Lucky (4 page)

“Sorry. Age makes asses of us all. Sit, girl. I haven’t thanked you for saving me yet. So, thanks.”

Lucky grinned. “I didn’t exactly save you. You almost saved yourself.” And then Lucky thought of something she should have asked sooner. “What made you fall? Were you dizzy? Did you get sick? Maybe we should call a—”

“It was that damned cat. He jumped up on my antimacassar. It’s Belgian lace, you know. I’ve had it for years and that blasted Lucifer knows he’s not supposed to be up there. He does it just to annoy me.”

Lucky tried to follow the explanation but had gotten lost. “Antimewhat?”

The old woman rolled her eyes, making them seem twice as large as normal beneath the Cleopatra blue shadow.

“This,” she said, and picked up a fragile, lace doily from the floor that she primly dropped on the arm of her chair. “It’s to be placed on fine furnishings…behind one’s head, you know. I swung at the cat and lost my balance. I caught the back of the chair instead of that damned cat and pulled it down on top of me.”

Lucky nodded, trying not to laugh at the images the old woman’s words created. “Are you sure you don’t hurt anywhere?” she asked, worried by the length of time she’d been beneath the chair.

“Oh, lord. Of course I hurt, girl. I’m eighty-four, for God’s sake. The day I quit hurting is the day I’m dead. Pain just tells me that I’m still ticking.”

Her head lolled a bit against the old brocade covering the chair, while she sighed from the vent she’d made of her temper.

“You can call me Fluffy. Everyone does,” Lucille said, and absently patted the wild mop of hair Lucky had desperately tried to ignore.

Lucky grinned again. “Fluffy?”

Lucille’s eyes opened and her chin lifted just the least little bit. Suddenly, Lucky saw past the years into the face of the woman Lucille had been and was stunned by the life and vitality she saw dancing in those dark gray eyes.

“It was my stage name. When I stripped, it was all I
wore. Tiny bits of yellow chiffon that looked like the down of a chick. That’s what I took off. That’s where I got my name.”

“Stripped? Wore?”

Lucille rolled her eyes again, giving Lucky another look at the underside of her eyelids.

“Good lord, girl! Where are you from, the sticks?”

“Yes, ma’am, I believe I am,” Lucky said quietly.

“Fluffy,” Lucille corrected.

“Fluffy.”

“How far in the sticks?” Fluffy asked.

“Um…Cradle Creek, Tennessee.”

“Have mercy!” Fluffy muttered. “Why on earth would you come out here? A young thing like you has no business in a city like this. Not alone.”

“I came because Johnny couldn’t,” Lucky said, unable to hide a quick spurt of tears.

“Johnny?”

“My father. Johnny Houston. He was a gambler. He died last week.”

“Sorry, honey,” Fluffy said. “But it’s an end we all have to face.”

“Yes, ma’am…I mean, Fluffy. I know.”

“Okay. You’re here. What can you do?”

“I deal cards.”

This wasn’t the answer Fluffy expected. This young girl child was beautiful. She’d expected to hear her say she wanted to be a dancer. She wouldn’t even have been surprised to hear cocktail waitress as a prospective job opportunity. But she hadn’t planned on this.

“Do you know how?” she asked, unable to keep doubt from her voice.

“It’s about all I
do
know.”

Fluffy nodded. “Then that settles it. But you need to get in with one of the older casinos. Maybe one down on the old strip.”

“Why? I thought that I should try the MGM Grand…or maybe the Luxor. Even Caesar’s Palace has to have a turnover.”

“Oh hell, honey. They all have turnovers. This is a wide-open town. Way too many of the workers are either stoned or drunk. So many of them are in debt up to their eyeballs from making bets they can’t cover that it isn’t even funny. Why I know men who’ve simply walked away, without packing or bothering to declare bankruptcy. They simply gave up and got out. This is a place of delight and a city of sin all at the same time. Do you understand what I mean?”

Lucky nodded, remembering the pimp earlier in the day who’d accosted her right on the streets in broad daylight. A small shiver of fear slid up her spine at the thought of being alone in a place like this. It wasn’t exactly the way she’d imagined.

In Cradle Creek she’d known whom she could turn her back on and who might do her harm. Here everyone and everything were unknown. And then she looked up into Fluffy’s stern face and started to relax. But she wasn’t alone. Not entirely. Not anymore.

