Bowled Over

Chapter Five

Maggie leaned her forearms on the steering wheel and looked to her right, past Alex, to see the full flight of wood-slat stairs leading up to her father's borrowed bachelor pad.

She should have realized. Lots of the houses nearest the ocean were built on pilings, to allow parking beneath them, off the street, and to avoid flood damage during nor'easters and the occasional hurricane.

"Great. How am I supposed to get up there? Fly?"

"It would be an interesting phenomenon if you could, and one I'd be delighted to witness. Or I could volunteer my services," Alex suggested, opening the car door. "But I believe I'll first reconnoiter, ascertain if your father is indeed at home and receiving visitors. Much as I adore you, sweetheart, the idea of carrying you up those stairs, and whatever stairs may lay beyond the door, just to carry you back down again, does not really appeal."

"I'd be insulted, if you weren't right. Going up I can handle. Coming down again is another story, not that I don't trust you not to drop me. Okay. He's in 2B. Sounds like the second floor, huh? Damn."

She waited, tapping her fingertips on the steering wheel, for Alex to return to the car. It would have been easier, logistically, to stay at her mother's house (no longer her parents' house), but she'd rather have to bump herself up two flights on her fanny than admit that to anyone.

Sterling leaned on the back of the front seat. "What will we do if your father isn't at home?"

Maggie opened her mouth to say they'd just have to suck it up and go to her mother's, and then changed her mind. It was stupid, putting off the inevitable, but she was a devout coward, and it was time she owned up to that sad fact. "I don't know, Sterling," she said brightly. "You said you wanted to go to Atlantic City again. We could do that."

"Oh, yes, that would be above all things wonderful. Do you think they still have the dancing woodpeckers?"

Maggie frowned, trying to decipher that statement, and then smiled. "Oh, right, the dancing woodpeckers. On one of the nickel slots you played last time. I remember now. I'm sure they do, Sterling. Ah, here comes Alex. So?" she asked as he climbed back into the front seat.

"There's a note on his door—his second-floor door, so I believe you'll, as you say, owe me big time, before this visit is concluded. I look forward to that. He's at the dentist for something called a crown, and doesn't expect to be home for a few hours. We just missed him, as a matter-of-fact. But he did leave a key under the mat, which is either a testament to the citizens of this small city or a remarkable lapse in judgment by your father."

"No comment. Did you take the key?"

"No, I did not, as your father might then wonder what had happened to it. Or are you ready to go upstairs?"

"With Dad not there? I don't think so," Maggie said. It would be odd enough, seeing her father in a bachelor apartment. Invading that apartment without him there was just plain creepy.

"Excuse me, please. A crown?" Sterling said, quite predictably, from the backseat. "That doesn't mean what it should mean, does it?"

Maggie put the car in gear as she explained that, no, her father wasn't about to become royalty, and then told Alex her brilliant plan. They'd drive up to the Borgata, only eight miles away. Sterling could play the nickel slots, Alex could try his hand at baccarat again, and Maggie, who didn't gamble, could wait patiently until they were ready to go to the buffet for prime rib and coconut macaroons.

"A capital idea, my dear. Directly after we stop in at your mother's house, to assure her you actually have made an appearance rather than running off to join the circus."

"I'm not even going to ask what that means," Sterling grumbled from the backseat, clicking on his seat belt.

"Yeah, right. A drop-in visit with Mommy Dearest, only three hours after she called to tell me that she's being run off her feet—her words—because I'm not there to help her and won't be able to help her when I am there. Go see her now? Uh-uh, that's not going to happen until it has to happen, thank you. And tomorrow's soon enough to see everybody else, too," Maggie told him, stopping at the red light. She watched idly as three cars went past her along Wesley Avenue, and then leaned forward as a long black limousine entered the intersection, the back window rolled down. "Oh, would you for crying out loud look at that!"

Alex, who had been unfolding a map of New Jersey he'd taken from the glove compartment, looked up and smiled as the limousine glided out of the intersection. "Why, hello, Tate."

"He hired a limo. He hired a freaking limo," Maggie said, shaking her head. "And Ninth Street is the way in from the Expressway—Wesley is the way to Atlantic City. He was in Atlantic City, dollars to donuts. Lording it in the casinos with his important friends, whoever they are, and now he's on his way to sponge off my mother. A limo, Alex. And I'm going to arrive in a rented Taurus. There is no justice in this world."

"Hesitant as I am to point this out, Maggie, you could have employed a limousine service. If you weren't," he smiled, "so economically prudent."

