by Marie Astor
“Everything all right?” Roman Kovar had materialized out of thin air.
“Everything is awesome, boss.” Jason grinned at him. “I was just checking on the bar supplies, and Janet here slipped on the floor. We may want to have it mopped; wouldn’t want to have a lawsuit on our hands. Well, I’ve got to get back to work. See you all later.”
“Was he coming on to you?” Roman asked after Jason walked away. “You just say the word, Janet, and I’ll sack him.” Roman puffed out his chest.
Janet shook her head. “No, nothing like that. He’s just being friendly, that’s all.”
The night continued as Janet greeted the guests mechanically, escorting them to their tables. At first the time seemed to drag, but then, before she knew it, it was getting close to eight p.m., and her heart started beating like a sledgehammer.
Chapter 17
At eight p.m. sharp, Dennis buzzed the intercom of Mila’s, or to be more precise, Anton Kovar’s apartment.
“Glad you could make it,” Mila greeted him when she opened the door. She was dressed in a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Her hair was pulled in a ponytail and her face was free of makeup. A carryon suitcase stood by the door. “Did anyone see you come here?” she asked.
Dennis shook his head, taking off his jacket. “Why would anyone see me?” he asked nonchalantly, trying not to think about the fact that he was wearing a wire.
“Just checking. What’s that?” Mila asked, pointing at his briefcase.
“My tools of the trade, remember? Shall we dance?”
Mila smirked. “You’ve got a strange sense of humor. Come on, it’s this way.” She motioned for him to follow her.
“Voila,” Mila pointed at the safe.
“Great, thanks.” Dennis examined the safe; it was the model and make that Mila had specified to him, and he had spent over ten hours breaking into safes just like that under the tutelage of Ham’s contact, and then had the added benefit of instructions from the Feds this afternoon. He’d felt fairly confident then, but now that he was ‘on’ he was nervous. There was the option of calling in for back-up; all he had to do was press a button on his stethoscope, which he removed from his briefcase and hung over his neck to listen to the safe’s mechanism, but he hoped that he wouldn’t have to exercise it.
Dennis plugged the stethoscope into his ears and began to slowly roll the safe’s wheel. He was listening to the mechanism. Just then there was a click. He wrote done the number and continued rolling the safe lock wheel. Two more clicks followed, and he wrote down the corresponding numbers.
“Wow, this is just like the movies,” said Mila, perching on the couch.
Dennis waved for her to be quiet. Slowly, he began to enter the sequence, pausing at the numbers he had previously written down. There was a click and he stopped the safe wheel. Two more rounds. He took a deep breath and pulled on the lever. He was shocked to see the door open; this was just too easy. He expected more sophistication from Anton Kovar.
“Yes!” Mila clapped her hands. “Bravo!”
“We ain’t home yet,” Dennis muttered. He looked through the contents of the safe: there were several jump drives, a ledger notebook, and a bank token. Now came the tough part.
“Grab the bank token and leave everything else in there,” Mila said. “I don’t want Anton to think that I took anything other than the money.”
Dennis did as he was told; there’d be plenty of time to retrieve the contents of the safe later.
Anton’s computer was password protected, but Dennis was able to bypass the password fairly easily. He entered the bank’s website and tried to log in. The first attempt was denied. Damn it, he thought, trying to concentrate on the instructions that he’d been given.
“Come on!” Mila bit her knuckles, squirming on the couch.
“Some quiet would be appreciated,” Dennis snapped. His fingers fluttered over the keyboard, entering the sequences that he was told would give him access. He bit his lip: one, two, three, he was in. “Yes,” he panted, wiping his forehead.
“Yes! You did it!” Mila’s flowery perfume enveloped him, as she wrapped her arms around him. “Now transfer it all to this account.” She put a piece of paper on the table.
But Dennis was already typing in the wire instructions for the escrow account that the Feds had given him. He transferred the entire ten million dollars.
“Wait! What the hell are you doing?” Mila screamed.
