Death On the Flop (31 page)

“Ben’s company.”

“Ben was actually one of our suspects but, during our interview, he offered to help us get information about Stan. There were rumors of Stan smuggling something between here and Mexico but no one knew exactly what it was. Ben had heard on from an online chat that it might have to do with prescription drugs. We went with it because Ben was already registered for the tournament. We didn’t think he’d try to act like James Bond, for God’s sake.”

“Hey,” Ben said.

“Focus mode,” I said.

“Anyway, the drug angle we had. The snuff films were a surprise. We now think that the operation is double sided. They smuggle out the snuff and smuggle in the prescription drugs.

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Ben?”

“It was stupid to bring you to Vegas,” Frank said, glaring at Ben. “I couldn’t figure out why he would have put you in danger. Your presence made it look like he might be in it with Stan and trying to throw us off the scent by offering to help.”

“But why?”

“Well, you could pass for one of Stan’s Squeezes.”

“Yah, maybe twenty years ago.”

“You could’ve fooled me, I told you that.”

I tried not to blush. It would dilute my anger, and I wanted to stay mad. “So at the bar, you were trying to figure out if I was a bad guy or good guy?”

Frank nodded.

“When did you decide?”

“When you called me, I thought it might be a setup. But when I saw you, how sincerely upset you were, I knew it wasn’t. Then I was worried because I knew that either Ben had gotten in over his head or he was in deep with the bad guys. Either way you were in danger. When you happened on Conner and Pete in the stairwell, it just made it worse.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I couldn’t. Not only was the investigation classified, but the more you knew, the more danger you were in. And the more I got to know you, the more danger I was in, because I cared a little too much to work on this with the proper perspective.”

There was no stopping the heat that slid up my neck, then other places down a little lower. Hmm. “You’re just saying that.”

Frank hitched that right eyebrow. “You think so?”

I was drawn into those deep dark eyes. Slowly I shook my head.

“Hey, you
cared
too much? What does that mean!” My wimp of a brother chimed in, suddenly feeling better. “What went on between you two, anyway? Did you take advantage of my sister, Frank? Am I going to have to clean your clock?”

Frank and I started laughing. It felt so good after the stress of the last few days that I almost couldn’t stop. Behind us Ben had sat up in bed. “I wasn’t kidding, you know. I can hurt you. My sister’s already had her heart broken once this week.”

I cocked my head at Ben. Not only did Frank outweigh Ben by fifty pounds right now, he also was ten times tougher. “Ah, Toby didn’t really break my heart. Bruised it up a bit maybe. I don’t think it would feel this good right now if it were broken.”

Ben shook his head and flopped down in the bed. It was a bit too deep for the man who was the president of the Slam, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am Club.

“Why didn’t they kill you, Ben?” Frank asked.

“Hell if I know,” Ben croaked. “I followed Stan and heard him talking to this tall guy in a suit and short sweaty fatso about problems with ‘the shipments’ and a driver who got suspicious that they had to get rid of.”

“Rudy,” I breathed. Frank nodded.

“Then, I followed Stan back to the Hold ’Em tables, sat next to him and during our play, told him I worked for a drug company and wanted to find an outlet for some of the drugs I lifted. I gave him my room number.”

Frank shook his head. “Smooth, Ben. Why didn’t you just draw X’s across your head and Bee’s for them to use as target practice. Thank God she wasn’t there when they came to get you, you fool.”

Ben shrugged and looked ever so slightly sorry. “Hey I’m a sales guy, I was trying to sell him so I could turn him over to you. I didn’t like being a suspect.

“Anyhow, the two dudes from earlier attacked me in the room, knocking me out. I remember coming to in another room and hearing Stan tell them that we had to find out how much I knew so they could figure out how much they would have to change before they offed me. I guess I didn’t tell them enough when I was drugged. Or maybe they kept me drugged until they could question me.”

“Stan told me they were going to make you a star,” I said softly. “I think they’d planned to use you in one of the snuff films.”

Ben paled even more. “You’re kidding.”

Frank shrugged. “Makes sense. They were the ultimate opportunists. That would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

Patterson walked in, sliding his cell phone back into a holder on his hip. “That was our computer geek. He says the computer chip you found in the briefcase had what appears to be an authentic snuff film. The girl is young, Mexican, possibly a sixteen-year-old who went missing from Nogales. The man is Caucasian. Unidentifiable. You never see his face. She is strangled to death.”

Patterson paused and we all sat there in a brief silence, lost in our thoughts, mourning a girl we didn’t know.

I suddenly remembered Rudy’s sister and the threats against her. I told Patterson about them both. He spoke to one of the uniforms who left quickly.

“Patterson, you also need to get a hold of Deidre, to see if this is the film she saw, if not, there are others,” Frank said, his face stony.

Patterson nodded. “The FBI and DEA are both on their way. This investigation is far from over. Suffice it to say that the three of you have uncovered a labyrinth of crime and I imagine we haven’t even seen down most of its corridors.”

Patterson’s phone rang. “What?” he demanded of the caller so sharply, we all looked at him. He barked some orders into the phone and hung up saying “I’ll be right back.”

He looked at all of us. “Conner didn’t shoot Stan. His department issued bullet was found lodged in the wall behind Stan. Crime scene suspects from the blood splatter that the bullet that killed Stan came from forty-five degrees to the right of where Conner held you, Miss Cooley.”

I didn’t see Frank and Ben for another six hours. Inves
tigators, federal and local, were interrogating Ben at the hospital while he was hooked up to an IV to treat his severe dehydration. Frank was locked in a room in the Cook County Sheriff ’s Department with the FBI and DEA. I wasn’t even sure which agency was interviewing me, although I’d guess it was federal, since they seemed to have the upper hand. Patterson was cooperating, but clearly unhappily.

