The Scam

by Janet Evanovich

  “Okay, but before we can get started, we need some basic information,” Mingus said. “We need to know the production company and studio, where the financing is coming from, whether the project is union or nonunion, whether—”

  Nick interrupted him. “Say that again.”

  “What?”

  “What you said before, only this time with coiled rage and greater authority.” Nick pointed at him and said, “Go!”

  Mingus stared at him for a moment, not sure what to make of the request, so he just soldiered on. “What I’m saying is that I need to make sure that you and your movie are legit. Anybody can just walk in here and claim—”

  “Wonderful,” Nick said, cutting him off again. “I believed it. Where did you get your training as an actor?”

  “I don’t have any, but before I got this job, I did some small parts. I was one of the airline passengers in the Lost pilot. I didn’t have any lines, but I was in the background of every scene.”

  “Those roles are crucial. They are even harder than speaking parts.”

  “They are?”

  “Of course. They give a film its inherent reality. You have that and natural gravitas, too.”

  “I do?”

  “Inherent reality and natural gravitas are just what I am looking for in the actor who plays Indy’s boss.”

  “Did you say ‘Indy’?” Mingus’s gaze flicked to the Raiders of the Lost Ark poster on the wall. “As in ‘Indiana Jones’?”

  Nick winced, as if realizing he’d let something slip. “No, I most emphatically did not. Forget I said that. All you need to know is that it’s a key speaking part, and I need to cast a local rather than fly someone in. You’d be doing me a big favor if you’d take the role. It’s a two-day job, tops. Would you do it for me?”

  “I’d be glad to,” Mingus said, breaking out in a huge grin.

  “Then it’s done, assuming we shoot here, of course,” Nick said. “What can you show me tomorrow?”

  “We have some spectacular locations, among the best on earth,” Mingus said. “Let me go grab the binders.”

  —

  Kate and Jake awoke at dawn and worked their way slowly to the southeast, keeping low and staying off the trails. It took them three hours to slog through the heavy vegetation and reach their destination, which was marked by a pair of iron gates under a massive stone arch with the words “Cretaceous Zoo” carved across the top.

  Jake knocked on the arch. It was a molded fiberglass veneer nailed to plywood. “What is this place?”

  “The old set for a movie about a zoo filled with genetically re-created dinosaurs and cavemen. The dinosaurs escape and eat all of the guests,” Kate said. “The cavemen team up with a retired New York cop, a busty medical student, and a novelist to battle the monsters.”

  “You saw it?”

  “I think it’s probably the best work Gunter Jorgenson has ever done. In the finale the survivors fight their way through hordes of raptors to get to the brontosaurus paddock. That’s the field where the helicopters landed to get the heroes off the island before the nukes were dropped. If it worked for them, it could work for us.”

  Kate took the lead, her shotgun at the ready, and sprinted under the arch, then hugged the tree line along the trail that led inside. Jake followed, wielding the M16 he’d acquired the day before. They moved from tree to tree, one person at a time, covering each other as they went.

  The Cretaceous Zoo Welcome Center loomed at the end of the trail in front of them. It was a two-story Polynesian-style building with a domed glass atrium. The plants in the atrium had grown and broken through the glass. There were several Jeeps that had been crushed by rampaging dinosaurs scattered around the Welcome Center.

  Kate and Jake used the Jeeps as cover, going from one to another, as they approached the Welcome Center and then worked their way behind the building, sticking close to the walls. They peeked around the edge of the building to see what lay beyond it.

  They faced the zoo itself. To their left was the caveman habitat, a neighborhood of stone-and-log cabins covered in layers of graffiti and arranged in a half circle facing a statue of two raging T. rexes tearing apart a struggling pterodactyl. To their right was a fake hillside, riddled with caves and overgrown with plants. At the far end, directly across from the Welcome Center, was another arch that lead to the next section of the zoo.

  “The brontosaurus corral and the clearing are on the other side of that arch,” Kate said.

