“There’s no way I’m letting you do this, Sundance,” Candice spat. Clearly that bump on the head had brought out her temper.
“Oh, there is a way,” I told her. “The Vegas bureau has already cleared me, and Gaston’s even on board. No one here trusts you, Cassidy. Me, at least they sorta trust, and as I’ve already met the man in question, I’ll only add legitimacy to your request to see him.”
Candice rounded on her husband. “Do something!”
Brice had his eyes shielded by his hand and was trying hard not to look at my half-dressed self. “If I had my way, I’d never let either one of you go in there.”
Candice clenched her fists in frustration. “Abby, you are not going!”
“Oh, I am so going!” I yelled back.
“Hey!” Agent Oppenheimer shouted. We both turned to see he’d poked his head through the curtain separating us from the other agents. “Quit it, you two. You’re both going or the deal’s off.”
I crossed my arms over my torso. “Hey! This isn’t a peep show, you know!”
Oppenheimer indulged me by putting a hand over his eyes. “Sorry.”
He said that like he wasn’t one bit sorry. Just then my cell rang. Caller ID showed it was my husband. I palmed my forehead. “Crap on a cracker!” Perhaps Brice and I had neglected to call Dutch and assure him that we’d be home soon and that we weren’t up to any shenanigans in Sin City. “Hey, cowboy!” I sang, all breezy and relaxed.
“Where are you?” he demanded. “I just heard you’d been rehired by Gaston, and that you’re involved in some crazy undercover op out in Vegas.”
“I’m fine, honey. And how’re you?”
“Don’t be cute.”
“You make it hard to be otherwise when you’re mad.”
“Edgar . . . ,” Dutch growled.
“What’s that, Brice?” I said, looking meaningfully at Brice. He started to shake his head. Vigorously. “Oh, you want to talk to Dutch and explain everything? Sure! Hold on, Dutch, here’s Brice.”
I held out the phone to Brice. He continued to shake his head. I gave him my best “I’mma kill you if you don’t take this phone from me right now!” face, and reluctantly, he took the phone.
Candice and I got back to arguing with each other while the tech finished up with me. Twenty minutes later we’d settled down. A bit. Candice was still pissed off, and Brice looked like he’d gotten a pretty good lecture from my husband. He’d tried to hand the phone back to me a couple of times, and eventually I took it and simply hit the “end” button before turning off the phone. Dutch couldn’t yell at me if he couldn’t reach me. I’d probably have to put out several times over the next few days to get him to forgive us, but if making love to my incredibly hot and oh-so-sexy husband was what it took, well . . . I suppose I’d take one for the team.
“Okay, now let’s go over this again,” Oppenheimer said. “You go in there and request a meeting. You meet and get him to admit to killing Michelle Fusco. You then trade him the file for the evidence to prove Candice’s innocence, and then you get the hell out of there. You do not, and I repeat do not, leave that hotel to go to any other location. We’ve got the place surrounded, but his surveillance team will be working from the inside, and if they’re alerted to our presence, they could definitely run interference with us. The code word if you get into trouble is ‘canary.’”
“That’s a stupid code word,” Candice said. I suspected she was angry enough at me to take it out on Oppenheimer.
“How about ‘pizza’?” I said.
Oppenheimer sighed and rubbed his face. “Fine. The code word is ‘pizza.’”
“Uh, no. I was a little hungry and I was hoping for some pizza.” Oppenheimer glared so hard at me that I actually backed up. “Kidding!” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “Gee, you Vegas guys need to lighten up a bit.”
“This is why I don’t think she should come!” Candice snapped.
I knew she simply wanted to keep me out of harm’s way, but she was starting to hurt my feelings. So I turned to her and said, “What you fail to understand, Cassidy, is that I’ve already pointed my radar at this little meet and greet, and without me, you have zero chance of survival. With me, the odds are significantly better.”
All eyes in the room widened in surprise. “You didn’t tell me that when you asked me to get permission to go along, Abby,” Brice said, alarm in his voice.
