The dealer had a thin sad face and a pearl stickpin in his lavender necktie. Hands quick as Henri’s scooped up her chips.
“Dealer takes all pushes.”
She had a smooth aloof face, great cheekbones, and an insolent mouth, but said to the big man in a cloying little-girl voice, “Petie Sweetie, I’m out of gas.”
“You cost more to run than my Caddy.”
“I want to beat this bastard at his own crooked game.”
A paw made to crush beer bottles tossed a heavy leather wallet on the table. A granite jaw and thick neck suggested a ruthless power slightly belied by surprisingly mild blue eyes. She methodically lost a quarter inch of bills, cursing the dealer obscenely for every hand he took. They departed to the bar.
Dunc said to the dealer, “Sweet lady.”
“She was explaining my parentage to me.” Two red spots burned on his cheeks. “She’s a guest at the hotel.”
“And the customer’s always right. Right?”
The spots faded from his cheeks. He grinned wryly. Dunc said, “A blackjack dealer I knew in Vegas had hands like yours.”
He put the cards through an intricate Scarne shuffle, a false cut, dealt himself seconds. “There’s one rotten town, Vegas.” He finished with that most difficult of card maneuvers, the waterfall, said almost ruefully, “That’s my real name. Hands. What could I be except a dealer, hands like these, name like that? Like the kid in Treasure Island, he’s up the mast with a pistol, he says, ‘One more step and I’ll fire, Mr. Hands.’ ”
“Jim Hawkins,” said Dunc.
“That’s him. Most everybody just calls me Hands.”
Dunc hesitated a moment. “Peter Collinson,” he said.
His already expressionless face emptied entirely. “Big guy over there calls himself Peter Collins.”
“Good old dad,” said Dunc. “Mr. Nobody himself.”
“Comes in ’cause of Imogene. You just passing through?”
Dunc nodded. “Drifting with the wind.”
“A sad wind, maybe? Good luck.”
Dunc sat in a red leather chair out of the clerk’s sight, under a potted palm near the mezzanine’s broad marble stairway. Three A.M. Two hours before he could stick out his thumb. Physically, except for his headache, okay. Penny and their child were dead, but he was okay. He crossed his arms, felt a bulge in his jacket pocket. A folded sheaf of bills, $400. Where...
The blackest of despairs shot through him. Penny cashed in and gaily stuffed the neat fold of her winnings into Dunc’s inside sport jacket’s pocket. Penny, loving him, trusting him, and he’d made her want to be dead...
A man came in from the side street without seeing Dunc. Cold radiated from his midnight-blue overcoat; a black rakish hat with a narrow brim was pulled low over his eyes. He had thin features and an olive complexion. Dunc thought, Pepe, realized, of course not: Pepe was 250 miles away. But the same type.
Where’d you meet the piano player? Lad gets around. Something quizzical moved in Dunc, was gone.
Imogene came slinking out of the casino. The man in the blue topcoat purred at her. “He in there?”
“I said he would be, didn’t I?” Her voice was polished steel, nothing at all like her simpering tones for Petie Sweetie.
“We only pay on delivery.”
“I only deliver on payment.”
A faint rustling, Dunc imagined an envelope changing hands.
“Our play isn’t in here. Get him out to his car and—”
“You gotta be crazy. Up in my bed, asleep.”
“Just tell him to wait for you. At his car.”
Mollified, she went away. The man in the blue topcoat disappeared into the men’s room like a prowling black cat.
Dunc slumped lower in his chair. So what if Collins was hit? He was already Mr. Nobody. Penny was dead, and Dunc...
He sat up, frowning. Just as Penny had said, he was different. Eight months ago he’d charged into Raffetto’s gleaming blade to try and save Artis’s life. But Penny was...
Collins and Imogene came out of the casino. His mohair overcoat made him look too wide to fit through doors.
“Go warm up the car so I won’t get a chill, Petie Sweetie,” she crooned in her pubescent voice. She stood on tiptoe to give him a quick Judas kiss. “I’ll be down in ten minutes.”
She went upstairs, long legs flashing. Collins crossed the lobby toward the main door as a herd of noisy bus customers crowded in, eager to feed the bandits during their twenty-minute rest stop. The killer prowled out of the men’s room after Collins.
“Aw, shit!” muttered Dunc, and pulled his silly goddamn watch cap back down over his ears.
Out in the street, icy wind snatched the air from his lungs. Collins was already too far away to call to without alerting the man in the midnight-blue overcoat sauntering along behind. Dunc went padding after them on silent rubber soles.
A wind-danced streetlight cast confusing shadows as Pete Collins entered the parking lot where he’d left his long gleaming Cadillac. Whistling, he bent to unlock the door. A piece of the night leaped at him to drive a long-bladed glittering knife at the unprotected back of his prey. Knife. Glittering.
Glittering as Raffetto charged down the stairwell.
Dunc slammed his clasped hands, clublike, against the killer’s head, dropping him where he stood like the sheep in the Hunter’s Point slaughterhouse. His knife clattered away without having touched even the cloth of Mr. Nobody’s coat.
Collins spun around, shock on his face. He recovered quickly. “I know who he is — who the fuck are you?”
“The guy who just saved your life.” But Penny was still just as dead, Dunc was still just as responsible.
“How’d they... Imogene!”
He stormed past Dunc, face dark with rage. Dunc said, “She’s just spit on the sidewalk. Is she worth dying for?”
Collins whirled, staring at him almost stupidly. He looked down at the fallen warrior, he looked at his car keys, he looked at his Cadillac.
“That’s two I owe you. How do I square up? Money?”
And Dunc was thinking again like the private eye Drinker’s months of tutelage had made him. Raffetto’s blade had been a black Commando knife designed to never reflect light. But there had been another man in Vegas, slight, quick, muscular, who might have wielded a knife.
“A ride to South Lake Tahoe,” he said. He gestured down toward the killer slumbering at their feet. “What about him?”
“He wakes up or he freezes, he lives or he dies — who gives a shit?”
Dunc got into the Cadillac.
Chapter Fifty
It was three the next afternoon before Drinker got back to the office. Sherry was at her desk. She started to her feet when his head appeared above the floor level. “Anything?”
“Not a trace.” He opened a clenched fist as i£ freeing a trapped starling. “Like that. Dressed himself and walked out.”
Sherry slowly sat down again. “Then why hasn’t he called? He could be lying in a ditch somewhere—”
“When did you become his mother, for Chrissake?”
She was suddenly embarrassed. “Yeah, God, listen to me.”
“Go on home and get some rest.” He had gone around her desk to massage her shoulders. “I’ll handle things here.”
“Thanks, Drinker. I feel like I haven’t slept in a week.”
She put on her coat, went up on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth like a sleepy child, then went down the stairs with a wave of her hand. Jesus, more trouble. How did you tell a woman you needed to help run your office that you didn’t want her sexually anymore? But after having just spent two hours with April, he knew in his heart that he wouldn’t want Sherry, not ever again.