With the entertainment over, I seriously considered making a run for it. Somehow I couldn't work myself down to the indignity of an ignominious escape, mooning the world as I dashed away in my hospital gown. Pride can be such a hindrance.
On the verge of throwing dignity out the window, I sipped off the gurney, clutching my gown closed behind me. I whirled at the sound of the pneumatic doors at the far end of the hallway swinging inward.
My mother, Mona, charged through the opening. In leggings and a loose white tunic to hide her baby bump, with her brown hair swinging loosely to her shoulders, her make-up impeccable, her skin glowing, and her eyes dark with emotion, she looked like my kid sister. That certainly made me feel better. Add her unparalleled ability to punch every button I had, and her presence had me clinging by my fingernails to the ledge of civility.
Returning to my previous position on the gurney, I pasted on a weak smile and promised myself I would shelve the sarcasm. Okay, I would try to shelve it—making promises in my condition was iffy at best.
Mona hurried to my side, then clutched one of my hands in both of hers. Her skin was cold. I guess she really wasn't faking her worry, although, with Mother, one never could be certain."Lucky! My God, honey!" She leaned in and whispered, her voice shaking. "It's like before."
Another time. Another place. Another bomb. I shut my mind to the assault of the memories. "Don't go there, Mother. I'm okay." I looked around her but didn't see anyone.
Amazingly, Mona understood. "I left your father out front talking to the doctors. He'll be here in a minute." She grabbed my hand her face turning serious. "There's something going on, Lucky."
"I'll say. That message was delivered with quite a punch this afternoon."
She waved her hand as she glanced over her shoulder at the hallway doors. "Not with Jimmy G. It's your father. He got some kind of note yesterday. It made him nervous…and angry. I haven't seen him like that in a long time."
"What did the note say?"
"He wouldn't tell me. But I thought, with you two being thick as thieves, maybe he might tell you."
If she was jealous of my relationship with my father, she kept it hidden. Our bond was understandable really—my father and I had the hotel business in our blood. A businessperson as well, my mother had experience of a different kind, although it was remarkably similar in some respects. Until a couple of months ago, she'd been the proprietress of Mona's Place, the self-styled best whorehouse in Nevada. She and Father had married recently, terminating my illegitimacy. I still wasn't sure how I felt about that. Glad for them, of course, but missing a ready excuse for the boulder I carried on my shoulder.
"Father can be awfully private, but I'll try…when the time is right."
Mona's worried look fell away—transferring responsibility always lightens the load. She graced me with a soft smile. "I heard you're a hero," she said, her voice breathless with a grudging awe.
"Overstating." I tried to extricate my hand, but she wouldn't let go.
The doors swung open again, this time admitting my father, Albert Rothstein, lovingly referred to as the Big Boss. One of the top-tier players in town, he was integral in making Vegas what it was today. Currently he owned several properties, the Babylon by far his most grand. Yes, not only was he my father, he was also my boss. Not really advisable, but we seemed to be making it work.
Hands in his pockets, he strolled toward me, his weak flash of a grin unable to fully camouflage his concern. A short man with salt-and-pepper hair, a square face, and chiseled physique, he oozed masculinity and something else—power, perhaps? In his perfectly tailored, dark gray Italian suit in summer-weight wool with a very faint pinstripe, starched white shirt, deep purple tie, diamond-encrusted collar bar, and Gucci wingtips, he was every inch the power broker. With worry tingeing his eyes and pulling his lips into a taut line, he was also every inch a concerned parent. He moved close but didn't reach out to me. "The doctors say you're going to be fine. The CAT scan is just prophylactic."
I gave him a lopsided grin. "You know how I feel about prophylactics."
"Lucky!" Mona feigned shock.
I rolled my eyes. Apparently playing the owner's wife included heightened sensibilities not normally found in a former hooker.
Father patted her hand. "Humor, honey. It's how Lucky deflects, you know that."
