They checked the tables in the main casino but didn’t see him or any other familiar faces, goateed or otherwise. “It’s a short walk from here to a nightcap in my room,” Paul said as they wandered around. “That’s all you’ll be allowed to wear. A nightcap.”
“I’ll have to take a taxi home.”
Paul gave the main gaming room one last survey. “He’s not here.”
At Nina’s request and against Paul’s protests, they circuited the room twice more before landing back in the same spot.
“We should be thorough,” Nina said.
“Maybe he isn’t even playing tonight! Maybe he’s hiking Tallac in the moonlight! Maybe he’s pondering his sins in the chapel at the Hilton!”
“I really think he’s here somewhere.” She didn’t want to say it, but she could feel Riesner and she could feel danger. The ringing bells were sounding warnings all around for her, and her nerves jangled in response.
“Let’s go. We’ve wasted enough attention on him. We’ve done everything we could to find the bastard. Now he’s on his own.”
“Maybe there are special rooms for high rollers. I wouldn’t know, never having been one.”
“You know, Henry Miller once said that real antagonism is based on love. You think that’s true?”
“Henry Miller made impressive bloopers now and then, too. I do not love Jeff Riesner. Are you nuts?”
“Then why are we doing this, Nina?”
She understood his perplexity but she couldn’t explain. She couldn’t bear the blight of another death. “Just a few more minutes.”
He stood with his arms crossed, leaning against a corner slot machine.
“Let’s just check for special rooms.” She pulled on him. “Please. I don’t want to face him alone.”
He didn’t budge.
“I need you.”
His arms unfolded slowly and stretched. “Oh, you shameless devil woman.”
Rather than begin by opening a hundred random doors on the main floor, they called Rossmoor’s office. Steve was out, but an assistant was happy to tell them where to go to drop a few thousand bucks. The room was on the southeastern side of the building up five steps and through a set of unmarked doors. Five or six men perched at each table. Plenty of spectators surrounded them, wives, girlfriends, wannabe gamblers.
Nina saw him first, then Paul.
In casual Armani for a change, his sleek slacks falling into ironed pleats, Jeffrey Riesner sat at three o’clock from the dealer. A glance revealed a man having a good time, but a more incisive examination of his face and bearing told Nina that he was losing. He was unhappy. He was, if the short stack of chips left in front of him was any indication, about to be cleaned out.
“Let me talk to him,” Nina said, watching Paul’s temple throb at the sight of Riesner. “He doesn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, and there’s quite a crowd here. I’ll just tell him what’s going on and we can leave.”
“I’ll call Cheney and tell him we found him. Riesner’s not going to listen to you.”
“Good.”
She came within five feet of Riesner before he noticed her. Knocking back a clear drink, he motioned for another, before turning slightly on his stool to say softly, “Get the fuck away from me, you unlucky bitch.”
“I have to talk with you.”
He turned back to his cards, laying three down for the dealer to replace. He studied his new hand.
“It’ll just take a minute.”
He pushed a stack of red chips into the center, then a stack of white, and a small stack of blue. He ran his fingers through his hair, mussing the immaculate styling.
“Do you think I would come here if it wasn’t an emergency?” Nina asked.
“Four kings,” said the man across from Riesner, spreading his cards for all to see.
“Fuck,” Riesner muttered.
“Listen,” Nina started.
“Get the hell out of my face!” he cried, slamming his cards facedown on the table, whirling around to look at her. Indifferent to the astonished stares his shout generated, he tossed a few last chips at the dealer and stood up to leave.
Nina looked around for Paul, who had temporarily disappeared, maybe gone to find a pay phone, she realized, touching the cell phone on her belt. He didn’t always carry his.
Riesner pushed past her violently, and made his way rapidly toward the exit.
“Wait!” she said, following him through the doors into the main part of the casino. But he was tall, with far longer legs, and was already yards ahead of her.
“Wait!” she shouted, but a jackpot hit somewhere, and the bells clanged. He went through the outside doors.
She ran after him.
