Royal Flush (5 page)

"But that's why it was only a yellow card," said a lilting British voice, somewhat insistently. He apparently didn't believe the ref had committed any injustice at all. I looked over at Mike and nodded. From the side, the kid looked like the Kent in the driver's license photo, and the British accent sealed the deal. I couldn't imagine that the Harrah hotel school attracted a lot of students from the UK.

I eased my way back to Mike without Kent ever laying eyes on me.

"It's gotta be him," I said. "Let's just go over to the other side of the atrium so we can see him face-on."

Mike nodded, and the two of us proceeded around the cavernous room and found an unobtrusive spot next to a large white column. From the front, the guy definitely looked like the guy in the driver's license picture, except that he'd put on ten pounds or so. He was still quite a dish, though.

"He's gained a little weight, right?" I asked.

Mike smiled. "American food will do that to you."

"Hey, it's better than British food."

"That's my point," Mike said.

Kent and his pal broke off their conversation and went separate ways. Kent headed over to a student lounge area and got himself a Mountain Dew. Then he took a seat and pulled out his iPad. Mike and I had no plausible reason to be standing around in the school's atrium, so we pulled off into a hallway where we could watch the lounge exit in case Kent decided to leave.

"What now?" I asked.

Mike grinned. "This is the fun part. Watching someone on the move."

I wasn't having all that much fun. "I feel so old in here. And it feels like everyone's looking at us." It was a strange thing for a stripper to be concerned about, I admit.

"No, they're looking at
you
. You could wear something a little less, you know, flattering."

Wow, was that a compliment? I wondered. My tan shorts were not exactly a conservative length, but they weren't scandalously short either. And I couldn't help it if my top stuck out. What was I supposed to wear, plaid flannel pajamas?

Mike and I took turns watching the door while one of us wandered around, pretending to have some legitimate business being where we were. After ten or fifteen minutes of this, a pretty Asian girl entered the lounge and emerged a minute later with Kent. Their body language suggested intimacy. I texted Mike, and we joined up in the atrium to follow them out the door.

Mike followed Kent and the girl while I high-tailed it to retrieve my car. I returned and drove around for a minute before I found Mike walking about fifty yards behind them, just as they walked into the Tropicana parking garage.

I pulled over, and Mike hopped in.

"The Tropicana parking garage," Mike murmured with a chuckle, apparently echoing my private sentiments.

I smiled. "What's next, the MGM School of Film? The Trump School of Finance?"

He thought for a minute. "The Hooters School of Hospitality would be good."

"What about the Palazzo School of Architecture? Or the Caesars Palace School of Roman Studies."

Mike sighed. "Okay, that's enough."

I pouted, not that anyone was looking at me. We sat there, peering intently at each car that left the garage. Finally, a white Range Rover wheeled out and peeled away in the opposite direction. We didn't get a great look at the driver, but how many students could afford a Range Rover? It had to be his royal highness.

I followed them as they headed up to Flamingo Road, then we turned left to head toward the Strip.

"Must be heading back home," I said.

We followed them up to an ungodly long stop light on Las Vegas Boulevard. The Ballys was on our left and the new hotel, the Cromwell, sat on our right. I had never been inside the Cromwell in its present form, but I had no doubt it was an upgrade over the previous hotels on the site—Bill's Gamblin' Hall and, before that, the Barbary Coast. Finally, the light changed. But instead of heading left to the City Center, the Range Rover proceeded straight across the Strip and kept heading west. I looked at Mike, who could only offer a blasé shrug in response.

We followed at a distance as we passed underneath the freeway, within spitting distance of my own condo. After passing the Rio on our right, the Range Rover slowed and pulled into the Gold Coast Casino, a large three-story casino designed mainly for locals rather than out-of-towners.

Mike and I were both puzzled, but I forged ahead at a safe distance and parked about fifty feet away from them. We let them get a comfortable lead then followed on foot as they walked through a side entrance to the casino.

"Never been here before," Mike said, holding the door open for me.

