“I’m game. I’ve turned over every rock I can think of.”
***
Using my master keycard, I let Romeo and myself into Security. We paused as the door closed behind us, letting our eyes adjust to the dim light.
“Wow,” Romeo exclaimed. “You guys don’t miss a trick. Where don’t you have cameras?” His eyes traversed the banks of monitors covering the far wall, each rotating through feeds from every corner of the property.
“None in the bathrooms or the guestrooms, but that’s about it. Everywhere else is covered. When you have tens of millions of dollars flowing through the hotel in any given day, it pays to be vigilant.”
“And what are those guys doing?” Romeo pointed to a separate bank of monitors on the sidewall.
“They’re the gaming experts watching both dealers and players for any signs of mischief.” Most of the guys watching the feeds had done time for scamming the casinos. They’d paid their debt to society and now we used their expertise to catch the amateurs.
“I’m glad you called when you did,” Jerry said, as he joined Romeo and me. “I pulled the tape just in time, before it went back into the hopper to be used again.”
“You know Detective Romeo?”
Both men nodded as they shook hands.
“Romeo, bring Jerry up to speed. I know we have tapes of who got on and off that bus to Rachel last night. Maybe one of them looks the worse for wear. At least it’ll give some idea of who went up there from the hotel.’
Romeo started to say something, but I silenced him with a raised hand. “I know folks could’ve gone up there on their own, but at least it’s a start.”
***
Thoughts whirling, I left the two of them to review the tapes. They didn’t need me. And I was needed at a showdown with the architects. I prayed my father was loosening them up.
Glancing at my watch—still twelve minutes left to plot the overthrow of Rome. Hoping Jeremy had come out of his hole a bit early, I dialed his number.
The call rolled to voice mail.
“Damn.”
I tried it again. This time someone answered, but the static was too thick. My phone dropped the call. Worries niggled at the edges of my confidence—I knew Jeremy was okay, I just knew it. But what if they’d surprised him? Overwhelmed him?
Pacing in front of Delilah’s I was on the verge of chucking the architects and racing off to warn Jeremy myself, no matter who was following me, when my phone rang. I glanced at the number and my pulse slowed.
“Jeremy?”
“Still living and breathing,” came the Aussie-tinted reply.
“That is not funny.” I filled him in on Jenkins’s interesting night in the desert. “It looks like Carl is the eye of the storm. Has he told you anything yet?”
“We’ve become pretty good mates. I asked him about a daughter. He swears he doesn’t have one, but I can’t tell whether he’s blowing smoke trying to protect her, or whether he’s telling the truth. When he mumbles about family, it’s a sister not a daughter.”
“That’s the thing about Carl—it all gets muddled up. I’m not sure he even knows what he knows.” What had happened to him? “Has anyone come looking for him?”
“Not a soul.”
“And I trust you would know if he had left and gone, say, out to Rachel?”
“The guy is afraid to get too close to the light. Something has him spooked pretty bad.”
Him and me both.
And I didn’t like it one bit.
***
Now I was in the perfect mood to deal with the architects. I bounded up the stairs into Delilah’s. Sean caught my eye and pointed to the bottle of Wild Turkey then raised two fingers. I shook my head—my days of double bourbons were over. My father and the two designers were already seated at a table in the corner, their beverages of choice in hand, the plans spread out on the small table in front of them. The three men rose as I joined them. That would probably be the last nicety for the next two hours.
“Gentlemen,” I started in. “I have reviewed your plans and they are simply unacceptable. You seem either unwilling or unable to listen to my concept and reduce it to lines on paper that can be effectively costed-out and which the contractors can follow. Sit back, relax, and listen. You get one more shot at it, then I’ll find someone else.”
The elder architect spluttered and fumed. Turning to The Big Boss, he said, “Al, we’ve done business for a long time. I’m sure you find our plans acceptable.”
My Father’s face closed down, his voice cut like a knife when he said, “Ken, you seem incapable of getting the point here. Lucky may be my daughter, but she is the best hotel man I know. Not to mention, she owns the project you are bidding on, so why you keep trying to crawl up my ass is beyond me.”
That pretty much killed any opposition.
The younger architect smirked—I bet he didn’t like being little more than a step-and-fetch puppy. Wondering what he had to offer, I ignored the Neanderthal and gauged my conversation to the youngster.
As I started in, my father leaned back in his chair, a smile on his face.
***
“You’ve got the bit in your teeth. It’s fun to see you run with it,” my father said to me as we watched the architects walk across the casino, on their way to the garage. “That was a pretty gutsy move, pissing Ken off. His firm is the best in the business.”
“He’s no good to me if he won’t listen—if I don’t have his respect. Besides, he’s a dinosaur; he didn’t understand what I’m trying to do. The younger guy got it though. I’d like to see what he comes up with.”
“Your concept is solid, your conclusions sound. They’ll get their act together.”
“It doesn’t really matter—there are more fish in that barrel.”