“Calm down, Mila, we have to talk. The FBI is on to you, Mila. They followed me and they made me cooperate with them. Your only chance is to cooperate with them. They know that Anton stole Muller’s money. Now, if you cooperate, they won’t prosecute you. All they want is information and, of course, the money.”
“My cooperation? What the hell are you talking about? That money is mine! It was my grandmother’s!”
“Save it Mila, the Feds ran a check on you; both of your grandmothers never had more than the equivalent of one thousand dollars in their bank accounts. It will go much easier if you cooperate.”
“What did they promise you in exchange for handing me over? A nice reward?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“Yeah, right.”
“That’s right. I don’t know how they got wind of it. Maybe they overheard us in the bar; maybe it was when I was buying my supplies. My PI license did get suspended, so it might’ve been a clue,” Dennis followed the script he’d been given. Under no circumstances was he to reveal the nature of his true occupation for fear of compromising Janet’s cover.
Mila’s eyes welled up with tears; she tried to wipe them away, but her hands shook. “What bad luck! Why do these things keep happening to me?” she muttered.
“Because you keep hanging around the wrong kind of guys, that’s why. You can still turn things around if you listen to me.”
“What’s going to happen to me? Are they going to deport me? Or throw me in jail?”
“Not if you listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” she said, her voice trembling.
“The money’s been wired into the FBI’s escrow account. You will be taken into protective custody—”
“I knew it!” she exclaimed. “They are going to throw me in jail!”
“It’s protective custody, Mila. It’s not jail. Do you really think you could get away from a man like Anton Kovar on your own? He’d find you before you could make it to the airport. Even if you did make it to the airport, he’d pick you up right off the plane.”
“Instead I’m going to go to jail!” she wailed.
“It’s not jail; it’s for your own safety. Once Kovar is apprehended, you’ll be free to go.”
“Like you know.”
“Believe it or not, I do know.” Dennis leaned back in the chair, rubbing his forehead. “Your ex-boyfriend and I have lots more in common than you might think.”
“What on earth are you talking about? You’re a snitch. David is a financier.”
“I’m not a snitch, Mila. For your information, David Muller is nothing more than a common crook. The only difference between him and a common pickpocket is the scale of operation,” Dennis paused, deliberating if he should continue. He could simply escort Mila downstairs where an FBI van was waiting by the curb, or he could call for the FBI agents to come up and collect her. His part of the job was done. Still, he felt the need to provide an explanation, more so for himself than for Mila. “You will probably find it hard to believe, but I began my career as a trader. It was really just a lucky turn of events that got me started. I grew up in Park City, Utah. My old man worked as a hotel manager at one of the resorts. He got me a job there so that I could make some extra money during winter breaks and summers. My father probably thought I was going to have a great career as a hotel manager, but I had my eyes set on something different. No siree, working at a hotel wasn’t good enough for me. I couldn’t wait to get out of there, so I listened to the lofty conversations between the big wigs staying at
the resort and tried to ingratiate myself with them while carrying their luggage.”
“Oh, please.” Mila rolled her eyes. “Spare me a tale about a small town boy who learned his lesson the hard way.”
“Humor me.”
“By all means. It’s not as though I have a choice.”
“You always have a choice, Mila, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Back to the story: the winter of my high school senior year, I delivered Terrance Stanton’s luggage. At the time, he’d just been appointed as the CEO of Rossman Grozling, a major investment bank.”
“I don’t live under a rock, you know. I’ve heard of Rossman Grozling.”
“Pardon me. I didn’t mean to imply that in the least. When I brought up the luggage, the most gorgeous girl opened the door. Well, she seemed to be the most gorgeous girl to me at the time: long legs, blue eyes, a mane of blond hair. She was dressed in this see-through blouse that nearly made my eyes pop out.”
Mila wrinkled her nose. “What is it that men love about blondes, I never understood.”
