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

  “I’m sure the Big Boss was a bit peeved.” Dane smiled at his own understatement.

  “Boogie took the fall. And with no one to protect her and the Big Boss on the warpath, Eugenia split.”

  Dane’s eyebrows crinkled into a frown. “With the kid? How old was he?”

  “A bit older than me? I don’t really know, but Eugenia had tried to shake down my father by claiming Albert was his son.”

  “I wonder how he took that bit of news,” Dane said quietly. His eyes met mine in the mirror behind the bar.

  We both knew the Big Boss would not have taken that well.

  “So,” Dane said, and from the tone in his voice, I knew I wasn’t going to like what was coming. “Eugenia, free and clear with everybody thinking Boogie planted the bomb, and with the Big Boss over a barrel, and with a child of her own to care for . . . with all of this, she disappears?”

  “Well, when you say it that way . . . ” I groused. “I know it looks bad.”

  “Bad? Lucky, the worst lawyer on the planet could take that little story to a grand jury and walk out of the room with an indictment.”

  “Not here.” I sipped from the flute, relishing the Champagne, trying to conjure the nicer side of life. “This is Vegas, and it’s my father we’re talking about. No one would dare.”

  Would they?

  Chapter Three

  Las Vegas

  1982

  Davis Lovato ran his finger along the edge of his four iron as he worked the shaft into his golf bag. Ben Hogan blades, they’d been made especially to fit his tall frame and flat swing. And they had the reputation of being the hardest clubs to hit. Lovato liked that. Today’s round hadn’t been spectacular, but an 82 wasn’t anything to be ashamed of either. Especially since he’d taken the attorney general job and his course time had become severely limited. But in the dog days of summer, his schedule opened up a bit and a round or two of golf a week became a possibility—a reality, if he didn’t mind the heat.

  Davis Lovato had never minded the heat.

  Not the blistering temps of the summer in the Mojave, nor the heat of battle in a courtroom or on the political stage. That’s why the citizens of the Silver State had elected him attorney general. Of course, his imposing height, strong jaw, quick wit, ready smile and uncanny ability to remember not only the names of people he met, but also the names of their associates and family members, had helped. If you’re going to play the part, you gotta look the part—one of the primary rules of any game, or so his father had taught him. His father had been the patriarch of one of the oldest ranching families in Nevada, a legacy his son used to his advantage whenever possible.

  Lovato popped the top off the last beer in the cooler and took a long pull, draining half the bottle.

  “You all done, sir?” The young man dressed in caddie overalls stepped over to the cart, then stopped, leaving a deferential distance between himself and the Attorney General. “May I clean your clubs and put them away?”

  “All done.” Lovato reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty, which he handed to the kid. “Put some good luck on them this time, will ya’? And the five iron could use a new shaft.”

  “A new shaft, sir?” The kid’s eyes widened just a bit.

  “The old one somehow got wrapped around the trunk of that damned pine tree on number seven.”

  To the kid’s credit, he didn’t smirk. Instead, he nodded in understanding. “That tree’s eaten a couple of my shafts as well.” After unstrapping the bag, he shouldered it and disappeared into the cart barn.

  Lovato turned toward the clubhouse anticipating tossing back a couple more beers with his friends in the grill.

  The head pro met him as he pushed through the doors. “There’s a call for you, sir. You’re welcome to take it in my office.”

  The Attorney General shook his head with a rueful grin. “What happened to the sanctity of the golf course?” He kicked the door closed and lowered himself into the oversized chair behind the pro’s desk. Putting his feet on the polished mahogany, he tucked the receiver between his ear and shoulder and punched the blinking light on the phone. “Lovato.”

  “How was your round, sweetie?”

  The smile evaporated from the Attorney General’s face. “Eugenia, fuck. I told you never to call me here.”

  “Well, I wanted to talk to you. And I didn’t think you’d be wanting me to call your house. I mean, what if the beautiful Mrs. Lovato answered . . . well, then, what would I say? That would be sort of awkward, don’t you think?”