“I do have one question, though.” My father freshened my glass of wine, which was unnecessary, as I hadn’t touched it. “You were willing to listen to all their recommendations except for the one killing the wood oven in the new restaurant. How come you dug in your heels on that one?”
“Jean-Charles and I have gone over everything. He was adamant about the oven. I’d priced it at fifty thousand by the time we made OSHA happy, so when the architects came in at thirty-five thousand, I was in the money.”
“Would you have caved if you had not been?”
“No. I promised my chef, and I keep my promises.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I learned it from you.”
Let me ask you one other thing,” my father gave me a grin. “What did you have to give Jean-Charles to make him give up the fresco. I thought he was committed to that.”
“I told him I would find an acceptable replacement.”
“He let you get away with that?”
I smiled, remembering. “Yeah. We’ll have our battles, but we’ll work together just fine.”
“So were you his reward for playing so nicely?” My father pricked me with his verbal knife, but the blood would be mine.
“No, your Van Gogh.”
That wiped the grin off his face.
Then he burst out laughing. “That Frenchman is in for one hell of a ride. God help him.”
***
After my father left, Miss P joined me in the bar.
“I’m really sorry about ruining your birthday dinner,” I said. Even though the choice was Jeremy’s, I still felt like a heel—despite my best efforts.
“No worries. As I said, it’s not the ‘when’ that matters. Have you called Teddie?”
I flagged down a cocktail waitress and ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon. “Not yet. Haven’t had the time.”
“Or the courage?”
“It’s not that.” Avoiding my friend’s eyes, I looked instead over her shoulder and pretended to be fascinated with the waitress as she wiggled her way back to bar. “Okay, maybe a little of that. He actually did me a huge favor, cutting me loose. But it’s weird, even though I don’t want him, I want him to want m
e. Does that make any sense?”
“Sure. You want to be the dump-er, not the dump-ee.”
“I knew I could count on you to spare my feelings.”
We settled back in comfortable camaraderie as the waitress popped the cork—to applause from the patrons in the bar—and poured a flute of bubbly for each of us.
Raising mine in toast, I said, “To a good friend.” I paused, making sure I had her attention before I continued, “ and the new Head of Customer Relations at the Babylon.”
Miss P’s glass was halfway to her lips when my words registered and her eyes widened. “What?”
“A promotion and a rather hefty raise. You deserve it.” I took a sip of champagne—a celebration of life.
“I don’t want a promotion—I want to work with you.”
“We’re not breaking up the team, just reordering responsibilities. With an expanded role at the Athena, my title will be Vice President of Casino Relations. We will still office together—your department now will be my responsibility in the corporate hierarchy—but I will be more hands-off. You and Brandy have been handling the daily stuff for a while now. And doing a bang-up job, I might add. Come on.” I held my glass out.
With a grin, and dawning understanding, she clinked hers to mine. “Can I call you Veep?”
“Not if you want to keep all your body parts.”
“Will you keep your office?”
“No. It belongs to the Head of Customer Relations.” She started to object, but I held up my hand. “However, if it’s acceptable to you, I would like to expand our little corner of the universe. If we incorporate the empty office space behind ours, we could still fit me in. What do you think?”
“All of this isn’t because you’re feeling guilty about my birthday, is it?”
“Can you think of any other reason?” I said, trying to keep from smiling. It was hopeless. My face split into a grin. “Congratulations.”
“What about Brandy?” Miss P asked.
“That’s a decision for the Head of Customer Relations.”
“Is there money in the budget to give her a raise as well?”
“Her six-month review is coming up. That might be a perfect time to hammer out the details of her employment going forward.”
With delight coloring the apples of her cheeks, and her flute clutched tightly in her hand, Miss P leaned back in her club chair. “Wow.”
The look on her face warmed my heart—sometimes life served up a bowl of cherries.
While Miss P processed the ramifications of the last few minutes, I let my eyes wander over the casino. Friday night before Halloween, the place was packed. I couldn’t see an empty slot machine, a space at a table… nothing. And it made me proud. The Babylon had been a huge leap of faith, a gamble of immense proportions, and we had pulled it off. The thing that intrigued me, the genesis of my concept for the Athena/Cielo, was the makeup of our gamblers here at the Babylon. Not all of them stayed with us—our rooms were the priciest on the Strip—but they came to gamble with us because the Babylon was a classy, fun place to spend the evening.
The amount of money in play is the only accurate measure of a casino’s success. The room rates and occupancy levels are nice, but not a major contributor to the bottom line. So, I could have a luxury property, but I needed to focus on luring everyone to the casino—which would be an even taller task given that Cielo would be at the wrong end of the Strip.
Well, you know what they say about nothing ventured….
***
Each of us was consumed by our own thoughts, so neither one of us noticed Romeo until he pulled out a chair and joined us.
“May I,” he asked, after he had plopped into the seat.
“What did you and Jerry find?”
“Pretty much what you expected—Dr. Zewicki, Dr. Jenkins, and Danilov each went out on the bus—all of them gave presentations along with your buddy from West Virginia.”
