Lucky the Hard Way Read online

  As I watched him, I could see the wheels turning. A story hatching? The truth was pretty easy; only lies required a story.

  “What game are you playing, Stokes?”

  “It’s not that simple.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “And I’m not at liberty to say.”

  I leaned across the table. With a finger, I poked at the photo of the scooter guy. “That man shot at me.” I gave him a glance at my shoulder where the blood had dried in the dark crease of the wound. “Came pretty close, too. So, no, he wasn’t trying to scare me. And, if folks around here can be trusted, he killed Jhonny Vu with a brick…on the street…in broad daylight. Then he sashayed into my hotel, right under your nose.”

  A bead of sweat trickled down Stokes’ temple, catching the light.

  I watched it until it disappeared into his hairline. “So, are you going to tell me what’s going down, or I’m I going to have to make a stink to get the attention of your superiors?”

  A tic worked in his cheek. After a quick glance around—the guy was making me even more paranoid, if that was possible, and I was in my own hotel. He met me in the middle of the table. His nose inches from mine, he lowered his voice. “Look, I know you’re frustrated with my sitting on my thumb, as you would so delicately put it.”

  “Frustrated?” My voice rose on a wave of anger and incredulity.

  He shushed me.

  I didn’t take it well, but I did as he asked. “People are dying and you’re doing nothing.”

  “The sharks have taken the hook, and I’m letting them run with the line,” he said with a look that willed me to understand.

  Idioms as a code. None of the folks who could overhear looked like English was their first language, so I got it. They’d never understand our convoluted vernacular.

  “Until you know where all the cattle have wandered.” Normally, I loved a good turn of phrase. Now they just seemed silly.

  “Gotta round them all up.”

  “Hell of a thing.”

  He looked like he agreed. “Not my call.”

  With the knuckle of his forefinger, he pushed the guy’s ID back toward me. “Keep this. Memorize his face. If you see him, shoot first.”

  “Everybody’s been telling me the same thing. Different context, but same advice. Besides, that photo won’t help much. He doesn’t look like that anymore.”

  “How so?”

  “I rearranged his nose with a two-by-two.”

  He seemed to take that in stride. “Are you sure the guy you assaulted and the guy in the license photo are the same guy?”

  That raised my eyebrows. “Come to think of it, I just assumed. It was dark, and I’m not my best when being shot at. Although I am getting a bit more used to it.”

  Stokes deflated with a grudging grin. “God help me, O’Toole, I can’t decide whether I love you or hate you.”

  “A common problem. I do tend to push either end of that spectrum, leaving not much real estate in the middle.” The agent looked a little more relaxed, which made me inclined to at least give a listen to his story.

  Tired of perching on the edge of my seat, as it were, I leaned back, claiming my chair. “What do you know about the guy?”

  “Muscle for hire.” He must’ve read my look—he held up his hands in a defensive position. “I’m not thinking you’re stupid, just confirming what you know.”

  I pulled out the paper I’d kept from Teddie, smoothing it on the table. “I know this guy. And you do, too. He’s killed already, and he’ll kill again.”

  “Unless you stop him. I know where’re you’re headed, O’Toole, and you’d best not go there.”

  “I’m going there with or without your help. Your call.” I had him; I could see it in the slight slump in his shoulders. Yep, I’d shouldered his burden and he was happy to shift it. Didn’t really blame him. He was in a thankless and dangerous position—he wasn’t calling the shots, but he and his team were taking the hits. “I can help you, but you’ve got to help me. Tell me what I don’t know.”

  “Last time I got close to him he was in Vegas.”

  That shot my eyebrows skyward. “Where in Vegas?”

  He folded up the paper as if having it would get us both shot. “Your hotel.”

  I hid it back in my purse. “My hotel?” Another piece to the puzzle—I could almost see the whole picture…almost. I chewed on my lip as I thought. When I’d seen his picture in the paper Teddie showed me, the guy had looked familiar, but I’d been thinking too small. I needed to widen the aperture on my lens.

