Lucky the Hard Way

by Deborah Coonts

  Romeo reached for the bottle and refreshed his drink, then offered the bottle to me.

  I waved it away. “Drink up, Grasshopper. Then get some sleep. I have a feeling you’re going to need it.” And I was going to need to be sharp, as sharp as I could muster.

  I didn’t like dragging him into this—whatever the hell this was.

  No, I didn’t like it at all.

  After his third Scotch, Romeo’s eyelids got heavy. As he listed to the side, I took the glass out of his hand before he dropped it. Stuffing a pillow under his head, I pressed him down. “Sleep. We’ve got a long way to go.” He didn’t argue. Feeling protective, I put a blanket over him.

  And then I went to have a little chat with Frank Cho in the back.

  His head bent over a drawing, he didn’t look up when I took a chair close to his, leaving an empty seat between us. “How’re you doing, Frank?”

  His hand jumped. He sighed, removed his headphones, then reached for the eraser.

  I put my hand over it. “I’ll repeat, how are you doing?”

  Finally, his eyes met mine—dark, flat, they could’ve held hatred or happiness. “How would you be doing?”

  “This isn’t about me.” Something flickered across his face, so quick I might have imagined it. “Or is it?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I’ve got something you want.”

  He snorted. “What would that be?”

  “Legitimacy.”

  “My father is an esteemed diplomat.”

  I leaned on my shoulder against the back of the seat so I could keep facing him. “Really?” I put all the sarcasm I could muster into that one word. “He’s a junket dealer trolling the back alleys like a mongrel, feeding on leftovers, preying on the weak.”

  His eyes flicked from mine as he bent his head and concentrated on his drawing.

  A woman. Dark, slanted eyes. Long dark hair. I knew her. “Is that Kimberly? Your sister?”

  “What?” He looked confused for a fraction of a second, then his expression cleared. “Yeah. My sister.”

  “You want to see her again?”

  He shrugged but wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  I tugged on his arm until he looked at me. “I can make that happen,” I lied. I had no idea how to even find Kimberly Cho, much less present her to her brother, but desperate times, desperate measures and all of that.

  He gave me a long, appraising look.

  “I’ve delivered on my promises so far. Remember that.” Man, I was so busy promising stuff I had no idea how to make happen that it had become easy—like sinking in quicksand, the more you moved, the faster you sank. “Now, let’s talk about your father.”

  Frank’s face closed; his eyes went all flinty.

  “He thinks he has my family over a barrel. Maybe he does; I don’t know.” I waited until I was sure I had Frank’s attention. “What I do know is this. I will take him down and you along with him. If I lose the property in Macau, so be it.”

  “Your company couldn’t survive that loss.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” I bluffed. He was right; I knew it. I prayed he didn’t.

  “My father, he’s analyzed…” Frank trailed off, his face coloring a bit.

  I leaned back a little giving him a look. “Has he now?” We were small in comparison to Sheldon Adelson’s operation, or MGM, or even Steve Wynn. And there’s no denying losing Macau would certainly be a huge loss, maybe one from which the Babylon would not recover.

  Irv Gittings would like that. This whole thing had his stink all over it. He’d already tried to frame my father for murder. I guess when that failed he went looking for a stronger ally. With Mr. Cho in his pocket, his odds improved greatly—couldn’t fault him that.

  “Your father has overplayed his hand.” I leaned back into him. “One thing I can promise you and your father, I will destroy all my family has built before I let you have it or let you tarnish our name.” I did my best De Niro impersonation. If only I had a baseball bat.

  Frank glanced away, telegraphing the truth of what I told him. To be honest, I was making this up as I went. Oh, I had a good idea how things were going down. The trouble was proving it, connecting the dots, and putting the guilty away forever. A minor complication.

  “Your father is wanted back in Vegas for ordering the hit on my father. Pretty convenient he got his own son to do it.”

  I was all puffed up and proud, when Frank stuck a pin in my balloon. “Or pretty damned dumb.”

