Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) Read Online Free PDF Page B

friend in the place, Royal, was too dumb and weird to trust. Second thoughts were crowding out all the reasons I’d taken the job, including my concern for Deeanne, loyalty to Artie, and curiosity about the affiliations of Deeanne’s latest boyfriend. A cop-shy turncoat skinhead with altruist pretensions and a wild story about murder and a race war conspiracy. I was pretty sure the altruism, and maybe even the conspiracy, was a crock. His fear was personal. Getting a good look at the customers in Thor’s made it understandable too.
    I washed my hands and glanced in the mirror, gingerly. The man who looked back at me was an aging punk, a hoodlum. A Nordic god gone to trash. The hair didn’t quite match my coloring. The clothes, well… The disguise seemed to work on Floyd, which goes to show.
    When I returned to sit beside Royal again, he was talking to another young guy, this one with a short brush of dark brown head-bristles. Royal was saying something about being “knee-deep in shit”— I figured he was probably talking about his job, not his private worries— and his friend laughed loudly.
    I interrupted their merriment to ask, “What’s a freshcut?” and that made them laugh even louder.
    “A brand-new skin,” Royal said.
    “Yeah,” his friend grunted. “Someone who really doesn’t know the scene.”
    Like me. “I’m Royal’s cousin, Jase.”
    “I’m Zack. Pleased to meet you.” Maybe he was, but he immediately began talking to Royal about his boots, or some boots he was buying, and shut me out. I took the hint and turned away.
    Floyd was deep in conversation at a table across the room with one of the men in fatigue pants, the one with the double-lightning tattoo and the knife. They were both eating burgers, probably bloody ones. As I watched, the skinny man who’d been having the very private phone conversation walked over to join them. He had a stiff kind of walk that could have been a limp or just a funny way of moving.
    The bartender asked me if I wanted another draft.
    “Sure.”
    He was thickset, heavy with muscle and a roll of fat around his middle. His wavy hair was gray and carefully combed. I was guessing he was a member of the group. If he wasn’t, why would he let all these underage kids in the bar?
    He drew the beer with a practiced efficiency. No flourishes. Scraped the foam off the top with a mother-of-pearl-handled double-edged knife that looked like a letter opener. There were no tattoos on his hands, and his long-sleeved shirt concealed any messages he might be conveying on his arms.
    This man looked a lot older than most of the others in the bar, maybe sixty or sixty-five. The rest of them ranged from sixteen to fifty, I thought.
    Just as I was reaching for my beer, a woman came up to the bar and ordered a red wine. The newcomer was someone I hadn’t seen in my earlier surveys. She moved lightly, her slender body graceful as she swung himself up onto a stool a few away from me. She glanced at me, her eyelids drooping in a second’s speculation. Her hair was shoulder-length. Warm gold. Or maybe it was just the light from the neon beer signs that made it look that way. I guessed her to be somewhere in her thirties. As I kept on looking, she smiled and turned away. I needed to get a grip on myself. Gorgeous she might be, but she was hanging out in a Nazi bar. Not exactly my perfect mate.
    Floyd, I noticed, was watching me again. Either he thought I was beautiful or he was trying to make me nervous, challenging me, running some kind of alpha-dog game. I didn’t think he thought I was beautiful.
    Only one way to deal with it, then. Turn it back on him. Put him on the defensive. I interrupted Royal and Zack, whose conversation had turned from boots to jackets.
    “Hey, Royal, can I ask you something?”
    He looked startled. “Sure.”
    “Excuse us, Zack.” Zack shrugged at me.
    Squinting speculatively at Floyd, I pulled Royal into an empty corner of the room and spoke