* * *
At midnight, as the calendar clicked to Friday the thirteenth, our weather update came from the news desk at the Weather One studios in Atlanta. It was straightforward, just the facts and frightening figures, delivered without wild speculation, sensationalism, or Sauvignon Blanc, because Chip Chapman was taking a nap at one of the megatower slot machines.
Lovely.
We would wake up to thirty-mile-an-hour winds, which would steadily increase throughout the morning. The outer bands with intermittent squalls of heavy rain would arrive by noon. Wind gusts would be up to sixty miles per hour. Hurricane Kevin was expected to make landfall between five and six in the afternoon.
Weather One gave last call.
If we weren’t out by ten the next morning, get to a shelter.
If we couldn’t get to a shelter, Godspeed.
After going through the long list of Storms with Mark Perry, eliminating thirteen as possible suspects, we directed our attention to the four Storms left. Specifically, how could six of us—me, Bradley, No Hair, Fantasy, Baylor, and Mark Perry—keep a constant eye on the Storm plumber, the Storm insurance agent, the Storm housekeeper (whose name, they said, was Mop, not Broom), and Filet, the Storm chef.
“Is Filet’s name really Filet, and is Mop’s name really Mop?” I asked.
As it turned out, the men were cousins, and on the suspect list by default for having been all over the Bellissimo all day with so many gaps in their surveillance histories.
“The nature of their jobs,” Mark Perry said. “Mop’s job is to gather supplies. He can’t adequately stock this floor without being on every other floor.”
I tried to check Bradley’s and Baylor’s surveillance notes. It wasn’t easy. For one, it was dark. For two, my eyes had stopped working. For three, Baylor had the handwriting of a second-grader. “We have him in the executive offices from two until 2:40.” Or it might have been 4:20. I dropped the notes to my lap. “Why would the housekeeper need to be anywhere near the executive offices?”
“Player Lost and Found,” Mark Perry said.
I chased a distant memory of Player Lost and Found on the executive floor. It was years old, the recollection, when Fantasy and I were working an undercover cocktail server job. Something about graveyard cocktail servers with advanced sleight of hand skills and table players claiming someone was swiping their $5,000 chips from right under their noses. (They were. Two sticky-fingered magical cocktail servers.) A barefoot woman wearing short shorts, a silk tank top, and nothing else tried to pull my arm off claiming she’d lost everything. She was standing in the middle of the casino floor without a purse, a phone, or even shoes, and not being a seasoned cocktail waitress who knew to turn her over to Security, I hurried her to Player Lost and Found only for her to explain to the woman at the desk it was her money she’d lost, playing slot machines. (“I lost everything,” she told her. “I mean it, everything.”) And wanted to know if Lost and Found had her money. I asked what happened to her shoes. She told me she sold them at a blackjack table for ten dollars.
“Why would Broom be in Lost and Found?” I asked Mark Perry.
“Mop?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Collecting electronics and electronic chargers.”
Ah.
“He netted several laptops, tablets, phones, and chargers we’ll need on the off chance we lose generator power.”
It wasn’t a bad storm idea, rounding up stray electronics.
Losing generator power, on the other hand, was a very bad idea.
Broom’s cousin Filet was on the suspect list for the same reason. We couldn’t nail him down on surveillance because he’d been all over the building, zipping in and out of venues, mostly restaurants, and way too many of those times out of the camera’s eye. Again, his job.
The insurance agent Storm hit the list for unaccountability.
“Two things about him,” Mark Perry said, him being Terry Enders, a claims adjuster with Gulf Shelter, who insured our gaming operations to the tune of $300,000,000 and our property for one billion. (Dollars.) “One, he seems like a great guy. Two, he’s here to assess damage after the storm. He has very little to do before, which was why you saw him wandering the building, helping out where he could.”
