Lucky (5 page)

Lucky nodded.

“Come with me,” Manny said. Remembering her warnings, he gave the floor one last regretful glance be
fore motioning for the slot manager to take over until he returned.

Before Lucky could rethink her strategy, she was inside a small office just off the main gaming room. When the door closed behind them, she was amazed at the contrast between the constant dull roar and the instant silence.

He slid into the chair behind his desk. If he was going to look up at a woman, at least he could be sitting when he did it. “So…why do you want a job here?” he asked.

Lucky folded her hands before her like a child about to recite, then smiled.

“Because it’s more like the places Johnny used to talk about. Because here there’s less flash and more class. And because I need to work and you need a dealer.”

Manny frowned. “So you said.” He stared, waiting for her to fidget or look away. She did neither. “Who’s Johnny?” he finally asked.

“My father.”

“So…he’s been here before and recommended the place to you?”

Lucky sighed. “No. I told you. Fluffy recommended Club 52. Johnny just talked about the shiny places, like Vegas and Reno. As a child, I always promised him that one day I would come for him.”

Manny sensed there was more behind this simple answer, but he wasn’t into family histories. And ordinarily he would have brushed off a woman with an approach like this. Yet something stilled the impulse. He handed her a deck of cards.

“Show me,” he said, and then leaned forward, open
mouthed, when Lucky’s fingers began to fly. Cards slid between each other without a sound. She spread them, then cut, fanned, and shuffled again, yet this time, with only one hand.

He handed her a stack of chips and played twelve hands of blackjack with her, watching as she skillfully and quickly calculated his winnings and losses in her head.

“Where have you worked?” he asked.

“Nowhere. Before, it was just play.”

“
Madre de Dios!
Then where did you learn to handle cards like that?”

“My father was a gambler.”

Manny sat back in his chair with a thump. The tension in her voice was now unmistakable.

“And you…you have this fever too?”

Lucky’s voice was full of anger when she answered. “Never. But he gave me the skill. It’s all I know. I’ll play, but only for the house. I never gamble with anything that belongs to me. Do you understand?”

Manny understood much more than that, but he let it pass.

“Do you have a sheriff’s card?”

She displayed all of her permits proudly, thankful that the realtor who’d rented her the apartment had let the necessity slip.

Manny nodded and then smiled. “They are exactly…twenty-four hours old. So, you’re new in town.”

Lucky laughed. Aloud. Without reserve.

“I’ve been waiting for that,” she said, swallowing a last chuckle.

Manny didn’t understand her remark, but it didn’t
matter. He’d been on her side since the moment her lips had parted in a smile. And when she’d laughed, he’d been sold.

“When can you start?” he asked.

“Tomorrow.”

Manny nodded. “Go by the office and pick up an application. For now, you’ll be on the three to eleven shift. Come early. I’ll get you outfitted with a uniform and show you where you’ll work.”

“What do you pay?”

Manny grinned. “I wondered if you were going to ask.”

“First things first,” Lucky said. “Didn’t matter if I didn’t get the job now, did it?”

“We’re a cut above the average on wages in town, and you can ask anyone to verify.”

When she nodded her approval, he grinned.

“As usual, the woman has the last word. Welcome to Club 52.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Manny. Call me Manny.”

Lucky nodded. “And you can call me Lucky.”

The little mustache above his lips fairly danced with amusement. “You’re name is beautiful…just as you are,
chica
, but you’ll have to put your legal name on your application.”

“That is my name,” Lucky said quietly. “I told you…my father was a gambler. My oldest sister’s name is Queen. The middle one is Diamond.”

Manny frowned at the defiant way in which she’d explained, and something told him that her youth had not been all doll babies and bubble gum.

“Then Lucky it is,” he said. “I will see you tomorrow.”

She was almost out the door when Manny remembered to ask.

“Lucky!”

She stopped and turned toward him.

“You say I have three dealers who are screwed. Which ones are they?”

She frowned. “You hired me to deal cards, not snitch. You’re the manager. You find them. I only work here, remember?”

