Lucky the Hard Way Page 21

  Miss P pulled back but didn’t release me. She thumbed my tears away, keeping ahold of me with one arm. “Aw, honey, you think we’d let you have all the fun?”

  She looked radiant, her short golden hair spiked, her cheeks rosy, her lush figure perfectly framed in a just-tight-enough band dress. Barefooted, happy… satisfied…she looked like I wanted to feel. And I loved her anyway.

  “You’re supposed to be on your honeymoon.” Regaining my composure, I gently shifted out of her one-armed embrace. With the heel of my hand, I swiped at my tears.

  “You’re making it worse.” Miss P dabbed at me with a tissue. She lowered her voice. “Have you found Teddie?”

  I nodded, narrowly avoiding losing an eye with her dabbing. “He’s fine.”

  She gave me a squeeze, and I turned to include the rest of the group, Jeremy in particular. “Seriously, why are you here? I thought you were lolling about on a beach somewhere in the South Pacific.”

  “We were,” Jeremy said, the hint of happiness still in his voice. “We got bored. Heard you’d gone off like a bucket of prawns in the sun. Thought it’d be a bit more lively, so here we are.”

  Of course, they were both horrible liars, but I’d never been so happy to see two people in my life. Except having them here terrified me, too.

  “Why the tears?” he asked. “We thought you’d be happy to see us.” Happiness enhanced his male pulchritude, if that was possible. Golden flecks in dancing brown eyes, a light tint on the ends of his just-long-enough hair only enhanced his babe-magnet qualities. And then there were the dimples and the Australian accent…oh, and the muscled perfection on the long and lean frame. Fifteen years younger than his bride, he was totally besotted, which made him truly the handsomest man alive.

  “You have no idea.” I burst into tears anew.

  Miss P pressed a glass of bubbles into my hand then led me over to the couch, where Jeremy and Romeo made a place between them.

  Romeo looked a bit unnerved. “I didn’t know you cried. I’ve never seen you.”

  “Never let them see you cry.” I gave him a waterlogged grin. “Bad for that badass street cred. Apparently, I’m not as badass as I’d hoped.”

  “Well, you scare the shit out of me.” Romeo looked serious.

  There were murmurs of agreement all around. I couldn’t tell whether they meant it or were just trying to make me feel good.

  Miss P settled in a chair across from the three of us. I studied their faces, each of them, and fought back my tears. Such great friends, ready to ride into hell at my side, armed with nothing more than a damp cloth and a loose plan. Which was a good thing, since that’s what we were doing and that’s all we had.

  “I had no idea how I was going to pull this off by myself.”

  “Neither did we,” Miss P said, adding a note of home, which settled me. “Aren’t you the one always preaching to us that we are only as good as the team?”

  “Yes, but this is different.” I sipped my Champagne and settled my thoughts. “Much more dangerous, much more at stake.” I thought I’d keep the whole saving the Babylon thing out of it. After I drained my glass, I waved off a refill. Leaning forward, elbows on my knees, I tried to figure out where to begin. “I am working on a sting. One that will bring down Mr. Cho and his colleagues who have been running Macau like the Mob ran Vegas.”

  “A sting, you say?” A light sparked in Jeremy’s eyes. “What’s the bait?”

  “Well, maybe a bait and switch is more accurate. The watches in the exhibit downstairs.”

  His reaction, and that of his bride, to my little shock-bomb were Kodak moments. “All of them?” Miss P asked.

  “That’s the goal.”

  “And how are you going to do this?” Jeremy still looked skeptical.

  I told them a bit about Sinjin. “Romeo is going to be his bag man.”

  “Righteous.” Jeremy gave the kid a welcome-to-the-club look. I hoped he wouldn’t follow it with a secret handshake. He didn’t. Instead, he pulled his laptop from the knapsack at his feet. “Kim Cho’s brother, you say?”

  “Yep, another male claiming blood relations with Kim Cho. Either Mr. Cho sowed his seed far and wide or somebody’s lying.”

  “Let’s take a look.” He fired up the machine.

  “Don’t you need the password for the Wi-Fi?”