I hoped the law enforcement turf war didn’t compromise the investigation. I knew there had to be others out there who knew enough about the operation to keep it going with a new smuggling venue. And, I had a sinking feeling that Stan was just a lackey himself. The real boss was still out there, somewhere. Maybe he was the one who’d pulled the trigger, killing the King of Hold ’Em.

“Feel free to wait for Frank, if you wish,” Patterson told me, when I was finally released, dry mouthed from talking too long, thick headed from lack of sleep, yet jittery from too much coffee. “But they may keep him for the rest of the day.”

Day? I looked out the tinted window in amazement. It had to be near noon already.

“If you decide to go back to your hotel, I will have an officer drive you and escort you through the media, which I’m sure is not only downstairs here but waiting for you at the Lanai. We’ll slip you out and in the back ways.”

“Thank you,” I breathed. The thought of the media sticking microphones in my face was more than I could deal with right then. I was longing for a bed. “You’ll let Frank know I’ll be at the room?”

He nodded and motioned to a uniformed officer in the corner of the room. We went down the service elevator and to the basement where an unmarked police car was waiting for us. I nodded off before we were barely a block away. The cop had to shake me awake when we stopped in the basement of the Lanai. I felt like a zombie as we made it blessedly back to Frank’s room without encountering anyone but a few guests who gave me curious looks. I must have looked like death warmed over. Talk about bags. I bet I could trip on them.

“You’re famous, I guess, huh?” the officer asked.

“Why do you say that?”

“Those people looked like they wanted your autograph.”

“I thought they looked like they wanted to give me a years supply of antiwrinkle cream.”

The cop just shook his head and smiled. Sweet boy.

I thanked him and let myself into our room. I threw my purse down on the couch and walked straight to my bedroom.

“You’ve been quite busy, haven’t you, Miss Cooley?”

I paused in the doorway and hoped I was hallucinating. That sure sounded like slick Cyrano or Ranocy or whatever his real name was. I looked over my shoulder. He was sitting in the chair with a gun pointed at my heart.

I survived Conner only to be killed by a porn freak. That pissed me off something fierce. “What do you want?”

“Ballsy aren’t we.” Cyrano smiled without any humor. I tried not to show the chill that slipped down my spine. “Considering I could kill you by moving my finger a millimeter.”

“I’m low on sleep, it makes me cranky.”

“My employees cheating me makes me cranky,” Cyrano snapped.

Since I had turned down the opportunity to work for him, I raised my eyebrows, crossed my arms over my chest and waited.

“Tell me what my boy Stan has done. The news is sadly misinformed. They are saying he got caught in a card scam, that Conner was in it with him. They’re stupid. There’s no card scam.”

“Not that I know of anyway,” I said.

“Then why have they arrested Conner? Why are they calling Stan a criminal mastermind? Gopher is more like it,” he scoffed.

“He’s dead, Cyrano,” I said, watching him carefully, wondering how the news crews had left that part out.

“I know that, you stupid woman, I shot him.”

Oh. Well, then.

“I want to know why they
were
after him.”

“Lots of reasons,” I began slowly, watching his finger as his hand began to tremble slightly from the effort of holding up the gun. “Do you want to rest your hand on your leg or something?”

He waved the gun at me. “Go on!”

“Stan was running a smuggling operation using Fresh Foods trucks—”

“I know that, he was running the operation for me. Porn videos on computer disks.”

I recoiled. “You know about the snuff films?”

“No! No! No! He was the one all this time!” he shouted, his face red. He narrowed his eyes. “I knew Stan was double crossing me. Listen to me, he was nothing but a low level porn dealer when he worked at the Hold ’Em table at my casino. “Your casino?” I blurted.

The Galaxy is mine, he confirmed. A money maker mostly, but in this case, if provided me the perfect opportunity to obtain my heart’s desire—an ambitious nobody to use. Stan had the buyers, I knew the suppliers down in Mexico. He used the trucks from Fresh Foods to bring in the videos and sell them. In return, I would sponsor him in his quest to be a Hold ’Em champion. I held up my end of the bargain, and he even sicced the cops on me when they came sniffing around about the snuff films. Cheating sicko murderer.”

Cyrano had become so distracted by his fury at Stan that the gun had gone off center from me. I tried to distract him further. “Well, that’s not all. They were also smuggling prescription drugs into Mexico—the same method, reversed.”

His face went purple. “They were cheating me there too!”

Cyrano paused and narrowed his eyes. “Was Conner in on this?”

“Apparently so,” I said, pleased to see the gun had drifted so far to the left I couldn’t see down the barrel anymore. Whew.

“I’ll kill him,” Cyrano hissed. “He was paid to keep the force from sniffing around the sales. He was paid to protect the DVD shipments. And instead he was becoming his own entrepeneur.”

Cyrano looked at me with a sudden shocking realization. “Is Conner talking to police?”

I shrugged. No way was I telling him Conner lawyered up. That would give Cyrano time to find someone behind bars to kill him, and the whole operation could go unpunished. “I don’t know, Cyrano, Conner sure knows how to work the system. I guess he could pin it all on Stan, but I’m guessing if Conner goes down, everyone goes down with him. You will be the big boss, he was just taking orders from you and Stan. Conner just strikes me as that type. And you do have the history with the cops as being a porn dealer. You’re the one who told me about that.”

“I’m going to have to go to prison.” Cyrano suddenly looked lost. “I can’t go to prison!”

“Bee!” I heard Frank yell on the other side of the door.

It all happened at once—the gunshot, the glass shattering, another gunshot, and two bodies hurling through the room, one out the window.