I called Carla on my phone after I couldn’t reach Vince. I’d left the house and was driving, headed toward the Strip. “I’m trying to reach Vince, do you know if he’s around tonight?”
“He’s due here pretty soon. We have a new, big-shot player tonight, and he wanted to stop and say a personal hello.”
My hand left the steering wheel and dug in my pocket to see if I still had a wad of cash. I was already tabulating how much I’d have for buy-in and if I’d have to go on Carla’s books to get in the game.
No. I quickly put my hand back on the steering wheel, the cash undisturbed. JoJo was what became of going on Carla’s books, and JoJo was dead.
“You want to play?” Carla asked.
“No. But I need to talk to Vince.”
“Why don’t you swing by. He might even be here by the time you get here.”
I didn’t really want to say what I needed to say to Vince in some hotel suite with a table full of poker players nearby, but I felt this sense of urgency that I really needed to do this tonight. “Okay, I’ll do that. Where are you?”
They were playing at Bellagio tonight, and I said a silent thanks that my route from the parking deck to the guest rooms would not take me past the sports book. Now, I just needed to say my piece to Vince and walk away from the table.
Who knows, after tonight, maybe I’d be banned from Vince’s tables. The thought was both freeing and terrifying.
Vince had indeed beaten me to the suite where tonight’s game was being played. Carla must have let him know I’d be on my way and wanted to talk with him, because he greeted me with a small nod then picked up Carla’s ledger and led the way to one of the bedrooms of the suite, closing the door behind us.
I looked puzzled at the ledger in his arms and he put it aside, on the table next to me. It flipped open to a page about a third in, and I tensed when I saw my name and signature from money I’d borrowed in the past.
That was done, over, I told myself. That book was closed. As if to make my point, I shut the ledger.
Vince pointed to it. “I wanted the players to think that we were discussing business. I didn’t want them to know about us, at least not without your permission.”
“Oh, that was thoughtful.”
He lifted his hands in a “no problem” gesture. “Protection for you, yes. But also I don’t want them to think I give preferential treatment to anyone.” He moved toward me, put his hands on my hips. “So, we obviously can’t stay in here as long as I’d like to, and do the things I’d want to do in hotel suite. At least not this one.”
His smile was warm, and of course handsome, and part of me, a small part, wanted to return his smile and sink into his body. But I stepped away from him and crossed to the other side of the room. “Vince…” I began, now suddenly wondering why all the urgency that this needed to be done tonight. I knew we had just started dating, that there was no way Vince had really deep feelings for me yet. But I truly liked Vince, cared for him. And I’d been on the receiving end of this little speech enough times to know that however deep or not deep you’d fallen, it was a bitch to hear.
He held a hand up for me to stop, which I gladly did. Let him be the one to do the talking.
“Schiller,” is all he said.
I looked into his eyes, careful not to show pity – he’d hate that, and I didn’t really feel it for him – but I tried to look resolved, yet understanding. “Yes.”
Vince’s face dropped into a professional mask. If it had been Jack, I would have called it his cop face, but it was different with Vince. Beyond stern and professional, but not quite all the way to scary. “He hurt you before,” he said.
“Things are different this time,” I said. It sounded weak even to my ears.
“Do you know how many times a day that sentence is said in this town?”
He had me there.
“Even so,” I said. I wasn’t going to make the case for Jack and me being together. I couldn’t really even make it to myself. There were definitely still issues between us, but he wanted to try. So did I.
He waited for me to go on, and when I didn’t he smiled softly at me. “One of the things I like about you, Anna, is you never made excuses. You always took responsibility for your actions. You have accountability, that’s different from gamblers with a problem.”
See, even Vince seemed to think that I was different from compulsive gamblers. And Lord knows he’d seen his share of them.
“I am sorry, though, if it feels like a sucker punch,” I said. “I know you didn’t see this coming.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I suspected it might come to this. I guess I’d hoped it wouldn’t happen so soon, that perhaps we’d have a chance to have something a little more solid.”
“I’m not sure if that would be possible for us, Vince. Seems like we have too much between us on a…professional level. I don’t know if we could ever really see our way past that.”
“I could. I did.”
I put my hands in my pants pockets. “I guess I couldn’t.”
“So, where do we stand then? Professionally?”
“I’m assuming you’re aware of the investigation being dropped.” He was nodding his head and starting to speak as I continued. “Thank you for that.” He stilled, his eyes narrowed on me, and I could have kicked myself. I guess I’d thought that this being a random hotel suite that there’d be no concern for listening devices. He was hosting a high-stakes, illegal poker game in the next room, for goodness sake. “I’m sorry. I thought it would be okay to speak freely here.”
“It is. Sorry, it was just a gut reaction. We’re fine here.” He waved a hand. “Go on.”
“I came by tonight, not only to tell you that I couldn’t see you anymore, but to thank you for what you did. Getting those men to discredit Bubba Kinney was a stroke of genius.”
He was quiet for a few moments, and I almost thought he was about to search me for a wire or something the way he was looking at me, with such a studied countenance. Finally, he said, “I wanted to help in some way. I couldn’t go with you to Chicago.”
“I know that,” I said softly.
“I’m glad it helped.”
“It did.”
“Where does it all stand now?”
I gave him a brief rundown of the Joseph family’s exodus from Chicago, the relative assurance that it was over, and the fact that JoJo had never been mentioned by Raymond to anyone.
“He’s staying with you? Is that smart?”