Manny grinned. She certainly was a fiery one. But it was good. Manny liked things peppery and hot. Especially the women.

It was midafternoon as Nick stared absently down at the crowd from the floor above, wondering where Manny had gone, when a woman walked into his line of vision, sauntering through the crowd with a slow, sexy sway.

Nick’s gaze caught and then held on her figure, and he frowned and wondered why. There were hundreds of women below. Again, why did he keep singling one out from all the rest?

Minus the heels that she wore, this one, he could see, would still be tall. But all he could see was the top of her head, and then the back of her suit as she walked away. From the crystal reflection of the room around her, that black crown of hair almost looked blue. An enticing length of tanned leg was exposed from beneath the miniskirt of her suit, and she clutched a small purse as if it were a shield.

He had an inexplicable urge to follow her. Just as im
pulse had him heading for the stairs, he saw Manny walk out onto the floor and squashed the notion before it became deed. He needed to forget monkey business and concentrate on the business at hand.

Manny looked up, and when he did, Nick motioned for him to come. As Manny started up the stairs, Nick headed for his office.

Inside his office, away from the teeming crowd below him, Nick still felt the urge to watch her. He found himself strolling toward a window…just for a glimpse…just to assure himself she was no one special.

There she was—on the street—then climbing into a cab. His belly rolled as the door swung shut and the cab moved away. He would have sworn he’d seen those legs and that slender backside before on a ragtag lovely in a downtown bus station. And then the moment he thought it, called himself twelve kinds of a fool.

“You wanted to see me, Nicky?” Manny asked, as he entered the office.

Nick spun away from the window. “Who was that woman?”

There’d been several hundred women down on the floor at the same time Lucky had been there. And yet Manny instinctively knew who Nick meant.

“A new dealer. I just hired her.”

Nick frowned. “We don’t need any dealers.”

Manny shrugged. “If I believe my instincts, we’re about to need two more besides her. I’m on my way to Security. I want to take the Eye on a table-to-table visit.
Comprende?
”

Nick read between the lines. For some reason, Manny
suspected dirty dealers. The camera system they had in place was so sophisticated that it could zoom into any specific table and see everything up close and personal…even a single hair on their dealer’s arm. Only Manny and Nick weren’t splitting hairs; they were on a witchhunt.

“I’ll come with you,” Nick said. “Four eyes are better than two.”

To Manny’s dismay, the woman had been right. It was with great pleasure that he promptly fired two of the dealers and had the other one charged with theft.

By the time the turmoil was over, Manny had gone off shift, and Nick realized that he hadn’t even asked Manny the woman’s name.

“Oh hell,” he told himself. “It doesn’t matter. She’s just another woman with a pretty face. They’re all alike.”

Fluffy LaMont sat at her front window, watching the street in front of her house, waiting to spring her surprise. It would have shocked her oldest acquaintances to know that Fluffy LaMont had developed such an interest in Lucky Houston. She’d lived long enough in this world to learn that there were few she could trust.

But something had clicked between Lucille and Lucky. They’d both sensed it. And wasting time was not a luxury Lucille could afford. She had no family and who knew how many years left.

She’d puttered for hours, dusting things that hadn’t been touched in months, and cooking tidbits of her favorite foods while maligning the cat’s constant presence beneath her feet. But now the preparations were over. The time of waiting was at hand. Lucifer lay curled in her lap,
purring in sleep while Fluffy’s arthritic hands absently stroked his silky black fur. For the time, their antagonism was at a cease-fire as the late afternoon sun made layabouts of them both.

And then Fluffy saw Lucky coming up the street, her long legs making short work of the block and a half to home. Fluffy smiled. She could tell by the length of her stride and the set of her jaw that she’d gotten a job.

“But where, my pretty?” she muttered to herself, and promptly stood, dumping Lucifer unceremoniously on the floor and anxiously smoothing the front of her dress as she hobbled to the door.

Lucky was walking on air. Three days in Las Vegas and she had a home, a friend, and a job. It was more than she’d ever dreamed possible when she’d hugged Queenie good-bye and crawled on that bus, leaving Cradle Creek behind and Johnny in his grave.

