Certified Male (18 page)

“Keep talking, you're breaking my heart here. You look like you're workin' real hard, playin' poker, sucking down liquor, acting like the big man.”

“There's been a holdup.”

“Always is with you.”

“Look, you brought me the guy. If he's a screwup, then it's partly your fault. If that means you got to sweat a little more, well, it ain't gonna keep me up at night.”

“Asshole,” she spat.

“Yeah? Right back atcha. He's the one who ain't paying. Until he coughs up the cash, I don't get it, which means you don't get it. Unnerstand?”

“Tell me you didn't make some idiot move like giving him the goods already.”

“The stuff's in a safe place. It's cool. Everything's cool, or it would be if you'd stop being such a psycho bitch.”

“I'll back off for now, but I'm warning you, I'd better see something soon.”

“Saturday night is gonna be the handover, babe. I'll get you the dough, you can put in your notice. Maybe we'll take a nice trip or something.”

“I'll show you a nice trip if you're feeding me a line.”

“Hey, Ren, would I do that?”

“You always did have a habit of asking stupid questions,” she returned.

 

G
WEN LAY ON THE SHEETS
, waiting for her breath to return to normal.

“Are you trying to give me heart failure so I'll forfeit my seat at the table?” Del croaked.

She grinned. “I just wanted to help you release your post-tournament tension.”

“You helped me release my tension, all right.”

“Mmm.” She moved so that her head lay across his belly. “So, based on that conversation we overheard, it sounds like Jerry's planning the handoff on Saturday, which means we've got to get our act in gear.”

“Yep.”

“So, I think I've figured out a way to do it.”

“How?”

“Well, it depends on Jerry making the final table. If he does, then we'll know without a doubt where he is during the last night of play.”

“Of course, you might be there also.”

“I suppose, but just because I start the game doesn't mean I'll be the last one standing.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Everybody but the champ has to lose sometime. If I'm the first one out, I'll be free to roam while Jerry's stuck there.”

“Too chancy.”

“Not at all,” she argued, rolling over to prop her arms on his chest. “They'll be showing the play on the closed-circuit television system throughout the hotel. All I need to do is put it on and I can monitor Jerry the whole time. I know where they are, Del,” she reminded him. “It won't take long.”

“And what do you think he's going to do when he finds them gone?”

“What can he do? They were stolen to begin with.”

“What about fingerprints, assuming he does go to the cops?”

She dismissed it. “We were just in his suite. My fingerprints are going to be all over the place anyway.”

“You made sure of it, didn't you?”

She grinned at him. “Nina's no dummy.”

“It still feels risky to me. What if someone catches you up there?”

“It'll work out fine. You can put money on it.”

“That's what I'm worried about.”

D
EL LEANED AGAINST ONE OF
the marble pillars of one of the casino bars—the Sun King Court—and watched Gwen being interviewed for the tournament video. It was one of the fifteen-minute segments the filmmakers were doing with all the front-runners. He'd done his only the day before. Somehow, though, Gwen's segment had stretched to nearly an hour. Not that he blamed them. She made a fetching subject and it wasn't just him being biased.

Behind him, on the stage in the bar, the singer of the house band warbled a version of Madonna's “Holiday.” That was what this whole week felt like, a holiday from the real world.

He pulled out his cell phone to check his voice mail while he waited. It might feel as if he was on vacation, but there was still work to think about.

He punched in the number and then navigated his way through the voice-mail menus, punching the key to play his first message. “Hey, Redmond—” the voice jumped out of the phone “—it's Kellar.” A casino waitress hustled past, her tray of drinks held high. “Jessup put me full-time on that stamp story you dropped. I need to get a list of your sources and where you left things, so give me a call or shoot me an e-mail, okay?”

Del jabbed at the key that deleted the message and stood, quietly steaming. Maybe Jessup hadn't been ready
to let the story go so easily and had asked Kellar to follow up. More likely it was Kellar getting industrious, Del figured, hoping that a little sniffing around would net him a story and a clip.
Dream on, buddy.
No journalist who wanted to remain competitive coughed up his sources. Anyway, it wasn't as if he owed Jessup anything. The thing to do was sit tight and let Kellar cool his heels. With nothing to go on, the kid couldn't possibly get an angle on the story.

Del hoped.

Someone bumped him on the hip and he turned to see Gwen. “Hey, you,” she said, giving him a quick kiss. “Sorry that took so long. Did I miss anything important?”

“Not a thing,” he told her and hoped like hell he was right.

 

“W
ELCOME TO THE THIRD ROUND
of the Tournament of Champions.” The MC's voice came across the PA system as the players and audience milled around the tournament room. The mood had become even more focused, even more intense as the tournament had progressed. The good news was that everybody was in the money. The bad news was that the sooner a player went out, the less of a payoff they got. By the end of play that day, the field would be winnowed from thirty-six to the final table of nine.

