Three hours later, I thought I was doing pretty good. I'd been taking double orders the entire time, and was faster at getting the drinks to the customer, so I'd made three times the tips I had yesterday. Since I had nowhere to carry the oversized things, whenever I got a chip or coin, I took it over to the bar and dropped it into the slot with number 59 on it, which marked it as mine. (There were only three slots, but the numbers were on little wheels, so they could change depending on which employee was working that shift.) Someone somewhere collected my money and logged it in my account, or maybe it was automated. I had no idea, and since I wasn't all that concerned with the money, it didn't really matter.
Anyway, I was meandering around the slot machines, toying with the idea of taking a triple order, and calling out "Cocktails?" in a slightly raised voice. I'd been doing this all day, so there was nothing unusual about someone answering me, except that this time I recognized the voice. When I did, I almost jumped out of my boots in surprise.
"I'll take one, miss," said Mark Powers, staring at me from a seat in front of one of the five-cent slots. He was looking my tiny body up and down, and grinning like the damn Cheshire cat all the while.
If I'd had a gun, I probably would have blown him away right then and there, and no jury would have been able to convict me.
"Mark!" I yelled, pissed off beyond measure. "What the hell do you think you're doing here?"
"Calm down!" he replied, that insipid smile still plastered all over his face. "You wouldn't let me see you in costume, so I wanted to take a look for myself."
"You are such a dead man!" I yelled up at him, absolutely furious. If I hadn't been so small, I would have already been pounding the crap out of him. Mentally, I added another reason to my growing list of why I did not like being shrunk.
"Oh, geez, lighten up, will you?" he chuckled. "Sooner or later I was going to get a look at you like this. Might as well get it over with now."
I was still seething, but managed to keep myself under control. "You do realize I'm being watched, right?" I hissed, resisting the urge to point up at the hidden camera dome in the ceiling. "Don't even think about trying to touch me. All I have to do is scream and you'll be an ink spot on the floor."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," he replied, putting up his hands in protest. At least for the moment, he managed to stop laughing and wipe the leering grin off his face. "Don't worry, I won't try anything, 'Ashley.' You can just tell them I'm your old boyfriend or something."
"I'll think of something," I said gruffly. "Now, for the love of God, get the hell out of here!"
"Just wait a second," he told me. "I did come down here for a reason, you know. It wasn't just to sneak a peek at you."
"That's nice to know," I said icily.
"Yeah, well, get a load of this," he went on. "I got a call an hour ago. We traced another missing girl back to the casino. That brings the total up to five."
"Shit," I muttered, my anger fading as I forced myself to remember why I was here. "All right, what was her name?"
"Nicole Tisdale," he answered, hesitating to see if I'd remember which one that was.
"The Hollywood girl," I said after a moment's recollection. "Geez, that's just what we needed!"
Nicole was the daughter of Johnny Tisdale, a rather well-known actor but one with a pretty poor reputation in social circles. His daughter had run away from home a year ago, perhaps justifiably, and we'd managed to trace her to Las Vegas, where she'd been living under an assumed name. That was all we knew, though, or so I'd thought until now.
"Yeah," continued Mark, "one of our detectives linked Nicole with another pseudonym that we found listed on the casino's employee files. From what we know, the Sidewinder fired her six weeks ago, and mailed her final paycheck to her last known address. The check was cashed two days later, but no one's seen Nicole since then, and she hasn't accessed her bank account, either."
"So, just like the others, we don't know for sure if the casino was involved," I said, frowning. That was what made this case so damn frustrating. All the girls had employment at this casino in common, but we couldn't actually trace an exact moment of disappearance back to here. For all we knew, the fact that they worked for the Sidewinder might have just been a coincidence.
I doubted that, though. In my experience, there are no such things as coincidences.
"We're still looking into it," Mark told me. "By tomorrow, we should know more. Stop by in the morning, but in the meantime, keep your ears open. She was going under the alias Nicole Westerbrooke."
"All right," I answered. "Now will you get out of here, please?"
"Sure," he replied. Then he hesitated for a moment, as though lost in thought. Finally, he went on. "Before I go, though, I want to say something else, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way."
I sighed, looking up at him with my hands on my hips. God, I must have looked ridiculous, staring up at him like that. "What is it now?" I demanded. Was he ever going to leave?
"Well, I'm not sure how to put this," he started, almost looking a little bit nervous.
"What? Spit it out, already!"
"All right, all right! I just wanted to say, you look really great."
"Oh, for the love of God!" I spat. "I swear, when I get back to normal size, I'm going to kick your male chauvinist ass!"
"No, seriously!" he insisted, and to my surprise, he really WAS serious. He wasn't laughing, and that ridiculous, humiliating smile had not returned to his face at all. In fact, he actually looked sort of embarrassed. Though it was hard to tell with the lighting in the casino, it seemed like he'd turned a slightly darker shade of red. "Really," he went on, suddenly unable to look me in the eye. "You look fantastic. That costume really looks good on you."
"You have got to be kidding me," I said, but I wasn't really all that angry any more. Surprised was a much better word for what I was feeling. Could he actually be sincere? If this were some kind of bad joke, I swore, there would be hell to pay!
"And don't worry about the size thing," he went on, still not able to look directly at me. "I can't really explain it, but it's very appealing. Whatever the reason, you're really pulling off the whole shrunken cocktail waitress thing. It's no wonder everyone is staring at you all the time."
Jesus, now I was actually blushing! That was such a foreign emotion to me that I didn't even recognize it at first. In fact, I think it wasn't until later that I realized it for what it was. "Thanks," was all I could say.
"Now I'll leave," he concluded, "but I just thought you should know that. I hope it makes you feel a bit better about this assignment, all right?"
"Sure," I replied weakly, staring up at him as he got to his feet and headed away, waving goodbye over his shoulder as he departed.
Well, I have to tell you, that had come completely out of the clear blue sky. After what had happened that morning, I'd thought Mark was a complete asshole, but now, at least for the moment, he'd redeemed himself.
And he'd been right about that last part, as it turned out. It did make me feel a lot better.