“Yeah, well, some things are just better left unsaid.”
“You’re making that up,” Candice said, squinting at me.
I looked her dead in the eyes. “No. I’m not.”
There was an awkward silence after that, and finally Oppenheimer said, “Well, at this moment, Candice, you’re still officially under arrest for the murder of Dr. Robinowitz, and the attempted murder of Saline Hamon. You either cooperate under the terms we’ve negotiated, or we call this whole thing off and you go directly to jail.”
Candice glared at both me and Oppenheimer. I could tell she wasn’t happy about any of this, but it was the only way to clear her name. There was concrete proof out there that Michelle had framed Candice and we had to get it from the person who’d killed Michelle before he destroyed it.
Also, the FBI could use the file we’d gotten from under the litter box to reel in a big fish, so they were sorta chomping at the bit for us to play nice and get the meet and greet going. We’d be on a short leash, but at least we had a chance.
“Fine,” Candice said through clenched teeth. I gave her a winning smile, even though, on the inside, I was shaking like a leaf.
I had a terrible feeling about walking into the lion’s den. I knew we’d be protected to a point, but it didn’t feel like we’d thought of every contingency. Of course, this plan had been put together on the fly, so it was more than likely that we’d missed something important, but we were committed and there wasn’t really another choice available to us if we ever wanted the charges against Candice dropped.
At ten past five, we were given the green light, and Candice and I went down to our new rental car and drove the short distance to the casino.
I parked in the same area I’d parked in before, and led the way to the entrance. We made it through the casino and up to the lobby level by way of the escalator. I gripped the railing on the way up; every nerve was on edge and my Spidey senses were tingling with warning.
As we got off the escalator, we were met by a familiar figure. I had a feeling he’d greet us, especially after I’d put a few more of the puzzle pieces together since my close call at the apartment. “Arlo,” I said. “So sorry I couldn’t hang out with you at the apartment last night, but you seemed a little tied up.”
Arlo’s eyes narrowed and his lip curled in a snarl. Moving aside his jacket slightly to reveal the gun holstered at his side, he said, “I’m free to hang out now.”
Candice moved closer to me and her posture suggested that she was ready to karate chop his ass if it came to it. “Aww, that’s sweet of you,” I said, patting his chest. “But we’ve got an appointment to keep. Maybe next time.”
He gripped my elbow much the way he had before. “The boss told me to personally escort you two upstairs,” he said.
I cut my eyes to Candice and subtly shook my head. I didn’t want her to get into it with Arlo. He was the smaller fish in the pond. We’d deal with him later.
She frowned but relaxed her shoulders a bit. She didn’t like it, but she’d play along.
Arlo “escorted” us over to the elevator and we waited for the doors to open. At last the elevator pinged and we headed inside. We rode up in silence and I felt my underarms become slick. So much for the extra deodorant I’d slathered on. I wondered if they made a formula strong-enough-for-meeting-a-Mafia-killer- but-made-for-a-woman. I’d have to inquire about it if I made it out alive.
The elevator slowed, then stopp
ed, and with a ping the doors opened. We stepped out into a corridor and headed to the end of the hall. Arlo then let go of my elbow, and knocked on the double doors. “Enter!” we heard a voice command.
Arlo opened the doors and then reached behind the two of us to push us forward. The second we were through the entry, he closed the door behind us, locked it, then gripped both of our shoulders tightly. “Thought I’d spare you the public pat-down, but I still gotta put you through it,” he said.
He started with Candice, feeling along every limb and the small of her back all the way down to her ankles. She took it without complaint. We both knew Arlo wasn’t about to find the wires we were both wearing. They were tucked into our bras and the tiny battery pack was hidden in the clasp at the back. Sometimes, being a girl has its advantages.
Arlo moved on to me and while he touched me, I read his energy. I kept the information to myself, but I knew he was the kind of guy that made the wrong choices. How ironic that he’d gambled in Vegas and was about to lose big-time.
