The Kill Radius

by Nichole Christoff

  At a closed door with a wide fish-eye peephole smack dab in the middle of it, my escorts halted. Shark Eyes monitored the hall while, without asking for permission, Mr. Smirk ran his hands over my clothes. He paid particular attention to anyplace I could’ve stashed a weapon—or a wire. Like beneath my arms. And under my sweater.

  “Hey,” I complained as his hands made a return trip toward my chest. “Once is more than enough, don’t you think?”

  Mr. Smirk winked at me. He slipped his fingers beneath the black bamboo-like detail on the clasp of my petite evening bag and whipped it open for inspection. He wasn’t going to find anything in it except my lipstick, my stash of cash, and my credit card with the name of Vivian Sternwood on it, but I clutched the gold chain that kept the bag at my side and frowned until he was finished. When he’d convinced himself I posed no threat, he knocked on the door and it opened.

  Another thug, with a head as shiny as a billiard ball, admitted us. And across the room, behind a massive desk with lions’ heads carved into the corners, the boss himself rose to greet me. Hunch Nevis wore a custom-made suit that hadn’t been tailored anywhere around here. His shirt gleamed with a sheen that smacked of bespoke silk. His white hair and eyebrows were as groomed as if he spent quality time in an old-fashioned barber’s chair once a week, but that couldn’t make up for his face, which looked as if it had been beaten with an ugly stick. Nevis was a man who’d taken a thorough thrashing more than once and had lived to talk about it.

  At Nevis’s invisible signal, the goons withdrew, leaving me alone with their boss. They closed the door—and locked it, I was certain—behind them. The room had no windows and no cameras to witness whatever was about to happen next.

  Nevis rounded the desk and took my palm in his. I shook his well-manicured hand, a gnarled paw that had been in one too many fights in his youth. I’d have bet my bottom dollar that he’d been someone’s enforcer once upon a time. That’s how thugs like him got into illegal business activities in the first place. From the bottom up. And it meant Hunch Nevis had had the guts, the brawn, or the brains to bump those higher than him off the ladder.

  “Miss Vivian,” he rasped. His voice was the sound wrapping paper makes when you rip open an unexpected gift. “I’m delighted to meet you. Absolutely delighted.”

  Point of fact, he was probably more delighted with the prospect that I’d brought my bankroll, and that supposedly, my daddy or his friend Brixton had more greenbacks where mine had come from.

  “Is the governor with you tonight?”

  “No, sir.” I smiled grandly. “I believe he’s catching up on his rest.”

  Nevis chuckled. “Well, I’m delighted he had a good time at my little soirée.”

  He moved to a set of built-in bookcases in the wall and tugged on one leather-bound volume in particular. The entire case swung open, revealing a mirrored bar. Liquor, sparkling like rare jewels, sloshed in the cut-crystal decanters.

  “Sherry, Miss Vivian? Or scotch?”

  “Sherry,” I said, hoping the choice would play into the ladylike—and therefore lightweight—image I was projecting.

  Nevis turned his back to pour a snootful of the stuff into a tiny crystal cordial glass. I glanced at his desk. Save for an embossed blotter, an ornate ormolu clock dripping with cherubs, and a sleeping laptop, its surface was bare. There were no spreadsheets brimming with numbers, no leather-bound ledgers detailing who owed him big. In short, Nevis had stashed his gotcha list before I’d crossed his threshold—if he even kept it in this office at all.

  Nevis offered me the glass by its fragile foot and waved me into a deep leather club chair. While he looked on, I limited my intake to the smallest of sips—just in case he was bold enough to drug me. But the sherry was tasty and I doubted Nevis would want to get rid of me before he determined what he could get out of me.

  “Well, my dear, what brings you to Mississippi and my humble home? Business? Or pleasure?”

  “Can’t a girl mix a little bit of both?”

  “You, Miss Vivian, are a woman after my own heart.”

  “I’m after more than that,” I admitted. “I’d like to play, if I may.”

  Nevis let loose with a belly laugh that had me jumping in my seat.

  “Following the governor’s example, are you, Miss Vivian? Or should I call you Miss Sternwood?”