  Lovato ran his hand over his eyes and glanced around to see if anyone was watching him through the wall of glass separating the office from the pro shop. No one appeared to be taking an unusual amount of interest. “What do you want?”

  “Honey, I just want you.” Eugenia’s voice held a plaintive, seductive tone.

  Lovato used to find Eugenia Campos alluring—she was a damn fine package, no one would say otherwise. He’d let his pecker pick his path, not that that was such a sin. Having a piece on the side was sort of expected for someone of his stature, but times were changing. Lovato had a lot to lose, and these days, everyone seemed to expect their public figures to smell like a rose. And if you slept with a whore too often, eventually the stink would rub off on you. Eugenia Campos was not worth the risk. Besides, his wife would be hurt, and his three daughters would be disappointed. And his son . . . well, he didn’t want to think what Daniel might say—the kid had gone all sanctimonious recently. Guess he got that from his mother.

  To be honest, the Attorney General couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. And now Eugenia was getting bolder, more possessive. He could see where this was going, and he didn’t like it one bit. “Let me finish up here, honey. Then I’ll meet you at the usual place.”

  Something needed to be done, he thought as he slowly recradled the phone and his mind worked through the possibilities.

  July 2012

  Las Vegas

  The morning sun streaming through the open shades assaulted me. Without opening my eyes, I groaned and rolled over. A headache pounded behind my right eye; a bit too much bubbly last night. Jean-Charles had warned me, but I hadn’t listened. He had been kind enough to walk me to the elevator, but I’d made the final trek to my bed alone. Casual sex made me twitchy. With sex came connection . . . and commitment—at least where I was concerned. And I’d had more than enough of both lately to develop a healthy distaste for more.

  I sneaked one eye open. Yes, it looked like my apartment—boxes stacked everywhere. Although I’d been in residence several months, I’d yet to unpack fully, treating my apartment like a way station rather than a home, which was a pretty good metaphor—my life on hold. Clearly I was waiting for something, I just didn’t know what.

  A trail of clothes stretched toward the living room, but that was as far as I risked looking. If I moved my head, I was rewarded with a stabbing pain that felt like an ice pick in my eye, so I quickly decided to keep my head immobile. Taking a deep breath, I searched for the aroma of coffee, the cure for everything that ailed . . . well, everything except the broken heart thing—apparently that wasn’t a quick-fix deal.

  No coffee. Programming the damned thing clearly fell outside my skill set, so instead of providing coffee, the machine just delivered a dose of humility. That coffee pot was not long for this world . . . provided I could figure out how to move without having my head explode.

  From behind a copy of Billboard magazine, Miss P glanced at me as I pushed through the office door. “Teddie’s song Lucky for Me is in the top five pop tunes this week.” She shrank a little at my glare and folded the paper, placing it in her bottom drawer. “Just thought you would want to know.”

  “You thought wrong.” I hated that Teddie considered it to be a good idea to trot out our checkered love life as fodder for the masses. If he was angling to get my attention, he succeeded, but I don’t think unabated fury was the reaction he’d hoped for.

  Miss P
trailed me into what would be my new office—if the construction guys ever decided to show up and finish it. She stopped once to grab a mug of coffee, which she pressed into my hand as I sank gingerly into my desk chair.

  Closing my eyes, I savored the medicinal hit of the first sip of caffeine. Don Francisco’s Vanilla Nut. Miss P clearly was attempting amends for the blindside.

  “He is trying, can’t fault him that,” she offered in a conversational tone.

  I refused to be drawn in. When I finally opened my eyes, Miss P perched on the edge of the chair facing my desk, looking at me with a mixture of concern and irritation. With short, spiky blond hair, subtle makeup that highlighted her large eyes and a pouty yet prim mouth, she looked a decade younger than she had before Teddie’s makeover.

  Teddie . . . I blinked a few times batting away the memory. For once I was successful.

  Miss P, in her cool, pale pink silk blouse and white slacks, looked every inch the casino executive she was. Until recently, she had been my stalwart assistant. Now as the Head of Customer Relations for the Babylon, her job was to support the new V.P. thereof, which would be me. So even though we both had moved up in pay grade, nothing had really changed . . . other than she had my comfy old office and I lived in a construction zone.

