Ringo looked like I shot his favorite dog. He hung his head. "I thought you'd be excited."

"Excited?" I let out a breath. "I am excited. Thrilled in fact. It's just unexpected. A shock."

"Just like Christmas!" Ringo rubbed his hands together. "Or a surprise birthday party!"

Look at that face, how was I going to say no?

"What time are we supposed to be there?" I asked Ringo as Joe let himself into the suite. "Where's the party?" he asked Ringo, shaking his hand.

"Not a party. An ad shoot."

Joe looked in question at me. "I didn't know you were working here."

"I'm not the agent. I'm the model for this one."

"Huh," Joe said. "Sorry Frank's not here to see this."

"Maybe he will be."

"It doesn't look like it, does it?"

When I didn't answer, he pa.s.sed over a fax. "That's the report on Affie's note. Her handwriting. Common Crayola pens. Common generic copy paper, used in about three hundred million copiers, faxes and printers throughout the world. No fingerprints we could match through the database. But there was one thing..."

I looked at the sheet. It was gobbledygook to me. "What?" I demanded.

"There were some microscopic traces on the paper-usually this is what we are going for when we test. We don't know what they mean, but-"

"Joe, get on with it."

"There was pollen from a certain spring flower indigenous to the northern Rockies and snake skin."

Snake? Before Joe could add any more, I picked up the landline and dialed home.

I withstood five minutes of small talk about a scourge of white flies on her tomatoes and before I finally broke down I asked, "Mom, how's my snake?"

"Pookie, you know I hate that thing."

"I know, Mom. That's why I asked Dad to take care of him."

Pause. Sound of Mom pulling weeds in her garden. Sound of Dad starting up lawnmower so I couldn't even hope for him to save me.

"So has Dad been taking care of him?" I prayed for patience.

Sound of huge guilt-inducing sigh.

"No, I didn't want to tell you because I was afraid you'd be upset."

Ten-nine-eight-seven..."Tell me what, Mom?"

"The wretched reptile disappeared. The same night Affie did."

Huh. I didn't know what that meant. Why would some kidnappers have let Affie lug along a ten-foot-long pet? Joe was asking me something but my mind was too full of possibilities to listen.

"Bee?" Joe asked after a pause.

I glanced from the carpet that I wished held all the answers back up to his face. "Did you hear me?" he asked.

"No, I'm sorry."

"I asked if your pet is a rattlesnake?"

"No, Grog is a python."

"Then it's not your snake's skin traces on the note. This snake was a rattler."

Twenty.

Reverend Phineas Paul stood on a riser in the middle of a crowd of people on the sidewalk in front of the Fortune. It was pretty easy to tell his followers from the Vegas tourists by their dress. In fact, I'd looked a little like a follower yesterday. Not today, though, not in the getup Ingrid had messengered over for me to wear for the shoot.

"Do you good people know there is a bunch of sinners, many of them here in this city for this G.o.dforsaken tournament, who say they pray to the 'Church of Texas Hold 'Em'? This is a sacrilege. This is the work of the devil. The game might seem an innocent diversion at first, for your youth, your brothers, your sisters, your wives, your husbands, but soon instead of holding a Bible, they will be holding cards. Instead of giving to a collection plate for G.o.d's work, they'll be giving to a felt table, paying for the devil to drag them straight down to the depths of h.e.l.l!"

Okay. Paul was pretty worked up today. He was fascinating to watch. Even though I despised the man and disagreed with everything that came out of his mouth, I couldn't tear my gaze away. He had charisma plus.

"They tempt you by saying 'come worship'-in their altar of sin? Why would someone succ.u.mb to that, I ask."

I was rethinking my brave thought of taking him on and had decided to quietly skirt the group when he caught sight of me.

"I ask that of you, Bee Cool." He spat my name like I was Mary Magdalene before she was forgiven. Perfect day to take on the holy roller, since I looked like a modern version of what Mary had been, in the clingy silk shortie dress in a rainbow of colors. I don't know what I'd been thinking when I'd expected to sneak by when I was impossible to miss. "I ask you, oh you queen of gamblers, what you say about a secular-nay, a sinful-organization calling innocents to pray in a temple of money and greed?"

