“I’m moving through it one file at a time. Slow but sure. So what are you thinking? Clothes? Jewelry? A car? Right here in this mall alone you have Gucci, Tiffany, Breitling, Louis Vuitton, Prada…”
“I’m pretty open.”
“Well, we need to start somewhere, Jev.”
I recall that Charlene left her cross necklace on Emilio’s body in the Philippines. “A necklace. I think I want to get her a really nice necklace.”
“Always a good choice. Where’s the nearest jewelry store?”
“Just up ahead.”
I’ve never been in this store before, but when we enter I find that the place looks just like I might picture a high-end jewelry store in New York City, London, or Paris looking.
A tall, angular man stands behind one of the glass counters. He appraises us as we enter, no doubt taking note of my jeans and tattered T-shirt, then he glances at his watch as if this has already been a waste of his time. Obviously, he doesn’t recognize me from the billboards.
“May I help you?” he says. It sounds more like an accusation than a question.
“I’m looking for a necklace,” I tell him. “Something really nice for a very special woman.”
“I see.” He looks at Fionna and nods stiffly.
“Oh, no. It’s not her. She’s here to help me choose the piece for my girlfriend.”
“Well,” he replies vaguely. “And do you have a price range in mind?” Once again he looks askance at my clothes.
“What kind of prices do you start at?”
“We have a few pieces for under twelve, but if you’re looking for something more along those lines, there’s a place across the street where—”
“What kind of prices do you end at?” Fionna asks.
“A quarter.”
“Of a million?”
“Yes. Of a million.”
“Let’s start there,” I suggest. “See if anything catches my fancy.”
He doesn’t reply right away. “Yes, well…” At last he turns to the glass case to his left, but doesn’t remove the jewelry as he tells us about it. “Here we have a graduated necklace in platinum with 204 round brilliant and marquise diamonds. Twenty-five-point-eight carats. I have some smaller carat weights and different-length necklaces—”
Fionna shakes her head. “It’s not Charlene. Too pretentious.”
“Agreed.”
He spends the next five minutes going through the pieces in front of him, but nothing seems right for Charlene, and at last, when I tell him we’re just not interested in those necklaces, he doesn’t look at all surprised.
My phone vibrates, and I see a text from Charlene that she has just parked and is on her way to the restaurant.
I thank the proprietor for his time. He grumbles a snippy reply, so I open my wallet and hand him one of my cards. “Call me if you get anything a little more expensive but not so showy in stock.” Before I close my wallet I make sure he sees my black American Express Centurion Card. It’s a card issued only by invitation. When I got mine, the holder needed to have at least twenty million dollars of assets. There’s no limit to the card. I could buy this jewelry store and all that it contains with it.
His eyes widen and he gulps slightly. “Sir, I—”
I wink at him. “Right.” I gesture toward the door. “Okay, Fionna. Let’s go have lunch.”
When we arrive at the restaurant again, we find that the wait time is still at fifteen minutes, which isn’t going to work out for us at all. Headliners never need to wait in lines in Vegas, but I don’t like skipping in front of people or drawing that kind of attention to myself.
As it is, there’s no way we’ll get seated and served and be able to finish our meal before we need to be downstairs at one o’clock.
Fionna suggests that she stay up here while Xavier, Charlene, and I go to get ready for rehearsal. “We’ll bring you something down,” she offers. “Special delivery.”
“But Mom,” Maddie objects, “I didn’t get a chance to tell everyone about the immortal jellyfish.”
“Hmm…” Fionna is considering things when the pager goes off, indicating that our table is ready. “Well, that’s a surprise. Okay, well, you three should probably head downstairs.” Her gaze shifts back to Maddie. “How about we get seated, then Lonnie, Donnie, and Mandie can order while we go down to Mr. Banks’s dressing room and you can fill us in.”
Maddie nods. “Perfect,” she says punctiliously.
Before they can leave, Mandie tugs on her mom’s slacks. “Mommy, what’s a gentleman’s club?”
“Who told you about gentleman’s clubs?”
“I saw a sign. On the way here.” Her reading ability is another testimony to her mother’s teaching ability.
They start to follow their server to the table. “Well, for starters it’s a place where no true gentleman would ever go.”
“Oh. Then why’s it called that?”
But by then they’re out of earshot, and even though I’m curious as to Fionna’s detailed answer to her kindergartner, it’s time for Xavier, Charlene, and me to take off for the escalator to the dressing rooms.
The receptionist at the Arête’s front desk let Calista check in early, and the courtesan went up to the honeymoon suite on the top floor to make sure everything was ready for tonight.
It was soundproof.
She and Derek had checked that out earlier.
It would be important for what was going to happen in the room tomorrow.
Getting past the gaming area is like picking your way through a labyrinth.
There’s no direct route to the theater entrance, and that’s all part of the plan. Casinos are designed to keep you inside, not to give you a direct path to the exit door, because if you’re outside walking the Strip you’re not gambling, and if you’re not gambling, the casino isn’t making money.
Truthfully, Lady Luck has nothing to do with your winnings; Señor Computer does. He’s the one who decides how much you’re going to win at the slots. The best odds are always when you’re playing the tables, and that’s where the next generation wants to gamble. There’s a saying around here that there are two types of people who leave Vegas — losers and liars. Not too many people figure out how to exit our city without becoming one or the other.
And almost always those are the ones who play blackjack.
On the way to the theater, Charlene fills Xavier and me in about her meeting with the FBI agent. “To put it bluntly, he wasn’t very interested at all in what I had to say. I gave him the USB drive, but I’m not very hopeful.”
She pauses, and I recall that Fionna was working with the copy she’d made, that Charlene had taken the original drive with her. “However, now with the break-in at Emilio’s place, maybe the guy will change his tune.”
“Unless,” Xavier replies, “there are jurisdictional issues with the police department. You know how, in crime novels and TV shows, there’s always an interagency rivalry between the Feds and local law enforcement. That could really slow us down here.”
“Hopefully, life won’t imitate art.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
She produces a business card from the federal agent she’d met with. “I’ll follow up with him when we get downstairs.”
We pass the sports betting area and find the escalator that leads down to the lower level where the green rooms are. Charlene tells me, “As far as the research on the cobras, you’re not going to believe this, but there’s a secondary venom in the Sri Lankan subspecies of cobra.”
“A secondary venom?”
“It took a bit of searching — I actually had Donnie help me. As soon as I told him it was about snake venom, he was all about doing some extra credit work for his mom. Anyway, turns out there’s hardly anything on the Internet, just one thing I came across. It’s still undocumented, but I found one researcher’s blog. He’s a herpetologist and was bitten by a Sri Lankan cobra that had its venom glands removed. He describes a reaction similar to the one you had. The secondary venom is actually in the snake’s saliva.”