The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas
playing real opponents for once, instead of a collection of pixels named Dark Dawn or Amarillo2000 .
    Whatever the explanation, I was a good deal poorer than when I’d last seen Victoria and I was in a pretty foul mood to boot. I idly considered circling the tables to see if anyone was enjoying better luck, but it didn’t strike me as the surest way to cheer myself up. A more tempting option was to head outside for one of the free Strip spectaculars – the erupting Volcano at the Mirage, perhaps, or the saucy female pirates waging naval warfare at TI. Practically anything had to be better than returning to my room and having Victoria drop by to say, ‘I told you so.’
    On the subject of Victoria, I was really quite confused by her attitude to gambling. Sure, I’d just become the latest casualty of the vice, but I couldn’t deny the thrill I’d taken from that final hand – at least until I’d lost. And if her objection was a moral thing, her thinking was mighty peculiar, because she’d never seemed very troubled by my sideline in burglary. Then again, she had mentioned that not gambling was a family rule, so perhaps it was something that had been drummed into her in childhood. She’d once told me that her father was a judge, which didn’t exactly suggest a relaxed upbringing.
    In any case, she’d been very clear that she didn’t approve of my foray among the gaming-tables, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard a raucous whoop and a squeal, only to glance to my right and find someone who looked just like her leaping in delight from behind a high-stakes roulette-table.
    I knuckled my eyes. The woman had the same shade of brown hair as Victoria, cut to the same length and curled in around her shoulders in the same style. She had on a similar green blouse and charcoal pencil skirt, teamed with a familiar-looking green handbag. Her height and frame were strangely alike, and she had some of Victoria’s mannerisms down pat.
    The Doppelgänger held her arms above her head and bounced on her toes while the croupier smiled at her indulgently. He wasn’t alone. There were six players seated around the table and they all seemed utterly charmed. Most enchanted of all was a guy with dazzling white teeth, a flawless tan and showpiece hair. He wore stonewashed jeans over alligator cowboy boots, a plain white T-shirt and a tan leather jacket.
    The handsome hunk wrapped Victoria’s double in his gym-muscle arms and lifted her clean from the floor. She giggled and beat down playfully on his shoulders, meanwhile bending her legs at the knee.
    In almost no time at all, I seemed to be standing alongside them, and so I reached out and tapped the woman on the shoulder. She whipped her head around and blinked, and then she covered her mouth with her hand and said, ‘Oh God, Charlie,’ with the kind of alarm I might have expected if I’d just broken into her home.
    ‘Who’s your friend?’ I asked.
    Victoria blushed and gestured to be set down. She straightened her clothes and adjusted her handbag strap and gingerly motioned towards her muscular beau.
    ‘Charlie, this is Josh. He’s an illusionist. You’ve probably seen the posters for his show.’
    ‘Nope, I don’t think so.’
    ‘Hey, Charlie.’ He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘It’s sure great to meet you.’
    Now, allow me to come clean and admit right away, just in case you haven’t picked up on the subtle clues that I’ve weaved into my account, that I disliked Josh Masters instantly. When Victoria introduced us, his greeting was about as genuine as the medieval knights inside the Excalibur casino, and his eyes weren’t even pointing in my direction – they were angled towards the roulette-table, calculating the bets he might lay.
    Here’s the second reason I didn’t take to him – he was winning very handsomely. Stacks of purple chips were neatly arranged in front of him, looking like the ramparts of a mini-fortress. He also had some of the blue
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