  A single lightbulb dangled from its cord in the center of the ceiling—a temporary fixture, which cast a circle of light that illuminated my desk but left the corners of the room shadowed. Probably just as well. I didn’t want to see the buckets of paint and all the other junk piled there—it just made me angry. But really, how much could two guys with one hammer do? I tried to adjust my expectations lower, but it was impossible . . . they bounced off the bottom as it was.

  With my right hand, I arced through the thin layer of dust that whitened the burled, black walnut of my desk and tried not to scowl. Everything in my life seemed to be under construction.

  “Quite a day you had yesterday,” Miss P remarked, her voice modulated to an emotionless monotone.

  I snorted, then instantly regretted it. I was pretty sure if I did it again, part of my brain would ooze out my nose. “Do you think Denny Mix could help me remember stuff I’ve forgotten?”

  “Denny Mix?” Miss P’s voice remained steady, matter-of-fact.

  While not perhaps in the top tier of hypnotists in town, Denny still had a good reputation for bringing in a crowd . . . and he was cheap. Personally, hypnotists scared the hell out of me—abdicating control over my behavior to implanted suggestions from a modern-day snake oil salesman wasn’t even close to my comfort zone. But if the clue to getting to the bottom of the Campos mess was buried somewhere in the deep dark recesses . . . well, it seemed like a small sacrifice to keep the whole bomb thing from happening again. Assuming, that is, that Dane was right and Albert Campos was merely a stooge. And assuming Mona’s assertion that I knew more than I remembered proved to be accurate. And assuming Denny Mix could help me remember. Several very huge assumptions.

  As she gave me the once-over, Miss P’s eyes widened slightly, but that was her only reaction. “How much did you have to drink last night?”

  I shot her a disapproving look. “I can remember last night, well, most of it anyway. I’m pretty sure I have a mild case of PTSD or something, but that’s not what I’m talking about.” I pushed at a Lucite paperweight holding a few papers on my desk. A golden cockroach encased in the clear plastic, it had been a present from the staff after I had a run-in with a guest who had smuggled thousands of the beasts into the hotel. “I need to access repressed details from an event that happened when I was four.”

  “I don’t know… stuff that happened before the earth was cool might be more difficult.”

  “Or at least more pricey.” I gave her a grin—I could rally, even when the chips were down . . . and someone was jackhammering inside my skull.

  “The deeper you dig—” She left it hanging there, earning my eternal gratitude. “That bomb . . . you could’ve been killed.”

  I just looked at her while trying to think of something clever to say, but the truth sort of deflated me.

  Luckily I was rescued by a voice emanating from the front office. “Hey, doesn’t anybody work here anymore?”

  Miss P looked alarmed, which made me smile. The voice belonged to Flash Gordon, my best friend and the top investigative reporter for the local rag, The Review-Journal. She had the loyalty of a Labrador retriever, the smarts of a Border collie, and the bite of a Pit bull . . . and she made Miss P all twitchy, which was her best trait.

  “Work?” I raised my voice ignoring the jolt of pain, which was quickly abating—caffeine, a miracle drug. “Of course not, we’re management.”

  Flash appeared in my doorway, took one glance around, then plopped on the couch along the wall behind Miss P, forcing her to angle her chair to the side.

  Today Flash sported faded jeans with strategic holes, for which I’m sure she paid a King’s ransom. Her ample figure filled a hot-pink tee shirt to the bursting point. Her red hair fell in a cascade of messy waves, and along with her slightly full lips and bedroom eyes, it gave her the look of someone who had spent the night abusing some hapless lover, which was probably closer to the truth than I could handle at this early hour.

  “So girlfriend, how’re you holding up this fine morning?” Flash’s tone telegraphed concern—a rare occurrence. “To be honest, you’re looking a bit owl-eyed and green around the gills.”

  Imagine, Flash going all motherly on me; I must have looked as bad as I felt. “Thanks for stopping by to make me feel better.”

