Slots of Saturn: A Poker Boy Novel Read online

  For an instant panic seemed to flash over her face, then she got herself under control and asked, “Do you work here?”

  A logical question under the circumstances.

  “Actually, no,” I said, stopping far enough away so that I would give no threatening signs to either her, or her dog, who was looking up at me with a worried look in those big, brown eyes.

  “I’m just here to play in the tournament. My name’s Conway, and I know my way around this old hotel pretty well. It’s a confusing maze, even on the best of days. I’d be glad to help you if you need it.”

  “Actually,” she said, smiling at me, her face relaxing a little under her dark glasses, “I know exactly where I am. But thank you.”

  “Then can I help you find whatever it is that you’ve lost?” I asked.

  I knew my Ultra-Intuition Power had not been wrong. If she knew where she was, then her problem was that she had lost something else.

  My question made her jerk, and again her skin paled slightly, even noticeably without my vision super-power in use.

  “How did you know I am looking for someone?”

  I laughed. “How did you know I was coming toward you when you couldn’t hear me?”

  She thought for a moment, then laughed with me. “Top sirloin, rare.”

  I was impressed.

  “So I assume,” I said, pressing on with her problem, “that you have tried all the regular methods, such as having this person paged? Having an employee check the tournament room? And so on.”

  Modern casinos, and even old ones like the Horseshoe, are extremely easy to get lost in. And without clocks anywhere, and the focus on money and games, time can seem to vanish. People being lost in a casino is a common problem, and usually not one that would require Poker Boy’s help.

  But I knew, without a doubt, and from my Ultra-Intuition Power, that this woman needed me.

  “I have,” she said, nodding. “A number of times, actually. They are starting to think I am nuts.”

  “Who is missing?” I asked.

  Sometimes the best power a superhero has was to simply ask the right questions and then listen very carefully to the answer.

  “My husband,” she said, a look of caring and concern on her face.

  I could tell, by my heightened ability as a poker player and not as Poker Boy, that she really loved her husband. This wasn’t the old tired cliché of the married couple coming to Las Vegas and the husband dumping the blind wife and running off with a Keno girl.

  No, this guy was really missing.

  “When was the last time you were with him?” I asked.

  “We were eating lunch at the café downstairs, the one in the basement.”

  I knew the place well. It too had the feel of an old supper club, but it had been remodeled with the wood posts and low ceilings to look a little like a Carnegie library with tables. The waiters wore short, white aprons over black pants and white shirts and always seemed extra busy, even at times there was almost no one in the place. Every time I ate there I always felt as if I should order something more with my omelet, just to make it worth the waiter’s time and energy.

  “I’ve eaten there,” I said to her. “So what happened?”

  She took a deep breath, clearly blaming herself for what she was about to tell me.

  “I wanted to sit and just finish my tea, so Ben, my husband, said he would just go out in front of the restaurant and play the bank of slots there. He said he’d come back in and get me in fifteen minutes.”

  “He never did,” I said.

  She nodded. “I sat there for an hour, then paid the bill by charging it to our room. I got a waiter to help me get out of the restaurant and up the stairs to the slot machines, thinking Ben had gotten wrapped up in winning and had forgotten about coming back for me. No one around the top of those stairs remembered seeing him.”

  My Ultra-Intuition Power was rumbling in the back of my brain, clearly almost ready to echo me a deep-voiced insight.

  “I had him paged,” she said, “and I had security look for him. About two hours after he vanished I went back to our room and waited until about an hour ago. I don’t know what to do, to be honest with you.”

  “And I know the Vegas police won’t help until a certain amount of time has gone by,” I said.

  Again she nodded. “It took me an hour on the phone to finally get that figured out.”

  My Ultra-Intuition superpower was still rumbling, but nothing was echoing forth from the depths just yet. I still needed a little more information.

  “Did he say which bank of slots he was going up to play?”

  She shrugged. “No, but he liked the really old slots. That’s why he liked staying downtown instead of out on the strip.”

  Ghost slots!

  My Ultra-Intuition shouted at me, the sound echoing around inside my head like my brain was missing.

  “Ghost slots,” I said out loud, not really meaning to.

  “Ghost slots?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Would you mind walking me down to the restaurant and showing me anything else you might remember.”

  She cocked her head sideways a little. “I don’t even know you, Mr. Conway.”

  “Actually, the name is Conway Moore,” I said. “And I think you do know me. And could use my help.”

  “Are you the police? Or a detective?”

  “Neither,” I said. “Just a person who helps when someone needs help.”

  She reached out slowly and touched my arm, then my shoulder, then ran her hand over my face, noting my black hat, lack of facial hair, and black leather coat that was part of my superhero uniform I always wear.

  The hat was a Fedora-style and combined with my coat, it seemed to focus my energy when in a casino.

  Then she nodded. “You’re right, I do need your help. And I would be willing to pay for it.”

  I laughed. “Payment is not necessary. I make my money playing poker, and that’s good enough for me. Just say thank you when we find Ben.”

  Again she sort of stood there, clearly running all her emotions and senses about me over in her mind. Could she trust me? Should she trust me? Did she have any better options at the moment?