  As long as Hunch Nevis couldn’t call me Jamie Sinclair, the name he used to address me made no nevermind. But his question proved he liked to use secret information to take his guests by surprise. And that he had an X-ray scanner in his bag of tricks.

  The scanner’s working parts could’ve been housed in any doorjamb, cabinet, or wall paneling I’d passed. My money was on the bar’s decorative front, because the butler had directed me there. And like the machines at your friendly neighborhood airport, Nevis’s was sensitive enough to read the embossed name on the credit card through the satiny fabric of the evening bag I carried, but that didn’t matter, either. A quick-and-dirty Internet search would’ve led him or his cronies to Vivian Sternwood’s social media pages—but all those pages featured my face as hers.

  “You can call me what you like,” I told Nevis, “as long as you say my credit’s good.”

  Nevis laughed again. He tucked his hands into his trouser pockets and took a seat on the edge of his desk. “Why come to me? Why not go to Vegas…or one of the hotel casinos along Beauville’s waterfront? You can even combine a little gaming with a riverboat cruise.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Nevis smiled to himself. “Such a shame. All that radioactive contamination and forty-some people dead.”

  Forty-one, I thought.

  “In any case,” I told him, “whether I win big in Vegas or here on the waterfront, I have to pay the tax man. But I don’t think that’s quite fair, do you, Mr. Nevis? After all, the tax man didn’t help me decide whether to bet on the red or the black.”

  “True,” Nevis replied, “and you can win so much more in my humble establishment than in any Beauville casino.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Of course, you can lose much more, too.”

  I laughed as if Nevis had suggested the impossible. Or as if I was reluctant to cop to a gambling problem. “I’m not a loser, Mr. Nevis.”

  He smiled. And his expression was as cold as the stars. He thought he had me right where he wanted me.

  “I’m so glad,” he rasped, “because you’ve met my collection staff.”

  Mr. Smirk, I knew, would enjoy hurting me and Shark Eyes wouldn’t be bothered to watch.

  “Is Eddie Jepson one of your collectors?” I asked.

  The corners of Nevis’s harsh mouth grew hard. I’d surprised him with information I’d gathered on my own. And he didn’t like it.

  “I’d like to say I have an Eddie on my staff, my dear, only so I don’t disappoint you.”

  But I wasn’t convinced.

  Bran claimed to have seen Eddie, and as much as I didn’t trust Bran, I wasn’t about to take Nevis’s say-so over his.

  “Eddie Jepson doesn’t work for you?” I persisted. “Daddy’s friend, the Governor, must have been mistaken.”

  “Well,” Nevis backpedaled, “Eddie is more of an independent contractor. In fact, he’s what you might call unskilled labor. He runs errands for me when I have need of him. Nothing more, I’m afraid, and oftentimes much less.”

  “I see,” I said.

  And I did. In other parlance, Eddie was a bagman. It was his job to shuttle commodities, like cash and governors—and maybe even women like Monique—to and from Nevis’s concerns. Which made me wonder: What else had Eddie done for Hunch Nevis?

  Nevis touched a particular spot on his desk. A door on the far side of the room opened. Shark Eyes and his buddy, Mr. Smirk, loomed large on the threshold.

  “Please,” Nevis said to me, “be my guest. Take ten thousand dollars’ credit, on the house. Manny, my personal bartender, will be at your disposal.”

&nbs
p; “Thank you, Mr. Nevis.”

  I rose, rewarded him with a dazzling smile.

  “I want you and your companion to have a pleasant evening,” he told me.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t quite believe him.

  Chapter 20

  Just as Hunch Nevis had promised, stacks of poker chips totaling $10,000 awaited me the second I set foot on his extensive private gambling floor. A white-gloved clerk of some kind, wearing a snazzy red vest and black bowtie, offered up Nevis’s markers on an ornate sterling silver tray as soon as Mr. Smirk and Shark Eyes delivered me downstairs. With their tasks completed, all three of Nevis’s employees melted away as if I was of no more concern to them or to their boss.

  But that probably wasn’t true.

