Lucky Now and Then (Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure) Read online

  “Not really, it just presented a good opportunity. You see, me and Fleischman had been hired by the union to provide some . . . enthusiasm . . . for some holdouts to join.”

  “You bombed their joints.” It wasn’t a question. Rothstein knew the answer.

  “Fleischman did the heavy lifting. I just provided cover.” Crider shouldered the weight of the admission easily. He dipped his head toward the body. “That guy was the head of the Culinary Union.”

  “So what’d you want with the union chief? And why is he dead?”

  “He didn’t pay.” The man smiled. It sent a chill to Rothstein’s heart—it was the smile of a dead man. “The guy whacking him was a stroke of luck.”

  Chapter One

  July 2012

  Las Vegas

  ONE stick of dynamite had not been enough to kill me.

  Although it was sufficient to put a dent in my day.

  Of course, I’d been lucky. I didn’t even smile at the pun, which was unusual for me. You see, Lucky is my name, Lucky O’Toole to be exact, and I’m the V.P. of Customer Relations at the Babylon, one of the primo properties on the Las Vegas Strip. Usually my duties include diffusing the average domestic dispute, not bombs, but life had been . . . well, a bit more explosive lately.

  When the elevator doors opened and I stepped out onto the rooftop of the Babylon, I was returning to the scene of the crime, drawn by a primal need, a curiosity I didn’t understand but felt powerless to resist. A survivor, I was lured by the inexorable pull of reliving my incredibly close call. The police and the bomb squad were finishing up. Like wraiths, they moved silently in the half-light, in and out of shadows, gathering clues, looking for answers. Just like me. Although, as I stepped to the edge of the roof crossing my arms against the slight chill on the night breeze, I suspected my questions were a bit different, my answers more difficult.

  “What are you doing here?” Detective Romeo’s voice was a soothing salve to my raw nerves.

  I turned to find the detective in the shadows. “You see me, right? I’m, like, really here?”

  A sympathetic smile ticked up one corner of his mouth, as he stepped in next to me. “I don’t see dead people, if that’s what you mean. Well, I see dead people—all the time, in fact—but they don’t talk to me.” He shook his head as if tossing one of those snow globes, trying to realign the snowflakes of words and thoughts. “Well they talk to me, but, well, not like you mean . . . ” Trailing off, he looked as confused as I felt. With a sigh, he put a hand on my arm and squeezed. “See, you’re not dead.”

  “To be honest, I’m sort of ambivalent about that right now.” I meant it as a joke, but I didn’t pull it off. My recent bout of melodrama was getting a bit tiresome—it was so not me, the normal me, anyway. Of course, my life had been turned on its head recently: my lover had abandoned me, I’d moved, and now had almost been killed. I would guess, coupled together, those would rank me as a strong candidate for a meltdown—if I allowed myself that sort of thing.

  Romeo didn’t respond. I could see him fighting the urge to run. Typically male, all of his flight tendencies were triggered by a woman on the verge of histrionics. To his credit, he held his ground.

  Could my father be a killer? Assaulted by the possibility, I tried to shake off impending panic. And with my armor worn thin by the spinning wheel of a life out of balance, it took all the strength I had to cling by my fingernails to the ledge of logic.

  Resolutely I pushed away the thought and returned to one of my favorite views: Vegas at night. Like a blanket snapped out full, the lights of Las Vegas unfurled at our feet, covering the valley floor in every direction. Several hours had passed since the conclusion of the annual 4th of July fireworks display, launched from the rooftops of seven major properties and choreographed to the second. The bomb I had tossed in desperation off the top of the Babylon had been a bit of ad-libbing, but I doubted anyone noticed.

  The lights from the huge signs lining both sides of the Strip to the south painted our perch in a shifting kaleidoscope of color and alternating shadows as they flashed their messages to the world. Someone told me once the lights of Vegas could be seen from space. I didn’t doubt it—the folks in charge around here would accept nothing less.

  Vegas, as quintessentially American as apple pie and baseball; but while the others exuded wholesomeness, Sin City had an ugly past.

