Lucky Break (42 page)

I had to play this hand, but I was going to hate myself a bit in the morning.
 
“Okay, I’ll use what I got, but you’ve got to give me something, anything to get the drop on Irv Gittings.
 
He and Sam, they’re doing some serious damage.
 
Shot my father, tried to kill me twice.
 
I need some leverage here.”

Again, he glanced up at the guard.
 
Nobody liked a snitch, especially not here.

“I get it, kid.”

A smile lifted one corner of his mouth.
 
“Home.
 
Have a nice trip home.”

The cabbie had been true to her word.
 
She fired the engine when she saw me.
 
I’d stopped to chat with the warden.
 
Frank would get his art supplies.
 
Hadn’t taken long.
 
The warden was a good guy.

The ride back passed in silence, with me lost in thought and the cabbie leaving me to it.
 
We rolled through the desert, the miles clicking under the wheels.
 
On the north side, just as the first of the suburban sprawl crawled over the hills, we passed the turn-off to Mt. Charleston sporting its mantle of snow—most folks were surprised to find out one could ski in the morning and sunbathe in the afternoon.
 
Vegas winters, as many distinct faces as the city itself.
 

When we hit the edge of town, I leaned forward.
 
“Can you reach another cabbie?”
 

“The dispatcher can find anybody.”

I gave her River Watalsky’s name, then wrote my number on a slip of paper which I handed to her.
 
“Ask if he can call me at that number.”

I watched my city slip by outside the window.
 
When we passed the turnoff for Summerlin Parkway, my breath caught.
 
Jean-Charles’s neighborhood.

Home.

Irv and I had one thing in common—neither of us had a home.
 
I had no idea where I would call home.
 
But the more important question was, where would he?

I had options.
 
What were his?
 
He’d lived at the Athena.
 

It was gone.

My phone vibrated in my hand.
 

Jeremy.
 
“Hey.
 
Got anything?” I asked, hope flaring.
 
I knew the pieces were there, but how was all this going down?
 
How could I prove it?

“No sign of your man at Miss Minnie’s.”
 
Jeremy’s voice was tired, but had a hint of happy in it.
 
“I left Shooter out there, and Flash is still hanging in.
 
She is relentless.”

“One of her best qualities and one of her worst.
 
Depends on the context.”

That got a chuckle.
 
“I got that.”

“Any idea where the young Asian woman is?
 
Is she still there?”

“No, she left, but she didn’t come back.
 
Took her mother’s car, or at least I assumed it was her mother’s.”

I heard a female voice in the background.
 
“Thanks.
 
Where are you?”

“Home.”
 
He was being intentionally oblique; I could hear it in his voice.
 
Jerking my chain.
 
Why not?
 
Everybody else was.

“Get some sleep.”
 
I wanted to ask him so much more, but it was none of my business and not a problem I could solve.
 
Sticking my nose in would only make things worse.
 
Amazingly, I took my own advice and hung up.

Waiting for River to call, I was at wit’s end.
 
Frank had said Irv had a lady waiting on the outside.
 
He’d said it casually, but could it have been another hint?
 
A female accomplice?
 
Given Ol’ Irv’s appetites, that would be consistent.

Papers crumpled in my pocket as I shifted, looking for a more comfortable position.
 
Tugging them loose, I unfolded them.
 
The visitor log for Ol’ Irv.
 
Not many names for a guy known for his glad-handing.
 
One name caught my eye.
 
Dani Jo.
 
No last name.
 
On a whim, I rooted through my purse and found the registration form Mrs. Holt Box had signed.

One look and I laughed out loud, startling the cabbie, who darted a worried look at me in the rearview.
 
“I’m okay.
 
In fact, I’m better than okay.”

“Good to know,” she said in a voice filled with indifference.

Different names; same handwriting down to the left-handed slant and the closed-loop letters.
 
Granted, I was no expert.
 
But the similarities were enough to warrant paying the grieving widow a call.

With the help of security and their cameras, I found Mrs. Holt Box at the private pool in the Hanging Gardens.
 
Carrying the Babylonian theme to the max, the Big Boss had created Las Vegas’s very own jungle under glass.
 
The Hanging Gardens, fashioned after the seventh wonder of the Ancient World, were a riot of large draping trees, flowering shrubs, trailing greenery, and all manner of plants clinging to the banks of meandering streams filled with tubing tourists.
 
The streams flowed through three distinct pools—one family-friendly, one adults only, and one private, tops-optional.

The original gardens, as described in ancient texts, consisted of steps of flowering plants, like a giant pyramid or mountain.
 
Nobody knows for sure and many speculate the gardens were purely mythical.
 
Not in Vegas.
 
Here, we make it our life’s work to turn the magic and mythical into reality.

