Dark Eye (5 page)

“Clearing out the trash,” he explained, his feet propped up on my desk. “Making myself at home.”

“In my office?”

“Not anymore.”

Incredible. In the space of one week O’Bannon had reassigned my office space. Actually, I could live with that, even understand it. But what I couldn’t understand was giving it to this pig Granger.

“This is unacceptable,” I said. My emotions were also pretty undisguised.

“O’Bannon needed a new detective.”

“I was only gone a week. I’ve taken longer vacations.”

“Not in the drunk tank.”

I could feel my rage rising, and I really wanted to ream him in the worst way. But that would be playing into his hands. “Why would he promote you?”

“I was next in line.”

“I was still around.”

“You were drunk on your ass.”

“And even drunk on my ass I would be a better detective than you.”

To his credit, Granger remained calm. “I don’t think Internal Affairs would agree.”

“O’Bannon can’t afford to replace a seasoned-”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Granger was a handsome man, which made him all the more difficult to bear. He had sandy hair and a sun-baked complexion. He wore a light stubble, which even I had to admit made him look damn sexy. How did men maintain a light stubble, anyway? At some point, don’t you have to shave or it turns into a beard? Do they make special razors with dullish blades for guys who look good with a little growth? “You’re a behaviorist. I’m a homicide specialist. It’s not that I’m replacing you. O’Bannon just needed someone he could depend on.”

“Go to hell.”

“And he can’t count on you any more than-” He stopped himself, the bastard. Apparently this line was too low even for him. “Than anyone could.”

“How the hell would you know?”

“I’ve seen what you’ve done to yourself. I’ve seen what you’ve turned into.”

“There have been some extenuating circumstances, you son of a bitch. I lost my husband!”

“And I lost my partner!” He lashed out, letting loose something I knew he’d been holding back a long time. “Did you forget that?”

Granger had been David’s last partner. Granger wasn’t around when he died, but in a way, I think that made it worse. Sometimes cops carry this “my partner-my life” routine too far-the influence of excessive episodes of
T. J. Hooker.
But David and Granger had been close. Granger had genuinely loved David. And admired him. I knew that. But it didn’t make me like him. How dare he fling the loss of my own husband in my face to score points, as if somehow he had more right to grieve than I did?

“I didn’t forget,” I said, pushing past him. “Where are my files?”

“You don’t have any. They’ve all been reassigned.”

I was reaching my limit. One more remark like that, and I knew I’d hit him. So much for my attempt to prove that I don’t have any more violent tendencies. “I’m talking to O’Bannon.”

“He’s at the crime scene. Likely to be there all morning.”

“What crime scene?”

Granger squinted slightly. “You
have
been out of touch, haven’t you?”

“Don’t play games with me, Granger. Tell me where he is!”

“No, that wouldn’t be prudent.”

I swore under my breath. Then I swore over my breath, several times. “You’re still sulking because I wouldn’t suck your dick that time at Gordy’s, aren’t you?”

“Jesus Christ, that was what? Ten years ago? Before you hooked up with David? I’d just met you.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t forgotten. Who was drunk
that
night?”

“I think you should go now, Susan.”

“I think you’re right. The smell in here is getting intense.” I bolted for the door. “Have fun playing detective, Granger. If you need any help-go fuck yourself.”

I slammed the door-
my
door-just for dramatic effect.

“How’d it go?” Lisa asked as I slid into the passenger seat.

“Fine. Swell.”

“No problems?”

“Nah. They were all very kind. Glad to see me. Granger and I embraced.”

“Granger?”

“Yeah. Who’da thought?” Well, if I couldn’t live the fantasy, I could at least make Lisa think I did. While she drove to the house where Rachel was staying, I used her cell phone to call Eleanor, one of the young girls in Dispatch. She was nice, I thought she liked me, and I also thought she was gullible enough to believe anything.

“Eleanor? Susan Pulaski. I’ve got some lab reports for O’Bannon. Is he still at the crime scene?”

