The Scam

by Janet Evanovich

  “Letting players destroy the cards like that would never fly in Vegas,” Billy Dee said.

  “The players aren’t as superstitious there,” Natasha said. “Many players here believe the way they reveal the cards has the power to change the numerical value.”

  “It didn’t work for that guy,” Boyd said.

  “He may not be a powerful person,” Natasha said. “I believe truly powerful men make their own luck.”

  They continued on across the casino floor toward a bank of elevators, and up to the eighth floor.

  Dumah was a big and broad-chested descendent of an Indonesian tribe that, as recently as a hundred years ago, had been feared throughout the South China Sea as headhunters and slave traders. Back then, he would have been a warrior, and his traditional dress would have been a necklace of wild boar teeth and tusks, a battle vest of woven rattan and water buffalo bone, and a rigid two-foot-long penis sheath with a sharp pointed end.

  Instead, as a security operative for Côte d’Argent, he wore a gray Dolce & Gabbana suit, a Patek Philippe gold watch, a radio transmitter in his ear, and nothing sheathing his penis but bikini briefs. His forefathers would have been deeply ashamed to see him like this.

  Nevertheless, Dumah was still a warrior, of sorts. He’d never lopped off a head or traded a slave, but he’d made his living throughout Asia on his muscles, menace, and willingness to commit acts of extreme violence to protect whomever hired him. He’d worked for corporate executives, government officials, Triad mobsters, and, for a short time, a U.S. investment banker who’d embezzled a half billion dollars and fled to a tiny Indonesian island, safe from extradition.

  That last job hadn’t ended well. It started to go bad the instant a spoiled American heiress and her servants showed up in a bullet-riddled yacht, leading the Bugis pirates who’d attacked them right to the island. The pirates took all the Americans hostage, but they let Dumah go unharmed. He’d bounced around Asia for a few months after that, before ending up as a security guard at Côte d’Argent. It was pure fate that he happened to be standing in the casino when Natasha Ling walked by with her latest group of junket guests.

  Dumah recognized two members of the group immediately. It was the heiress and her servant. Only that’s not who they were today, and that probably wasn’t who they were before. Either way, they deserved agony.

  He didn’t have a spear to fling at them, or a knife to cut their throats. What he had was a radio. He pressed the button in his pocket, activating the microphone, so that he could speak to his supervisor.

  “I need to see Mr. Trace,” Dumah said. “It’s urgent.”

  —

  The only difference between Trace’s private dining room in Côte d’Argent Macau and the one in Las Vegas were the paintings on the wall. In Macau, he displayed masterpieces by Qi Baishi, Chen Yifei, and Ai Weiwei to impress his Asian guests. He also had a print of the seven dogs playing poker to amuse himself. The dining room had the same atrium and koi pond, though the only koi that were ever in the pond were ones that he fed to the piranhas.

  Trace sat at his table beside the pond, browsing the South China Morning Post and eating a breakfast of steamed dim sum, Portuguese egg custard tarts, fresh fruit, and hot milk tea. He sported a carefully groomed three-day beard and was dressed casually in a blue-striped mandarin-collared, knot-buttoned dress shirt that was untucked over faded black jeans. He thought it was a look that straddled East and West but that fit with his devil-may-care image.

  Natasha Ling came in, smiling at him as she crossed the Plexiglas bridge that arched over the pond and into the dining room.

  “Mr. Sweet and Miss Porter have arrived with their guests,” Natasha said, taking a seat at the table. “They are up in the eighth-floor suite and are already gambling.”

  He set the newspaper aside. “What do we know about their guests?”

  “Lou Ould-Abdallah is from Mogadishu. He is a Somali warlord who has hijacked everything from oil tankers to yachts moving through the Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden. Sometimes he sets the crews free and sells the boats and cargo, and other times he holds the crew and vessels for ransom. He’s been known to behead his captives when negotiations aren’t going to his satisfaction.”

  “My kind of guy.” Trace took a sip of his milk tea. “How much did his last ransom bring him?”

  “One hundred million dollars,” Natasha said.

