Fast and Loose

by Fern Michaels

  “He’d still be the CIA’s number one, but his cover got blown, and it was either take a job pushing paper, be an instructor at Langley, or get out. Dix elected to get out, but he is still on, if you know what I mean. Just like you and me. Cut him some slack, but if you run into a problem, let me know. I need to warn you about one thing where he’s concerned. Dix loves the ladies, and they love him right back. Just so you know.”

  “So where do you want us to start, Bert?” Charles asked.

  “What I think you all should do is hit the casino floor as soon as we end this call. Gamble. Eat. Drink. Take in a show. You’re on vacation, so act like you are. You really can’t do anything until Abner arrives and we talk again. Maggie has a bead on it with starting out early tomorrow. While her and the guys are busy with Dix, the rest of you can call, and we’ll work out a plan. Now, I’ve got to head out for a meeting. Call me after Abner arrives.”

  The call ended as everyone looked at each other.

  “You heard the man,” Ted said. “We need to act like we’re on vacation.” He rubbed his hands together in wild anticipation of making a big score, as if that were going to happen in a Vegas casino, even if it was the one owned by a member of the Vigilantes.

  “I suggest we split up so we don’t look so obvious,” Fergus said. “We should make a plan to meet up somewhere around, let’s say, eight o’clock, and we can have dinner together to discuss our wins or losses. That bar Bert mentioned, the Tiki Bar, sounds like a good meeting place. Are we all agreed?”

  Ted, Espinosa, and Dennis were out the door before Fergus finished talking. The others followed, with Snowden bringing up the rear.

  Chapter 6

  The four hours leading up to the meet at eight o’clock in the Tiki Bar rushed by in a blur for the gang. Charles and Fergus hit the poker table and won eighteen hundred dollars in the four hours. Fergus said it wasn’t a bad return for sitting on their bums and getting something for nothing.

  Jack, Harry, and Sparrow hit the blackjack table with gusto. Their total winnings for the same four hours were twenty-nine hundred dollars.

  Maggie, Ted, Espinosa, and Dennis took over a bank of slot machines and went at it full bore, with total winnings of $11,315.

  Snowden and his people worked the floor, their eyes everywhere. From time to time, they would sit down at a slot machine, press the button, then walk away. Their total winnings for the four hours were $8.50.

  Chits in hand at the meet in the Tiki Bar, they agreed that they would donate the money to the Sunshine Foundation. It was Maggie’s honor to walk the donation to the front of the casino floor, where an elderly, white-haired lady cried at the sizable donations.

  “We are dining at the Knife and Fork, on the sixth floor,” Charles said. “After dinner, we will head for the concierge floor to wait for Abner.”

  The restaurant was just crowded enough that no one paid attention to the lively group as they waited for tables to be put together to accommodate all of them.

  Drinks were on the way and dinner had been ordered when Jack held up his hand for silence. “Okay, anyone notice anything while we were gambling?”

  Everyone started talking at once. The bottom line was they all felt like they were being watched. All eyes turned to Sparrow, the pro in the group.

  “We’re on Kelly’s radar, that’s for sure,” Sparrow told them. “I really don’t think that Bert told him what’s going on, and he is definitely miffed that whatever it is, he’s not included. The guy is good. Bert told me all about him a while back. Whatever you do, do not underestimate him.

  “Right now, he’s checking each one of us out as he tries to figure out what the play is. Hell, he probably did that the minute he left us earlier. He could definitely be an asset to us, but we can’t use him, since Bert, while he didn’t say it out loud, thinks, despite the time differences, that he might be involved. Right or wrong, for now the man is tainted.”

  The group nodded as one.

  “Avery, you and your people were cruising the floor. What, if anything, did you come up with?” Charles asked.

  “I feel confident in saying Kelly assigned a tail to each one of us. I’m proud of all of you. You acted like everyone else on the floor. As far as I could tell, the tails went back to Kelly with their tails between their legs, no pun intended. In other words, they had nothing of substance to report. We’re all doing just what everyone else is doing.