  Well, there was that, but I wasn’t about to let the truth trifle with my mojo. “Hey, in America stupid criminals have their own television show.”

  One side of his mouth curled up. “You don’t know anything.”

  “So your mother told me.” His eyes flicked to mine. “Aren’t you going to ask me how she is?”

  “I talked to her yesterday. She called. They record every conversation at the prison, so I’m sure you know that. Probably know what we talked about.”

  I didn’t, but I assumed if it had been important somebody would’ve told me. “So you know somebody shot her?”

  Surprise flattened his smirk. “What?”

  I nodded. Then I shot a look toward the forward cabin where Romeo still slumbered. “He didn’t tell you?”

  “Cops,” Frank huffed. His tone said it all.

  “Yeah, cops.” I tried to match his tone. From the look on his face, I could tell he wasn’t exactly buying my buddy-buddy act.

  To be honest, while I didn’t necessarily disagree with the route the cops had taken—the last thing they needed was Frank Cho demanding to hold vigil at his mother’s bedside—I did feel withholding that sort of information was a bit…cruel. Although, it’s not like the Chos were a close family—murder, theft, assassination, larceny, bribery, money laundering…oh, yes, and prostitution…the ties that bind. They made my family look like the Huxtables.

  But I bet their family dinners were far more interesting.

  “She okay?”

  Frank’s voice brought my attention back. “So far. Any idea who would want her dead?”

  His dark eyes held mine—this time I’d swear they held laughter, like somehow the joke was on me. “You sure they were shooting at her?”

  “Well, they hit her, and, if it was a professional hit as I assume it was, those guys usually don’t miss.” For some reason, Sam Cho sprang to mind. He’d missed… twice.

  His shoulders drooped. “I have no idea why anyone would want to shoot Minnie.”

  He seemed sad; maybe I imagined it. Maybe I knew it wasn’t up to me to pound information out of him—that was the FBI’s job. Maybe I was too tired to think straight.

  But maybe, just maybe, I was right about Frank Cho.

  “You’re in my world now,” he said. Benign words that clearly held a threat.

  “You think you hold all the cards.” I leaned hard, my elbow on his hand. He flinched as I pressed down. This whole thing reminded me of an overblown Hollywood B movie. “Be careful, Frank. I’m not nearly as stupid as you think I am. And, I promise you, there will come a point…I don’t know exactly when, but it’ll happen in the next few days… where you’ll be begging me for help.”

  He scoffed, but I could see the fear behind his bravado.

  “You ratted out your brother. Pointed a finger at your father. You’ve been tight with Irv Gittings, and, I assure you, that will come back to haunt you.” I pushed myself up, but not before grinding the point of my elbow into his hand. “You know where to find me.” I swaggered out with my last erg of courage.

  In my absence, the flight attendant had set up for dinner, pulling a table from its slot, securing it between Romeo’s seat and mine, then draping a white cloth. She disappeared back into the galley then reappeared with fancy silver and crystal. The dinner would be plated on Babylon china before being served.

  All this had been done while Romeo napped.

  When I sagged back into my seat, Romeo opened one eye. “Gues
s it’s time to eat.”

  “Time to try something new, since we have the drinking part down.” Wonderful aromas infused the small space. It smelled like Jean-Charles had outdone himself.

  Romeo pushed himself upright, then shook open the cloth napkin and tucked it in his collar. “Learn anything?”

  “Planted some seeds, more like.” On barren soil or rich, I didn’t know.

  Make it or break it time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE BIG BOSS told me that flying was like riding a magic carpet, picking you up in one world and dropping you in another. With my nose pressed to the window, I believed he was right. Below us the lights of Hong Kong and Kowloon brightened the night. Clusters of tall buildings along the water rose like fingers of light toward the stars. Huge tall buildings with choreographed lightshows dancing up the sides of the tallest. Roads and lower buildings outlined the dark hulks of low mountains that pushed up through the city. And in the middle of it all lay Victoria harbor, one of the most magnificent harbors in the world with it sleek boats, jetfoils, rusted tankers, and brand-new gleaming ones, sampans and junks, and the ubiquitous transports of the Star Ferry.

