Lucky Score

by Deborah Coonts

  Working my way through the thickening crowd, I still couldn’t see anything. At least the surge of humanity was moving with me. I grabbed my phone and hit a familiar speed dial. “Security?”

  “Security.” The new voice again, deep with an edge. I’d been hoping Jerry had returned from a sit-down in the can or wherever he had run off to. Only a serious threat to life as we knew it or the Siren call of Mother Nature could make him leave his post on a Saturday night.

  “O’Toole here. Is this Fox again? Who the hell are you?” I didn’t bother to keep the hard out of my voice—nice took time I didn’t have.

  “Jack Fox, acting security head, ma’am.”

  I’d never seen anything on this kid and Jerry had given him temporary control of Security? “And Jerry? Where is he?”

  “On a break, ma’am.”

  Jerry didn’t take breaks, but now was not the time to argue. “Okay, Fox, we have a screamer by the front entrance. What’s happening? Can you see?” One of the security cameras ought to give them a bird’s-eye view.

  “Yes, ma’am. Bringing up the feed now.” The kid was in love with the word “ma’am.” I couldn’t tell why, or how he meant it.

  Actually, I’d made my peace with the whole ma’am thing: I chose to see it as a sign of respect rather than age. A pyrrhic victory and probably delusional, but delusion was my only escape from reality.

  I eased through an opening in the crowd and darted ahead past a couple clutching each other with one hand and a flute of Champagne with the other. The girl’s tiara identified her as the bride. Ahead of them, a gaggle of young men looking for mischief formed a wedge to part the crowd. I fell into trail behind them. “What do you see?” I shouted into my phone to be heard above the excited murmurs around me.

  “Holy shit!” Apparently, Mr. Jack Fox was as young as he sounded. And not particularly helpful.

  But his response did tell me one thing: I was going to need help with this one. “Send a detail NOW!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The young voice sobered. “Ms. O’Toole, he has a knife.”

  A guy with an automatic weapon and several full magazines was our worst-case scenario. A man with a knife, a distant second, but still a major problem in need of a quick solution. My heart rate climbed until blood pounded in my ears. “Is he…?”

  “No, ma’am. He’s just standing there. There’s a lot of blood. Should I make the calls?”

  “Put someone between him and the crowd and get the crowd back. I’m seconds away if someone would get this wall of humanity out of my way.”

  “Do you need help with that?”

  “No, just keep the knife guy from hurting anyone until I get there. Can you see any victim?”

  “Negative.”

  “But there’s blood?”

  “All over him.”

  “There has to be a victim somewhere. Find him!” I used the masculine generically, but a man with a knife? In all probability, the victim was a woman. So many men came to Vegas with a need for sex and with no respect for the women who provided it—one of those ethical swords men regularly threw themselves on. But the women were the ones bloodied.

  “Roust the doc out of bed, but wait on the paramedics.” The media stuck to the EMTs like remora on sharks. “Security is on its way, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “After they’ve secured him, have them fan out. Given that he’s covered in blood, the guy couldn’t have wandered too far from the scene of the crime. We need to find his victim STAT.”

  Snaking through the crowd, I took a moment to think. The crowd was interested, calm not panicked. An odd commentary on modern life that a man with a knife was viewed as a curiosity and not a threat. But, then again, this was Vegas where everything was part of the show.

  Until it wasn’t.

  Jack Fox jumped into the silence. “But the blood. I think it best to call the EMTs.” The kid had balls—not one of the best attributes for a young security guard, but usually the kind attracted to this kind of work. I bet he even wore his shirts two sizes too small to show off the size of his biceps.

  “My job is to do the thinking, Fox. Your job is to do as you’re told.”

  “Roger.” One word slid in like a lethal blade between two ribs.

