Dangerous Refuge

chapter Sixteen



Tanner drove into the Aces Up parking lot and turned off his car’s unhappy engine. “Looks more like Monaco than Glitter Gulch,” he said of the building. “Fresh paint, artsy sign, no burned-out bulbs or flickering neon, and a clean parking lot.”

“Like I said, a dress rehearsal. Locals gamble here, but only the high rollers get upstairs. No shorts or sandals allowed on the upper casino floor. You want to play slots next to people wearing flip-flops, surfer pants, and Hawaiian shirts? You can do that at ground level, but you won’t make it past the bouncers guarding the mezzanine entrances.”

“No wonder Lorne and his poker pals drove to the Silver Lode.”

“The old ranchers might have anniversary dinners at Aces Up—the restaurant is almost painfully classy and has really fine food—but the old ranchers don’t really care much for Ace himself.”

“He’s not their kind of people?” Tanner asked.

“They don’t trust manicures and Italian loafers.”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine Lorne getting all fancied up in a tie and suit just to enjoy a drink and a card game.”

“From what Kimberli says, you might get away without a tie upstairs, but only if you’ve been gambling for more than twelve hours and have lost a bundle already.”

He looked at Shaye. She was the least produced, turned-out, or self-conscious woman he’d ever met—and the sexiest. He liked knowing that if he went to bed with her, he wouldn’t wake up to raccoon eyes and a face that needed an hour with a makeup artist.

“So Kimberli likes Ace’s casino and you don’t,” he said.

“Nothing personal. Gambling just doesn’t light up my blood. And the casinos . . .” She shook her head. “Forget quiet desperation. They’re noisy desperation. So I don’t spend any more time than I have to in them.”

He laughed. “Smart lady.”

“Ace is smart, too. Underneath that glossy surface is one very shrewd businessman. The local gambling competition is strictly small town and downscale. He bought Aces Up cheap, renovated, and proved that he could attract a high-end crowd to the valley floor.”

“Yeah. From what I’ve seen, his local competition has to lure people through the doors with soft slots and easy tables, low-dollar single-deck and guaranteed ninety-seven percent payouts. Three percent of the day’s take in penny and nickel slots isn’t much.”

She listened and realized all over again that Tanner was more than a hard body and a compelling face. He had a brain and wasn’t afraid of using it.

And he was good company.

“That’s why the Conservancy spends a lot of time charming Ace,” she said. “He has enough money to keep Kimberli’s mustangs in hay for the rest of the century, and land to let them run.”

“Yet Ace will make time to talk to you if you ask,” Tanner said.

Her expression said she wasn’t thrilled. But she was game. “C’mon. Let’s get it over with.” Then she heard her own words and sighed. “That didn’t come out right.”

“Ace isn’t your kind of guy?”

“About the only thing we have in common is the Conservancy. Makes conversation pretty limited.”

Tanner’s smile was a flash of hard teeth. “We’ll see what we can do to expand his horizons.”

“I’m hoping we won’t have to go to him at all. If we do, please remember that Ace may make Conservancy donations for his image, but his money spends just like a true believer’s. Whether he means to or not, he’s done a lot of good.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t bite or piss on the rug.”

She just shook her head and bit her lip against a smile.

No sooner did they walk in the front entrance than a thin, nervous young man with startling natural red hair approached them. The suit he wore was ill fitting and his string tie was lopsided and frayed at one end.

“Shaye Townsend?” he asked.

“And guest,” Tanner said.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Ace told me to give you any help you needed. I’ll take you upstairs.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I was wondering how we would get past the clothes police.”

He almost laughed, then cleared his throat. “I promised the pit boss we wouldn’t stop for a game. Follow me.”

An employee elevator was waiting for them. Their guide used a key card, then fidgeted for the short ride up. The instant the door opened, he set off at a brisk pace down a hallway that paralleled the second-floor casino, looking neither right nor left. The wall dividing them from the casino was made of a smoky kind of glass that allowed anyone in the hall to watch the action without being seen.

Tanner had seen one-way glass windows in interrogation rooms, but never an entire wall. Well-dressed people were drinking from crystal glasses and pushing chips on the line for bets. Some of the players were still wearing clothes from last night’s parties, though no one seemed obviously drunk. The feel of money was everywhere, but there was no cash in sight.

“Hell of a place for a pawnshop,” Tanner said quietly to Shaye.

“Vertical integration. You can experience an entire resort getaway—food, drink, shops, exercise room—and never leave your hotel. It doesn’t look like it from the outside, but Aces Up covers a city block.”

“So if you come up short for a bet, you can hock a watch or a ring or your lady’s jewelry without actually leaving the casino.”

Shaye nodded.

The red-haired guide used his key card on the door at the end of the hall. It opened onto a mezzanine of shops and restaurants. One of the shops offered jewelry and other portable, expensive items. Though it was richly laid out and discreetly lit, it was difficult to hide the fact that Brilliant Moments was a pawnshop.

Tanner took it all in with the eyes of the cop he was. The front was run like a jewelry store with a big side order of collectibles. People who got lucky in the casino could come to the shop and buy diamonds, guitars, solid gold watches, coins, or the collector’s case of Star Wars figures that had haunted their dreams as a kid. Unlucky people sold their personal Brilliant Moments for pennies on the dollar.