  “We’ll be out in the open between here and those T. rex statues,” Jake said. “Then in the open again to the clearing.”

  “You go first and I’ll cover you.” Kate drew her Glock and held it out to Jake. “But I’ll need your M16 to do the job right.”

  They swapped weapons. She gave him her extra clips for the Glock and he stuck them in his pocket. She removed the shotgun from over her shoulder, and moved into position with the M16. She pressed her cheek against the stock, looked down the weld line through the sight, and targeted the statues. She put her finger on the trigger.

  “Ready,” Kate said.

  “That’s my girl,” he said.

  Jake held the Glock at his side and dashed out into the open, zigzagging as he went. He was halfway to the fighting dinosaurs when gunfire rang out and bullets cut divots into the dirt around him. Two shooters with M16s were firing down at him from the hillside caves.

  Kate opened fire on the hill, driving the startled shooters back into their caves. She pivoted and sprayed the caveman cabins, too, pinning down two other shooters who were about to let loose a barrage of their own. Her suppression fire gave Jake the crucial seconds he needed to dive for cover amid the legs of the fighting T. rexes. Kate had caught them by surprise, but it wore off quickly.

  The instant Jake landed, bullets chipped away at the dinosaurs’ legs from both the cabins and the caves, showering him with bits of wood and plaster. Alika’s men also let loose on Kate. She ducked back as bullets slammed into the wall beside her.

  There were at least two men in the cabins and two in the hillside caves, all armed with M16s. Jake was pinned down. He had a Glock and very little cover. Kate’s clip was empty, which left her with the twelve-gauge short-barreled shotgun, a perfect weapon for close-quarters fighting but lousy for situations like this. She’d have to get much closer to her enemy for the shotgun to be effective. The question was whether Jake could hold out long enough for Kate to sneak up on the cabins and start taking the shooters out, one by one.

  Her other option was to call Virgil on the radio. Tell him to come in the chopper right away, and bring all the firepower he could muster.

  Kate was about to make a decision when she heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter approaching. She looked up apprehensively, and a white helicopter flew in low over the Welcome Center. As it passed, she could clearly see the Hawaii state seal on the side of the aircraft.

  “This is where they shot Cretaceous Zoo,” Alan Mingus told Nick as they flew over the statues of the two battling T. rexes in the center of the park. “Those are caveman houses. You can remodel the buildings or tear them all down. It makes no difference to us.”

  Nick had a director’s viewfinder hanging on a lanyard around his neck. He used it to peer out the window at the set below, and glimpsed what he thought was someone hunkered down among the fighting dinosaurs. He couldn’t be sure, and even if it was someone, it didn’t mean it was Kate or her father.

  “I wish you’d tear the sets down,” said Larry Kealoha, the uniformed park ranger who sat across from them. “People love to party up here. Over the years, we’ve probably had to rescue a dozen drunken fools who’ve fallen into the raptor pit and broken their legs.”

  “I would never use another director’s sets,” Nick said. “The vision of this film must be completely my own. I would be morally and artistically bankrupt to do otherwise. It would be like asking the women in my films to shave their underarm hair.”

  “Is that a thing in S
wedish films?” Kealoha asked.

  “It is in mine,” Nick said.

  The pilot landed the chopper in the center of a field with enormous cages on one end and bleachers on another.

  “What was this?” Nick asked.

  “The brontosaurus corral,” Mingus said. “In the movie, the dinosaurs were in those big cages, and their trainers rode them around this field like horses, doing tricks, while the audience watched from the bleachers.”

  Nick hopped out, dashed a few yards away from the helicopter, then held the viewfinder up to his eye with one hand and scanned the statues. He could definitely see someone standing with his back against the leg of a T. rex. The man turned to look at Nick. It was Jake, covered in mud and holding a gun. Nick panned the viewfinder up over to the cabins and saw a Hawaiian peek out of a doorway holding an M16. Nick figured Kate was here somewhere, either taking cover herself or moving in for the kill.