  “Before you all go up to your rooms after dinner, I’m going to pass on dessert, leave a little early, and check to make sure the rooms are clean. By that I mean free of listening devices. Like Sparrow said, once an agent, always an agent.”

  The others nodded in agreement.

  None of them failed to notice the impeccable service they were getting when their dinners arrived all at the same exact time. The Kobe beef and jumbo prawns that Babylon was known for were served piping hot, and no one had a complaint. Water glasses were constantly filled, as were the wineglasses. Waiters in crisp black and white stood to the side in anticipation of a request from one of the diners.

  Maggie Spritzer, long known for her out-of-whack metabolism and ferocious appetite, mumbled something that sounded like “I could get used to this kind of dining real quick.”

  The others heartily agreed.

  As dessert was being served, a double chocolate mousse cake, Jack’s cell phone pinged. Abner had just sent him a text. He looked up at the others. “Abner just pulled into the parking garage. He wants to know what he should do.”

  “I’ll go down to meet him and take him up to the room,” Harry said. Other than Snowden, he was the only one at the table who had passed on dessert. “We’ll wait for you.”

  Dennis looked at his dessert and frowned. Harry had told him more than once that sugar was a killer, and he had lost all that weight. “I’ll come with you,” he said, getting up from the table. Maggie’s hand moved quicker than a magician’s as she scooped up her multimillionaire junior reporter’s dessert plate.

  “I know you’re all anxious to get up to your rooms, so go ahead. Fergus and I will settle the bill,” Charles said.

  All the guys were on their feet in a second, except for Maggie, who was stuffing the mousse cake into her face as fast as she could.

  Charles raised his hand to indicate he was ready for the bill.

  The head waiter smiled and said, “Sir, Mr. Navarro left instructions that you and your party are our prime guests, and as such, dinner is compliments of the house. We hope you enjoyed your dinners, and we look forward to seeing you again during your stay. By the way, we offer a varied menu for in-room dining, if you feel that is something you might like. The kitchen is open twenty-four hours.”

  Charles beamed his pleasure as he peeled off three one-hundred-dollar bills for the tip. “One way or another,” he said to Fergus, “you pay. The life of a waiter or waitress is not easy.” He turned to Maggie. “Come along, missy, and let’s see what Abner has in store for us.”

  * * *

  Well out of sight, Dixson Kelly listened to the voice at the other end of the phone he was holding to his ear, telling him that the last guest on Navarro’s list had just arrived and was parking in the garage. The voice, which belonged to Pete Justice, further informed him that the last guest had just placed a phone call or sent a text. From his vantage point, he couldn’t be sure which it was, not that it mattered all that much.

  Dixson Kelly clenched his teeth together so hard, he thought his jaw would crack. All present and accounted for. At least for now. “Pete, what did you come up with on the background checks for this crew?”

  “Done and on your desk, boss. Anything else?”

  “Anything interesting?”

  Justice laughed. “I’ll let you be the judge of that, boss. It did make for some interesting reading, I will say that. A word of advice. Tread carefully around that guy Harry Wong. Just so you know, on our best day, I and my entire Delta team couldn’t take him out. Even in our prime. That guy Eme
ry, even though he’s some kind of lawyer, is no slouch, either. Then there’s this young kid, a reporter who is Wong’s protégé. In other words, when it comes to mixing it up down and dirty, the three of them are a force to be reckoned with.”

  Kelly made an ugly sound in the back of his throat. “I knew about Harry Wong, since he’s been in Vegas a number of times, but you’re making it sound like Armageddon is right around the corner. I’ll keep it in mind, Pete.”

  Kelly took the elevator to his office, where he poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot that was freshened hourly, and settled down to read the background reports on Bert Navarro’s guests. He perched a pair of reading glasses on his nose and started to read.

  When he was finished, thirty minutes later, he snorted in disgust.

  Four reporters here to do a week in the life of a Vegas honcho. One lawyer who used to be a district attorney. The number one martial arts expert in the world. A Scottish gent by the name of Fergus Duffy, who used to head up Interpol. A British chap who worked both sides of the pond, was Elizabeth’s childhood playmate, and was still on a first-name basis with the queen of England. Serious firepower there, he thought glumly.