“Lucky! Lucky Houston. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Her eccentric landlady was waving at her from the front door. With a spurt of joy, she started to run.

“Fluffy! You won’t guess!”

“You have a job, of course. Now come in. Come in. Tell me all about it.”

Lucky took the steps two at a time, glad to have someone with whom she could share her news.

Lucifer darted between her feet as he made for the back of the house, hissing and spitting with every leap.

“He doesn’t like me much,” she said. “I scared him yesterday when I came headfirst through your window.”

“Pooh,” Fluffy muttered. “He doesn’t like me much either. Pay him no mind.”

Lucky grinned and then looked around, suddenly seeing all that had been done in her absence.

“You’ve been, ah…fixing up the place, haven’t you? It looks wonderful.” As did Fluffy. She was cleaner and much more presentable than she’d been when first they’d met.

Fluffy smoothed the front of her magenta gown and readjusted the brooch she had pinned at her breast to replace a missing button. She patted her hair and walked across the room with an arthritic sway reminiscent of her runway walk.

“It needed it,” Fluffy said. Hesitation coupled with loneliness entered her voice. “I cooked. If you like, you could have dinner with me.”

Lucky smiled and then impulsively hugged her. “It would be my pleasure.”

“I don’t cook ordinary food. I cook what I like to eat,” she warned. “At my age, diets are a joke. Going without fat or cholesterol is not going to prolong my life. I’ve already outlived every friend I have, you know.”

Lucky’s eyes misted. Fluffy would hate to know that while her words were defiantly funny, her watery gray eyes gave her away. She was lonely. And Lucky could easily identify with the feeling. Save for her sisters and Johnny, she had never in her life had anyone close to her.

“We make a pair, don’t we, Fluffy?” Lucky said, kicking off her shoes and wiggling her toes.

“Why don’t you go change into something comfortable, then come back when you’re ready. I boiled shrimp. It’s chilled and just waiting to be eaten. I made macaroni and cheese too. It’s one of my favorites…oh, and I bought a chocolate fudge pie.”

The combination of foods Fluffy ticked off on her fingers threatened to stagger Lucky’s constitution, but she wouldn’t have missed this meal for a million dollars.

“Give me five minutes. I’ll be back barefoot and hungry.”

Fluffy patted her pocket and then removed a key, handing it to Lucky in a casual, offhand manner, when in fact it was a gesture of such trust that it brought tears to Lucky’s eyes.

“Here,” she said. “It’s the key to the front door. It’s an extra so you might as well keep it.” She shrugged and turned away, unwilling for Lucky to see the emotion on her face. “You never know when I’ll need rescuing again, and I don’t want you to have to crawl through any more windows and scare my damn cat.”

Lucky took the key and put it with her own door key. “Thank you, Fluffy. I’ll take good care of it.”

“I know that,” Fluffy said shortly, “or else I would never have given it to you. Now hurry! I’m starving.”

Lucky bolted toward the door.

“Oh, by the way,” Fluffy asked. “Where did you find work?”

“Club 52,” Lucky said. “I think I’m going to like it there.”

Fluffy’s eyes narrowed. She pursed her mispainted lips in concentration as she watched the beautiful young woman bounce out of her home with the enthusiasm of a young deer.

“Hmmm, so it’s to be the Chenaults.” And then she smiled, making her look younger than her true age for a moment. “That Nick Chenault is one fine man, my dear. You will know that soon enough on your own. Maybe this is fate. Maybe this is fate.”

But Lucky was gone. She didn’t hear Fluffy’s remarks, and if she had, would have pooh-poohed them as nonsense. The Houston women didn’t have much use for men.

But the die had been cast. Fate had already set events in motion that none of the players in this game could have predicted.

“N
ick! I can’t remember the last time you came home for dinner.” Paul’s elation was evident as Cubby wheeled him out onto the patio. “Cubby, tell Shari to bring another glass. Nick can join me for an aperitif.”

