clapboard houses. It was a straight hundred-yard shot to her place. She patted his arm and said, 'Heat the lasagna in the oven at three-fifty for thirty minutes. Don't use the microwave; it makes the cheese runny.'
'The guy's a real lady-killer, huh?' Valentine said, never one to leave loose ends dangling.
'A regular Don Juan.'
'You think she's helping him?'
'Could be,' Mabel said. 'Later, Tony.'
It was an angle to which he hadn't given much thought, and he went back inside. The VCR was still on, and he slipped into his La-Z-Boy and resumed watching. Slick was on a roll, and as he won hand after hand, Valentine focused on the blonde doing the dealing. After a while, he began to see what Mabel had seen. There was a chemistry between them. She didn't seem upset that he was winning so much, and that wasn't a good thing.
2
Three thousand miles away, Nola Briggs was practicing her riffle-shuffling, her brain on autopilot. Curls of hours-old cigarette smoke did lazy contortions over her blackjack table, the bluish haze lulling her to sleep.
It was eleven a.m. and the casino was as dead as a church social. A big computer convention was in town, but none of the action had spilled over to their tables. Too bad-she needed the dough. Like most dealers, Nola earned fifty bucks a shift and made up the rest in tips. When it was dead, she barely earned enough to pay her rent and eat at McDonald's once a week. Maybe the casino could survive on little old ladies playing the twenty-five-cent slots, but she sure as hell couldn't.
A native of Queens, New York, Nola had pulled up stakes and driven to Las Vegas ten years earlier, chasing a dream. She'd win a super jackpot or meet a successful guy and end up living on a beautiful spread raising horses or some breed of large dogs. As dreams went, it was a tall order, and the fact that none of it had materialized didn't faze her. Life was a gamble, and she'd played the hand she'd been dealt accordingly.
'Hit me,' a man's voice said.
Nola blinked. The world's cutest guy had materialized at her table. Their eyes met, and she saw the corners of his mouth curl up mischievously.
'Remember me?' he asked.
Of course Nola remembered him. He'd sat in the same spot the night before and the night before that. A computer software salesman from upstate New York. She'd been mesmerized by his looks until he'd started drawing on stiffs and beating her when she was holding eighteen and higher. He'd taken her for twenty grand the first night, thirty the second.
'Hit you where?' she inquired.
His smile grew into something more, and Nola's heart began to melt. He was terrific looking without being handsome: soft mouth, gentle eyes, the New York accent having none of the usual rudeness. He drew a wad of hundreds from his pocket.
'Come on, Nola-don't you want to win your money back?'
'Sure, Fred,' she said.
'It's Frank,' he said, ruining the smile with a little frown. 'Frank Fontaine.'
Nola knew damn well what his name was. Frank Allen Fontaine, age forty-four, divorced, no kids, star salesman for a computer outfit out of Poughkeepsie, no criminal record. Once he'd started winning, security had called the Mirage, where he was staying, and gotten his credit card number. Within minutes, the results of a complete financial and personal check were spitting out of a fax machine.
'He's a choirboy,' Wily had told Nola during her break, the printout clutched in his hand. 'Mr. Clean.'
'What did you expect?' she replied, firing up a cigarette. 'Ted Bundy?'
'I don't like his play,' the pit boss declared.
The employee lounge overlooked the casino floor, and they stared through a tinted two-way mirror at Fontaine sitting at Nola's table, awaiting her return.
'What don't you like about it?' Nola said.
'It doesn't feel right. He's hustling us.'
'How?'
'The fuck I know. But he is.'
'People get lucky.'
'Not this lucky.'
'So bar him.'
'And let him walk out of here with our dough? You don't get it, sweetie. I want to break this paesano.'
'Well, you probably will,' Nola said when her cigarette was gone. 'He's no player.'
'He's sure soft on you.'
'Well, he is kinda cute. And polite. And he tips great.'
'You sucking his dick?'
Nola stuck her tongue out. 'Go sit on a spike, fatso.'
But Wily hadn't given up. Pit bosses were required to make quotas. It had been a rough week and Fontaine's score was going to put Wily's take on the negative side, and that was unacceptable. So Wily had come up with one of his famous stupid ideas. Because Fontaine was attending the computer show, Wily figured he must have some kind of computer device on him. And because it was illegal in Nevada to bring a computer or calculator onto a casino floor, Wily believed he could relieve Fontaine of his winnings without any fear of legal repercussions.
So Wily had frisked him right at the table the second night. Fontaine took it like a real gentleman. Not once did he raise his voice or threaten to sue the casino.
'Perhaps you could tell me what this is about,' Fontaine had said when his pockets produced nothing.
His face beet red, Wily had stammered a lame apology. 'I'm really sorry, but you're a dead ringer for a guy who robbed us a while back.'
Fontaine's face betrayed a hint of skepticism.
'On my mother's grave,' Wily swore, putting his hand over his heart. 'You could be brothers.'
'I'm surprised I made it through the front door,' Fontaine had replied, giving Nola a wink.
And now he was back, dressed in a navy silk sports jacket with mother-of-pearl buttons and a choirboy smile lighting up his face. Nola pushed him his chips. 'Good luck.'
Shuffling the cards a final time, she offered them to be cut, then dealt. She worked a two-deck game, hand held. A lot of casinos on the strip had gone back to hand-held games. The players seemed to like it.
'Insurance,' she said, her face card an ace.
'That's a sucker's bet, isn't it?' he inquired.
Nola looked at his bet. Five blacks: five hundred bucks. He was starting off heavy. It was against the rules to coach, but Nola saw no harm in passing along a little knowledge.
'Not really,' she explained. 'Insurance protects your bet if I have blackjack.'
Fontaine looked at his hand, exposing his cards to her. He had a fifteen, a stiff. 'Naw,' he said.
Nola bit her lip. When it came to strategy, her dream boy was a dope. She peeked at her hole card. A nine. She had twenty. Fontaine was a goner.
'Guess you don't have blackjack,' he said, smiling.
Nola pursed her lips. The odds against his drawing a six and beating her twenty were astronomically high. Let's see you wiggle out of this one, she thought.
'Hit me,' he said.
Nola dealt him a deuce.
'Again,' he informed her.
Nola stared at him. He had a seventeen, a pat hand. Drawing another card was the wrong play unless he somehow knew what her hole card was.
'You sure about that?' she asked him.
'Positive.'
Nola dealt him a four, giving him twenty-one. She turned over her hole card.