  “Feel better?” Flash scoffed. “Hell, I just wanted to see what was left.”

  “Preside over my demise? I knew I could count on you to sift through the remains.”

  “The lengths I have to go to for a story.” She gave me an exaggerated pout.

  My face must’ve sobered as I saw a reflective, anticipatory sobering in hers. “There is something you can do for me.”

  “Name it.” She leaned toward me.

  “I’m trying to piece together the details of the bombing at Jimmy G’s when I was four. Can you go through what you’ve put together so far?”

  Flash blew at a tendril that hung in her eyes, then chewed on her lip for a moment as she culled through her mental database. She rose, then plopped a butt cheek on the corner of my desk as she glanced between Miss P and me, bringing us both into her gaze. “Short and sweet?” She paused, giving me a questioning lift to one eyebrow, then continued at my nod. “The police reports were pretty specific. The Big Boss was late meeting your mother and you, which was unusual. No one could remember him being anything but early before.”

  I stared at the wall behind Flash as my eyes lost focus, searching for clarity in the murky past. “Mother was worried, I remember that. She had a box, something for my father.” I refocused on Flash. “Was there any mention of that in the reports?”

  She shook her head. “No, the only thing your father said was that he’d received a phone call just as he was leaving the office. Something about a problem at the site he needed to deal with.”

  “Did he say who called?”

  “No, just that the voice was female.”

  “No mention of a name attached to that voice?” I leaned back in my chair, fully intending the question to be rhetorical.

  “Not yet, but I’ve got a lead for you.” Flash paused, giving in to her penchant for melodrama.

  I didn’t give her the satisfaction of showing my surprise. “And?”

  “I was pumping Crayfish . . . ” She shot a sideways glance at Miss P whose face remained impassive. “For more info. He was still wet behind the ears back then, but that bomb was one of his first big cases.”

  Crayfish Crider was one of Flash’s more nauseating forays into casual sex—he was old enough to be her grandfather, and he had a penchant for weird sexual . . . devices. I tried to close my mind to the visuals. “And he remembered something?” I pushed.

  “He so
rta went all wonky on me when I pushed him too far. But he did say to ask Matilda, that she knew more than she’d let on.”

  Great. My day had just gone from as-bad-as-it-gets to worse.

  Flash must’ve seen the look on my face. “You know who Matilda was?”

  “Is . . . she’s my aunt . . . sort of. It’s a long, sordid tale.” I leaned back, placing my hands palm down on my desk, and stared at my two friends. “Aunt Matilda, how does she fit into all of this?”

  Las Vegas

  1982

  Albert Rothstein raced out of Mama Farina’s, his heart pounding, a cold sweat gripping him. Davis Lovato was never late—tardiness was one of his pet peeves. No, this whole thing reeked of a setup. The guys from the desert hadn’t made their move—he’d been waiting for it. But would they really go after his family?

  The Family had its rules, its code of conduct, and killing women and children was considered bad form. But that had been before, in the old Vegas. The new blood came with new rules. Albert’s heart constricted as he jumped into his car, turned the key, then floored it, racing out of the parking lot with a squeal of rubber.

  Jimmy G’s wasn’t far.

  * * *

  Mona, dressed in short shorts, a halter top and a smile, perched on the stool at the bar nearest to the front door. After two washings and fifty strokes of the brush, just as her mother had taught her, her deep mahogany hair with copper highlights shone as it cascaded past her shoulders. Large, dark doe eyes, high cheekbones, and a neck to rival Audrey Hepburn’s, Mona pretended to be oblivious to the heads she turned. Even though she was Albert’s, she still liked to preen for the men. As she waited, her long thin legs crossed, she dangled a flip-flop from her foot, bouncing it as her excitement grew. She looked all of sixteen, which wasn’t too far from the truth, although she kept her age a closely guarded secret. Even Albert didn’t know. Her smile dimmed.

  “Mom?”

  Mona’s smile returned to its former wattage as she gazed at the young girl squirming on the stool next to her. Only four, Lucky was as lean and lanky as a colt.