Lucky the Hard Way
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LUCKY THE HARD WAY
Lucky O’Toole Vegas Adventure
Book Seven
DEBORAH COONTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
NOVELS IN THE LUCKY O’TOOLE SERIES
LUCKY O’TOOLE NOVELLAS
OTHER BOOKS BY DEBORAH COONTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
TOO many questions, no easy answers, and no one to shoot—not exactly a great Christmas.
Okay, I didn’t really want to perforate someone. Not on Christmas. To be honest, I’m not exactly a point-and-shoot kind of gal anyway. Probably a good thing, since the woman standing in front of me was campaigning hard for a spot in the crosshairs. This is where that concealed-carry permit, had I had one, could’ve gotten us both into trouble.
But there was a difference between imagining shooting someone and wanting to see that person dead. One a euphemism, one a finality—so don’t take me too seriously. I’m known for talking a talk I could never walk—a shortcoming I’ve learned to carry with shame.
Miss Minnie, the aforementioned woman standing in front of me, was the proprietress of Miss Minnie’s Magic Massage and one of the most difficult people I know, which was saying a lot. Dealing with difficult people all day, every day was at the core of my job description, but when I was off the clock? Well, that just seemed wrong.
In a questionable neighborhood on the opposite side of Interstate 15, Miss Minnie’s was light-years away from my hood, the glamour and glitz of the Las Vegas Strip. A long, narrow retail space, it was a perfect layout with closed rooms on either side of a narrow hallway, a laminated counter up front, chipped and stained, and a threadbare couch pushed up against the wall as an afterthought. Muted music thumped from the rooms. I blocked out the other, more human, sounds.
As with most things in Vegas, Miss Minnie’s hid reality behind the thick whitewash of a fantasy. I was raised in a whorehouse; I could smell them a mile away. The cloying scent of sex masked by ammonia and room deodorizers—a noxious combination to churn even the most ironclad stomach.
Minnie’s girls worked as independent contractors—another clue. Alone with a client behind closed doors, each girl could negotiate her own deal—business dealings repeated multiple times in parking lots of the strip clubs and in hotel rooms all over town. Most of Minnie’s girls chose the profession, or so my mother told me, and she was somewhat of an expert. They weren’t the ones I worried about when the noise of life quieted and daylight thinned. But they were not why I was here. Not tonight.
Tonight I needed help.
The Miss Minnies of the world were parasites capitalizing on human frailty. Of course, I ran a casino, so who was I to judge? Before I slipped out onto that slippery slope and outlawed gambling, drinking, and other excesses, thereby turning Nevada into Utah, I reined myself in and tabled that bit of unnerving parallelism.
Using my ten-inch and fifty-pound advantage, I stared down Miss Minnie, willing her to break.
One of the junkyard dogs of the human race, with a bite worse than her bark, she met me glare for glare.
A walking fashion faux pas, tonight Miss Minnie channeled her Geisha-Gone-Wild look—with my apologies to geishas everywhere. She looked like a silk-encased human hotdog. The sheath of delicate fabric captured her Himalayan breasts several inches shy of respectability, then tapered to a tight opening at her ankles. The seams held, defying every law of physics. With her stride silk-limited to about six inches and teetering on platform shoes, Miss Minnie had no choice but to hold her ground, which she did with tilted chin and fists planted on either hip. A white face, the powder cracking and flaking, and a jet-black wig appropriately styled and lacquered completed the look. And the flashing pink of the faded sign in the window added a comical color, but this visit was anything but funny. Her red bow-tie mouth knotted tight and her dark eyes throwing daggers, she met me stare for stare as anger rolled off her in waves.
Wasn’t anger outlawed on Christmas?
“Minnie, you know why I’m here. I need your help.” I cringed as I said it—the last person on the planet I wanted to owe was Minnie, a high-ranking priestess in the cult of Paybacks Are Hell.
