he’s bluffing. You’ll be gone the next hand, anyway.”
Seconds more passed like hours crawling by. Nighthawk could see sweat beading Flowers’s forehead. His hands twitched once, reaching for his final chips, and then froze as the door to the hotel suite opened. He looked back over his shoulder, but it was only a waiter delivering Galante’s sandwich on a covered silver tray. He also carried a small folding table.
“Goddamn it,” Flowers swore.
The waiter, an elderly man in hotel livery, came to the table.
“Who ordered the steak sandwich?” he asked.
Cyn, who had resumed her seat, nodded at Galante. “Over here.”
“Bring me a whiskey on the rocks,” Galante said with a glance at Irina. He returned his attention to the game as the waiter deftly set the folding table down, after Cyn scootched her chair over to make room.
Irina approached with the drink as Flowers pushed his remaining chips into the pot with an agonized gesture. Fortune looked at Monroe, who shook his head.
“Your move,” he said.
Still smiling, Fortune turned over his hole card, revealing a third deuce.
“Goddamn it!” Flowers stood up suddenly, pushing his chair back and bumping into Irina, who staggered. The drink that she was delivering to Galante slid from her tray into his lap.
For one brief moment time seemed frozen and Nighthawk could smell the danger that suddenly speared the air. He started to rise. Irina, a stricken look on her face, started to bend over, reaching out with the cloth napkin that had been draped over her forearm. “I’m sor—”
Galante swiveled in his chair. “You clumsy bitch!” He slapped her in the face hard enough to knock her to the floor.
There was another moment of silence, broken by a wordless shout of rage from the waiter, who swung the tray bearing the steak sandwich and accompanying fries at Galante, catching him on the side of the head and knocking him and his chair onto the floor.
And suddenly all hell broke loose.
Khan rose from his seat with a feline roar and reached for the waiter, but the old man was changing. In the blink of an eye his body mass seemed to double, shredding the uniform that he wore. All the added mass was solid muscle. The waiter backhanded Cyn and she slammed into the wall and rebounded, stunned. Khan reached across Galante’s fallen chair and he and the waiter grappled. They stood locked together for a moment, clearly matched in strength.
Dutton, Nighthawk thought. He grabbed his client, hoisted him over the bar, and dropped him behind it onto the floor, turning back in time to see Khan and the waiter smash onto the table and roll over it, scattering chips and cards. John Fortune dove away. Tor Johnson stood, uncertain. Flowers drew a pistol he’d had in a shoulder holster. Lilith drew a blade and moved to Siraj, but Meathooks, next to her, lashed out, catching her in the side with the metallic hooks that’d sprung from his hands. Lilith staggered backwards, her gown suddenly torn and very bloody.
It was all happening so fast that Nighthawk could do nothing but stand his ground. Besides, his duty was to Dutton and his job was to stay between him and whatever danger might come his way. So far, all of the action was across the table.
Meathooks stumbled against Flowers as he avoided the sweep of Lilith’s blade. Charlie Flowers was shouting and spraying shots. One struck Prince Siraj as he rose from his chair. Khan and the waiter were hammering at each other, as a dazed Cyn pushed to her knees and unleashed a gout of flame that ripped the chandelier from the ceiling and set off the smoke alarm. Part of the heavy glass-and-metal fixture landed on Siraj. Fortune shouted, “Help him,” but before either of his bodyguards could move, Khan and the waiter, still locked together, lurched off the table and bumped into Cyn. Her flames licked across the room. Nighthawk felt the heat of it wash over him, but he was only at its very edge. Part of it flicked across Meek, who cried out in pain, raised both hands, and filled the suite with rainbow light.
The rainbows seemed to wrinkle the very air. Whoever they touched simply disappeared. Only Charles Dutton, on the floor behind the bar, and Nighthawk, at Meek’s side, remained. All that remained of the other players, companions, and servers were a few untidy heaps of clothing and jewelry that marked where they’d been standing, sitting, or sleeping.
The window drapes were aflame. Nighthawk, quelling the questions screeching in his brain, arose and put out the fire before the sprinklers came on, using a soda water bottle from the stocked bar. As he was spraying down the draperies the two women emerged from the bedroom, where they’d been occupied.
“Siraj?” Margot Bellerose cried. “What happened? What happened?” Her voice rose in panic. “Where is everyone?”
Nighthawk turned to Meek, who was slapping at the burning sleeve of his jacket. Teleportation, he thought. “Where did you send them?” Nighthawk demanded.
But Meek shook his head. “Not where. When.”
NICK WILLIAMS HAD NEVER been to Chicago before, let alone its Gold Coast district. The Playboy Mansion was Beaux Arts, built to impress, four stories of classical French brick and exposed limestone with a steep slate roof and attic windows flanked with Grecian urns. The chauffeur who’d met him at the airport carried his suitcase up the walkway. Nick carried the Argus’s case himself. He paused for a moment to read the brass plaque set over the main door: Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare. Nick grinned, his high school Latin coming in handy for more than the mottos of movie studios: If You Don’t Swing, Don’t Ring.
The February weather was much cooler than Los Angeles, and he wished he’d brought a heavier coat. But it was warmer inside, especially in the parlor off the black-and-white marble foyer. Hef awaited in an ornate Victorian wingback chair upholstered in rose velvet, flanked not by classical urns but by classic beauties. Two young women, a blonde and a brunette, lounged on matching divans to each side, attired in diaphanous gowns like the Muses of old … or perhaps a more sybaritic interpretation of Old King Cole’s attendants, since the blonde was pouring Hef a snifter of cognac from the requisite decanter of an unlocked tantalus while the brunette reclined near a Delft tobacco jar and a matching porcelain box. The pipe was in Hef’s hand, and he was dressed in a rich black velvet smoking jacket and slippers, all the better to enjoy the roaring fire in the parlor’s fireplace. The porthole television in the burl-wood cabinet opposite glowed like a fortune-teller’s crystal ball. The all-seeing eye within winked and vanished, the CBS logo replaced by the Olympic rings, then the dizzying melody of Strauss’s “Acceleration Waltz” started up, a Dutch beauty entering the Squaw Valley ice arena.
“Ah, Mr. Williams,” Hef said, rising as the chauffeur took Nick’s camera bag, “or may I call you Nick?”
Nick removed his suit jacket, which the chauffeur also took. “Nick’s fine.” He doffed the new gray fedora he’d bought for the trip. He regretted letting it go, feeling like the soft felt was almost a part of him now. But the chauffeur was implacable.
Hef
