A Cold Welcome
The cab dropped me at a dark alley a block away from the casino. The place was a fortress of glass and steel, a neon promise in a world of ten-cent regrets. It was a high-end joint, the kind that smelled of money, cologne, and a lie you could believe in for one night. I found Jamie Diamond sitting on a bench, a gray hat pulled low over his eyes.
He didn’t look up, just handed me a pair of tickets. “The name’s ‘The Grand Reserve,’ but it’s a house of ill-repute. Just in a better suit,” he said, his voice flat. “The game’s in the back room. ‘Blackjack with a Twist,’ they call it. The twist is, the fix is in, and it’s a cold one.”
The Fox and the Henhouse
We walked in, the air thick with the murmur of money and the clink of glasses. Jamie gave me the rundown. The casino was run by a shadowy figure, a man who liked to operate from the sidelines. The dealer, a sharp-eyed kid with a perpetual sneer, never broke eye contact with the cards. But it was the cocktail bunnies that drew my eye. All of them in tiny black outfits, all of them beautiful, all of them deadly. One of them, a blonde with a permanent smile and a pair of eyes that could cut a man in two, was the one Jamie had a hunch about.
“Her name’s Lola,” he said, a cold edge to his voice. “She’s been serving the table. Every time she comes by, I lose. It’s too perfect.”
I watched Lola work the floor, her eyes sweeping over the tables, a graceful predator. She was a moving part in a machine I couldn’t yet see. And my job was to find the other parts before the whole thing came crashing down.