“Believe me, neither did I. So as I was wheeling in Stanton’s luggage, fighting a hard-on the blonde had given me, Stanton himself came to give me the tip. I had the presence of mind to congratulate him on his recent appointment and that earned me the privilege of walking his dog during his entire stay. In the spring, I received my college acceptance letters; I’d gotten into all the schools, but only University of Utah gave me a full ride, so that was going to be my choice. A few weeks later, I received a letter from Stanton’s scholarship fund, granting me full tuition and board at any school of my choice. I didn’t have to think twice to choose Princeton, Stanton’s alma mater. Stanton took me under his wing, and when I graduated, a job at Rossman Grozling was waiting for me. The rookie year was tough, but after I earned my stripes, real money started coming in.
I was living the high life. I spent my bonuses on a swanky apartment in the city and even began to collect art, not the old masters of course, but I did get a few good modern ones; even managed to get a Lichtenstein. Those actually turned out be a very good investment when I had to sell them to cover my legal bills, but I’m getting ahead of myself. My success wasn’t enough for me. I wanted more, and my wish certainly was granted. I got approached by partners at Vitaon hedge fund and was offered a senior trader spot there. Vitaon was known for its cutting edge strategies, but more importantly, for its huge bonuses. So of course I jumped at the chance. That year I received the largest bonus of my career. I got engaged to the girl I was dating at the time, Vanessa; she looked a lot like Stanton’s blonde, and I was crazy about her. When they told me that they were going to make me partner at Vitaon, I thought that the world was my oyster. Once I became a partner, I was initiated into the secret behind Vitaon’s booming success: the management was indiscriminate as to the sources of its investors’ money, including terrorists and drug cartels.”
“They made you partner to spread out the blame.”
Dennis nodded. “You’re a sharp one. Yours truly was in it up to his ears. It didn’t matter if you were a partner for five years or five months; you still got indicted.”
“Is that how you made your first acquaintance with the Feds?”
“Yes. I tried to get out, but it was too late. Vitaon had already been on the radar. The FBI had been building the case for some time. I was offered to cooperate and walk away as a free man.”
“So you said yes?”
“I had little choice in the matter, so yes, I did. I cooperated and in exchange for providing valuable evidence for the case, I was free to go. I had to give up all of my earnings at Vitaon. I also got barred from the securities industry for life, not that I had much interest in returning to it. Oh, and my fiancée left me the minute we had to put my luxury apartment up for sale. So I moved into a studio, got my private investigator license, and moved on with my life.”
Mila whistled. “That’s some story.”
“You know what was the hardest part? Facing my family and telling Stanton. Stanton had been my mentor, and I repaid him with disappointment. Even after my failure, Stanton had been most supportive. He told me to put the past behind me and start over, and I’ve been trying to do so ever since.”
“You still don’t trust women, do you?”
Dennis was caught off-guard. Of all the things in his story, Mila had to pick up on that piece. “What makes you say that?”
“That sex addiction mess—you obviously have commitment and trust issues.”
Dennis cringed, thinking of the FBI agents listening to the wire and snickering in the van. Sure, his past as a white collar criminal was embarrassing, but the FBI already knew about it from his file. The sex addiction stuff, however, even though it was fabricated, was news. He could just imagine the jokes afterwards; good luck convincing them that it was part of his cover-up. He had Janet to thank for it; she must’ve been really pissed at him to come up with something as ridiculous as that. “You know, I never thought of it from that angle, but you might be right. Gives me something to talk about with my shrink,” Dennis lied, but beneath the crazy made-up story was a fraction of truth. He did have a hard time trusting women, and if a stranger like Mila could spot it from miles away, then what must Janet think of him?
Mila rose from the couch. “Thanks for the story, Dennis.”
“You’re welcome. I hope that now you can see that it’s possible to make the right choices even in a wrong situation. It’s never too late to put the past behind you and move on.”
“So what do we do now?” She lifted her arms. “Do you cuff me and take me downstairs?”
