Lucky the Hard Way Read online

  At this moment, looking at him, the memories so close, I wasn’t sure which was worse. I laughed at myself. Apparently, I was the one in four with sociopathic tendencies—I’d read that statistic somewhere. Sorta made me look at my fellow man with a jaundiced eye, which really fogged up my rose-colored glasses.

  Teddie erased my smile with a serious look. “They’re thirty-six hours ahead of you. Without you here, I didn’t know where to start, but since you and your family are the targets, I figured your hotel was a good place to stake out.”

  As I watched him, my mind wandered a bit. I really envied his casual confidence as a woman. Maybe that should worry me…or both of us. “And you decided to become a cocktail waitress because?”

  “There is no such thing. Did you know nobody drinks while gambling here?” He looked surprised.

  “Curiously enough, as one of the casino executives in charge, I do happen to have a grasp on that little factoid. Here the patrons are serious gamblers. In the U.S., they are serious partiers. Either way, the house comes out ahead.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  I looked at Teddie and thought what he didn’t know was legion, but I didn’t say that. What would be the point?

  He must’ve sensed we had exhausted that line of conversation. “No one is looking for a woman,” he said finally answering my question.

  “Not entirely true. The FBI knew you’d left the U.S. disguised as a woman.”

  “Well, they haven’t found me yet, but good to know—I won’t be quite so brazen. Besides, women here are invisible, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Unless the men want their services.”

  “I’m not their type.”

  “You hope. You do sort of stand out.” Tall and blonde in a sea of something else and with legs to die for? Not their type? He was fooling himself. “Did you see Kim before she was killed?”

  “I’d caught a glimpse, and started to follow but got waylaid by a drunk Russian wanting bottle service in one of the junket rooms upstairs. Trust me, you do not want to piss off anybody traveling here with the junket operators, especially a Russian.”

  “I’m hoping ‘waylaid’ is one word, not two.”

  He rewarded me with a smile, which didn’t do a thing for me—well, except for sending a warm rush through every capillary. “Did you see anyone else? Like maybe the person who killed her?”

  Teddie shook his head. “No.”

  “I did.” We both whirled at the voice.

  The young woman with the tattoo. Carrying three glasses, she used her foot to nudge the door open. How long she had been standing there was anybody’s guess, not that it mattered—apparently, I had no secrets here.

  She handed me one of the glasses. “You drink. It hot.”

  “Who killed Kim Cho?” I pressed, knowing the answer, hoping I was right.

  “You drink.” Ming’s voice held the hardness of steel.

  Force wasn’t always the answer; I knew that. So I retreated…for the moment. Let her have a small victory, soften her up, a good strategy. Yeah, right. “What is it?” I sniffed at the amber liquid as I held the glass by the rim. A vaguely floral scent I couldn’t place.

  Teddie accepted a glass. The third she kept for herself.

  I motioned her over, then exchanged glasses with her, which got a wry half-smile and what I thought was a fleeting hint of respect.

  Ming shut the door, then leaned against it. “My grandfather, he a healer. Has a shop in the central district in Hong Kong. This is his most strong medicine. Give much power.”

  Testing the heat, I took a sip. My body’s response was immediate—it wanted all of it and right now, if not before. I’d experienced that once before—an ill-fated trip to Spain, a case of food poisoning that left me only able to crawl short distances, and a homegrown cure made of green apples, brandy, lemon juice, and sugar. So, trusting my gut, I blew on the brew until just below scalding, then drank it down.

  Ming and Teddie followed my lead, although in a slightly more measured manner.

  Curiously, I felt better. Mind over matter? Who knew? At this point, I didn’t care. “That stuff is potent. Your grandfather have anything that will impart superpowers?”

  “Superpowers?” A furrow of concentration buckled the skin between her eyes. “What is this?” She looked to Teddie.

  Teddie waved her off. “Ignore her.”

  I leaned over and set the glass on the floor, then fixed Ming with my best grown-up stare, such as it was. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Bad men make it bad for everybody. We stop them.”