Most people yearned for that kind of insight from their loved ones. Not me. It just made me uncomfortable. Picking at the hem of my gown, I stared at the floor commanding my thoughts into a logical formation, which sounds way easier than it was. "Father, you remember Boogie Fleischman?"
"Boogie the Bomber." His eyes widened slightly as they held mine. A few beats passed before he answered. "That's going way back." My father reached into his back pocket and tugged at his wallet—a slim, well-worn piece of leather. He opened it and extracted a hundred dollar bill. Flipping the wallet closed, he tucked it back where he'd found it and began working the paper bill. His hands shook a bit, which surprised me. Creasing and folding, he glanced at me. "What'll it be?"
"Your choice."
My mother and I watched him, his brows scrunched in concentration, as he created. A few moments, and he was finished. Taking my hand, he turned it over and pressed the finished product into my palm. After leaning in for a quick peck on my cheek, he let go of my hand and stepped back.
Glancing down, I smiled. A heart. "Origami," I said. "Your way of deflecting." I hoped he'd heard my smile. "Now, Boogie and Jimmy G? Weren't they partners or something? I can't remember; I was young."
"Very." My father's eyes had turned dark, his expression serious as he crossed his arms. "This reminds me of that time…"
"Yeah, startling similarities." My tone shut him down. A close call, so long ago. "A bomb. Jimmy's Place."
"You don't need to remind me." My father's voice was flat, hard.
"Tell me about Boogie and Jimmy G," I prompted. "You've never really talked about it before—I've never heard your take."
"Never had to give it to you."
"Perhaps now might be a good time to fill me in."
Amazingly, he didn't argue. "Not only partners, but the best of friends, they'd moved out here together. I can't remember exactly, but neither one of them was much more than legal at the time."
I finally extricated my hand from Mona's. When I patted the gurney next to me, she boosted herself up. Reflexively, my father helped her, right-side-of-the-tracks manners from a wrong-side guy. "This was when? The sixties?"
My father nodded. "They'd both grown up in the restaurant business back in Jersey. So they came out here and set up shop together—a popular little Italian joint over on Eastern. The neighborhood was much more upscale then—all the casino folks and their families lived there."
"What happened between them?"
My father ran a hand over his eyes. "Why're you asking me this? You can't possibly think…"
For a moment I chewed on my lip, remembering.
Mona looked at me owl-eyed. "Lucky?"
I shut them both down with a look. "I don't know what to think. Tell me what happened."
He shot me a questioning look but did as I asked. "Boogie fell in with the wrong crowd. You know Jimmy, he kept his nose clean, ran a nice place. Jimmy forced Boogie out—he didn't need that kind of trouble. Jimmy paid him fair, but Boogie held a grudge." My father glanced around. I knew what he was looking for—a window. He loved to stare out through a window when he trotted down memory lane.
"No pretty vistas here, Boss. This is a hospital, one of the most depressing places on the planet. I'm sure the lack of ambiance, although a bit sadistic, is purposeful. Makes us all want to go home."
My father shrugged. "You know the rest of the story."
"Tell me again. I want to be sure."
"I'd like to hear it again, too," Mona said, adding an encouraging nod.
"In the seventies, the corporations moved in. There was a huge push to move the Family out. We all knew th
at's how it'd have to go if we really hoped to put Vegas on the map." Clearly on edge, my father again reached for his wallet, extracted another bill, then stuffed his wallet back in his pocket. Drawing on a lifetime of memory, he began working the bill as he talked. "Jimmy's place was doing real good. A high-class joint, you know?"
At his glance, I nodded.
"A lot of money was at stake in polishing Vegas' image. The dirty history was swept under the rug, until the Union moved in." Absentmindedly, he folded and refolded, his fingers dancing to a memory.
"The Culinary Union?"
"Yeah, they tried to fill the power vacuum left when the Family got escorted out of town. As you can imagine, the business owners wanted no part of the Union. To them, it was just more of the same."
"A poor substitute for the Mob."
