want you to run a full analysis of variance, comparing subsidence with the results we took in the fall of 2030.’
‘Hey, Lauren, where are you?’ Sam bursts into the bedroom.
She cuts her fiance off with a harsh glare. ‘You’d better hurry with that data. Hurricane Kenneth was officially upgraded to a class-five storm two hours ago. Winds are expected to reach super-cane proportions by Tuesday evening. If the weather net doesn’t slow it down, we may have to evacuate the city as early as next weekend.’
‘Where’s the eye?’
Lauren presses CONTROL -6 on her keyboard. The screen splits, the right side showing a live satellite feed over the Atlantic Ocean. Using the mouse, she focuses on a swirling white vortex, the eye of the strengthening storm clearly defined.
‘Kenneth’s 361 miles due east of Antigua.’
‘Still pretty far out. Where’s the weather net?’
She types in another command. A series of crimson dots appears off Cuba. ‘En route to Havana’s port to refuel from the last cell.’
‘Which means they won’t be in place until Wednesday. You’re right, that’s calling it close.’
Sam lies by Lauren’s feet. Playfully, he reaches his hand beneath her towel.
She pushes him away with a calloused foot.
‘Any other cells developing in the Atlantic?’
She scans the screen. ‘Nothing.’
‘Analyze that data. I’ll be in touch when I can. And Lauren, mention this to no one.’
‘Understood.’
‘Gabeheart out.’
‘Wait-what about my grant? The committee meeting’s on Monday.’
‘You know you have my full support, now more than ever. We could sure use your brain down here.’
Sam makes an obscene gesture with his tongue.
‘Good luck on Monday. Gabeheart out.’
22
Saturday Night
The Mabus Plaza Hotel and Casino is an L-shaped monstrosity of tinted black glass and bloodred neon lighting, occupying five full beach blocks along scenic Ocean Drive. The top six floors of the thirty-three-floor dwelling are all lavish apartment suites leased year-round to film stars, politicians, bankers, and foreign dignitaries. For those who can afford the five million-dollar price tag, there is a seven-year waiting list for availability. For those who can’t, reservations for hotel rooms on levels seven through twenty-seven must be made eighteen months in advance and require a nonrefundable five-thousand-dollar deposit. Still out of your league? You can always rent a room by the hour. Two hundred one-bedroom studios are located on floors four through six and are available twenty-four hours a day for clients of the Mabus Bordello, a state-licensed brothel that occupies most of level five. Businessmen specials run 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. daily. ‘Blue-ball Mondays are 10 percent off, Two is for Tuesdays (menage a trois), Wednesday’s are ‘hump-days,’ with ‘Fantasy Thursdays’ rounding out the weekdays (Friday through Sunday reserved for platinum-condom members only).
The first three floors of the Mabus Complex are dedicated strictly to gambling. Levels One and Two are where the general public goes to lose its money. Level Three is more private, strictly reserved for the high rollers and VIPs-by invitation only.
None of the bright lights and sparkles of the old Las Vegas-style casino can be found in this ‘Hideaway of the Rich and Decadent.’ Light is out, darkness in. The walls and floors of Level Three are decorated in crimson silks and ebony velvets, the ceiling in smoky mirrors. Half of the two hundred craps and blackjack tables are set up as islands inside giant hot tubs. High-priced ‘pink ladies of the evening’ wearing high-heeled pumps (and little else) sell drinks, drugs, and ultimately themselves, for each of these carnation-dyed beauties can be ‘rented’ by the hour or trick (whatever ‘cums’ first). Baccarat players at hundred-thousand-dollar-minimum tables often receive sexual favors while they gamble, their naked genitals pleasured beneath the tables’ overhanging satin aprons.
Welcome to the Mabus Plaza Hotel and Casino-a den of iniquity raking in an estimated million dollars every hour-the favorite jewel of Lucien Mabus’s thriving financial empire.
For newlyweds Danny Diaz and his bride, Sia, it has become their own private hell.
The young couple from Cocoa Beach had pushed the date of their wedding back eight months just so they could ‘Honeymoon at the Mabus.’ On their very first day, ‘Lady Luck’ had greeted them in the guise of an afternoon thundershower, forcing them to abandon ‘Emperor Nero’s Decadence at the Beach’ for a day at the casino. Changing into satin robes (provided free by the hotel) they had spent the next seven-plus hours on an amazing run at the roulette table. Sia had won over $30,000, Danny pocketing another $21,400. Delirious with joy, they returned to their room for a quick interlude of sandwiches and sex, hurrying back to the casino with visions of a down payment on a four-bedroom dream home on the coast dancing in their intoxicated heads.
But Lady Luck can be a nasty mistress, and by Saturday morning, the newlyweds had squandered all their winnings, plus another $7,200 in vacation money, a $12,000 advance on Danny’s credit card, and the $10,000 in credit Sia’s mother had given her daughter as a wedding gift. Worse, Danny had done the unthinkable, tapping into his department’s expense account to the tune of $7,300.
Their only consolation-they had received an engraved invitation from the hotel manager to visit Level Three on this, their final evening at the Mabus.
Danny clutches Sia’s sweaty palm, guiding her to an open spot at a roulette table, the fifty-six-hundred- dollar credit from her pawned engagement ring burning in his right pants pocket. Steam rises from a nearby hot tub, where an obese middle-aged man is playing poker, the fat on his back flushed pink beneath a mat of thick black hair. Danny pauses, watching enviously as the man bets a stack of ten-thousand-dollar chips.
‘Damn… uh, okay, honey, what do you think? Roulette or craps?’
Sia glances around the room, gazing at the half-naked celebrities and guests who are circling the tables like vultures. She is perspiring profusely, despite the heavy air-conditioning. ‘Look, isn’t that Tonja Davidson, the soap opera star? Look at those tits. God, she makes me sick.’
‘Honey, please, roulette or craps? I have to get those funds back into the department’s account before seven.’
‘Okay… okay… I say roulette.’ She leads him to the nearest table.
‘Chips, please.’ Danny tosses the attendant the credit, his gaze momentarily lost in her size 38-DD breasts. He squeezes Sia’s hand. ‘Red?’
She nods. ‘And lucky number 23. Let’s get it all back on the first roll.’
‘Right. Okay, quick, give me a kiss for luck.’
Their lips meet, their tongues spreading saliva and vodka as the wheel is spun.
Two floors up, Benjamin Merchant, personal assistant to the casino’s president and CEO, sucks deeply on a pacifier bong as he watches the scene play out on his wrist monitor. Merchant’s piggish eyes, squirrel gray, remain half-closed behind rose-colored designer spectacles. A thin line of spittle drools from the pacifier and down his lower lip onto the ruffles of his ivory white embroidered dress shirt.
Ben Merchant has never met Danny and Sylvia Diaz, but he knows the couple well. Over the last three days he has been both their good luck charm and dark cloud. Seducing them with each roll of the roulette wheel, he has baited them with lingering tastes of success while encouraging them to reach deeper into their depleted savings. He has played the banker, personally signing off on their arrangements at the hotel’s pawn shop. He has played the ‘chef,’ lacing their meals with a potent form of Ecstasy.
Now he plays his favorite role of all-the Devil’s advocate-as he guides them deeper into bankruptcy.
