Royal Flush (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 6) by Shelley Singer Read Free Book Online Page B

lifted his upper lip in what was probably a smile and I could see he was missing a couple of incisors. He sat down. Now three of us were silent. Floyd broke first.
    “So. Jase. Tell us about yourself.”
    Floyd had pulled his chair closer. He clutched his beer glass and tried the suspicious look again, but I was suddenly aware he’d had too much beer. Those narrowed eyes were also a bit glazed.
    Which made it as good a time as any to unroll the cover spiel I’d worked on that afternoon. I’d put a lot of thought into it, because it needed to make sense and it had to include some stuff I thought would help me keep unwanted visitors from my actual home.
    “Where should I start?”
    “At the beginning.” Red grinned. Like a wolf.
    “Okay. I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota.” Close enough. Chicago. “My parents were working people. She was of Scandinavian descent. He was German.” Close enough. Russian Jews. “I was an only child.”
    “Threw away the mold, huh?” Red snorted.
    Hot enough for you?
    I grinned like I appreciated his joke. “Guess so. Anyway, we lived in a working-class neighborhood until it started to go bad.”
    Floyd nodded wisely, clucking his tongue. He knew what kind of “bad” I was talking about.
    “Sonsabitches,” he said.
    “Yeah. Anyway, after Mom died, my dad, he moved out here to be near some family. My dad, he’s not doing so great, kind of needs me to help him out.” I looked very sad. Dad was on his last legs. Not at all up to visitors. “So I decided to come on out here and take care of him. I like it here just fine. Great weather. Some—” I emphasized the
some
“—great people.”
    Red sneered. “We got our share of problems. Point is, we don’t have to take it laying down.” His hand went to the knife sheath hanging from his belt.
    “I agree.” I slapped the table. “Royal’s just a kid, but I know what he means when he says we gotta take this country back.”
    “Damn right we do.”
    Floyd’s eyes were closed. Looked like the conversation was now two-way, me and Red.
    “I’ve been thinking, maybe I should join this club of Royal’s— are you in it?” I made it sound like his being in it would just about clinch my decision.
    Red bared his sharp-looking teeth at me again. “Yeah. I’m in it, all right. Big time.”
    “Yeah? You run the organization?”
    He shook his head and laughed. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”
    I was trying to talk to Red and keep my eye on the action too. Pete came back to the bar, without Zack. He said a few words to my “cousin,” and marched him back to that mysterious place where he’d taken his friend.
    I stood up. “I gotta pee.”
    This time I went past the men’s, past the women’s, and saw the door to what had to be the Back Room, between the women’s room and the rear exit. It was paneled like the wall and damned near invisible, except that it had an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign on it. I could just hear mumbling voices inside. No point in taking a chance on someone catching me eavesdropping— I’d ask Royal what this was all about. Quickly, I slid back down the hall and into the toilet, stuck around for a minute, flushed, and headed back toward Floyd and Red. On my way to the table I passed the young buzz-cut female, who was saying something earnest about a black helicopter— a black helicopter?— to another young woman. I was trying to catch the other kid’s answer when the bristle-head noticed me.
    “Hey!” she said.
    I turned all the way back toward her. There was that long, sullen look again, this one ending in a smile. Maybe it takes two nights to earn the friendlier version. Then she spun all the way around on her bar stool until she faced me again, very coy. She was all of eighteen, tops, small and stocky, kind of like a tree stump, with short legs squeezed into a pair of black tights. Boots just like Floyd’s, except they were red-brown. Her hair was about a quarter-inch long all over her head, and