“What about Jenny?”
Before answering, Hughes glanced over at the entrance of the restaurant where Jenny had disappeared. “Unless you have something you need her for, I think it would be best if we dealt her out of the next hand.”
Though Tommy did have something he wanted to go over with Susan G.’s assistant, it had nothing at all to do with what Hughes was talking about. “Let her have some fun,” he finally muttered. “She earned it.”
“Will she be all right on her own?” Hughes asked, betraying his concern for the girl’s safety.
Unable to help himself, Tommy guffawed. “If you ask me, it’s the people she runs into tonight you need to be concerned about.”
The two men parted with a laugh at the shared thought of the Oklahoma girl raising mayhem. While Hughes settled up the bill before heading up to the casino’s surveillance center to check on things, Tommy made his way out into the night as he, like Jenny, set off to see just what kind of mischief he could get into.
After leaving a message for Jenny the next morning, informing her she was free to do whatever struck her fancy for the day provided she stayed in touch just in case they needed her again, Tommy and Hughes headed out to brief Sean Woodard on what they’d found and find out what he wished to do.
Escorted once more onto the shaded patio by another comely young woman in a white shirtdress, Tommy explained what Jenny had found while enjoying what amounted to his second breakfast of the morning. In doing so, he used terms that were decidedly more technical than the girl from Oklahoma had in order to make what they’d accomplished come across as far more complex than it had been. Hughes, who’d served with Tommy, understood what he was doing. “The last thing you want is for an officer to think he can do something on his own” was a favorite witticism of his he had frequently shared with his fellow NCOs. “It makes them think they don’t need you, leading them to do things they shouldn’t be doing and creating messes that are twice as difficult to sort out than if you’d tackled them on your own in the first place.” So as he had often done while with the colors, Tommy used this opportunity to reinforce the idea his services were indispensable to Sean Woodard.
For his part, Woodard did his best to nod his head from time to time to show he was following what Tommy was saying and ask what he hoped were intelligent questions. Having no desire to spoil his friend’s fun and wishing to drive home the point he really had had the need to call in an outside expert, Hughes said very little. It wasn’t until Tommy had finished that Woodard turned to his surveillance head and asked him what could be done to stop the illicit use of the online poker site.
Having already gone over this in his own mind, Hughes didn’t hesitate to suggest they go to the FBI with what they had and allow them to handle it. “If we were to shut down the site, the criminals would only move on to another gaming site. While it would solve our short-term problems, I expect in time they’d be caught.”
“So?” Woodard muttered dismissively.
“So,” Tommy chipped in, “whoever looked into the matter, whether it be your FBI or ATF or whatever, would, in time, track the miscreants back to you. That would lead them to ask why you hadn’t reported their activities to them right off, causing the investigators to suspect you were in on it.”
Having no wish to open up his business affairs to the close scrutiny of an agency like the FBI, Woodard didn’t need either man to say another word. Instead, he turned his attention back to Hughes, who quickly laid out a course of action he thought would be the fastest way of ridding themselves of the whole mess. “Tommy has suggested that he and his team put together a package that lays out the mechanics of the scheme, providing just enough details of how it works to allow whoever it is that conducts the investigation to delve into the matter without our needing to do any more or to lead them — that is, their techies — back to us. It’ll not only keep them out of our hair but also give them an opportunity to show their bosses just how bloody smart and indispensable they are.”
“I like that,” Woodard muttered as he slowly nodded his head before turning his attention back toward Tommy. “How long will it take for you to pull everything together and hand it off to Jack?”
Easing back in his chair, Tommy made a great show of knitting the pudgy little fingers of his hands together and resting them on his paunch as he took to gazing up as if going over complex calculations in his head. “Oh, two, maybe three days. No more than four,” he added, glancing back down at Woodard.
Cutting his eyes over to Hughes, Woodard regarded him quizzically.
Though he suspected Tommy and the energetic young woman from Oklahoma wouldn’t need more than half a day since they already had most of it pulled together, Hughes nodded.
Satisfied the pair of Welshmen had a firm handle on the issue as well as a solution he could live with, Woodard turned his attention back to Tommy. “In that case, I’ll not keep you gentlemen any longer.”
Appreciating they’d been dismissed, Tommy rose to his feet and took Woodard’s proffered hand. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”
“Likewise,” Woodard responded offhandedly as he turned his attention to a fetching young brunette in a white shirtdress who’d come up behind him bearing a stack of documents.
Only after they were in the car and well away from Woodard’s walled estate did Hughes glance over at Tommy out of the corner of his eye. “It’s not going to take you three days to finish up, is it?”
“Do you really want to know?” Tommy asked as he eyed his friend.
Snickering, Hughes shook his head. “No.”
“Good! Now, where are we going to have lunch?”
“You just had breakfast! Two of ’em.”
“So?”
Knowing better than pointing out the obvious and just as eager to spend as much time with an old army buddy swapping war stories, Hughes sighed. “What’ll it be? Chinese, Italian, or Thai?”
“Why not all three?”
5
Hughes waited until the morning of the third day after their final meeting with Woodard to set up a meeting with the FBI. At Tommy’s request, Hughes went alone with instructions to make no mention of the role either Tommy or Jenny had played in the affair.
“You appreciate I’ve been doing this on the QT,” Tommy explained. “The last thing I need is for some kid in the FBI contacting my boss and asking all sorts of questions he can’t answer.”
“You do appreciate the check you’re going to be paid with is going to be made out to Century Consulting and not you personally,” Hughes pointed out as he was getting ready to head out to the federal building on West Lake Mead Boulevard.
“I know. I might be a crafty little git, but I’m not stupid.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Hughes muttered. “You’re forgetting the time I left you in charge of the Scimitar in Sennelager and came back to find you’d managed to mire it in muck that was up over the road wheels.”
“Can’t blame that one on me, mate. That lieutenant of ours was the one who told me we had to move it.”
“Did he tell you to drive it into a mud puddle?”
“No.”
Hughes grinned. “I rest my case. Now, while you head off and get into trouble, I’ve things I need to take care of.” With that, Hughes left Tommy free to track down Jenny and see what information he could pry out of her concerning Susan G.
As before, this proved to be an exercise in futility. Catching up to her at the same roulette table he’d left her off at the night before, he peppered her with a series of less-than-subtle questions as she watched the play of the wheel, betting before each spin but betting small. Only when he realized what she was up to did he set aside his interest in the redhead she worked for and followed her lead, betting on the same spots she did.