"I am not cheap," Maggie said, turning the corner once the light turned green, and probably stepping too hard on the gas with her good foot. "I'm buying a mansion, for crying out loud."

"True. And a bargain, at that."

"I would have paid full price," Maggie said, holding out her hand for change for the toll. "Maybe. And I'm still wondering why I got it so cheap."

"It could be haunted. I must say, I like that idea better than thinking about poor drains or small insects gnawing on the floorboards, and all of that," Sterling supplied from the backseat, earning himself speaking looks from both his friends.

Alex handed over a dollar bill even as he surveyed their surroundings, low marshland to their left, the fairly dark waters of the Atlantic to their right. "I seem to recall that we're to bear to the left once we're beyond this bridge, and then quickly to the right."

"I know where I'm going," Maggie told him, even as she squinted a bit in the deepening dusk. "You don't need that map. Why does Jersey insist on making all its route markers so small? It's almost like they don't want you to know where you're going."

"I'll read the signs for you, Maggie," Sterling said helpfully from the backseat.

True to his word, Sterling read every sign as they passed through several small towns, until they were at last in Atlantic City.

"We could use the tunnel, Maggie. I think we're fairly close now," Alex said, pointing to a small sign—a ridiculously small sign—vaguely labeled Marina, when anyone knew the smarter thing to do would be to have the sign printed with the word Tunnel on it.

Traffic was slow, impeded by the light blue jitneys that seemed to stop wherever and whenever the driver felt like it.

"Where do I turn? Sterling? You're reading the signs, remember?"

"Oh, my, yes. And they're all so big and pretty, aren't they? So many lights. Look! Do you see that sign? Sir Elton John is coming to town? How wonderful it would be for you to have a nice visit with a fellow peer, Saint Just. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could—"

"You missed the turn, Maggie," Alex pointed out quietly as the Taurus was cut off by a tour bus with a Pennsylvania license plate. "Let's see. Next up would be Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard. I believe that if you were to turn left at that intersection we would have no problem in—ah. Sterling, wave a fond farewell to Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard, would you?"

"If you'd only talk faster," Maggie groused as she switched on the windshield wipers to swipe away the light snow that had begun to fall. She was pretty sure their next stop would be the ocean, if she didn't find somewhere to take a left turn. "And this is stupid, anyway. Just another one of my very bad ideas. I can't hop through a casino. I should just turn the car around and face the music—no, Sterling, don't say anything else!"

"I won't. Except that we just passed a small purple fingerpost with the name Borgata printed on it. If-you-were-to-quickly-turn-left-we-might—that's the ticket, Maggie! Just like Nascar. She feathered that corner just like an established whip, didn't she, Saint Just? That's probably why automobile aficionados speak of horses beneath the hood, yes?"

Alex retrieved the map from the floor and replaced it in the glove box. "I must remember to apply for a driver's license the moment we return to the metropolis. Either that, or take up daily prayers. Ah, and there it is, the Borgata, shining golden in the distance. Sterling, I believe we're in for some fairly spectacular good luck. The omens are all there."

"They are?" Sterling scrambled out of the backseat with the folded-up walker as Maggie pulled to a stop in the valet parking line, having decided that people who can qualify for a three-million-dollar mortgage probably have left the self-park garage behind, at least on Christmas Eve. "What omens, Saint Just?"

Alex handed a ten dollar bill to the attendant before Maggie could pull a one dollar bill from her purse, and escorted his friends inside, explaining, "We survived to arrive here, didn't we? I consider that a good omen."

"Bite me," Maggie said, hopping through the opened door and then sagging against the walker at the sheer vastness of the casino floor in the distance.

"Excuse me, miss? Might I suggest a motorized cart? We rent by the day, quite reasonably."

Maggie looked up at the casino employee, ready to refuse. After all, she wasn't even going to gamble. But she'd only hopped about thirty feet, and she was already exhausted. "It's a deal."

Ten minutes later, with only a short tutorial on the thing, Maggie was zipping ahead of Alex and Sterling, still giggling over the idea that, when she put the cart in reverse, it beeped like she was backing up a semi.

"I could get used to this," she told Alex, unfortunately taking her eyes away from where she was going as she neared the end of a double row of spectacularly tall slot machines.

The head-on collision with the cart turning into the aisle wasn't horrendous, but it was definitely humiliating, causing Maggie to paraphrase in her best Dustin Hoffman/Ratso Rizzo voice: "Hey, I'm driving here."