And with the gardens, the Big Boss had exceeded himself.

Yes, the Babylon had the only tropical climate in all of Nevada.
 
And it took an enormous amount of energy, electricity, and manpower to sustain it.
 
Two acres of climate-controlled wonderland.

Mrs. Box lounged by the top-optional pool, availing herself of the option.
 
She needn’t have bothered—by Vegas standards, anti-climactic.
 
But, my assessment … and to be honest, I didn’t make a habit of evaluating boobs.
 
A couple of strings and a tiny triangle completed her ensemble.
 

Apparently today was my day to be small.
 
Something the two of us had in common, albeit in different contexts.
 
However, I didn’t think pointing that out would be a good icebreaker, so I bailed.

Instead, I dangled the visitor log from the jail in front of her face.
 
“This is you, right?”

She shaded her eyes from an absent sun with a dainty hand.
 
“No.”

I dangled the registration form she’d signed next to the other.

“Oh.”
 
She moved herself to a seated position, swinging her legs over the side of the lounge chair so she faced me, knees to knees, as I plopped down on the lounge chair next to hers.
 

I could tell she was trying to assess my bullshit tolerance level.
 
“I’m tired of playing games.
 
Your buddy, Ol’ Irv, and Sam, a buddy of his you know, have tried to kill my father once and me twice.
 
They killed your husband, which you seem really broken-up over, by the way.
 
You better tell me what’s going on.
 
If you’re honest, I can help you.
 
If not, I’ll see you buried in a shallow grave where the crows and rats and other desert critters can get to you, ripping your flesh from bone.”

She swallowed hard.
 
“Is that a threat?”

“No.
 
It’s a promise.”
 
My inner Robert De Niro cheered.
 
I had always wanted to say that … and to mean it.
 
Okay, I was faking it, but as they say, fake it ‘til you make it.

She knotted her hands in her lap. “Me, and Holt … we haven’t been so good for a long time.
 
We have a big house, him on one end, me on the other, the kids in the middle.
 
We’re doing it for the kids, but I got to the point I couldn’t stand it.
 
Being married to somebody who has a bazillion gals waiting to bed him every night takes a toll, you know?
 
We were just kids, nobodies when we got married.
 
Irv gave him that stage and everything changed.”

“Big lights.
 
How’d that happen?
 
That was a pretty big gig for a nobody, as you say.”

Her face closed.
 
She plucked at the edge of a towel as if there was a thread to pull.
 

Not in a Babylon towel, thank you.
 
I wanted to slap her hand away.
 

“I slept with him.” Her voice came out small, defeated.

“You slept with Irv?”
 
I wasn’t surprised.
 
Back then, Ol’ Irv was at the top of the Vegas heap, and apparently at the top of his game.

“Shhh.”
 
She glanced around as if a microphone could be in the bushes.
 
Came with the territory, I guessed.
 
“It was a huge opportunity.
 
Holt was good enough—I think that’s been proven.
 
Look what happened.”

“But Irv needed a bit of extra incentive.”

“Yeah.
 
I’m not proud of it, but you could say I opened the door for Holt.
 
He ran through it, but still.”
 
She looked sad.
 
A plain gal from a small town—simple wants, simple needs, caught in a celebrity maelstrom.

I sorta started feeling sorry for her.
 
Sorta.
 
I still sensed a piranha lurking under the boots and Levis act.
 
“Irv has proof?”

“Pictures and a video.”
 
She shivered.
 
“It’s awful.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“I was there, and yes, I’ve seen enough.”
 
She wouldn’t look at me.

I didn’t blame her.
 
“That was a long time ago.
 
What could it matter now?”

“Yeah, several lifetimes, it seems.
 
But I was married.
 
And now we’re getting divorced, or were.
 
The press didn’t know yet.
 
Nobody knows really—our lawyers, my mom.”

Holt’s death just increased her wealth by a hundred percent. “Irv?”
 

“Irv,” she affirmed, her voice hard and cold—a tone I remembered from our first meeting.
 
“I’d kill him, you know.”

I had no doubt. “How’d he find out?”

She adjusted the tiny string on her bottom half, untying one side with a yank, then redoing it in angry, jerky motions.
 
“Who knows?
 
Can you ever keep something like that totally quiet?
 
People were all over the new tour, coming out of retirement.
 
Why now?
 
That sort of thing.
 
Lots of questions, people guessing.
 
Some guessing right.”

“So, if it came out you’d had an affair, you stood to lose a lot in the divorce.”

“My kids, enough money to go back home, start over.
 
Nobody knows, and I couldn’t risk it.
 
I got scared.
 
I didn’t want anyone to know.
 
You can imagine how it would be, fighting the Holt Box publicity machine.
 
I’d be labeled a tramp, unfit for everything.”