James Swain - Gift sense

Then he ran out of the casino as fast as his legs would carry him.

Not everyone who worked at the Acropolis was taking part in the battle royale on the casino floor. People were getting hurt out there, and many of Nick's less courageous employees chose not to participate. These included the waitresses and bartender at Nick's Place, a group of Mexican dishwashers and chambermaids, and several bookkeepers. Together they cowered in the employee lounge, waiting for the bedlam to subside.

Roxanne sat among them, biting her nails. She'd stepped out of the elevator five minutes earlier and had nearly been hit by a flying chair. Running to the lounge, she'd bummed a cigarette off a slow-witted chambermaid named Dolores and waited it out with the rest of them.

"I thought you had a date?" Dolores said, always the snoop. "What happened?"

"It didn't work out," Roxanne said coolly.

Dolores cackled. Earlier, she'd caught Roxanne in the bathroom preening, her perfume heavy enough to choke a horse.

"Didn't work out," Dolores squawked like a parrot. "Honey, you were gone only forty-five minutes."

"It sure seemed longer," Roxanne said, trying to make light of it.

"What happened?"

"You heard what I said-it didn't work out," Roxanne snapped. "It happens, okay?"

"Was he that bad?"

Roxanne stomped her foot and the kitchen help looked up in alarm. Not a one had a green card, and they were all scared as hell.

"Stop it," she told Dolores.

Dolores cackled again. "My, my. Aren't we sensitive tonight."

"Must I tell you the gory details?" Roxanne said.

"Yeah!" Dolores said.

Roxanne lowered her voice to a whisper. "I went to his room, had room service bring up two surf and turfs, then set the table, and put on some music. Then I got a call. His son's missing and presumed dead. I call around the casino and find him and he comes upstairs. It was so sad; I figured the least I could do was console him."

Dolores, who couldn't buy a social life, looked ready to pee in her pants. "Yeah," she said breathlessly. "What happened then?"

"Nothing," Roxanne said sadly.

Dolores's face caved in. "What do you mean, nothing?"

"I mean, nothing happened."

"But…"

"He fell asleep," Roxanne said, stifling a little sob and rubbing her eye with the sleeve of her silk blouse. "He went into his room to make a call. When he didn't come out, I went in and found him lying on the bed. God, I just can't win."

"Oh, baby," Dolores said, putting her arm around Roxanne's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

"Me, too," Roxanne said, crying silently.

At 10:20, Roxanne stuck her head out of the lounge. Nick and his troops were in the pit applauding Joe Smith, who stood on a blackjack table with his shirt off, doing tricks with his muscles. A man in cowboy clothes lay on the floor, sleeping soundly.

Stubbing out her cigarette, Roxanne said her good-byes. Then, just as she had a thousand times before, she walked across the casino floor to the front entrance, opting to take the long way to her car, which was parked in the employee lot in back. Everyone who worked in the casino had seen her do it, and everyone knew why.

Because Roxanne had a dream, no different from the rest of them. A dream of a better life, one without alarm clocks and mailboxes filled with bills and time clocks to punch. It was the dream of wealth, and it had made her leave her husband and come to Las Vegas. As she walked, she removed five silver dollars from her purse, kissing Eisenhower's profile on each. Then she shook them in her hand like a pair of dice. Every day for a thousand days, she'd gone through this ritual. The long walk, the coins, the kiss, the shake, and finally the moment of truth, when she'd feed her money into One-Armed Billy and blow a kiss at Joe Smith, who'd always wished her luck.

Every day the same ritual. She'd become part of the fabric. Some of the employees found it funny, others a little sad. Look, there goes Roxanne and her silver dollars. She kisses them for luck, you know. If anyone deserves to win the jackpot, it's her.

She slipped into the alcove and stared at Joe Smith's vacant stool. How careless of Nick to pull him out. When the casino's surveillance cameras had been updated, Nick had installed dummy cameras over One-Armed Billy, too cheap to rewire the ceiling at this end of the casino. Nick was his own man, and now he was going to pay for it.

Roxanne stepped up to Billy and held onto the giant arm while she removed the tennis ball and dropped it into her purse. For a split second, she caught her reflection in the polished brass. Words could not describe the look of exultation on her face.

She hesitated, savoring the moment before she released the giant arm and set the bells off that would bring Nick and the rest of the gang running. They'd see her jumping up and down, and once the initial shock wore off, they'd be happy for her good fortune. Everyone loved a winner, and everyone was going to love her.

Roxanne was sure of it.

But when she tried to release Billy's arm, her fingers became stuck. A man's hand had clasped itself over hers and was holding Billy's arm in place.

"Let go," she begged.

"No," the man said.

"Please."

But the man would not let go. She did not have the courage to look him in the eye, and instead looked into Billy's polished brass. It was Valentine, his face a bloody mess. Behind him, Wily stood in the alcove's entrance, filming her every move with a camcorder.

"I was hoping like hell it wasn't going to be you," she heard Valentine say.

You've got some balls," Bill Higgins said a few hours later, sitting on the edge of the mammoth granite desk in Nick's office and blowing steam off a cup of coffee.

Valentine sat on the couch, an ice pack pressed to his forehead. One of his judo exercises required him to stand on his head a few minutes a day to keep his neck strong, and he supposed this was why the cowboy had not split his skull open with the steel pipe. Bill was showing little sympathy, their twenty years of friendship about to go up in flames.

"You ride into my town like Wyatt Earp," Higgins went on, "conduct your own investigation, then nail the bastards without consulting the GCB or the police. I should haul you in."

"I called you first, didn't I?"

"So?"

"It's your collar," Valentine mumbled.

"My collar?" Higgins laughed derisively. "I can't take this in front of a judge without a story to go with it. It's nobody's collar until you explain to me what's going on."

Rising on shaky legs, Valentine went to the window behind Nick's desk and stared down. Eight police cruisers jammed the Acropolis's front entrance, their bubbles throwing an eerie red light onto the gawking crowd pushing at the wooden sawhorses. Three thousand miles away, he imagined another crowd was gathered, staring at a body lying beneath a sheet. His son's.

Valentine felt the pain well up in his chest. He needed to be alone for a while, to stare into the darkness. But if he didn't explain to Bill what had happened, Fontaine and his gang might walk. And no matter how bad he felt, he was not about to let that happen.

"How about I start at the beginning?" Valentine said.

"You mean when you rode into town?"

"No, I mean when this really started."

"I'm all ears," Higgins said.

"Ten years ago, Nick fell in love with Nola," Valentine began. "One night, they go on the catwalk and start screwing. A fight breaks out below. The guard who baby-sits One-Armed Billy comes running, and Nick goes ballistic. Nola's not stupid and she makes the connection. The guard beside Billy isn't for show. He's for real."

"The flaw Sherry Solomon was taking about."

"Right."

"Why did Sammy Mann say it didn't exist?"