We had Plumber Storm—I didn’t even catch the man’s name—working steadily all day, accounted for, and nowhere near the casino. The only thing he was guilty of was being Wells Cannon’s successor; he was only on our radar because he’d replaced the dead man. And we’d need to replace the ice machine behind Shots where his dead body was on ice. Who’d want a drink made with ice a corpse had slept on?
“My turn,” Mark Perry said. “I need your help lowering the head count. Why are the gaming agents still here? What about the man with the pig? And the girl who took the blow to the head who’s explaining the slot machines? The women from Michigan are distracting everyone from doing their jobs, and the Weather One crew is out of control. The man in the FEMA jacket. What’s he doing here?”
The girl who took the blow to the head was explaining the slot machines?
What exactly was Danielle, who had no memory, explaining?
“If Weather One’s forecast holds,” Perry went on, “and we have until ten tomorrow morning to safely evacuate, I strongly suggest we lower our head count. The easiest would be the gaming agents. Let me close the casino. Let me round up my security staff, my men, who I trust, and let’s move the money to the Disaster vault tonight, let the gaming agents close the casino, and let them go.”
We should probably tell him. (There was no money to move.)
We didn’t. (Because we were still hoping to find it.)
“Back to the FEMA agent,” Mark Perry said. “I don’t see how we need him. Let’s put him on the road. He took up twenty valuable minutes of my time explaining if we had any horseradish we needed to dispose of it, because it would throw off luminol testing.”
“Let’s get back to the slot machines.” I could barely form words. “What was the girl who took the blow to the head explaining about the slot machines? Explaining what, exactly? Explain that to me.”
Every radio blared with an incoming call on channel zero, which was either another dinner bell from Filet or an ominous weather update.
“DAVID!”
My weary eyes popped open. I grabbed my radio. “Bianca, you’re on the wrong channel.”
“Excuse me, David? I’m trying to sleep.”
(Then why are you calling?)
“Bianca, please switch to channel ten,” I said. “The top arrow. Push the button until you’re on channel ten.”
“David, forevermore.” Everyone with a radio heard Bianca sigh. Which was everyone. “There is a shrill staccato bell interrupting—”
Someone cut in. “This channel is reserved to transmit weather updates and group-wide announcements. If you don’t mind—”
I looked at Mark Perry. “Who was that?”
“The communication Storm, Bennet Devlin.”
“Well, pardon me, you insolent man, whoever you are—”
The communication Storm broke in again. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind—”
“I mind very much,” Bianca said. “David, someone is on this line.”
Mark Perry grabbed his radio and jumped in. “Standby, Devlin. We’re working on it.”
No Hair said, “Work on it, David.”
“I told her channel ten!”
“David, this shrill bell. I need you to—”
Bradley asked Mark Perry what bell Bianca could possibly be talking about.
“She’s in the president’s suite?” he asked.
We nodded.
“Probably the satellite phone,” Perry said.
“Who would know the number to a satellite phone on Disaster?” I asked.
“DAVID!”
/> “Hey.”
As if it couldn’t get worse, it was a voice I knew, even over a radio. I’d married and divorced it twice. And I’d done everything within my power to keep Bianca from knowing Eddie the Idiot Crawford was there or him knowing she was. Those two had an ugly history and didn’t need to be in the same state, much less on the same floor of the same building.
“Hey.”
His vocabulary had diminished to the one word?
“Hey.”
I had my finger on the radio transmit button ready to let Eddie have it, when Bradley put a hand over the small speaker.
“There it is again, David,” Bianca said. To everyone. “I’m trying to rest. Do you understand the concept of rest?”
“Yeah,” Eddie the Idiot said. “I thought so.”
Mark Perry, ear perked, said, “That’s the satellite phone in the presidential suite.”
It was Bianca’s husband. The owner of the Bellissimo. Richard Sanders. The news of Hurricane Kevin’s turn for Biloxi had made its way to the ice holes of Norway.
