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Authors: Kristin Hardy

Certified Male (21 page)

BOOK: Certified Male
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“We're booking him down at the station, but you're going to need to come down to the security area in the casino to press charges, ma'am,” a young officer with eyes far too old for his face told her.

Gwen nodded. “Just give me a couple minutes and I'll be there,” she promised. She was exhausted enough to fall over. Instead she walked out into the concierge area by the elevators.

And saw Del waiting for her on a couch.

She crossed to him and sat. “How are you doing?” he asked.

She nodded. “Fine. They're going to charge Stewart with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and anything else they can think of. I'm sure Jerry will be eager to hang it all on Stewart, but I doubt he'll be looking forward to leaving the hospital himself.”

“Do they know where the other stamp is?”

“They mentioned some Swedish guy—a collector, I think. Stewart's clammed up about it. From what they said before you came, it sounds like Stewart owed money to some leg breakers and just about the time they were get
ting serious about hurting him, the collector came asking if he could get my grandfather to sell the Post Office Mauritius pair.”

“Those stamps are hard to find, I take it?”

“Almost impossible. All but two or three are in museums. Stewart figured it was a slam dunk because my grandfather was retiring, so he got ahead of himself and used the down payment to pay off the leg breakers. Then my grandfather said no.”

“Oops.”

“Exactly. Stewart knew Rennie from when he used to go to Reno and when he saw her in Vegas one weekend, he figured she might help him out. Enter Jerry.” She shrugged. “You know the rest.”

“All but who the collector is.”

“I've got some guesses, but I want to wait and see if Stewart says anything.” But why were they talking about what didn't matter now? What she needed to say was how she'd felt when she'd known he was coming, when she'd seen him hurtle through the door and she'd felt not only relief but a rush of recognition, connection, rightness.

He stared ahead a moment, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “You don't know what it did to me to come through that door and see him with the gun,” he said at last.

“There aren't any words to thank you for today. You saved my life.” And it made her tremble a bit to know the words were true. “If you hadn't been there, I don't know what would have happened.”

“When I watched Jerry walk away from the table, it scared the hell out of me. All I could think was that you might be up in the room and he might hurt you.”

“And you walked away from the tournament. God, Del, two million dollars.”

He brushed it off as he might an annoying fly. “Gwen,
you could have been hurt, killed. Who cares about the tournament? You were all that mattered,” he said softly. “You still are.”

She swallowed. “Last night—”

“Last night we both said a lot of things. But not the really important stuff.”

“I love you, Del. I know this isn't the time or place to say it, but I do and you should know that.”

He stared at her. “God, Gwen, I don't—”

The elevator doors opened to arguing. Pete Kellar walked into the lobby, arguing with an officer. “Hey, I got a press pass. I'm coming through to meet with a colleague.” He walked up to Del. “Hey, Redmond. Brother, you look like shit. The guy caught you with one, huh?”

Del's eyes iced over. “What are you doing here, Kellar?”

“Hey, gotta get the story. I heard it on the police band. I figure with an exclusive interview with you, this is going to be killer.” He shoved his pocket recorder in front of Gwen. “So, you part of this? You the one with the stamps or you just helping him out?”

“Kellar.” Something flinty and cold and absolutely dangerous looked out of Del's eyes. “You've got exactly one second to put that thing away before I put your nose through the back of your skull.”

Kellar backpedaled. “Hey, you got no call to talk like that. I'm just doing my job. I've only got a coupla hours to get the story done.”

Del stared at him.

“Hey, this could be front page in the Vegas paper, maybe even make the
Globe
or get picked up on the AP.” He gave Del a look of disdain. “Come on, buddy, you're a reporter. You can't stand in the way of a story, particularly not one like this.”

Del stared at him, then nodded slowly. “Okay. Five minutes, then we talk.”

“Yeah? Cool.” Kellar bounced a little on his toes. “Okay, I'll just wait for you out here.” He gave a little wave and left.

 

I
T WAS LIKE CLIFF DIVING HE'D
done in high school from the bluffs of La Jolla—knowing what he had to do, scared as hell of what it meant, but still making himself take that step. And then flying through space, hoping to god that he'd do it right.

Gwen stared at him, her face paper-white, her eyes enormous. “What are you thinking?” she whispered.

Watching her, he felt as though he'd been gut-punched himself. “I have to work with him, Gwen.”

