“Being our casinos are next door to each other, it’s not surprising that I sometimes get deliveries for you,” Nick said. “I got that little baby in a package from Japan. I believe it’s called Deadlock.”
The three casino executives looked stricken. Each had gone through a rigorous examination when applying for his casino license. No criminal activity of any kind was allowed. Owning a sophisticated cheating device could get their licenses taken away.
“Now, I suppose you could argue that you purchased Deadlock in order to educate your surveillance techs,” Nick went on. “Only there’s this little problem called Frank Fontaine. The FBI picked him up this morning and threw him back in jail. If I tell the FBI about Deadlock, and they ask Fontaine what he knows, well, you boys could be royally screwed.”
“Nick!” Wanda said disapprovingly.
“Sorry, baby.”
“I should hope so,” she said.
Nick smiled at his bride. He’d promised Wanda to stop swearing. Wanda believed the baby could hear him, and would develop bad habits.
Shelly Michael cleared his throat. “Let me guess. You want to make a deal.”
Nick’s smile grew. “Let’s call it a business arrangement.”
Rags shook his head. To his partners, he said, “I’d rather take my chances in court than get fucked by this clown.”
Nick wanted to belt him. Hadn’t Rags seen how sensitive Wanda was to vulgarity? He decided to hit him where it hurt, and said, “What’s the name of your company? BE BOP SHABAM Records?”
“That’s right,” Rags said.
“Or is it BE BOP SCAM Records?”
Rags glared menacingly at him. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” Nick said, puffing out his chest. “You got this great thing going, don’t you? You take these ghetto rappers, release their CDs to other ghetto kids, and they go gold in two weeks. You go to the chains, show them the sales figures, and they order a million copies for their stores. That’s the game, isn’t it?”
Rags said, “Yeah, so what’s your point?”
“The point is, those kids aren’t buying music CDs. They’re buying Hershey bars with altered bar codes. The sales numbers are faked. You’re a fake. You want to take me to court? Do you?”
Rags shrank in his chair, his bluster gone. “No.”
“I didn’t think so. Maybe while I’m at it, I’ll tell everybody how Chance bankrupted his software company in Silicon Valley, and how Shelly’s law firm struck a secret deal with the feds so none of the partners had to go to jail.”
Shelly and Chance both closed their eyes.
“You boys think I lasted thirty-nine years in this town by being a dummy?” Nick said, his voice rising. “I know everything about everybody. So we can deal, or we can fight. It’s up to you.”
Chance opened his eyes. “What do you want?”
Nick held up two fingers. “Two things,” he said.
“Name them.”
Nick clicked his fingers, and Wanda removed a rolled sheet of paper from her handbag with the aplomb of a game show hostess. Nick unfurled the paper. It was a crude rendering of a pedestrian walkway connecting the Acropolis to the three men’s casinos. The sketch included stick people and a smiling sun. Wanda had even signed it.
“In the spirit of cooperation, and the betterment of mankind, I propose that our casinos be linked,” Nick said. “It will be good for
Chance groaned as if confronting his worst nightmare.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Nick said.
“Are you going to get rid of those awful statues?”
“They’re being demolished as we speak,” Nick replied. “I’m replacing them with ones of Wanda.”
Shelly Michael stared at the sketch. “What else do you want?”
Nick went to the window. During breakfast, he’d asked Valentine how he could thank him for saving the city. Tony had only wanted one thing.
“A favor for a friend,” he said.
In the glass, Nick saw the three men exchange looks.
Shelly said, “You going to explain?”
Nick had greased plenty of palms over the years, but he still didn’t have the juice to accomplish what Tony had asked him for. That was going to take help. He tapped his fingers on the glass, then turned to look at the three men.
“It’s a little sticky,” he said.
52
Lois Marie Valentine was a tiny thing, just under six pounds, but she had a voice like the fat lady in the opera, and Yolanda’s doctor said she was perfectly healthy. Gerry could not stop holding her, his wife lying in bed, looking like a truck had run over her, the labor lasting thirty hours.
“I’ll never do natural again,” she’d declared.
Valentine sat in a chair beside Yolanda’s bed, staring at his granddaughter. Other people’s babies looked like larvae, never your own. Two days had passed since he’d shot Amin, and it was nice to finally be home. He pushed himself out of the chair.
“I’m getting coffee,” he said. “Either of you want anything?”
“No thanks,” Gerry and Yolanda said.
He left, and Gerry put his daughter on the bed so they could both look at her. In her tiny face, he saw traces of his mother, and it made him feel things in his heart he’d never felt before. Yolanda touched his arm.
“Gerry, what’s going to happen?”
“Nothing,” he said, stroking his daughter’s hair.
“But Mabel said you were in trouble. That you might end up going to jail for helping the terrorists win money at the casinos, and for buying explosives. She said the district attorney wanted to throw the book at you.”
“He changed his mind.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. I’m free,” he said quietly.
“You are? Really?”
He met her gaze, hearing the mistrust. He was going to have to win that back, however long it took.
“Really,” he said.
“How did you manage that?”
His daughter let out a scream that lifted the hair on his head. Yolanda lifted her off the sheets, and she instantly went quiet.
“My dad got these three casino bosses to fix it with the DA’s office,” he said. “The charges were thrown out this morning. The judge wasn’t too happy about it.”
“What did he say?”
“He gave me a real tongue-lashing. Told me never to step foot in the state of Nevada again. We went straight from the courthouse to the airport. I think my father was afraid the judge was going to change his mind.”
Yolanda took his hand and squeezed it. “Oh, my God, that is so wonderful.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What about your job? Is your father going to let you stay in the business?”
Gerry looked at the floor. It was tile, and he saw his reflection in it. If the guy looking back at him wasn’t the luckiest guy on the planet, he didn’t know who was.
“He’s going to give me another chance,” he said.