“So why should I try for work in the older part of the strip?”

Fluffy made a face. “Because the new places are like an adult Disneyland. Nothing like the old days when Bugsy came and went with an entourage you wouldn’t believe. And Hollywood and all its stars came down here to shine a little brighter. And…” she added, “because I know my way around down there. I’ll give you names of people you can trust. You make your own choices. How’s that sound?”

“Like a deal,” Lucky said, and then grinned at her own wit.

Fluffy’s pencil-painted eyebrows rose sharply. And then she grinned. A wicked cackle slid out the corner of her mouth as she fluttered her hand across her bosom in delight.

“Girl, you and I are going to be friends. I can tell.”

Lucky smiled. “I hope so, Fluffy. My daddy said that was something you never had too many of.”

“Your daddy was a smart man.”

Lucky considered the statement. “Not really. But he had his moments. He surely did.”

Fluffy laughed. “Just like a man, honey. Just like a man.”

N
ick stood on the mezzanine above the gaming tables of Club 52 and watched the action below with a practiced eye. Although their old-fashioned security system had been replaced with new, high-tech cameras that filmed each dealer and table with the precision of a laser beam, he still liked the personal touch of firsthand observation. The “eye-in-the-sky” method was state of the art and highly trustworthy, but his instincts were even better. He could tell, simply by watching the crowd around a table, whether all was going as it should.

“Hey, boss. Aren’t you going to call it a night? It’s almost midnight.”

Nick turned. His right-hand man, Manny Sosa, was bearing down on him with a carton of new tapes for the security cameras in one hand, and the shift totals in the other.

“No. Just put the stuff on my desk,” Nick said. “I can’t sleep. I may as well be working.”

Manny stopped to gauge the tension behind his boss’s words. He’d been in this business too long not to recognize the fact that trouble must be brewing.

For Manny, middle age was almost gone, but one could never tell by his behavior or appearance. Long after his body had given up the pretense, he’d vainly maintained his Latin good looks by dyeing his white hair black to match the small, pencil-thin mustache he sported above his upper lip. His dark eyes sparkled constantly with the verve of a man who loved life and all that it encompassed, including women. At the age of fifty-nine, Manny considered himself irreplaceable to Club 52 and to the ladies. He’d known Nicholas Chenault since the day he was born, and now he could tell something was wrong. He could feel it.

“You can’t sleep? Maybe you just need a woman, Nicky. You spend too much time alone, that’s what.”

Nick grinned. “You, my friend, have a one-track mind.”

“No, no! Never one-track. Always, the man should run on many tracks. And then he will have many friends.”

Nick shook his head. “Not everyone wants to be my friend. Someone wants me dead.”

Manny frowned, dumped the armload of stuff he’d been carrying onto Nick’s desk, and pulled him into the office without giving him time to argue. “You aren’t being serious…are you?”

Nick’s expression was cold. “I want a name, Manny. Give me a name. Who from our past would hate that much?”

“That is something you must ask your father. But you
must tell me now, Nicky. What makes you think such an evil thing?”

Nick gave Manny a slow, thoughtful look. “Charlie Sams was a plant in the organization. Did you know?”

“Basta!”
Manny cursed and then crossed himself to negate what he’d said. “Why would I know of such a thing and not speak of it to you? Of course not! But how do you know? Maybe you’re wrong.”

“I’m not. But I wish I was. I don’t know how much to tell Dad and how much to protect him. If I don’t tell him anything, he might get careless, and that could cost him his life. If I tell him too much, it still might cost him his life.”

He circled the desk in frustration and then tunneled angry fingers through his hair.

“You know, Manny, for the first time in as long as I can remember, this business is no longer enough for me. It’s crap like this…and the newspaper articles…and the federal regulations…and…” He picked up an appointment book and threw it across the room with a vicious snap. “Sorry. It’s been a hell of a day.”

Manny loved and respected this man like the son he never had. He’d do anything for the Chenaults. But he didn’t know how to fix this. He walked across the room, picked up the book, and replaced it on the desk.

“
De nada
. It is nothing. Go home, Nicky. Rest. Make love to a beautiful woman. Live before life makes an old man out of you.”

“As soon as I go over the totals,” Nick said.

Manny shrugged and left. In his world, a man must do what a man must do.

Nick stared down at the papers and tried to concentrate. But all he could see was the memory of that transcript and the terror that it promised for his family. He closed his eyes, expecting almost anything to surface but the face of the woman from the bus stop.

