Lucky Bastard by Deborah Coonts

or he was up to his ass in alligators. But what was the connection?
    Beat the heck out of me.
    “I’ll start the tape around one a.m. ,” Jerry said. “That’s right after the break where your girl takes a phone call. I presume that’s the one from Dane. You said she didn’t bust out until close to two?”
    “Two, right, but I said she made a phone call.”
    “No.” Jerry shook his head and cued the feed. The monitor flashed to life. “Here, watch it for yourself.”
    I’d been right, Sylvie Dane had been a real looker—style and class with just enough trashy thrown in to call attention to herself in Vegas. Pale, her face drawn, and the looked of the hunted in her eyes, she played aggressively for sure, but more than that—she played with reckless abandon. And from the reaction of some of her compatriots, they were starting to smell a rat. Bad beats were part of the game, but when one player hit a string of luck that defied the odds, the others began to get twitchy. And there were so many ways to cheat.… Of course, I knew how Sylvie did it. But, during the game, she kept her eyes averted behind glasses with lenses just gray enough to obscure the color difference in her eyes.
    Jerry was right. Clearly annoyed, Sylvie fished her phone out of her handbag—the same one she’d died holding—and answered the call, cupping her hand around her mouth as she spoke. The conversation had been brief.
    I wondered who had called her. “Are there any more calls?”
    Jerry shook his head. “I checked twenty minutes either side. Nothing. You can always check her phone.”
    “Funny enough, that was missing from the crime scene.”
    His eyes widened a bit as he looked at me and took a long pull on his cigarette. He didn’t have to say anything, I could tell we were both on the same page—Dane had time to lift the phone from her purse.
    One thing I didn’t know: Was lying a protective habit or a calculation with Dane?
    Either way, it so did not work for me.
    But now was not the time to think about Dane—it just pissed me off. And when I was pissed, I couldn’t think. I turned my attention back to the poker game unfolding in front of me. While Sylvie was a curiosity, I knew her story—at least I thought I did. On the other hand, a couple of the others at the table were more interesting. I tapped the screen. “That guy there.”
    “Kevin Slurry.” Jerry answered as he took a pull on his cigarette then blew a ring of smoke.
    I watched the ring dissipate. “They call him ‘the Hawk,’ right?”
    “Yep. A big-stakes amateur who loves to slow play, then swoop in for the kill.”
    “He had just bought in to the big game when I had arrived in the Poker Room and had my altercation with the Stoneman. I find it curious that he was playing the thousand-dollar buy-in before that. Doesn’t his motor run on higher octane adrenaline?”
    “He doesn’t normally go for the satellite games. But, from the looks of it, he’s cleaning everyone’s clock.” Multicolored chips stacked high in rows in front of him formed a wall of money, gaudy enough to get all the attention.
    “The cat who ate the canary,” I commented as one of the pros motioned the Stoneman over to the table and had a whispered conversation with him. I couldn’t tell what was said, the cameras in the Poker Room were not equipped with audio, but the conversation was heated and left the pro red faced with anger.
    “What’s that guy’s name again?” I tapped the pro’s image on the screen. “I’ve seen him around.”
    “Morton.” Jerry pulled on his cigarette, then gazed with narrowed eyes through the smoke at the image on the screen. “First name Felix, but no one calls him that to his face if they value their skins. Most refer to him as ‘the Professor.’ He’s from somewhere back East, I think. Chases the big money.”
    “Stop the tape,” I said a bit louder than I had intended, making Jerry jump. “Who is that?”
    “Where?” He leaned