LAS VEGAS, 1987
“Do you know why I've always hated that bastard Riordan?” Bic said. “He reminds me of my father. He's an arrogant bastard who thinks he is king shit. My father said he hired him because he walked tall. The guy was nothing but street trash, a cheap hustler, and a crook. Know what my old man caught him doing?”
Janelle grinned as he talked. She knew only too well what Con Halliday caught Zack doing.
They were in the living room of the house that was on the ranch Bic inherited from Con. Like everything else he touched, the ranch had gone from a money-making spread with two employees to a dry hole Bic retreated to when things got too hot for him in town, which was most of the time.
“Dad always favored Riordan, liked him better than his own son. And Riordan played him, sure as hell, he knew how to ingratiate himself with my father, kiss his ass.”
Janelle let him blow off steam. She had her own opinion of why Con and Zack had clicked and it had nothing to do with ass kissing. Bic was almost dead right when he said that the two were cut from the same mold. But they weren't twins.
She never thought of Con as particularly smart; instead of real smarts he had an ability to read people, along with a bravado that mowed them down. She thought of Zack as having real smarts. She had smarts, too, and she was finally going to use them to get what she wanted. Zack owed her. She felt that Zack had cheated her. Yeah, she had played that creep Windell, manipulating him into scamming Halliday's, but in her own mind she had been driven to it by Zack. He had treated her like dirt, drawing away from her after he got his break at Halliday's, acting like a lap dancer wasn't good enough for him, wanting her to give up the dancing and constantly slamming her because she needed a fix once in a while to face the dirty world around
her. She hated Zack, hated him for his arrogance, for his strength, for getting her busted.
She met Bic purely by accident. After getting out of jail, she left Nevada with her probation officer's permission and knocked around L.A. and San Diego for a while, serving cocktails in lounges and doing tricks out in the parking lot. She made a connection with a small-time drug pusher who supplied her and moved in with him and was soon introduced to the “business” of selling drugs.
When a friend who hauled the products to Vegas got busted, she drove a kilo herself across the state line and delivered it to a man in a bar on the west side of town. Bic was with the buyer, financing the deal for a piece of the kilo at wholesale prices. He recognized her as a former Halliday's dealer and Zack's girlfriend, and as soon as she bad-mouthed Zack, she and Bic became old friends.
“He turned my father against me, turned Morgan against me, and stole the club. I should own half of it, but I've only got a third and I don't really own that. Morgan controls it and he controls her. Now that bastard is going to lose even that to make himself a big shot on the Strip. My father knew better than to mess with the Strip. It's nothing but an ego trip.”
Janelle's eye caught a picture of a woman on the end table next to the couch. “Who's that?”
“My mother. She was beautiful, a Follies dancer, a real star.”
To Janelle the woman in the picture was just another Vegas showgirl, a product cranked out by the town by the thousands, but if Bic wanted to think of her as something special, that was okay with her. She usually wasn't submissive to a man, but in this case she had her reasons. Bic needed a woman he could dominate and she needed what he hadâan inheritance worth millions.
“She killed herself when I was seven, walked in front of a train. She couldn't stand my old man. She killed herself because she couldn't take his abuse anymore. He doesn't care about anyone but himself. He used to tell people she greased the railroad tracks. I heard him say that a dozen times. He's not capable of loving anyone.”
“What about Morgan?”
“He treats her okay because she knows how to handle him. If she had ever got in his way, he would have treated her like shit, too. But I was never tough enough, smart enough, or fast enough for him. The
old man said the only thing I succeeded at was failure. Real encouraging words, huh.”
Janelle listened and stroked him. She cooked heroin in a teaspoon over a candle and soaked a cigarillo in it. Bic smoked the dope and soon was relaxed. She learned how to manipulate his drugs, sometimes giving him cocaine to elevate him and heroin to bring him back down. Right now she was expecting company and wanted him out of the way. As he was slipping into sleep, she stroked him and rubbed his groin. She knew he was impotent from wasting his body with drugs, but she kept up the pretense with him.
She waited outside and smoked a joint until sunset, when the yellow Camaro she was expecting drove down the road. The man who stepped out of the car was big, over six-foot-two and weighing in at two hundred twenty. He wore sunglasses, thousand-dollar cowboy boots, a Stetson, and five-hundred-dollar silk shirts. His tight black jeans bulged in the crotch.
“Hello, lover.” She gave him a wet kiss.
Diego Gomez squeezed her buttocks. “Missed me, baby?”
“Yeah, I missed your cock and your dream powders.”
“I can fix that real quick.”
He retrieved a gym bag from the trunk and followed her into the house.
“Where's your friend?”
“Sleeping, but keep the noise down. He might wake up.”
