Smoke & Mirrors by John Ramsey Miller Page A

walked over and rested a hand on Parr’s shoulder. “Nice to see you, Mr. Parr,” Pierce said, turning on his warmest smile. “So nice to have you with us again. How is everything going?”
    “Financially speaking, it’s looking grim at the moment, Mr. Mulvane.”
    “I hope at least your accommodations are satisfactory.” “Room’s fit for a king. And I thank you for the bottles of bourbon you sent up.”
    “Our pleasure. If you need anything, you’ll let us know?”
    “I sure will. My only question is, what are y’all gonna do with my hog farm?”
    The farmer guffawed, and Pierce laughed right along with him.
    Pierce stayed long enough to watch the farmer toss back a glass filled with brown liquor and lose another two thousand dollars. He didn’t want a pig farm, but if Parr lost enough money, the casino’s attorneys would figure out how to liquidate one pretty quickly.
    The bottom line was Pierce’s responsibility. When all was said and done, gambling was just a business like any other. Pierce Mulvane was just another CEO working long hours to generate profits for a corporation.
    The main gaming tables ran the length of the casino center like a narrow island bordered by an ocean of slot machines, row after row like the cash crop they were. Though they were the main source of casino income, they were just machines, and got only a cursory glance from Pierce. Twenty-eight poker tables were surrounded by a low wall, so people could watch games in progress without interrupting them.
    As Pierce and Tug rode the private elevator back upstairs, he couldn’t shake his curiosity about how the young blackjack player was beating the house. He opened his phone and poked in a number.
    “Albert, no-limit blackjack, table four. The man in the yellow V-neck. He’s counting, with quite an audience. Let him run his streak. Check the black book and see if he’s in it. Handle it with your customary discretion.”
    Pierce closed the phone. He couldn’t allow cheaters to profit and tell their pals that the Roundtable was an easy mark. He knew that White would handle this matter properly. As security director, Albert White received a substantial salary, but the additional enrichment incentives Pierce made available to him here and there ensured results, not to mention the above-and-beyond effort Mulvane expected. And Pierce’s above-and-beyond requests often called for tasks he couldn’t give to people he didn’t trust one hundred and ten percent.

16
    THE HOUSE THAT ALPHONSE JEFFERSON HAD LISTED as his address when he’d been arrested three months earlier had long since surrendered to the elements. Several of the paint-starved clapboards were missing and shocks of faded-pink fiberglass shot out from several open spaces like clown hair.
    The yard was bare dirt except for scattered clumps of stiff rust-colored weeds, a dead washing machine, a child’s bicycle without wheels, a flattened shoe, and an emaciated and shivering pit bull whose head was much wider than his shoulders. The animal, standing in front of a wood-crate shelter with a floral plastic shower liner weighted down by brickbats on top of it, was anchored to a stake by a short section of swing-set chain. The dog growled as though he was saving his barks for more worthy customers than the two strangers he watched approach his master’s front door.
    Brad stood and loudly rapped on the jamb. The interior door opened a few inches. The unmistakable sounds of a fist-flying talk show boomed from the living room.
    “Yeah, what?” a scrappy voice rumbled from inside.
    “Mrs. Jefferson, it’s Sheriff Barnett. I’m looking for Alphonse,” Brad said through an aluminum door whose fabric screening hung like a mainsail from a corner of it. A mangy cat shot out and flew around the corner of the house. The watchdog eyed the fleeing feline without comment.
    “What you wants wif my grandbaby?” the old woman asked, her rheumy brown eyes floating in a cocoa lake of skin,