Trouble in Paradise Read Online Free PDF

beyond-out the door and turn left. He rang the little illuminated bell beside the door. When the door opened, he stepped into a small foyer. Room 418 was in fact a two-bedroom suite.
    In the foyer with him was a big man with thick hands.
    “Mr. Hoyle?”
    “That’s me,” Macklin said.
    “Sorry, sir, but I’ll have to pat you down. Just routine.”
    A short plump man in a white silk shirt was standing behind the big man. He had thin black hair plastered against his balding skull.
    “Sergeant Voss is an off-duty police officer,” the plump man said.
    “Just to make sure everything’s on the up and up.”
    “Excellent,” Macklin said.
    “Makes me feel safe.”
    He spread his arms and stood straight while Sergeant Voss ran his hands under each arm, down each side, around Macklin’s belt line, and down each leg. Sergeant Voss was assiduous, as Macklin knew he would be, in avoiding Macklin’s crotch. When he was through, Sergeant Voss stepped back and nodded at the plump man.
    “I’m Tommy King,” the plump man said.
    “Come on in.”
    The game was in the living room. Five men at a round table, with a sixth chair waiting for Macklin at the sixth spot. A blond woman with prominent breasts and a short black dress was overseeing the buffet and bar that was set up at the far end of the living room.
    “Drink?” King said.
    “I’ll just take a beer,” Macklin said.
    “Maybe a shrimp cocktail.”
    “Fine. Tiffany will get it for you.”
    Macklin sat down. He took the thousand out of his pants pocket and put it on the table beside him without making much attempt to smooth them out.
    “The gentleman with the five-o’clock shadow is Tony, my dealer.”
    Macklin nodded at him.
    “The rest will introduce themselves,” King said.
    “Bill,” the first player said, and they went around the table.
    “Chuck.”
    “Mel.”
    “John.”
    “Sully.”
    Macklin smiled and nodded. Tiffany brought him beer and shrimp cocktail and managed to rub one of her breasts against him as she did so.
    “Five-card draw,” Tony said.
    “Jacks or better. Hundred-dollar minimum.”
    Macklin nodded and put his hundred in the pot. Tony began to deal. He was thin with dense black hair that waved straight back.
    The cards seemed to move about in his thin hands as if they were alive. Macklin got a pair of threes. Chuck opened. Macklin drew three cards. It didn’t improve his threes. He dropped out. Chuck won with three queens. Tiffany made sure everyone had what they needed in food and drink. And she made sure that she rubbed her chest against all the players but Tony. Tony neither ate nor drank.
    Sergeant Voss leaned on the wall in the foyer. Occasionally Tommy King sat in for Tony. Macklin was a competent card player, but it didn’t interest him. Gambling was for losers. There were better ways to get money. And there were better ways to lose it… like women. Macklin played hard enough to make it seem he was trying and kept close track of the amount of money that was moving Iv across the table.
    After an hour and a half, Macklin was down $200.
    “Excuse me a minute,” he said.
    “Damn beer, you don’t drink it, : you just rent it.”
    He stood and walked through a bedroom into the bath and ’t closed the door and locked it. Then he unbuttoned his pants, pulled the tape off the gun butt and took the pistol out of his protector. He put the pistol down on the top of the toilet tank and took the occasion to urinate. Make it authentic. Then he zipped up.
    Washed his hands, dried them on a towel, picked up the pistol, cocked it, and went back through the bedroom. He took a pillows off the bed and shook the pillowcase loose. Carrying it in his left hand, with the 9-mm in his right, he went into the poker room. The first thing he did as he stepped through the bedroom door was to shoot Sergeant Voss in the middle of the chest. Voss grunted and fell on his left side and twitched a couple of times and was still. It took the starch out of