“What’s wrong with your shoulders?”
“Popped them out of their sockets freeing my arms,” Gerry said.
“They hurt?”
“Like a son-of-a-bitch.”
Valentine heard the sound of approaching sirens. Earl walked around the car wash, and Valentine heard him calling to the driver of the police car that had just pulled into the gas station. He saw his son grimace, and realized it had nothing to do with how he was feeling. It was time for Gerry to tell the police everything that had happened.
His son motioned to him, and Valentine knelt down in the dirt.
“Closer,” his son said.
Valentine realized Gerry didn’t want the other men hearing what he was about to say. He lowered his head, and brought his ear next to Gerry’s lips.
“I know this is going to sound stupid,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“I really liked Pash. I’m sorry you had to kill him.”
Valentine felt himself shudder. He saw a blue uniform come around the car wash, heading straight toward them. In a whisper he said, “You’d better not tell the police that.”
50
Except for Amin and Pash, no one had died in the blast.
The bomb had ripped a hole in the earth worthy of a falling meteor, the explosion strong enough to be felt as far away as Los Angeles, and now the newspapers and TV stations and Internet news services were calling it a miracle.
Several thousand windows were shattered — including those in casinos over five miles away — and a hundred houses within the blast’s immediate radius were damaged, their gas and water lines rupturing, forcing the immediate evacuation of their occupants. The cost was estimated at twenty million dollars, not including the loss of revenue the casinos experienced from being temporarily shut down.
Even the two Pakistani waiters whom Amin had tricked into driving to Los Angeles were spared. They had pulled off at a truck strop on I-15, and were inside the building relieving themselves when the Apache helicopters swooped down and riddled their rental car with over a thousand rounds of ammunition.
An elderly lady named Alice Sweet was found dead in her house several miles away from the blast, but the Clark County coroner quickly determined that she’d passed away peacefully in her sleep the night before, and had died from natural causes.
But many could have died. The media brought in their experts and showed what the bomb would have done had Amin made it into the city, and detonated seventy-five pounds of TATP in a closed space. Besides killing thousands of pedestrians, the explosion would have taken down a block’s worth of buildings. The estimated loss of life was put at over fifty thousand people.
It was the theme of Mayor Oscar Goodman’s speech during a news conference that afternoon. Standing before a room packed with reporters, he had called Las Vegas the luckiest city on earth, and praised the military, police and firemen who’d responded to the emergency so quickly. Then, he’d taken off his glasses, and thanked a retired cop named Tony Valentine.
“I’ve been told that this man has single-handedly saved the city’s casinos millions of dollars over the years from cheaters and thieves,” the mayor said. “And now, he’s saved the city itself. How do we thank him? I don’t honestly know. Maybe we should all go out and place a bet in his name.”
Valentine had listened to the mayor’s speech in Gerry’s hospital room at University Medical Center, and had wanted to throw something at the television. Placing a bet in his name was the last thing he wanted people to do. Gerry, who had just woken up, stared at the TV and started laughing.
“Maybe they’ll name a street after you,” he said. “Or a slot machine.”
“Very funny,” Valentine replied.
A pair of stern-faced uniformed cops stood outside the door. Once Gerry was feeling better, they were going to formally arrest him. He was tied to everything Amin had done in the past week, and was facing multiple criminal charges that could put him in prison for the next thirty years of his life.
In desperation, Valentine had called everyone he knew in Las Vegas. So far, only one person had offered to help him.
“You talk to Mabel?” Gerry asked expectantly.
“Ten minutes ago,” he said.
“Any news?”
“Yolanda’s still in labor. It’s going to be a girl.”
“How does she know?”
“Yolanda had a dream with red apples in it.”
They sat in silence for a while and stared out the window at the beautiful afternoon. It was not hard to imagine what might have been, and more than once, Valentine saw his son wipe a tear away from his eye.
“I always wanted a girl,” he said quietly.
51
Nick did not believe in wasting time. He had his lost treasure appraised that afternoon, showed the appraisal to his bank, and was granted a line of credit that allowed him to open the Acropolis that night. Then he called Chance Newman and demanded a meeting with him, Shelly Michael, and Rags Richardson for the next day.
“Your office, ten sharp,” Nick said. “No lawyers.”
“Why should I meet with you?” Chance replied.
“I’ve got something that belongs to you,” Nick said.
Nick appeared in Chance’s office the next morning with Wanda draped on his arm. He wore basic hoodlum attire: black slacks and shirt, silver necktie, and a black sports jacket with silver buttons. Wanda wore a Nancy Sinatra — vintage pink jumpsuit. As she was introduced, Chance, Shelly, and Rags rose from their chairs. Each wore a pin-striped suit and carried a sullen expression on his face.
“My pleasure,” she purred.
The men returned to their chairs. Nick reached into his pocket and removed the Deadlock cheating device Valentine had given him over breakfast that morning. It hit Chance’s desk with a loud thud.
“Being our casinos are next door to each other, it’s not surprising that I sometimes get deliveries for you,” Nick said. “I got that little baby in a package from Japan. I believe it’s called Deadlock.”
The three casino executives looked stricken. Each had gone through a rigorous examination when applying for his casino license. No criminal activity of any kind was allowed. Owning a sophisticated cheating device could get their licenses taken away.
“Now, I suppose you could argue that you purchased Deadlock in order to educate your surveillance techs,” Nick went on. “Only there’s this little problem called Frank Fontaine. The FBI picked him up this morning and threw him back in jail. If I tell the FBI about Deadlock, and they ask Fontaine what he knows, well, you boys could be royally screwed.”
“Nick!” Wanda said disapprovingly.
“Sorry, baby.”
“I should hope so,” she said.
Nick smiled at his bride. He’d promised Wanda to stop swearing. Wanda believed the baby could hear him, and would develop bad habits.
Shelly Michael cleared his throat. “Let me guess. You want to make a deal.”
Nick’s smile grew. “Let’s call it a business arrangement.”
Rags shook his head. To his partners, he said, “I’d rather take my chances in court than get fucked by this clown.”
Nick wanted to belt him. Hadn’t Rags seen how sensitive Wanda was to vulgarity? He decided to hit him where it hurt, and said, “What’s the name of your company? BE BOP SHABAM Records?”
“That’s right,” Rags said.
“Or is it BE BOP SCAM Records?”
Rags glared menacingly at him. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” Nick said, puffing out his chest. “You got this great thing going, don’t you? You take these ghetto rappers, release their CDs to other ghetto kids, and they go gold in two weeks. You go to the chains, show them the sales figures, and they order a million copies for their stores. That’s the game, isn’t it?”