She grabbed me by the arm. “Okay, Daddy, let’s go get that suite.”
Daddy?
Roulette. Lucy headed for a table with the highest limits—a thousand on a number, twenty thousand on red or black.
“What about my clothes?” I whispered in her ear. I was still holding the bags she’d given me.
“Your clothes don’t matter. You’ll see. It’s all about the idiot baby doll on Daddy’s arm.”
Baby doll? Daddy? I was beginning to really like this girl, and it wasn’t just the way she was filling out that dress.
She sat in a chair at the table, sort of bouncing, and looked up at me. “Sugar needs a thousand, Daddy,” she tittered, voice pitched high. She crossed her legs and her dress rode up another three inches. One more inch and we’d be in trouble.
The eyes of the gal running the wheel flickered. Daddy gave “Sugar” ten bills and she hardly looked at the roulette girl as she handed over the cash and received ten chips worth a hundred each. The girl sent the ball spinning around its outer track.
“Uh-uh,” Lucy said to her, sounding put out. “One chip, not these little bitty things.”
Great.
The ten chips became one chip. Lucy slapped it down on red a few seconds before the girl said, “No more bets.” The ball went around the outside a few more times, then clattered around in the wheel and came up black.
Lucy giggled. “Oops.” She turned back to me and said, “Sugar needs another hit, Daddy.”
I looked at her, and she shot me a look that lasted no more than a millisecond.
I handed twenty crisp Franklins to the girl running the wheel and said, “Two big ones, Honey,” in a dumbass voice that matched Sugar’s, but was two octaves lower. It matched the wig, the moustache, and the Stetson. Rich old dude keeping his young sexy thing happy. However this played out, I was going to keep enough gas money to limp back to Reno. Without Lucy.
Sugar grabbed the two chips as the ball whirled around the track, wheel spinning in the opposite direction. She closed her eyes and said, “Red, red, red,” then plopped a single chip down on red.
Whirr, clatter, bounce.
“Twenty-three red,” the girl said. She set a thousand-dollar chip on top of Lucy’s.
Lucy let out a little-girl squeal of delight and bounced in her chair. “Lookit, Daddy. I made us some money.”
“Real fine, Honey Bunch.” I decided not to point out that in fact she hadn’t made us a single penny yet.
She closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the ceiling. “I’m gonna let it ride. And this one, too.” She giggled, putting down the other chip I’d bought her.
“You do that, Sugar Plum.” Three thousand on red. Shee-it.
Christ, what a circus. Half a dozen people were watching. So far we hadn’t lost a nickel. Hadn’t made one either, but Lucy was betting red and I was thinking black.
The ball whirred around the rim and the wheel spun and Sugar said, “Red, red, red,” and the ball clattered and bounced, stopped.
“Nine, red,” the girl called out.
Lucy squealed, bounced out of her chair, and planted a big wet kiss on my lips as the girl put three chips on top of Lucy’s. A quick breathy whisper in my ear: “Lucky Luce. Look out.”
She sat down and picked up her six chips. I was still savoring the kiss. A pit boss eased over, as if drifting on an unseen current. He was bald, wearing a shiny black vest, name tag said Fred. He didn’t look directly at Lucy as she toyed with six thousand dollars’ worth of chips, three of which had recently belonged to the house.
The wheel spun, Lucy slid all six grand onto red again. “Red, red, red,” she chanted, as the pit boss tried not to look as if he were taking a greater interest in the game.
Clatter, bounce. “Thirty-three, black.”
“Well, shuckins,” said my darling Honey Bunch, pushing her lips out in a pout. She turned to me and said in a giddy voice, “Sugar needs another hit, Daddy.” And a sharp flash in her eyes said that, yes indeed, Sugar needed another hit.
So, Daddy shelled out another grand. Down three thousand and counting, not to mention the red dress and shoes.
The ball spun, and Sugar said, “Red, red, red,” and the ball landed and the girl called out, “Sixteen, red.”
Sugar squealed, which was evidently what she did, and it was a hell of an improvement over, “Well, shuckins.”
The pit boss didn’t leave. The girl got the ball going again and Lucy moved both chips to black and said, “Black, black, black,” and damn if the girl didn’t call out, “Two, black.”
Sugar squealed, looked up at the ceiling with her eyes closed, moved the four chips to red. The ball spun, the pit boss watched, and Sugar said, loud enough for everyone around to hear, “I gots me that lucky-unlucky feelin’, Daddy,” and she took a single chip off red and stuck it on double zero.
The ball whirred, clattered around in the wheel, stopped, and the girl said, in a slightly higher register than before, “Double zero.”
Lucy squealed and clapped her hands, threw her arms around my neck, and gave me the best-tasting French kiss I’d had in I didn’t know how long.
The pit boss’s eyes jittered as the girl counted out thirty-five chips and set them on Lucy’s double-zero chip, so I guess he had a little strabismus thing going. Suddenly we were up a total of thirty-two thousand dollars.
Lucy pulled her chips in front of her and looked up at me and said, “We oughta get us a suite here, Daddy. I like this place.”
The pit boss had a two-way radio with a mike on his lapel. He turned away, head lowered, and twenty seconds later a guy was at my side in a two-thousand-dollar suit and a power tie. “Little lady’s lucky,” he said conversationally.
“Yep. She’s a pistol.”
He smiled. “We like to treat folks right around here.