* * *
After a half-hour conversation with Mr. Sanders on the satellite phone, we went our separate ways with our nightwork cut out for us. Mark Perry and the three other security Storms would patrol Disaster—no unauthorized entries or exits. Bradley and I, along with No Hair, Fantasy, and Baylor, would take heavily armed shifts searching the venues off the casino to look for our cash carts. We had until three a.m. to find the money, then the casino would be officially closed by Gaming. If we didn’t find the cash, the gaming agents would notify the state. Our hands would be slapped, our doors closed indefinitely, but only if there were doors left to close after Hurricane Kevin.
Bradley and I held hands walking the long concrete path from the helipad into Disaster.
He said, “I’ll go with you.”
“After we talk to them, can we disable the slot machines?”
He kissed the top of my head. “Yes.”
* * *
We spotted Eddie the minute we stepped on the industrial carpet of the single-room housing hall. He was sleeping propped up against Danielle’s door, his bandaged hand in his lap. His pig was wide awake and zigzagging up and down the hall, snout to floor, tracking something. She sounded like an air conditioner.
I nudged Eddie with my foot.
I nudged him a little harder.
He woke with a start. “Bacon?”
“She’s right there.” I pointed. “Move away from the door.” I had my knuckles ready. “We need to wake Danielle.”
“She’s not in there.”
The good news was if she wasn’t in her room, she was awake. The bad news was she was awake, but not in her room.
“Where is she?”
“How should I know?” Then he called for his pig. The pig, who couldn’t be blamed because she didn’t know any better, came waddling, then crawled into his lap.
I looked up and down the hall with a weary sigh. “Have you talked to her?” I asked. “Does she remember you?”
“Nope. She’s got anesthesia.”
“Amnesia.”
“That’s what I said.”
Bradley paced. “When was the last time you saw her, Eddie?”
“Her who?” he asked.
“Danielle.” I might have accidentally nudged him with my foot again.
“Before.”
“When before?” I asked.
“Before now.”
We might never know what happened that morning.
“Eddie.” I looked up and down the hall. Nothing. I lowered my voice anyway. “We need to talk.”
I coded us into Danielle’s room. There was no sign of her. Danielle Sparks had made a run for it, and I had no way of knowing if she’d taken her memory with her or not. If not, she could be wandering up and down Beach Boulevard. That left Eddie to fill in the many blanks. Half an hour later, the only thing we’d learned was next to nothing, and the something we did learn was chilling.
Eddie woke when the officer arrived for the transfer to city jail. According to him, the officer unlocked the cell and let the three of them—he miraculously remembered his friend Jug being there when I waved photographic evidence from surveillance in his face—out of the drunk tank. Jug went one way; he, Danielle, and the officer went the other. Where did Jug go? To his van. Just outside the back door.
So it was Jug’s van on the surveillance feed.
Jug Dooley was in big trouble.
When I asked Eddie if he knew why Jug’s van was outside our dungeon door, he told us the fake officer needed to borrow it. Which made no sense. Then the fake officer asked Eddie and Danielle to help load it. Which made even less sense. The way Eddie told the story, it made perfect sense that a police officer would need to borrow one drunk’s van, then ask two other drunks to help load it in exchange for pig retrieval.
Eddie went on to tell us the problems started when he, Danielle, and the fake officer entered the casino on their way to Bacon, and the officer didn’t find what he was looking for. He didn’t know what the fake officer was looking for.
We knew.
Next, there was a scuffle, Eddie was shot, Danielle was dead (again with dead Danielle), then nothing. He swore he’d never seen the fake officer in his life, then he swore Danielle had better not have seen him in hers. He didn’t know what a cash kit was, had never seen a cash kit in his life, didn’t have any idea where ten cash kits were, and he had no idea where Jug or Danielle were.
“Carts,” Bradley said. “Cash carts.”
“Am I supposed to keep up with what you call your stuff, man? I have a pig to take care of and my true love has magnesia.”
