Pepper and Tommy Wang had slept in, had sex, then ordered breakfast. A uniformed butler wheeled the meal into their bedroom and popped a bottle of bubbly. They ate the meal in bed and giggled each time a crumb fell between the sheets.
When the meal was over, Wang slipped out of bed. As the bathroom door clicked shut, Pepper took his cell phone off the night table and scrolled through the apps. She found the photo gallery and felt the breath catch in her throat. She’d wanted to believe that Billy had gotten it wrong, but Billy rarely got things wrong. Wang’s wife and two children were on prominent display with dozens of photos of family outings. The wife was petite and pretty and the kids were absolutely darling. It was all Pepper could do not to scream.
Pepper slipped out of the covers and fixed herself a mimosa. Wang came out of the bathroom and saw her standing naked by the bed and got the wrong idea. The glass barely missed his head.
“You dirty bastard!” she said.
A saltshaker was next, followed by a half-filled coffee cup. Wang’s reflexes were good, and he expertly dodged the projectiles.
“What did I do?” he begged.
“You lied to me.”
“I would never lie to you.”
The best shots were the least expected. She pretended to calm down and Wang lowered his guard. The sugar bowl flew out of her hand and bonked him cleanly on the forehead. A smart man knows when he’s beaten, and Wang wisely grabbed a bathrobe and retreated to the other room. Pepper wrapped herself in a bedsheet and followed, holding the evidence in her hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were married and had a couple of rug rats?” she said.
Wang sat on a chair in the living room, nursing his forehead. “What are rug rats?”
“Kids. And a wife. They’re all over your cell phone.”
“I am divorced,” he said without flinching.
“Like I haven’t heard that one before,” she said.
His face took on a forlorn expression. “My wife served me with papers after I became associated with Broken Tooth. She told me I had shamed my family, and the only honorable thing to do was sign them. So I did.”
Pepper knew bullshit when she heard it, and she also knew the truth. She knelt on the floor next to the chair, still wrapped in the bedsheet. “Look at me,” she said.
Her lover shifted his eyes. “Yes?”
“Did you love her?”
“Very much.”
“So why did you sign the divorce papers?”
“Because she no longer loved me, and I wished to protect my children.”
“But you weren’t killed by Broken Tooth’s men. You lived.”
“Yes, I lived.”
“So did you contact your wife and try to patch things up?”
“I spoke to her once over the phone. My wife said that my being spared did not erase the shame I had brought upon my family.” Wang gazed fondly at the smiling photos stored on his cell phone. “All I have left are these.”
Pepper thought she just might cry. She took Wang’s head in her hands and kissed him on the mouth the way a good man was meant to be kissed. His face was filled with hurt, and she found herself wishing she could take back the last fifteen minutes and flush them down the toilet.
“Want to go another round with the champ?” she asked playfully.
His eyes lit up. “That would be wonderful. But first I have a question.”
“What’s that?”
“Is your boss a criminal? He strikes me that way when we are together.”
Pepper let out a strained laugh. Wang’s sky palace was also bugged, and hotel security had just heard Wang cast a shadow over Billy’s reputation.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” she asked.
“He never seems to relax. Is someone after him?”
This was getting hairy. Back in Lake Tahoe they’d rehearsed for this very scenario, Billy being of the belief that there would always be problems on jobs, and the only way to handle them was to prepare a story ahead of time and commit that story to memory.
“Billy’s a hedge-fund manager. He gets insider information on companies, and then he buys their stock, waits for it to go up, and dumps it. They say that behind every fortune is a crime. Well, Billy’s committed a hundred crimes, and they’re all perfectly legal.”
“I see. We have many men like him in my country as well.”
“I bet you do. Ready when you are.”
Smiling happily, Wang escorted her back to the bedroom.
Forty-Five
Jimmy Slyde knew his place on the food chain. It was down at the bottom, one notch above the pimps and streetwalkers. This was partly due to the shade of Slyde’s skin, but more because he was a street person, with no formal education except the school of hard knocks.
This lack of pedigree didn’t mean that Slyde couldn’t drive a European sports car or have a closet of designer suits. Slyde could own all the toys he wanted, and no one in Las Vegas would have cared. What Slyde couldn’t do was think he was anything more than a common thief.
Thieves took orders, and Slyde had been ordered by the concierges of four major Vegas casinos to get rid of Maggie Flynn. The orders could have come from anyone of power — GMs, pit bosses, floor managers — and Slyde would have obeyed them. If Slyde didn’t, his days in Sin City would be over, and he’d be forced to leave town. That was how things worked in the desert. If you didn’t play the game, you were done.
Mags lived in the Stone Ridge development on the southeast side of town. Slyde pulled into her narrow driveway and lowered his window to listen for any signs of life. Most of her neighbors had day jobs and did not come home until the sun went down.
Slyde took the takeout from Kapit Bahay off the passenger seat and got out. Mags had a thing for Filipino fast food, and he’d brought a disposable Styrofoam plate filled with chicken adobo and lumpia plus two unsweetened iced teas.
He went to the front door and knocked. “Daddy’s here. Open up.”
The door swung in. The pills had worn off and Mags looked like hell.
“You shouldn’t have,” she said.
“Nothing but the best for my girl.”
“You better not have forgotten the special sauce.”
“Got that, too.”
Mags chained the door behind him. Her condo was furnished with dumpy furniture knock-offs. It was a familiar refrain. Years of scamming and nothing to show for it. Slyde handed her the bag, and Mags went into the kitchen to put the food on real plates.
“Make yourself at home,” she said.
Slyde took a seat at the head of the dining room table. In the table’s center was a stack of playing cards still in their boxes and wrapped in plastic. They were not ordinary playing cards but had come from a number of well-known casinos. There were decks from Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, Circus Circus, the Venetian, Aria, and Monte Carlo.
Slyde examined the bar codes on the boxes and determined the cards were real. The casinos went through extraordinary procedures to safeguard their cards that included special markings on the boxes and storing them in warehouses where the security was as tight as Fort Knox. But that hadn’t stopped the town’s cheats from getting their hands on a deck, marking it, and finding a clever way to ring those marked cards into a game at the casino where the cards came from.
If it wasn’t bolted down, the cheats would take it out of a casino, rig it, and bring it back. This included dealing shoes, roulette wheels, and even slot and video poker machines. An employee or two was usually involved and were bribed to look the other way.
Mags served Slyde a plate of food. She sat down next to him and started to eat.
“Dolan isn’t doing so hot. There’s a fifty-fifty chance he’ll never walk again.”