Free Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz Page A

men.
    When Tina squeezed into the narrow gap between the tables and caught Michael’s attention, his reaction was far different from what she had expected. She’d thought the sight of her would wipe the smile off his face. Instead, his smile broadened, and there seemed to be genuine delight in his eyes.
    He was shuffling cards when he saw her, and he continued to shuffle while he spoke. “Hey, hello there. You look terrific, Tina. A sight for sore eyes.”
    She wasn’t prepared for this pleasantness, nonplussed by the warmth of his greeting.
    He said, “That’s a nice sweater. I like it. You always looked good in blue.”
    She smiled uneasily and tried to remember that she had come here to accuse him of cruelly harassing her. “Michael, I have to talk to you.”
    He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a break coming up in five minutes.”
    “Where should I meet you?”
    “Why don’t you wait right where you are? You can watch these nice people beat me out of a lot of money.”
    Every player at the table groaned, and they all had comments to make about the unlikely possibility that they might win anything from this dealer.
    Michael grinned and winked at Tina.
    She smiled woodenly.
    She waited impatiently as the five minutes crawled by; she was never comfortable in a casino when it was busy. The frantic activity and the unrelenting excitement, which bordered on hysteria at times, abraded her nerves.
    The huge room was so noisy that the blend of sounds seemed to coalesce into a visible substance — like a humid yellow haze in the air. Slot machines rang and beeped and whistled and buzzed. Balls clattered around spinning roulette wheels. A five-piece band hammered out wildly amplified pop music from the small stage in the open cocktail lounge beyond and slightly above the slot machines. The paging system blared names. Ice rattled in glasses as gamblers drank while they played. And everyone seemed to be talking at once.
    When Michael’s break time arrived, a replacement dealer took over the table, and Michael stepped out of the blackjack pit, into the center aisle. “You want to talk?”
    “Not here,” she said, half-shouting. “I can’t hear myself think.”
    “Let’s go down to the arcade.”
    “Okay.”
    To reach the escalators that would carry them down to the shopping arcade on the lower level, they had to cross the entire casino. Michael led the way, gently pushing and elbowing through the holiday crowd, and Tina followed quickly in his wake, before the path that he made could close up again.
    Halfway across the long room, they stopped at a clearing where a middle-aged man lay on his back, unconscious, in front of a blackjack table. He was wearing a beige suit, a dark brown shirt, and a beige-patterned tie. An overturned stool lay beside him, and approximately five hundred dollars’ worth of green chips were scattered on the carpet. Two uniformed security men were performing first aid on the unconscious man, loosening his tie and collar, taking his pulse, while a third guard was keeping curious customers out of the way.
    Michael said, “Heart attack, Pete?”
    The third guard said, “Hi, Mike. Nah, I don’t think it’s his heart. Probably a combination of blackjack blackout and bingo bladder. He was sitting here for eight hours straight.”
    On the floor, the man in the beige suit groaned. His eyelids fluttered.
    Shaking his head, obviously amused, Michael moved around the clearing and into the crowd again.
    When at last they reached the end of the casino and were on the escalators, heading down toward the shopping arcade, Tina said, “What is blackjack blackout?”
    “It’s stupid is what it is,” Michael said, still amused. “The guy sits down to play cards and gets so involved he loses track of time, which is, of course, exactly what the management wants him to do. That’s why there aren’t any windows or clocks in the casino. But once in a while, a guy really loses track, doesn’t get up