  Trace whistled appreciatively. “Nice haul. So he’s sitting on a pile of cash in the desert and looking to spend it on something besides another camel. What’s the other high roller’s story?”

  “Shane Blackmore is a Canadian mobster. He started in the trucking business, smuggling stolen goods between the U.S. and Canada, then branched out into narcotics distribution and sex trafficking,” she said. “He controls the drug and sex trade from Vancouver to Toronto.”

  “Vancouver and Toronto is about all there is between Vancouver and Toronto.”

  “That’s why he’s anxious to expand,” she said. “He’s got enough money stashed to buy his way into a business, legitimate or otherwise, somewhere else. He just needs to get his cash out of Canada to do it.”

  “I’m glad to be of service,” Trace said. “We could make a lot of money from these two. How did Sweet hook up with them?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Natasha reached for one of the egg tarts on Trace’s plate, and he slapped her hand.

  She slapped his face, hard enough to draw blood from the corner of his mouth.

  Trace licked the blood away and smiled. “That’s nice, but it’s more fun somehow when you’re wearing leather and stiletto heels.”

  She picked up the egg tart and took a bite out of it before speaking. “I can change my clothes if you’d like.”

  He was considering the pros and cons of that offer when Garver walked in. Garver moved with a lumbering, slightly hunched gait that looked as if he was fighting the urge to knuckle-walk like a gorilla. He was accompanied by one of Côte d’Argent’s security men, a big Indonesian who kept a respectful step or two behind Garver. Trace had seen the Indonesian around the casino but had never actually met him.

  “There’s something you’ve got to hear,” Garver said. “It’s about Sweet and Porter.” Garver gave the Indonesian a nod. “Tell him, Dumah.”

  “I met them two years ago, while I was a bodyguard for Derek Griffin,” Dumah said. If a grizzly bear could talk, Trace thought, he would sound like this guy.

  “The investment banker who ran off with a half billion dollars of his clients’ money? You were working for a celebrity. Why didn’t I know that?” Trace looked at Garver. “Do you remember seeing Griffin on Dumah’s résumé?”

  “I don’t read résumés,” Garver said. “I read scars.”

  “I haven’t told anyone about that job, Mr. Trace,” Dumah said. “The story I’m about to tell you is the reason why. Griffin was hiding out on an island, safe from extradition, when that woman arrived on a yacht. She said that she’d been attacked by Bugis pirates. The man she was with today was there, too, only he was her servant back then. That night, the pirates invaded the island, took the Americans hostage, and let me go.”

  “No wonder you don’t use Griffin as a reference,” Trace said. “I hope you show me more loyalty than you showed him.”

  “It’s true, I didn’t protect him. I saved myself instead. But I think by telling you about those two, and revealing my personal shame, that I am demonstrating my loyalty,” Dumah said. “I could have just waited for the right moment, slit their throats, and restored my dignity without anyone but me knowing that it had ever been lost.”

  “Fair point,” Trace said. “Go on.”

  “Two days after I left the island, Griffin was arrested in Palm Springs, California. It made no sense. How did he get there? What happened to the woman and her servant? There was never any news about them. It was as if they never existed.”

  “I can see why you’d be angry at the pirates,” Natasha said. “
But why do you want to kill Sweet and Porter?”

  “Because they are responsible for my shame,” Dumah said. “They either led the pirates to the island through their stupidity, or they brought them there intentionally. I knew something wasn’t right about those two the moment they came ashore. I warned Griffin that they were trouble, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He just wanted to get the woman into bed.”

  “Did he succeed?” Trace asked.

  Dumah shook his head, no. “Now he’s in prison and those two are here, but as entirely different people. They’re frauds. Whatever they’ve told you is a lie. They’re here to take something.”

  Or someone, Trace thought. Was it him? Or was it the Canadian mobster and the Somali warlord that they were entertaining upstairs? Or were they after something else entirely?

  Trace stood up. “I think it’s time we had a candid conversation with Sweet.”

  “Okay,” Garver said. “I’ll go get my lie detector.”

  “You do that,” Trace said. “Dumah, come with me.”