My name is Lucky O’Toole and as the Vice President of Customer Relations for the Babylon, Vegas’s most over-the-top strip casino/resort, I was slumming, but for a good cause—at least that’s what I kept telling myself, but I wasn’t an easy sell. As Christmas night wound toward an end, I wasn’t at all pleased to have been lured out of my bit of the jungle, especially with a warm bed and a hot French chef waiting for me.
“You bring man who killed my Sam, and I help you.” Minnie’s staccato delivery perforated my veneer of civility, thin as it was.
As I worked to hold onto my notoriously absent patience and regain my thick shield of self-delusion, I stared at Minnie. And I wondered how she stayed in business. One look at Minnie and any self-respecting male should turn and run. There was a warning in that thought somewhere, but I chose to ignore it.
“Irv Gittings shot Sam,” I said, telling her what she already knew. “You know I’d gladly risk twenty-to-life to shoot Mr. Gittings myself, but I have a minor problem—I need to find him first. That’s where you come in.”
“Me?” Miss Minnie’s voice rose on a wave of forced incredulity. “What I know?”
Despite knowing her well, Minnie didn’t scare me…much. I seemed to have the same effect on her. Familiarity breeding contempt and all of that. “Minnie, Irv Gittings hopped a private jet with your husband.”
“He not my husband anymore.” A faraway look lit her eyes for a moment, a look I couldn’t exactly read, other than I saw a hint of homicidal…and terrible hurt.
The Madam and the Diplomat—a B movie if there ever was one. I doubted it played well in halls of power in Beijing. “Your daughter, Kim, was along for the ride, too. Don’t you want me to find her?”
Miss Minnie flicked a glance my way. I’d say it was inscrutable, but that would be cliché and bordering on non-PC, wouldn’t it? Not that I didn’t normally blow right through those boundaries.
“Kim? Girl? Bah.” From her tone and puckered mouth I actually thought she might spit. Thankfully, I was wrong. “Girls no good for nothing but trouble.”
I couldn’t argue, other than with her double negative. Kimberly Cho, Miss Minnie’s daughter—a recent revelation that still had me a bit on my heels—had run me in circles in my own town, played me for a chump, and then had hot-footed with her father and Irv Gittings, a wart on the ass of humanity.
“Last I heard they were headed to Macau.” I threw that out there, a hook perhaps to catch Minnie’s complicity.
Her pupils pinpointed. “Then why you need me? You already know where they go.”
“Macau is a maze. Tiny winding streets, thousands of miniscule apartments—a spot of an island with six hundred thousand people on it.” Taking a deep breath and counting to ten, I worked to not wring the life out of Miss Minnie. Truth of it was, I needed a lead and she was the best hope I had—yep, a new low. Life was trying to teach me something—either that or Sa
nta had a huge bitch streak. “Three needles in a very large haystack. You can tell me exactly where to start digging.”
Minnie burbled like a teakettle ready to boil. I braced myself.
“You killed Sam!” she shrieked, as she launched herself at me with a growl, trying to rake me with pointed talons.
Actually, she didn’t launch herself so much as lean like a small tree felled in the forest. I stepped to the side and watched as she face-planted on the carpet that probably hadn’t been visited by a cleaner since it left the factory.
And I’d thought this was going so well.
A landed carp, she wiggled and thrashed, trying to throw her bound body over. Curiously detached, I watched and marveled at the incongruity of my life. This was my Christmas.
A life intervention! That’s what I needed. And I’d thought I had a pretty good handle on my life. But that was before Teddie came back. Then everything had gone on tilt, and I hadn’t found my footing since.
Miss Minnie flopped a few more times then quit. The floor was as far as she would get without help.
Bending, I grabbed her, pinning her arms at her sides, and lifted her up. A tiny human, she was as light as she looked, which was a good thing. While I could throw my weight around, I wasn’t as strong as my size might lead one to believe—intimidation rather than force was my game.
