Lucky the Hard Way

by Deborah Coonts

  “Transmissions came through fine.” Jerry’s voice mirrored my serious tone. “The tapes of tonight are clear, but there is a lot of footage to go through.”

  “I know.”

  He heard the unasked questions. “I’ll be looking for Miss Cho and anyone showing peculiar interest in her, as well as anyone we recognize. That what you want?”

  “Absolutely. As soon as you can.”

  “We’re on it.”

  A man entered the bar to my right. The hotel operations manager by the looks of him—officious, with a nametag and a service pin stuck in his lapel. With a tight smile, he worked the patrons and the employees, greeting each one. “You’re a peach, Jer,” I said, keeping my eyes on the man. He looked familiar.

  “Please remind my wife. But one question. Why me? Why not local? The Security guys there could give you the inside skinny.”

  “You I know I can trust.” With that I severed the connection. Hearing his voice, knowing he was so far away, everything I knew and loved was beyond my reach, the emotions welled and I felt so alone. Too much booze, too little sleep, and the whole world-hanging-in-the-balance thing had me slipping over the edge.

  Where was Romeo? What were they doing to him? The imaginings derailed thought and churned my stomach.

  And Teddie? I sat on that thought until it quit torturing me.

  What I would do for a friend.

  Pressing my face in my hands, I worked to pull myself together.

  When I felt a hand on my shoulder, for a brief instant, hope surged. Teddie! Heat raced through me.

  But the voice, too deep to be Teddie’s, dashed my hope.

  “Lucky? I’m sorry to interrupt, but, as the Operations Manager, I feel I should extend my personal welcome.” There was a hint of familiar in the deep tones—the man I thought I had recognized. He extended his hand. “It’s been a long time. Ryan Whitmore.”

  “Ryan Whitmore! Of course.” He hadn’t opened the hotel—I’d been here for that. The Peninsula had hired that guy away—he was that good. Ryan had been a third-string stand-in, and I was surprised the Big Boss hadn’t replaced him. If it’d been my responsibility, he’d have been long gone.

  I thought I’d recognized him, but I hadn’t been sure. Funny how, in a foreign place, people started looking like someone from home. It happened to me every time, but this time more than others. Perhaps I missed home more.

  But with Ryan, I’d been right.

  He was someone from home.

  Ryan Whitmore.

  Years ago, I’d trained him when our careers had momentarily traveled the same path. We both had been pups barely whelped. Now he had grown into a set of broad shoulders tapering to a thin waist then ending in long legs that put him eye-to-eye with me. His green eyes reminded me of a Texas guy I once knew, as did his wavy brown hair and easy manner. He even oozed the same slickness. Although younger than Ryan by a year or two, back in the day I’d been a few rungs higher on the corporate ladder—still was. I’d wanted it more, worked harder. Ryan had relied mainly on his charm. Since I didn’t have any, that wasn’t an option for me.

  Ryan gave me a warm look, which pissed me off—I was still his boss. Some men never got it.

  He hadn’t impressed me then, and he sure wasn’t getting off on the right foot now. “You should have let me know you were coming.”

  “It was spur of the moment. I had some non-hotel business to take care of in Hong Kong.” That sounded legit, even to me, and I knew it wasn’t true.

  “Glad you stopped by, in any case.” The words tripped easily off his tongue, but the subtext, if I read it right, negated the words. “Bad business, this.”

  If I’d been in his shoes, I would’ve felt put out at a sneak visit from a corporate type, but I’ve always been a bit touchy. In contrast, Ryan had a smooth polish. He was better than I thought.

  Bad business? I tried not to flip out. “Truly. Do you lose workers often?”

  He shrugged, then deftly changed the subject. “I’ve been watching you—from afar of course. You were the best teacher I had.” He reddened as he looked at his feet for a moment. “I wasn’t stalking you, just interested in your success.” When he looked up, his composure had returned. “You’re opening your own hotel. That is so amazing. And in a few days. What the hell are you doing here?”

  I wondered the same thing myself. “A long story, but I’m going to need your help.”