“What, because of some fraternal secret-handshake thing? The Loyal Order of Reporters? I tell you I love you and you want to violate me in the papers with that guy?” Her words dripped with loathing.

“It's not like that,” he told her steadily.

“Then what's it like?”

“Gwen, I have to do this story.” He took her hands in his. “I don't have a choice.
We
don't.”

She yanked them away. “Funny, that's exactly what Stewart said when he was holding a gun on me.”

That one got to him. “Gwen, this story is going to happen no matter what. If I work with Kellar, I can spin it in the way that hurts you least. If I'm not a part of it, he's going to dig deep, because he's young, he's ambitious and he wants to move onto the main paper.”

“And, of course, you don't have any ambitions at all, right? Nothing that a story like this would help?” Gwen rose and walked blindly toward the elevators.

“Gwen, wait.”

“I don't need to hear any more, Del. You want to do this, fine, but don't sit there trying to justify it and make it all right, because it's not.”

“Just listen to me.”

“No!” She spun to face him, eyes burning with fury and betrayal. “I won't. You said just trust me before and I did and then I found out that you sold me out the first time. And then, dummy me, I fall for your line again. ‘Gwen, you're all that matters,'” she mocked. “How
dare
you?”

He looked at her helplessly. She wasn't playing a role this time. This wasn't Nina doing the dirty work. This was Gwen in full righteous fury and there was no way to reach her. “Gwen, think about this for a second,” he said softly. “I don't want this to be the end.”

For a moment something utterly vulnerable looked out of her eyes and then was gone, supplanted by anger. “Just stay the hell away from me, Redmond. Stay the hell away.”

23

G
WEN SAT AT HER DESK IN THE
familiar confines of her office and lifted up a bright vermillion stamp with a pair of tongs. She didn't inspect it, though. Mostly she stared into space.

She'd been doing that a lot since she'd come back from Las Vegas. Ever since Kellar's story had appeared in the metro section of the
Globe.
If it hadn't been as detailed as she'd feared, it still reported the basics of the theft.

It was missing a lot of the details of the case that would have gotten the media excited.

And it was missing Del's byline.

It had been picked up by the AP wire and, she'd heard, the
Los Angeles Times.
Then again, Stewart's fall was the talk of the stamp world. She'd fielded phone calls for a while, but not as many as she'd anticipated, and her grandfather hadn't found out. Without the sensational splash, the run she'd feared hadn't materialized. So far, so good.

If waking every morning feeling as if she'd had her heart cut out could be called good.

If she focused on the details, things were infinitely better than they'd been before she went to Vegas. All but one of the issues were back in their appropriate slots, the burgundy albums safely tucked away in a bank vault. Insurance now protected the store inventory. No more would they be vulnerable to theft. She was back in familiar surroundings, back in her own clothes, back in her old life.
So why couldn't she relax and be comfortable with plain old Gwen again?

So why couldn't she forget?

The phone rang. It was the San Francisco police inspector assigned to her case. “I just wanted to let you know, we're going to have to drop the investigation into the Swede.”

“But he's still got one of the stamps.”

“We think that, but we don't know it. If he does, it goes under international jurisdiction.”

“But he's got something worth more than a million dollars,” she said a little desperately.

“Or someone does. This whole Swedish thing may be an invention, something Oakes cooked up to tell Messner. Maybe he just wanted them to sell himself.”

“He wouldn't have done that to my grandfather.”

A world of disillusionment went into his sigh. “You'd be surprised what people will do for money.”

Maybe he was right. Gwen wanted to think that Stewart had been desperate and frightened and grasping at the only out he could find. She didn't want to think the theft was calculated purely for his gain.

Just as she hadn't wanted to think that Del had calculatedly given her up for a news story. And how gullible did that make her, since she had proof of both of their treachery?

“What does Stewart say?”

“He says he never met or saw the guy, just dealt with an intermediary, and he had no fixed contact information for him. We've got no trail. We couldn't follow it even if we had the jurisdiction.”

“So you don't do anything?”

“On the missing stamp, no. Let Interpol look into it. Maybe they'll take it on. On Oakes, you bet. Las Vegas has
got him cold on the assault and we've got him on the conspiracy charges—Messner's so ticked at being double-crossed and shot that he hasn't stopped talking yet. Oakes will definitely do time.”

“How about Jerry?”

