No House Limit by Steve Fisher

Author:Steve Fisher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Hard Case Crime
Published: 2014-05-08T22:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

The playing cards used in blackjack games are washed every afternoon by several young women seated at a long table in the counting room. They also check the cards for creases, damage or the telltale marks of a professional cheat. A deck with even one damaged or marked card is thrown away; the rest are wiped clean with a cloth that has been dipped in a special solution. At another table, a few feet away, strongboxes taken from beneath the gaming tables are opened and the money inside carefully counted by men expert at such things, the money being checked against the amount of chips allotted to the table at the start of the session.

It was going on three o’clock when Mai entered the casino. He was just back from Boulder City. Dee would arrive a few minutes later, through a different door. He gazed around, saw that all four of the crap tables were going, a fair crowd patronizing them, several of the men (guests at the hotel) wearing open sports shirts and no coats, and a few clad in swimming trunks, sandals and a tee shirt. Everything seemed quiet, casual. The big game was operating the same as before: a crowd of Vegas people thronged around it.

He felt hungry and started for the adjoining buffet when he saw Sunny Guido headed in the same direction. He caught up with her.

“Could I buy you a lunch—a sandwich—food?”

She smiled. “How about Dutch treat?”

“Are schoolteachers always so proper?”

She laughed. “They try to be.” But thinking of Joe, she wasn’t laughing, and the word “proper” upset her. How proper had she been early this morning when he pulled off the bed covers?

They found a table in view of the big crap game, ordered a light lunch; he noticed her eyes turning again and again in the direction of Joe.

“You and Joe getting along all right?”

Wondering whether he knew she was now living in the penthouse, she flushed, but answered: “I like him a lot.”

“So do I. That makes two of us.”

He shot her a quick look and decided Joe must have scored. But he had his own problems. Dee. They had talked more than two hours trying to find a realistic way out. “Old Mai Davis and his advice to lost and confused human beings,” he had said. “If you want the truth, I think I need advice more than you do.”

“Why,” she’d asked, “what’s wrong with you?”

“Forget it. We’re not here to talk about me.” And they didn’t. They had sipped endless cocktails and discussed her problem and finally didn’t agree on anything except that they’d somehow meet again—and maybe by that time he’d have a plan. But meet where? “Certainly not in public,” he’d said. “Maybe in some cheap out-of-the-way old hotel downtown. And don’t think—don’t think for a minute I say a hotel room because I have anything dirty on my mind. I won’t so much as try to touch you.” She believed him and asked him to arrange for the room, and he’d promised to do so first thing tomorrow.

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