Jennifer put her phone away and gave her a smile.
“Simple. Now, when someone new joins my crew, I explain Jennifer’s easy rules for success. And then I show ’em that picture, so they understand what happens when those rules get broken.”
She leaned farther over the desk, closer. The smile never left her face, but her eyes went colder than a Siberian sunset as her voice dropped low.
“That gangster enough for you? Or do I need to show you the rest of my photo collection?”
I watched Seabrook’s throat bulge as she swallowed, hard.
“We’ll find the dealer those kids bought from,” I said. “And if any of the bad batch is still around, it’ll disappear without a trace. Just like the dealer.”
*
On the other side of the mayor’s office door, I shot Jennifer a dubious look.
“Seriously, you probably shouldn’t carry that picture around on your phone.”
“Can’t prove it’s real. Special effects, a Halloween decoration…” She hip-bumped me as we walked. “Ain’t like they’re ever gonna find his body.”
“True, true. So, were you trying to scare the hell out of her? Because mission accomplished and well done.”
“I was tired of her sass,” she said. “One of Jennifer’s rules for success: Jennifer gives the sass. She does not receive the sass. Seabrook just needed a little reminder of who’s wearing the pants in this particular domestic arrangement. And you weren’t wrong about keeping her away from that conference. I’d rather we had a scared mayor than a dead one.”
“Scared only goes so far. We need some results, to show we’re holding up our end of the bargain. I wasn’t even going to ask her about the liquor license for the American.”
The American was my pet project. A nightclub on the fringes of the Vegas Strip, built from the ground up to be a safe harbor for the city’s underworld. Whether you carried a gun or a wand, no matter what color your blood ran, we’d be waiting with open arms and your favorite poison on tap. Not to mention a high-stakes backroom game or two, with no pesky IRS forms for the winners to fill out, and a secure vault to facilitate the exchange of contraband. I’d convinced every member of the New Commission’s board of directors to kick in some seed money, guaranteeing that each of the city’s biggest crews had a stake in the place and a vested interest in keeping it safe.
All we needed now, once construction wrapped up, was a liquor license. I’d breezed through a forest of red tape with ease, crafting a shell company with reams of fake paper (not to mention the American’s fictional owner, one Mr. Rick Blaine), but the Board of Liquor and Gaming was a tough nut to crack. One phone call from Mayor Seabrook would grease the wheels, but she needed a little encouragement to play along.
I figured she’d cooperate if we made a show of good faith and drove the Network out of Vegas. Fine by me. We were going to do that anyway.
“Y’know, if we have to wait, it’s not the biggest problem in the world,” Jennifer told me. “Yeah, everybody on the Commission wants to see a return on their investment, but now that we’re getting a grip on Nicky’s old rackets, we’re starting to see some real cash rolling in. The American’s a small splash in a big pool.”
Our footsteps echoed off the polished sweep of white marble, echoing down a long and lonely hallway lined with doors of pebbled glass. We traveled in that strange space just before dawn, when the bars and strip clubs had kicked out their last stragglers, the neon went cold, and the city took one slow, deep breath before the party started all over again. At this hour, only sharks kept swimming.
“It’s not the money,” I said. What was it, then? I fumbled for an answer, figuring it out as the words came to me. “I turn forty in a few months.”
She put a hand on my shoulder. “Oh, I know. Believe me, I’ve been plannin’ your party. We’re going to have black balloons, black candles on the cake…”
“I’ve been thinking about it, is all.”
“Getting older, or just getting old?”
“Both,” I said. “But it’s more like…I’ve ghosted my way through life. I pay cash, I carry fake paper, I don’t leave footprints. And that’s always been fine, that always worked for me.”
“We are career criminals,” Jennifer said. “It kinda goes with the lifestyle.”
“And if I died tomorrow, outside of a few people’s memories, there’d be nothing to show I ever existed at all.” I dug deeper and found the words I was looking for. “I want to build something.”
“Like a legacy,” she said.
“I guess, yeah. I want to put my mark on this city. I want to build something so I can stand back and point to it and say, see that? That’s mine. I made that.”
“Sugar,” Jennifer said, “you’re havin’ a midlife crisis. You know that, right?”
“Maybe.”
We pushed out through the double doors and onto the granite steps. It was a desert night in early November; the bone-dry chill wasn’t taking any prisoners. The bitter wind ruffled my hair and slipped an icy finger along the back of my neck, leaving goose bumps in its wake. A cold and loveless glow touched the mountains in the distance with the shimmer of false dawn.
“I’ll shake a few trees, see if I can figure out an alternative option if Seabrook doesn’t come through.” She stifled a yawn behind her fist. “I’m bushed, gonna hit the sack for a few hours. You oughta do the same. Feels like one of those ‘calm before the storm’ situations.”
I promised myself four hours of shut-eye, but I break promises all the time. I was up and moving in two, blasting my drowsiness away under the spray of an ice-cold shower and knotting a fresh tie around my neck as I headed for the door. I had work to do, and the warning of the King of Worms—that his would-be prince was on the move and gunning for my head—lingered at the back of my thoughts.
So did his offer.
I was used to being on the defensive, but never like this. The Enemy was coming after me, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I’d been sucked into the same cosmic nightmare that spawned him. As far as the universe was concerned, I was the Thief, one of the characters in his endlessly repeating story. And the Thief’s story always ended with a knife in his back. If I didn’t get this curse off my head, and soon, the Enemy wouldn’t have to knock me off; the fabric of reality itself would do it for him.
On the other side, we had the Network, a criminal occult cartel with ambitions we couldn’t begin to decipher and a reach longer than the edges of the world. And Naavarasi, who had her own plans in motion. It felt like everyone wanted to use me, kill me, or both.
Taking the king’s offer would solve all my problems. Attractive, but his pitch smelled as sour as month-old milk. If there was one thing a life of running con games had taught me, it was that when someone offered you the perfect solution, it was usually the perfect lie.
I didn’t need help from the King of Worms. All I needed was a little breathing room. Just enough space to start throwing punches.
4.
I was still renting my wheels. The last I’d heard, my Barracuda had been “requisitioned” by Special Agent Harmony Black, an act I considered tantamount to grave robbery. And then dancing on my grave after robbing it.
The point is, I loved that car.
I had feelers out, trying to track it down so I could steal it back. At the moment, though, my ride was a dirty-silver Hyundai Elantra. Good mileage, good cargo space, and forgettable enough to vanish like a ghost in the city’s arteries. I drove off the edge of the Vegas Strip and straight down, down into the neighborhoods the tourists never saw.