  “We who?”

  She stood a little taller. “We women.”

  Struck dumb for a moment, I must’ve flapped my mouth like a guppy, then I regrouped. “Women.” It wasn’t a question. “You have no idea how much I’m loving this.”

  Teddie seemed to be enjoying the whole show as well.

  A smile split Ming’s face, and, for the first time, I realized how young she must be. Eighteen? Nineteen?

  “How many women?”

  “Many, many women. We all start out here or another place the same. Now many work in casinos. We see everything. We know much.”

  “You work here?” The thought squeezed my heart. “How long?”

  “Four year, maybe five.”

  Teddie’s eyes mirrored my own anger and profound sadness. Women, under attack the world over. No wonder humanity was going straight down the slop-chute.

  Ming handed Teddie her glass, then tugged up a sleeve, exposing her tattoo. “This how you know.”

  The answer to one question! Hopefully there would be more to come. “What do you want with me?” I asked, unsure how I played a role in their plan.

  “You big powerful woman. Kim tell us. You make men afraid.”

  Amusement flashed across Teddie’s face, so I studiously ignored him. “I’m not sure I agree, but I will do what I can to help. What do you want me to do?”

  “You smart. You know business. So you know how to fool men. We want you to tell us how to do this.”

  “You want me to make a plan?”

  She nodded, clearly happy I understood or was at least following. “Yes, you lead us. Help us take power back. Make bad men pay.”

  “Okay, okay.” I took a few moments to process. I’d asked for a friend and I’d gotten “many, many.” This could work. “You going to tell me who killed Kim Cho?”

  The question exposed the lethal under Ming’s carefully arranged exterior. “She my friend, very good friend.”

  “Mine, too.” Okay, it was a little lie.

  Something told me not to push Ming, so I waited, which used every ounce of my mythic Herculean strength.

  “You help us?” Ming was on the fence; I could see that. A game of verbal poker: who was going to show their cards first and hope the other kept playing. A tough call.

  “I’ll help you.”

  She flicked a glance at Teddie.

  “You can trust her.”

  The fight left, leaving only the pain and a need for revenge I could hear in her voice, see in her eyes. “That man, the guai lo. He come with Mr. Cho. Frank say he bad, bad man. He kill Sam.” She swallowed hard, blinking rapidly. “He kill Kim, too.”

  “Guai lo?” Teddie asked.

  “White devil in Cantonese,” I answered. God knew I’d heard that enough around Mona’s place when I was a kid.

  Teddie looked impressed.

  I didn’t disabuse him of any misguided esteem he might have for me. “Irv Gittings.”

  Ming nodded as she crossed her arms, hugging herself. Irv Gittings had that effect on almost everyone.

  Not me. Not anymore.

  I’d never taken a life, but I’d looked into enough eyes of those who had to know, justified or not, taking a life exacted a huge price. When it came to Irv Gittings, I was prepared to pay.

  I shot a look at Teddie. If he could read me as well as I thought he could, then he knew Irv woul
dn’t get out of this alive, not if I had anything to do with it.

  “Frank and Sam. They were your friends, too?”

  Ming nodded. “Good men.”

  Which explained how Sam Cho, “hired assassin,” could’ve missed killing not only my father at short range but me also, however at a slightly longer range. But it didn’t explain Sam Cho, Teddie, and the murder of Holt Box. If Sam didn’t kill him, who did? I need that to get Teddie off the hook.

  A troubling thought best left for a less troubling day.

  And Frank Cho—Ming’s revelation explained him, too, and how easy it had been to get him remanded from the state prison into my care, and Romeo’s…

  Romeo.

  Some pieces of the puzzle had clicked together—I loved it when that happened. But now it was time to go on the offensive.

