“How about you?” she asked Ashton.
“I’m in,” he said quickly.
“I thought you might be,” Ava said. “Now, I do need to stress one thing — there’s no time limit on our agreement. It doesn’t expire in a month, a year, or ten years.”
“That’s clear,” Douglas said.
A noise erupted from the kitchen. Carlo and Andy were hauling in the man who had been shot in the leg. They stood on either side of him, holding his arms, as he hopped in. Douglas looked at him with disgust.
It took fifteen minutes to get everyone double-taped and lying in separate rooms. When they were settled, she said to Carlo and Andy, “Take their wallets and go through the drawers. Make it look like a robbery. You can keep whatever you find; just don’t use their credit cards. When you’re done, come outside to the car.”
As Carlo and Andy started going through Douglas’s things, Ava went outside to join Martin. “We’re just finishing up,” she told him as she slid into the passenger seat.
“And?”
“Here is a confession signed by both of them,” she said, passing him a copy. “It could be useful if the Chief ever has an issue with them.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Martin asked.
“It’s a bargaining chip.”
“Why do you need one?”
“I only got back a little of the money they stole. The bulk is sitting in an account in Cyprus and it takes three signatures to release it. I have only two.”
“Who is the third?”
“Ashton’s fiancee, and she’s in London. I’m going there tonight.”
“What about them?” he asked, pointing to the house.
“They’re tied up and will stay that way until I can get Carlo and Andy and you out of Las Vegas.”
“And they’ll stay quiet?”
“Yes, I think they will. Neither of them is stupid.”
The front door opened and Carlo and Andy emerged, each of them carrying his paper bag.
“You can open the trunk,” Ava said. “We should leave the same way we came in.”
They climbed back into the trunk in the same order. The smell of baby powder was gone, replaced by a faint odour of sweat.
They drove out of the complex without any complications, and two minutes later Martin pulled the car over to the side of the road. He popped the trunk, held out his hand to Ava, and pulled her out. She felt stiff, and the right side of her torso was throbbing. The boys climbed out after her.
“Wipe your prints off the cleaver and the gun and then toss them,” she said.
As she watched them walk out into the desert to get rid of the weapons, she muttered, “Ninety-five.”
“What?” Martin said.
“I’m ninety-five percent of the way to getting that money back.”
“That’s amazing.”
“No, unfortunately, it isn’t. Unless I can close, it doesn’t mean a thing,” Ava said. Half of her brain was making a list of all the things she had to do before she left Las Vegas; the other half was already in London.
(33)
Ava stripped as soon as she got to her hotel room. She could smell sweat, car trunk, and dog urine. She packed the clothes she had been wearing in a plastic laundry bag and tied it tight. Then she went into the bathroom and showered.
When she came out a half-hour later, she put on a clean black Giordano T-shirt and track pants, then packed the rest of her clothes for the trip. She buried the laundry bag in the bottom of her Louis Vuitton suitcase and put a powder-blue Brooks Brothers shirt and a clean pair of slacks in her “Double Happiness” bag. If she went directly from Gatwick to Lily Simmons’s office, she would need to change on the plane.
She sat down near the window with her Moleskine notebook in her lap and began to organize her thoughts. With the money she’d moved that day, her worst-case scenario was that they would recoup a bit more than six million dollars, and that factored in what she had promised to give back to Douglas and Ashton even if she failed with Simmons. It was lot of money — more than what they went after on many jobs. But compared to the sixty-five million that was sitting in Cyprus, it was insignificant. All she had to do to get that jackpot was convince Lily Simmons to sign a piece of paper.
Ava checked the time. It was almost five o’clock — eight o’clock in the morning in Hong Kong. She needed to call Uncle.
“ Wei.”
“We’re back and it went well.”
He listened without interruption as she described how the afternoon had gone. When she finished, his first question was, “How soon can you see this Simmons woman?”
“Late tomorrow. I’m flying to London tonight.”
“And the woman doesn’t know that Ashton and Douglas stole the money?”
“No.”
“Could that be a problem?”
“The opposite, I would think. It has a certain shock value that I can embellish. Although, you know, that doesn’t mean she’ll react the way we want.”
“If anyone can manage that, you can,” Uncle said. “Now I need to call Chang. It is as I thought. Now that Ordonez knows for sure his brother was swindled, he is becoming fanatical about getting the money back. Chang says he can barely get him to focus on anything else. This news might calm him, but I will tell him only about your success in Las Vegas. I will leave the rest of it as vaguely promising. We do not want to raise expectations that we cannot guarantee will be met.”
“Thank you.”
“Now, how about Carlo and Andy?”
“I’m sending them to Los Angeles tonight. They’ll be on a plane back to Hong Kong tomorrow.”
“Ava, do you want to keep them closer?”
“Jackie Leung?”
“Yes. He has not been cornered yet. We have found out that he was talking to Sammy Wing, and I have sent Sonny to see Sammy.”
“Wing is a friend.”
“Wing was a friend. He is in the process of becoming one again.”
“Uncle, I can’t take Carlo and Andy to England with me. I have enough on my mind as it is.”
“I am just being cautious.”
“I know, and I appreciate the offer, but they would just slow me down. Now, when will you call Manila?”
“Not for a while. Chang is as old as me but he still likes to sleep.”
“Good luck with him.”
“He is not the problem.”
“I know. Ordonez left a message on my phone last night. I didn’t call him back.”
“That is his nature: he feels compelled to manage everything. You would think that with an empire as big as his, he would have learned to let go. And this situation with his brother has probably only made things worse.”
“I’m not going to call him and I’m not going to take his calls.”
“I will handle it. Call me as soon as you have met that woman.”
Ava put down the phone. Let Uncle work his magic, she thought. I’ll look after London. Let him handle Hong Kong and Manila.
She turned on her computer and logged into her email account. She had received a new batch of messages, and almost without thinking she opened the most recent one from Mimi. Hey sister, Just wanted you to know that