"Yeah." My father gave me a rueful smile, then took a quick glance at the figure forming as he worked. "At least with the Mob, they took care of their own. You knew what the rules were, and the price for breaking them. With the corporations and the Union, it was warfare—a game with no rules."
"But the Union won," I said, mainly for Mona's benefit.
"A lot of blood was spilt," my father continued, a lost, angry look in his eyes."The Union had these thugs that would bomb restaurants that refused to become unionized. It was an ugly time in this town."
"And Boogie Fleischman? What role did he play?"
"He found his calling: he loved blowing things up. Got pretty cocky about it, as I recall."
"And that night at Jimmy's, was the bomb his?"
"They didn't pin that one on him, but we were pretty sure it was." My father glanced at me, then his eyes skittered away. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was nervous. He pretended to be absorbed in the tiny figure in his hands, putting the finishing touches on a swan with a graceful, arched neck. Taking one of Mona's hands, he pressed it into her palm, then closed her fingers over it.
"Why didn't they pin it on him?"
"He had an airtight alibi."
"What?"
My father didn't meet my eyes. "I don't know, but it stuck."
"But he was sent up, right?"
"Lesser charges, another incident."
My feet stopped swinging as I stilled. "Then why were you sure the bomb had been his?"
"A few bits of the bomb were found in the wreckage. Parts of a wind-up clock, pieces of a secondary trigger." He rubbed his eyes, then took a deep breath. "Making a bomb is an art. The folks that do it usually have some particular background or knowledge that shapes how they fashion the device. With Boogie, he only knew one way."
"Unique, like a signature?"
"Exactly."
"Ah, the punch line." I leaned back against the wall, once again glad the wheels on the gurney had been locked.
They both looked at me owl-eyed. Silence stretched between us.
"Today's bomb and the other one, all those years ago; they were exactly the same," I said with a little more bravado than I felt.
My father stared me down. "Are you sure?"
"An old wind-up clock that probably hasn't been for sale for decades. Seriously old dynamite."
"Boogie paid his debt and went back east, last I heard." My father sounded like he was working real hard to sell the story. But to me or to himself? I didn't know. "He didn't have anything to do with this, Lucky."
"Why are you so sure?" I pressed. Mona was right; something was definitely going on with the Big Boss. Behind the paternal façade, he looked tired. And angry.
My father started to answer, then clamped his mouth shut at the sound of the doors opening one more time. This time, they admitted Romeo with my EMT Galahad on his heels.
As they approached, my father leaned in close. "We need to talk. Soon." He touched my face, a lost look in his eyes, then he stepped back, turning a smile toward the two men hurrying in our direction.
Romeo, his clothes rumpled but his face bright, looked a whole lot better than I thought he should. Apparently he could take bombs and late nights in stride far better than I. His sandy hair was cut short and gelled with not a hair out of place…well, except for the cowlick at the crown of his head, which so far had defied every styling substance short of Super Glue. His blue eyes clear. A bounce in his step. A ready smile creasing skin otherwise unmarred by the passage of time. Looking at him, I had a glimmer of why people would mortgage their souls for a brief taste of lost youth.
After nodding a greeting to my parents, the young and way too perky detective hooked a thumb over his shoulder as he stopped in front of me. "The ATF guys are chomping at the bit to talk to you."
"I can't tell you how good that makes me feel."
"Bombings attract a lot of attention, and you're the only one who got a look at the device."
"Besides the one who put it there." I gave him the best stern look I could muster. "Speaking of which, shouldn't you be out chasing leads or something?"
"I'm working on it." Romeo didn't seem to buy my act. "There's precious little to go on. Jimmy didn't have any video, so we're trying to get a bead on what folks saw."
"Or thought they saw."
"Eyewitnesses aren't the most reliable," the young detective agreed. "So you can understand why ATF wants to get your take."
"I have a head injury, haven't you heard?" I pointed toward radiology. "I'm waiting for them to diagnose the extent."
Romeo smiled. "Nice try."
"I could use some help here," I said to the EMT. "I still don't know your name."
"Nick." He flashed those dimples.
