This from a pudgy guy close to my age, with a bleached-blond, rock-star haircut. Wearing his Brioni or Canali suits with high-polished Gravati shoes, he threaded casino crowds dressed in T-shirts and shorts. Safe to say, Mondari was watching a different movie than the rest of us. He was a five-foot-seven James Bond leaning over a craps table and living proof we make our own reality. But he was brilliant with computer systems and uses, brilliant and inventive.
He made another semipolite run at dismissing the bomb-maker tip he had given Jane, then got pissy when I said we’d come back for his car later. I drove to a new steakhouse a couple miles up the road, but it wasn’t until we were inside in a red leather booth and he had a drink in his hand that he started talking again. Across the room, a woman played old jazz on a piano by the bar. Mondari kept his eyes on the woman playing as he talked with me.
“I can’t help the Bureau this time.”
“I’m not looking for you to solve anything. I want what you told Jane Stone. Start at the beginning. Tell me the story you heard.”
“I think I’m going to introduce myself to the piano player and get another drink first.”
He did that, and I checked my messages. I’ve learned to let him feel like he’s in control. He returned and started chatting about how the piano player found him very attractive.
“I can feel it,” he said. “You can leave me here. I’ll talk with her. I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“What did you tell Jane about a bomb maker?”
“That I’d heard one was hired and brought to Vegas to set off several small bombs, glass breakers that wouldn’t kill anybody but would scare the public away from the tables. After those would come the threat of a much bigger one and a ten-million-dollar demand.”
“Why would anyone give you this information?”
“Someone who heard about it and didn’t want it to happen, because her kid works at the casino.”
“She heard about it how?”
“I don’t know.”
“I need her name.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You told Jane you saw the bomb maker.”
“I did, but from across the room, and I don’t have a description. Three guys were with him, supposedly taking him up to a meeting. I never got a good look and he was gone. He left.”
“How do you know he left?”
Mondari shrugged. Jane could do a killer imitation of that shrug. What a sad, terrible thing to lose her.
“Was he there to scout the Bellagio?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right I told Jane the Bellagio. Forgot all about that. I lied. Had to. I was going to tell her at the right time that it was the Wynn.”
“Finish your drink. We’ll eat at the Wynn after you show me. I’ll put you in a cab or Uber to get you back to your car later.”
When we got to the Wynn, Mondari claimed he’d looked across the pits toward the elevators. He saw the bomb maker accompanied by three men turn into the corridor toward the elevators. He turned and pointed at an older Asian gentleman in a cream-colored suit at a blackjack table.
“He was about that tall and kind of that build.”
“The bomb maker looked like that guy over there, and the bodyguards were Hispanic. You’re making this up on the fly, aren’t you? I have Jane’s notes. I know from reading them you told her something different.”
“What I told Julie was wrong.”
“Julie?”
“Right, Jane, what I told Jane was wrong. I got burned with that story. I think someone was checking to see if I’m feeding information to the FBI. Fed it to me, I fed it to her, and someone inside the Bureau fed it back to the source.”
“No.”
We crossed the casino and took seats along an open stretch of bar, and Mondari got very specific with the bartender about how he wanted his vodka. His precision with the drink order was similar to the accuracy that showed in some of his tips. Sometimes he was worth the effort. I watched him sip his drink, testing it, his lips extending almost sexually to the rim of the glass. I was disappointed and borderline angry, but then realized that whatever Mondari had told Jane and wouldn’t repeat to me worried him. I pushed him harder and the vodka loosened him. I listened, watched his body language, and there it was again. Mondari was scared and wasn’t going to say anything tonight. It wasn’t just spite for ruining his good time, though that would be like him.
I paid the bill, leaned in and said, “We’re picking this up again in the morning. If I have to look for you, I’ll ask for a warrant. You clear?”
He nodded, and I walked out and drove to the hospital.
26