  For my part, the thought of hauling all those chips to the cashier’s window and exchanging them for the cash equivalent was tempting. After all, $10,000 is nothing to sneeze at. And maybe that’s what Nevis had in mind by offering such a sum to me.

  Nevis hadn’t been happy when I’d mentioned the name of Eddie Jepson, and I doubted he wanted me to stick around. In fact, the boss was probably burning up the phone lines between his office and Governor Brixton’s right that second. Which meant I needed to get a move-on if I wanted a chance to locate the man’s gotcha list.

  I loaded Nevis’s largesse into my evening bag and waded into the throng of happy gamblers crowding Nevis’s tables. The casino itself had probably once been a ballroom. Nowadays, with dense red carpet, flocked-velvet wallpaper, and gaudy, gilded statuary bearing the torchieres that illuminated the place, it looked more like a 1970s bordello that had run off the rails. But win or lose, Nevis’s high rollers didn’t seem to mind the décor.

  Blue smoke, rich with the aroma of smuggled cigars, hung over the players like doom. Short-skirted waitresses like the one Marc and I had seen behind the bar circulated and kept the liquor flowing. I supposed the drinks were free—and I supposed that was how Nevis evaded the IRS.

  On paper, Nevis’s creative accountants could call this place a tavern of some kind. They could launder Nevis’s ill-gotten gains by claiming any cash listed in their ledgers came from patrons paying their bar tabs. And I was willing to bet it was a lot of cash.

  Nevis’s operation probably put quite a dent in the waterfront casinos’ intake. By comparison, the Lady Luck’s profits would look like chump change. Of course, the riverboat’s modest market share wouldn’t go unnoticed by a man like Nevis. Wise guys like him always wanted a bigger piece of the pie. And chances were he’d do anything to get it.

  Tamping down that uncomfortable thought, I sought Marc, found him occupying a high-backed stool at the blackjack table. The set of his shoulders relaxed when he caught sight of me making my way toward him. As if I were his good luck charm, he slung his arm around my hip and pulled me close when I joined him at the table.

  “Hit me,” he told the dealer, and she did, sliding another card to him with a flash of her fire-engine-red fingernails.

  Marc lifted the card’s corner for a glimpse at its face. I peeped, too. It was the three of spades. It went nicely with the nine of diamonds and the seven of hearts that already lay face-up in front of him, bringing his grand total to nineteen. And in this game, where coming up with the highest hand without going over twenty-one made you a winner, nineteen was a difficult combination to beat.

  But to my surprise, when his turn rolled around again, Marc tapped the table to request another card. The dealer complied. And slipped him an ace.

  This brought his score to twenty, but still, Marc tapped the table a second time. The dealer sent yet another ace his way, giving him an unbeatable hand equaling twenty-one. And I began to smell a rat—especially when Marc tugged me closer, a sure sign that he wanted me to pay attention.

  Marc’s fingers arched to tap the table a third time. Because, contrary to common sense, he intended to go bust—and exceed twenty-one—on purpose. But before he could make contact with the felt and demand another card, the dealer ended the round by revealing her hand with a fast flip. The move added a jack of spades to the eight of hearts already showing. Together, they totaled eighteen for the house.

  And that wasn’t good enough to best Marc.

  “The gentleman wins,” the dealer announced, shoving chips Marc’s way.

  She raked in the bets stacked in front of an urban cowboy in a ten-gallon hat, a pro wrestler I recognized from late-night TV, two young men with soldiers’ high, tight haircuts, and a painfully thin brunette wearing Christian Louboutins with her skinny jeans. Every last one of them pretended not to notice something fishy had just gone down. And every last one of them breathed a sigh of relief when Marc collected his winnings and rose from the table.

  “Congratulations,” I said, slipping my arm through his and directing him toward the cashier’s window.

  After the dealer’s little display, I was antsy to leave. Clearly, Nevis played by his own rules and everyone in his house followed suit. If things turned ugly now, there’d be no help for us here. And I’d be damned if I let Marc get hurt because of me. We needed to get out—even without Nevis’s gotcha list.

  The cashier’s window was a gilded cage built between massive marble pillars on the far side of the room. Marc and I heaped our chips in the divot cut below the golden bars. While Marc engaged the cashier in small talk, I let my eyes roam the interior of the booth.

