Quarry's Deal Read Online Free PDF Page B

hands, throwing away twenty-five bucks on nothing but anteing up.
    I shouldn’t have chosen blackjack, which is my worst game, or five-card stud either, my second worst. I shouldn’t have been playing cards at all, coming off of two days of solid driving, which had left me sluggish to say the least, and one thing I didn’t need to spend any more time in was a sitting position. What I did need was a bed. I was getting sleepy just thinking about it.
    But this place, this Red Barn Club with its hokey decor and mediocre restaurant and high stakes gambling set-up, was where my dragon lady, Glenna Cole, had gone. Or anyway, where simple reasoning said she’d gone, considering the Barn’s phone number was the one she’d left for her (late) lover.
    So I needed to get the feel of the place, find out what it was about, find out what was going on here that could require the specialized talents of the beautiful Ms. Cole.
    By the time I’d settled in at a table where three-card draw poker (jacks or better to open, progressive ante) was being played, I had traversed the room and pretty well convinced myself Glenna Cole was not around, not anywhere where I could see her, anyway.
    I was beginning to think I’d beat her here. I hadn’t made great time on my way up from Florida, but not terrible time, either, and maybe she’d made a side trip or something.
    If she was here, she’d be easy enough to spot. The oriental eyes, the awesome breasts, how could you miss her? Even if the room were full of women.
    Which it wasn’t. There were a few ladies mixed in at the blackjack tables, several others playing casino, just one or two playing at a poker table where a handsome young house dealer was offering seven-card stud. The week nights at the Barn, it would seem, belonged primarily to area businessmen having a night out; the weekends apparently attracted more couples, from the area and outside of it too, probably, with the craps and roulette tables being better suited to the needs of a mixed crowd.
    At any rate, if Glenna Cole was among the few females present, she was wearing a hell of a disguise. Outside of the waitresses, these were women in their forties, wives, divorcees, maybe a mistress or two. Too much make-up. Expensive, ugly pants suits. A hell of a disguise.
    The men were dressed more casually, country club casual, sports shirts, knit slacks, occasionally a sport coat, seldom a tie. This included the house dealers, who, unlike the waitresses, wore no specific uniform.
    The house dealer at the draw poker table was a guy in his early twenties with short black hair, glasses, and a worried expression. He was the weakest dealer in the room, easy, and I started winning off him right away. Most of the dealers were making cheerful, if terse, conversation with the patrons, but this kid was tightlipped, bordering on sullen.
    I was up a hundred and a half after less than an hour, and a guy across from me at the table (there were five of us in) was up maybe two hundred. He was a fat guy in a striped shirt with a string tie that had a little calf’s head choker; whether or not he’d dressed to suit the decor, or was just an asshole, I can’t say. I’d guess the latter.
    We were up to aces or better to open, second time around. The ante was five bucks, so there was a hundred seventy-five bucks in the pot before any betting started. I opened with aces, betting ten bucks. Everybody stayed. I drew three cards, picked up another ace. Everybody drew three except the fat guy, who drew to either a four-card flush or four-card straight; whichever it was, he didn’t make it, and folded before the second round of betting could begin.
    I threw another ten in and everybody dropped but the dealer. He raised me twenty-five, which was the limit. I raised him another twenty-five, and he swallowed, and called.
    “Bullets,” I said, and showed him the aces, two red ones and a spade.
    He swallowed again, and his cards tumbled out of his fingers and I