Vertical integration with a vengeance.

He wondered which back room was used to disappoint losers who found out that the $6,000 watch they had bought retail was worth maybe $600 cash right now in their sweaty hands. When all the shine was rubbed away, gambling was about losing money, not winning it.

“The dude who manages the collectibles section is back here,” their guide said. “Name is Fred.”

Tanner and Shaye dutifully followed their guide through a locked gate. The two salesclerks up front looked at the redhead before they went back to waiting for the next person, someone who might be a buyer instead of a guest.

Fred was moon-faced, dressed to gamble on the second floor, and didn’t glance up when the redheaded admin guy showed his two charges into the room and left, shutting the door behind him. Fred was giving a quick and thorough examination to a teardrop-shaped guitar lying on the counter in front of him. Next to the guitar, a laptop computer waited to research online databases.

Tanner suspected that the computer was backup only. People like Fred knew the difference between retail dollars and pawn dollars without resorting to machines.

“Best I can offer for this Vox is five bills,” Fred said. His voice sounded like Chicago, bourbon, and cigar smoke. His attitude was take it or leave it.

The tall, gaunt man with shaggy hair, worn jeans, and moccasins picked up the guitar and walked out a back door without saying a word.

“My turn,” Shaye said softly.

Tanner didn’t object. Fred wouldn’t be any more interested in Tanner’s L.A. badge than the guitar player had been in giving away his Vox.

Fred looked at Shaye like a man who was tired of questions. “Why did Ace’s boy bring you here?”

“I heard you had some 1932 Saint-Gaudens twenty-dollar gold coins.”

“Where did you hear that?”

Tanner moved like a man impatient to be somewhere else, and fully capable of kicking the ass of anyone who got in his way.

Interest flickered in Fred’s pale eyes. Then he gave Shaye his full attention. “And are you buying or inquiring?”

“Depends on what you have,” she said.

Silently Tanner cheered the society maven who had taught Shaye how to make someone feel like gum on a sidewalk without even curling her lip.

“Unusual pieces,” Fred said. “Sure you don’t want a coin specialist?”

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Tanner said to himself. His voice was pitched like he expected privacy, but it was just loud enough for Fred to overhear. “C’mon, sweetie, I told you this would be a waste of time.”

“Hush, sugar pie,” she said. “I want those coins. Preferably uncirculated. I was told Brilliant Moments had them.”

“When I think you can afford them,” Fred said indifferently, “you can see any Saint-Gaudens I have. If I had them. Which I didn’t say I did.”

As Fred spoke, he started cleaning his nails with a letter opener he kept at hand.

“I assure you, I am quite capable of buying whatever you have for sale,” she said.

“Then it’s too bad I don’t have any Saint-Gaudens, isn’t it?”

She turned to Tanner. “Your turn.”

“We’re not buying. We’re tracing,” he said. “Word is, you have what we’re looking for.”

“You have any ID?” the man asked without looking up.

Tanner dropped his badge onto the counter.

“Long way from home,” Fred said after a glance. “And we’re not in California, so I wonder why I’m talking to you without a warrant.”

“Because you don’t want to piss off your boss,” Tanner said. “I don’t care how much you paid for the Saint-Gaudens. I just want to know who sold them to you.”

“If I have them.”

Tanner spun the laptop computer toward himself, clicked up to the menu that would give him the search sites for the last week, and struck gold.

“You’re researching Saint-Gaudens for the hell of it? Starting Thursday?” he asked sardonically. “Lame, mook, really lame.”

Fred stopped working on his nails for a heartbeat, then continued. “I research a lot of things.”

“Uh-huh. Looks like you spent some time on dealers’ forums where they brag about how cheap they buy and how dear they sell coins. Your handle is Auric1953. Now, you want to do another lap around this track and make me call Ace?”

Fred sighed like someone who had a junk poker hand that wouldn’t float him long enough to get him to the other side of the river. “Yeah, I’ve got some Saint-Gaudens. And yeah, they’re fresh.”

“Your turn,” Tanner said to Shaye.

She smiled. “Thank you.” She looked back to Fred, who had given up cleaning his nails. “How did you hear about the coins?”

“Same way you did. Off the casino floor.”

“When? This post on the forum was made on Thursday.”

“Couple hours before I hit the forum,” Fred said, disgust in his voice. “I just had to shove some of their snotty noses in it.”

“And you got five of them for two thousand cash?” Shaye asked. “How much do they usually sell for?”

“Depends on the buyer.”

“According to the reaction on the forum,” Tanner said, looking away from the computer, “you made one screaming hell of a buy.”

“The guys who come here want cash and they want it now. We make good buys after we make sure the goods aren’t on anyone’s hot sheet. Ace would fire my ass in a heartbeat if he thought anything different.”

Shaye looked at Tanner.

“You have to take a copy of the driver’s license, right?” Blue eyes bored into Fred.

“Of course. Like I said, we’re legit all the way.”

“Then you won’t mind showing us the copy and the data from that transaction,” Tanner said, gesturing to the cameras he was sure were hidden in the ceiling.

“We delete every forty-eight hours. Storage doesn’t come free. And no copy of the driver’s license until Mr. Desmond personally tells me different.”

Tanner looked at Shaye.

“You’re right,” she said. “We should have started with Ace.”