“There’s no need for that. Grab your things and we’ll go downstairs. An FBI van is waiting. They’ll take you to a safe place. I don’t know its location, but probably somewhere outside of town. Don’t expect anything fancy, but it’ll be comfortable; a Holiday Inn type of setting.”
“I’ll take Holiday Inn over jail any time, and Dennis, I think it’s time you started following your own advice.”
Chapter 18
At eight thirty p.m., Janet made her way downstairs where Roman was already waiting for her. Together, they walked to the casino entrance. While Roman punched in the electronic lock sequence, Janet edged herself closer to him to allow for the camera in her pendant to have an ample view of the lock and sequence that Roman was punching in.
“You know the drill, Janet,” Roman instructed her once they were inside the casino. “Go and change, and I’ll check on the tables.”
Janet made her way downstairs. Regina was already there, and Janet wondered if she’d been told to keep an eye on her.
“I see you’re back,” Regina observed without much enthusiasm.
“Hello.” Janet smiled, but her gesture wasn’t reciprocated.
“You even got new shoes,” Regina added, eyeing Janet’s shoes. “Those must’ve cost you a pretty penny. So I guess Marina won’t be coming back after all, but then I’m not surprised. She’s in pretty bad shape.”
“What happened to her?”
Regina fixed Janet with an icy stare. “Too much coke, and I don’t mean the kind that comes in the can.”
Janet gulped. “Is she going to be okay?”
“She’d better be. I don’t think that Roman is too keen on taking a girl without papers to the hospital for a drug overdose. Are you going to change or what? I’ve got to get back to work, or they’ll be looking for me upstairs.”
Janet forced indifference into her tone. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. They can wait a few minutes.”
She slipped into the hostess dress. This time she came prepared with her own padded bra that made her a whole size bigger in the chest. The pendant chain slinked down her neck, with the pendant almost falling into her cleavage; hopefully her amplified bosom would provide the needed distraction. Not that a layman would ever guess that the lovely pendant was hiding a camera; only half an inch in size, the stone was sparkling blue gray in color and looked like labrad
orite, which had become a very fashionable gem in the past year. Who would’ve thought that the FBI followed fashion trends? Or maybe it was just a coincidence. In any case, the pretty surface concealed a powerful camera, making sure that everything that took place inside Kovar’s hidden casino was being recorded. If things were to go wrong, the FBI would know at once to come to Janet’s help; at least that was what she had been told and was determined to believe.
“That’s a pretty stone.” Regina’s fingers reached for Janet’s neck.
“It was my grandmother’s.” Janet touched the pendant protectively, and Regina took the hint.
Janet went upstairs and took her place next to Roman. In a few minutes the guests would start arriving.
***
The evening rolled on just like the one yesterday. Janet seated the customers at their tables and smiled pleasantly at them. The place was starting to get filled up. She checked her watch: it was eleven p.m. She wondered if the FBI agents had been able to read the door lock sequence from the camera. Falk had assured her that even if the agents couldn’t see the keys Roman was hitting, they could deduce the sequence from the sound made by each key and the model number of the lock. He had assured her that it had been done before, and she had decided to believe him. Now, all Janet had to do was play her part and wait for the good guys to do their job. She wondered what Dennis would think about the plan. She hadn’t seen him since the morning, but even if she had, she wouldn’t have been able to say a word about tonight; this was classified information, the exciting stuff that blockbusters were made of. Only this wasn’t a movie or a book; it was real life, and she was terrified.
Just then, another patron entered the room. When he flashed his green card, Janet could barely manage a welcoming smile; Julius Libby was standing before her, in the flesh. If he had recognized her from his previous encounter with her at Panther, he didn’t show it as he stood there, politely waiting to be ushered to his table. Julius Libby was too busy a man to bother with memorizing the face of every waitress he met. Tonight he looked as sharp as ever, sharper even: dressed in an expertly tailored black suit of very fine wool, white shirt, and a dark purple tie, he looked more like a socialite than a government official.