“What the hell,” he muttered, and rubbed his burning eyes with the heels of his palms. “Am I now being haunted by a stranger?”

And as he waited, in his mind’s eye, her features became clearer and clearer. When his pulse accelerated, he opened his eyes, halfway hoping she’d be there. He exhaled slowly when he saw he was alone.

“Why? Why in hell is it you I keep remembering when I don’t even know your name?”

He had no answers, except that maybe Manny was right. Maybe he did need a woman. But not just any woman—one with green eyes. He sighed and settled back to work.

Just after two
A. M.
, Nick got in his car and drove away from Club 52 with the bright lights of Las Vegas reflecting off his windshield and into his eyes. Waiting at a traffic light, he realized that there were as many people on the streets right now as ther were in the middle of the day. But it was a different crowd of people who came out after sundown, compared to the people on the streets at sunup.

A tall young woman in white sequins and three-inch heels paraded across the crosswalk in front of him, full breasts bouncing with every step she took. Long blonde hair blew away from a face of great beauty. The short, tight skirt of her dress emphasized the perfection of long
tan legs. And when she absently glanced toward his car, the emptiness and desperation behind her pasted-on smile made him shudder. Noting his interest, she paused.

Nick shook his head. Theirs was a silent conversation that needed no words. She’d asked if he was interested, and he’d rejected her.

She blew him a kiss and then disappeared into the crowds of people going into, and coming out of, the casinos lining the strip.

She was beautiful, but definitely not his type. The last time Nick had paid for sex, he’d been nineteen years old. Just about the age of the woman who’d just offered herself to him with a single look. And at the same moment, he remembered the one at the bus station who’d turned him down just as abruptly as he’d rejected the blonde.

“What the hell is it with me?” he muttered. “I don’t have enough grief on my mind without mooning over a passing stranger?”

He stared through the glare of oncoming traffic, certain that he’d just about lost his mind, when the car behind him honked. The light had changed. It was time to move on. Nick accelerated through the intersection, for the time being leaving his job and its worries behind.

Lucky sat cross-legged in her bed, admiring her four new outfits hanging in the closet, mentally planning which one she should wear tomorrow when she went to search for work.

Twice she almost called aloud for Diamond to come help her decide what to wear, and earlier in the evening,
she’d been in the middle of preparing her supper and actually shouted Queenie’s name, intent on asking about ingredients that went into Johnny’s catchall stew.

“Will I ever get used to being without you two?” she groaned aloud and fell backward onto the bed, gazing up at the ceiling as she tried to ignore the heartsick pain pricking her chest and the tears burning behind her eyelids.

Then she remembered Fluffy LaMont and smiled. She’d made one friend. Something told her that this one would be a keeper.
One day, one friend—it was enough to start on
, she thought.

She reached over to turn off the light and smiled as the faded fringe from the lampshade tickled the back of her hands. Just like Fluffy, this place was old, but everything still seemed to work. What more could a woman ask?

Lucky rolled over onto her side, cuddling her extra pillow beneath her chin in lieu of the sister who usually slept beside her. And soon, the slow, deep regularity of her breathing was a sign of the end to an exhausting day.

Hours later, her long legs had scissored across the mattress, wadding the sheet and riding her T-shirt above her waist. But she was unaware. She was lost in dreamsleep, held in the arms of a man with hair and eyes the color of bourbon, while he whispered words of love that kept turning to lies every time she looked away.

Manny Sosa was on duty. As shift manager, he was in charge of all the department managers during his eight-hour shift. But Manny often stayed long past time. As Nick Chenault’s right-hand man, he felt a proprietary
need to make certain that all phases of Club 52 went as smooth as clockwork.

The dark, rich wine-and-gray interior of the casino was reflected back from one side of the room to the other by immense, floor-to-ceiling mirrors. And the crystal chandeliers that were suspended from the second-floor ceiling gave the room the appearance of being starlit.

The sleek tuxedoed dealers and the minuscule black-and-white French maid’s uniforms that the waitresses wore gave a European elegance to the club.

No volcanoes spewed here. No children ran crying after their parents. No live birds or exotic fish were on display for passersby. No clowns paraded or lions roared. Here they came to wager…and sometimes win. The faint of heart did not belong here. Only the risk-takers. The gamblers.

