“He’s a shareholder in The River, along with Jeremy Ashton. The company is registered in Cyprus.”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“You left before I had a chance to say anything.”
“I did, didn’t I. Well, now that we’re talking, tell me what you know about him.”
“I’ve never met Douglas. We’ve only dealt with Ashton, which is not unusual. A lot of these poker sites have well-known professionals attached to them to attract players. They’re normally not involved in any of the day-to-day administration.”
“Then talk to me about Ashton.”
“He’s English, a bit of a snot, and demanding as hell. I’ve actually talked to the Chief a few times about cutting them loose. When we started this business, we were so anxious for customers that we were more flexible with our standards than we should have been, and we didn’t always do the kind of due diligence we do now.”
“Are you saying there’s something odd going on with The River?” she asked.
“I’m saying I don’t know if there is or not, but that there shouldn’t be any doubt.”
“Fair enough. Although it’s a bit late in the day now.”
“I know,” he said softly.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to second-guess you.” Ava checked her watch. “Martin, I know I didn’t clear this with the Chief, but can you send me everything you have on Ashton and Douglas and their businesses — The River and the holding company and whatever else you have on file?”
“I can.”
“Tonight, if possible.”
“Okay.”
“Do you need to discuss it with the Chief?”
“I don’t think so. He did ask me to handle communications with you. I don’t see how your request is out of the ordinary.”
“Thanks, and I’ll talk to you later.”
“Good luck.”
Funny, she thought, luck wasn’t a word she normally associated with her job, but this time it seemed to fit.
(20)
Even at midnight, McCarran Airport was a zoo. Serving a city with a population of only a million people, it was the sixth-busiest airport in the world, handling more than 600,000 planes and 45 million passengers a year. Hordes of people slumped towards the departure gates, tired, depressed, defeated, and broke. Moving past them in the opposite direction were thousands of confident, eager, energetic new arrivals.
Ava’s plane landed at the main terminal and she walked out to the taxi stand. The lineup looped back and forth like one for a Disney World ride in peak season. She shivered, the cool desert air penetrating her nylon Adidas jacket. She spotted a limo driver with a sign that read downtown and headed towards him. A tall, lean black man got there just ahead of her. “The Venetian,” he said.
“Can you take two people?” Ava asked, poking her head around him.
“Up to him,” the driver said.
“Where are you going?” the man asked.
“Wynn’s.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding at the driver.
McCarran Airport was in the southeast part of Vegas, only eight kilometres from the downtown area and about four kilometres from the heart of the Strip. Its outer boundary was mainly desert. On previous trips it had taken Ava not much more than ten minutes to get from the airport to the main Strip, but tonight traffic was unbelievably heavy. After crawling along Tropicana Avenue for fifteen minutes they still hadn’t reached Las Vegas Boulevard.
“Is there something going on tonight?” Ava asked.
“There’s always something going on,” the driver said.
The man she was sharing the limo with spent the first ten minutes of the drive working his BlackBerry. Whatever he was reading had brought a smile to his face. Ava thought he looked slightly familiar. She gazed at his long, lean frame. He wore a black silk jacket over a white T-shirt, black designer jeans, and a pair of expensive white sneakers. When he had put the BlackBerry away, he turned to her and said, “Hi, I’m Gilbert Jackson.”
The driver twisted his head to look back at them. “I thought I recognized you. Great to drive you.”
“I’m Ava Lee,” she said to Jackson.
“You in the movies?” he asked.
“No.”
“You didn’t do that Crouching Tiger thing?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“I think so.”
“Okay,” he said, smiling at her.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I played basketball, and now I’m an agent.”
“He’s the agent,” the driver said. “He represents the best.”
“I was lucky,” Jackson said. “I wasn’t much of a player but I learned how the system works. And I made a lot of friends.”
“I’m an accountant,” Ava said.
“I have one.”
“I wasn’t looking for a job.”
He shrugged. “I’m here for an agents’ meeting. You?”
“I came here to get some money.”
“Then you’ve come to the wrong place,” Jackson said. “They didn’t build Las Vegas to give money away.”
Traffic lightened as they moved closer towards the Strip. As they turned north on Las Vegas Boulevard, four massive hotels — the MGM Grand, the Tropicana, New York-New York, and the Excalibur — lit up the night sky. Those hotels alone, Ava knew, held twenty thousand guests at any given time. Most of them, it seemed, had spilled out onto the jammed sidewalks.
It had been a few years since Ava had been to Vegas. On previous trips, always with her mother, she had done her run along the Strip in the early morning. She would start at Sands Avenue and work her way south, past Flamingo Road, Harmon Road, and Tropicana Avenue, out to Russell Road, where she was greeted by the famous welcome to las vegas sign at the tip of the boulevard. Just beyond had been patches of vacant desert, small strip malls, and stand-alone restaurants. Now Ava saw that the gaps had been plugged. On the west side of the Strip, New York-New York ran into the Monte Carlo, and beside it was the massive new City Center complex and the Bellagio, on the southwest corner of Flamingo Road.
“Hardcore Disneyland for adults,” Jackson said.
“If you like to gamble,” Ava replied.
“Hell, not many of my guys are into that. They come here to party — which, if anything, is worse. Vegas has the best club scene in the country, and there’s more trouble to be found there than on any casino floor.”
“Women?”
Jackson laughed. “These guys are in the NBA. They use women the way you use dental floss.”
“Nice,” Ava said.
“No offence.”
“A bit late for that.”
“What I mean,” he said, as they neared the northwest corner of Flamingo Boulevard, “is that things get more