“Nice place,” he said, throwing the gym bag on a couch. “But not exactly a millionaire's ranch.”
“It is a millionaire's ranch, but Bic doesn't spend much time out here. Neither did his dad. He said his father bought the place for old times' sake, so he could keep up the pretense of being a Texas rancher. They own Halliday's in town.”
Diego whistled. “And the guy's a drugged-out slug?”
“He's getting there. You bring me the stuff?”
“In the bag.”
She opened the bag and pulled out a kilo of cocaine, a metropolitan telephone bookâsized package wrapped in plastic and aluminum foil. “I'll need more heroine, too,” she said.
“I'll get it, but you should get your contacts into crank and away from coke. It's the drug of choice for the future. Crank can be made
anywhere; people mix the meth and other shit in their kitchens, it's dirt cheap, and gives a better kick than cocaine.”
He sat down on the couch and pulled her onto his lap. He kissed her as he put his hand between her legs.
“So what's the scam, baby?”
“You mean what's in it for you.”
“What's in it for us?”
“I'll bet you if we swept the property with a metal detector, we'd find millions in gold and silver buried. That's how these casino owners are. Con Halliday used to fill a suitcase with money from the counting room before the feds put a stop to it.”
“So let's do it. I'll buy a metal detector.”
“No, he'd have the sheriff after us in five minutes. Besides, there's more involved than that. Bic's sister is married to a guy I used to know, Zack Riordan. Zack's building a five-hundred-million-dollar casino with money from Bic and his sister.”
“You're shitting me. Five hundred million bucks?”
“And Bic owns a third of the club. Can you imagine what life would be like if we controlled a third of the biggest club in Vegas?”
“Christo, it would be like being a king. The goddamn president would kiss your ass.”
“That's why we forget about the buried crap. This is my opportunity to connect big time, as big as it can get. And to exact some revenge on a bastard who has it coming. When I'mâ”
“Don't forget it's we, baby, we.”
“I keep asking, you greaser bastard, what do I get out of it from you?”
Diego grabbed his crotch. “This baby, you get to suck me. That's good enough for any woman.”
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Diego had her bent over the arm of the couch and was pumping her doggie style when Bic staggered into the darkened living room. “Janelle? Where are you?” His words were slurred.
She pulled down her dress as she walked across the room.
“Right here, hon.”
“I thought I heard somebody else.”
“It's my delivery man, hon, bringing the candy I ordered for you.”
MACAO, 1987
Macao still smelled like sweaty gym clothes.
I called Wan to talk about old times before I left Las Vegas. He told me Luis had had a 9mm café coronary, taking a shot between the eyes as he ate a plate of
chouriço
sausages. Not one to cry over spilled blood, Chenza had jumped into bed with a Japanese computer tycoon and moved on to Tokyo.
Wan now controlled most of the gambling of Macao and a big chunk of Hong Kong. It sounded like he was rolling in dough. I never mentioned A-Ma on the phone because I wasn't sure if she was still with him. I did mention I needed an angel for my project. The price tag on my super casino was running over five hundred million. To complete the financial package, I needed a hundred million to go with what I had already raised. Once I had it, a commitment by the banks for the balance would kick in. That kind of money was chicken feed to the Hong KongâMacao crowd, and the clock was ticking for Wan and his triad buddies. When the Chinese Communists marched in, they knew better than to hang around waving a red flag. And before they got out, they needed to pad their nests with investments in safe locales.
Wan couldn't directly loan me anythingâneither the feds nor the state gaming people would approve a license if he did. What I wanted from him was clean money from people he had juice with. As long as the third parties could show an honest source for the money, I wouldn't have a problem. What went on between them and Wan was their business. Bottom line, I would not get a dime from Wan and would owe him nothingâexcept my life, if I fucked up.
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I was delightfully surprised when I found A-Ma waiting for me in the 1930ish Rolls Royce limo parked outside the wharf reception area.
A-Ma looked exquisite. She wore a dark silky red dress that came down to her ankles. A seductive slit went up to her thighs. Her hat
was small and round, with a mesh veil that fell over her face. A single string of priceless pink Indian pearls showed between the high collars of the dress. She looked like the model of a 1936 issue of
Vogue
. Her perfume attacked my senses, but I didn't need an aphrodisiac. One look at her and I forgot about the hundred million dollars I wanted from Wan.
“I wore the dress especially for you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Then take it off.”
“No, the color. Red is the color of luck. You will need it in dealing with Mr. Wan.”
“What color will he be wearing?”
“Hopefully not white. White is the color of death and mourning.” Her eyes appraised me. “You look different,” she said.
“So do you.”
“You look older ⦠more manly.”