  —

  Another hand was about to be dealt in the eighth-floor VIP gambling suite, a luxury two-bedroom, harbor-view apartment with a baccarat table, a sitting area, and a well-stocked bar. Boyd put $1 million in chips on the betting line. Nick gambled $250,000 on Boyd’s hand, and Billy Dee wagered $100,000 with the dealer.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Boyd said to Billy Dee.

  “I’ve seen your luck,” Billy Dee said. “I’m here to win, not make friends.”

  They were an hour into play, and Nick and Billy Dee were up about $200,000, but Boyd was already down over a million dollars. This was Boyd’s swing for the fences to get it all back in one hand.

  Kate sat on a stool at the bar, watching the game and absentmindedly plucking items from the platters of dim sum and Portuguese pastries on the counter. At the rate Boyd was going, she was worried that he’d be tapped out in the next half hour and that she’d eat everything on the bar.

  The dealer was a pretty, young Macanese woman named Luisa, who was all smiles and girly enthusiasm on the surface, but in complete command of her table. She dealt the cards with swift efficiency. Luisa was ordered to do that by the casino. The faster the men played, the more they’d bet and the more likely it was that they’d lose.

  Standing beside Luisa was a grim-faced Macanese man named Tony who made notations on an iPad and watched the chips.

  Boyd flipped over his cards to reveal a pair of twos. He swallowed half of the Bloody Mary that was in front of him.

  “Hit me again, honey,” Boyd said, though he had no choice but to take another card. “Make it a five.”

  Luisa gave him a card. Boyd winked at her. She smiled coyly back at him and he flipped the card over. It was a seven. That gave him a measly one.

  “Bad luck,” Nick said.

  “The game isn’t over yet,” Boyd said and twirled his mustache.

  The dim sum was sitting like a rock in Kate’s gut. She could face down a two-hundred-pound man attacking with a knife and not break a sweat, but she was terrified at the thought of explaining the loss of a million dollars to her boss. Even without the threat of reprisal, Kate had a hard time justifying this kind of gambling. She was thrifty and law-abiding by nature, and that didn’t change just because she zipped herself into a sexpot dress.

  Luisa flipped over her cards, dealt herself one more, and came up with a hand that added up to ten, which in baccarat is equivalent to zero. She’d lost the game. Boyd had taken it with a one. It took a beat for it to sink in to Kate. Saved by the luck of the draw, she thought, letting out a whoosh of air.

  Boyd whooped, pumping his fist in the air. “That’s how you play the game. Watch and learn, boys.”

  Evan Trace strolled casually into the suite.

  Nick looked over at him. “Well, this is a nice surprise.”

  “For both of us,” Trace said, flashing his warmest smile. “I’m glad our trips here coincided. Now I can personally welcome you and your friends to Côte d’Argent Macau.”

  Nick stood up and turned to the others. “Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to—”

  “No freakin’ gondolas!” Boyd said, shouldering past Nick and thrusting his hand out to Trace. “Gambling straight up, that’s how I like it, too. Just deal the cards and screw the show. I’m Shane Blackmore.”

  Trace shook his hand. “I’ll tell you a little secret, Mr. Blackmore. Back when I was a gambler myself, my favorite casinos were the ones off the Strip, the dark rooms so thick with cigarette smoke that you could barely see the cards in your hands, but you could still smell the sweat, beer, and puke in the air.”

  “You just described my living room,” Boyd said. “And my office.”

  “That does not surprise me,” Billy Dee said to Boyd, then offered his hand to Trace. “I’m Lou Ould-Abdallah, but you may call me Lou. I’m glad you settled on a compromise between a casino that reeks of urine and one that’s shaken every twenty minutes by the eruption of a fake volcano. This suite is perfect. I couldn’t ask for anything more except, perhaps, a change in my luck.”

  “I can’t do anything about your luck, Lou,” Trace said, shaking Billy Dee’s hand, “but if you do think of something else you’d like, perhaps a masseuse to loosen your muscles after sitting at the table all day, just ask Natasha or one of our other staff members. We will see to your needs immediately.”