  “Together we can do this, Ming. I will come up with a plan to help you. But right now, I could use your help.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  NO one would ever know the Chinese frowned on ostentation by looking at the owner’s suite. The beautiful statuary—probably so old that if I blew on it, it would turn to dust. Large jade animal figurines—tigers mainly, but the largest one was of a dragon, which made me smile. Symbolic of power and good luck for those worthy of it, dragons held a special place in Chinese cultural symbolism. I’d learned a lot from the Big Boss and his dollar-bill origami. The Big Boss would get a huge kick out of the latest twist to this adventure.

  He worshipped women and was appropriately scared of us. I loved that about him. For an old-school Wiseguy he was remarkably evolved.

  Heavy silk draperies hanging floor to ceiling and falling to rest on the floor in pools of exquisite cloth. The furniture wasn’t my style, but I knew it was expensive—I’d seen the bills. The place was probably bugged. I didn’t care, but Ryan’s nervousness and veiled threats had me looking over my shoulder.

  No doubt about it, I felt exposed…and totally out of my comfort zone.

  I wondered how Stokes had gotten on with the police.

  Kim Cho was his man. And one of Ming’s women.

  To be honest, after meeting Ming, I was feeling a glimmer of optimism. When pushed, women as warriors had no equal.

  The trick was getting them to tap into that strength.

  For eons we’d been taught our physical weakness meant we had no power.

  Oh, so very wrong.

  In a way I felt sorry for Agent Stokes. Okay, not really, not until I figured out which team he played for. But I really felt sorry for Kim Cho. And, with nowhere to turn and no one to turn to, I had to let the FBI try to find Romeo while I waited, keeping myself available for the kidnappers to find me.

  They would. They clearly wanted something. I just wished they’d hurry.

  She’d been helping the good guys and we’d let her down. Of course, some of us hadn’t been let in on the secret. I’d deal with Stokes later. Right now, I needed to cut Mona off at the knees, and I needed a good baseball bat.

  Brandy answered on the first ring.

  “Hang on, I’m patching in Jerry.”

  My tone took the chipper right out of her voice. “Okay.”

  “Lucky, it’s been awhile,” Jerry said, his voice deadly serious. “What’s cookin’?”

  “You got anything for me?”

  “Not yet, but we’re working on it. A lot of video to go through and I’m not that familiar with the property there. Took me a bit of time to get oriented.”

  “Okay, understood. Keep working on it. I want to know who in our happy little band of brigands was in the hotel when Kim Cho was murdered.”

  “If I find one of them on the tapes, I’ll let you know.”

  “Good. I hate to add to the workload, but I need something else. Jerry, can you pull up some photos of the collection of antique arms we bought to showcase around Cielo? Specifically, I’m looking for an ivory-handled knife.”

  “What’s so special about the knife?”

  “It was the one buried in Kim Cho’s chest.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I know, right? But somebody was either very sloppy or sending a message. Message received, and, if I could, I’d like to appropriately thank the sender.”

  “You’re not going to do something stupid, not without me having your back, right?” Jerry’s concern vibrated through the line.

  “Please, stupid is what I do.” I didn’t tell him about Ming fingering Irv Gittings in Kim Cho’s murder. Everybody here had an agenda, and Kim Cho’s warning about people not being who they appeared to be kept pealing like a Sunday church bell in my subconscious.

  Jerry could often pull a rabbit out of a hat, and it’d be interesting if he could pin the murder on Gittings as well. While in China, my version of murder investigating mirrored a good reporter’s—at least two objective sources for everything.

  Sometimes it was best to not jade the researcher, to let them come to it clean, so I left all the juicy stuff for Jerry to find. I put him on speaker on my phone, then worked through my photos, choosing several good shots of the knife. “I’m sending the photos I have. And, given that this is Macau and I’m a foreigner, they are likely all I’ll ever have.”

  “Gotcha.” His phone pinged in the background, announcing the arrival of the pictures. “Got them. We’ve got something else going on that we need to talk with you about.”

  A problem I could solve! Oh, happy day! “Fire away.”

  “Got a problem with Mona.”

  My heart sank. Mona had no solution.