  “Let’s get a table. Maybe the one in the corner over there?” He motioned to the far side of the bar next to a baby grand, just like the one Teddie used to play, except this one was black to his white.

  “Sure.”

  “You want your Champagne?”

  “No, it’s gotten warm.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but offered a hand, which I ignored as I slipped off the stool. Taking the hint, he didn’t pull out my chair at the small circular table. We settled ourselves in the enveloping club chairs. The noise of the casino, slight as it was by Vegas standards, muffled our conversation, hopefully keeping it from any would-be eavesdroppers.

  Ryan didn’t seem overly concerned as he leaned back, crossing one leg, resting the ankle on his knee. His expression placid, his foot bounced. “What’s your pleasure?”

  A quip on the end of my tongue, my defenses and self-muzzling at low ebb, I surprised myself when I stammered, “Bubbles, not the cheapest, but not enough to make me want to shed clothes.”

  “Hopes dashed,” he countered with an emotionless grin, as only the British can do. He signaled a waitperson and gave our order. She returned with a bottle of Veuve and two glasses. Both Ryan and I watched as she went through the routine.

  Exhaustion crept through my veins with the cold numbness of anesthesia. I accepted the glass Ryan handed me, holding it.

  “It’s better if you drink it.” He sipped his, then asked, “How can I be of assistance?”

  An innocent question, but to me he seemed guarded even though his manner remained casual.

  My face fell and I took a long gulp.

  Ryan raised his eyebrows. “That bad?”

  “Worse.” I drained my glass, then held it out.

  Ryan took his cue.

  After two glasses, the warmth moderated the cold and I felt a bit more myself. “I’ve got a real problem. Actually, change that. You and me, we have a huge problem. How long have you been here? Five years, give or take?”

  He nodded.

  “Long enough,” I said, a slight joke…very slight.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Long enough for what?”

  “To know the back alleys and the folks who navigate them.”

  He sobered. “Oh, that is bad.”

  Needing to shake things up, I threw caution to the wind and used a verbal stick to poke the hive. “There’s something going on here, in the hotel. And when it goes down, they’re planning on taking everything with them.”

  “Everything?”

  “Vegas. The Big Boss. Me.” I paused and leveled a stare. “You.”

  He didn’t seem guilty. In fact, I couldn’t find a reaction if he had one.

  I made a sweeping arc with my arm. “They’ll take this, too.”

  Still nothing. “Any idea what they’re doing?” Ryan followed my lead and drained his glass, then refilled. The bottle empty, he motioned for another.

  “I was hoping you could tell me.” I eyed my third glass, weighing the cost versus the benefit. The immediate benefit won—I’m shallow that way.

  “You knew that gal in the lounge?” Ryan asked. “I didn’t get a good look at her—didn’t really want one. Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

  “It’s always better to know. Didn’t I teach you anything? And especially here.” I sipped my Champagne, feeling somewhat virtuous that I didn’t bolt it like the first two glasses, and I thought about all that could happen while the ones in charge looked the other way. “Yeah, I knew her. Kimberly Cho.”

  “Kim Cho?” Ryan slumped back in his chair, lookin
g like he’d lost his best friend. “Shit.”

  I reached out and grabbed his arm, giving it a squeeze. “You knew her. I’m so sorry. Normally, I have a tad more tact and sensitivity.”

  “Only a tad, if I remember correctly.” He gave me a wan smile. “It’s not like that. She was a local lawyer. Made big waves. We were all worried about her.”

  Stokes had said she worked for him.

  People are not who they seem. She’d told me that, and then she’d died. I tried to remember everything Kim had told me in Vegas. What game had she been playing? Had she been trying to take her father down or step into his shoes? Why couldn’t everyone play nice and get along? Oh yeah, that filthy lucre thing. Throw a few gold coins on the ground and every snake within miles will slither your way, eating the other snakes along the way. “Do you think I could buy an island somewhere southeast of here and just disappear?”

  Ryan went to work on the fresh bottle a waitress had delivered. “I’m afraid not. You’d be missed.”

