Lucky by Sharon Sala Page A

name is Queen. The middle one is Diamond.”
    Manny frowned at the defiant way in which she’d explained, and something told him that her youth had not been all doll babies and bubble gum.
    “Then Lucky it is,” he said. “I will see you tomorrow.”
    She was almost out the door when Manny remembered to ask.
    “Lucky!”
    She stopped and turned toward him.
    “You say I have three dealers who are screwed. Which ones are they?”
    She frowned. “You hired me to deal cards, not snitch. You’re the manager. You find them. I only work here, remember?”
    Manny grinned. She certainly was a fiery one. But it was good. Manny liked things peppery and hot. Especially the women.
     
    It was midafternoon as Nick stared absently down at the crowd from the floor above, wondering where Manny had gone, when a woman walked into his line of vision, sauntering through the crowd with a slow, sexy sway.
    Nick’s gaze caught and then held on her figure, and he frowned and wondered why. There were hundreds of women below. Again, why did he keep singling one out from all the rest?
    Minus the heels that she wore, this one, he could see, would still be tall. But all he could see was the top of her head, and then the back of her suit as she walked away. From the crystal reflection of the room around her, that black crown of hair almost looked blue. An enticing length of tanned leg was exposed from beneath the miniskirt of her suit, and she clutched a small purse as if it were a shield.
    He had an inexplicable urge to follow her. Just as impulse had him heading for the stairs, he saw Manny walk out onto the floor and squashed the notion before it became deed. He needed to forget monkey business and concentrate on the business at hand.
    Manny looked up, and when he did, Nick motioned for him to come. As Manny started up the stairs, Nick headed for his office.
    Inside his office, away from the teeming crowd below him, Nick still felt the urge to watch her. He found himself strolling toward a window…just for a glimpse…just to assure himself she was no one special.
    There she was—on the street—then climbing into a cab. His belly rolled as the door swung shut and the cab moved away. He would have sworn he’d seen those legs and that slender backside before on a ragtag lovely in a downtown bus station. And then the moment he thought it, called himself twelve kinds of a fool.
    “You wanted to see me, Nicky?” Manny asked, as he entered the office.
    Nick spun away from the window. “Who was that woman?”
    There’d been several hundred women down on the floor at the same time Lucky had been there. And yet Manny instinctively knew who Nick meant.
    “A new dealer. I just hired her.”
    Nick frowned. “We don’t need any dealers.”
    Manny shrugged. “If I believe my instincts, we’re about to need two more besides her. I’m on my way to Security. I want to take the Eye on a table-to-table visit. Comprende? ”
    Nick read between the lines. For some reason, Mannysuspected dirty dealers. The camera system they had in place was so sophisticated that it could zoom into any specific table and see everything up close and personal…even a single hair on their dealer’s arm. Only Manny and Nick weren’t splitting hairs; they were on a witchhunt.
    “I’ll come with you,” Nick said. “Four eyes are better than two.”
    To Manny’s dismay, the woman had been right. It was with great pleasure that he promptly fired two of the dealers and had the other one charged with theft.
    By the time the turmoil was over, Manny had gone off shift, and Nick realized that he hadn’t even asked Manny the woman’s name.
    “Oh hell,” he told himself. “It doesn’t matter. She’s just another woman with a pretty face. They’re all alike.”
     
    Fluffy LaMont sat at her front window, watching the street in front of her house, waiting to spring her surprise. It would have shocked her oldest acquaintances to know that Fluffy LaMont had developed such