“Then why bother?”
“First, to do what you want: get these bastards off the streets. And second, to do what Reitzfeld wants: get even with the two punks who snookered him.”
Kylie shrugged. “Two noble goals. Call if you need our help.”
“Thank you both for coming,” Shelley said. “One question before you go. Have you heard from Spence?”
Kylie shook her head. “Not a word. You?”
“Nothing.”
The door to the adjoining suite opened, and a man entered, carrying a plate of shrimp and a beer. He saw us talking to Shelley, put his food and drink on a table, threw his arms up in the air, and yelled, “Kylie!”
He headed straight toward her, took her in his arms, and kissed her. This was a far cry from the father-figure, happy-to-see-you kiss Shelley had given her. This was a full-on mouth kiss that could easily have escalated into something a lot more passionate if there hadn’t been eight other men in the room.
Quick-witted detective that I am, I immediately figured out two things.
One: I now knew what Kylie meant when she said “Don’t say anything.”
Two: I was about to meet Kylie’s new boyfriend.
CHAPTER 24
His name was C. J. Berringer. Kylie knew, of course, that he’d be at the poker game, which is why she offered to drop me off at home and spare me the tedium of an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar nonevent.
Failing that, she got me to promise not to say anything about anything, a promise I kept until she was forced to introduce me to C.J.
“I can’t believe I finally get to meet Kylie’s partner,” he said, pumping my arm and acting like he was as thrilled to see me as he was to see his girlfriend.
I sized him up: about my age, slightly taller, and annoyingly handsome. He was also a talker, and for the next ten minutes, which I could only hope were excruciating for Kylie, he bent my ear.
He was born in Hawaii to a native Hawaiian mother and a white father. He struggled through his freshman year in college because he spent more time playing cards than cracking books. And then he had an epiphany: who needs college? He dropped out and carved out a life for himself as a professional gambler.
He asked me if Kylie had told me how they met. Why no, she hadn’t. He was happy to fill me in.
“It was a few weeks after her husband…” He didn’t finish the sentence. I guess I was supposed to fill in the blank. Flew the coop? Took a hike? Dropped her like a hand grenade?
“Anyway,” he said, “she hopped a plane down to the Bahamas for a quick getaway. I was going down there for a blackjack tournament. We were on the same flight, but we didn’t meet until the baggage carousel. Then we split a cab to the Atlantis. I couldn’t believe it when she told me she was Five-O. I didn’t think cops could be that…I mean, look at her. Anyway, I lost fifty K, but it was the luckiest weekend of my life. After that…well…” He gave me another blank to fill in.
“Great story,” I lied. “How do you know Shelley?”
“Kylie introduced us. She told me she had a friend who hosted a biweekly Texas Hold’em game, and she got me an invite. This is only my third time here. The other two times I got played under the table by a plastic surgeon.”
Knowing Kylie, I figured she hadn’t told him anything about our past. And then he said, “Enough about me. I want to hear all about you. Come on over to the losers’ lounge, and let’s throw down a few drinks.”
The losers’ lounge. Of course she had told him, and now the fucker was sticking it to me.
“Another time,” I said, looking at my watch. “I’ve got to get back home and shoot the cat.”
He stared at me, dark eyes curious, a bright white smile and a crown of black hair on a copper canvas.
“I have a diabetic cat,” I said. “I’ve got to give him an insulin shot every twelve hours.”
“Ah, shoot the cat,” he said. “Cop talk. Funny.”
I left him laughing.
My apartment was only two blocks east. I walked slowly, but my mind was racing.
I understood why Shelley didn’t want NYPD to investigate the robbery. It’s not just the publicity. There’d be interviews, digging into the private lives of the victims, and then if there was an arrest, there would be depositions, subpoenas, a trial. It was far too time-consuming for these high rollers. Like the comic said: he had expected to lose the money anyway, so why get tied up in a criminal investigation?
And yet the criminal investigator in me couldn’t let it go.
The details of Shelley’s high-stakes poker games are a well-kept secret. It’s by invitation only. Reitzfeld said the two guys with guns were amateurs. So how did they know where and when the game was being held? And how did they know to sneak up on Reitzfeld from behind?
I knew the answer in two words: inside job.
Someone on the inside tipped them off. It could have been someone at the hotel—a manager, a reservation clerk, a room service waiter—or it could have been someone at the table.
According to Reitzfeld, most of the players were regulars. Same cast of characters, he said. About a dozen all told, but they rotate. But there was one new guy, an engaging rogue who had lost a hundred grand to the plastic surgeon in his first two sit-downs at the table. C. J. Berringer.
I got to the corner of 77th and Lexington and looked up at my apartment building. I was in no hurry to get home. It’s not like I had a cat to take care of.
I began walking south on Lex. The precinct was only ten blocks away. I knew Shelley wanted NYPD to back off, but it was too late. I already had a prime suspect, and I wanted to sit down in front of a department computer terminal and do some digging.
For starters, I wanted to know what the C.J. stood for.
PART TWO
THE BANGKOK HILTON
CHAPTER 25
There was fresh hot coffee in the break room. I took that as a positive omen, poured myself a cup, and logged on to the Interstate Identification Index, a catalog of criminal histories in the U.S. If C. J. Berringer had a rap sheet, it would pop up on Triple Eye. It didn’t.
I tried two other law enforcement databases. No luck. Either he wasn’t a crook or he hadn’t been caught yet.
“You can run, C.J.,” I said as I booted up the LexisNexis Accurint Virtual Crime Center, “but you can’t hide.” I dove into the bottomless pit of public and not-so-public records, and there he was—Clyde Jerome Berringer, a Hawaiian-born college dropout who traveled the world playing cards. He had an excellent credit rating, impressive reported earnings, and no criminal history.
But I did find something almost as damning. Clyde Jerome was married.
My first instinct was to pick up the phone and tell Kylie. My second instinct was to play out that phone call in my head. Hey, Kylie, you’ll never guess what I stumbled on when I was running your boyfriend’s name through the system to see if I could find something that would put him behind bars.
I needed a better plan. Normally when I’m confronted by challenging interpersonal situations like this, I go to Cheryl for advice. But telling my new girlfriend that I felt compelled to investigate my old girlfriend’s new boyfriend had all the earmarks of a bad soap opera where the Zach character winds up losing his new girlfriend, his old girlfriend, and his balls.
My motives for digging into C.J.’s past may not have been pure, but now that I knew the truth, someone had to tell Kylie that her handsome gambler was gambling on the fact that she’d never find out about Nalani, his wife of seven years, who lived five thousand miles away in Honolulu.
And I knew just the someone who could do it.
The next morning at 5:45, I arrived at Gerri’s Diner. The sign on the door says NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE. There should be a second sign that says NO BOUNDARIES, because as soon as you walk through that door, your private life belongs to Gerri Gomperts.