  “The downside to pretending to be indispensable. Eventually somebody believes it.”

  He held up the bottle, then without encouragement, he freshened my glass.

  I quit whining…for now. “Tell me about her father.”

  “He’s hooked in with a bunch of bigwigs here.” He paused, giving me an assessing look. “You do know how the game is played in Macau?”

  This was one of those points where intuition told me it would be more enlightening to play dumb. “Probably not. Tell me.”

  “The whole town is on the take. The casino bosses and their acolytes are the government here. They pass laws to benefit themselves and enforce other laws when and how they feel like it. They dangle the foreign investors here like puppets on a string. They might enforce one gaming law strictly against us, but never enforce it against Wynn or MGM.”

  “And they promise a gaming concession of five hundred tables to encourage investment, then deliver permission for half as many when the construction is complete. That much I do know.” I didn’t add from personal experience. Ryan had been here long enough to have heard that story.

  “Did you also know that the government here pays each citizen several thousand dollars U.S. every year? They get free medical care. Vouchers each year for education to spend as they see fit. Subsidized utilities, and the seniors get free or essentially free housing, if they need it.” He seemed to relish his role—mansplaining clearly suited him. Another black mark on his soul.

  I pursed my lips and nodded with appreciation. “Legalized graft and corruption with a payoff to anyone who might throw a big stink. I don’t like it, but I appreciate it, if you know what I mean. It’s exactly what would happen if Vegas was its own country.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Okay, so how does Cho figure in?”

  “He’s not officially part of the government, but he has his fingers in all the pies. And there’s some scuttlebutt he’s tied in with one of the junket dealers, which raises ugly to a whole other level.”

  “Which junket?”

  “Not sure.” Ryan glanced over his shoulder. “Best not to bite the hand that feeds you, you know.”

  No, I didn’t know. And that’s just the kind of thinking that would get our concession pulled.

  Ryan plucked at his jacket, straightening it while looking decidedly uncomfortable. Lying would do that. Whitmore knew damn well Cho was a junket dealer and the head of Panda 777. If he was hoping to throw me off the scent, he was as dumb as I’d always taken him for.

  I contemplated the best strategy: waterboarding, thumbscrews? I wasn’t really sure. So I decided I should play dumb until I figured out the smart thing to do. Not exactly a strategy, but it was the best I had.

  “The junkets do make our life possible.” I tried for a bland expression, which cost me greatly. Giving that sort of attribution to the junkets, who used the Triads to enforce gambling debts, and who made book on the side, was like saying Vegas had been a much better place when the Mob ran it. I guess it depended on which side of that wall you stood. And, if the Big Boss’s stories were true, once you shook the hand of the Devil, you rode that slippery slope into oblivion. The question wasn’t if; it was when.

  As I watched Ryan, I wondered who had him looking over his shoulder.

  He relaxed back in his chair, but his hand shook as he raised his glass to his lips. “They do indeed.”

  “Do you know any more about Mr. Cho? “

  “He likes to show off his wealth. Rides around town in a red Ferrari. Wears bespoke suits tailored in Thailand. Always has something new and flashy. Doesn’t sit well with the government types back in Beijing. And their recent crackdown on gambling and high-dollar purchases has hurt our bottom line here.”

  I found his use of “us” to be telling. And we both knew that the crackdown would be temporary—it was the sort of saber-rattling Beijing did from time to time to keep their officials within some boundaries and to keep face with the international community. But bribery was still a way of business in China, on the mainland or in the control areas of Hong Kong and Macau.

  “Did you know he tried to have the Big Boss killed?” My turn for the twenty questions.

  Ryan looked impressed. “Balls.” At my raised eyebrow, he recovered. “Sorry. I never knew he was your father. Not until recently anyway.”

  “Me either. When he and my mother told me, I thought about killing him myself, but not worth the jail time. Besides, I’ve grown accustomed to my creature comforts. Speaking of which, do you have a room for me?” Time to pull the curtain on this little show.