I was so glad I wasn't hooked up to one of those heart rate machines or the thing would be having a coronary about now.
"And I'll be glad to testify to your instability if you'll go out to dinner with me. The detective here told me you were flying solo." He colored a bit at my scowl.
Romeo, on the other hand, seemed unfazed.
"Sweetheart," I cooed to the young detective. "I don't need you pimping me out." He just gave me an open, innocent look, making me smile.
My mother, who had grabbed my hand again, cutting off the blood flow, leaned in and whispered so everyone could hear, "Honey, he's yummy."
None of this seemed to knock Nick off base. Not even his introduction to my parents. Either he was clueless or supremely secure. Perhaps he merited some study. As I opened my mouth to respond to his invitation, the doors behind me slammed open, making me swallow my words.
The orderly, who had abandoned me a lifetime ago, stepped into the group and announced, "They're ready for you."
As he reached to wheel me away, I gathered my dignity—hard to do in my current attire—and announced, "Well, today's the day we finally find out if I really do have mush for brains."
***
By the time I'd been stitched up, declared of sound mind and body, and given my discharge papers, the energy in the hospital was at an ebb—daytime bombings under control, nighttime stabbings and overdoses still to come. Thankfully, my father had taken Mona home, relieving me of the energy drain. Romeo had left, presumably to tilt at windmills and right wrongs, keeping the world as we know it status quo for yet another day.
My clothes had been stuffed into a sack and unceremoniously thrown into a corner of my emergency room cubicle. Weariness crept through me—the aftermath of an overdose of adrenaline—as I pulled my Dana Buchman slacks and matching sweater in a deep midnight blue from the bag. Crumpled, peppered with holes, and reeking of smoke, they were all I had. It took me three tries to get my foot fully through the left pant leg without it coming out the large tear in the knee. Then I pulled my sweater on over my head—a bra seemed beyond my capabilities at the moment so I left it in the bag. Reaching into the bottom, I came up empty—no shoes. And as I recall, they'd been my favorite Ferragamos, also in blue. I'd had them resoled seven times. Or was it eight? Not that it really mattered. Finally covered, but still far from presentable, I scrawled my name on a stack of release forms left by the attending physician
and padded toward the exit.
Paxton Dane pushed himself upright and into my consciousness. How had I missed him holding up the wall next to the nurse's station? He ambled in my direction. "Man, you look like forty miles of bad road."
Too bad I couldn't say the same about him. Several inches over six feet, with wide shoulders tapering to a boyish waist, dark wavy hair, emerald green eyes, cheekbones so sharp they looked carved out of stone, and a ready grin, he was spit-and-polished in his creased 501s and starched button down. Normally, his presence made me wary. Not only did he ooze some sort of male pheromone or something—which ought to be illegal around women in my weakened state—he also had a penchant for bending the truth. However, tonight I'd never been so happy see a friendly face. A former co-worker and rebuffed suitor, I thought we now had weathered the rocky road to friendship. His smile gave me a hint he agreed.
"What are you doing here?"
"Trying to get a jump-start on my damsel-in-distress quota."
"I'm honored to be the beneficiary of such self-aggrandizement." I took his proffered arm, looping mine through it. "It's been a less-than-stellar day."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," he said as he steered me away from the front entrance. "You don't want to go out that way."
"What about the ATF guys? I heard they were looking for me."
"They agreed to meet you in your office. The packs of bloodhounds feasting on small children and old people around here scared them off. My truck's in the garage on the other side of the hospital."
I happily leaned on Dane as I let him lead me through the labyrinth of UMC. We both knew the drill—the reporters would be corralled out front, while we sneaked out the back. "The newshounds are waiting to tear out my throat, are they?"
"Or anoint you queen for a day. Nice touch saving the kid."
"You know me, anything for good copy."
"Seriously." His grip tightened on my arm. "Good job."
I felt heat rise in my cheeks. Praise made me uncomfortable. Praise for doing something I should have done made me mad.
Lucky Bang Page 2