I didn't know what she meant by that, but she could have told me I looked like the woman on the Aunt Jemina box and I wouldn't have disagreed.
“You look like a Popsicle,” I said.
“A what?”
“A cool, sweet juice bar that tastes heavenly on hot days.”
“Mr. Riordan, I'm not sure that's a compliment.”
“You smell like Eve in the garden. Chanel No. 5?”
“Ylang-ylang, from what we call the perfume tree.”
“Marilyn Monroe had the best way of wearing perfume.”
“Which is?”
“She said it was the
only thing
she wore to bed.” I leaned across the seat, pulled up her veil, and brushed her lips with mine. “I thought so. Cool and sweet. For a man who's been crossing a scorching desert, you are an oasis.”
“You don't look very deprived, Mr. Riordan.”
“You haven't looked at my love-famished soul. And if you call me Mr. Riordan again, I'm going to rape you.”
“Is that a promise ⦠Mr. Riordan?”
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“A-Ma has become a problem to me,” Wan said. “Now that she is a movie star, she attracts too much attention for an old man seeking the peaceful anonymity he has earned for his many years.”
There was one thing I had learned in working with Wan: You could always tell when he was lying. It happened every time his lips moved. He hated the attention created by escorting a beautiful woman as much as lions hated red meat. He had a reason for priming the pump about his “problem” with A-Ma and it had nothing to do with his sudden penchant for privacy. Whatever it was, at the moment it appeared to be tipping the scales in my favor.
As soon as we reached Wan's “palace,” Wan and I got down to business after the preliminaries of hello and an offer of tea. I passed on the tea and went for a Jack Coke. “A bottle of Jack Daniels was left over from your last visit,” he said, too polite to mention I was almost murdered during my last visit to Macao.
He wore a black robe for our meeting. I didn't know what black meant.
“We heard about the unfortunate attack on you in Las Vegas, and your narrow survival.” He clicked his tongue. “America is such a violent country.”
I choked on my drink. “Mr. Wan, I'm going to have to bend the laws of politeness to a host and tell you that you are the most amazing bastard I have ever met.”
He shook a bony yellow finger at me. “A-Ma tells me you are different but I suspect that you have still not learned the art of patience. Instead of waiting for your enemies to float by, you go out and bludgeon them.”
“Let's get down to brass tacks before I end up floating facedown in some goddamn Chinese river. I need a hundred million dollars in clean money. The person who puts it up will have a foothold in the biggest money machine in Vegas. What can you do for me?”
He shook his head with true Chinese regret. “Nothing, I'm afraid. As you pointed out during our telephone conversation, a single dollar from me in the pile and you would never get a license.”
I sipped my Jack Coke and waited. Wan didn't have me fly halfway around the world for a simple answerâhe could have said no on the phone. But I needed to exercise some patience and let him expose what he had up his sleeve at his own pace.
“Hear any news of Chenza since the last time we talked?” I asked.
“An interesting and provocative woman. You know, there was a dark rumor that she lured LuÃs to that restaurant the day he was
killed because another woman was displacing her in his affections. But of course, one should not believe everything one hears, should one, Mr. Riordan?”
It was hard to keep a straight face. Wan no doubt was behind LuÃs's murder and convinced Chenzaâfor love or moneyâto assist in taking him out. What tangled webs this yellow spider wove.
Wan stroked his short beard. “It has occurred to me that perhaps you are approaching the wrong person with your need for financing. Have you spoken to A-Ma about the matter?”
He said it so casually that I almost bought into it as an innocent remark. I cleared my throat. So A-Ma was the game.
“No, uh, I haven't. I wasn't aware acting in Hong Kong movies was so profitable.”
“A-Ma does not just star in movies, Mr. Riordan; she owns the production company that makes her movies and many others. Because of the international nature of the business she has many financial contacts, even in your country.”
“I see,” said the blind mouse. But there was light at the end of the tunnel. Wan was a known Asian gangster and was probably monitored by the FBI, Interpol, and other police agencies. A-Ma was a young woman without a police record. It didn't take much imagination to realize that Wan not only owned the movie company, but probably didn't give a damn if any of his movies made a profit. He could pump money into accounts all over the world for production costs, publicity, and every other front he could think of ⦠and leave every dollar earned in foreign bank accounts.
“Do I have your permission to speak to A-Ma concerning the matter?” I asked.
“Of course, of course,” he cackled, “it is no affair of mine what she does with her money. But as her guardian, I do offer the young woman some small advice in financial matters. Perhaps you will let me help you arrange an agreement in which A-Ma assists you in financing your âsuper' casino?”
I bowed my head and saluted him with my drink. “Nothing would please me more, Mr. Wan. I'm sure A-Ma values your advice over all others.”