We still didn’t know who shot whom. But we strongly suspected why. Someone swiped ten cash carts from the fake officer before he could swipe them from us, so at the end of the day, the former Storm/fake officer’s hurricane heist, years in the planning, had fallen apart.
Exhibit A: for whatever reasons, he’d been forced to enlist Jug’s, Eddie’s, and Danielle’s assistance, three people who could barely assist themselves.
Exhibit B: he was dead.
In all likelihood, the fake officer’s partner had turned on him.
Who was the fake officer’s partner?
Who stole the cash carts from the cash cart thief?
TEN
Three hours of sleep were not enough, especially considering the sleep we missed hadn’t turned up the cash carts and the fifty million dollars by the time Bradley’s and my search shift ended at three. Ten minutes later, we met with the anxious gaming agents in Bradley’s dark office on the executive floor. We signed the dire paperwork releasing the Mississippi Gaming Commission of any and all responsibility for the missing money, then sent the agents on their merry hurricane way. We checked on our children and mothers, then fell into the strange Disaster bed. Waking up to Filet’s voice blaring from dueling two-way radios on the strange nightstands three hours later was harsh.
“Hello to the mornings? Is not beautiful days outsides. Is smellses to Filet of the rains. Filet, who is my person, is with sensitives smellses because smellses connects to the tasteses. Filet make the breakfasts. Is hot now—”
Bradley showed me the latest radar satellite images on his phone.
“How much time do we have?”
He said, “Twelve hours until landfall. Four hours to evacuate.”
“—Filet makes the crepes. Delicate and fluffs, some with the crabs and spinaches, and some with the beautiful fat blueberry, some with the creams of cheeses and ripes strawberrieses big as Filet’s big noses, and Filet’s big noses very bigs. Filet too makes his most famous for hangovers-go-aways cureses, the blood Marys. Must eats with the spoon. Works for every times. Come to eats. Please to washes filthy handses.”
“How is it a Bloody Mary if you
have to eat it with a spoon?” Bradley asked.
“How, and why, has Filet been outside?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“He said it smelled of the rains.” I flipped the pillow to the cool side. “I thought we were locked in.”
“We are.”
“How did he smell of the rains?”
“I have no idea, Davis.”
We were nose to nose in the Disaster bed.
We had a million things to do.
Neither of us moved a muscle.
“Are we going to take our girls away from here, Bradley?”
He smoothed my hair from my face. “We are. Our girls, our mothers, our dog, Bianca, your ex-husband, his pig, and the magnesiac, if we can find her.”
Wait.
No.
“Davis.”
He was right. We couldn’t leave them there. It was a very hard start to my day knowing I would spend a good portion of it with Eddie, Danielle, and their pig.
“Ten o’clock,” he said. “Let’s give it until ten.” His feet hit the floor. “Let’s find the money before ten.”
“I’m up.” Five minutes later, with a hot cup of coffee placed in my hands by my mother-in-law, I rolled the combination lock to the emergency door exit and took Candy out to smell the rains. I didn’t smell the rains so much as I heard the winds. At the end of the concrete tunnel, I felt them, the winds Weather One had predicted.
My hair whipping around my head, my pajamas (Bradley’s t-shirt) almost billowing off, I stepped into the sanctuary of the concrete patio and sipped coffee while Candy ran several breezy laps around the helipad, wondering how bad the storm would be, wondering where the money was, who stole it from the fake officer, where they’d hidden it or if it was long gone, wondering if Danielle was somewhere in the building trying to figure out who and where she was, wondering if we could talk No Hair, Baylor, and Fantasy and her family into evacuating with us, and wondering how the wind could be so loud. Or maybe it was just how quiet the city was: not a car in sight, not a casino light burning, the city of Biloxi was dead except for strobing red traffic lights as far as I could see, which wasn’t very far, because visibility was so low on the gunmetal gray horizon.
Double Agent Page 10