Lee Child - First Thrills

LISE S. BAKERis a licensed private investigator and a member of the World Association of Detectives. She has been nominated nine years in a row for California Investigator of the Year by CALI (California Association of Licensed Investigators). Her award-winning novel The Loser’s Club was inspired by John Lutz’s fictional detective, Fred Carver. Collaborating with Lutz on the short story “Eye of the Storm” is a dream come true for this writer/detective.

Currently, Detective Baker is working on a murder case for the Northern California Innocence Project. This is in addition to running her agency, L.S. Baker Investigations, which specializes in fraud investigations.

I’ vealways loved Vegas. And not just in a “I love going there” kind of way, which I do. It’s really much more than that. Vegas is like a second home to me. In the same way some people turn all warm and tingly inside when they stroll into, say, a knitting shop, that’s how I feel as soon as I take my first footsteps onto the blood-red carpeting of a Vegas casino.

I’m home.

Funny thing is, I’m a doctor, a general practitioner, and a darn good one. So you’d think after seeing my fair share of emphysema cases and a battalion of concerned parents whose teenage kids have just started lighting up, that I’d despise the cigarette smoke that clings to the ceiling and the table felt. But you’d be wrong. I love it, despite having quit the nasty habit to win a bet some twenty years ago.

And who says gambling can be dangerous to your health?

The sounds of chips plinking against one another are like birdsongs to me. I love watching the waitresses work the room-the ones destined to seduce some high roller and those still strutting their stuff, despite being as well-worn as flea market furniture. I love the unending sea of lights and the symphony of the slots, praising the winners with their bells and chimes, while goading the losers into pointlessly dropping more down the hatch. But what I love most about Vegas is winning money and that’s something I’ve always been very good at doing.

Now, Lee Anne, she’s my wife, might be quick to disagree with that last claim, but she tends to focus on the negative. See, as any real gambler knows, you’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet and that means the losses with the wins. What Lee Anne can’t seem to grasp is that even with the expected dry spells over the years, if you add it all up, I’ve won more money than I’ve lost, which is more than most players could honestly claim.

Some folks who know me best, Lee Anne for one, might argue that I had no business attending the AMA symposium on osteoporosis, held at the Luxor in Vegas, but Lou (he would be the head of my group, and the one flipping the bill) didn’t seem to mind since I needed the continuing medical education credits.

“Bobby, do you really have to go for a whole week?” Lee Anne asked, while I was packing.

One thing to know about my wife, she only calls me Bobby if she’s really unhappy about something I’ve done. To my friends, I’m Bob and at work I’m Dr. Robert Tomlinson, but at home, at least lately, I’m far more Bobby than I am Bob. Over the years, I’ve come to use Bobby myself whenever my behavior veers a few degrees from the center.

Yeah, I told her, I had to go. But of course, that was white lie. I did have to go, but not for the CMEs. I mean, Vegas wouldn’t be Vegas without a little bit of sin thrown into the mix. You know, take the sweet with the bitter.

My first night in town, I skipped out on the Cardinal Healthcare- sponsored cocktail hour and rolled into the Bellagio’s vast casino. I wanted to wet my whistle with a little blackjack at the fifteen dollar table just to get the juices flowing. Since most of us docs were staying at the Luxor, I had no desire to bump into any of them out on the floor. See, I was harboring a wee bit of guilt about spending my practice’s hard earned money on the conference and not being the all-functions, all-the-time sort of guy. I figured, so long as I didn’t run into anybody who recognized me, I wouldn’t have to feel bad about having skipped out on the cocktail hour. Of course, even at the Bellagio I was spotted. But later I’d be glad because that was how I got introduced to The Dead Club.

The cocktail hour back at the Luxor was only half-cocked and already I was down three hundred on a string of hard-luck hands. The thing about strings, though, for good or bad, is that they’re destined to end. The MIT math wonks who claim that sort of thinking is nothing but a gambling fallacy are full of S-H-I-T, if you ask me. I can feel when a win streak is coming on. It starts in my toes and buzzes up my legs like electricity; I had that feeling now. The first two cards of my next hand were the six of clubs and four of spades. Naturally, I doubled down, intending to cut my current losses in half with a win. My next card was the jack of clubs. The dealer bust hitting on thirteen, and just like that, I heard that bad-luck streak snap like the string of an overplayed guitar.

That was when I met Grover.

He sat down on the empty stool to my left and placed a hundred dollar initial bet, which he proceeded to lose in seven seconds. His follow-up was an even two hundred smackers.

“Looks like you’ve soaked up all the good luck this table’s dishing out tonight,” he said to me.

I’d won my fifth straight hand and he’d dropped his third.

“There’s more luck to be had,” I replied.

Now Grover was the sort of fellow you didn’t easily forget and I knew that I’d seen him earlier in the day at the symposium registration booth. He had a grizzly-bear frame, a thick Santa Claus head of snow-white hair, and a matching snowy goatee. I was pretty confident he didn’t recognize me.

“So what sort of doc are you?” he asked.

Guess I was wrong.

“GP,” I said. “You?”

“Orthopedist. Name’s Grover Theodore Marshall. Friends just call me Grove.”

Grove had a vise for a handshake and a deep Southern accent. I never bothered asking where he was from, or what hospital he worked at, and he never bothered to tell me.

“Look at that,” Grove said.

“What?”

“That woman over there.”

My eyes followed his finger until I spotted an attractive thirtysome-thing brunette at the craps table.

“What about her?” I asked.

“She keeps touching her hair with her left hand. Hundred bucks says the next time she does it, it’ll be with her right.”

“You serious?”

I let my attention wander and the dealer had to ask if I wanted to set down a bet. I hated passing on a deal when I was so hot, but there was something compelling about Grove. We left the table together.

On closer inspection, the woman was well into her forties, and wore too much makeup.

I reasoned that either Grove was lying to me and she had been touching her hair with her right hand all along, which made it a sucker bet, or he was thinking that I was thinking he was lying, in which case he’d expect me to double the stakes, but only if I got to bet the right hand-a wager he’d politely decline. Trusting my gut, I went with the left-hand touch. Three seconds later I was a hundred richer.

“Goddamit!” Grove said, slapping my back hard enough to rattle my lungs. “I was so sure she was going to go right.”

He slid a hundred from a thick wad and pressed the crisp bill into my palm.

“Just dumb luck,” I said.