And they came, as they had for the past forty years since Nick’s father had built the club. The rich…and the poor…and the ones who never left. The ones who won, only to lose it back and more besides, trying to regain that surge of power they’d felt when the lights had flashed, and the bells had rung. And like Nick, it was all that Manny knew. He was satisfied with his life.

Then Lucky Houston entered his world.

When Manny finally noticed her, he realized that she’d been circling the floor for several hours, because he distinctly remembered the chic, virgin-white suit she was wearing, and her long, tan legs visible beneath the short, slim skirt.

But that had been three hours ago. And to his knowledge, the woman hadn’t bought or spent a chip the whole
time. His dark eyes narrowed as she disappeared again into the crowd upon the floor, certain that she was up to no good. The thought of a heist and a possible accomplice sent him scanning the crowds for someone else who didn’t belong. But everyone else he saw seemed to be absorbed in the games around them.

Just when he told himself he’d imagined it, she suddenly reappeared near one of the blackjack tables. And as before, she stood at the edge of the crowd around it, watching, listening, ignoring the appreciative stares of men and the subtle but jealous glances of other women. She seemed to care for nothing but the games.

Manny was just considering calling for security when she moved away from the tables and seemed to do a little crowd searching of her own. For the space of several seconds, the people between them parted, and they stared straight into each other’s eyes. Manny’s expression was one of shock. Hers one of determination. And then they were face-to-face, and Manny found himself looking at one of the most stunning women he’d ever seen in his life.

Black hair crowned a face of unusual features. Her wide, full mouth was a slash of ginger against a complexion only shades lighter than his own. But it was her eyes that commanded attention. Almond in shape, their true, spring green color was framed in sooty lashes that looked too long to be real, and yet Manny knew instinctively that there was little artifice about this one. If her take-it-or-leave-it attitude could have been bottled, she would have made a fortune.

And then she spoke, and Manny forgot not to grin. She might look like she’d stepped off the pages of a magazine, but her fashionable image faded with the slow, country drawl that wrapped around his senses.

“Are you the manager?”

Manny smiled and nodded. “And you, I believe, must be lost.” Her confusion was obvious as he continued. “I know that I’ve seen you circle this floor at least seven times in the last three hours. What, my dear woman, are you doing? Casing the joint?”

“Yes, I guess I was,” Lucky said, a little pleased with herself when she saw that she’d scored a point of her own. Manny was now the one wearing a confused expression.

“So,
are
you the manager?”

Manny sighed. He recognized persistence when he heard it. “
Sí, chica
, I am the shift manager. How may I be of assistance?”

Lucky waved her hand in an airy gesture of dismissal and shifted her small envelope purse to her other hand. “It’s not me who needs help. It’s you. And I want a job.”

Manny frowned. “We do not have a floor show here, miss. And I don’t hire the waitresses. You need to see—”

“I don’t dance, and I don’t sing. And I
don’t
sling drinks.”

“Then what, may I ask,
do
you do?”

“I’m a dealer. A good one.”

Manny shook his head. “We have no need for a dealer at this time. But you can apply. We keep applications on file for a couple of months. Maybe by then we’ll—”

“Oh, but you do need a dealer. Actually, you need three. You have one on duty that’s stoned out of his mind.
You have one who’s palming chips like peanuts, and another who’s so busy getting customer’s room numbers, he can’t deal the shoe.”

Manny’s mouth dropped, and his black eyes flashed. This impudent stranger had just waltzed into his inner sanctum and accused him of running a shoddy shift. He wasn’t having it. Not any of it.

“You don’t come in and walk all over a man’s business and his pride and then expect him to drink from your cup,
chica
,” he said, unable to mask his displeasure. “I want to know the real reason why you’re here. How do I know you’re not a decoy while an accomplice is busy elsewhere robbing us blind?”

Lucky frowned. “I’m here because Fluffy LaMont sent me. She recommended this casino as a good place to work. I’m beginning to think she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

With that, Lucky turned away, intent on leaving, when the little man’s hand closed around her arm.

“Please don’t,” she said, and quietly shrugged off his grasp.

Manny frowned. A woman who didn’t like to be touched? Again this didn’t fit the mold.

“Fluffy? Fluffy LaMont really sent you?” He’d lived in Las Vegas all of his fifty-nine years and had known as a young boy of Fluffy LaMont’s legendary status in the old Vegas. He hadn’t even known she was still alive.