  That happy little thought led me right back to the line of thinking I was trying to avoid: my father’s past.

  When my father had begun his climb up through the ranks, Vegas had been a rough-and-tumble town run by the Mob. Born of nothing, he had clawed his way to the top of the heap. As the owner of the Babylon, he was one of the men who had made Vegas what it was today. And as a player who had gotten his start in the rough-and-tumble Vegas, then made his mark in the corporate Vegas, he was an enigma. To be honest, I didn’t know many details of his past. I’d never thought to ask. What can I say? I’m sort of a big-picture kind of gal. Besides, Vegas was like that . . . nonjudgmental.

  A city of second chances.

  Just about everybody who came here was running from something, so nobody asked and nobody cared. Which fit my father like a tailored suit. To him, the past was the only thing in life that couldn’t be changed, so it wasn’t worth much thought or discussion.

  But as a man in the public eye, a member of the Vegas elite, his silence created a vacuum of conjecture.

  Could he have something to atone for? I shook my head in self-recrimination and chewed on the inside of my cheek. Guilty until proven innocent might be the battle cry of the Internal Revenue Service, but it wasn’t mine. However, I wasn’t stupid. Men had done much worse for a lot less.

  I shivered in the cool breeze—probably not that cool, really, but the disparity between the triple-digit sizzle of the sun on your skin and the tickle of a slight wind in the dark usually peppered my skin with goose bumps. The pops of distant fireworks from the suburbs sounded like gunshots. Like summer clouds, puffs of smoke eerily lit by the city lights below drifted on the breeze, most likely remnants of the fireworks . . . or a bomb. A couple sticks of very old dynamite, a 12V battery and a fairly clever motion trigger . . .

  Life . . . what a crapshoot.

  This had all started with the appearance of Albert Campos.

  “Care to share?” I asked the detective at my shoulder. He appeared almost as shaken as I felt. When we’d met, he’d looked all of twelve. Now, less than a year later, he looked a decade older, which wasn’t that bad when I thought about it. But if his job kept taking its toll at the same pace, he’d soon be old before his time. Dealing with death and despair day-in and day-out, some of it was bound to rub off. Tonight his sandy hair ruffled in the light breeze, his cowlick at the crown standing like a flagpole, tall and defiant. His eyes, normally a vibrant blue, now held the faded hue of color too long in the sun. His clothes hung on his slender frame—the kid needed several good meals and some serious R and R. I felt the tug of guilt; it’s not like I was helping or anything. And I did feel sort of responsible for him.

  “I don’t know jack.” He gave me a sideways glance as he pulled his pad and pencil from an inside pocket. “But I bet you can fill me in.”

  “What makes you think I have any answers?”

  “Experience,” he noted with a wry smile.

  He had me there. “I’m assuming you heard Campos claim to be my father’s illegitimate son?” At his curt nod, I started in, “Apparently Boogie Fleischman tutored him in bomb making. Not only that, but the creep told Campos where to find his old stash of materials.”

  “Boogie Fleischman.” Romeo’s voice held a hint of awe. “Man, he really knew how to blow. He took out a bunch of non-union joints back in the day.”

  “Kid, he’s not a rock star.” Why the world held a fascination with the old, Mobbed-up Vegas was beyond me. Boogie and his ilk came after that, though. During an unsavory period when the Mob was on its way out, leaving a power vacuum, t
he Culinary Union had valued his skills, using them to sway holdouts to join up.

  “To hear him tell it, this whole thing with your father started over some woman.” He gave me an impish look—at least that’s what I thought it was. “That’s so trite it’s a cliché, isn’t it?”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Everything good begins with a bad woman.”

  He shrugged and I knew he was blushing even though I couldn’t see it in the half-light. “In this case, the bad woman was Eugenia Campos, Albert’s mother.”

  “So you know that part of the story?” The detective had clearly done his homework.

  “Yeah. She was quite a looker. I’ve seen pictures.” Romeo ran a finger around the inside of his collar, tugging at it. “She ended up pregnant, had the kid, never pointing the finger at the father.”