  I have this theory about life and death—it’s sort of silly, but it works for me. I think that when people die, they come back somewhere else where no one they knew would likely see them again. I’ve met long-dead friends and acquaintances before, or at least their doppelgängers, and right now was one of those times.

  My mother was standing in front of me, or rather an ephemeral image was.

  Of course, Mona wasn’t dead, but she would be when I got home.

  And the fact she wasn’t really here saved me from rotting in a Chinese jail.

  “I heard about the hackers. How bad is it?”

  “Bad,” Jerry and Brandy said in unison. Understandably, Jerry’s was the more expressive of the two—he had more experience with my mother.

  “Jerry,” I said after I’d let the ramifications of my mother sink in a bit, “can you bring Sergio on the line?”

  Sergio Fabiano was our Front Desk Manager. Handling Mona’s epic boo-boo would take all four of us and a lot of luck.

  Jerry went off line for a moment. I could hear Brandy breathing, but neither of us said anything. Romeo loomed between us—of course, I knew that and she didn’t, which made the whole thing darn near impossible. I fought the urge to blurt everything out, which would only make us both terrified. One of us was enough…more than enough. But I couldn’t resist jumping into the silence. “How are all the preparations going for the opening? Anything I should know about?”

  “Everything you and I went over before you left is in place and ready to go. We’ve been doing lots of run-throughs with the staff, fine-tuning. It’s all really good. Don’t worry.”

  “With you at the helm, I don’t. Thank you. Let me know if you need me to step in anywhere.”

  “Of course.”

  Jerry came back online, releasing me from my agony. “We’re all here.”

  “Good. It sounds like we have a major problem.”

  “You’re telling me,” Sergio sounded exasperated as he dove into my conversation. “Mr. Jackson, from New York?”

  “The one who brings his family and his mistress?” I asked, knowing how this was going to go.

  “Yes, but the wife, she does not know about the mistress.”

  “Yes, we put them on separate floors with a note in the file to make sure to keep them separate, even though Mr. Jackson has keys to both rooms. The instructions are explicit.”

  “Exactly.”

  I could almost hear Sergio
slap his thigh as he flicked his stylishly long hair out of his eyes. By all accounts, with his chiseled physique and smoldering good looks, he was a babe magnet. I didn’t get it. He was far too fussy for me. The first sign of the age apocalypse, no doubt.

  “But someone, she changed the computer,”Sergio continued in his inimitable Italian sort of way, which set my teeth on edge. “The seven-year-old-son walked in on—”

  “Don’t tell me.” I made a mental note to alert the legal department as I tried to figure out how to spin the PR nightmare.

  “It is not so bad. The lady, she was alone, taking a bath.”

  I’d seen Mr. Jackson’s mistress. I’m sure the boy would be ruined forever, but not traumatized. Of course, he’d probably have all his daddy’s money someday. The thought made me sad and angry…wasted energy, I know. My Don Quixote complex. “Okay. Sergio, alert your staff. Make sure they actually think before doing. These hackers are famous for getting in the computer systems and causing all kinds of mischief: rebooking people to already occupied rooms, playing with the locks and the keycards, making reservations, changing charges, the sky’s the limit. What we can think of, they’ve already done. Consider them to be one step ahead at all times.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But what do we look for?” Brandy asked.

  “Anything out of the ordinary.” Even as I said it, I knew it to be an impossibility. We were talking about Vegas, where everything is out of the ordinary. “You’ll know it when you see it—if you look closely enough.” With nothing more to add, I switched gears. “Jerry…”

  “I’m on it. I’ll work with the IT guys and try to shut these kids out, at least out of the most sensitive areas to start. What about gaming?”

  “They won’t hit that. Federal felonies are a deterrent. The thing about these kids is this: they don’t want to totally mess things up; they just want to see if they can hack the system, and they want us to know they can. There is an upside here, although slight: we will learn our vulnerabilities, and, considering the sensitive information we have about our patrons, it might not be bad to know if all of our expensive security really works and all the high-priced consultants are worth what we pay them.”