Death On the Flop Page 7

  “Duh.” She hit her hand on her head. “I knew that. You couldn’t fake those tits. They are way too natural and nice, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  I shook my head. I really didn’t mind. I think Vegas was rubbing off on me. She continued. “No, there is a new show at our casino, it’s girls dressed up like guys. They look the real deal, girl, then they strip and wa-la, there’s real tits for all the world to see. The audience is floored. It’s the coolest. Wish I were a real woman. And the best part for you is, my boss only hires girls with real ones. No silicone. Nothing fake. That makes the surprise so much better in the end.”

  I was really depressed now. I was a man-ish looking woman who looked like a hooker. I sighed and wondered why I continued to be polite, except that I kind of liked my new buddy. “Thanks, but I think I’m too old. I’m forty.”

  She hit my arm and I nearly fell over. “You’re shitting me, girl! I would’ve never guessed it, and neither will my boss. Just fudge a little. By the time he hires you and sees those goods you got, he won’t care.”

  She pulled out a card and handed it to me. Carey Beck-with. “Thanks.”

  “Call me, or at least come see the show before you decide. I’ll get you in for free.”

  We were almost to the ground floor, so I quickly dialed Frank’s number. A sleepy male voice answered. “Gilbert.”

  “Frank? This is Belinda Cooley.”

  “Uh . . .”

  Oh great, he’d been so drunk he couldn’t remember me. Maybe this was a mistake.

  “Belinda Cooley,” I repeated, thinking I might add, that mannish looking woman you sat next to last night at the Caesars Palace bar. But then I remembered I never introduced myself. “Uh, ‘Debbie Dallas’ from last night?”

  Carey’s eyebrows went up and she did a humping action against the wall. It looked so funny for a corporate maven to be doing the nasty that I giggled.

  “Oh, yes, Debbie,” Frank said, his cold voice warming. “Sounds like you had a better evening after I left. What can I do for you this early morning?”

  “You said I could call you anytime,” I reminded him, sobering and still not sure this was a good idea. The elevator deposited us on the ground floor and we exited, Carey following as I walked to an alcove against the wall. “I wondered if we could meet somewhere for coffee?”

  “Sure, about ten?”

  “Could it be sooner? Like in a half hour? I’m staying at the Lanai too. I could come to your room.” I didn’t like the way that sounded but I didn’t want to talk about what happened in the middle of the casino. I didn’t know when or where Electric Blue Rambo might reappear. Besides, I didn’t know if I was being overly dramatic, imagining the danger of the whole thing, and if he’d laugh at me in public. Private was better. I held my breath as his pause stretched on. Carey shot me a sympathetic look, clearly misunderstanding the reason for my call.

  Finally, Frank answered hesitantly. “Sure. Come on up. Or down, depending on where you are.”

  “I’ll be right there. 2521. Right?”

  I handed over the phone with a thanks that she waved off. “Those cold calls are hell. Really, girl, think about a new career. Call me.”

  She reached into her cleavage, came out with a handful of twenties and handed it to me. “Here. Tell the guy to take a powder. Being a working girl nowadays is just too dangerous.”

  I put the money back in her hand, touched at her kindness. “I promise I’ll come see your show.”

  She grinned. “The show is pretty fun, always. Can’t make any promises on this Wall Street woman thing, but I’d love to see you in the audience, girl.”

  On impulse, I gave her a hug and we waved goodbye. She was by far the best person I’d met in Vegas. Transvestite show girl, amateur psychologist. I guess that said it for the city. Of course, Frank could elevate himself above Carey within moments. I was quickly back on the elevator, headed to his room. Only time, and probably a few aspirin on his part, would tell.

  “This is a surprise,” Frank said, stepping back in his maroon terry cloth robe, from the door of his room to allow me to enter. He reminded me of my Aunt Telly who always acted like it was a surprise when we showed up, invited, for Thanksgiving dinner.

  “Really, I’m sorry to wake you so early, and I wouldn’t have done it except that your card said ‘security,’ you offered to help and I have a problem.”

