Watching him go, Maxine did not share his smile. Rather, the look she focused on him was not unlike that of a snake watching a supposedly flightless meal disappear into the clouds.
“Max … I think we’ve got problems,” Laverna hissed, materializing at her side.
“What’s that, Laverna?” Maxine blinked, tearing her eyes away from Phule’s retreating back.
“I said we’ve got problems,” her aide repeated. “It’s been nearly half an hour since midnight, and those damn machines aren’t-“
“I know,” Max snapped, cutting her off. “Tell those idiots to stop feeding our money into the house’s coffers. And don’t bother being subtle. The gambit has been blown and countered.”
“It has?”
“Just go,” Maxine said. “Come up to the room when you’re done and I’ll fill you in on the details. Right now, as you pointed out earlier, every minute’s delay is costing us money.”
“On the way,” Laverna said, and headed for the slots with a speed quite unlike her characteristic amble.
“Mr. Stilman! A moment, if you please?”
At her summons, the ex-astroball player floated over to her.
“Yes, Mrs. Pruet?”
“I want you to take over the floor operations for a while,” she said. “See if you can arrange some sort of incident to remind Mr. Phule’s troops that we haven’t forgotten them completely. I need some time to rethink things.”
“Is something wrong?”
“It seems I’ve underestimated our Mr. Phule … Rather badly, at that,” Max admitted, shaking her head. “I’ll be in my suite with Laverna trying to figure where we go from here.”
Preoccupied as she was with her own thoughts as she headed for the elevators, Maxine failed to look directly at her violence specialist after she spoke. If she had, her usually alert warning signals might have been triggered by the rare, slow smile that spread across Stilman’s face.