“Very well. A gangster named Broken Tooth sent me to Las Vegas because he believes good fortune has shone down upon me. My mission is to win ten million dollars, which a group of unlucky Chinese gamblers lost in the casinos here several months ago.”
“Does he really have a broken tooth?” Pepper asked.
“Yes. He is very ordinary looking, except for his broken tooth. I believe this is why he’s chosen not to have it fixed.”
“Why does Broken Tooth think you can win ten million dollars?” Pepper asked.
“It is a long story,” he said solemnly.
“Can you do it?”
“I most certainly am going to try.”
Pepper stole a glance at Misty. So that was why Billy had picked Tommy Wang to rip off Carnivale’s casino. Wang was a man on a mission, and that mission was to win big.
“What’s going to happen if you lose?” Misty asked.
“Then I will be shot. Broken Tooth is not a forgiving man,” Wang said.
The tiny meatball on the toothpick Pepper was nibbling no longer tasted so good, and she placed it on a napkin. Pepper had decided that she dug Tommy Wang. He was soft-spoken and had impeccable manners, and she admired those qualities in a man. She wanted to ask Wang why he didn’t just cut bait and run; she guessed there was more to the story than he was telling them.
“How do you know when good fortune is shining down on you?” she asked, wanting to change the subject. “Do the skies open up and you hear a voice?”
“It is subtler than that,” he replied. “There are signs in everyday occurrences that indicate when good fortune is happening. Take the backgammon game we just enjoyed. I rolled the numbers six, eight, and nine more times than the other numbers. In China, six means wealth, eight means prosperity, and nine means long-lasting. These are signs that good fortune is smiling down on me.”
Which was why Billy rigged the backgammon game for those numbers to come up, Pepper realized. To get Tommy Wang to think he couldn’t lose.
“There is another reason,” their host said. “You are here.”
“You think we’re part of your good fortune?” Pepper asked.
“Yes. The first time I met you, you were wearing lucky jade. And now the luckiest numbers appear on the dice each time I roll them. You are bringing me good fortune.”
Pepper feigned surprise and looked at Misty. Then she looked back at Wang.
“Wow,” she said.
Wang went to the bar and popped another bottle of champagne, which he brought to the table. He refilled their flutes to overflowing and stared at Pepper with a smoldering fire burning in his eyes. Pepper had stopped thinking men were special about the time she’d started making porn movies, and she was more than a little surprised when she felt her knees weaken.
“I have a favor to ask,” Wang said.
“Name it,” Pepper said.
“I would like you to accompany me to the casino tonight. Both of you. I would be honored if you said yes.”
Going on a date with Tommy Wang was not part of the plan. Pepper glanced at Misty, who already had her cell phone out and was typing in a text. Before they accepted Wang’s offer, they needed to run it by Billy. While they were on a job, nothing happened without Billy’s approval.
Which was why the words that came out of Pepper’s mouth surprised her.
“You’re on,” Pepper said.
Twenty-Eight
Special Agent Frank Grimes was having a crappy day. First he’d woken up to find the coffeemaker on the fritz. Then over breakfast he’d sparred with his wife over his late hours. Upon arriving at work he’d discovered his desktop had crashed. He didn’t think it could get any worse until he’d gotten a text from Junior Haney saying things hadn’t gone according to plan last night. That didn’t sound good, so he’d gone outside to the parking lot and climbed into his Jeep Cherokee before calling Junior on his cell phone.
“What do you mean, things didn’t go according to plan?” Grimes said.
“We went to Gabe Weiss’s house like you told us to, only Gabe wasn’t home,” Junior replied. “Another guy was there, house-sitting. My father beat the guy into telling us where Gabe was.”
“Your father beat him up? How bad?”
“Bad enough.”
“Bad enough to kill him?”
“Probably.”
Grimes shook his head in disgust. The Haneys had now snuffed two innocent men, and Grimes wondered how high the body count would get before this was over.
“Guy was in rough shape when we left,” Junior continued. “Yeah, my father probably killed him. He gets that way sometimes, you know? His mind snaps and he loses total fucking control. Something good did come out of it, though. We know where Cunningham is.”
“How do you know that?”
“It was on Weiss’s computer. Cunningham’s staying at the Carnivale.”
“So go get him.”
“We plan to, but we need your help. You know, fake ID.”
“Consider it done. Where are you now?” Grimes asked.
“At a hookah bar,” Junior said.
“At eleven o’clock in the morning?”
“It was my father’s idea. He wanted a smoke.”
“Give me the address, and I’ll be over as soon as I can.”
The gaming board employed nine hundred special agents whose job was to catch cheats and thieves. When foul play inside a casino was suspected, a gaming agent would come to the casino disguised as an employee and spy on the suspected cheat. Disguises ranged from cocktail waitresses to culinary workers or maintenance people.
Grimes took the elevator to the basement where these disguises were stored. He requested two disguises for a fictitious sting from the clerk on duty. The clerk fetched a pair of olive green maintenance men uniforms and two clip-on ID badges, which he made Grimes sign for.
Grimes returned to the parking lot and put the disguises into his vehicle. He left the parking lot and was soon driving south on I-15. Traffic in Vegas was unpredictable, with no rhyme or reason to its patterns. Twenty-five minutes later, he’d gone exactly eleven miles.
He took Exit 30 and let his GPS guide him. He’d thought whacking Cunningham would be child’s play for the Haneys, and it bothered him that they’d now killed a couple of innocent people. But he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. Because of Cunningham, he’d been denied two promotions and hadn’t seen a raise in years. As a result, he was driving a car with a hundred thousand miles, his oldest kid was going to a community college, and his wife worked retail. He didn’t care if he had to kill half the population of Las Vegas; if it meant putting Cunningham’s lights out, it would be worth it.
He entered a deserted strip center and parked. The hookah bar was also a notary. What a novel idea. Puff on a hookah while having a document stamped. He grabbed the disguises and went inside. The place was decorated like a rec room with cheap rugs on the floor and gaudy wall decorations. The Haneys sat at a corner table, puffing on a hookah. Or at least the elder Haney was. Junior was drinking coffee and looked like he’d just rolled out of bed.
Grimes didn’t know that much about the Haneys except Wilmer was from Texas and had worked for the Dallas mob before moving to Vegas and marrying a pretty blackjack dealer, who was Junior’s mother. As the story went, Wilmer had confessed the horrible things he’d done back in Dallas to his wife one night, and the wife, upon learning she’d married a monster, had downed a bottle of sleeping pills. Grimes pulled up a chair and dropped the disguises on the table.
“These will get you into the Carnivale,” Grimes said.
Junior checked out the disguises. “Maintenance men?”
“That’s right. You don’t look like management.”
“That supposed to be a joke?”