Free Step to the Graveyard Easy by Bill Pronzini

and the ex-husband who’d let her get away. The kind of man she deserved was an older version of the kid who’d saved his money to buy her a patterned silver bracelet for her birthday.



12
    He spent the rest of the morning making the rounds of the other casinos. In Harrah’s he won a hundred and fifty playing blackjack. In Caesar’s, another ninety. One of the craps layouts was getting some play in the Harvey’s; the shooter, a sweating bald man in his sixties, was riding a hot streak and betting heavily. Cape watched him make another pass, moved in, and put fifty on the pass line. Eleven, another winner. He let his winnings ride. The next roll was an eight. Cape put another twenty on the Come line, and the shooter made his eight point the hard way, with a pair of fours, on the third roll. The bald man paused to wipe his streaming face; his eyes had a glazed look. Subtle change in the vibes. Cape switched half his stack of chips to Don’t Pass. Right choice: The next roll was boxcars. Craps for the shooter, another winner for Cape.
    All right. No luck with Justine, but a nice little run of luck on the gambling end; he was close to five hundred ahead for his twenty-some hours in Stateline. Hang for a while, try to ride it up? Or put it on hold and move on when he was done with the Vanowens?
    The red message light on his room phone was blinking. Voice-mail message from Vince Mahannah: Call him back any time, he expected to be home all day.
    Cape tapped out the number. Mahannah said without preamble, “How would you like to sit in on my poker game tomorrow night?”
    “I was thinking I might get back on the road this afternoon.”
    “Someplace you need to be?”
    “No.”
    “Then stick around a couple of days. Play some poker, leave Sunday.”
    “Tell me something. Why the invitation?”
    “Would you buy it if I said it was the favor I mentioned last night?”
    Cape said, “It wouldn’t be a favor if I lost money.”
    “No, it wouldn’t. Truth is, we’re shorthanded. Just five of us this time, and I don’t like playing with less than six.”
    “I can’t afford to get into a high-stakes game.”
    “You won’t be,” Mahannah said. “Not all of mine are like that. No high rollers in this one, just friends of mine. How much can you afford to lose?”
    Cape thought about it. “A few thousand, maybe. But not for an hour or two’s entertainment.”
    “You don’t strike me as the wild-hair type. That kind of play is the only way you’d lose a few thousand in an hour or two. Table stakes, twenty-dollar ante, no limit on the bets, four-limit on the raises. Straight poker, nothing fancy.”
    “I don’t know,” Cape said. “I had a good run in the casinos this morning, and I’m not sure I want to push my luck.”
    “Sometimes pushing it means riding it.”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Think it over. Give me another call if you’re interested.”
    “I’ll do that. Thanks for the invitation.”
    “Don’t thank me unless you play and win.”
    Lakepoint Country Club.
    Big, precision-landscaped place on the lakeshore. Most of the eighteen-hole golf course spread over a jut of land flanked by thick stands of trees—chlorophyll-bright greens, manmade lagoon, rolling fairways, not too many hazards. Clubhouse and restaurant and outbuildings made of pine and some darker wood, embellishedwith native stone and plenty of glass. Playpen for the rich. The greens fees would be high, membership fee upwards of five thousand a year: Keep out the riffraff.
    Cape had played a couple of courses like this one in the Chicago area. Golf had been part of his salesman’s persona, a comfortable, outdoors way to schmooze Emerson’s clients and prospective clients. He’d never been very good at the game. Nor developed the passion for it some people did. It had been a means to an end, a take-it-or-leave-it pastime that he didn’t miss at all. The new Cape, standing here looking out over all that green opulence, was as alien to golf