"Me either."

Inside, the place was surprisingly nice, clean, and airy. Nothing fancy, especially compared to the Bellagio, but I think that was the point. If you're a local, you don't need a theme or a fountain show every half hour to keep you entertained. You want a nice place to gamble, with good table games and slot machine odds, solid restaurants, and ample parking. The Gold Coast fit the bill perfectly.

The immediate purpose of Kent's visit to the Gold Coast became abundantly clear. As my stomach had already been signaling to me, it was lunchtime. Kent and his friend navigated a path to a Chinese restaurant with the silliest name I've ever seen: Ping Pang Pong, a name that would have been politically incorrect unless the owners were truly Chinese themselves, so I guessed that was the case. A sign at the door announced a dim sum lunch special, which sounded heavenly, but I didn't want to get too close to Kent and his friend.

I camped out on a bench in the hallway while Mike found us some portable lunch food. I sighed longingly as satisfied-looking people emerged from the restaurant with smiles on their faces. A fair number of them were Asian, which gave the place even more street cred in my mind. Through the entrance, I could see waitresses rolling large carts piled high with little wooden baskets of food, allowing the diners to select what they wanted.

Mike returned and handed me a small white paper bag.

I could smell what was inside. "Hot dogs? You got fricking hot dogs?"

He grimaced. "They were cheap."

I grabbed the little bag in disgust. "I'm sitting out here watching people eat dim sum, and I have to eat a hot dog." When I opened the bag it got worse. "And you only got me
one
?" I asked.

"Pipe down and eat. You can get more later."

I frowned. One packet of ketchup. No mustard. No onions. No sauerkraut. And they called this a sausage? I grew up near Chicago. I would admit that they had no idea how to make a pizza in Chicago—deep dish is for tourists—but their hot dogs were the best around. Celery salt, tomato, sport peppers, relish. And the cardinal rule was:
no ketchup
. I felt as if it was a sin to even have a packet of ketchup in the same bag with the dog.

Despite my sausage snobbishness, I choked it down, silently admitting to myself that it wasn't all that bad. But it wasn't going to do. I left Mike there and wandered around to find something else, and decided that a two-scoop hot fudge sundae would make things better. My pledge to eat better could wait another day. After all, hunger was known to adversely affect job performance, and in my job things could get dangerous. So, the way I reasoned it, the sundae was more of a health food than an indulgence.

When I returned, Mike eyed my sundae but wisely declined to comment. I checked my watch. Kent and the girl had only been inside for about fifteen minutes, and I figured a proper dim sum experience would take at least an hour. Mike was happy enough to sit on the bench watching the exit, so I found my way to a video poker machine. The machines on the Strip were typically 8/5 machines, or worse, meaning they paid eight credits for a full house and five for three of a kind. Those were the tourist rates, which could get even worse on lower-denomination machines. A lot of tourists never even checked the payout schedules, which by law were listed right on the display. I couldn't count the number of times I'd seen someone sitting at a machine that had worse odds than the one right next to them.

But at off-strip places, which were geared toward the more knowledgeable local crowd, it was possible to find the Holy Grail of video poker: the 9/6 machine. If you played a 9/6 machine correctly, the house had almost no advantage over you. I was telling myself this as I slipped a twenty into one of the four 9/6 machines I'd found.

Four minutes later I found myself staring at the video screen, which told me in no uncertain terms that I had zero credits. I had won my first two hands, but since then it was all downhill, made worse by the fact that I was playing max credits. It wasn't even long enough to get a free drink. I resigned myself to the torture of sitting outside a restaurant waiting for Kent to emerge, probably with a very satisfied look on his face.

Mike smirked at me when I slumped back onto the bench. "How'd it go?" he asked, knowing full well.

"Never mind," I muttered.

"They might be leaving soon, actually," he said. "You can see them right through those two wooden posts there. The waitress just brought the check."

That was good news. "Let's go wait over in that hallway, where we won't be so obvious."