I held her while she fought, making sure to keep out of the reach of her teeth. One wooden-soled shoe connected with my shin, evaporating my thin veneer of restraint. I carried her to a small couch in the corner of the vestibule and tossed her down, her geisha finery immobilizing her better than I could have. One breast escaped and fell like an under-inflated water balloon. That was a bit more of Minnie than I needed.
She didn’t appear concerned. Instead, she struggled to lean forward, scooching to the edge of the couch to get her weight over her feet. Each time she almost got there, I pushed her back.
Finally, she tired of the game. “You kill Sam.” Her voice had lost its fight. Now she sounded like a mother who had lost her son, which she was.
I didn’t feel bad about the shooting Sam part, but my heart constricted for the mother-losing-a-son part. No matter how bad the child, a mother was always a mother—or so my own mother, Mona, told me—but Mona couldn’t always be trusted.
In a logic kind of mood, I gave it a shot, knowing full well reason never trumped emotion. But, hope springs eternal and all of that. “Irv Gittings shot Sam. And Sam had it coming.” Considering Sam had killed Holt Box, effectively ending a county and western comeback story, and then had framed Teddie for the murder, I wasn’t feeling at all charitable toward the former Sam Cho. He also then attempted to kill both my father and me, thereby solidifying his name close to the top of my shit list. Irv Gittings had earned a permanent place in the top spot, but that was a long story.
This time, Miss Minnie spat, narrowly missing my left foot. “You know nothing. Sam a good boy.”
“Sure, all the good boys I know try to kill people.” No logic in that. And it dawned on me that I really didn’t have the time to soften-up Miss Minnie—if that was even possible. Or maybe I didn’t want to take the time. Whatever. Time to play my ace. “I have Frank.” Frank was Sam’s brother, Miss Minnie’s second son, and the Dr. Jekyll to Sam’s Mr. Hyde.
“You bring Frank?”
A glimmer of interest, which fanned the flames of my hope. “Maybe,” I told her, not feeling at all remorseful about the lie.
Her narrowed-eyed look told me she didn’t trust me. I knew how she felt—I didn’t trust me either.
Frank was a guest of the Silver State at the High Desert State Prison outside of Indian Springs, forty-six miles north of Las Vegas, so him being the good son was relative. My cohort, Detective Romeo, a detective-in-training (my characterization, not his) for the Metropolitan Police Department, was working on remanding Frank to my care, but his mother didn’t need to know that. Frank would be my bargaining chip in Macau. His mother didn’t need to know that either.
My plan was to bring Kimberly Cho back, find a way to rid the world of Mr. Gittings without taking the fall for it, and do the same to Mr. Cho if it turned out he was behind the recent assassination attempt on my father.
What can I say? I’m an over achiever.
And then there was Teddie to think about.
Teddie.
But, before I went all vigilante, I needed some information. “You need to tell me what game your ex-husband and your daughter are playing.”
“Why you think I know?”
I gave her the what-do-you-take-me-for look.
She didn’t buy it. “What make you think anybody tell Minnie anything? I just a small-business owner.”
That was like calling a Great White just another shark.
Logic clearly wasn’t the winning gambit. “Stupidity, I guess.” Keeping an eye on Miss Minnie, I glanced around the entrance area to the massage parlor. Faded carpet, unraveling in places, with a dark track from the door to the counter then continuing around the desk and down the long hallway toward the back, large windows fogged with dirt, a pink neon sign blinking from high in the corner, the sizzle of aging bulbs audible above the low thumping music from the back, the place reeked of sexual desperation. I still didn’t understand the whole prostitution thing. Never would. But I’d learned enough about human peccadillos to read Minnie like a book.
“To be honest, Minnie, I don’t even know why I’m here. Really stupid of me to think you might know something, that you might be able to help me find your daughter and stop her father.” I gave her the benefit of my full attention. “I mean, really, who would tell you anything? You’re right. I’m sorry I bothered you.” I moved toward the door, but I didn’t turn my back on her—a rabid dog, she was waiting for the chance to bite me in the ass.
