Lucky Bastard by Deborah Coonts Page A

forward.
    “There.” I pointed to a fuzzy image. A pair of jean-clad legs.
    Jerry pushed buttons and searched other feeds until he found the right one to back out. Blurry but recognizable.
    “Well I’ll be damned,” Jerry and I said in unison.
    We looked at each other. “You first,” I said.
    “The kid who was counting cards…”
    I’d forgotten about that. “What time were you tangled up with him?”
    “A little after two. He told me that he’d left the Poker Room because some of the players were hassling him, not letting him play.”
    “Not only the players.” I crossed my arms and leaned back. “He’s the kid I fired the Stoneman over.” I would’ve said the plot thickens, but that was too much of a cliché, even for me. “He must’ve been on break from one of the other tables or he wouldn’t have been allowed to stand there.” As I said it, the steward hustled him away from the table.
    But he’d been there long enough.
    “You think he was in on whatever scam was going down?”
    “It would be interesting to find out, wouldn’t it?”
    “You done with this one?” Jerry asked. At my nod, he rekeyed the original feed.
    I pointed to the man sitting opposite Sylvie Dane. “River Watalsky. I didn’t know he was back in the game.”
    A muscular guy with sandy brown hair cut military short, small angry eyes, and thin lips, Mr. Watalsky had a killer instinct, and an uncanny knack to get his card on the river, hence the nickname. Unfortunately, River’s luck ran hot and cold, and he was the last one to realize when it had turned icy. He’d won and lost so many fortunes even the oddsmakers in Vegas had quit laying odds on him. When he’d been down on his luck, I’d gotten him a job or two. Last I’d heard he’d been driving a cab.
    “Yeah, surprised me, too,” Jerry mumbled as he took the last drag on his cigarette—his fifth since I’d arrived but who was counting? “He’s a good guy. Nice to see luck smiling on him again.”
    Tonight, from the size of the stack in front of River and the fact he had a grand to buy in, I guessed Lady Luck had visited him once more. I didn’t know who won the tournament, but from the stack of chips in front of him, I’d bet he’d at least made it into the money.
    Jerry reached for his pack and shook another cigarette out. He lit it with the butt.
    “I thought you’d quit.” On the theory that secondhand smoke was worse than the filtered stuff, I scooched my chair away.
    “I’ve tried everything. Even some laser hocus-pocus, if you can believe that.”
    “No way.”
    “I knew it wouldn’t work when I saw the pile of butts in the bushes by the front door to the place, but I’m desperate. I’d try hypnosis if I wasn’t scared of what other suggestions might be implanted—I’ve seen those hypnotists on the Strip. My insurance premiums are through the roof. My wife is hounding my ass. Gotta love her, but she’s driving me crazy.”
    “My kind of gal.” I tapped River Watalsky’s image on the screen. “That guy can ferret out a cheat better than anybody I know. I wonder how come he was hoodwinked by the looker.”
    “He wasn’t.” Jerry let smoke out through his mouth then sucked it back in through his nose. I didn’t even know that was possible. “He got pretty steamed at Sylvie Dane.”
    “Really? What’d he do?”
    “Not much. The Stoneman stonewalled him, what could he do?”
    “Take matters into his own hands?”
    “Watalsky?” Jerry’s voice rose an octave as his eyebrows shot north. “No way.”
    “People kill so often for money that it’s become hackneyed. You know that.”
    “Yeah, but she was losing, remember?”
    “True, but something was going down, that much seems obvious. So, the two were in it together and she’d get the split later. I don’t know. There’s lotsa ways this could’ve worked.”
    “But Watalsky? If that guy has a mean bone, I’ve not seen it.” Jerry had dug in his heels.
    I shrugged.