  Mingus and Kealoha came up beside Nick.

  “What do you think of the location?” Mingus asked.

  Nick dropped the viewfinder, letting it fall against his chest. “Very nice. Lots of possibilities here. Let’s take a closer look.”

  He tramped purposefully toward the statues, followed by Mingus and Kealoha.

  Kate didn’t know who the three men were, but they’d arrived in a government helicopter and she doubted Alika’s men would dare open fire in front of state officials. The blowback for Alika from the authorities would be too severe. Kate was willing to stake her life on that assumption.

  She slung the shotgun over her shoulder by its strap, stepped out from behind the wall into the open, and strode casually toward her father. Jake saw her coming and peeked out from behind one of the T. rex legs to sneak a look at the caves. The gunmen were hiding in the dark recesses of the caves and cabins, wrestling with the decision of whether or not to shoot.

  Kate reached her dad just as the three men from the chopper were crossing under the arch from the brontosaurus paddock. That’s when she realized that the blond one with the ridiculous soul patch was Nick.

  Mingus and Kealoha were surprised to see the couple who’d walked out of the zoo to meet them. The old man was shirtless, covered in mud, and holding a gun at his side. The younger woman’s face was painted in streaks like some sort of jungle savage, and she had a shotgun slung over her shoulder.

  “My God,” Mingus said to Kealoha. “Who are those people?”

  “Crazy tourists,” Kealoha said. “Maybe a couple of survivalists. We get all kinds out here.”

  “Sven!” Nick said. “Gita!”

  Mingus looked at Nick in astonishment. “You know these people?”

  “They are two of my actors. They have lived in the jungle for days, immersing themselves in the roles that they will play,” Nick said, loud enough for Jake and Kate to hear as they approached. “This is the commitment you must have to be in my movies.”

  “You didn’t mention anything to me about having actors in the jungle,” Mingus said.

  “We became the jungle,” Kate corrected him in an accent as unrecognizable as Nick’s.

  “I’m certain that it will add enormous depth to your roles,” Nick said, then turned back to Mingus. “Sven and Gita are huge stars in Sweden, and their total dedication is the reason they are so popular. You could learn something from them. I want you to become the jungle, too.”

  The color drained from Mingus’s face. “Is that really necessary?”

  “It is if you want to achieve greatness as an actor. Think about it, because I love this location. This is where I’ll make my movie.”

  “Excellent,” Mingus said, his enthusiasm tempered by the terrifying prospect of having to become the jungle himself.

  Nick faced Kate and Jake. “You two must come back to Honolulu with me and tell me all about your experiences.”

  He put one arm around Jake and another around Kate, and led them back toward the chopper. Mingus and Kealoha lagged behind so they could confer in private.

  “Out of curiosity,” Nick whispered. “How many shooters are there?”

  “At least four,” Jake said. “With M16s.”

  “Poor guys,” Nick said. “They never stood a chance.”

  —

  Nick took Kate and Jake back to his two-bedroom suite at the historic Royal Hawaiian Hotel, on Waikiki Beach, so they could shower and change into clean clothes.

  Jake was happy to see a white polo shirt, khaki slacks, and a pair of leather loafers, all in his size, laid out on the bed. He was ecstatic to find the correct Dr. Scholl’s inserts in the shoes, because his feet were killing him.

  A luncheon buffet of fresh fruit, kalua pork, and an assortment of desserts that included lilikoi cheesecake and haupia cream pie was laid out on the dining table. The doors to the lanai were open, letting in a gentle breeze and offering a spectacular panoramic view of Diamond Head, Waikiki Beach, and the shimmering Pacific.

  “Feeling better?” Nick asked Jake.

  “I was feeling great before.” Jake took a plate and nodded in approval. “But this isn’t bad.”

  “We’ll have lunch, relax on the lanai for a bit, and then you and I will head back to Los Angeles by private jet. Kate will settle up with the local authorities and take a commercial flight home.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I take down Lono Alika,” Jake said. “He destroyed Harlan’s food truck and shot up his house. I can’t let him get away with that.”