  I nodded. “That’s not the whole story. To hear Boogie tell it, he took the fall for something she did. When he was sent up, she hung around for a while, then split.”

  “What did she do that got him sent to prison?”

  “Tried to kill Mona and me.”

  Romeo’s head swiveled in my direction, his hand poised in his note taking. “Really?”

  “So Boogie says.” I squeezed my eyes shut against the memories. “A bomb. Jimmy G’s first place, the one on Flamingo.”

  “Wow. How come you weren’t killed? Didn’t the bomb level the place?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.” I rubbed my arms, chasing away the shiver of murder. “I really don’t remember much.”

  Romeo paused. I could see the questions bubbling inside him. Thankfully he didn’t press me for details. “Okay, so Boogie gets sent up, Eugenia Campos has her son, but she never names the father?”

  “Not until she comes back eight years later and fingers my father.”

  “Why then?”

  I shrugged. “Beats the heck out of me.”

  “Why’d she leave?”

  “Would you stick around if the rumor mill had you tied in with trying to kill Albert Rothstein’s family?”

  Romeo exhaled sharply.

  “My point exactly.”

  “Boy, I sure would like to talk to her,” Romeo added wistfully, as if asking the Universe would make her appear.

  “Wouldn’t everybody.”

  “Any idea where she might be, assuming she’s still around?”

  “I’ve asked and nobody knows.” I turned. Finding Romeo’s eyes I held them with my gaze. “She disappeared.”

  “What do you mean ‘disappeared’?”

  “Gone. Vanished. Without at trace.”

  “Whoa.” Romeo let the word out in one long sigh, his imagination clearly galloping off, leaving rational thought in the dust.

  I could almost see the visions of bleached bones in the desert dancing in his head. I did not want to go where he wanted to take me, but it was hard to deny my father had motive, means and opportunity.

  However, there was no body—which sorta shot a hole in the whole murder theory . . . for now.

  But accusations were funny things: once planted they tended to grow. Watered by our access to instant information and fed by immoral media outlets, simply pointing a finger and laying blame was often enough to tarnish even the most unassailable reputation.

  Somehow I needed to diffuse this situation before too many fingers started pointing in my father’s direction.

  Before the paramedics had led him off for stitches and x-rays, my father had leaned into me, his mouth close to my ear, his voice hushed and strained as he’d whispered, “Leave the Campos matter alone, Lucky girl. It’s history. Best not to disturb old bones.”

  His eyes, when they’d met mine, had had a hint of beg in them.

  And Albert Rothstein never begged.

  Was it a confirmation? A warning? When I’d pressed him for more, he’d clammed up.

  My worry was compounded by the possibilities lodged as a cold ball of dread in my stomach. I rubbed my arms again—I couldn’t get warm—and contemplated my city. Enigmatic, Vegas was a city of contrasts. A city of hope. A city of despair. A city of desperation. A city of untold riches.

  I blew at a lock of hair that tickled my eyes. My father knew better than anyone that I was a black-and-white kind of gal who struggled mightily living in a world cloaked in shades of gray. Before tonight, I’d thought my father was one of the white hats. And he was . . . is. But was he always?

  I had no answer.

  Now what? Could I tolerate the unknown? Even when the unknown could turn out to be the unthinkable?

  Romeo tucked his pad and pencil away, then brushed down his jacket, which must’ve been a subconscious move—there was no way a simple smoothing would erase the wrinkles. “Better go. Gotta put the thumbscrews to Albert Campos.”

  Fighting with my own demons, I stared out at my city and nodded. “If you get any answers—”

  “—you’ll be the first to know.”

  After he’d left, the night filled the space he’d abandoned, like air rushing into a vacuum when the seal is broken, closing around me in the comforting press of solitude.

  My peace didn’t last long.

  I felt a presence at my shoulder, then a soft hand on my arm. Her perfume identified her—a scent I’d known my whole life. Normally a thorn in my side, my mother rarely added comfort to my day, but tonight, for some reason, she did. As she snaked an arm around my waist, I rested my head on her shoulder.