“Yeah,” she answered. I heard a dozen other lines working in the background. “But I thought you-”

“He brought me back in. Said he needed my expertise on this one. So he’s still out there?”

“Far as I know.”

I noticed a light drizzle on the dashboard. “You think I should bring him a raincoat?”

“Nah. He’ll be inside the hotel.”

Getting warm. “And still working in that… that-what do they call it?”

“The Edgar Allan Poe Ballroom?”

“Right, right.” That would have to be the Transylvania. One of the newer “family” resorts on the Strip. “Dumb of me. I never paid much attention in English class. I was thinking of that other guy. Hawthorne.”

“No, it’s Poe.”

“Okay, thanks.” For more than you know.

Annabel Spencer gazed nervously at the mirror-paneled walls, the smoky glass ceiling, the translucent corbels. Cameras behind every one of them, she thought. She had read that the camera positions were changed regularly to prevent anyone from knowing for certain what the security people could and could not see. Men on metal catwalks hidden behind the ceiling peered down 24/7. There was no telling how many people were watching her right now. Did they know she wasn’t supposed to be here? How long would it take them to figure it out? And once they knew, what would they do to her?

As soon as she passed through the front doors of the casino, she knew her face was scanned by a computer running facial recognition software-developed at MIT, of course-which converted a fluid digital image of her face into mathematical data, translating facial landmarks into algorithms, then comparing the results to the millions of faces in a shared database. She didn’t know if anyone had her cheekbones on file yet. In this day and age, it was impossible to be certain. The latest hot cyber-rumor held that Big Brother was constantly scooping up people’s faces, taking them off Web sites and newspapers and airport security scanners. Today, almost anyone could be identified by an entity with the financial resources to pay for the data. Privacy was an illusion, or perhaps more accurately, a luxury that many big businesses could no longer afford. So the casino hard drives must be whirring away, she mused, trying to come up with a match, determining if she was a player or a patsy, a tourist or that most dreaded of all evils: a card counter.

Given the famous hatred of casinos for card counters, the minor detail that she was underage might seem negligible-although it would certainly give them a no-questions-asked excuse to bar her from the premises. Not that they needed one. They could expel anyone, and would, if they thought the player was too successful at the blackjack table. It hardly seemed fair-they only allowed people to play the game if they weren’t very good at it. Forget the signs saying the dealer rests on seventeen; the signs should read: SUCKERS ONLY.

Like many of her fellow students, Annabel considered herself a freedom fighter, not a card cheat. But she knew the casino would take a different view. Dark rumors circulated throughout the MIT campus about what happened to card counters in the back rooms of Vegas gambling emporiums. Since they were private property, they could ban anyone they wanted, and if you violated their ban, you could be charged with trespassing. But this was the town the mob built, after all, and casino bosses were known to employ means not sanctioned by law to convey the message that card counting was disfavored. She’d seen more than one MIT hotshot return to class on Monday morning looking as if he’d lost a fight with a tractor. And a few had disappeared altogether-never to return.

Trying to remain calm, Annabel strolled into the blackjack pit and scanned for an open seat. She was wearing her best DKNY
Sex and the City
black dress, and for an MIT math major, she looked pretty damn hot, if she did say so herself. Not that she wanted to attract attention-she just wanted to look as if she belonged there. Because everything depended on her having a successful night. Everything in the world.

She saw her mother’s face on an overhead TV in the bar and froze. If her mother found out what she had done…

God. Annabel didn’t even want to think about it.

A zombie dressed in tattered rags bumped into her backside. Clumsy, or copping a feel? Hard to be sure, but she was not inclined to give a guy in tatters and black eyeliner the benefit of the doubt.

“Sorry about that, ma’am.”

Well, at least he was a polite zombie. “No problem.”

“Can I get you something? Drink? Change?”

She suspected he really wanted to give her something altogether different. Damn those horny zombies. “I’m fine, thanks.”

He moved on down the aisle, dragging his leprous skin and putrescent sores with him, brushing aside a cobweb and blending into the crowd of ghosts, witches, and assorted ghouls.

Welcome to Transylvania.