The man mountain on the other cart backed up a good three feet ... and rammed her again, hard, as if they were on bumper cars at one of the small amusement parks on the Boardwalk. "Get out of my way, wise mouth. That's my machine, and if I don't get it because of you, I'm going to run you over like a bug."

Maggie looked to her left and right. To her left were six empty machines. A like number of the same machines were to her right. But the guy seemed to have his eyes on the second machine from the end on the right. "Which machine? I don't see a name on any of these machines. Or is your name Big-Wheels-o'-Bucks? No? I didn't think so. Back up, buster."

"Maggie, I think you might have been in the wrong," Alex told her in his best-accented English, placing his hand on the handlebars. "Excuse us, sir. My friend here is still learning how to navigate."

"Yeah? What was your first clue, Jeeves?"

"Now, now, no need to take umbrage. If you'd be so kind as to reverse your conveyance just a tad more, we'll move on now. Won't we, Maggie?"

"The hell we will, Jeeves," Maggie said, feeling suddenly stubborn. She hadn't had the best day. Face it, she hadn't had the best week, or even the best month, as someone had tried to kill her not so long ago. Tomorrow was Christmas, and it didn't look to be any better than any other day in her recent memory.

If this guy wanted to make himself a target for all her pent-up anger, she was more than willing to take out her miserableness on him. She'd already had a good cry, more than one good cry. That was enough with the pity parties! Maybe it was time figuratively to punch something ... and the bozo on the go-cart was as good as anything else.

She grabbed onto the back of the nearest seat and held on as she planted her right foot and hopped around until she could sit in the chair. "This is my machine. I'm staying right here."

"You can't do that! That's my machine! I play that machine every time I come here."

"Yeah? And like I said, I didn't see your name on it. Still don't. So, the way I see it, I'm sitting here, and that makes it my machine," Maggie said, settling herself. She felt stupid, mulish, but the man was really getting on her nerves. What did it matter which machine he lost his ten bucks in, anyway? She shot her left arm into the air, palm up. "Alex, give me some money."

"I'll be back with an attendant to boot you out of here. And you'd damn well better not win while I'm gone," the fat man said, beep-beeping as he backed up and tore off in the opposite direction, all but leaving skid marks on the carpet.

"You just go do that, see if I care," she called after him, and then lost her smile, because she was pretty sure she'd already lost her mind. "God, what have I done?"

"You've a heart of gold, Maggie," Alex told her, bending to kiss the nape of her neck as he inserted a bill into the machine. "But I don't believe this particular side of you is very appealing."

She sagged in the chair, all the fight gone out of her. Her casted leg hurt, her right foot felt black-and-blue from hopping on it for days on end, her arms seemed as weak as the proverbial wet noodles, her palms were throbbing from holding onto the walker—and she was pretty sure she was developing calluses.

She'd kill to take a real shower rather than washing at the bathroom sink, body part by body part, then balancing on one foot at the kitchen sink to wash her hair, half the time missing with the sprayer and having to one-handedly wipe down the cabinets when she was done.

And she refused to take any more pain pills because they made her feel too good, and if she could get addicted to cigarettes, maybe she was an addictive personality, or whatever, so she'd flushed the pain pills.

Except for two of them. They were in her purse. Lurking there, the way her cigarettes used to lurk there, calling to her.

And her leg ached like a son of a—

Maybe if she only took one? She could still drive back to Ocean City in a couple of hours, if she only took one.

Leaving her one more for Christmas Day and the Kelly family dinner. Painkillers should be de rigueur for Kelly family dinners.

Oh yeah. All in all, she felt like crap. She'd been really rude to that idiot on the go-cart. Hell, in the mood she was in, she probably would have beat up Santa Claus if he'd looked at her crooked. "I know, I know. That was inexcusable, even if the guy is a card-carrying jerk. Call him back, Alex. You know I don't gamble. He can have his damn machine."

"Nonsense. Just because you were rude does not excuse his boorishness. The initial collision was an accident, most probably your fault, but an accident nonetheless. It was he who backed up to give it another go, hit you again. You stay here with Sterling, gamble away my money, and I'll seek out the baccarat tables, all right? I think it's safer for yourself and possibly the general population if you remain in one place."

Maggie nodded, feeling heat come into her cheeks. "It was seeing Tate in the limo, Alex. Showing up like the Grand Poobah with his friends who will be sleeping in my bed. I think that one put me over the top. That and Mom knowing I'm in a leg cast, and kicking me out, sending me to stay in Dad's second-floor apartment anyway. There's a certain lack of maternal caring there, Alex. Definitely."

