If you're referring to the double bed, I've seen it.
He walked to the bedroom door. Penny pointed at a bottle of champagne in a cooler, placed conveniently close to the bed.
'For what they're charging for this, a hundred and a half a night, they can afford to throw in a bottle of champagne,' Matt said.
'How ever do you afford all this high living on a policeman's pay, Matthew?'
'Don't start being a bitch, Penny.'
'Sorry,' she said, sounding as if she meant it. 'I'm curious. Have you got some kind of an expense account?'
'Not for this, no,' Matt replied. 'What were your parents doing here?'
'Daddy likes to gamble here.'
Why does that surprise me? It shouldn't. He apparently is no stranger in Las Vegas. But why the hell is he gambling? With all his money, what's the point? He really can't care if he wins or loses.
'You didn't say anything, before, when I told you we were coming here.'
'I didn't want to spoil your little surprise. You said we were coming here, you will recall, before you made it clear that whatever you had in mind, it was not rolling around between the sheets with me.'
'I want to get a look inside the gambling place.'
'That shouldn't be a problem.'
'You still hungry?'
'Always,' she said.
'Come on then, we'll go have a drink at the bar and then have dinner.'
'And save that for later?' she asked, pointing at the champagne.
'We could have it now, if you would like.'
'I'd really rather have a beer,' she said. 'If you romanced me like this more often, Matt, you'd learn that I'm really a cheap date.'
'Economical,' he responded without thinking, 'not cheap.'
'Why, thank you, Matthew.'
She walked past him out of the bedroom and to the corridor door.
They sat at the bar where Penny drank two bottles of Heineken's beer, which for some reason surprised him, and he had two drinks of Scotch.
The entertainment was a pianist, a middle-aged woman trying to look younger, who wasn't half bad. Much better, he thought, than the trio who replaced her when they went to a table for dinner.
And Penny was right. The food was first class. Penny said she remembered the Chateaubriand for two was really good, and he indulged her, and it was much better than he expected it to be, a perfectly roasted filet, surrounded by what looked like one each of every known variety of vegetable. They had a bottle of California Cabernet Sauvignon with that, and somehow it was suddenly all gone.
'If you'd like, we could have another,' Penny said as he mocked shaking the last couple of drops into his glass. 'And have cheese afterward, and listen to the music. I don't think the gambling gets going until later.'
The cheese was good, something the waiter recommended, something he'd never had before, sort of a combination of Camembert and Roquefort. They ate one serving, spreading it on crackers and then taking a swallow of the wine before chewing, and then had another.
Penny said she would like a liqueur to finish the meal, and he passed, saying he'd already had too much drink, and instead drank a cup of very black, very strong coffee.
When he'd finished that, Penny inclined her head toward the rear of the room.
'It's over there, if you want to give it a try,' she said.
Matt looked and saw a closed double door, draped with red curtain and guarded by a large man in a dinner jacket.
As they walked to it, Penny leaned up and whispered in his ear: ' You did remember to bring money?'
'Absolutely,' he said, although he wasn't really sure.
The man in the dinner jacket blocked their way.
'May I help you?' he asked.
'We want to go in there,' Penny said.
'That's a private party, I'm afraid, madam.'
'Oh, come on. I've been in there before.'
'Are you a club member?'
'I'm not, but if there's a club, my father probably is.'
'And your name, madam?'
'My maiden name was Detweiler,' Penny said.
That rang a bell, Matt thought, if widening eyes and raised eyebrows are any criteria.
'First name?'
'Richard. H. Richard.'
'Just a moment, please, madam,' the man in the dinner jacket said. He pulled open a cabinet door in the wall Matt hadn't noticed-it was covered with wallpaper-and spoke softly into a telephone. After a moment, he hung up and pushed the door closed.
'Sorry for the delay, Miss Detweiler,' he said as he pulled the door open. 'Good luck!'
'Mrs. Payne,'Penny corrected him, smiling sweetly at Matt.
There were very few people in the room, although croupiers stood waiting for customers behind every table.
Do you call the guys who run the craps games and the blackjack ' croupiers' too? Matt wondered. Or does that term apply only to roulette? If not, what do you call the guy who runs the craps table? The crapier?
'Roulette all right with you, Penny?'
'It's fine with me,' she replied. 'But I'm surprised, I thought you would be a craps shooter.'
Matt took out his wallet. He had one hundred-dollar bill and four fifties and some smaller bills.
The hundred must be left over from the Flamingo in Las Vegas. I never take hundreds from the bank. You can never get anyone to change one.
He put the hundred-dollar bill on the green baize beside the roulette wheel.
'Nickels,' he said.
The croupier slid a small stack of chips to him.
He placed two of them on the board, both on One to Twelve. The croupier spun the wheel, twenty-three came up, and he picked up Matt's chips.
Matt made the same bet again.
'There's a marvelous story,' Penny said. 'A fellow brought a girl here, or to a place like this, and gave her chips, and she said, 'I don't know what to bet,' so he said, 'Bet your age,' so she put fifty dollars on twenty-three. Twenty-nine came up. The girl said, 'Oh,shit!
'
The croupier laughed softly. Matt didn't understand. Penny saw this: 'The moral of the story, Matthew darling, is 'Truth pays off.''
He laughed.
Thirty-three came up, and the croupier picked up Matt's chips again.
'You're not too good at this, are you, darling?'
'Just getting warmed up,' Matt said. He put five chips on 00.
Sixteen came up.
'Have you ever considered getting an honest job?' Penny asked.
Not only isn't this much fun, but I've seen about all of this place that there is to see. It's about as wicked as a bingo game in the basement of McFadden's parish church.
Hay-zus is off base on this one. There's nobody in this room who looks like a mobster; my fellow gamblers look like they all belong to the Kiwanis. And/or the Bible Study Group.
I will buy Penny a drink, and try to show her the wisdom of driving back to Philadelphia now, rather than in the morning. We can get back by one, maybe a little sooner.