Not that she was an expert, but in her mind a casino should be sleek and elegant, like the ones in James Bond movies, where the men wore tuxes and the women wore beaded floor-length gowns with décolleté bodices. None of that here-this joint was pure Disneyland. Dolorous Victorian décor and bar stools that creaked when you sat on them. Your “ghost host” checked you in; the bell captain wore a long black hooded robe and carried a scythe. The gambling pit was decked out like a haunted house, with shutters blowing in the wind and tombstones with corny epitaphs. A Vegas casino with a Halloween party motif-it was enough to make you barf. And there were cops swarming everywhere, which also made her nervous. Apparently some horrible crime had taken place in one of the ballrooms; an entire wing of the hotel was roped off. But like it or not, this was the only house in town that still dealt a six-deck shoe all the way to the sixth deck. So here she was. Anyone want to suck her blood?

She found a stool at a hundred-dollar blackjack table and slid onto it. She liked sitting at the far left-Position Three, they called it at MIT. It gave her the most time to count cards before she had to play. Most amateurs thought the game of blackjack favored the dealer. It didn’t. The dealer was stuck hitting sixteens and standing on seventeens whether it was smart or not. He didn’t have the luxury of sitting pat on a twelve and waiting to see what happened. The only advantage the dealer had was that he played last. If you went bust, he collected your bet and kept it-even if he later went bust himself. A small point, but one that made a huge financial difference to the casinos. The only way to overcome that advantage was to count cards.

She ran the rules through her head. They weren’t complex, but the cards moved so fast it was hard to keep up. Plus one for twos, threes, fours, fives, and sixes; minus one for tens and face cards. Take that running count and divide it by the number of decks in the shoe not yet dealt to come up with the true count. When the true count was plus eight or better, start increasing your bet. And most importantly, look casual, distracted, unconcerned, lusty, possibly intoxicated-but never give the slightest hint that you’re counting.

She pulled out five hundreds and placed them on the table, waiting for chips. A moment later, a small man in a black vest slid onto the stool beside her. He had thinning hair and a little Hitler-style black mustache.

“Having any luck?” he asked.

“Just got here,” Annabel answered succinctly. She didn’t want to be unfriendly-but she didn’t want to be friendly, either.

“I haven’t caught a break all night,” he said.

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Guess the stars just aren’t right.”

“Maybe a zombie priestess put the hoodoo on you.”

The corner of his lips turned up. “Anything’s possible.”

A waitress came by the table. She was dressed in a witch getup, but Vegas-style, with a plunging neckline, an obscenely short skirt, and fishnet hose. She did at least wear the traditional black pointed hat. Annabel ordered a mineral water. The man beside her asked for a Bloody Mary.

The first several decks were average. That was okay. She knew counting required patience. Favorable decks were the exception, not the rule. For the first hour and a half, Annabel remained almost exactly even. The count never rose above a plus five. She’d managed to rack up a few extra bucks by doubling down and splitting at strategic moments, but she’d had no justification for seriously increasing her wager. And the man sitting next to her talked almost continuously the whole time. He seemed uncommonly interested in her-where she was from, what she did for a living, whether she was here alone. Another hand or two and he’d probably be asking what kind of underwear she had on.

About two-thirds of the way through the next shoe, the count rose to plus twelve. With all those ten-spots in the deck, it favored the players, and coming this late in the shoe, the count was extremely reliable. It was time to increase her bet. Her hand trembled a bit as she pushed three hundred bucks’ worth of chips into the circle. She was nervous, putting so much money on the line. But she had to do it. Everything depended on her game. Including Warren.

She felt a tapping on her bare shoulder. “Excuse me, miss.”

She turned and saw a silver security badge. Damnation. Busted.

“Could I speak to you for a moment? In private.”

Her first instinct was to run, but she got a grip on herself and followed the man to a private corner at the edge of the pit, just beneath a cartoonish polystyrene Satan. Had he caught her counting? Did he know she was underage? And what would he do about it? Her knees knocked. She was beginning to wish she’d had something stronger than mineral water.