I shrugged. “We didn’t have many options given that we wanted to get Halia and her daughter squared away as soon as possible.”
“Still…”
“He’s going to lay low. His appearance has already drastically changed, and he’s just been hanging out at the house, playing cards with the boys. And let’s face it, if you didn’t know he arrived in Vegas, nobody does.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t know he was here.”
“Did you?”
A small, reluctant smile graced his face. “No.”
A look passed between us. One of what might have been. I took my hands from my pockets and walked toward him, holding my arms out. He opened his, and I gave him a quick hug. “Thanks, Vince.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’d say I owed you one, but I’m afraid what you might charge me,” I said jokingly, but it wasn’t really funny. Too close to the truth. But I knew I owed him for this. And so did he.
“I guess I’d better get going,” I said as I stepped away from his warm body.
“Not playing tonight?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m trying to limit my games to casinos. I don’t want to be on anybody’s books.”
“Not even mine?”
“Especially yours.”
“Fair enough, but you know a seat is always open for you at a table of mine, Anna.”
“I know,” I said. I didn’t add that I hoped I never again took him up on it. “I appreciate it.” He picked up the ledger, and we headed toward the door to the rest of the suite. “Would you like me to look appropriately chastised? Be an example to the players out there?”
His mouth twitched up. “Too bad we don’t have any ketchup or something we could dribble down you to look like blood. No one out there would owe me again.”
“But that’s not what you want, not really.”
“True.”
I waved to two of the players at the table when I walked by and demurred their offer to join them, and then I stopped and chatted with Carla for a moment. Vince handed her the ledger back and she put it on the floor beside her chair, then looked closely at me.
On the drive home, I thought about how I could repay Vince for siccing the dogs on Bubba Kinney. I didn’t like owing him, but I needed to think of a repayment that was still on a professional level and didn’t involve a resurrection of JoJo.
Obviously, it was in Vince’s best interest that the investigation into Raymond was dropped, but he’d done it for me, too, and I’d like to repay that if I could. Partly as a thank you, and partly because I didn’t want to have Vince hanging over my head in anyway if I was going to be with Jack.
And judging by the sleeping body waiting in my bed for me when I got home, I was definitely going to be with Jack.
I hurriedly threw my clothes off and went to the bed wearing only my bra and panties. He turned over when I crawled in beside him. “You have too many clothes on,” he whispered. “Let me take care of that for you.”
And he did.
Later, lying in the darkness, he asked, “How’d it go?”
“Okay. Better than I thought, I guess.”
He turned my very pliant and sated body over, then pulled me to him, spooning us. “Any regrets?”
I snorted. “You ask me that now? After everything we just did?”
He placed a kiss on my shoulder. “That’s why I waited until now to ask.”
“No,” I whispered, taking his hand from my hip and bringing it to my front, holding it between both of mine. “No regrets.”
It was an odd Saturday, my second one of watching games all day with Ben at home and not having money on any of them. Raymond, much impressed by our TV room, barely left his seat all day. Pretty much only for the john and food.
Which is how it should be on college basketball Saturdays.
There was no Hummer, but the promise of another night with Jack awaited me and it was a good replacement.
He’d gotten a call early in the morning – scaring the crap out of me – and had to go to a crime scene, but had promised to come by tonight after he was done.
Lor had announced that morning to Ben – before I got up - that she was going out for the day and then had a date that evening, so we were on our own for meals. Ben and Raymond had already had breakfast, and I got by on coffee and a bagel. I offered to either call out for delivery or heat up leftovers later on, and that seemed to work for Raymond and Ben.
We ended up, the three of us, calling out for pizza when we discovered that all the ziti leftovers were gone, sent home with Jimmy last night, no doubt. Jimmy called about the time we finished up our pizza to see if anybody was up for cards. Which, of course, we were.
Jack came in as we were just shuffling up the deck, and I heated him some pizza which he ate as we played.
Nice, quiet, Saturday night playing cards with the gang.
Jimmy asked if we knew the score of the final west-coast game played that afternoon, and I went into our office to call it up on the Internet. As I rounded my desk, I saw the NPR tote bag sitting on the floor, leaning against the leg well of the desk.
I had totally forgotten about the DNA testing. Well, not forgotten, but had certainly shoved it from my mind during the trip to Chicago, and the two days we’d been back. The results were waiting for me in a brown envelope in my desk drawer. Did I want to know this information right now, with Jack and Ben down the hallway?
Fate intervened and Jack walked into the office. “Never mind, I got the score for Jimmy off of my phone.”
Not that he could see it from where he stood, and it in itself wouldn’t divulge anything, but I nudged the tote bag a little farther under my desk with my foot. A little farther away from having to deal with it.
“Oh, great, thanks,” I said and walked past Jack and back down the hallway.
“You know, you can get those on your iPhone.”
“I know. Lor set that all up for me, but I don’t know all the bells and whistles on that thing yet.” Neither of us mentioned my other phone, the JoJo phone, that was much more simplistic. And long gone.
As we came back into the living room, Jimmy was writing down something in his little tablet that he kept scores and results in. It was the size of Ben’s, but where as Ben’s tablets were cheap ones with spiral wiring at the top, Jimmy’s were small, leather-covered ones that opened like a book. The leather was navy and had a red piping stripe across the top third. A red, satin marking ribbon dangled from the top.
I looked at the ledger closely as cogs and wheels fell into place.
“Oh, my God,” I said to Jack. “I know who killed Paulie.”