"Take people as they are, my dear, rather than hope they'll live up to your expectations of what they should be, and your own life becomes less stressful."

She searched in her purse for the small bottle of water that she always carried, and then spoke to Alex around the pretty hot-pink pill she'd plopped onto her tongue. "Yeah? Where did you read that?"

"It may have been the Cryptoquote in this morning's newspaper, actually. Now, are you comfortable?"

She swallowed the pill, instantly regretting having done so. "I haven't been comfortable since this cast went on, but I'm all right. I'll just sit here, put my leg up on the end seat, and if the guy comes back, I'll move to another machine in the row. I only came here for the macaroons, anyway." She leaned forward to inspect the machine. "But maybe I'll lose your money for you, just because I'm taking you as you are. How much did you put in here, anyway?"

"The first bill I found," he told her. "A one hundred dollar bill."

Maggie's eyes threatened to pop out of her head as she saw a number one followed by two zeroes lit up in red on the Credits line of the machine. "A hundred bucks? Are you nuts? Get it out of there. How do you get it out of there?"

"It's all right, Maggie," Sterling said, sitting down beside her. "Look, they're only nickels. And the operation of the machine itself is quite simple. You just press the button labeled Max Bet, although I have no idea who Max is, do you? He may have invented the machines, don't you think? At any rate, just push the button, and the machine does everything else. Isn't that correct, Saint Just?"

"It is. However, this isn't a nickel machine, but a dollar machine. The maximum bet, as I have deduced, is three dollars."

Maggie held her hands out in front of her as if figuratively backing away from the machine. "There is no way I'm going to play three dollars at one time, Daddy Warbucks, even with your money. No freaking way."

"So speaks the woman who just bought a several million dollar house in order to prove that she's gained confidence in her own worth and that of her career."

"Don't use my own words on me, Alex. Gambling is stupid. How do you think they build casinos like these? I'll tell you how. Because the only people that really win in casinos are the people who own them. Now get that money out of there. Look for a Refund button, or something. There must be a way to get it out of there."

"Oh ye of faint heart. You could win, you know. Sterling, push the button if you please," Alex instructed, and Maggie watched as the three reels began to spin, then stopped, one by one.

The machine had proved her point for her. "And you're both happy now? You'll never see that three dollars again."

"I'm not ecstatic," Alex told her, "but I am delighted to know that you'll stay here, not causing any more uproar, while I try my own luck. And, if it makes you feel better, we can agree to divide whatever you win three ways. Sterling, don't let her move from here."

"I'm not a baby, you know," Maggie groused, scrambling in her purse for her nicotine inhaler. Her pacifier. Oh, hell. Why didn't she just give it up before somebody thought they had to burp her. "Just go, Alex, knowing that no matter what you win, I'll be here losing your hundred dollars. It won't be any different than if I set fire to the money. Pushing that button just takes longer."

"Always the optimist. And it's now officially our one hundred dollars you'll be burning through the machine. Good luck, my dear."

"Yeah, thanks," Maggie said, scowling at the machine, now showing ninety-one credits, as Sterling had been busily pressing the Max button. "This is looking better and better, isn't it? Sure, I believe I could win. And my foot could magically heal itself overnight so I can dance the lead in the Nutcracker. Go away, Alex. I'm not fit company."

Meanwhile, back at the—oh, right.

We already did that one ...

He picked up the photograph, recognizing the woman he'd seen parked at the curb, in the No Parking/Loading Zone out front.

Pretty girl.

Too bad for her, huh?

And not much more time to get what he came for.

Nice of Evan to tape that note to his door, though.

Nicer of him to keep a key stashed under the mat.

Schmuck.

Okay, okay, luck is good, but luck runs out. Nobody lives eight miles from Atlantic City without knowing that one, right?

So get what you need and go. Don't think, just act. The first act, that leads to the second act, that leads to—oh yeah. Time to boogie.

Get the show on the road.

Four more hours, that's all.

Four more hours, and it's party time.

Now, where the hell does he keep it ... ?

Alas, dear reader, this is the last time we will delve into the twisted mind of our Shadowy Figure. Because said Shadowy Figure isn't kidding—no more thinking of any great consequence is going to happen inside that particular brain any time soon.

Figuratively, from this point on, it is as if Shadowy Figure's mind, like Elvis, has left the building.