  “Somebody is playing with us.” Now it was my turn to state the obvious. The stars were starting to align. Miss Minnie and Frank were running me, forcing me to do their dirty work, dangling the promise of exculpatory evidence for Teddie. What could it be? Something about the face in the photo—the brick man. “We better do something to shut this whole operation down.”

  “Not possible.” Stokes looked pained.

  “What do you mean, ‘Not possible’?”

  “Gotta let it play out. Let them show their hand.”

  “Well, Mr. Fed, your hands might be tied, but mine are not.”

  Now he looked scared. “Don’t go messing in my bust.”

  I really did feel a bit sorry for Stokes—the FBI Ken-doll looked a bit out of his element. Maybe he really was one of the white hats. “Is there anybody who can confirm your story, this whole bust thing you keep talking about?”

  “Not to you. I’m buried so deep even Jesus wouldn’t vouch for me.”

  “I figured.” I put a bit of distance between us, rolling my chair back so I could stretch my legs.

  “Whoever is playing me, and you, for that matter, has his finger on the pulse around here. They were watching you, that’s for sure. And they covered their ass if you got lucky.” He didn’t smile at the pun.

  I didn’t either. “I’m sorry, Stokes, but I gotta jump in the middle of this. You won’t like it, so I’m not going to tell you. Besides, you’d probably arrest me.”

  Everybody had a story and an angle. Including me.

  “Not on your life. Trust me, you don’t want to know…not really.”

  “The last time I saw that look in your eyes, bombs started exploding. You ended up tossing one off the top of your hotel, as I recall.”

  “An unforgettable moment of sheer panic and stupidity.”

  “You have that same gleam about you.”

  What was it about me lately that made me an open book to the males of the species? Whatever it was, I needed to shut it down.

  “I’m trying to figure out things just like you, Stokes.” Technically, it wasn’t a lie. “Poke the beehive, if you will.”

  “I’m intrigued.”

  “I won’t compromise your position, but, if you’ll hang with my friend, Jeremy Whitlock, I think we both will get what we want.”

  “Whitlock. The PI? He’s stand-up.”

  “You can judge someone by the friends they keep.”

  “And the enemies they make.”

  Finally! Some common ground for me and the Fed to bond over.

  “You’re asking me to trust you.”

  “My methods might be unusual, but I’ve never given you reason to doubt my motive.”

  “No, only your sanity.”

  “Hell, even I doubt that.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I’D left Stokes at the bar pondering the black marks on his soul, or at least doing some serious navel gazing. Maybe he could say penance for a few on my soul as well—I didn’t have the time.

  Cindy Liu patrolled the hallway in front of a row of high-roller rooms, each one affiliated with a different junket operating under contract with the hotel.

  Lately I’d developed a keen appreciation for the minefields my father had had to navigate in the Mob days of early Vegas.

  Dressed exactly as she had been a few hours ago, this time Cindy Liu graced me with a smile. “You have a nice time?” Her eyes held joy at my r
emembered discomfort.

  “Once was enough, thank you.” The doors to the various rooms contained no markings, at least not that I could tell. “Which one is operated by Panda 777?”

  Her carefully drawn-on eyebrows came together in a frown, pinching the alabaster skin between them. “Why you want that one?” She seemed nervous, but weren’t we all?

  “I’m looking for a friend.”

  Whatever she was expecting, that wasn’t it as her eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “You no find friend in there.”

  I took her words as a warning. “I’m sure you’re right.”

  Smoke engulfed me as I pushed through the door. Expecting to find the interior dim with players huddled around tables, I was surprised to find the room well lit, the gamblers, all men, mingling and chatting while they watched others take their turns at the tables.

  Teddie was sitting in the lap of a particularly hairy man, probably one of the Russians the wire agent had mentioned. And now I understood how he knew about the guy’s body hair—and I knew what had happened to the Quiana shirts that had been in style for a nanosecond in the seventies. This guy had his shirt unbuttoned to his belt—a nauseating display of his hirsute paunch. He clutched Teddie, despite Teddie’s efforts to get away.