What was this? Red thought, following his prey and the woman lawyer fast enough to stay close without being noticed. A tagalong. A complication.
He had patiently watched Jeff Riesner lose money steadily for almost an hour. By his accounts, the lawyer had lost a sizable amount, possibly more than a few thousand, and he was a poor sport, who was playing the wrong game. His emotions showed in every thick twitch of the muscles on his neck. But he was an attorney, a mighty successful one from the looks of his clothing. He had had his chance to lose big, and win big. Now it was Red’s turn.
Fortunately, some clown in bicycle gear was jumping up and down in excitement over a hit, a measly two thousand bucks, Red noted in passing swiftly through the main casino. Not even enough to buy Donna another one-carat ring. Her ring had originally cost him seven thousand. Jesus, for all the commotion, you would think he’d won a million! Some people had no sense of proportion. But the ringing and excitement had dual effects, preparing Red for what was to come by pumping up his heartbeat, and disguising his race through the casino to the parking lot.
He had his hand in his pocket on Donna’s sharpest kitchen knife. Without a gun, he was forced to rely on primitive means, but he knew where to cut to make death come quick and to keep the blood off him.
If Jessie’s lawyer got in the way, she’d go down also. A pity. Scenes of mayhem were not his bag in any way, but this might be his only chance in the foreseeable future to take Riesner down. He simply couldn’t wait any longer.
Riesner had just stepped outside when Nina caught up to him. She was out of breath, panting, and so mad at him she couldn’t see straight.
She punched him on the arm. “Listen to me, you idiot! There’s a man who may be trying to kill you! I’m warning you . . .”
But Riesner had fixed on the slight blow to his arm. His hand flew out, grabbing her by the forearm.
“Ow,” Nina said. “Let go!”
“What’s this really about?” he asked. “Huh? Are you here to finish our unfinished business? Maybe now’s the time to conduct it.”
He clamped a hand on her breast. “No bag along, huh? No hidden weapons.”
“Pay attention, you idiot—!” She looked up.
Crazy eyes under a baseball cap—a leather jacket—too small to be Jovanic—
But Riesner had glazed eyes only for her, all his fury wrapped up in that look.
“Look out!” she screamed. Using all her strength, she twisted her arm out of his grasp and pushed the astonished Riesner back into the casino.
Red couldn’t believe it. He had thrown away his chance by being overeager, an amateur’s error! He should have waited until they had gotten farther into the parking lot. . . .
Nina Reilly had recognized him. He was almost sure of it. That instant when she saw him had caused him to falter, and that hesitation had cost him the moment. Any doubt about what had to happen to her vaporized. She had to die. The smart thing would be to fade away into the dark forest of automobiles in the parking lot. He could lie in wait. But he was tired of waiting, primed perfectly with pills and alcohol to a lusty peak. A feeling washed over him. Compulsion, pulling him as strongly as the moon pulled the tides. He couldn’t quit now. He was on the verge of the biggest jackpot of his life. He couldn’t
stop. He couldn’t let go.
He could still win this. He was taking a big risk but he didn’t care.
The key was speed. First Riesner, then the woman. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, then exit. Like it was before, when he had killed Amanda and Potter, before the witnesses even registered what they saw. And what would they see? An alter ego, a phantom in a baseball cap and goatee. Plenty to talk about in his clothes and disguise, but not a thing to mark who he really was, not a thing.
Removing his gloves, he wiped his hands against his jeans and replaced them. He hurried up to the casino doors. He felt his fingers reach automatically out for the handle.
Just inside the doors, Riesner tried to shake Nina off him. “Are you crazy? You’re assaulting me.” He waved at the witnesses that were turning their eyes toward the two people raising such a ruckus in the doorway.
“We have to find the security police. Right now!” Nina said, pulling him.