  Under normal circumstances, this woman would never accept help from some strange man. But Poker Boy has a way of putting people at ease, making them feel as if they know me, without ever really knowing anything about me. I am convinced it is one of the superpowers that goes along with the job, but I couldn’t come up with a decent name for it.

  And I had tried. Ultra-Acceptance Power didn’t feel right. Come-to-me-for-help Power didn’t do it either. For a time I had called it my Trust-Me Superpower, but that sort of went away as any bad name does.

  Plus, I couldn’t call it up at will. It was sort of just there.

  “Okay, Mr. Conway Moore,” she said. “I’ll thank you now for your help, and after we find Ben.”

  “Deal,” I said. It seemed my unnamed, superpower worked even on the blind.

  She stuck out her hand and I grasped the warm, firm grip. “Deal,” she said. “And by the way, my name is Samantha. And this is Sue.”

  She bent down slightly and patted the top of the beautiful golden-haired dog.

  “Sue and Samantha MacDuff,” the woman added.

  “Nice meeting you both,” I said.

  I am convinced we were both glad I didn’t ask the obvious question about why anyone would name a dog Sue.

  And it took every bit of super will-power I had to not say, when she turned toward the elevator, pulling her dog around, “Lead on MacDuff.”

  I didn’t say it, but I wanted to.

  Chapter Three

  A SIDEKICK JOINS THE FUN

  SAMANTHA, SUE, and I wound our way through the gaming tables and slot machines until we were near the front of the cafe. I maneuvered us into an area out of the way so that Samantha would have a wall to lean against.

  As I had expected, there were no older-loo
king slots anywhere near the front of the restaurant. In fact, I had been watching for older slots since we got to the main casino floor, and hadn’t seen any.

  “Okay, what does your husband look like?” I asked, just a fraction of a second before I realized I was asking that question of a blind woman. “Oh, sorry.”

  She laughed and patted my arm. “It’s all right. I’ve only been blind the last eight years of my life. And I was already married to Ben before this happened.”

  “Okay,” I said, again restraining from asking about how she had become blind. Instead I focused on the task at hand. “So anything you can tell me would help. Height, hair color, balding or not? And do you know what he was wearing this morning? That sort of thing.”

  She nodded, turning her head slightly to listen as a machine half the room away released a flood of coins, one right after the other into a tray, banging as a loud alarm went off. Casinos always wanted to draw attention to any time they gave away money, but never when they took it. Just good business sense. But any customer with any common sense knew they didn’t build those multi-billion dollar resorts out on the Strip by giving away too much money.

  “Ben stands five-foot-ten,” Samantha said, “weighs about one hundred and seventy, and keeps himself in good shape. He has thinning brown hair, with a hairline that has started to recede slightly. He was wearing tan slacks, a brown golf shirt, and deck shoes this morning.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Will you be all right standing here for a few minutes while I look around?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said.

  I touched her arm lightly, then turned away, heading down the flight of stairs in to the restaurant. I had to check a few things before I went any farther in helping her.

  A number of times I have had people come to me for help who were actually in no need of help. I wish I had a superpower that could tell when someone was lying or not. But I didn’t, so I had to rely on the old fashioned way, asking questions like a detective would. And even though I had approached her, and everything about her story made sense, I still had to check.

  I found the restaurant manager and within a few seconds confirmed the woman’s story. She and a guy had been having breakfast, he left her after they had finished, and she seemed to wait for him for an hour before paying and asking to be helped up the stairs.

  That was all the information I needed. That, combined with my Ultra-Intuition Power confirmed for me she was telling me the truth.

  “Any luck?” she asked me before I got within ten feet of her. Clearly this woman’s hearing was fantastic, or the steak I had eaten for dinner was still with me.

  “I didn’t see him anywhere,” I said. “And there are no older slot machines anywhere near here.”

  “Really?” she asked, seemingly surprised. “When I came up to the top of the stairs after waiting, the manager asked a few of the people in the area if they had seen Ben. I heard one of them tell him they thought they had seen him playing the old Saturn Slots near the stairs.”

  I glanced at the staircase. No Saturn Slots anywhere to be seen. Just a half dozen video poker games and some newer Monopoly machines. I didn’t want to think about the chance those Saturn Slots had been ghost slots.

  “Let’s go get some more information.” I took her gently by the arm and led her, and her dog Sue, through the tight rows of slots, past the gaming tables, and toward the front desk.

  I was hoping the woman with the big brown eyes would be behind the main desk, and I was in luck. She looked up at me, smiled fondly, and for an instant I was lost again.

  But the feeling only lasted an instant, since I wasn’t just Conway Moore checking in, I was Poker Boy, helping a woman and her dog. Superhero duties come first, even over lust.

  The woman with brown eyes looked over at the blind woman and frowned, a worried look crossing that beautiful face. “Mrs. MacDuff, have you found your husband yet?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Samantha said.

  Clearly this woman had been involved with the paging that Samantha had done earlier.

  “So what can I do to help?” the woman asked, glancing at me.