  “Ah, yes!” Ryan patted his pockets then extracted a key from the one that jangled. “The owner’s suite. We kept the old lock and key, since it is rarely used. The entire floor is secure.” He handed me the brass key with a purple silk tassel.

  “Makes me feel like a maharajah or something.”

  “Please, there’s none of that here in the People’s Republic.”

  I pocketed the key, then refilled Ryan’s glass. “Any idea who would want Kimberly Cho dead?”

  “Well, she’s the second local lawyer who’s been killed. The first was a young guy, Jhonny Vu.” Ryan glanced over his shoulder, his gaze sweeping the area like the FBI swept a room for bugs. Apparently satisfied, he leaned forward, moving his chair closer.

  I leaned in to him.

  “There are rumors she helped the FBI take down Paul Zhung. Stuff like that gets you the wrong kind of attention around here.”

  “They still have Zhung on ice in Vegas.”

  “That would be only a minor impediment to Z.”

  So Ryan and Paul Zhung were on a first-nickname basis. Interesting. “You think he could arrange a hit from there?”

  “Easily. And he’ll beat that rap. You watch.” Ryan looked a bit spooked along with impressed. “Rules are different here. The amount of money immense. His influence is impressive.”

  “He was running a wire room in Caesar’s, making illegal book. Stupid, but I gotta give it to him, the man has balls. They’re trying to bring him down with his tie-ins to organized crime—the Triad and the junkets dealers.”

  Ryan shushed me. His head on a swivel, he looked to see who might be taking an interest in our conversation. “Be careful, Lucky. Very careful or you might find yourself like Kim Cho. The walls have ears.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  Ryan reared back, leaning away from me. “Don’t be silly. It’s just a warning. Macau isn’t Vegas.”

  “I know the drill. And you’re wrong. Macau is exactly like Vegas as it once was.”

  “Very similar in many ways, I’ll grant you that. China has just started cleaning it up—or making an attempt, like the early corporate days in Vegas.” He leveled a look. “Remember what happened when they cleaned up Vegas?”

  I didn’t feel as smug as he looked. My parents had lived through it, and I’d teethed on the stories. “Carnage. Power loves a vacuum. Take away the Mob and everyone is in
the game, fighting to win.”

  “You have the same situation here. And the money that flows through here dwarfs Vegas a hundredfold or more. A messy business. But why don’t you let the authorities worry about all this? Stay out of the way. Everyone here is a bit skittish when it comes to outsiders, and,” he reached cross and patted my hand, “honey, you scream outsider.”

  I pulled my hand from under his as my eyes turned all slitty. Nobody calls me honey and goes unpunished. But right now I was too tired to rip him a new one. “That’s where you’re wrong. I scream foreigner, for sure. But when it comes to the gaming industry, I am far from an outsider.”

  “True.” Ryan shifted uncomfortably. “This is a dangerous game. I’d hate to see you hurt…or worse.”

  “You and me both.” I didn’t throw out my normal I-can-take-care-of-myself-bullshit. When it came to Macau and the Triad, I wasn’t at all sure of my skills. Breaking noses seemed almost laughable. “You said the junket dealers. Give me the inside skinny on them.” As a casino exec, I knew there was what the public knew and what the hotel people saw—often different by a magnitude of ten.

  “Nobody has proven it, but the scuttlebutt is the junket dealers, at least the largest of them, make private book, using our tables for the game.”

  “Explain.” I sipped my drink, but the bubbles weren’t settling my stomach. My gut was not happy, and through the years I’d learned to pay attention.

  “So, part of the game is the junket dealers give credit to their Chinese National customers. A clever way to circumvent the currency export limitations. It used to be the mobile credit-card machines being used to extract cash from mainland accounts, but the government shut that down.”

  “Along with a general crackdown on luxury spending.” I nodded. I knew most of this story.

  “Right. Well, apparently, the junket dealers have found a way around, if you will. It works like this: if one of their players wagers ten million, then they’ve wagered ten times that with the junket dealers.”

  “Sort of a virtual game on the game?”