And someone at that final table would walk away with a cool two million.

On the surface, players behaved just about the same, only more so. The loquacious ones coffeehoused just as much as they always had, perhaps out of nerves or as a calculated attempt to distract their cohorts. Punks like Jerry grated ever more on the nerves.

And the cool, focused players like Del just kept coming. The power balances had changed at the tables. The chip leaders, some of them sitting on several hundred thou
sand dollars' worth of chips, bet relentlessly, raising and reraising, trying to break their poorer competition.

Much to her own surprise, Gwen had worked her way up to over two hundred thousand dollars in chips by the time she was reseated at a shorthanded table with Jerry.

A chance for a little revenge.

She didn't want to knock him out of the tournament. She needed him there where she could keep an eye on him. The more of his chips she could steal away, though, the higher up the ladder she would move and the more of her grandfather's property she could buy back.

And she began to seriously play.

 

T
HE NIGHT AIR WAS COOL AS
Gwen pushed through the doors that led out of the casino and onto the long, covered arcade that looked down on the front entrance. The hint of coolness in the air helped ease the stress headache that beat in her temples. After ten hours at the tables, the players had winnowed their numbers from thirty-six to thirteen, and the pressure rose every time someone dropped out.

Four more and they'd be down to the final table. Four more and she'd be guaranteed enough money to buy back all of the low-value stamps that Jerry had sold and then some. She'd taken a few chips from Jerry, but she'd left him with enough to survive and he'd built back from there. If luck were with him, he'd get to the final table.

If luck were with them both.

The message light on her cell phone flashed a peremptory red.
A minute,
Gwen thought, leaning down to rest her forehead briefly against the cold marble of the railing. She'd give herself just one precious moment before she hit redial.

When she did, Joss answered. “Hello?”

“What's going on?”

“It's Grampa. You need to call him.”

“Come on, Joss, it's eleven o'clock at night.”

“So? It's the middle of the morning there and he just called again. I'm out of excuses and he's starting to get suspicious. You've got to call him.”

Gwen squeezed her eyes shut. “I can't now, Joss. We're down to the final thirteen. I've got to go back inside in, like, ten minutes.”

“I told him you've been really busy. Just five minutes?” she wheedled. “He just needs to hear your voice.”

The headache felt as though someone was merrily thumping Gwen's brain with a meat tenderizer. “All right.”

Gwen repeated her grandfather's phone number as Joss read it out to her, repeated it again before she said goodbye, then recited the number out loud as she punched the keys. The clicking in the electronic circuits and the ring sounded farther away somehow.
Half a world away,
she thought suddenly. Half a world and a dozen time zones.

“Good morning.”

It might have been coming from half a world away, but when she heard her grandfather's voice, it was as though he were right beside her. “Grampa. It's Gwen.”

“Gwennie!” The pleasure in his voice warmed her, easing her headache. “I was about ready to come looking for you. What have you been up to? All Joss can ever tell me is that you're off somewhere busy.”

“Oh, just working hard,” she said vaguely. “I only have a few minutes to talk but I wanted to say hi. How's Australia?”

“Tasmania today,” he corrected her. “And we leave for Papua New Guinea day after tomorrow.”

His voice sounded richer, she thought, more thrum
mingly full of bass, as though a tightness none of them had been aware of had eased. “You sound happy, Grampa.”

“We're having the time of our lives. Your grandmother learned how to use a boomerang a couple of days ago.”

“A boomerang?” The image of her quiet, buttoned-down grandmother hucking around a boomerang made her laugh.

“Almost took my head off with it, but she had fun. Oh, we've been having a blast. I don't know why we didn't do this before.”

“You were married to your business?” she speculated.

“No longer,” he assured her. “That's someone else's job now. Speaking of the business, how'd that new kid you hired work out?”

The headache returned with a vengeance. “Oh, all right,” Gwen said briefly, hating the fact that she wasn't being straight with him. But how could she tell him and chase away all the joy and pleasure she heard?

“How'd the Chicago estate sale go?”

“Great. Made a couple of surprise finds and already unloaded some of the issues.”

“Nice work. But I know you haven't told me everything.”

For an instant her heart stopped. “What do you mean?”

“About the business.”

“Have you heard something is wrong?” How could he have found out, she wondered wildly.

“No, of course not. I'm sure it's all fine and dandy with you at the helm. But that's what I'm talking about. I know you've been unhappy about closing the store down,” he told her. “You haven't said anything about it, but you didn't have to—I know.”

Gwen breathed a silent sigh of relief. “I'll miss it,” she told him, “but I'll find something else I like. Maybe go to work for Stewart.”