  His eyes never left the small screen as his fingers flew over the keys. “Every hotel does the same thing: room number and last name. So easy to hack into the system it’s criminal.”

  I’m not sure anyone but me got the irony. “Still, you need the right combination.”

  “Stand down near reception and listen.”

  “But they are trained not to speak room numbers.” Even as I said the words, I knew the truth.

  “Yes, and often it is the guest who verbally confirms the room number.”

  “You’re not making me feel better.”

  Without looking at me, he gave me a quick flash of dimples. As Jeremy worked, I poured that last drop of Champagne into a flute then threw it back. Not a proud moment, but I was over worrying about that.

  Ah,” Jeremy said after what seemed an eternity. “Unless he’s gone to a lot of trouble to fabricate a lineage, he’s telling the truth.”

  “But he said he was adopted.”

  “True. Open adoption records.”

  Why couldn’t everything be that easy? “We don’t have time to thoroughly run him, but anything odd leap out at you?”

  “Not offhand. You’re going to have to go with the gut. And, if memory serves, yours is fairly reliable.”

  “When I don’t overthink it, and this is one of those times. I need your help.” I looked around the group bringing everyone into that request.

  Jeremy speared me with those eyes, but he kept the dimples hidden. “So your first instinct is to trust this guy? This pirate.” He threw off the word with a scoff. “I mean, seriously. Pirate?”

  “It’s worse; he’s also a hedge-fund manager. I know neither of those things exactly screams trustworthy. But he’s only slightly nudged my bullshit meter. He’s got an agenda, but as long as we know what it is, we can figure out how much rope to let him run with.” Ah, the clichés were back! Yes, I was more myself huddled in the bosom of my chosen family, such as it were. “Desperate times and all of that.”

  “Your fallback for making gut decisions on the fly,” Miss P said.

  This time it was easy to tell she was teasing.

  “Just watch yourself.” Jeremy looked like he thought I was a step or two down that road.

  Guess he didn’t understand I was dead last on my worry list.

  Jeremy folded up his computer and gave me his full attention. “What plan do you have for the watches?”

  Miss P bounced around on the edge of the couch like that irritating girl in my fifth-grade class who waved her hand almost before the teacher posited a question.

  I ignored her. “Sinjin is going to steal them.”

  Miss P deflated.

  Jeremy, to his credit, took my little bombshell with only a slight flinch. “And he told you that?”

  Romeo, his hands crossed across his belly, his feet on the priceless antique table, gloated a bit. He hadn’t taken off his shoes, which was a good thing/bad thing sort of…thing. Scratch the furniture or leave a stink so bad the place would need to be fumigated when we left? I was conflicted.

  “You’re no Robert Redford,” I said to the young detective with no apparent effect.

  He gave me a blank stare.

  “The Sting?”

  He shrugged. “Stuff happened before my time. I’m pretty young and you’re—”

  “—experienced.” I gave him the slitty-eye, which shut him up but didn’t dim his grin.

  So I turned back to Jeremy’s question. “I had to sweeten the pot a little.”

  “This is going to be good.” Jeremy laced his fingers together behind his head and leaned back.

  “I told him we’d hel
p him.”

  Nobody looked stunned. Tough crowd. Clearly, I was losing my crazy…or they were getting used to it.

  “Jeremy, I need you to dog Stokes. Tell him enough to keep him on our side, but not enough that he’ll stroke out.”

  “The FBI dude? Piece of piss.” His grin and nod told me that meant yes. His wife gave him a raised eyebrow and he shrugged. “To be able to catch a criminal, it helps to have been one…or at least acted like one.” Turning back to me, he wiped his smile. “But why don’t we just lose him, send him off chasing ghosts or something?”

  “I’d love to, but he’s the only one with any authority from the good ol’ U. S. of A. Once I get the goods on Gittings, I’m going to need the Fed to bag him along with the other players.”

  “Other players?”

  “I plan on really shaking the trees around here. I bet a lot of bad apples will fall out—in fact, I’m counting on it.” I didn’t mention Teddie’s freedom was the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. That burden was mine alone.

  “Sounds like fun.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed, but there was a sort of satisfaction in exacting revenge in a large and painful way.

