The bride and I won, but I was the only one there who was smiling. I lost my own hand, but I’d put only the minimum on that. I did the same play on the next hand, and the next. I had all my money back by that time and a little bit more.
The pit boss came back after a couple more hands and closed the table. I was up by about a thousand bucks by then, so I didn’t care. The bride got a bucket for her chips and headed for the cash-out window. I followed.
“Thanks for letting me ride your luck,” I said.
“It wasn’t luck,” she replied in a wooden voice.
“I know.”
She looked at me then, for the first time. “You work for the casinos, don’t you? You’re the first security man. The pit boss was the second.”
I shook my head. “No. I’m Quentin Draith.”
I held out my hand, but she ignored it. “Jenna Townsend,” she said.
“I don’t work here, and I doubt I ever will now. They hate me too, because I took their money.”
Jenna cashed out her chips. I did the same, but I bought a small bucket of silver dollars. She turned away, but I called to her.
“Mrs. Townsend? You want to mess with this casino in a new way?”
She froze, then turned back toward me, staring.
“I don’t know what problem you have with them, or how you did what you did, but I can add some pain for them tonight.”
“How?” she asked. Her eyes were intense, hungry.
I rattled my paper bucket of silver. It jingled and thudded. “Come with me to the dollar slots.”
She followed me, as did a dozen cameras and sets of eyes, I suspected. I felt a bit nervous pulling this, like I’d stumbled onto part of the late-night terrors going on in this city, but I wasn’t even sure of that. Maybe she was just angry because the hotel dry cleaners had put a burn mark in her expensive dress.
I had a hunch it was more than that, however, so I took a chance. I went to the biggest, gaudiest dollar-slot machine in the place and put five coins into it. Then I reached into my breast pocket and drew out Tony Montoro’s sunglasses. I put them on my face.
Jenna frowned at me. “What are you doing?”
“Pull the handle,” I said. “Now.”
She licked her lips, looking around briefly. Then she did it.
There was a strange sound. It wasn’t right—anyone who heard it would have known that. The handle snapped down, but instead of stopping at the usual spot, at about a forty-five degree angle, it kept going. It came down to a ninety, then past that so it aimed at the carpet. It didn’t go back up again.
I sucked in air through my teeth. I half expected coins to come gushing out, but they didn’t. What happened was worse. The dials on the face of the machine spun, showing fruit—why was it always fruit? Bananas, cherries, bells, and WIN signs flashed by. But they spun on and on too long, and before they were done, the rightmost dial came off its tracks like a wheel coming off a bike. A quick, sharp shrieking sound came out of the machine once, then it quit moving altogether.
I tucked away my sunglasses and stepped away from the machine. Jenna Townsend, her mouth hanging open, stepped after me. The slot machine gave a death rattle that sounded like gears grinding in an old stick-shift truck. A few defeated coins pissed out into the silver tray underneath the monster.
“What the hell did you do?” she asked in an excited whisper.
“Probably ten grand in damage,” I said.
“How did you do it?”
I shrugged and smiled. “Wait a second, you pulled the handle. You must have focused all your rage into that one yank.”
Jenna shook her head. “You’re risking your life, do you know that? I don’t even know you.”
“I’m Quentin Draith. I thought I mentioned that.”
“Draith? Do you run that blog full of crazy stuff online?”
“The same,” I said. “E-mail me sometime.”
She eyed me with suspicion. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing.”
“Slots. You want to keep going? Or are you done wrecking this place?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not done.”
“Before we do any more damage, can you tell me why you’re so angry?”
“It’s my husband,” she said. That dead tone had returned to her voice. “He’s gone. They say he just went someplace, but I know what happened. This place ate him.”
Ate him? The words rang in my mind. I nodded slowly, thinking of Dr. Meng. Maybe such a thing could happen. Maybe this woman wasn’t as crazy as she sounded.
“Want to tell me how you did that trick at the table?” I asked.
“You want to tell me how you did yours?”
“All right,” I said. “I made the guts of that machine turn into rubber. The metal went soft, and when you pulled the arm it twisted out of place and broke.”
She blinked at me, shaking her head. “OK then,” she said. “You did tell me first. I—uh-oh.”
I followed her gaze over my own shoulder. The pit boss was coming. He had two chunky members of the Lucky Seven security brigade behind him. Left with little choice, I decided to bluff it through.
“Can I help you?” I asked, meeting his charge head-on.