“I’ve already got a drink, Dad,” Nick said, lifting a soda and lime. “I don’t want anything stronger. I may go back to the club later and it would only make me sleepy if I indulge now.”

Paul grinned. “You sound like an old man. What you need is a change of pace. Walter Warner’s daughter is home from Europe. Celebrating her third divorce, I think. She’s lethal but pretty. You should give her a call. She could be someone to pass time with.”

Nick didn’t answer. Paul gauged the extent of his son’s absent gaze across the manicured lawns of the estate, then frowned. Something else was bothering him. He could tell.

“You want to talk, Nicky?”

Nick sighed. A spurt of longing for the good old days came swiftly. Days when Paul Chenault had dealt with the problems and all Nick had to worry about was which car he could drive and how much he had to study for exams.

But those days were long gone. He’d been in charge of the family businesses far longer than he cared to remember. Yes, he wanted to talk. But how much good was it going to do? Sharing the information wasn’t going to make the problem go away.

Nick slowly turned and faced his father. It had been years since Paul had called him by his childhood nickname. But it was somehow endearing to know that sometimes his father must still think of him in those terms.

He set down his glass, and then pulled up a chair to face his father’s wheelchair.

“We do have to talk, Dad.”

“I’ll just wait in the—” Cubby began.

“Wait, Cubby. This concerns all of us,” Nick said. “You grab a chair too. We’ve got a problem on our hands.”

Paul’s expression turned serious. All thoughts of matchmaking were forgotten.

Nick leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and looked his father in the face. Then realizing how harsh the question was going to sound, gave his father’s thigh a comforting pat before he began.

“When I went down to Las Vegas Metro, the detective in charge let me read Charlie Sams’s confession.”

Paul’s eyebrows rose. “Isn’t that a little unorthodox?”

Nick nodded.

“Then why?”

Nick inhaled slowly. This was where things would get sticky. How much to tell…and how much to hold back? And as he watched the expressions changing on his father’s face, knew that holding back was impossible. Both of their lives might depend upon his honesty now.

“Because…according to Charlie Sams, he was a plant in Chenault Incorporated. Everything, and I mean everything, that Charlie learned about our business, he funneled back to his boss.”

“Who was his boss?” Paul asked.

“The detective says that Charlie didn’t know. He was contacted by phone and paid by direct bank deposit. He never had a face or a name.”

Paul waved a hand in disgust. “That’s ridiculous! We’re no high-tech corporation with secrets to sell. And we don’t have any underworld ties to be held over our heads. What the hell is the point?”

“Maybe hate…or revenge?”

Paul’s face turned ashen. When Nick gently squeezed his knee as a reminder to temper his emotions, he sighed and leaned back in his chair. After taking a deep breath he sipped the wine Cubby offered.

“Sorry,” Paul said. “It was just a shock.”

“That’s not all,” Nick said. “According to Charlie Sams, someone doesn’t want to just ruin us. Someone wants me dead. Who, Dad? Who do you know that could hold a grudge like that?”

Paul Chenault blanched again. Only this time, the
wineglass he was holding slipped from his fingers and shattered on the flagstone, scattering the wine like red tears.

“My God! You can’t be serious!”

Nick grimaced. A shaft of panic centered in his belly as he watched his father pale.

“Dad…calm down. It’s okay. We’ve been warned. We can stop this. But I can’t do this alone. I need you to think. I need you to remember. Is there someone…anyone from the past who would hold a grudge like that?”

At first Paul shook his head vehemently. And then Nick saw the indecision sweep over his father’s face as memories surfaced. When Paul buried his face in his hands, Nick knew he would have an answer. Finally the man got control of his emotions enough to speak.

“In my lifetime, I only knew one man who would hate on that level. But I thought he was dead.” He shuddered, and a firmness seared his lips. “No! I’m sure he’s dead. It can’t be him. Besides, if he’d wanted revenge, he would have done it years ago when we had the falling out. Not now. Not when I’m too old to care whether I live or—”

“It’s not you he wants dead, Dad. It’s me. Would this man hate you enough to want to kill me?”

