“Which you’ll do to stop the Haneys from murdering us,” Travis said.
“That’s right. I know of several jobs the Haneys have pulled. I also have Gabe digging up dirt on them. When we’re finished scamming the Carnivale, I’ll contact Shapiro and pass along the information. Shapiro will bust them and add another feather to his cap.”
“What’s going to stop the Haneys from turning over the information they found on Gabe’s computer to the gaming board?” Travis asked.
“I’ll ask Shapiro to destroy the folder,” Billy said.
“He’ll do that for you?”
“Damn straight he will. I risked my neck. He owes me. Any more questions?”
There were none. Billy looked each of them in the eye before speaking again.
“Are we good?”
“I’m good,” Travis said.
“Me, too,” Cory said.
“Fine here,” Morris said.
Misty reached across the table and touched Billy’s wrist. “Thank you for telling us this. It means a lot to us.”
Cory and Morris went back inside the sky palace. Travis followed moments later. Misty started to rise from her chair and Billy cleared his throat. The sound stopped Misty in her tracks and she sat back down.
“So where is she?” Billy asked.
Misty shook her head, pretending not to understand.
“Pepper. Where is she?” Billy asked.
“I don’t know where she is,” Misty replied.
“You have the nerve to fucking lie to me, after what I just told you? You and Pepper live together, eat together, and probably take showers together. Don’t you dare tell me you haven’t heard from her, because I know you have. Now, where is she?”
Misty dropped her hands in her lap and started to reply, but no words came out. Her allegiance was to Pepper and always would be. Her chair made a harsh scraping sound as she stood up. Standing at the balcony, she pointed due north.
“Pepper’s over there, on the rides.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No, I’m not.”
In the distance was the Stratosphere, a casino hotel known for its terrifying rooftop rides. Billy envisioned Pepper and Tommy Wang riding the roller coaster as it whipped around the needle-shaped building, their screams piercing the air like a pair of high school kids on a date.
“Is she in love with him?” Billy asked.
“What do you think?”
“I think she is.”
“You just might be right.”
Misty returned to her chair, leaving Billy to wonder if they’d ever hear from Pepper again. Love did strange things to people. He’d found that out the hard way with Maggie Flynn. All he could hope was that Pepper didn’t have as hard a landing as he’d had.
Thirty-Seven
The date had almost not happened. Tommy Wang offered to buy Pepper a drink in one of Carnivale’s fancy, high-priced cocktail lounges, and Pepper nearly turned him down. Tommy was the mark, and it wasn’t smart to get too close to people you conned.
But Pepper hadn’t done that. Instead, she’d accepted, and off they’d gone. She liked Tommy; he was gentle and caring, attributes rarely found in men who gambled large sums of money in casinos. Billy had said that Tommy had nearly died at a gangster’s hands, and Pepper had a feeling there was more to the story. Lurking behind Tommy’s soulful eyes was a secret, and Pepper was determined to unlock that secret and make him share it with her.
As they took the elevator down to the hotel’s first floor, Tommy pointed through the elevator’s tinted glass walls at the needle-shaped spire of the Stratosphere casino.
“Have you ever ridden on the roller coaster on the top of that building?” he asked. “I hear the screams from my balcony. It sounds wonderful.”
The Stratosphere’s rooftop roller coaster had a unique construction, its chairs attached to a giant teeter-totter. After taking a trip around the building at breakneck speed, the coaster unexpectedly pitched over the hotel’s edge and dangled nine hundred terrifying feet above the ground. These were the screams that Tommy heard from his balcony at the Carnivale.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never ridden a roller coaster,” Pepper said.
“When I was a little boy, my family visited the Shijingshan Amusement Park in Beijing, but I was not tall enough to get on the roller coaster,” he explained. “I had to stay behind while my brothers and sisters rode on it. It was a very sad day.”
“We need to fix that.”
“Will you go on the roller coaster with me?”
A hint of fear had crept into his voice. Maybe the story wasn’t entirely true; maybe Tommy had been too afraid to get on the ride with his siblings.
“You bet I will,” Pepper said.
The roller coaster docked and Pepper pulled Tommy off. His legs had turned to jelly and silent tears ran down his cheeks. Grown men did not weep uncontrollably on amusement rides, and Pepper realized there was something seriously wrong with her date.
Most men were broken; what you saw on the outside was a well-constructed facade meant to impress the opposite sex. Pepper decided she could deal with it. Tommy was her ticket to the big time, and she was more than happy to prop him up until they took down Carnivale.
She took him to the Air Bar on the 108th floor of the Stratosphere. The place was empty and she grabbed a corner table with a panoramic view of the Strip. Tommy sat slumped in his chair with his chin resting on his chest. Pepper dabbed away the wet spot on his mouth with a napkin.
“Is your friend okay?” the waitress asked.
“The ride freaked him out. Better bring us two shots of whiskey,” Pepper said.
“He’s not the first one. I’ll bring you water, too.”
The waitress’s heels clacked across the checkered tile floor. Pepper pulled herself close and gave Tommy’s cheek a gentle slap. “You still with me, cowboy?”
His eyelids fluttered. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself. How do you feel?”
“I will be all right. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”
“Don’t worry about it. If you don’t mind my asking, what were you were bawling about?”
“What is bawling?”
“Crying, as in real loud.”
“I had a flashback and saw my dead parents.”
This was getting heavy. The waitress returned with their drinks. Pepper placed a shot glass against Tommy’s lips and poured.
“That burns,” he said.
“It’s supposed to. Here, drink some water.”
He sipped from the glass. “Much better.”
“You want this other shot?”
Tommy declined. Pepper slammed back the second shot. Nothing set the world straighter than whiskey. “If you don’t mind my asking, what made you have a flashback?”
“I thought I was going to die.”
“Come on, it was just a flipping ride.”
“I had a bad experience not long ago and have not been the same since.”
Pepper didn’t like the sound of this. What if Tommy experienced another flashback when they were ripping off Carnivale and started crying his head off?
“Want to talk about it? I’m the world’s best listener,” she said.
“I would prefer not.”
Tommy was holding back. Had they been at the sky palace, she would have thrown him on a couch and screwed him. Porn had taught her how to make a man open up, the layers as easy to peel as an onion. Because they were in a bar, she did the next best thing and stroked his thigh. “I like you. You’re one of the coolest guys I’ve ever met. Come on. Tell me.”
Aroused, he sat up straight in his chair. “I need more whiskey,” he said.
Pepper snapped her fingers and their waitress hit the table.
“Give us another round,” Pepper said.
“My country is different than yours,” Tommy said after he’d had another drink. “We believe that life is a wheel that never stops turning. A person can step on, or step off, at any time. No matter what the person does, the wheel keeps turning. Does that make sense?”