  “Okay,” Frank said from behind me as I hurried in and sat on the loveseat in his suite that was bigger and more expensively decorated than ours.

  “What?” Frank asked as he sat in the chair opposite the loveseat. I looked around in awe, as he continued, crossing his legs at his ankles, “I’d have to guess you are on a floor below me? Some of those are the comp rooms.”

  For some reason I was distracted by his bare feet. Men’s feet, when bare, seem so vulnerable to me. That was a good thing in this case, because now I felt like I could tell Frank my problem without being intimidated. I looked again. Size twelve B, nicely kept, but not professionally pedicured. Feet that made me wish I’d noticed the hands that went with these nice big feet. They were currently hidden in the pockets of the robe, but I might find a reason for them to come out to play.

  I stopped myself.

  No, no, no. No fun for me. I had to find Ben and get to the bottom of the break-in.

  I sucked in a breath and explained: “We are on the twentieth floor. And when I went up to our room for the second time tonight, I found it had been vandalized.”

  Frank sat forward, elbows on his knees. “What do you mean?”

  I described the scene in detail and he didn’t interrupt me, which led me to believe he might have spent some of his past as a cop. I’d been interviewed by a few of them, through no fault of mine and all of Ben’s, but suffice it to say I had experience with the men in blue. Frank struck me as an ex-cop.

  “I guess I should call the Las Vegas police.” I said. “This has all been made more complicated by Ben, yet again, who made us leave our cell phones at home. They need to know he’s missing.”

  “First of all, this casino is not in city limits, so the city cops wouldn’t care. You would have to call the deputy sheriffs for Clark County, and let me warn you, Belinda, that you have to be careful who you talk to on the force.”

  “You sound paranoid,” I offered, I admit, a little antagonistically.

  He wasn’t offended. You had to love that. He looked at me with that awesome intensity. “With good reason. Some well placed guys on the force are on the pad from the mob and from some drug runners, some operate their own illegal gigs. You don’t want to be telling your story to them, because if this had anything to do with any kind of corrupt doings, they might want to cover it up instead of investigate. That might turn out to be dangerous to you.”

  “Come on.” I said, “That sounds like an episode of Las Vegas.”

  Frank gave me a look. “Trust me, it’s worse than any Hollywood imagination could dream up.”

  “I really don’t have any other option. My brother is missing. My room is trashed. What am I supposed to do?”

  Frank sighed. “Was anything missing?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing of mine was missing, but I don’t know exactly what Ben brought.”

  “You don’t have a cell phone and neither does he,” Frank mused. “Is there anyone back home, friends, family he might contact if he can’t get a hold of you?”

  “I doubt he would call Mom, she manufactures reasons to panic and Ben is her baby. She’d have the National Guard here if he got a hangnail. Dad tells Mom everything so calling him is like calling her. He has a couple of good buddies but I certainly don’t know their phone numbers, and Ben knows I don’t. He might call my best friend, though.”

  “Call her first, then call your parents and his closest buddy if you can get his number from information. Don’t let on anything is wrong.” Frank handed me a paper thin phone. Very high tech, very cool.

  He watched carefully wh
ile I talked to Shana. She hadn’t heard from Ben, obviously, and chastised me for not gambling yet. Mom didn’t know we’d gone to Vegas and hadn’t been able to get a hold of me and had called police to my house. She sent me on a major guilt trip. I started to give her my room number and Frank shook his head, scribbling his own instead as well as his phone number. I reluctantly read both to Mom, and finally extracted myself from the conversation.

  “You really don’t want my mom having your number. She’ll call fifteen times a day.”

  “Better that than whoever roughed up your brother finding out about your mom and going to see her.”

  Yikes. “They wouldn’t do that.”

  “We don’t know what Ben was into and what they wanted from him.” Frank pointed out.

  Finally, I tracked down Sam Cuero, who asked how much money we’d won so far. I did tell him Ben and I had gotten separated and he just advised me to sit tight because Ben was probably “getting him some.” Ah what a romantic. And to think I’d turned Sam down when he’d asked me out ten years ago.