“It's not the same as running your own shop, though, is it?”

Her throat tightened.

“There's something I want to toss out to you, just food for thought. Your grandmother and I have been talking.”

“In between throwing boomerangs?”

“In between,” he agreed. “We've talked it over and the business is yours if you want it.”

Gwen's jaw dropped. “You mean you want me to run the store?”

“No, we want to turn the whole business over to you, lock, stock and barrel. If you want it.”

It was as though the world had been dropped in her lap. “Grampa. I—I don't know what to say.”

“Don't answer right away,” he returned. “Think about it and we can talk next month once we're all home. Oh, we can't give it to you outright, there are the other kids to consider. But if you'd like it, we'll find a way to make it happen.”

“Like it?” Gwen spluttered, “I'd love it.”

“Well, take some time and think it over. Owning your own business is a big job, remember.”

“It's exactly the right job,” she told him. The door opened behind her.

“Gwen.” She heard Del's voice. “They're calling us back to the tables.”

“Be right there,” she told him. She'd get the stamps back, she thought with renewed purpose. She'd take care of her grandparents and she'd start into business right.

“You have to run?” her grandfather asked.

“I have to get back to the game,” she said without thinking. “You're wonderful, Grampa. Give Grandma a big hug for me.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess it is Thursday night back there,” he
said, clearly thinking she was at the weekly home game. “You going to come out ahead tonight?”

“I'm going to come out ahead on everything,” she promised him.

 

A
ROUND OF APPLAUSE BEGAN IN
the bleachers and spread throughout the room. Gwen looked up, blinking. That was it, she realized, stunned. A player at the other table had just gone out and now they were nine. The long night was over. She caught Del's eye and suddenly the excitement surged through her. They'd made the cut. They were in the serious money.

Without thinking, she rose and ran the few steps over to his table. He grabbed her in a huge bear hug and swung her around. “We did it,” she laughed. “We're in.”

And then his mouth was on hers, all heat and promise, and the room and people around them faded away. Everything faded away except the immediacy of him, the taste of his mouth, the feel of his body.

“God, I want you,” he murmured in her ear.

It was intoxicating. Being in the running to win two million dollars was nothing compared to the way he made her feel.

“Are you two going to come up for air long enough to accept congratulations?”

Gwen opened her eyes to see Roxy watching them.

“Sorry.” She could feel the heat of a blush on her face.

“Don't worry about me. The news cameras are having fun, though.” She pointed to the black circles of the lenses pointed their way.

“Settle up your chips, folks,” the tournament manager reminded them, walking through the tables. They all straggled back to their seats to count up their chips and sign and staple the colorful clay disks in Ziploc bags.

The final day of play in the tournament would begin the next afternoon and run until only one of them was left.

“So, where should we go to celebrate?” Roxy asked, her arms around both of their shoulders. “The Ghost Bar over at the Palms?”

“I'd settle for dinner,” Gwen said.

“Dinner was only a couple of hours ago.”

“For those of us who could eat.”

“Nerves, huh?” Roxy winked at her. “Okay, let's go over to the Hard Rock and hit Nobu. I adore the tuna on miso chips. Meet in the lobby in, say, five minutes?” She waved and peeled off to the ladies' room.

Gwen and Del headed down the escalator into the casino and headed toward the elevators.

“Hey, Redmond, made the final table,” came a voice from behind him. “Congratulations.”

Del turned to look at the source of the voice.

It was Kellar. “Hey, I been leaving messages for you, you know?”

“I'll talk with you later, Kellar,” he said and continued toward the elevators.

“No.” Kellar's voice became more insistent. “You're a hard guy to track down.” He followed them into the marble-lined elevator lobby.

“Kellar, let it go,” Del snapped, punching the call button. “Later, okay? This is not the place.”

“That's what you said before and it's later now. I'm not going to hold you up, I just need a list of your sources on the stamp story.” Behind them one of the elevators chimed.

“The stamp story?” Gwen asked.

“Yeah. For the paper.” He gave her a pugnacious glance. “I'm taking over.”

“Really.”

Del felt Gwen's hand drop away from his as she turned
to stare at him. Without saying a word she turned and got on the elevator. Del followed.

Kellar blinked. “Hey, Redmond, you can't do that,” he protested.

“Watch me.”

The atmosphere was glacial as the door closed. Gwen didn't say anything, just punched the button for her floor. When the doors opened, she got out without a word or a backward glance. Del followed her.

She did turn then. “Get away from me.”

“Gwen, don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Shut me out. Let me tell you what's going on.”

“Why?” She glared at him. “So you can pump me for more information for your article, you and your buddy?” She headed toward her room. “When you talked about changing your career, you never told me that my family was going to be the means to your end.”