  Guess I wasn’t a ma’am anymore. So much for the whole respect thing. “On second thought, you’re right.” I so wanted to avoid the spectacle of flashing lights and sirens but, on the theory that where there was horseshit, there was a horse, we needed to be prepared to find a victim in need of serious medical attention. “Rally the EMTs, and find Jerry and have him call Metro; tell him to keep it on the down low. We don’t need the cops screaming in here, too. He’ll know who to call. You start working through the video feed. Track the guy with the knife. I want to know where he came from and how he got to my lobby. First priority is to immobilize him. Second priority, find who donated all that blood. I can’t stress the urgency of that enough.” I disconnected then called my office. Miss P, my Number One, answered on the first ring. “I need you to sub for me at the signing.” The NFL legends, past and current, would be signing memorabilia in the Golden Fleece Room. Someone from my staff needed to be there. “Escort them to the party at Babel.” Babel was our über cool rooftop lounge and club.

  “On my way.” Miss P rang off. Ours was a long and close corporate marriage where verbal shorthand sufficed.

  The crowd thickened as I drew closer—human concrete setting up from fluid to impassable. My plow of young men now became a wall.

  “Everybody back!” I shouted as if anyone would listen.

  Nobody even glanced my way.

  I wedged a shoulder between two more big guys, these two blocking my way. “Excuse me. May I please get through? I’m with the hotel.”

  One glanced at me. “No way, lady.”

  I elbowed him in the ribs hard enough to make a point but stopping short of breaking anything. As he cringed, I moved through.

  “Shit, lady, I think you broke my rib. All you had to do was ask.” He put a hand on my shoulder, jerking me back.

  “I did.” I met him eye-to-eye, mine slitty, his bloodshot and wide with surprise. Most bullies didn’t expect a woman topping six feet with some bulk behind her punches. “Let go. If you don’t, next it’ll be your nose.”

  Wisely, he let his hand drop.

  “That was so cool,” Bethany said from behind me as she rubbed her shoulder.

  My definition of cool and hers were separated by seventeen years.

  People around us muttered, their excitement growing.

  I could read that murmur—someone recognizable.

  Shit.

  Cellphones held high, folks snapped unobstructed photos.

  “Everybody back! No photos.”

  Nobody moved. Phones remained high.

  Finally, I shimmied through a crack in the human wall into the open and drew a deep breath.

  A man, covered in blood and holding a knife, and a pretty decent blade at that. Twelve inches, a serrated edge, it had a black plastic handle, a coating of blood and a military look to it.

  Bethany gasped when she saw him.

  I put out an arm, keeping the girl back.

  “I know that guy,” she whispered as she clung near my shoulder.

  “Yeah.” I knew him, too. And my heart sank.

  This was so not good.

  CHAPTER TWO

  N OLAN PONDER—the owner of the Vegas-bound NFL team, with money to burn and a lifestyle to match wore a dazed expression and wobbled on unsteady legs. The knife seemed forgotten as he took in his surroundings with a vacant stare.

  He’d been making big promises, stepping on more than a few toes to coerce the approval of the team owners, the league, and apparently the Almighty herself, to bring the San Antonio Marauders to Vegas. The whole thing hinged on a unique money deal. A deal requiring a significant state investment. A deal lacking support from those who were scraping by and in need of state assistance.
A deal orchestrated by the man holding the knife.

  Blood coated Mr. Ponder’s hands and most of the rest of him. The only way I’d keep this out of the news was if he’d been on a hunting trip and had decided to gut an elk in our lobby. The tux he wore pretty much shot a hole in that theory. Covered in dirt, he looked like he’d been in close hand-to-hand combat and rolling around in the desert.

  “No,” Bethany insisted. “I know him. Like, I saw him tonight.”

  I didn’t have time to draw her out. Ponder needed to be de-weaponed before he perforated a guest. “Stay right here,” I barked as I rushed toward him with a security detail a few steps behind me. At least the new kid in security had known serious when he heard it.

  Given Ponder’s higher-than-most profile, I was glad I’d arrived first.

  Stopping in front of Mr. Ponder, I waved the security guys away. “One of you, get rid of the crowd.” My eyes left Mr. Ponder for a flash to make sure the security guys understood my order was not a suggestion.

  They both gave me the bug-eye. Easy to interpret: Saturday night, the crowd our normal level of epic. But I was the boss. One of the security dudes, I assumed the least experienced of the two, peeled off and started moving the crowd back.

  I gave our main attraction my undivided attention. “Mr. Ponder, are you hurt?”

