about this scavenger hunt thing?
 
I don’t understand why Dig Me O’Dell would get involved in something like that.
 
It’s just asking to be a big splash of the wrong kind.”

“You can’t fix stupid,” Renny said.

I gave him a look. It wasn’t clear exactly who he thought was stupid and I didn’t feel like asking, so I nodded.
 
“Right you are.”

“There’s some weird shit going down, though,” Ralph added as he churned through what I’d told him.

“Could you narrow that down a bit for me?
 
It’s late.”

“It’s nuthin’ I know for sure.”
 
He unhooked the rope and waved another gaggle of stick-thin prepubescents into the club.
 
“But, you know, they got music memorabilia stashed in odd places all over town.
 
I love that shit.
 
But folks who have it don’t pay it the proper reverence, know what I mean?
 
They treat it pretty casual.”

I didn’t.
 
To me old shit was old shit, but I was smart enough to play along.
 
“Totally.”

“Well, that stuff is low-hanging fruit to the properly motivated sticky fingered.”

“So Dig Me O’Dell offered the golden egg to a bunch of no-talent wannabes willing to overlook the whole legal thing.
 
He’s actually gonna sign one of them.
 
At least according to my source. What I don’t get is what’s in it for O’Dell?
 
Sweet Sound Downtown Records is one of the big players.”
 
The whole thing sounded far-fetched to me.

Ralph seemed to have suspended disbelief.
 
“Well, desperate times call for desperate measures and all that shit.
 
Digital downloading took a chunk of green away from those guys, and Sweet Sound hasn’t had a winner in a long time.”

“Man, a lack of money hits a guy where it hurts.
 
Right in the ego.”

Ralph nodded.
 
“Follow the money, you’ll find your answers.”

I thought for a moment.
 
“I’m a journalist with my finger on the pulse of the happenings here in Sin City.
 
If Dig Me O’Dell wanted to make a big splash with this scavenger hunt thing, don’t you think it’s odd I didn’t know about it?”
 

Ralph’s face sobered.
 

“How’d you find out about it?” I asked him.

“Somebody floated it on the grapevine.”

“Who?”

“That no-talent dude with the seriously bad wardrobe.”
 
Ralph thought for a moment then shook his head.
 
“Can’t remember his name.”

“And therein lies his problem. Unremarkable and forgotten.
 
The name Johnny Pismo, ring a bell?”

His face lit with recognition.
 
“That’s the dude.”

Now I knew Pismo was lying.
 
The question was why.

CHAPTER FOUR

L
UCKY

Teddie peeled himself off the wall as I stepped off the elevator and into my living room.
 
A gal just couldn’t catch a break.
 

“How’d you get up here?
 
You need to know the secret handshake and have the secret code.”

He flashed me his patented dimpled grin.
 
That, along with his tight ass, bright baby blues, and a voice as smooth as 20-year-old whiskey, could probably pry the secrets out of Forrest, our former NFL defensive end turned security dude, if he had to, but he didn’t.
 

“Oh, yeah, you live here.”
 
I reached for the back of the couch, steadying myself as I shucked a shoe, then repeated the process for the other.
 
I would’ve sighed in ecstasy, but Teddie would’ve found encouragement in that.
 
“Correction, you don’t live here; you live upstairs.”

“With a back staircase to you kitchen.”

“One I’m seriously considering boarding over.”

“But you haven’t.”

He had a point, one I didn’t want to think about right now.
 
“What if Jean-Charles had been with me?”

“He’s asleep in your room.”

“What?” My mind froze, but the rest of me overheated.
 
If I could ever get my body parts in synch, life would be so much simpler.
 
Then the cold shower of rational thought filtered through the hormones on high alert.
 
“I just talked to him.
 
The kitchen is swamped.
 
He won’t be done for hours.”

Teddie shrugged.
 
“Wanted to see your reaction.
 
Do you love him?”

Always the pragmatist, and having been so recently burned, I’d been asking myself the same thing.
 
“When I see him, my heart soars.
 
At odd moments during the day, I think about him, trying to picture where he might be.
 
At other times, I am overcome with a joy so deep it infuses every part of me.
 
When he is not with me, like now, I crave his touch.
 
I want to be the me I see when he looks at me.”

Teddie recoiled as if I’d slapped him, which I guess I had.
 
I didn’t feel particularly good about that.
 
Actually, he’d asked, I’d answered.
 
What I didn’t like was how I felt delivering the blows.
 
I could be cruel.
 
I could enjoy inflicting the hurt, not something to be proud of.

Teddie regained his equilibrium.
 
“None of that changes that I feel exactly that way about you.”

Disappointed in myself, disappointed in him, I felt defeated and sad.
 
“There was a time I returned that love.”

“We could get back there.”

“No, I fell in love with the man I thought you were.
 
You proved me wrong.
 
You are not that man.”

Another blow.
 
Was I being honest or vengeful?
 
“We need to stop talking about this.
 
I’m not liking myself much right now.”