  A mahogany ledge ran around three sides of the space, sheltering deep cash drawers below. On the back wall, against a solid steel door that would’ve done a bank vault proud, stood a bulky thug in an overly large suit. He probably carried an arsenal under all those pinstripes.

  The most interesting feature, however, was the laptop. It stood at the cashier’s elbow, its face turned from mine. A bundle of cords snaked through a carefully crafted hole in the mahogany countertop, tethering the device to an electrical outlet, and, probably, Nevis’s own network server. When the cashier didn’t reach for its keyboard, when he didn’t type our details into some database, I knew this laptop had to be linked to the gotcha list Nevis kept of his losers. And I nearly smiled.

  As Marc watched the cashier count out our cash, I stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. The most sophisticated Vegas casinos had high-powered microphones suspended over the tables—just in case anyone was dumb enough to utter their plans to cheat. I was willing to believe Nevis’s place was full of these kinds of gadgets as well.

  “Get the car,” I breathed. “I’ll meet you out front in ten minutes.”

  “Like hell,” he barked. “I’m not taking my eyes off of you again.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said, loud enough to make a librarian cringe. “But you’ll look awfully funny following me into the ladies’ room.”

  The goon at the back of the cage guffawed and the cashier smothered a smile. Marc grimaced. He knew I had no intention of visiting the restroom, but we’d given Nevis’s staff that impression and that was the point.

  When I asked for directions, the cashier pointed me to a rear corridor carved through the heart of the gracious home’s original rooms. Sure enough, the ladies’ lounge and the gents’ both opened off of this hallway, and when a pair of waitresses emerged from a door farther on, I guessed their dressing room was along here, too. The dealers’ break room was probably directly across from it, but it was the door at the very end of the corridor that caught my attention and held it.

  Marked PRIVATE and bearing a programmable push-button pad on the lockset, this was the kind of door I’d hoped to find. Though I raced to punch in typical four-, six-, and eight-digit code combinations before the guards on the other side of the ever-present cameras realized what I was doing, the brushed-chrome handle wouldn’t yield to my hand. But then the swinging doors to the casino floor burst open behind me.

  I whirled to face the newcomer, certain I’d see Mr. Smirk or Shark Eyes rushing up on me. Instead, I spied a bartender, wheeling cardboard crate upon cardboard crate of empty booze bottles stacked
so high on a dolly, they obscured his view. I ducked into the restroom and peered past the jamb while he came steaming up the corridor, leaning to look past one side of the crates as the bottles rattled and the dolly’s tires squeaked.

  At the end of the hall, he managed to balance the heavy load long enough to tap a half dozen numbers into the lock. Four-two-two-five-six. And just like that, the door opened when the heel of his hand came down on the handle.

  The bartender struggled over the threshold with his burden. The door sighed softly behind him. And then I was on the move.

  My fingertips danced over the pin pad. Four-two-two-five-six and I was through, too, poking my nose into a kind of mudroom. The shabby space was a far cry from the fancy bar, the opulent game room, and Hunch Nevis’s elegant office above. Peeling linoleum curled on the floor, and on the walls, plaster had fallen away in chunks, revealing the structure’s original lathing. But none of that mattered. Guests weren’t supposed to step behind this door. I was risking my neck to be here and I knew it.

  Straight ahead, a reinforced fire door promised an escape to the great outdoors and relative safety. I, however, was much more interested in the stairwell on my right. Plain and serviceable, with worn treads and unadorned spindles making up its banister, it had been the servants’ stairs once upon a time, meant for folks who weren’t to be seen or heard.

  The steps descended into a dark basement. I was willing to bet it was dank and dungeon-like, carved a century ago from the countryside’s meager bedrock. But the stairs appeared to ascend to the second and third floors, too, and no doubt an attic. There, under the eaves, would be the perfect place to stash what I was looking for. The snoozing laptop on Nevis’s desk had suggested as much, but it was the computer connected to the tangle of cables in the cashier’s cage that convinced me. Nevis was operating a private local area network. And if I was lucky, I’d find his server at the top of the house.