  Nolan Ponder, his shirt red with fresh blood, his tux jacket showing wet, dark stains and a white powdery substance that covered his left shoulder and arm and most of that side of his face, looked right through me. He wove on unsteady legs. “Hurt?” His eyes flicked to mine.

  “Want me to take him?” The remaining security guy hulked at my shoulder.

  “No, I got this. Just wait. Step back a little. Keep the kid here.” I nodded at Bethany, then inched closer to Mr. Ponder. I couldn’t see any pulsing wounds, but truth exceeded expectation—there was way more blood than I thought possible. He breathed heavily, deep, tortured lungs full of air. The whites of his eyes were visible—did that mean I could shoot him? I forget.

  But all I had was Bethany’s air gun. I couldn’t kill him, but I could start a stampede that might.

  Panic was setting in. I felt the glare of the cameras. My every move would be recorded and then shredded by lawyers and the vast public for eons to come. Okay, overstating, but at least for my lifetime, which was all that mattered to me.

  Pink tinged his skin—not the pale of someone losing a lot of blood. He blinked as if trying to focus and occasionally shuffled a foot to maintain balance. Blood splatter stitched across his face—a well-dressed, garish Frankenstein. I couldn’t imagine where he’d been, what he’d been doing, and what he’d seen.

  Visuals tended to implant themselves in my gray matter and torture me in the wee hours.

  He reeked of back-alley fear mingling with the metallic tang of blood, but no alcohol. I wondered what kind of drugs he’d been doing. Or maybe he’d had a total psychotic break. Wealthy, handsome, influential, with the requisite arm-candy wife—number four if I remember correctly—he didn’t seem the type to have any sorrows to drown, but I’d been surprised before.

  I’d leave the why for the cops. But I’d sure like to know the who.

  “Mr. Ponder. It’s Lucky O’Toole, Albert Rothstein’s daughter. The V.P. of Customer Relations here at the Babylon.” I searched for a glimmer of recognition.

  Nothing.

  When he raised his hand, I took a step back, even though he seemed confused by the knife he held and not particularly intent on burying it in my chest.

  “Lucky, can I help?” A familiar voice sounded behind me.

  Jerry! Finally!

  A trim black man, pressed and proper in khakis with the sleeves of his starched shirt rolled up and a flash of gold at the wrist. The perfect Head of Security, his tone and manner invoked calm but demanded compliance.

  “No.” It came out a bit harsher than I intended. “I got this.” Problems were my thing, and Mr. Ponder was the very definition of a huge problem. Besides, he knew my father—not a friend, more a respected adversary—but still, this was Vegas and relationships were currency. “Is Romeo on his way?” I asked Jerry. I didn’t want to say “police.” Experience taught me that particular word makes knife-wielding, blood-covered folks a bit twitchy.

  I so needed a new job.

  Jerry tried to cover a hint of anger with concern. He needn’t have bothered. “Yeah. I told him lights off. No need to attract an even larger crowd.”

  Detective Romeo was my ace-up-the-sleeve with the Metropolitan Police Department, Metro to us locals. Through the last year or so, the young detective and I had forged an easy alliance.

  I glanced past Ponder to the front doors where, for the moment, a phalanx of valets barred entry and exit. Jerry once again ran the show—for that I was thankful. I wouldn’t have to lead him by the nose as I would Fox. “While we’re waiting on him, get some of your men to ask out front how Mr. Ponder arrived here.”

  Jerry motioned to his men who had been close enough to hear. They filtered away through the crowd, which was now well back, alleviating the claustrophobic crush but giving the camera bugs better shots.

  For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. Yin and yang—one of the immutable rules of existence.

  Jerry inserted himself between me and the knife. “Let me,” out of the side of his mouth. Translated, it meant “Stay out of my way.” Possible threats to my health and physical well-being brought out the Papa Bear in Jerry—he’d been my mentor long before I’d earned partner status.

  Technically, now with the recent promotion, I was Jerry’s boss, but neither of us stood on that bit of corporate fiction.

  Mr. Ponder raised the knife. Alarm flashed across his face.