  “I’ve got some,” Boyd said with a mischievous grin. “I’d like a large Tim Hortons Caramel Latte Supreme and a dozen Honey Dip Timbits when you get a chance.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” Trace said and slipped his arm around Nick’s shoulder, like they were old chums. “Nick, do you have a few minutes? I’d like to steal you away for a quick chat.”

  “Of course.” Nick turned and winked at Kate as he walked away with Trace. “Keep my seat warm, honey. Win me a quarter million while you’re at it.”

  Billy Dee and Boyd returned to their seats at the table.

  “There probably isn’t a Tim Hortons within ten thousand miles of here.” Boyd grinned at Billy Dee and bet $100,000 on the next hand.

  “You like to needle people just to see how far you can push,” Billy Dee said, betting $100,000 with Boyd this time. “I’ve known men like you before, may they rest in peace.”

  The dealer looked up at Kate.

  “Will you be joining us?” Luisa asked.

  “Maybe later,” Kate said, moving to the bar while she eavesdropped on Nick and Trace through her earbud.

  Nick and Trace walked out of the suite, closed the door, and went to the elevator directly across the hall. Trace pressed the elevator call button.

  “What would you like to talk about?” Nick asked.

  “You, Nick. I’d like to get to know you better now that we’re doing business together.”

  “There isn’t much to tell. I’m just an international entrepreneur who takes advantage of new opportunities as they come along.”

  The elevator doors opened, and there was a Côte d’Argent security man waiting for them inside.

  Dumah, Nick thought. Crap.

  “Remember me?” Dumah asked Nick as Nick stepped into the elevator.

  “Of course I remember you,” Nick said, thinking how to choose his words so Kate would get a grip on this new development. “Congratulations, Dumah. It’s good to see you’ve found a job worthy of your skills.”

  Dumah caught him with a brutal sucker punch just below the rib cage and Nick folded, unable to breathe. Dumah grabbed him by the arm and propped him up.

  “You understand now that we need to have a serious discussion?” Trace asked Nick.

  Nick nodded, making an effort to relax, to give his lungs a chance to expand.

  “Good,” Trace said. “You’re going to allow Dumah to assist you across the floor to my office.”

  Nick nodded again.

  —

  Kate heard everything that was happening in the elevator through he
r earbud. So did Billy Dee and Boyd. They looked over at her with concern, and she smiled at them from behind the bar.

  “Go ahead and play without me, gentlemen,” she said. “I think I need some air. I’ll be right back.”

  Kate palmed a corkscrew from the bar and walked into the foyer. Natasha Ling was at the door, quietly standing, waiting to be of service.

  “I’m just stepping out for some air,” Kate said to Natasha.

  “I’m so sorry, but you’re not permitted to leave the suite at the present time,” Natasha said, blocking Kate’s path. “I suggest you go back to the bar and enjoy the game. Maybe have an egg tart. They’re quite delicious.”

  “I suppose I could.” Kate looked over her shoulder to make sure they were both out of view of the baccarat table before stepping close to Natasha and head-butting her. “But I won’t.”

  The hostess staggered back, stunned by the blow. Kate shifted the corkscrew to her left hand and decked Natasha with a solid right hook, bouncing her head off the door and knocking her out cold. Kate caught Natasha before she reached the floor, dragged the woman into the adjoining bedroom, closed the door, and continued on her way to rescue Nick.

  —

  Nick had recovered by the time the elevator reached the ground floor, but he stayed doubled over, gasping for air, forcing Dumah to support him. He needed a moment to organize his thoughts, to stall for time.

  Dumah half-carried, half-dragged Nick out of the elevator and across the noisy casino floor to the VIP salon.

  “The VIP salon seems like a nice place to talk,” Nick said. “We can have a few drinks, maybe play some cards after I catch my breath.”

  “I’d like a little more privacy,” Trace said. “I’m sure you understand.”

  He did. He also knew that Kate was listening and he wanted to let her know where he was, and the seriousness of their situation, without being too obvious about it.

  They led Nick through the salon, past the bar, to the door leading to Trace’s private dining room. There was a security man standing guard at the door. As they approached, the guard took a transparent key card out of his pocket and passed it over a sensor on the wall, and the door unlocked.