He pushed her. She fell back against the wall. Through blurry eyes, she saw him again, the man with the baseball cap, not running away into the darkness at all, but coming back through the double doors into the casino behind Riesner. Something glinted in his hand. Striking out with the speed of a snake, he reached out and grabbed Riesner’s thinning hair and jerked his head back, so Nina could see his wide terrified eyes. The hand with the knife came up—
And Paul’s hand, like a flat knife itself, cut upward. The man’s arm flew up and he seemed to mount into the air, holding tight to the knife. Something small and white fell out of his pocket and skidded across the floor. Paul threw him onto the ground and stepped on his arm, which made the man emit a short scream of his own. Paul ground his shoe into the man’s arm like he was stubbing out a cigarette, slowly and methodically, and the knife fell. The baseball cap rolled to a stop on the floor.
Paul bent down, pulled him up, and came up behind him in one seamless action. “Security!” he commanded, but the first two sturdy uniforms that materialized beside him were city police, followed closely by Sergeant Cheney.
Riesner had fallen onto the ground, where he lay with his cheek nestled into the garish pattern of the red carpet. He raised his head and put a hand on his neck. When he took it away, he stared at the blood and his eyes widened.
He saw Nina.
“You!” he said. “I’ll have you arrested. . . .” But hands were pulling at him, pointing at the man with his hands behind his back, groaning. His jacket was still zipped up and he wore jeans and Nikes. His face was pale and something was wrong with his goatee. Paul had torn his goatee almost off, but there was no bleeding. The man’s mouth opened in another groan and Nina saw the gap in the front teeth, the gap which she knew well.
She bent down and gingerly picked up the white container Ully Miller had dropped. Another weapon? Small, plastic—
Dental floss.
31
IF YOU DON’T like somebody, but they do you a good turn, and you’re a normal person, you tend to look upon them more softly. And if you don’t like somebody, but you do them a good turn, same thing: You have a positive stake in this person.
But this is not the psychology of lawyers. In the psychology of lawyers, you have been one-upped in the former case, and you have kicked butt in the latter case. In neither situation does one party like the other party any better.
So it was that Jeff Riesner’s first words to Nina at the meeting in her conference room that Friday were “Still in this dump, I see.” He was resplendent in a shiny gray suit, no sign of the incident in the casino two days before except a Band-Aid on the left side of his neck where Ully Miller—or Ulrich Miller, as they called him in the papers—had begun to cut his throat.
As he pulled out one of the office chairs, which, true, were from Office Depot, on sale, guaranteed stackable, and sat gingerly down, Nina’s impulse was to pour her hot double espresso over his head. But that would have been a waste of good espresso.
Was Riesner humiliated at being saved by Paul? No doubt. He hadn’t thanked Paul yet, and he probably never would. Right now, Paul was on the road, driving back to the central Coast, to pick up the threads in Carmel.
He was gone. She couldn’t think about that right now. She snapped back into her focus on Riesner. Would he rather have been gutted like a snapper, murdered in full view of dozens of people?
Maybe so. At least he wouldn’t be sitting here today, summoned by Nina, who, having pepper-sprayed and mortified him, had called a meeting of casino officials that he could not avoid.
His unsurprising public reaction to all these latest events was to affect unruffled aplomb. His personal reaction had lodged like Ully Miller’s knife somewhere between his corrupt black heart and slimy soul. He would not forget or forgive her for any of it, that she knew for sure.
John Jovanic laughed about something into his cell phone. Prince Hatfield, an ex–Nevada state senator, member of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and Ully Miller’s boss, sat next to him, trying to get comfortable in one chair when it would have taken two to hold his girth. And Thomas Munzinger, Global Gaming’s vice president, he of the Marlboro Man face and the cowboy hat, was at the far end of the table. He was waiting.
“John,” Riesner said, shaking hands across the crowded table. “Mr. Hatfield. Hello, Thomas.”
Munzinger nodded, not a pleasant nod.
The second hand of the wall clock jigged past the twelve, signifying that it was ten A.M. exactly, and Munzinger said, “Let’s get started.” Jovanic murmured something and hung up. Nina sipped her coffee and wondered if she could carry it off. A year before, she would have been tongue-tied with anxiety, but she had changed. The men in the room seemed to sense this. Riesner was watching her uneasily.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “thank you for coming. But where are your attorneys?”
