Ghosts

by Matt Rogers

  He could have said, That’s a long shot.

  Most would.

  But he’d been around for long enough to know it would work. Humans are social creatures. They believe what they see right in front of them. They make mistakes. He’d just proven how easily Gates had accepted two total strangers into his world. Sure, if Kerr was deep in murky waters she’d be more careful about her inner circle — given her public position — but criminals have to take risks. It comes part and parcel with the life.

  King said, ‘If this all works, it’s going to kick off a shitstorm.’

  ‘Then you’re right at home.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Come here,’ she said.

  They made love, slow and intimate, their faces inches apart. King’s mind didn’t wander.

  How could it?

  He slept soundly, and the next day he peeled himself out of bed at five in the morning. He walked naked to the en suite, took an ice cold shower, then went downstairs and took himself through an extended yoga routine. He opted to stay away from the rigid running and shooting routine of weeks past, mainly because there was a high likelihood of Gates using whatever muscle he had left to trawl the affluent suburbs surrounding Summerlin. In hindsight King should have fed him a suburb on the other side of Vegas, but he’d been fixated on expediting the process and getting the gangbangers out of the picture as fast as possible.

  So he decided not to be unnecessarily stupid by getting himself spotted before they could go back to Wan’s. He still made sure to jack his heart rate up for close to an hour of exercise and left the yoga mat stained with a puddle of sweat. But he didn’t hit the bag. He didn’t lift weights. He figured there’d be opportunities to practice combat on real bodies before the day was through.

  Slater, it seemed, had similar thoughts.

  King intercepted the man in the kitchen, still coated in perspiration from an unspecified morning workout. Slater had fixed himself a breakfast of eggs, spinach, avocado and goat’s curd on toast, and was halfway through demolishing the mountain of food heaped high on his plate.

  King eyed the meal. ‘Filling up the tank?’

  Slater smirked. ‘Might need it later.’

  King followed suit.

  Alexis came down as they finished scrubbing the dishes. She’d dressed strategically for what was to come. A revealing summer dress, with a bra underneath that pushed her breasts up and accentuated the cleavage.

  Slater said, ‘I like where your head’s at.’

  She shrugged. ‘I figured it can’t hurt.’

  ‘No,’ Slater said. ‘It sure can’t.’

  King might have laughed in different circumstances, but he knew there was truth to it. Her exact target was still up in the air, but it’d almost certainly be a guy, and he’d almost certainly be a junior officer.

  Sometimes, operational strategy was just that simple.

  Violetta took longer to get ready. When she came down, twenty minutes after King and Slater had showered and dressed, she was barely recognisable. She’d caked herself in liquid foundation that made her look paler than usual, and applied bright red lipstick and heavy eyeliner. She’d pulled her blonde hair back sharply, putting it in a tight bun. She wore outlandishly expensive designer-wear — a stark white skirt and suit jacket, and a neatly pressed black business shirt underneath. There were extra flourishes — ten-thousand dollar earrings, a Dolce & Gabbana clutch, and a razor-sharp diamond hairpin holding the bun together.

  In a frighteningly good Eastern European accent, she said, ‘You think this will work?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ King said, looking her up and down. ‘It’ll work.’

  Slater said, ‘I’m worried you’re going to ask us for protection fees.’

  She smirked.

  She carried herself like a barely suppressed psychopath, which was crucial for the shtick. Shoulders back, chin held high, a certain unhinged venom in her eyes beneath an icy exterior.

  King said, ‘Just be careful you don’t win an Oscar.’

  The four of them gave each other the once-over, pondering whether anything had been missed, but there was little else to cover.

  They wished each other good luck, and then moved out in three separate parties, taking cars from the garage, leaving the limo in the shadows where it belonged.

  Alexis alone.

  Violetta alone.

  King and Slater together.

  20

  Alexis felt her hands shaking.

  She let them.

  Best to get all the nerves out before it was showtime.

  She sat behind the wheel of a tiny grey Toyota Yaris hatchback. It was their daily driver, and perhaps the most unassuming car money could buy, which was the point. Best not to bomb around Vegas in luxury supercars until the heat was off them. Alexis had little idea about exactly how much heat was on them, but King, Slater and Violetta figured it wasn’t a risk worth taking, at least for a couple of months.

  Which was notable, given their mutual propensity for risk.

  Now she trawled the streets on the immediate outskirts of the Strip. Not close enough to the centre to be gridlocked with traffic, but busy enough to have a police presence.

  She found what she was looking for within thirty minutes of leaving the estate.

  On the east side of the University of Nevada campus — the far side of the Strip based on their position in The Ridges — she spotted a LVMPD squad car parked on the shoulder, facing a quiet stretch of Tropicana Avenue. There was a cop behind the wheel, and as she drove the Yaris closer to the vehicle she made out a mop of brown hair and a young, slender face. It was a guy, almost certainly in his twenties, and he was in uniform.

  He was on his own.