“Junior Arbogast,” I said, leaning forward.
“They all went out on the bus, but Danilov is the only one who returned with the group.”
“We know what happened to Jenkins. What about Zewicki?”
“We’ve been looking for him, can’t find him.”
“And Molly Rain?”
“I thought I saw someone from the back who could’ve been her, but nothing concrete.”
“And Mr. Mortimer?”
“Didn’t see him. But as you know, anyone could’ve gotten there by car.”
I turned to Miss P, but before I could speak, she put down her glass. “I’m on it. ”
“Where’s she going?” Romeo asked, as he watched her retreat.
“To call car rental companies. It’s a long shot. She’ll let me know if she finds anything.”
“Man, you guys are almost as good as Metro.”
“Almost?” I rolled my eyes. “Please!”
***
Miss P would only be irritated if I tried to help her—she had a system and woe to anyone who got in the way. So I sat with Romeo in the bar, not sure where to go or what to do. Even with the open bottle of bubbly cooling in the ice bucket next to me, I had stopped at one glass. Congratulating myself on my self-discipline, with thoughts tumbling, I again scanned the crowd, looking for problems—an old, ingrained habit.
I let the wheels spin freely. So we had a magician—presumably still alive, although no one knew for sure—and his elaborately staged exit. And we had an assistant in on the plan, who could climb walls like Spiderman and appear and disappear as if by transporter on Captain Kirk’s orders. She claimed to be Crazy Carl’s daughter, but Carl either couldn’t or wouldn’t confirm. And then there was our whole cast of characters, each of whom had some connection either to the others or to Eden.
“I’d beat more bushes if I had any idea where to look for them,” I remarked to no one in particular.
Romeo grabbed Miss P’s abandoned glass, wiped the rim with a napkin, then poured himself a shot of bubbly. If he saw my raised eyebrow, he ignored it.
“We have clean glasses you know,” I said. “ This is a high-class joint.”
“Not necessary,” he said, as he settled back in his chair. “Besides, the alcohol kills the germs.”
“A derivation of the five-second rule,” I nodded sagely as I refilled my glass, trying not to be ashamed of my lack of willpower. “I’m all in favor.”
“Do you think the folks watching can hear what we’re saying?” Romeo asked, as he glanced up at the cameras embedded in the ceiling.
“Big Brother is watching.”
The young detective pulled a pen from his inner coat pocket and scribbled on a paper napkin, then folded it and pushed it to me.
Raising one eyebrow, I took the note and read. ‘The window at the Danilov’s was cut from the inside.’
I opened my mouth to speak, but Romeo jumped in. “I’m not supposed to know. It’s all hush-hush at the department. So, this is on the Q-T, right?”
“Absolutely,” I said, trying to process the information. “What does it mean, besides the obvious?”
“They wanted us to think someone broke in. But why?”
***
“Fuck you, bitch!” Newton greeted me the next morning as I pushed through the door of my office, walking straight into Miss P’s glare. Instead of going home last night, I had taken a small employee room in the back of the hotel. Home just wasn’t home anymore.
“What’s the bird doing here?” I asked. In strange surroundings, my night had been fitful. My morning wasn’t looking much better.
“Your father,” my assistant growled.
“My father?”
“He said you’d probably need some clothes.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. She looked normal… .well, as normal as she ever did. Hooking my thumb over my shoulder, I said, “ I’m just going to go out that door and walk back in again, then maybe all of this will make sense.”
Miss P sighed as if it took everything she had to muster
the patience to talk to someone as moronic as me. “I assume you know he sent a crew to move all of your personal items out of your apartment and into the one next to his?”
“No, I didn’t know.” I lowered myself into the chair across from her. We might as well stencil my name on the back of the thing—I’d been residing there pretty often lately. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning.”
“While I was calling the car companies last night, he came around looking for you. I told him I had last seen you at the bar. When he couldn’t find you there, apparently he called Jerry.”
“And when Security couldn’t find me, he assumed I’d trotted off with a divine Frenchman or something along those lines?”
“Right.”
“It would have been so easy for someone to call me,” I said, adding a much-needed dollop of logic to this whole illogical conversation.
“He thought you were…busy.”
“If I had been…busy…I wouldn’t have answered the phone.”
“Precisely!” Miss P announced, as if she’d won the debate. “So why waste time calling in the first place?”
At a loss for words, I could only stare. That’s the thing about circular conversations, I was never quite sure how I got roped in, I couldn’t find an exit, and winning was never an option. Okay, that’s three things instead of one, but who’s going to quibble?
I resisted saying the obvious—that I wasn’t busy. My engine was clearly revving at a far lower RPM than everyone else’s this morning—I had yet to get up to speed and was in danger of being lapped down the backstretch.
“That’s when your Father decided you would need a change of clothing this morning.”
“I’m really glad my private life is such public knowledge.”
Finally, Miss P grinned.
So Damn Lucky (Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Book 3) Page 30