Mike nodded and offered a hand to lift me off the bench. We walked over to a side corridor that extended off to both sides of the restaurant's door. Leaning against the wall, we had a view of the door but would be out of their natural field of vision unless they decided to come directly at us, which seemed unlikely. Worst-case scenario, we'd both look down at our cell phones if they walked past.

Mike was right. A couple of minutes later, Kent and his friend emerged from the restaurant and headed back the way they'd come in. We followed them past the slot machines and table games. Apparently they weren't going to stick around for any gambling. Mike and I took a different tack to reach our car, but we kept them in sight the whole time.

Mike buckled up. "That was kind of a waste."

"Well, you can't expect to find anything too interesting the second you start tailing a guy, can you? Plus, we did find something interesting."

"Yeah, he seems to have a girlfriend."

I shrugged. "Royals have girlfriends all the time."

Mike chuckled. "You actually believe in this guy, don't you?"

I pulled out of the parking lot and began following the Range Rover. "Well, doesn't he kind of
look
like royalty?"

"No. Even if he were actually a royal, you have to realize that he would be their fourth cousin or something like that. He's not going to look like any of the royal family that you know. The amount of DNA he would have in common with Prince William is like three percent."

"You're no fun, Mike."

He seemed satisfied with himself, a consummate bubble-popper and parade rainer-onner. We drove back in the direction of the Strip on Flamingo, and then Kent turned right into the Bellagio hotel entrance. I had gotten caught up right behind him, so we pulled in to the valet parking very slowly, trying to create breathing room. A cab honked at me, but I flipped him off like the good local I was.

Once they were out of their car, I drove in and left my car with the valet. Mike was already tailing them into the casino, so I hustled to catch up. The place wasn't its usual hopping self that Wednesday afternoon, which forced us to hang back.

"It's quiet in here," I said when I caught up to Mike.

He nodded and checked his watch. "All the convention people are back at their meetings, or whatever it is they do."

We stayed a healthy distance behind Kent, who once again seemed to know his way around the casino. We weaved past bank after bank of slot machines,
pai gow
tables, and the high-limit room, where a quick peek revealed a bored-looking Japanese man betting about ten grand on baccarat.

Kent and his friend slowed as they reached the rear of the casino, where the sports book and poker rooms were. I had played poker here a few times, but the limits were higher than my comfort zone, so typically I played online or at the Monte Carlo, a little ways down the Strip. Kent paused to talk to the poker host, who pointed him to a table. Kent turned and kissed the girl, which was apparently her cue to open her purse and hand him a wad of bills.

I looked at Mike, who was smiling knowingly.

I shook my head. "You've got it all figured out, haven't you?" I asked.

"Isn't it obvious? He's a playboy. Using that British accent, he finds girls with means and exploits them. I bet he told this poor girl the same story about being part of the royal family, and now she's swooning all over him and handing him wads of cash."

I looked back at them. Kent had found a spot at a table near the rail, which allowed his friend to stand a couple feet behind him, a one-woman cheering section. I had watched poker before, but not for very long. On TV you can see what everyone's cards are, which lends drama to the game. But in real life you were just staring at people playing cards mostly face-down, which is about as interesting as a bowl of stale oatmeal. The girl must have been dedicated.

We stood nearby for a few minutes, trying to pretend as if we were playing a slot machine. Despite the fact that the girl wasn't playing a game, the cocktail waitress stopped by and brought her what looked like a cola-based cocktail. The girl tipped her a twenty, smiling warmly.

"That's odd," I said.

Mike nodded. "She didn't even have time to order. The waitress just brought that drink to her. They must be regulars here."

"And she's a good tipper, which helps get the drinks flowing."

Mike scratched his chin. He seemed impatient. "What should we do?"

"I don't know. Most poker players play for a long time. They could be here all afternoon."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking. You play, right?"

I nodded. "I'm not a pro or anything, but men love trying to beat me. When I flash some cleavage, it's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. It makes them play cards they would never play at other times, so I win some easy pots."