  Miss P gave her hubby a bright smile, which dimmed when she turned it my direction. I seemed to be having that effect on a lot of folks these days. “And me?” she asked me.

  “I need you to work with Cindy Liu, the head of customer service at this hotel. You remember her? We worked with her during the run-up to the opening.”

  “All business. I remember. What’s going on with her?”

  “Ryan Whitmore is the Head of Operations. I knew him back in the day.” I didn’t feel the need to explain. “He’s got as much slick as anyone I know—and just a tad shy of Ol’ Irv’s mastery. I don’t trust him. And Cindy Liu seems a bit tight with him. I don’t have any proof, just a gut feeling. If Ryan turns out to fall in with the wrong team, I’m not sure what Cindy Liu will do.”

  “She doesn’t strike me as the kind who’d compromise herself for a man.”

  “I’ve known good women with a weak spot when it came to a cad.” Been there, done that, bought that T-shirt. We all probably had, but this wasn’t the time to bond through the sharing of our prior stupidities. “But, for the record, I agree with you—I have a feeling she’ll help us, if it comes to that. She’s helped me already. But this is too important to leave the outcome resting on a hunch that she won’t betray us.”

  If I didn’t learn from my own stupidities, then that made me a fool, and I was trying very hard not to be one. Should I fail, this time undoubtedly would be my last.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Shadow her. I’ll tell her it was my idea—a way for us to improve our own customer service or something like that. On second thought, I’ll set it up. Would be fun to light a fire under her, see what she does.” I didn’t need to give Miss P any more details—she knew what I wanted.

  “A corporate spy.” Her voice held a reverence unbefitting of the danger.

  I opened my mouth to begin that lecture. Instead, I pulled my shirt aside enough to show the top of my shoulder and two dark grooves in my skin. “They’ve shot at me twice, once in Vegas and once here. This is how close they came. I wouldn’t count on them missing again.”

  My point hit home, sobering up my little band of Merry Men.

  A key scratched in the door, and we all turned like felons caught in the vault. Teddie, still in disguise, strolled through, then stopped short at all of us looking at him. For a moment, life froze, then everyone but me jumped to their feet, and hugs and backslapping happened all around.

  Once the merriment died down and Teddie had pulled up a chair next to Miss P’s and received his own flute of bubbles, I brought him quickly up to speed.

  He didn’t argue with the plan. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You have the most important job of all. Deliver Irv Gittings.”

  “In what way?”

  “I need to know how I can make it look like he’s the one behind all this. Where he is keeping funds, who he is manipulating, sleeping with, anything that I can use. He’s new here, new to this game. Get me something I can use.” Not much to go on, but Teddie was good at playing the angles. He could figure it out.

  Paleness lurked under all the pancake, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was tossing a small rodent in the case with a boa constrictor.

  “I think I’ve already got a line on some of that. I got your message—using Ming as your messenger was a good call. She found me leaving the junket rooms, just getting off my shift. We were able to talk out of sight.” At the look on my face he raised a finger, silencing me. “And out of earshot and visibility of the security system. Nobody saw us together. I jumped on it, and Ming is pulling it together. I’ll know shortly what we’ve got.”

  “Ming?” Romeo asked.

  I explained for the group, covering even the part where she hit me over the head.

  Romeo whistled. “You met her? Like, actually were in her presence and fully functional?”

  Fully functional was a stretch, but I didn’t say so. “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “And you let her live?”

  “Recruiting her to the team seemed more important.” I skewered him with reality. “This battle is a gloves-off, no rules, fight to the death. Ego has no place.”

  For a fleeting moment, as I looked at their faces, I saw a glimmer of hope that we could actually pull this off and not end up rotting in a prison no one knew about and whose name no one could pronounce. The thought was fleeting.

  “Is there anything we need to be doing right now?” Jeremy asked with false enthusiasm betrayed by his bloodshot eyes.

  “It’s late. Miss Liu has gone off shift. Ryan Whitmore has the night shift, so he won’t be going far. I need to talk with some folks and come up with a plan. Get a few hours of shut-eye.”