"Uh, I don't belong to the Church of Texas Hold 'Em, Mr. Paul, but if you ask me, I think it's just a bit of a light take on poker, an irony. Like, a joke?"

"G.o.d is a..." Gasp. Grab throat. "...joke, Miss Cooley?"

"That's not what I said, Mr. Paul."

"That is Reverend Paul to you."

Okay, time to take the gloves off. Time to show some teeth. The cameras, which had been busy with the interview of the current chip leader, Rahn Vinoy, at the other end of the sidewalk, moved in on the two of us now, like sharks smelling blood in the water.

"Reverend Paul, what would you call what you do? Seducing young girls with the selfsame money you criticize?"

A gasp rose from the gathered crowd. Paul went apoplectic, his mouth opening and closing, his face glowing red.

I couldn't get away with the illusion that he was a pimp for much longer, so I continued. "Paying them to walk your picket line when they don't believe the messages they hold?"

"Who doesn't BEE-LIEVE the messages they hold?" he boomed at the teenage picketers. A couple of them looked curiously at the signs they held. I tried not to laugh out loud. No one, however, volunteered to answer his question.

"If so, you may bring me your sign. Turn it in. I will find someone else to carry on your holy work. There is no reason for you to walk down the road to salvation if you do not BEE-LIEVE."

No takers. The girls just kept walking. Bunch of zombies.

Paul had carefully not denied my claim.

Time to push. "Can you deny that you pay these girls to protest for you?"

"Not for me, for our community. For the world," he said, his voice rising in a crescendo, his hand on his heart, his eyes heavenward. "Other valuable members of my congregation are occupied with blessed duties that these girls are not yet able to perform. The means always justify the ends when the end is a holy work of the Lord. It will all make sense when we come to judgment.

"When we come to judgment, Miss Cooley, wouldn't you rather BEE-lieve than BEE Cool? Repent and live forever! Repent and save the millions you are corrupting. Repent and save the world from the evil legacy of poker."

I suppressed the shiver. And was saved by the sungla.s.ses, as the Chanel reps surrounded me and led me into the hotel.

The shoot went relatively smoothly and painlessly, so much so that it tempted me to change careers. Modeling gigs might be the way to go. Of course, at forty-one, what was I a potential candidate for besides poker-appropriate eyewear? Antiaging creams? Cellulite busters? Eighteen-hour support bras?

I managed to depress myself by the time I got to my table, a whole half hour early. Blackie was already there, as she always was. I wondered what time she got there.

"Do you sleep under the table or something?" I grumped.

She shook her head perhaps a centimeter back and forth, that was all, but I could tell she was making fun of me. How could someone with no sound and no facial expression mock someone else? What an art form.

What self-control.

I think she was my new hero.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

No answer.

"Are you so unfriendly because you're in your zone, or because you don't like anyone else?

"You know, I want to beat you just to see if you stand up and swear at me in Vietnamese or something."

She clearly wasn't Vietnamese but I thought that might get her talking.

"Watch out. If you cuss at me in Filipino, I'll know what you're saying because my best friend's mom is from Manila."

Nothing. No response. She could be dead.

If so, she might really be my hero, because I'd be put out of my current misery.

"Good talk," I told Blackie.

The dealer looked between the two of us and raised his eyebrows. At tournaments, the dealers are rotated every twenty minutes or so to prevent any kind of cheating. This year, the WSOP was doing random rotations, different amounts of time, unpredictable tables. We'd had this particular dealer, Ronnie, several times and he seemed to have a sense of humor. Some of them don't, and, trust me, it's a drag.

"Ladies." He nodded to us as he sat down.

"What's new?" I asked, feeling particularly punchy. I hadn't slept well two nights in a row, my mind full of clues, my body startling at every sound that could be Frank. If he didn't show by the end of tonight, I knew what I had to do and didn't want to think about it.

"The talk this morning's been that big bust of some Hold 'Em players at the Toucan."

"What bust?"

"Didn't you see the paper? It's the on front page." Ronnie took the Las Vegas Tribune out from under his arm and handed it to me. A photo of some middle-aged men and some young-looking teens being herded into paddy wagons by police. "This was an in-house tournament of some pros that play pretty low-level games but are household names around Vegas, old-timers. They were caught with underage girls-the girls are claiming consensual s.e.x but that's still jail time, right?"

