“No way,” I told him.
Diesel took another look at his hand and at the money on the table. “Okay, I’ll get you a new Lexus.”
I bit into my lower lip. I was pretty sure Diesel knew what he was doing. I mean, he cheats, right?
“How good is your hand?” I asked him.
Diesel shrugged.
“She’s kind of a pain in the ass,” Rocky said.
Diesel rocked back in his chair and studied me. “She grows on you. Anyway, she’s the best I’ve got to offer right now unless you want to take a check.”
“What the hell,” Rocky said. “What have you got?”
Diesel laid his cards on the table. “Straight flush. Jack high.”
“Beats me. Four of a kind. All kings.” He gave me the once-?over for the second time. “Just as well. She’d probably give me a heart attack. She looks like a lot of work.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m just saying.”
I had my purse hung on my shoulder and my shopping bag in hand. I was ready to go. It was past my bedtime, and I was pissed off that everyone thought I wasn’t such a great prize. All right, so I’m no Julia Roberts, but I had a nice nose, and I’d tweezed my eyebrows two days ago.
&n
bsp; Diesel pocketed his winnings and moved to the door. “We should do this again sometime.”
“I’m pretty sure you were cheating,” Rocky said, “but I don’t know how.”
“I was lucky,” Diesel said.
The rent-?a-?goon let us out and watched us walk to the elevator. We stepped in, and Diesel hit buttons for the fourth floor and the lobby. We got off at the fourth floor and took the stairs.
“Just in case,” Diesel said. “Walter looked like he was going to shoot himself, but he might have changed his mind and decided it would be more satisfying to shoot me.”
“How much did you win?”
“A hundred and ten thousand.”
“That’s a lot of money, but not enough.”
“Delvina doesn’t want to kill the horse. He wants his money, and I’m hoping he’s smart enough to understand that half of something is better than all of nothing.”
When we got to the second floor, Diesel took the service elevator to the ground level, and we exited through the kitchen. The staff didn’t seem all that surprised. Probably people sneaked out like this all the time.
“Now what?” I asked Diesel.
“Now we go back to Daffy’s and get a room.”
“Two rooms.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What do you mean there are no rooms?”
“There are four major conventions in town,” the desk clerk said. “I’ve been calling around all night, trying to find rooms. If you want a room, you’ll have to go off the Boardwalk.”
It was almost one o’clock. Going off the Boardwalk at this hour in Atlantic City didn’t sound like a good idea.