  Instinct gave me a sharp prod. I leaped at Mr. Ponder, pushing the knife down. Jerry stuck a leg behind him, then shoved Ponder backward. He landed with a thud on his back, the air leaving him in a whoosh. Jerry went with him, landing on top, using his weight to hold Ponder down. The knife clattered across the marble. Not wanting to disturb any evidence or add any trace of my own, I left it where it fell. Instead, I grabbed a gun out of the holster of the security guard standing next to me. “You haven’t gotten to the part of the course where they tell you what this is for?” I asked, not expecting an answer, which was a good thing as he gave me a forty-watt stare. I trained the gun on Ponder. “I got him, Jer.”

  Jerry crawled off Mr. Ponder. He brushed down his khakis and shirt as he stepped away, giving me a clear shot if I needed it.

  “Why didn’t you let me handle him?” Jerry let his irritation show.

  I worked to control my tone. Few things pissed me off more than some man thinking I couldn’t handle my job. “Why didn’t you let me? You don’t need a penis to handle a man with a knife, only some balls.”

  Jerry either didn’t have a comeback or was smart enough to keep it to himself.

  “Where have you been, Mr. Ponder?” I resisted the urge to grab his lapels and shake the truth out of him. “Where’d all the blood come from?”

  He lay on the floor staring at the ceiling. The blown-glass hummingbirds and butterflies mesmerized him. He giggled. “Pretty. Why don’t they move?” He cocked his head. “Oh, there they go.”

  “The guy is stoned out of his mind,” Jerry stated the obvious.

  “Where’d the blood come from, Mr. Ponder?” I kept asking on the misplaced theory that if I kept wailing away, at some point, I’d get the answer I wanted.

  He giggled again and shrugged, then wiped his palm down his pant leg as he pulled in another deep breath. “They shot him.”

  Okay, not what I expected, but it was something. “Who?”

  “I don’t know who shot him. Too dark.”

  “No, who did they shoot?”

  “Pain in the ass.”

  “That really narrows it down,” I said out of the side of my mouth to Jerry.

  The lobby had grown quiet, the crowd hanging on the edge of a collective
inhale. Curiously, the only sound was the omnipresent piped-in music. Right now, it was Bobby Darrin singing Mack the Knife.

  Laughable irony—the soundtrack of my life. I didn’t laugh.

  Ponder was totally out of it like the wheels were still turning but the hamster had died. He scratched at his arm, then rolled over and pushed himself to his knees.

  Jerry grabbed an arm to steady him as he staggered to his feet. “Mr. Ponder, if you’re not hurt, you’ve got a lot of blood there. Maybe someone else needs our assistance? Can you help us out? Where were you before you showed up here?” Since I’d been singularly unsuccessful, Jerry took up the cause.

  “I don’t know.” His brow creased with effort. “Game. Kids.”

  “Okay. Close to here?” I asked.

  “Lake.”

  “Near a lake?” This being the Mojave, lakes were not plentiful. The first glimmer of hope. “A big lake?” If he meant Lake Mead—searching there could take awhile, but it’d be a start.

  “Asshole,” he muttered. He shrugged out of Jerry’s grasp.

  Jerry moved back but only a step or two.

  Ponder’s non sequitur momentarily rocked me back on my heels, then the bolt of lightning seared through my pea brain. Shit! “Lake? You mean Senator Lake? This is his blood?” I tried to keep my voice calm, but it didn’t work. Even to me it sounded screechy and tight.

  Ponder looked at me, panting as if he’d sprinted to where he stood. For a moment, I thought I saw clarity and horror, then his knees buckled, and he crumpled. Jerry and I both jumped. He caught his left arm, I the right; then we gently lowered him to the floor.

  “Where the hell is the doctor?” I growled, wishing somebody, anybody, would show up.

  “Busy with a bleeder in Stairwell Fifteen,” Jerry said. “A guy took a header. Split his skull. Doc’ll be here as soon as he can.”

  I keyed Security again and got the same kid, Fox. “Any luck on figuring out where the knife guy came from?” I didn’t feel the need to explain the man was Ponder. Experience had taught me it was best to give only the information needed and nothing more.