“There, I'm not so sure. His shoulder will heal. He's got a deal with the D.A., probably to plead to a lesser charge, especially since nearly all of the property has been recovered.”

“Except for the million dollars,” she said, discouraged.

“Except that,” he agreed. “I understand your frustration, but it's more important to put away the guys who wave guns around than the small-timers like Messner. You can always file a civil suit against them both to try to recover damages. See if you can get some of Messner's tournament winnings.”

Yeah, right. Good luck. She didn't even want to think about lawyers and lawsuits just yet. “So it's in our laps.”

“For a lawsuit, yes.” His voice hardened. “Don't even think about trying to pull your detective stunt again to get the other one, though. You got lucky this time, but you could have wound up with a bullet in your brain.”

If it hadn't been for Del, she probably would have. Did she regret taking the chances—with Jerry, with Stewart? With Del?
No,
she thought. It was the living with it that was the hard part. “You're right, Inspector,” she sighed. “I appreciate everything you've done. Thanks for filling me in.”

Some things were easily cleaned up, she thought as she hung up the phone.

And some things weren't.

She was doing better these days. She managed routinely to go as much as thirty seconds at a time without thinking about Del. It would get longer as time went by, and maybe someday she'd get over this hollow feeling.

Maybe someday she'd get over him.

It was just the contrast, she told herself, all that excitement, then going back to her quiet life. She wasn't comfortable anymore as just Gwen, but she wasn't Nina, either. She didn't know who she was. She hung Nina's clothes in her closet and found herself sprinkling the garments into her normal wardrobe. Joss did a double take the first time but didn't say anything.

It was the glamour, the adrenaline rush. Del was just part of what she associated with it all, that was why she couldn't stop thinking about him. It had only been two weeks, after all. Sooner or later she'd forget.

In the meantime it helped to be busy.

Joss walked into the room. “I've closed everything up.”

Gwen nodded, concentrating on her stamp.

“That means it's the end of the day,” Joss told her. “You know, as in quitting time? When normal people go home and have dinner and relax?”

“I'm going to stay and finish some things up. You go along.”

Instead Joss plunked down into a chair. “Earth to Gwen. Working yourself to death isn't going to make it go away.”

“What do you mean?” Gwen asked with forced casualness.

“You've been at it until nine or ten at night since you got back from Vegas. It's not like this is brain surgery. There isn't that much work to do here.” She looked at Gwen sympathetically. “But then, it's not about work, is it?”

Gwen blinked. “I miss him, Joss. I shouldn't. I know it's stupid and I know he screwed me over, but I can't get him out of my head.” Her eyes filled and she blinked furiously.

“It's okay to be upset.”

“No, it's not.” She wiped her eyes. “I figured being back here would help. You know, same old, same old.” Settle
back into her familiar routines, pretend that whirlwind of Vegas had happened to someone else.

She'd been wrong.

She missed it. She missed the tournament. She missed Roxy, who she'd never even congratulated on her second tournament win.

And she missed Del most of all.

“I keep thinking I'm going to run into him somewhere. It makes me afraid to go out.” And it made her wonder, every street she walked down, every restaurant and store she entered, whether she'd see him, whether he'd been there. He haunted her everywhere she went.

He was going to for a long time.

 

D
EL WALKED INTO THE
U
NION
Square station of the Muni Metro, working his way around the rush-hour crowd. He walked up to the newsstand, scanning the magazines. There was a time he'd have read the
Globe
during his commute, but no more. All the paper was for him now was a reminder of all that had gone wrong.

He hadn't worked on the story after all, pleading involvement. Talking to Jessup hadn't gotten the story spiked, but it had pushed it to a small item on an inside page. He'd done what he could.

He didn't know when or if Gwen would understand. And he couldn't really blame her. Circumstances didn't matter. If he hadn't brought the original story idea to Jessup, none of this would have been put in motion. The gunshot might have wound up as a small item in the Las Vegas paper, if even that.

No matter how you stacked it up, he was at fault.

In the end he'd turned down the news job that Jessup had offered him. The cost, quite simply, had been too high. But it was more than that. Maybe he wasn't cut out for hard
news. He liked investigating, but he couldn't maintain quite the remove from his subjects, he didn't think.

Certainly he hadn't when it had come to Gwen.

Regret twisted viciously in his gut. To have lost her was impossible, but to have lost her over a job that he now knew he didn't want was worse.