Once Arlo was done patting us down, he motioned with his arm and we stepped forward. Candice had to be running on adrenaline at this point, but her steps were sure and I could tell she was alert and ready for anything. “Frank Garafolo,” she said. “Saline’s told me all about you.”
Big G pulled out a Big Gun and pointed it at us. “Where is she?”
“She’s dead,” Candice said simply.
I hadn’t expected her to lie about that.
Big G and his gun stared hard at her. “Did you kill her?”
“Nope,” Candice said before turning sideways and motioning to Arlo. “Your friend Arlo here did.”
Arlo’s jaw dropped and he drew his own gun. Pointing it at Candice, he said, “That’s a lie. Tell him the truth, you bitch.”
“Oh, but it’s not a lie,” I said, ready to holler “PIZZA!” at a moment’s notice. “You did kill her, Arlo. Because you were in on Michelle’s scheme, and you didn’t warn Frank here.”
Nobody moved or spoke for several seconds. Finally Big G said, “Arlo, put the gun away. Fusco, talk to me or I’ll kill you myself.”
Candice motioned to one of the chairs in front of Big G’s desk. “May I?”
G waved his gun nonchalantly. “It’s your funeral.”
Candice took a seat, but I felt like standing. Okay, so I felt like bolting, but I managed to stay put and watch Candice play this thing out.
“I’m going to tell you a story,” Candice said. “And you tell me if it matches up with what you think went down.”
Big G leaned back in his chair. “Amuse me.”
“A little over a month ago, my scum-sucking ex-husband was hired by you to investigate your girlfriend, Saline Hamon. Saline had you thinking seriously about marriage, but before you went down the aisle with her, you wanted to make sure there were no skeletons in her closet you didn’t know about.
“You knew Lenny from the days when he came in here and blew a couple grand in cash. He was flush with you, thanks in no small part to me, but you felt he was trustworthy because he knew what you’d do to him if he ever double-crossed you.
“Unfortunately for you, Lenny wasn’t as smart as you gave him credit for, and certainly he wasn’t as trustworthy. He discovered pretty quick that your girlfriend had a false ID. Her real name was Olive Wintergarden. We now know that her mother had once been the girlfriend of Salazar Kato. By Saline’s account, her mother had never told her much about her father, only that he’d broken it off with her a few weeks before she even knew she was pregnant, and because he’d headed off to America to find his fortune, she’d never tried to track him down to tell him about the baby. Lenny managed to obtain Olive’s birth certificate, listing her father as Salazar Kato, and he wondered if she could be his daughter. Somehow he obtained DNA samples for both, and sent them off for testing.
“Meanwhile, he also discovered that Saline was ripping you off. You added this wing of the hotel for condos, and Saline handled the title paperwork. You thought with her background in real estate she was the perfect person to execute the docs. What you didn’t know was that Saline was onto your methods for selling the condos during a time when the real estate market is, shall we say, less than robust, and yet, all the condos were sold lickety-split.” Candice snapped her fingers for effect. Big G seemed annoyed, but he let her continue.
“You tended to target a specific type of person to give the sales pitch to. You looked for regular guests of the casino, those folks who were starting to struggle with the compulsion to gamble. Maybe their credit was also starting to suffer a little, and you offered them a convenience that was hard for them to resist. If they lived right above the casino, they could ride that lucky streak any time they felt it coming on. You were exceptionally good at talking them into this, and once they were living here, you were also exceptionally good at coaxing them downstairs to lose more and more money. Eventually they started to default on their credit cards, and their car payments, and even their mortgage payments. And then you offered them a way out; you suggested that you could write them a new mortgage, and you would become their lender. You’d charge them very low interest for the first six months, until they could get back on their feet, and then you’d jack up the rate to nineteen, twenty, even twenty-five percent. They’d make a few payments to you after those first six months, because they wouldn’t dare risk missing a payment to you, now, would they? And then they’d slip, and you’d foreclose. That was a little item in small print that most of them missed, wasn’t it, Frank? That line about foreclosing after thirty days? You’d bring the hammer down so swiftly they wouldn’t even know what happened. They’d shuffle off to work one day, and come back to find out they couldn’t even get into the lobby. Within a day you’d have the place back on the market, ready for another hapless sucker. Oh, and you’d still make the old owners responsible for the balance of the remaining mortgage. And every once in a while you’ll send out a thug to remind them that they still owe you, right, Frank? Who says loan-sharking is dead?”