  Absolutely nothing on the guy Snowden and the four people who were with him. His background was a pure blank, as were those of the four others. Aliases. Not against the law. He was going to have to dig into that.

  Jackson Porter Sparrow. Framed by his own agents back in the day and spent a hitch in the federal pen, until Bert and a bunch of women proved he’d been framed. The president had pardoned him, and now he headed up the FBI, following the guy who had succeeded Bert, who had succeeded Elias Cummings.

  Good guy. Salt of the earth. Usually went by the rule book until the book didn’t work anymore, then, like Frank Sinatra said, did it his way. The moment he took over the Bureau, he cleaned house, set up new rules, and he was now actually the envy of the CIA. Yep, good man. The question was, what the hell was he doing here with this particular bunch of people?

  Which left Mr. Abner Tookus, whose report had three times as many pages as the reports on the others. Wealthy was the first word on the report, followed by his marital status, followed by his friendship with Maggie Spritzer, currently the star reporter and formerly the editor in chief of the Washington Post, which just happened to be owned by Babylon’s owner, Countess Anna de Silva. So that web of connections would account for Tookus being here and belonging to this particular group of people.

  Kelly continued to read. Tookus did not have a nine-to-five job. He worked on his own as a freelancer, doing stints for every government agency in the nation’s capital. Even the FBI. He was a computer genius. He wrote code, did designer security, set up Web sites that could not be hacked, ones with impenetrable firewalls.

  Kelly snorted. There was no such thing, in his opinion, as an impenetrable firewall. Tookus’s latest gig, as of six months ago, was installing a system for Homeland Security, for which he was paid a cool two million dollars. He snorted again when he read the words the United States government’s number one computer expert. In parentheses was the word GENIUS, in capital letters.

  Well, woo-hoo, boo-hoo, and all that jazz, Kelly thought. And here the number one computer genius in the country is suddenly, along with the number one martial arts expert in the country, right here, under my very nose. Not to mention the rest of the crew. Like I am really supposed to believe this whole gig is just a little gambling junket for fun and games. It has to mean something. But what?

  One thing he knew for certain was that these people were not here for a vacation or for shits and giggles. They were here for something else. Now all he had to do was figure out what that something was.

  Kelly spread all the reports across his desk and looked at them. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a monkey by the toe . . . Where to start? What should he dig into first? He took a mighty breath and let it out slowly. The computer guy, of course, this Abner Tookus. But first he had to make some phone calls. To old pals still in the business. Old pals who knew their way around the different government agencies, who knew who had whose ear and what was going to go down before it went down. One way or another, he was going to find out what was going on.

  * * *

  An hour after his arrival, allowing time for Abner to shower, put on fresh clothes, and eat, the gang gathered in Charles’s suite to talk.

  Jack thought Abner looked and acted like a cat on a hot griddle. Harry agreed. He decided to spare the computer expert the dance he was getting ready to orchestrate and get to the bare bones of whatever it was that was bothering him.

  “Okay, Abner, spit it out. I know . . . we all know something is bothering you big-time. We saw it back in the BOLO Building. Thank God you don’t play poker, because if you did, your face would give you away. You know something. What is it?”

  Abner cleared his throat. “You’re right. I think I know something. The operative word here is think. I didn’t say anything then, because I wasn’t sure. I’m still not one hundred percent sure, but I’m going to tell you, anyway, and you can all judge for yourselves if I’m right or wrong. I know where my loyalties lie. With all of you. That’s a given. But . . . I have another loyalty I have . . . had to consider. I’m able to do what I do because of my mentor of old. I owe him everything. He’s never asked anything of me in return. He’s like a beloved cyber grandfather. You probably don’t understand that, but I had to weigh that against all of you. At the same time, I didn’t want to bring the wrath of God down on him if I was wrong. I am having a real hard time with this, in case you haven’t noticed.