  Alexis inched over the speed limit as she got closer to the parked sedan, and then well and truly stepped on the accelerator.

  She flew by, twenty above.

  Then she slowed, and watched the rear view mirror, and waited.

  She counted out the seconds.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  The clock kept ticking.

  Now she was hundreds of feet away, and still nothing. Maybe the guy was lazy, or maybe he’d spotted her behind the wheel and opted to leave her alone, but it rattled her. She knew it wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but this was her first attempt at anything close to reconnaissance, and her confidence banked on momentum. If she failed here, she’d just fail elsewhere, and then she’d be useless to the mission and—

  Lights.

  In the rear view.

  Flashing red and blue.

  She breathed out.

  The timing was perfect. Still headed east, she waited for the squad car to catch up, waited until it was right on her tail. Then she waved recognition in the rear view mirror and turned off Tropicana Avenue into a quieter side street. She pulled into the largely empty parking lot of the Paradise Recreational Centre and sat with her hands in her lap and her window down until the cop decided to lever himself out of his vehicle.

  He left the lights on as he got out and walked up to her driver’s door.

  Alexis had been a civilian a month ago. She knew all the rules about police stops. Don’t make unnecessary conversation with the officer at risk of incriminating yourself. Answer each question honestly and make no excuses, because excuses are effectively admissions. There’s also the fifth amendment right to refuse to answer most questions, which is smart to implement if you think you’re being unfairly targeted.

  She was going to have to break all of them today.

  The officer stopped by the sill. ‘Ma’am, could I see some ID, please?’

  She turned and looked up at him with puppy-dog eyes, then hunched her shoulders, pushing her breasts together. ‘What did I do?’

  ‘You’re unaware why I pulled you over?’

  ‘I’m honestly not sure,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You were speeding. Do you know how fast you were going?’


  ‘It can’t have been far over.’

  ‘Do you have a good reason for being in a hurry?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not in a hurry.’

  She smiled up at him.

  His nameplate read A. WARD.

  She said, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I’m Officer Ward of the—’

  ‘First name,’ she said. ‘You know, if it’s not too forward…’

  ‘Alan,’ he said, which didn’t seem like part of the script.

  Good, she thought. He’s not completely rigid.

  ‘Alan,’ she said. ‘I like that name. I’m Alexis.’

  ‘Your ID, Alexis?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She handed over the driver’s licence Alonzo had express shipped to Violetta back when they’d first settled in Vegas. All their last names were different on their IDs, but they’d kept their first names intact. There were a thousand Jasons and Wills who knew each other across the country, and there was a blanket of suppression over their new identities anyway.

  ‘Alexis Wingate,’ he said, turning the ID over in his fingers, still hovering by the sill. ‘Have you been drinking, Ms. Wingate?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s ten in the morning.’

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been drinking.’

  She looked him up and down with interest.

  She said, ‘I would be if you were buying.’

  He met her gaze, which is what ruined his chances. He didn’t have a hope of remaining professional.

  He stifled a laugh and leant down and put his elbows on the windowsill.

  Their faces were a foot apart.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You try that with every cop who pulls you over and sooner or later you’re going to get arrested for it. You’re skirting on the edges of bribery. You’re lucky I’m nice.’

  ‘How nice?’ she said.

  ‘Nice enough to let you off with a warning,’ he said, handing her ID back. ‘Not nice enough to risk getting fired. As tempting as the offer is.’

  She pouted.

  He said, ‘Really, I’m doing you a favour.’

  She figured it was now or never. He wasn’t talking to her like a cop talking to a civilian. He was talking to her like a man talking to a woman. The guard was down. It might come back up at any moment.

  She said, ‘Are we off the record?’

  He paused. ‘Did you not hear a word I said?’

  ‘I heard,’ she said. ‘I’m just checking whether you’re going to haul me away or not.’

  He glanced at his watch, then back up. ‘Go on. Speak freely.’

  ‘I’ve only tried that once before,’ she said. ‘With a sheriff. You reminded me, just then. I’d forgotten about it. He bought me a drink, but that was it. It didn’t go any further. He was nice. I was wondering if you could tell me more about him.’

  He said, ‘A sheriff?’

  She said, ‘He seemed pretty important. His name was Keith.’

  Alan Ward’s bemused expression turned to stone.

  He reached up to the buttons of his shirt and thumbed a small device like a pinhole camera with a wire running inside his uniform.

  His body-cam.

  He’d turned it off.

  He said, ‘You want nothing to do with him.’

  21

  It took Violetta less than ninety minutes to get approached.

  She went to Caesar’s Palace and found the blackjack table with the highest minimum bets on the public floor.

  Then she sat down and gambled.

  Three thousand, four thousand a hand, over and over again. She lazily kept a running count in the back of her head, but she knew it was unlikely to amount to much of an advantage. Counting cards, popularised by blockbuster heist movies, was on its way out, with Vegas having put counter-measures in place years ago. But she hadn’t lost the analytical mind — she wasn’t that far separated from her career — so she applied probability math just for the hell of it.

