Serena looked up, surprised. “I didn’t know Boni had a daughter.”
Humphrey nodded. “Claire Belfort. She took her mother’s name. Claire and Boni had a big falling-out years ago. She’s a folk singer at one of the joints on the Boulder Strip.”
“Why would she help us?” Stride asked.
Humphrey shrugged. “She might not. Probably won’t. But if anyone can get you to Boni with a single phone call, it’s Claire.”
EIGHTEEN
He parked the Lexus on the lake road in front of an estate where the windows were dark. Whoever owned the mansion was away in the city for the evening, or maybe cruising through the calm waters of the Greek islands. That was what the people in Lake Las Vegas did. They could afford to go anywhere and do anything.
It didn’t really matter if someone was inside. If they looked out and saw a Lexus parked in front of their house, it wouldn’t arouse any suspicion. Just one of the neighbors taking a nighttime stroll by the water. After all, strangers couldn’t come here. You couldn’t get in without passing through the security gate on the south shore.
The old woman had played her part well. Smiling at the guard, laughing as if nothing was wrong, as if no one was behind her in the backseat, with a gun. Rolling up the window and driving through the gate, as she did most days. The only telltale sign, which he could see from behind her, was the frantic quivering of her fingers on the steering wheel. Not from Parkinson’s, as anyone might expect from an old woman. This was terror.
He had spent the late afternoon with her in her house, watching her fear grow, watching the sun set. She was tied to a chair and gagged, eyes wide, following his movements as he went back and forth to the window. When it was night, he was finally ready. He knew she was waiting for him to kill her, and he wondered if her heart finally stopped racing when he simply left the house, took her car, and drove away.
He didn’t drive far. Just a few blocks down to the lake, where the largest of the estates hugged the water. He had a commanding view from here of the big house dominating the street.
Waiting.
He wanted a cigarette but didn’t dare open the smoked windows of the car. Better to let it look deserted, if anyone drove by. He sat, almost motionless, watching the large estate, observing the lights that went on and off from room to room, seeing occasional silhouettes moving behind the curtains. He used a miniature pair of binoculars to see inside and confirm that both of them were still home. Just the two of them.
Every now and then, his eyes flicked across to the lake. The lights of the resorts twinkled like a fairyland. That was what they peddled here. Illusion,
He cleared his mind. He had done this many times, and he wasn’t nervous, but the mental lapse with the boy still worried him. He had allowed himself to get angry, to let his emotions spill over. It hadn’t been a problem with the others. He didn’t want it to be a problem again. Not tonight. Not with the rest in the days to come.
He saw motion in the rearview mirror of the car. Headlights. A long black limousine glided by the Lexus, continuing down the lakeside street and pulling into the driveway of the estate he was watching. The driver didn’t turn the engine off, or switch off the headlights, or toot his horn-it was simply the time for him to be there, and with celebrity assignments, you were always there at the right time.
The door of the estate opened.
He raised his binoculars and watched the big man leave the big house and proceed to the rear door of the big limousine. Everything about the man was larger than life. The driver had jumped out and was waiting there, tipping his hat, smiling.
The car door closed. The front door closed. He watched the limo back out of the driveway and reverse course along the lake road, passing the Lexus as it went.
He gave it another ten minutes, sitting in silence and darkness. The street remained deserted. Finally, he turned on the car, leaving the headlights off, and rolled the Lexus quietly down the remaining stretch of pavement until he was in front of the large estate. He put the car in park and set the brake but left the engine running. This wouldn’t take long. He was always surprised to hear about the mistakes that other professionals sometimes made, such as turning the car off and finding, when they got back from the scene, that the car wouldn’t start again. A little thing like that could mean twenty-five years to life.
He studied the mirrors one last time and got out of the car. The SIG-Sauer was almost invisible in his right hand.
As he walked up the driveway, he felt a glimmer of hesitation, which he tried to quell. Then he understood-he knew her. In almost every other case, he had faced a stranger, whose story he didn’t know, but he had been with her and liked her. She seemed lost, a victim, a little like himself. He came up to the oversized front door, rich with wood and brass, and thought how small she seemed in these giant surroundings.
It didn’t matter in the end. Everyone was a victim sooner or later. That was what the voice in his head said, the one that had always been there, guiding him.
Amira.
He rang the doorbell. A few seconds passed. He grew uncomfortable, bathed in the porch light. His gun was sheltered behind his right thigh.
She labored to open the door, and when she did, she smiled at him, recognizing him. There wasn’t any fear in her face.
“Oh, hi,” she said in her girlish voice. Pretty. Vulnerable. “Didn’t you get the message?”
Those were her last words. When she saw the gun, she only had an instant to become confused and then afraid, and then it was over. You couldn’t afford to hesitate when you had any doubts. Ten seconds later, he was back in the Lexus, with the windows open to disperse the acrid smell of smoke, driving back toward the hills that led into the city.
NINETEEN
Serena ordered a bottle of sparkling water and a champagne glass. She found a table for two near the stage and tipped the waiter twenty dollars to remove the other chair.
She hated being in a casino by herself, where she had to fend off drunken passes all night and watch drinks being poured that reminded her of what she couldn’t have. But Stride had suggested that Boni’s daughter, Claire, might respond better to her, one on one in the casual setting of the club, than to the two of them together.
The Boulder Strip casinos mostly attracted locals, people in the know, who assumed their odds here were better away from Las Vegas Boulevard (not likely) and that they could be higher rollers with more perks on a smaller stake out here (true). Serena knew that Cordy was a fixture at Sam’s Town, the largest of the Boulder casinos, a few miles to the north. He poured thousands of dollars into their greedy hands each year, but they treated him like a king in return.
The joint where Claire sang, called the Limelight, wasn’t in the same league as its bigger cousins like Sam’s Town, Arizona Charlie’s, or Boulder Station, and didn’t include an attached hotel. It was on the deserted southern end of the highway, where there were still acres of dirty, open land, interspersed with RV parks, adult superstores, and pawnshops. A few housing developments had begun creeping in at the edges, as the suburbs expanded their hold on the desert.
The Limelight had been recently renovated over the skeleton of a long-shuttered roadside casino, a beer-and-nickels joint where fights used to break out nightly and down-on-their-lucks gambled away their last few dollars. No one was sorry to see it go. The Limelight wasn’t upscale, but it was one of the few venues in town that featured live country music for the price of a couple of drinks. She and Stride had dropped in a few times. It was barely more than a bar, with a matchbox gaming room for tables and slots and a claustrophobic showroom with green walls, a long bar with video poker machines, and about fifty circular tables squeezed without much breathing room in front of a narrow stage.