  “Think about all I’ve been able to do for all of you over the years. I don’t know where we’d all be if I hadn’t been able to help out. Able to help out because of the person who took me under his wing and worked with me, taught me everything I know. He was there for me all the way. What I am trying to say here is that there is only one person in this whole world who I think could do what Bert thinks was done. RCHood. That’s his cyber name. I have no idea what his real name is. RCHood stands for ‘Robin Cool Hood.’ He robs the rich to help the poor. That’s the bottom line.

  “There is nothing he cannot hack into. I mean nothing. The man is a legend in his own time. You would have to live in my world to understand the fear the man generates. Fear and respect. I don’t know.... Maybe you have to see the words in black and white to understand what I mean. RCHood is most famous among people like myself for saying, ‘You screw me over, cross me, babble about me, or try to find me, and I will wipe out your entire bloodline.’ Is it true? Would he do that? Does he have the capabilities? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else, and none of us have ever, at least to my knowledge, tried to find out. Best to let sleeping dogs lie, as they say.”

  Avery Snowden wagged his finger in the air to indicate he had something to say. “What Abner is telling you is the absolute truth. I’ve had my ear to the ground, as well as the ears of a lot of people in the field, and RCHood is the name that comes up time and time again. It is virtually the only name that came up. No one talks about him. I’m not guessing here when I say you could stick lighted matches under those hackers’ toenails, and they still wouldn’t talk.

  “The thing is, they really don’t know anything about the person himself. No one knows who he is in real life, and no one has met him, or if they have, they do not know that they have. It could be a woman, for all I or any of my sources know. But whoever RCHood is, he or she is the best of the best.”

  “Well, where the hell does that leave us?” Ted exploded.

  “I met him. Once. I was sixteen at the time,” Abner said.

  The silence in the room was suddenly deafening.

  “Maybe you should tell us about that meeting,” Charles said quietly, his voice gentle, as if he were talking a child to sleep.

  “I did meet him, but even if you put those matches under my toenails, I couldn’t tell you what he looks like. I was sixteen, young, dumb, stupid. I heard there was this
underground hackers’ convention in New Jersey. To the dismay of my foster parents, I hitchhiked to the conference to meet what I thought were my idols. I was good. I knew that. I just needed guidance. There was this roundtable discussion where everyone got to say who they were, what their goals were, stuff like that. This one guy at the table kept watching me and later singled me out, and we talked. It was RCHood. We’ve been cyber friends ever since. I can’t tell you how many times he’s helped me out. He helps everyone out, asks for nothing but our loyalty.”

  “What’s he look like?” Snowden asked.

  Abner ran his hands through his hair. “Just a guy. Hey, I was only sixteen. He looked just as grungy as the rest of us. Dark hair. Tall. I think. Big hands. Really big hands. That’s what I was really looking at, because those hands, the fingers, literally danced on the computer keys. I wanted that capability. That’s the only thing that really registered with me. Also, remember at that time, he wasn’t the legend he is today in the hacker world.”

  “How much did he weigh? How tall was he?” Jack asked.

  Abner shrugged. “He was sitting down, so he was a lot taller than me, and I was sitting next to him. He had some meat on him. The only reason I even noticed was that the rest of us were pretty skinny, and that goes for the girls that were there. ‘Average big guy’ would have to be my answer.”

  “Eyes . . . what color? What color was his hair?” Dennis asked.

  “I have no clue as to eye color, but his hair was dark.”

  “Any markings? Tattoos, pimples, boils, scars?” Espinosa queried.

  “None that I remember. It was a long time ago. I was full of myself back then. I’d defied my foster parents where I was raised, hitchhiked up to Jersey, and was on my own for the first time in my life and was hell-bent on enjoying every minute of it. On my way here, I even thought about hypnosis, wondering if it would help. The bottom line is I didn’t pay attention to the person, just his hands, what they could do with a keyboard and a computer and the words that came out of his mouth. Now, if you showed me a picture of his hands, his nails, I’m sure I would have total recall, because that’s where my focus was. As I recall, he had a nice voice, kind of comforting. Soothing, actually, now that I think of it. At the same time he was trying, I think, to figure out which one of us was worthy of his time and effort. He chose me and a girl whose cyber name is PIP. Stands for ‘Pretty in Pink.’