  She wasn’t sure if there was any correlation, but eighty minutes into the spree she was up thirty-four thousand dollars.

  Not that it made any difference whether she was winning or not.

  That wasn’t what she was there for.

  The impeccable Eastern European accent never wavered, and she made it bombastic. She talked loudly to everyone who sat at her table, which was the whole point of the exercise. She spun tales when the dealer delivered her bad hands, claiming that if she was back in Russia she’d have him executed for his poor performance. The dealer half-chuckled, unsure whether she was serious or not.

  Then she got more specific.

  She alluded to connections she had on the Clark County Board of Commissioners, well within earshot of staff and wealthy patrons. She repeated it, several times, over the course of twenty minutes. She knew it’d send everyone scattering, probing into who this foreign woman was, publicly spouting claims of corruption.

  At the eighty-minute mark, she spotted the mole from a mile away.

  He was a plain unassuming man in his mid-thirties. He was dressed in casualwear but he clearly didn’t belong in it. By that point her table was full, and she was surrounded by intoxicated power players desperate to hear another one of her anecdotes. The unassuming guy sat down on the edge of the table and didn’t gamble.

  He just listened.

  She ramped up the performance.

  Three minutes later he was gone.

  Seven minutes after that, a hand touched her on the shoulder.

  It was another guy, this one a little older, his face more deeply lined. He had thick black hair and he looked Italian. He was dressed like a Caesar’s Palace staff member, but he wasn’t. The performance was impressive, and Violetta guessed he had the blessing of the casino to parade around in their uniform as he pleased.

  Mob ties.

  He started, ‘Could you please come with—?’

  She shot to her feet, cutting him off mid-sentence, and put her own hand on his shoulder. She looked right at him.

  ‘Darling, you are just who I have been looking for,’ she purred. ‘Come on.’

  She clapped her hands together, as if he were the horse drawing the cart.

  Slightly rattled but externally unfazed, he turned on his heel and walked away from the table.

  She followed.

  He led her to a quiet corner of the floor. With a glint in his eye — a goddamn mean glint — he said, ‘What do you want?’

  She didn’t blink, and thanked the exposure therapy of years spent in this world. She could keep her cool with a mob guy staring her in the face. It was a useful tactic for the role she was trying to portray.

  She said, ‘I am going to tell you some things, darling. You are going to deny them, or pretend you do not know what I am talking about. Nevertheless, I am going to say them anyway.’

  He didn’t flinch.

  She said, ‘I am in the business of selling people. I will not elaborate on that. You know what I mean, and you are not going to haul me out of here or hand me over to the police, are you, my dear?’

  Silence.

  She said, ‘I thought not.’

  She was close to him, within touching distance. He didn’t budge. He was a professional.

  She said, ‘Now, darling, for the fun part. You are going to get in touch with someone who is going to get in touch with someone else who is going to get in touch with Clark County District Attorney Gloria Kerr. She is going to be told that someone has expressed interest in merging businesses. She is going to be told that it is in her best interests not to ignore me. She is going to be told that it would go very badly for her and everyone she is involved with if she does not respond. She is going to be told all of this as fast as possible.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the mob guy said. ‘You’re rambling.’

  His face was steel.

  His gaze would have withered anyone
.

  Violetta said, ‘You heard every word, my dear. But you are playing your role well. I am impressed. Now...’

  She plucked an embossed business card out of her suit jacket. It had a single private number on it and nothing else. No name, no details.

  She offered it.

  He didn’t take it.

  She tutted. ‘Naughty boy.’

  He said, ‘I suggest you get out of town, darling. Take your business elsewhere.’

  With her free hand she reached out and lifted his suit jacket off his considerable chest. He didn’t slap her hand away. He didn’t move at all. The tension in her neck receded, but she didn’t let it show. She slotted the business card neatly into the inside pocket and patted the jacket back down.

  She said, ‘I heard what you said.’

  Silence.

  She said, ‘I am not going anywhere.’

  Silence.

  She said, ‘Do I look afraid?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t.’

  She said, ‘If Ms. Kerr even thinks about trying to get me out of the picture before we can meet, I have contingencies in place. These contingencies will lay bare every pie she has her fingers in. For the public, the media, and the police to see. And I will be long gone before she can retaliate.’

  Silence.

  She said, ‘Now go on. You have work to do.’

  She floated away, leaving him in the shadows.

  22

  Ward still had his elbows on the sill.

  He hadn’t backed away. He hadn’t told Alexis to get out of the car.

  He hadn’t moved.

  She pressed on. ‘Why would I want nothing to do with him?’

  ‘That’s all I’m going to say.’ He cast a glance over his shoulder, but there was no one in sight. ‘I shouldn’t have opened my mouth.’

  ‘I’m just curious,’ she said.

  He looked at her for a moment longer than necessary. ‘Alexis, I think you’re a nice lady. I could have ticketed you. I didn’t. Let’s just leave it at that.’

  ‘He didn’t return my calls.’