  They both glanced up when I walked in.

  How a man treated the help spoke volumes about his character. I leveled a stare at Teddie’s captor who, amazingly, reddened then released him. Teddie smoothed his uniform and fought the urge to break the guy’s nose—that was easy to read in his scowl and tense posture. Wisely thinking better of it, he sashayed off to work another table.

  I watched him for a moment. That man was going to have to teach me how to walk like that, swiveling like three men followed him.

  Gloating over my subtle powers of intimidation, I didn’t see the man sidle up behind me, but his voice sent shivers down my spine.

  “Lucky, Ol’ Irv is glad to see you.”

  Irv Gittings. My skin darn near crawled off and left me as I fought an involuntary shiver of fear and revulsion.

  Gittings always referred to himself in the third person, a bit of arrogance I found grating. Even more so today.

  How I’d missed his stench I didn’t know. I didn’t give him the pleasure of seeing the fear in my eyes. Yes, he scared me—and that gave me an advantage, I hoped. In his arrogance, Irv would make a wrong move. I just had to stay alive to catch him in it.

  But I knew he wouldn’t kill me in my own hotel—that would be brash even for him. No, he’d want me to die sullied in some dark alley…but he’d want me to know he’d arranged it. I’d already dodged his efforts at least three times.

  Nine lives like a cat? I was counting on it.

  “Hiding in plain sight, Gittings?”

  “Hiding from whom? I have nothing to fear here.” He sounded so sure. “Did you like the present I left you?”

  I pulled in a sharp breath. “That’s a bit bold, even for you.”

  Holding my arm in a viselike grip just above my elbow, he leaned in close, his lips next to my ear. “She had it coming. Like you.”

  His breath was putrid, as if something had crawled inside him and died.

  “I won’t be so easy.”

  Although his fingers dug into my skin, jangling the nerves, I refused to give him the satisfaction of wincing. He dropped my arm as if he’d received an electrical jolt. “I’ve just been toying with you.”

  “Right.” I turned to face him. A bit more bloated than I’d seen him in some time, his nose was red, his eyes watery. High stakes took a toll; I should know. Still, he wore a fake tan, a starched button-down with his initials at the cuff, and a pair of light wool slacks with flair—like a Hollywood A-lister long in the tooth and posing as a parody of himself. The hair was the same, as was the cut of the jaw, but where the A-lister understood the joke, Gittings believed the lie. “If you’re so big and brave, why don’t you just jab a knife in my chest right here, right now?”

  He took a step back and pasted on a fake jocularity. “Now, where’s the sport in that?” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “The game here is way over your head.”

  “Beware the adversary with nothing to lose.”

  His smile turned mean. “You have everything to lose.”

  I shrugged. “At some point, you gotta go all in.”

  “Give it your best shot, but your father isn’t here to rescue you.”

  I wanted to correct him—my father hadn’t rescued me since I was fifteen and a drunk patron by the pool had decided I would be a perfect appetizer—but the best way to beat Irv Gittings at his own game was not to play. But, in a way, Gittings was right. I was out on this tightrope without the net of my father’s experience. One step at a time; don’t look down. I kept my eyes steady, locked on his. “You came after Minnie.” It wasn’t a question; it was a bluff.

  He recoiled from the verbal slap. A brief flash of nervous, then his mask of contrived cool fell back into place. “What are you talking about?”

  “Minnie. She was shot a couple of nights ago. You ordered the hit.” If he asked me how I knew, I’d be dead in the water since I was making all this up as I went.

  “Don’t be silly; I ordered the hit on you.” He ran the back of a fingernail over the red gouges on my shoulder. “The fool missed.”

  Me? On one hand, I was a bit unnerved, but on the other, I was happy I was a big enough stone in his shoe. Although, to be honest, in this game I was irrelevant. So, I didn’t believe him for one moment. No, he’d been after Minnie and her rung on Mr. Cho’s ladder. “Nice try. When are you going to get it into that empty head of yours that you don’t scare me?” Much. Yeah, that was a bluff, too. Even I knew a psychopath when I met him…okay, not exactly when I had met him, but I was smart enough to see the wolf under the sheepskin now. And psychopaths scare everybody—like sharks, they are killing machines with no conscience, no remorse, no empathy that might be used to talk them out of it.