  “I met a local cop who I think is a good man,” Kate said. “I’ll have a talk with him and the agents in the FBI field office. They’ll make sure Alika knows that it would be a big mistake to give Harlan any trouble.”

  Jake shook his head. “That’s not good enough.”

  “I think it’s possible that we can take down Alika and Evan Trace at the same time,” Nick said. “Since we left Vegas, I’ve been noodling with an idea for a con to destroy Trace’s money laundering operation, but it wasn’t coming together. It was missing the key piece, the fulcrum, you might say.”

  “Fulcrum,” Jake said. “Like a seesaw?”

  “Like a tipping point,” Nick said. “We’re going to insinuate ourselves into the money laundering operation at Trace’s casino in Macau by becoming junket operators.”

  “I have no idea what that means,” Kate said.

  “Most of the major money laundering in Macau is done through junket operators. They are middlemen who bring high rollers to the casinos to gamble in private VIP rooms. The gamblers book their travel, rent their hotel rooms, and buy their chips through the junket operators, who are actually the ones on the hook with the casino for everything.”

  “So, technically, the players aren’t actually gambling in Macau with their own money,” Kate said. “They are playing with the junket’s money.”

  “That’s how the money gets laundered,” Nick said. “The cash the players use to buy their ‘vacations’ in Macau is dirty. But the money they get when they cash in their chips is clean.”

  “How do the junkets make money on the deal?” Jake asked.

  “By imposing a surcharge on all of their services and by requiring the gamblers to wager a certain amount of money over the course of their VIP play. The junket takes forty percent of whatever the house brings in at the tables. The casino takes the other sixty percent.”

  “That’s crazy,” Jake said. “Why doesn’t the casino get rid of the middleman and deal directly with the high rollers themselves?”

  “Risk avoidance. A lot of these high rollers come from countries like China, where it’s virtually impossible for the casinos to collect on gambling debts. But the casinos can collect from the junket operator, who assumes all of the financial and legal risks,” Nick said. “It’s the junket operator, not the casino, who has the relationship with the players. If anybody ever asks, the casino can say they don’t have any idea who the gamblers are in those VIP rooms or how much money they’re winning or losing.”

  “So how do we take
down Trace by running a junket?” Kate asked.

  “We’re going to bring a Canadian mobster and a Somali warlord to Trace’s casino in Macau to launder their dirty cash,” Nick said. “Only the two bad guys will be our friends playing parts, and the money they’ll be washing will be ours. We go in, we gamble, we leave.”

  “Which will establish our credibility as junket operators if anybody asks Côte d’Argent about us,” Kate said.

  Jake smiled. “Someone like Lono Alika.”

  “Now you’re catching on,” Nick said. “We’re going to invite Alika on a gambling junket to launder his money with us. We’ll go back to Macau with him and our two fake bad guys, wash his cash and ours, and everybody leaves happy.”

  “You seem to be missing the part where we put the criminals in jail,” Kate said. “So far we’re just washing our money and making the bad guys richer.”

  “We’re going to have to bait the trap for Alika first,” Nick said. “He isn’t going to go all in on the laundering scheme the first time around. He’ll gamble only a little of what he has and see how it goes. Once he discovers how well the washing machine works, he’ll come rushing back to us to launder all of the cash that he’s been hoarding. Only this time, I’m going to run away with his money, leaving him broke and Trace holding the bag.”

  “That’s a dangerous play,” Jake said. “I like that you’re ruining Alika, but he and his Yakuza backers will be in a bloody rage. They’ll go after you and Trace.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Nick said. “That’s what makes Alika the key element of this con. We need to scare the crap out of Trace. We want him to absolutely believe that his life is in serious danger.”

  “It will be,” Jake said. “The Yakuza take revenge to extremes.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Nick said. “Before there is any real threat, Kate is going to reveal herself to Trace as an undercover FBI agent.”

  “What will my story be?” Kate asked.