That was all it took. The man nodded and actually took a step back.
At last Jesús said, “From what I understand, you have a plane to catch? Another meeting this afternoon?”
“At five. With Agcaoili.”
“I hope it is productive.”
“I’m confident it will be. And now, before I leave, just one question, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.”
Derek watched him carefully. “Are you the one behind all this? Orchestrating the project?”
“Hmm…” Jesús reflected. “And here I was about to ask you the same question.”
For a moment they each studied the other man’s eyes to discern if he was telling the truth.
Derek, for his part, was convinced that Jesús wasn’t hiding anything.
“So we have a common friend then,” Jesús said.
“If friend is the right word.”
“If, indeed.”
Then Derek and the driver headed back to the airport so he could return to Las Vegas.
When they were gone, Jesús Garcia made a phone call to have some cartel members come to clean up the warehouse and dispose of the bodies of the four men who had, apparently, not been as good as their salaries would have led someone to believe.
Then he made one more call to see if his contact at the Las Vegas Police Department had found out for him what he wanted to know.
The Arête
The Arête is something to behold.
Over the last couple decades, location-themed casinos have become popular in Vegas. On the Strip you’ll find the Paris, the Venetian, and New York, New York. Off the Strip you have the Rio, the Gold Coast, and the Orleans.
But just as with any trend, when guests become too used to one thing they start to look for something that’s new and different.
However, right about the time when Vegas was rethinking the location-based idea back in 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed. The economy imploded, no one had money to come to Vegas, and real-estate values plummeted.
So, when billionaire Clive Fridell announced he was going to build an entertainment complex here two months after the stock market crashed, everyone thought he was crazy. However, he had cash in hand, plus properties in Singapore, Dubai, and his island resorts in the Caribbean that he could’ve sold if he needed to in order to get the capital necessary to build a multibillion-dollar resort casino.
Still, they told him he was crazy.
Still, he built.
And in the end, he had the last word, because if there was ever a time to buy property in Las Vegas, it was during the recession. Real estate was at decades-low prices, labor was cheap. It was almost as if Fridell had just won the jackpot at one of his own casinos.
Five years after construction began, the Arête opened.
The mirrored sides of the building might make you think of the Wynn or the Encore, but the sloping, asymmetrical mountain — inspired design for the top thirty stories puts it in a class by itself.
With the world’s tallest indoor rock climbing wall on one end and one of the hottest, hippest nightclubs in North America on the other, it was clear that Mr. Fridell held nothing back when he delivered on his promise to bring Vegas a resort casino like nothing it had ever seen before.
I leave my car with the valet, and then Fionna’s four children and I enter the Arête’s lobby.
The kids have never been here before, and when they see the fountains and the enclosed courtyard next to the casino entrance with the indoor “mountain” and rock climbing wall that rises twenty stories, their jaws drop.
Donnie unplugs his earbuds. “This place is sick.”
“I’ll get you some passes,” I tell them. “So you can climb it this afternoon while we’re in rehearsal.”
“Sweet.”
“All the vegetation on the mountain is real, unlike at some of the resorts here on the Strip. And they don’t pipe in the bird sounds. Those are actual real birds on the cliffs up there.”
“An aviary,” Maddie says knowingly.
“That’s right.”
People younger than twenty-one aren’t allowed to linger in the gaming areas or go near the machines, so we take the long, circuitous route around the casino toward Jenny’s Grille.
On our way, we pass the escalators leading down to the backstage area and dressing rooms for the theater where I’ll be performing tonight.
The newer casinos aren’t even typically called casinos, but rather resorts or entertainment complexes, and, truthfully, that’s a better description of what they are.
Revenue from gaming has dropped to about 35 percent of most hotels’ income — in contrast to the 95 percent it was a few decades ago. Television and the Internet have greatly affected the design of the newer casinos here in Vegas.
Now we have restaurants opening up with celebrity chefs, high-end shops selling designer sunglasses and purses, as well as jewelry that might easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Shows now make up a major portion of the profit, when, in Vegas’s early years, they used to be free.
Boxing is hot again, so is mixed martial arts and UFC fighting, which help boost gaming income.
Because of reality TV, spas and salons are popular and poker is making a huge comeback. But there are no reality shows about slot machines, and those are, at least to some degree, going by the wayside in modern Vegas.
To address the changing trends, the Arête has fewer slot machines per potential occupant than any other Las Vegas casino. The target demographic, young affluent Asians, don’t play the slots nearly as much as middle-aged and older Americans. Instead, they prefer the gaming tables and video poker machines.
If you look around the Strip you’ll see that the demographic is no longer rural cowboys like you find downtown at the casinos on Fremont, which is the more iconic 1950s Vegas with the casinos Frank Sinatra used to call carpet joints.
Now, it’s the goal of luring in money from China that shapes the mood and feel of the Strip.
Fionna and Xavier are waiting for us by the overcrowded entrance to Jenny’s Grille.
“I put my name in,” Xavier tells us, “but there’s a twenty-minute wait.”
“Well…” I evaluate that. “We may need to order the food to go or get it delivered to the dressing rooms. Let’s see how long it takes. Stay here, see if you can get a table and maybe order some appetizers. In the meantime, Fionna, I’m wondering if you can help me with something for a few minutes?”
“Sure.”
Xavier and the children take a seat with the other people waiting for tables, and he starts telling them knock-knock jokes.
Fionna looks at me curiously. “What’s up?”
“C’mon.” I turn toward the marble hallway to the stores. “Let’s go shopping.”
The Black Card
“I need to get something for Charlene,” I explain. “For Valentine’s Day. Something stunning and memorable, something that really shows her how much she means to me.”
“Jevin, she’s going to be here any minute.” We’re walking side by side down the corridor lined with elite, designer stores. “I’m not sure we really have time to shop.”
“What? We go into a store, choose something, buy it. In and out just like that. How long can it take?”
“Obviously you are not a woman.” She sighs lightly. “Alright, let’s go. I suppose if we hurry we might just make it back by the skin of our pants.”
Now that’s one I haven’t heard before.
I pause and look at the line of shops ahead of us. “Did you find out anything from the drive yet?”