  After a repast worthy of my multi-starred chef, I’d slept fitfully.

  I tapped Romeo on the shoulder. “Kid, wake up. We’re in Neverland.”

  He awoke with a start, took a fraction of a second to get his bearings, then joined me at the window.

  “The airport used to be right here in the thick of the action,” I told him, trying to convey some of the magic I felt. “A runway along the water that required a tight turn to final over an apartment building. That first trip I sat over the downwind wing and I remember looking down this long expanse of metal and seeing an old woman hanging her laundry on the lines on top of the building. She was so close I thought I could reach out and touch her.” I thought back. The first time I’d come here had been with the Big Boss. I was twenty-one and had just graduated from the Hotel and Restaurant Program at UNLV. “Actually, I thought we were an air burble away from taking her out. We didn’t, of course, but the whole near-miss feeling always started a trip to Hong Kong off on the right foot.”

  “You’re pretty strange, you know that?” The kid didn’t seem surprised.

  “Yep, for a long time. I won’t tell your superiors that it’s taken you this long to catch on, Detective.” Turning back to the sights outside the window, I continued with the travelogue, whether he wanted it or not. “They use the old airport now as a dock for the largest cruise ships.”

  We both fell quiet as the pilots made a lazy turn around the city as I’d asked them to.

  Feeling the tug of the unknown, I waxed poetic, surprising myself. “Travel changes you. You leave and then you come back different, in a good way. Different people, different traditions, they make you think and you realize that maybe we don’t have all the answers. Maybe there is room for differing opinions, differing lifestyles, differing ways of putting together a life. It’s actually freeing in a way, all the possibilities.”

  “I’ve never heard you talk like that. Be that real. You ought to let down that wall more often.”

  With a hand to my chest, I feigned indignation. “Please, the wizard never lets anyone see behind the curtain.”

  “Right. You may not know it, but you’re pretty much an open book.”

  He’d just said otherwise, but I didn’t argue. “Well, don’t tell anybody. And let me have my little fantasy that I’m hiding the real me behind jokes and bullshit.”

  “Why?”

  “Why the bullshit?” He nodded. “If folks don’t know what you’re thinking, what you believe, they can’t judge.”

  “People always judge. If you don’t give them the truth, they make it up. Human nature.” He sounded like he knew that from experience.

  Didn’t we all. I gave him a nudge. “Now look who’s being profound.”

  “But if they don’t know the real you, then how can they be your real friend?”

  I don’t think he expected an answer. If he did, I didn’t have one. “I’m not comfortable being all out there.”

  “Hence the sarcasm.”

  “No, the sarcasm is a result of my shallowness.”

  That made him laugh. “Okay, I let you have that point. You know I’m right, even if you won’t admit it.” Despite all the chatter, his eyes had never left the window. “This is an amazing place.”

  “You have no idea. Hong Kong was my first time out of the country, just like it is for you. And a more foreign place you couldn’t find, at least not easily. Although today it’s more international. Macau, on the other hand, is still strictly Asian. Much less Anglicized.”

  We made another circle around the city as I’d asked. Romeo deserved to feel the awe. First times are so important. First trip to a faraway place. First kisses.

  First loves.

  Each of those things leaves a mark.

  The approach to the new airport wasn’t nearly as dramatic. So, as we left the lights behind, I left the window and leaned back, savoring the last moments of feeling comfortable in my element, cocooned in a metal tube where the world couldn’t get to me.

  The new airport was a large expanse of concrete on an island comprised of reclaimed land. There still was a bit of insecurity to it—one minor earthquake…I guess the Chinese hadn’t heard about liquefaction. That was the theory that would give us Las Vegans beachfront property when the Big One took out most of California, sliding it into the ocean.