  I shook my head when Frank raised his eyebrows in question. “No luck.”

  “Okay, you need to check in periodically with them. Let’s go back to the sequence of events. You said that when you found the room trashed, it was the second time you were there. Tell me exactly what you and your brother did between when I saw you and when he disappeared.”

  “After I left you, I was going to find Ben when a casino security guy stopped me and asked if he could help me. He sent some goons to find Ben at the poker tables.” Frank drew his eyebrows together at that but rolled his hand to get me to continue the story. “Then we walked over here and as we entered the Lanai, the Steely Stan guy got out of a limo in front of us. I said something snide to him as he went in. Ben was obsessed with finding out where he was going and what he was doing.”

  Frank held up a hand to stop me and sat forward on the couch. “Wait a minute, Belinda. Why did you say something snide to Stan?”

  “His limo nearly ran me over, then he gets out with a girl on each hip and a hand on each breast and walks over and through people like he owns the world. It just rubbed me the wrong way. It was tacky.”

  Frank narrowed his eyes and gave me the most intense stare I’ve ever seen. “Belinda, I warned you to stay away from Stan. He is dangerous.”

  Have I mentioned I don’t like to be told what to do? Especially by virtual strangers. I straightened my spine and looked down my nose at Frank. His intensity was hard to fend off, and those bare feet were hard to ignore, but I tried with a look my mother perfected to guilt her little bad boy Ben into behaving. Frank just stared back. I don’t think it worked as well on him. Or maybe I wasn’t as good at it as my mom was.

  “What happened next?” Frank finally prodded.

  “So we checked in and rode the elevator up to the room. I went in to bathe and Ben left me a note that said he was going to check out where Stan had gone because he wanted to ‘research’ him to do better in the tournament.”

  Frank shook his head. “What is your brother really up to?”

  I shrugged. “I really think ‘researching’ Stan was what he was up to. Ben is obsessive. Anyway an hour later he still wasn’t back and so I dressed and went down the stairs because I got tired of waiting for the elevator.”

  Frank shook his head with a small smile, and his glance drifted to my legs. “Twenty flights? You must be in good shape.”

  I felt my cheeks warm. “Well, I didn’t quite make it all the way.” I hadn’t decided whether or not to tell him all about what happened next but his eye contact with my knees so flustered me that the story in the stairwell spilled out in a rush.

  Frank glowered, his dark eyes darkened. “Did these men see you?”

  “Um,” I began, really not wanting to go into the whole Felix episode. Somehow I didn’t think Frank would approve. “My back. My profile, maybe.”

  “And what did they look like?”

  I described both men as best I could. Of course, I’d seen Electric Blue Rambo a lot better than I had the short, fat whiner named Pete. I didn’t mention the cologne connection. Frank was all about facts and I doubted fragrance would qualify as a fact.

  “Look, I don’t know if this is all connected, coincidence or you have a knack for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. Humph. I thought I’d done pretty well getting away from the bad guys, but all Frank could do was criticize. Maybe Frank was the wrong person. Double humph.

  He continued, “But the bottom line is: You can’t go to police, some guys are on the up and up, some aren’t and you don’t know which is which. Some are linked to the mob and the Mexican mafia, but I also hear whispers that a couple are in Steely Stan’s pocket. I don’t know why he’d need them there unless he’s running some kind of poker scam. But that would be hard to do since he wins at casinos and tournaments outside Vegas. So that may be nothing but a rumor. Still, Stan’s up to something. And it’s not good, because all these rumors have some grain of truth. And that’s enough to steer clear of him.”

  “What about our hotel security. I’ll just report the break in to them.”

  Frank shook his head. “Half the security force are moonlighting cops or ex-cops who went to work the casino for bigger money.”

  “What do you suggest I do then?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Great,” I said, jumping to my feet. “You’re full of advice on what not to do. You can’t tell me what to do while my brother is out there somewhere bleeding to death.”