“We’ve talked to our attorneys and decided to leave them behind today. We can handle this,” said Jovanic.
Nina shrugged. “I won’t take up much of your valuable time this morning. I have a press conference at eleven.”
“And that’s what this is all about,” Munzinger said softly.
“Yes. I will be frank. I think you have a problem, and I think I have a solution.
“Your problem is that I am about to go on national television and discuss how Ulrich Miller knew the Greed Machine was going to hit. I am going to be asked about the random number generators, about the sevens on top of the line and below the line but hardly ever on the line, about the house percentages being carefully set in a nonrandom fashion, about the big spenders who can slip in their club cards and change the odds. And of course, about the nonrandom nature of the microchip in the high-jackpot slot machines.
“I am likely to be asked just how important slot machines are to the state of Nevada, and I will of course answer truthfully that slots are Nevada’s biggest industry. And I will be compelled to point out that in the case of this particular jackpot, all Mr. Miller did was predict the jackpot, not tamper with it. In other words, all he did was take advantage of the way the machine was already legally rigged by Global Gaming.”
“That statement is actionable,” John Jovanic began. He looked at Munzinger, who gave one short shake of his head. Jovanic sat back.
Munzinger said, “At the very least, he stole proprietary information from us to win a jackpot. That is illegal. Therefore the jackpot is void.”
“I thought you would say that,” Nina said. “In fact, let me try to state your position. It is that you are going to wait for Judge Amagosian to rule on the Writ of Execution, and then you are going to step in and void the jackpot if Jessie Potter wins the case. So she won’t get the money anyway, at least without a formidable fight in court.”
“There is still Mr. Riesner,” Munzinger said. “He might win.”
“There is still my fee,” Riesner said at the same time. “Forty percent of the jackpot. That was the contingency agreement with Atchison Potter. I have a notarized retainer agreement.”
; “No doubt. Let’s say Judge Amagosian decides in your favor. If you billed at a fair rate of, say, $200 per hour, your fee would be somewhere around ten thousand dollars. Of course, I’m being generous with that estimate. So if you win, Mr. Riesner, what happens to the jackpot? You’re hoping that at the end you will be awarded almost three million dollars, and the rest will go to pay off Mr. Potter’s margin calls. But the end will be a long way away for you.”
“I have a contract,” Riesner repeated to the whole table. He turned to Munzinger. “I practically got killed by your buddy Miller. He killed my client. I have suffered a lot of trauma. I am going to collect.”
Munzinger ignored him. He said to Nina, “What is your proposition?”
“Simple,” Nina said. “You gentlemen persuade Mr. Riesner to drop his claim, which will end the writ hearing and allow Mrs. Potter to take the jackpot. Sign a waiver of all claims against Mrs. Potter for the jackpot. After all, she is an innocent third party. Nobody is suggesting she had anything to do with Miller.”
“And what do we get out of this mess?” Munzinger said.
“I’ll have to cancel out of the press conference due to other commitments,” Nina said. “And so will Kenny Leung, Mrs. Potter, and my staff. We will sign an agreement not to discuss this settlement of your potential claim against Mrs. Potter. At all. Including, of course, the microchip information.”
“Most of what you plan to say is already public knowledge, available to anyone who reads the newspaper. And we can tie you up for a very long time, and probably get a gag order,” Munzinger said.
“That’s right,” Riesner said. “Let’s get real. My firm and the Gaming Control Board and Global Gaming—you are gonna get smashed so hard you’ll wish you never took the bar.”
“Maybe. But you may be surprised at the fight we’ll put up. I’m betting we will win down the line,” Nina said. “That’s the alternative, and we’ll beat you the hard way if it takes ten years, and we will get Mr. Riesner’s fee knocked down to something reasonable, and I will ask for my attorney’s fees ten years down the line. Meantime, the information about the slot machines will appear as major news all over the place, not just in the local papers, even if you get a gag order, leaked by persons unknown and unfindable by you. Bet on it.”
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