  “You okay, honey?” Fear and fatigue modulated and softened her normally strident tone. Of course, being very pregnant and besieged by hormones might have had something to do with this nicer, more nurturing version of Mona. History dictated it wouldn’t last, but I’d ride this pony as long as it would run.

  “Oh, a bit shell-shocked, but I’ll rally.”

  “Of course you will, dear.”

  “You know, you could clear all this up if you would just tell me what happened to Eugenia Campos. You had a vested interest back then, and you were right in the center of the action.”

  “So were you.”

  I lifted my head off her shoulder and gave her a stern look, which she refused to meet. “I was four.”

  “I wasn’t much older . . . and clearly not very wise.” She gave a subtle shrug but didn’t offer any more. Even with a shadow hiding her face, I could see she was scared and tired, and more than a little angry.

  My mother, tossed onto the streets at fourteen, had made her way as best she could. With her tall, lithe yet lush figure, high cheekbones, full lips that often curved provocatively, and soft brown hair that brushed her shoulders, she had found taking money for sex to be child’s play. I frowned at that word choice—perhaps not the best. I glanced at her. Time had not diminished her subtle, forceful beauty and pregnancy seemed to have enhanced it, giving her a softness, a rounding of her hard edges. If only it had the same effect on her often-acerbic personality, but I hadn’t seen much of that.

  At fifteen, Mona had become a mother. Even though my father knew I was his, he and my mother had kept that a closely guarded secret—my father had enemies and could ill-afford any vulnerability. Meeting my father had altered my mother’s trajectory in incalculable ways, beyond the obvious. They’d both thought they had the world by the tail, had covered every contingency.

  But Mona had lied. When he took up with her, my father thought she was nineteen, so he couldn’t really be faulted for bedding a minor. However, ignorance was no defense in the eyes of the law. Nor apparently with the Vegas power brokers. Nothing like a felony rape charge to get everybody all hot and bothered and derail a bright future. Somehow it always struck me as funny that cold-blooded killers had a moral code. And despite it being as riddled with holes as a body after a hit, that moral net that captured my father.

  Anyway, the threat had been made, a sword hanging over my father’s head. Of course, it never came to an arrest or anything—the threat was enough. Even though their marriage was thwarted, my parents had carried a torch for each other thr
ough the decades.

  I didn’t know any of this until recently when my father, thinking his end was near, came clean. Both of them had left me hanging for decades, letting me think that my conception had been the product of poor protection and that my mother didn’t even know who my father was. To be honest, I hadn’t totally forgiven either of them for the subterfuge.

  And when my father didn’t meet his maker, he’d gotten all rash and weepy and married my mother, thereby terminating my illegitimacy—a fact I was conflicted about. Now to all who weren’t in the know, I appeared to have had a normal upbringing instead of having been raised by a single madam in a whorehouse in Pahrump.

  The truth just had more panache.

  The truth. There I was, back to that. Did I really need to know what had happened to Eugenia Campos? Did I need to know whether my father had killed her? Could I live with not knowing? Could I live with the truth?

  Lost in the labyrinth of our respective thoughts, Mona and I stood there as we always had, shoulder-to-shoulder, the two Musketeers against the world and the forces of darkness. A few bottle rockets spurted in the distance—too far away for the sound to reach us.

  A subtle clearing of the throat sounded behind us and I turned to face one of the paramedics—Nick, I think his name was. Gorgeous and Greek, he didn’t even register on my libido meter—I must have been more out of sorts than I’d realized.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but we’re all done here.” His white teeth flashed in the darkness as he shot me a smile. “You and your family have kept us pretty busy today.”

  “Just want to keep you on your toes.” I don’t think my smile matched his in wattage, but I tried. “And the Big Boss? How is he?”

  At Nick’s quizzical look, I clarified, “My father. We call him the Big Boss around here. It’s sort of a joke, a clichéd term of respect.”

  “Gotcha. A couple of broken ribs. A pretty good headache. He’ll be hurting for a bit, but he’ll make a full recovery.” Nick tilted his head toward the elevators. “One of my guys made sure Mr. Rothstein got back to his apartment okay. Are you two ready to go? It’s pretty dark up here.”