  “You don’t know if that was his blood or someone else’s,” Frank rose slowly to his feet. I was momentarily distracted by his feet, but fortunately my anger pulled my attention back to where it should be.

  “That’s where police expertise comes in,” I retorted. “They could do blood tests and a real investigation.”

  Frank was glowering deeper and shaking his head stronger now.

  “You tell me not to trust anyone in Vegas, but you want me to trust you, some drunk I met at a bar who has a stupid cryptic card that means nothing. For all I know you’re an ex-cop who works for the Mexican mafia who will hold me hostage in this room while your compadres slice and dice my brother for fun.”

  Jumping to my feet, I strode to the door, trying not to think about the flash of hurt in Frank’s eyes when I’d called him a drunk. I was so mad I was shaking. I was so mad I couldn’t see straight. I grabbed the doorknob. Frank was behind me and put his palm on the door to hold it closed. I was so mad I was actually stronger than he was. I yanked the door open and marched down the hall.

  “Don’t do this, Belinda,” Frank called low and hard.

  “Call me Bee.” I threw over my shoulder. “And watch me buzz away.”

  Seven

  As I stomped to the front desk, I forgot to worry about Electric Blue Rambo jumping out at me from behind a potted palm. All I could think about was Frank trying to boss me around like Toby did, albeit in a different way. Toby was a smooth manipulator. From what I could tell of Frank he was his name—frank to the point of being blunt. One didn’t wonder what Frank wanted because he spelled it out. Toby was sneakier about getting what he wanted, but he still got it. Same difference. I’d let one too many men control me. No more. I was forty now and I was independent. I might die a spinster but at least I would go my own way doing my own thing.

  I marched through the blue granite waves and polished sandstone that was the lobby floor of the Lanai. A marble dolphin leaping out of a wave almost caught my right thigh. I detoured and nearly ran over a killer whale. Was that onyx and quartz? Ack.

  Thankfully, no one was in line. I approached the desk clerk who looked up, her eyes widening. I probably had smoke coming out my ears. “Yes, ma’am?” she asked cautiously.

  “I have a problem and need you to call the police for me.”

  “Is there something I ca
n help you with?” she asked.

  I felt like I was dealing with a diplomat from the United Nations. Sheesh. I remembered that Frank said the casinos liked to equalize trouble immediately. I remembered that the last casino had not even liked the way it looked when I was wandering around with luggage. Blood and break-ins would be much worse. I took a deep breath and tried not to scream. “I . . . Just . . . Told . . . You . . . How . . . You . . . Could . . . Help . . . Me. Call the police.”

  “Oh yes, ma’am. You are in luck.” I bet I was. She tapped something into her computer. Probably a red alert message and the casino goons would be on me momentarily. She nodded and spoke with a careful tone reserved for those not mentally stable. “There is a detective with the sheriff ’s department here right now checking out security for the big pro-am poker tournament that starts tomorrow night. I’ll take you to him. Maybe he can help you.”

  She poked her head in the open door behind her and another young clerk appeared, giving her colleague a sympathetic look as she took over the computer. The first clerk beckoned me to come around the front desk and follow her through a door she opened by punching a code into the keypad above the knob. She led me down a hallway and opened another door with the same code, 7826, which I memorized. Who would’ve guessed reading all those Nancy Drews when I was thirteen was coming in handy.

  She opened the door and motioned me to go ahead of her into what looked like a conference room. Two men in suits stood with their backs to us, bent over what looked like schematic blueprints. “Excuse me, Detective Conner?” my escort said apologetically. “This guest was asking for the police.”

  I walked past her as the taller man turned to look at us. His eyes were electric blue. I sucked in a breath and tasted Iceberg Effusion. Uh-oh. This changed everything. I tried to rewind the conversation I heard in the stairwell in my mind, playing the bad guy as a cop to see if I had misunderstood anything. Nope. Electric Blue Rambo was still the bad guy. Just so happened he was also a cop.