  The Big Boss must’ve paid a fortune for a landing slot—the Chinese weren’t all that thrilled with the elitism of private air travel, and they made it as difficult as possible.

  After taxiing to a far corner of the tarmac, the pilots shut down the engines then lowered the steps, letting in a rush of cool damp air. Humidity—my skin practically sat up and did a dance, a mummy rehydrating. I breathed deep—so healthy compared to the desiccating wind that scoured Las Vegas, mummifying everything and everyone.

  Romeo got up and started making plans to disembark.

  “Slow down, Grasshopper. We have to wait for Customs. Make sure your paperwork is in order.”

  The four guys who showed up gave me the willies. Two Customs agents and two cops. They had the right uniforms, the right questions, but they didn’t have the right…something. Something hit my bullshit meter, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Maybe I was just being paranoid. A strange land, an unpleasant business—as my father used to say when talking about a dead body found in the desert. I guess I was entitled to a bit of paranoia, but I hoped my unease wasn’t prophetic.

  While the Customs guys poked and prodded and worked at looking official, I wondered what time it was in Vegas, what Jean-Charles was doing. And I wished like hell I could wiggle my nose and be back there.

  The men checked our paperwork while I checked their credentials, such as they were. They looked legit, but I didn’t like the way they sniffed in every corner, the way they looked at us, the looks that passed between the head dog and Frank Cho. They took a particularly long time questioning Romeo about his prisoner, analyzing his paperwork, asking Frank questions.

  Then they made a big stink about Romeo’s guns. For all of us Great Unwashed guns were illegal in this part of the world. Of course the police could carry them, but it took Romeo some time to establish his bonafides.

  I watched and stayed out of it, figuring I would only piss somebody off and make things worse—that was one of my best things.

  A voice at my elbow startled me.

  “You’re just transiting Hong Kong?” the lead dog asked. He had slits for eyes and a mean, thin mouth.

  “Yes, delivering Mr. Cho to the FBI in Macau.”

  “And you?”

  “Hotel business.”

  He gave me a long stare.

  Authority triggered a deep-seated guilt response, whether I had anything to be guilty of or not, especially this kind of authority—the kind that wore a gun and an at
titude and could throw me in jail and leave me to rot. I crossed my arms across my chest as I attempted a look of authoritative cooperation, whatever that was.

  “Any money to declare?” He made it sound like an accusation.

  “What?” I patted my pockets.

  “Cash. Are you bringing large amounts of cash into the country?”

  “No. The point of doing business in Macau is to take money out, not bring it in.”

  “That’s illegal.”

  “Not for me.” I met his flat stare with one of my own.

  He flinched first. He and his compatriots finally signed off on the customs forms and let us into the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. Our stay would be short—just long enough to get to the dock chosen by the FBI.

  Once the officials cleared out, a black Rolls pulled to the foot of the stairway. I half expected Paolo to jump out and open the door for me as he did back home. But instead, it was a young woman, reed thin, a sour look on her face, at least the bottom half. Several sizes too big, her chauffeur’s hat rode low, hitting just above her eyes, the brim shading most of her face. Reaching for the door handle, she exposed the inside of her forearm, where the tail of a tattoo curled toward her wrist. It seemed all the young women had tattoos—guess I’d aged-out of that fashion statement.

  We all piled in for the short ride to the dock—it wasn’t far, still on Lantau Island. A large red arrow of a boat nestled into the pier waiting for us. I’d wanted a helicopter, but the Big Boss muttered something about not getting a landing spot from the local authorities, that they preferred a less flashy arrival. Only from Americans, I thought, as I eyed the parade of helicopters heading south.

  An empty, bright red jetfoil wasn’t exactly subtle. At least it was one of many similar jetfoils ferrying passengers between Hong Kong and Macau.

  The captain and a skeleton crew, no more than three deck hands, welcomed us aboard.

  The televisions hanging in the corners remained dark, the huge main cabin surrounded by windows normally held hundreds, but tonight only three. “Like walking into a ghost town,” I said under my breath.