“When he was young, he killed a man. I know that for a fact. That he could hate me enough to kill someone I loved…” His chin quivered. “Oh, yes.”

“Then I want a name.”

Paul looked away, unwilling for some reason to impart that information.

Cubby scurried to pick up the broken wineglass while
Shari, their maid, came bustling out with a pan of soapy water and a cloth.

Nick took his father’s chair and wheeled him back into the house. “Look, Dad, whatever happens will never be your fault. Together we can lick this, but I need you to be strong. Don’t panic. Plan.”

Paul closed his eyes and swallowed a lump of fear. Nick was right. They needed a plan.

“His name was…Dieter. Dieter Marx. Once, he was one of my best friends.”

An angry string of Spanish oaths drifted from the open door of the hacienda on the outskirts of
Ciudad Rio
. Servants crossed themselves and scurried away, their heads ducked, as they fled from their master’s wrath. Someone, somewhere, had angered
El Gato
. They didn’t want to be in his path and be made to pay.

Palm trees nodded in the market-day breeze of the old Colombian town as coffee merchants argued on the warehouse docks while their merchandise was being loaded onto trucks. The going price for coffee beans was down and they didn’t like it. Their loud voices rang out, determined that someone, other than they, should suffer the loss.

Back in the hacienda,
El Gato
had suffered a loss of his own. A plan that he’d spent months putting in motion had just gone awry. He’d just learned that his inside man was now in jail, awaiting arraignment. It would take weeks of plotting to reorganize and resurrect what he’d wanted to do.

“Señor, cómo está—”

The servant’s question never saw daylight as a bourbon bottle whizzed past his head and broke against the red tile wall at his back.

“Get out! Get out!”
El Gato
roared, forgetting in his anger to speak in the Spanish tongue.

After all these years, he still thought in English and had to translate to Spanish in his head before speaking. When he was frustrated or angry, his native tongue always took precedence.

As the servant scurried from the room, the man tried to channel his emotional rage into planning.

It would have been impossible to guess his age. He was simply a weathered survivor of life. With no spare flesh on his body and no hair on his head, his skin had the look of leather about it, and his pale blue eyes stood out from their sockets. On his left cheek he had a trio of parallel scars that he’d gotten when he’d first gone over the border.

Young and alone, certain that he’d been betrayed by those he trusted best, he’d been lost in the South American jungle for exactly four days, weak and hungry, nearly eaten up from the insects bites when it had happened.

To this day, he had only a vague memory of leaning over a riverbank to get a drink and then seeing, along with his own reflection, the jaguar poised on a limb above and behind him. He remembered jumping to his feet and then throwing up an arm to ward off the animal’s attack. Days later, he woke up in a village with some local’s daughter crooning over him like a baby.

When he left, he took the woman with him. She soon abandoned him, but the scar remained. A lasting re
minder that survival of the fittest still held true. It hadn’t taken the superstitious natives long to attribute this man’s strength of purpose to the mark the cat had left on his face. Thus,
El Gato
, The Cat, was born.

And yet, alone in the opulence of his home and wealth,
El Gato
was still the same young man at heart who’d bolted across the border with the syndicate, as well as the law, right at his heels. He’d escaped with his life and little else. It had taken him years to recoup what he’d left behind, but no amount of years could ever account for the thing that burned deep in his bitter soul: revenge!
El Gato
wanted…needed revenge. Only then could he go to his grave a happy man.

Lucky had been on the job at Club 52 exactly three minutes when someone overheard Manny Sosa call her by her name. The whispers had flown like wildfire among the players at the tables. There was a new dealer named Lucky. The fact that she was a young and beautiful woman hardly entered into the scenario. Many dealers were women. For the serious players, it was the game and the winning that counted, not who dealt the cards. But if they were superstitious enough to want a real live Lady Luck actually dealing their cards, so be it.

She stepped behind the green felt with a surge of elation. If only Johnny could see her now. And as she thought it, she knew that if he were here, he’d be on the other side of the table, waiting to place a bet.