Candice paused to study Frank, who was still holding his gun as if he might like to get in a little target practice. Candice seemed amused. “Now, we all know these mortgage terms you set up were super illegal,” she continued, “but Saline was handling all the paperwork, and somehow whatever she was filing down at the county recording office didn’t set off any alarm bells, so win-win, right?”
Frank’s eyes narrowed. We’d learned some of it by Candice’s conversations with Saline, and the rest by looking through the file we found under Michelle’s kitty litter box, which held an example of one such mortgage and a flash drive with all the other docs on it. It’d made for some interesting reading.
“Did Saline tell you all this?” Frank asked Candice.
Candice waved her hand as if to shoo his question away. “I’m getting to that,” she said to him. “The part I want to talk about now is the part where you didn’t realize that Saline was actually recording the condos in her name. Slowly, one by one as you wrote out a new mortgage to cover the bank-owned one, Saline was putting herself exclusively on title, and then she’d tuck in a lease agreement into each of the closing docs, which meant she was only leasing these places out to your next victim. You’d collect the rent, of course, but Saline didn’t care about the cash payments. What she cared about was the value of each condo as it was transferred from the bank to her. With each new mortgage you thought you were setting up, Saline was gaining a share of the value of your casino. All she needed were twenty-five condos, plus the one you outright gave to her when you proposed. Once she had that number, she’d be the legal owner of fifty-one percent of Big G’s. She’d be your boss, Frank. And she could assign those condos to anyone she wanted. She could even assign them to her father, Salazar Kato, who would then effectively own your ass. Which is exactly what she planned to do. She told me personally you were smothering the crap out of her,
and actively working to bring down her dad. She also knew about the other women. For a while, your loving fiancée had you so fooled, Frank.”
Big G’s jaw clenched and his free hand formed into a fist. The room became very tense and I wondered if now was a good time to throw a pizza party.
Candice, however, appeared unfazed by the tension she was creating. “I don’t know when you caught on to the plan, Frank. And I’m not sure how you recruited Arlo and Michelle to work for you. Maybe you promised them each a condo. Michelle was in the middle of selling her place when she was murdered; maybe she’d planned to move in here?”
Frank’s mouth became a thin line. “You’ve got nothing,” he told her.
Candice smiled at him like she thought he was being cute. Looking over her shoulder at Arlo, she said, “The problem with sending Arlo to do your dirty work, Frank, is that he jumps the gun—no pun intended. True, he killed Michelle before she could tell him where she’d hidden all that fabulous evidence that could land you many, many years in federal prison . . . but we found it.” Candice pointed back and forth between her and me, and when Frank turned his mean eyes on me, I gulped. He then turned that hostile gaze on Arlo.
“G,” Arlo said quickly. “I swear. There was nothing at that bitch’s place. I tore it apart! No way was there anything there!”
Candice tapped her fingertips together casually. “Did you think to check under the kitty litter, Arlo?” she asked him with a sly smile. “Cuz we did.”
Arlo’s face drained of color, and both he and Frank knew we weren’t fibbing.
Frank pursed his lips and rocked back in his chair. “It’s hard to find good help these days,” he said.
“Well, he did one thing right,” Candice told him. “He collected the evidence Michelle had stashed, which would’ve cleared me for Robinowitz’s murder. Am I right, Arlo? You grabbed that just in case I got my hands on Saline’s file.”