  I knew right then that this brown-eyed employee would be a valuable assistant. I’m not sure which of my powers told me that, but I was convinced.

  “I’m hoping we could get your help, or someone’s help in the back office,” I said, smiling at her and putting on my best Poker Boy charm. “We need to find out where a certain bank of slots are in the casino. Or if they are still here.”

  “And that would help Mrs. MacDuff find her husband?”

  “It might,” I said. “It’s the only bit of information we have to work with at the moment.

  I didn’t want to get into my theory that Ben might have been taken by ghost slots. Neither of these women, or Sue the dog for that matter, would believe me. At least not yet. And I didn’t want to make myself look like a fool without some proof to back up my theory.

  The woman with the brown eyes held my gaze for a long moment, as if she knew what I was thinking, then she nodded. “All right.”

  She glanced over at a man dressed in the same uniform she was. “Dan, I’m going to help these folks for a few minutes, then head for home.”

  Dan only nodded and kept typing something into a computer in front of him. Clearly this woman was about to get off for the night. Normally, if I wasn’t working on a case, that might have interested me. Now that part of my interest would have to wait for another time.

  The woman indicated that we should move to a heavy-looking wood door off one side of the main desk. She led us inside and down a hallway to a room with big desks. I could tell at a glance that this office had been in use for the same function for a lot of years, and had more than likely been missed in the big remodeling back in the eighties and nineties.

  In all my years before becoming a superhero, I hadn’t managed to get behind the scenes once in a hotel or casino. But since becoming Poker Boy, it seemed I did a lot of wandering around in offices and secure areas that most normal folk didn’t even know existed.

  The only man in the room stood immediately as we entered. “What’s going on, Patty?”

  Now I knew the brown-eyed desk clerk’s name. It fit her, actually.

  “This is Mrs. MacDuff,” Patty said, indicating Samantha. “And Mr. Moore. This is our Manager on Duty, Bob Silvers.”

  Bob’s stern look immediately melted when he heard Samantha’s name. “No luck finding your husband yet?”

  Samantha shook her head. “Mr. Moore is helping me. It’s still too early to get the police involved.”

  “So what can we do to help?” Bob asked, glancing at me, then back at Samantha.

  I took the lead, using my nicest, most convincing voice. “Two things, actually,” I said. “First off, would it be possible to look up where a bank of slot machines were in this casino?”

  Bob sort of jerked, clearly catching my use of past tense. He turned to stare at me. “You don’t think that—.”

  Clearly Bob had heard of ghost slots. It sometimes surprised me how many people in Vegas had. But I didn’t want him blurting that out just yet, so I interrupted him.

  “I don’t know what to think just yet,” I said. “But if we know where the slots that Ben MacDuff was seen playing are located, we might be able to find something on a surveillance camera that would tell us what happened.”

  He glanced at the frowning face of Samantha, and then at the worried face of Patty, and nodded. Without another word, he turned back to his desk and grabbed two badges that said “Guest” on them in big red letters.

  “Wear these,” Bob said. “Patty will help you look up the information you need. If you don’t mind staying a little after your shift, Patty?”

  “Not at all,” she said, smiling at me as she helped hook Samantha’s guest pass on her white blouse.

  And with that look, I knew that Poker Boy had found his sidekick. I had no doubt that Patty had her own share of superpowers to b
ring to the case of the missing MacDuff. With Patty, the fun part was going to be figuring out what those powers might be. I would bet that most of them were hooked into those big, brown eyes.

  And the ability to make a hotel uniform look sexy.

  Chapter Four

  ONE OFFICE, NO WINDOWS, NO ESCAPE

  PATTY LED ME, Samantha, and her dog, Sue, down a well-lit back hallway of the Horseshoe Hotel and Casino to a large file room.

  The place was windowless and had a few library-like tables in the center, with old file cabinets all around the outside of the room. A number of computers filled smaller work desks at different spots around the room, and each computer had a stack of files beside it. There was no one in the room when we got there, which actually relieved me.

  Working in a room like this was my worst nightmare. The place smelled of old paper and bad air-conditioning, and I had a hard time imagining working in such a room for eight hours a day.

  I had no doubt that if I tried to work regularly in there, even just a few hours a day, the plain painted walls and pictures of old Vegas taken back in the fifties would soon close in, smashing me like a fly between the pages of a book. I would be nothing more than a blood and guts splatter over the file cabinets, my very essence merging with the dull paint and old photos.

  Luckily, I had learned how to play poker for a living and became Poker Boy so I didn’t have to sit very often in such dull rooms.

  “We’re trying to get all of the most important old information entered into the computer system,” Patty said. “But it’s taking time, and with a casino this old it’s a difficult task at best. There’s a lot of information and people only work on it during slow times.”

  “And with the World Series of Poker starting up, this isn’t a slow time,” I said.

  “Far from it,” Patty said, laughing as she got Samantha seated at a table with Sue sitting at her feet. Then Patty sat down at one of the computers and keyed in the words “Saturn Slots” as I watched over her shoulder, trying to focus on her and what she was doing instead of the room around me.