Read Online Mind Scrambler by Chris Grabenstein - Free Book Online Page A

volunteer onstage.
    â€œYes, sir?”
    â€œKeep thinking about your number. Girls?”
    The chorus girls came bounding back onstage like gazelles to join the male dancers already out there, elbows cocked, eagerly anticipating their next hoedown.
    â€œA little traveling music, if you please!”
    The six remaining dancers launched into a huge production number, lip-synching to a prerecorded track about Lucky Numbers.
    I don’t think anybody was listening to the stupid song or watching the dancers kick and pump, even though two of the girls were more or less dancing with each other since Jake still hadn’t shown up and Jim Bob was escorting Rock out of the theater. All eyes were glued on the TV screen and Richard Rock as he sipped his Shirley Temple, went out the swinging doors, and strolled through the theater lobby.
    I wished I could’ve gone with him.
    The Lucky Numbers song sucked. Totally.

 
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    On the giant TV screen, we could see Rock and Jim Bob in the wide corridor outside the Shalimar Theater.
    They were standing underneath the blinking marquee as all sorts of people straggled past—many of them staring at the strange dude in the tuxedo with a black bag over his head who was being led around by a topless seeing-eye dancer.
    â€œShow Cassie and the other folks where we are, Fred.”
    The camera whipped around to take in the wide carpeted hall leading off to the slot machines and blackjack tables. Then it zipped back to frame up Rock again as he and his escort walked past all the shops and restaurants Ceepak and I had walked past earlier.
    â€œAll right, Fred. You can go back inside with that thing. Switch to the hotel security cameras, fellas!”
    The TV screen cut to a shot from the ceiling surveillance camera closest to where Rock was walking. When he left its coveragearea, the scene switched to the next camera down the line. The whole time he walked, Rock chattered away. I think magicians call it patter.
    â€œLadies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it was the ancient mathematician Pythagoras who once declared, ‘The world is built upon the power of numbers.’ Tonight, we will put his words to the ultimate test. We will witness just how powerful one number can be!”
    The camera angle switched and he was entering the main casino floor, walking past some blinking slot machines, of course. With that black hood over his head and white rose in his lapel, he looked a little like the Grim Reaper on his way to the senior prom, but nobody seemed to notice. They were all too busy staring at their spinning Sheriff Roscos, General Lees, Daisy Dukes, and whatever else spun on the
Dukes of Hazzard
slot machines.
    Another camera. Another left turn. This time past the electronic poker machines.
    â€œDo you believe one number can change your luck, change your life?”
    Onstage, a spotlight swung over to make Cassie the volunteer look like a Bambi caught in the searchlights during a prison break.
    She giggled. Mrs. Rock gestured for her to answer. “I don’t know,” she said, sounding nervous. “Maybe. I guess so.”
    Rock and Jim Bob hung another Louie, the camera switched, and we watched them pass that cocktail lounge where the athletic woman in the too-tight gown was stomping through another Motown hit.
    Thankfully, we couldn’t hear her. Just Rock’s voice over.
    â€œWe’re almost there, ladies and gentlemen. The Ming Dynasty Room! Where the highest of the high rollers win and lose millions of dollars, all on a single turn of the cards or a solitary spin of the roulette wheel. And you know what?”
    â€œWhat?” said the volunteer.
    We could see Rock and Jim Bob walk down a carpeted corridor toward an ornately decorated door right underneath a pagoda-shaped arch.
    But Rock didn’t answer his volunteer.
    So Cassie leaned in closer to her microphone. “Yes, Mr. Rock?”
    Mrs. Rock turned toward the