He now stared at the bright colors of the magazine covers.
Vanity Fair, Esquire, Harper's
—those magazines carried the kinds of stories that interested him. News but with depth. He wanted to get to know his subjects, not to be precluded from identifying with them. He wanted his insights to be a part of the story. He picked up
Vanity Fair
and flipped to an article on a lynching in the 1960s South. Then he stopped.

If these were the kinds of stories he wanted to do, why not pursue the magazines? It was all here before him, he realized, a chance to pursue the deeper, edgier stories that interested him with the depth he craved. He could keep writing for the newspaper and develop the magazine writing as a side career.

He handed the magazine to the cashier. Time to go home and start making some phone calls. It wouldn't be easy, he knew that, but with his track record he was confident he could get his foot in the door. Once he had a clip with one magazine, he could nudge his way into others. It wouldn't be easy, but it would be his, it would be something he'd made happen on his own.

Now if only he could make things right with Gwen as easily.

 

S
UNDAYS WERE ABOUT ROUTINE
, blessed routine. A long, lazy brunch at her little local café on Russian Hill that put tables outside when the weather was nice. The Sunday crossword with her orange juice. There was some small comfort in sameness, even if leisure time had become
something to avoid. She'd stick grimly to her tradition and trust that eventually the pleasure would return.

“Pass me the comics, would you?” Joss asked, a piece of toast in her hand.

The morning sun was surprisingly warm on Gwen's shoulders—at least, by San Francisco standards. It was nothing compared to the baking heat of Las Vegas, though. She blocked the thought almost as soon as she had it. Las Vegas meant the tournament, and the tournament meant Del.

Gwen picked through the paper for the funnies, avoiding the sports page as she had ever since she returned from Vegas. She was having a reasonably good morning. The last thing she needed to do was see Del's picture above his column. These were the little tricks she'd found to help her get through the day. Avoid Las Vegas, avoid the
Globe,
but she was damned if she was going to give up the Sunday paper.

Joss took the comics from her with a sigh. “I missed this so much in Africa, the funnies every week.”

“Me, too.”

“Mom says it was the crossword puzzle for her.”

Gwen fished out the
Globe
magazine that carried the puzzle. “That's my favorite part.”

“See, you're more like her than you thought. You're more like me than you thought, too.”

Gwen looked at Joss in surprise. “How do you figure?”

“Looks like a little of your alter ego rubbed off on you when you were out in Vegas. You're different since you came back.”

“I am not,” Gwen protested, but she knew it was true.

“I always wondered if you were really as quiet as you've always acted. About time you let that side of you out.”

But what had been the cost, Gwen wondered as she flipped through the magazine, looking for the crossword.

And found instead a photo that dragged her back to the
final table at the tournament. It was a picture during play, a picture of all of them—Jerry sulking in his best poker-brat style, Roxy peeking at her hole cards, Gwen tossing forward a stack of chips. And Del.

And Del.

All In, read the headline. Life, Love and Tournament Play in Vegas. The author was Del Redmond.

His jaw was set, his face sober. His hair poked up in spiky disorder. And the silver lenses of his sunglasses reflected Gwen's face.

“She said her name was Nina,” the article began. Palms damp, Gwen read on. When she reached the end, she blinked. The article had not, as she'd feared, been about the stamps. It hadn't even identified her, only mentioned Nina.

In the end poker is a little like life and a lot like love. You never know what's in the pocket cards of the person you're facing. Not unless you go all in. And when you do that, you hope to god you haven't totally misjudged the situation and lost everything. Because it can happen. I'm here to tell you it can happen. But sometimes, sometimes, you get it just right and the big risk gets you the big win.

The ones that haunt you, though, are the big losses. Those are the hands you play over and over in your head in the wee, wee hours when everything around you is still. Those are the hands you'd do anything in the world to have a chance to play again.

She said her name was Nina. I never got a chance to tell her I was sorry.

Gwen laid the magazine down on the table. “My god,” she said faintly. “I've got to find him.”

 

“S
PORTS SECTION,” ANSWERED A
clipped man's voice.

“I'm looking for Del Redmond,” Gwen said.

“He doesn't work on Sundays.”

“Do you happen to know where I might find him? This is a friend of his from the tournament.”

“Who from the tournament?” the guy asked suspiciously.

“Nina.”

“Well.” The voice was freighted with speculation. “I wish I could give you his number, but I can't.”

“Could you call him and give him mine?”

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