"Hold 'Em's really getting a black eye this Main Event, isn't it?" I observed, peering closer at the photo. One of the girls was wearing an Abercrombie shirt like the little brunette who'd hit me up for an autograph and bus fare. She was standing next to a blonde with a Juicy shirt on and a side ponytail...

"Hey, I know these two," I blurted.

Ronnie raised his eyebrows. "What kind of crowd do you hang with?"

"These girls. .h.i.t me up for bus fare home a couple of days ago." I sighed. "Guess they didn't go home, huh?"

"Where was home?"

"Oregon, they said."

Ronnie shrugged. "No good deed goes unpunished. See, now you can feel guilty."

"Too late, I already did."

I guess it was fortunate that my life was falling apart around me, because it certainly made playing cards easier. When the lives of most people I loved hung in the balance, suddenly the cards, chips and bets seemed trivial. Knowing I wouldn't be sitting there unless one of those lives depended on it made the game just another job. It's how I managed the Big Kahuna, my entree into Hold 'Em. It was how I would manage getting through the biggest poker tournament in the history of the world.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I don't play, aka do leisure time, well. I do work well. Or rather, more precisely, I work better than I play. So I was going to work at this Main Event. Deciding that took a huge and sudden load off my shoulders.

First order of business: read the players. We started the deal with five. Blackie I knew, or rather, was familiar with. I didn't know how well I really understood her but, so far, I'd let my intuition read her, and it was doing well enough to spare me any intellectual a.n.a.lysis. The other five were a veterinarian who played with his mustache anytime he didn't have the nuts, a local twenty-one dealer off The Strip who had so many facial expressions it was like seeing his cards, a Cincinnati computer expert who muttered nonsense to himself, a young man who said his wife had just given birth to quadruplets and who sighed heavily when he had a betting hand, and a woman who tortured her cuticles when she had a pair.

In my first pocket I got a Michael Jordan-those of you who know basketball and Hold 'Em are crying, because you know that's a two/three. All black, spade and club respectively. That was a no-brainer if I were anywhere but in the big blind. Come on, with as much as I had on the felt, I had to hang. Like Mike.

A 2 of clubs, Queen of diamonds and Jack of clubs Flop. I should have folded. But since Blackie didn't breathe, Cincinnati was sweating so much he had a swimming pool behind his shades and was muttering double time, and Twenty-one sure enough had a Big Slick straight draw, I decided to stay in. It didn't cost much because everybody left had turned into calling stations.

Fourth Street brought a 2 of hearts. Big deal. I was betting Cincinnati had a pair of Queens in his pocket. But if so, it was time for him to raise and he didn't. I didn't know if he was trying to slow play me or if I'd misread his hand as just a pair. I called because I couldn't decide. Blackie hung in too, although I wasn't sure why unless she had some Jack interest. I couldn't believe it when The River fell another deuce. What were the odds of me drawing four of a kind twice in forty-eight hours? It hadn't been masterful play, but I had been lucky. And I had so tentatively played the whole hand that I kept it up, small raising and waiting for Twenty-one to reraise. n.o.body knew what anyone had, so Blackie reraised. The pot was looking more comfortable when I flipped over the nuts.

Everyone glared. I think Cincinnati said a bad word. It wasn't by artifice, but now no one was going to be able to read me for at least a couple more hands, because I wouldn't have been able to read myself on that one.

Five hands later, I'd folded two, lost one and won a big one. The latter was a gift, as most luck is. I had what Ben likes to call a "flat tire" in my pocket. Guess it yet? It's a Jack/four, as in a flat tire is what you use a jack for. Heart/diamond. Anyway, it's not much to hang a call, much less a bet, on. I was in late position, which is the only reason why I called when three others had folded. It wasn't too expensive to see The Flop. So, I succ.u.mbed to temptation: Four of hearts, 10 of hearts, 4 of spades. No kidding.

Gotta love that.

Unless you're Phineas Paul, who would hate that I'd been rewarded for sin.

That made me even happier.