“You bring my son home?” She managed to stand, weaving a bit before finding her balance. “You give me back Frank?”
One hand on the door, I paused. “It depends. What do you have to trade?”
She eyed me, a butcher weighing meat on the hoof. I countered with my best I’m-out-of-here attitude. At a momentary impasse, I called her bluff. Showing her my back, I pushed the door open.
“Wait.”
I wiped the gloat off my face before I turned.
The large glass storefront to my right exploded.
Instinctively, I flinched away, my arms covering my head, my face tucked to the side. Ducking down, I waited for the next shot. It didn’t come. Outside, tires squealed. I looked up in time to see brake lights flash as a car turned, fishtailed onto the road and then disappeared into the darkness.
The hallway doors opened disgorging girls and guys in various stages of undress, excitedly chattering.
“Get back.” Still in a crouch, I motioned them to stop. “Go back to what you were doing. Excitement’s over.” My unfortunate choice of words actually amused me—sex one paid for couldn’t be exciting, at least not by my standards.
They hovered barely inside the hallway, but at least they didn’t step out into the open.
“Minnie, you okay?”
Standing, I brushed my slacks down as I kept my eyes looking out the window for more shooters. The fact that I was more pissed than scared probably should bother me, but frankly, being shot at had gotten to be a bit old-hat.
Miss Minnie didn’t answer.
One of the girls stepped around the corner. With a hand to her mouth, she screamed. I swiveled to look.
Slumped on the couch, Miss Minnie’s eyes were wide, her mouth slack. She pressed a hand to her chest. Blood seeped through her fingers.
“Shit!” I grabbed a towel from the front desk. Kneeling beside her, I gently moved her hands. Pressing the towel to the neat little hole, I then put her hands on the cloth. Her eyes followed me.
“Hold this, okay?”
I felt her hands press down—not much, but enough.
“You shoot me?” Her ragged voice held the hint of respect.
What a world she lived in. “Don’t be silly. I need you. When I don’t need you anymore, then I’ll shoot you.” I hit the emergency button on my iPhone. When the 911 dispatcher answered, I barked instructions. Finished, I left the call open but put the phone down, turning back to Miss Minnie.
“You real funny girl,” she gasped.
“And I’m the best hope you have to get your kids back. And I don’t know what game your ex is playing, but I’d hazard a guess it isn’t for your benefit.”
Even through the haze of pain, she looked like she was mulling that over.
“Besides, my father would kill me if I shot you now.”
That got a hint of a reaction. She and the Big Boss went way back to old Vegas when the Mob ran the town. Hard times bred unusual friendships. “Your father a good man.”
The look on her face told me she didn’t think he’d passed on that bit of DNA to his daughter. “I know.” I put my hand on top of hers and added pressure.
She covered mine with her other hand. “You remember that.”
That struck me as odd, but now was not the time to go into it. “Of course. Who did this?”
“It not matter. Minnie old. Tired.” She worked to pull in a deep breath. “In Macau, you find Sinjin. He help you.”
“Sinjin? He have a last name?”
She pursed her lips like that was a stupid question.
I wasn’t going to argue. “How do I find him?”
Her voice grew weaker. “Maybe he find you. Sinjin know everything.”
I could feel her blood, warm and thick, leaking through the towel. “Okay. I’ll find Sinjin. Be quiet now.” Sirens sounded in the distance, quickly growing louder. “Stay with me. Just a minute or two more.”
Sinjin knows everything. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but I couldn’t. She would expend her last bit of energy trying to tell me and then she would die. Not a fair trade. Still…
I only considered it for a nanosecond, a victory, considering the task ahead. I’m not normally quite so virtuous.
Did Sinjin have all the answers? Is that what she meant when she said he knew everything? God, I hoped so. But I also knew better. Life never was that easy, at least, not mine.