  “I don’t think he missed at all. He hit his target. Minnie’s still in ICU. What do you think Mr. Cho would do if he knew you were behind that hit?”

  Ol’ Irv didn’t have an answer to that.

  Ignoring a shudder of distaste, I stepped in close so we were nose to nose. “I’ll tell you what he’d do. He’d think you were trying to get rid of your competition as you try to worm your way into his organization doing what Minnie has been doing for him for years. She was his. You tried to take her out. They kill for far less here. Your death will be slow and painful.”

  “If you’re going to threaten somebody, you better be damn sure you have the upper hand.”

  I thought about the knife buried in Kim Cho. I thought about Ming and her assertions. She had proven she could take care of herself, but if Irv got a whiff of her fingering him as the killer, she’d need some help staying alive. I made a mental note. Isn’t this about where the Army comes riding over the hill to save the tiny band of settlers from sure slaughter at the hands of the bad guys?

  I really needed an army. And it dawned on me that I had one. And I also had a gift standing right there in front of me.

  I must’ve grinned at the thought because Irv looked a little unnerved.

  I thought about Minnie and Kim.

  And I thought about Frank Cho.

  A man who wasn’t Kim Cho’s brother—he was her lover.

  And he’d kill the man who’d killed her.

  Even without the rest of my plan falling into place, Irv Gittings was a dead man—he just didn’t know it yet.

  The trick was staying alive until he was dead.

  I cocked my head and gave him the head-to-toe visual undressing he loved to give all the women. “I never thought I’d say this, but I feel kinda sorry for you. You’re starting to look like a dead man.” I adopted a chatty tone. “Tell you what, why don’t I buy you a drink?”

  That threw him off. He looked at me, open-mouthed, as if not quite believing that I hadn’t dropped to
the floor and curled into the fetal position, begging for my life and my hotel.

  “No? Well, perhaps another time.” Without giving Teddie another look, I pushed past Gittings and out the door.

  Back in the hallway, I started breathing again. Of all the bluffs and bullshit I’d shoveled through the years, that ranked at the top. Although it wasn’t a bluff exactly, but rather more of a plan just germinating. What had Sinjin said? “It is best to use your enemy’s hand to catch a snake”?

  I darn near broke my arm patting myself on the back at my cleverness when I thought of Teddie. Stupid, Lucky, really stupid. In my need…of what, I didn’t know, I’d almost blown his cover. Irv didn’t know him and would never recognize him all dolled up as he was. But Irv was enough of a snake to sense my interest in someone or something. Once he did that, he’d go the far reaches of Hell to deprive me of it.

  Kim Cho was the latest, and the worst…so far. Losing her hurt my heart. Losing Teddie or Romeo would rip it out and cut it to pieces.

  But, I couldn’t lock them in a room to keep them safe. They both were grown men…mostly. I had to stop worrying, stop trying to control everything because, if the outcome wasn’t what I wanted, I would be eviscerated.

  Easy to say, hard to do.

  Yeah, I still cared…a lot.

  Being a grown-up sucked.

  Teddie was in over his head.

  And he wasn’t the only one.

  Laughter came from my room as I put my key in the lock and turned. Whoever they were, they weren’t trying to hide, so I wasn’t worried. But if Romeo was having a party, I’d shoot him myself. Sleep was at the top of my short list.

  I pushed open the door, then just stood there.

  Three faces, still red from laughter, turned my way.

  Miss P jumped from the couch and rushed over to me. Throwing her arms around my neck, she gave me a bear hug as Romeo and the Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock looked on, smiles splitting their faces.

  Too stunned to move, I felt tears, hot and wet, streaming down my face. “What are you doing here?” I managed to stammer. “You need to go home. It’s not safe here.” My heart’s exposure to devastating loss had just doubled.