  “And what’s our part in the plan, as you see it now?” Romeo asked me, clearly worried I might do something stupid.

  Too late for that.

  “I will follow the money and I will follow the watches. With your help, and the help of a friend of Mona’s, I will make sure Irv Gittings is left holding the bag.”

  Everyone raised a glass to that.

  Mine was empty.

  I arranged for a couple more of the adjoining rooms to be opened to my suite and sent Romeo to fetch the keys. While we waited for him, the energy slowly drained from my band of Happy Homicidal Helpers. When he returned, he handed the keys out like a scoutmaster organizing his troop. Miss P accepted hers with a tired sigh. Corralling her new husband, they wandered off in search of privacy and perhaps sleep, although it was anybody’s guess which time zone their bodies thought they were in.

  Romeo shifted around a bit, staring out the windows. I shouldered in next to him, sharing his view. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’ve always wanted to do this kind of thing. That’s why I joined the force. Until I met you, I was Reynolds’s grunt.”

  “Reynolds! I’d forgotten about him. What’s he up to these days?”

  “Working for me mostly.” Romeo drank in the sites.

  For the first time, I noticed he looked older and wiser, like he carried his world with confidence.

  “How come you picked working with me over Reynolds? He had all the experience.”

  “And you had all the talent.”

  “You could see that even then?”

  “As you said, I’m—”

  “—experienced.” He gave me a smile that could hold the world. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “Sure you could. I just accelerated your trip up the learning curve.” I turned to face him. “Care to learn a new skill?”

  He gave me that look—half puppy-dog-eager-to-please and half give-me-a- gun-and-tell-me-who-to-shoot—the look that had won my complicity in the first place.

  “Good. This time, you have my back. You’ll need to roll in Jeremy.
You got your notebook?”

  He pulled it out of his pocket, flipped it open, and held his pencil at the ready.

  “Good. Here are the things you’ll need.”

  Teddie had let Romeo and me plot and plan, remaining rooted to his chair. When I returned, settling in to my comfortable indentation in the couch, he looked like he’d been dozing. “Hungry?” he asked, one eye open.

  “Let’s just eat out of the mini bar.” Jet lag had me guessing as to what time it was, what day it was, then I realized I didn’t much want to know. We had a down moment, time to refresh.

  Surprisingly, one could make a rather elegant cheese and cracker tray, with some salted nuts, but I drew the line at dried sea creatures and the jarred fermented weeds—I didn’t care what sea they were from or what health benefits they promised.

  Teddie silently chided me with a wry grin I had no trouble reading.

  “I’m adventurous in every way except food,” I said a bit defensively, even though he already knew that about me.

  “One of your many charms.” His smile lacked its normal wattage.

  As a pale imitation of my vibrant self, I so got that. “Do you have to stay made-up like Mata Hari?”

  We both knew the answer. I didn’t know why I asked.

  “I can’t stay too long. Someone is bound to get wise.”

  “This floor should be above interest.”

  “You really believe that?” He gave me a look I recognized, despite the overdone eyeliner and the blue eye shadow.

  “No.” I wanted him to stay, and I hated myself for it. I shrugged off the need. “Have you seen Cho?”

  “Briefly. He keeps a low profile. “He and Gittings had a little tête-à-tête. What do you think Ol’ Irv’s angle is?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” I plucked a cube of yellow cheese, hoping for cheddar. I took a bite. Close. Feeling somewhat civilized, I popped the rest in my mouth, followed by a bite of a water cracker, and then washed it all down with a sip of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.

  Even though the river of dirty cash into Macau had evaporated down to a trickle, I bet I still knew Irv’s angle. Really, it was the only one he had. “It would seem that the bit of the money funnel that might be hard for Cho to fill would be the foreign investor—the one who takes the laundered funds and buys real estate or some other blue-chip investment, through a dizzying maze of shell corporations and limited partnerships, of course. Now that Minnie is out of the picture.” Another bit of bad business with Irv Gittings’ M.O. all over it, but I didn’t have the time nor the inclination to prove it. He’d given our judicial system the slip. Now it was time to tie the noose around his neck in a way he couldn’t slip out of.