Four players watched with jaundiced eyes as the manager oversaw the switch in dealers while the pit boss looked on from a short distance away. Lucky smiled casu
ally at the players, then, as if she’d done it all her life, took the cards from the shoe, the box that held the four decks of cards that each dealer used, and began to shuffle.

Precisely. Competently. With no show of the magicianlike skill that she’d given Manny Sosa the day before. The hours that she’d spent observing yesterday also stood her in good stead. She’d made a mental note of every casino rule regarding dealer behavior. Both hands in plain view at all times. No casual brushes of hands toward pockets or hair. Tips from happy customers went in a special slot on the table, while cash went in another, and so on, and so on. She hadn’t missed a thing.

When the shoe of cards had been shuffled, she pushed it toward the man to her right and handed him a large, colorful, plastic card. He took it, inserted it about halfway up the cards in the shuffled shoe, thereby proclaiming that the cards had been “cut.” As she was about to begin, her concentration was broken by a player’s question.

“Hey, babe. Did I hear the man call you Lucky?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that really your name?”

Lucky sighed. How many times in this city would she hear that question?

“Yes. It’s really my name.”

He grinned like the Cheshire cat, deciding that he’d just fallen down a rabbit hole of immense proportions, and shoved five one-hundred-dollar bills toward her.

“Change, please,” he barked. “All quarters, honey. I suddenly feel lucky.”

Lucky calmly counted out the twenty-five-dollar chips that he’d requested, then announced:

“Players…place your bets.”

And so it began. Manny Sosa stood a distance away, assessing the calmness of the woman. Her instant skill at mental calculation of the three-two payoff that the tables made was unusually adept, as was her cool, professional attitude in dealing with the customers who tried to get too friendly. At this point, Manny knew that he’d found himself a jewel. Part of his dealer shortage had been dealt with.

But another, more serious situation remained. Someone wanted Nicky dead, and Manny wouldn’t have it. Even if it meant losing sleep for the next six months, he was ready to bed down at Club 52 just to assure himself that Nick Chenault made no deadly mistakes.

Lucky was unaware of the turmoil surrounding her place of employment, or the owner she had yet to meet. She was too absorbed in the play and the players.

Yet in every ointment, there is a fly. And a croupier named Steve Lucas would be Lucky’s. He was milling about in the break room when Manny came through with the tall, black-haired beauty on his arm, giving her the new-employee tour. He’d watched with the intensity of the predator that he was, and when Lucky’s back was turned, he mentally stripped her of every garment she was wearing. From the classy blue slacks and jacket to the plain black flats.

When Manny took her away to be outfitted in a dealer’s black tux, Steve knew that his day had just gone from suck, to so fine. He went through the motions of croupier, while patiently waiting for the golden opportunity to make his move on Lucky. By the time his dinner
break came, he realized it would coincide with hers. It was just as well. He’d worked himself up to hot and hard in anticipation of the successful swath he intended to cut through her path.

Lucky didn’t see him coming. If she had, their first impressions of each other might have been different, and the rest of their lives might never have been altered. As it was, Lucas, in all his six-foot, body-builder perfection, assumed that an introduction was a flat waste of time. He waited until Lucky had a sandwich and soft drink in hand, and then made his move.

“Hey, little Lucky, I feel like getting lucky myself tonight. What do you say?”

Lucky froze. The hand squeezing the right side of her waist and the low, masculine whisper in her ear were an invasion of her space that she did not allow. Without spilling a drop, she pivoted.

“Excuse me,” she said quietly. “But I don’t like to be touched.”

Steve grinned at the cool flash of her green eyes. He assumed she was playing coy and accepted the challenge. He liked them hard to get. He took a step back, raising his hands in a gesture of playful arrest, and gave her his best Vegas smile. It always worked before.

Lucky carefully eyed the tall, sandy-haired man, assessing his thick, muscular build as dangerous, the cut of his chin as weak, and the smile on his face as deceptive. It was a total and instant dislike of the first employee of Club 52 who’d made an overture of friendliness.