Even at midnight, McCarran Airport was a zoo. Serving a city with a population of only a million people, it was the sixth-busiest airport in the world, handling more than 600,000 planes and 45 million passengers a year. Hordes of people slumped towards the departure gates, tired, depressed, defeated, and broke. Moving past them in the opposite direction were thousands of confident, eager, energetic new arrivals.
Ava’s plane landed at the main terminal and she walked out to the taxi stand. The lineup looped back and forth like one for a Disney World ride in peak season. She shivered, the cool desert air penetrating her nylon Adidas jacket. She spotted a limo driver with a sign that read downtown and headed towards him. A tall, lean black man got there just ahead of her. “The Venetian,” he said.
“Can you take two people?” Ava asked, poking her head around him.
“Up to him,” the driver said.
“Where are you going?” the man asked.
“Wynn’s.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding at the driver.
McCarran Airport was in the southeast part of Vegas, only eight kilometres from the downtown area and about four kilometres from the heart of the Strip. Its outer boundary was mainly desert. On previous trips it had taken Ava not much more than ten minutes to get from the airport to the main Strip, but tonight traffic was unbelievably heavy. After crawling along Tropicana Avenue for fifteen minutes they still hadn’t reached Las Vegas Boulevard.
“Is there something going on tonight?” Ava asked.
“There’s always something going on,” the driver said.
The man she was sharing the limo with spent the first ten minutes of the drive working his BlackBerry. Whatever he was reading had brought a smile to his face. Ava thought he looked slightly familiar. She gazed at his long, lean frame. He wore a black silk jacket over a white T-shirt, black designer jeans, and a pair of expensive white sneakers. When he had put the BlackBerry away, he turned to her and said, “Hi, I’m Gilbert Jackson.”
The driver twisted his head to look back at them. “I thought I recognized you. Great to drive you.”
“I’m Ava Lee,” she said to Jackson.
“You in the movies?” he asked.
“No.”
“You didn’t do that Crouching Tiger thing?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“I think so.”
“Okay,” he said, smiling at her.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I played basketball, and now I’m an agent.”
“He’s the agent,” the driver said. “He represents the best.”
“I was lucky,” Jackson said. “I wasn’t much of a player but I learned how the system works. And I made a lot of friends.”
“I’m an accountant,” Ava said.
“I have one.”
“I wasn’t looking for a job.”
He shrugged. “I’m here for an agents’ meeting. You?”
“I came here to get some money.”
“Then you’ve come to the wrong place,” Jackson said. “They didn’t build Las Vegas to give money away.”
Traffic lightened as they moved closer towards the Strip. As they turned north on Las Vegas Boulevard, four massive hotels — the MGM Grand, the Tropicana, New York-New York, and the Excalibur — lit up the night sky. Those hotels alone, Ava knew, held twenty thousand guests at any given time. Most of them, it seemed, had spilled out onto the jammed sidewalks.
It had been a few years since Ava had been to Vegas. On previous trips, always with her mother, she had done her run along the Strip in the early morning. She would start at Sands Avenue and work her way south, past Flamingo Road, Harmon Road, and Tropicana Avenue, out to Russell Road, where she was greeted by the famous welcome to las vegas sign at the tip of the boulevard. Just beyond had been patches of vacant desert, small strip malls, and stand-alone restaurants. Now Ava saw that the gaps had been plugged. On the west side of the Strip, New York-New York ran into the Monte Carlo, and beside it was the massive new City Center complex and the Bellagio, on the southwest corner of Flamingo Road.
“Hardcore Disneyland for adults,” Jackson said.
“If you like to gamble,” Ava replied.
“Hell, not many of my guys are into that. They come here to party — which, if anything, is worse. Vegas has the best club scene in the country, and there’s more trouble to be found there than on any casino floor.”
“Women?”
Jackson laughed. “These guys are in the NBA. They use women the way you use dental floss.”
“Nice,” Ava said.
“No offence.”
“A bit late for that.”
“What I mean,” he said, as they neared the northwest corner of Flamingo Boulevard, “is that things get more complicated here. Yeah, there are women, but there’s also drugs and booze and cash. Some of my guys really believe that shit about what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. When the NBA All-Star game was held here, it got so bad they had to shut down some of the clubs early on a Saturday night.”
“How bad could it have been?”
“Three shootings and a couple of near riots inside the clubs.”
“Geez.”
He smiled at Ava. “Yeah, geez. That’s why I never let any of my guys come to Vegas alone, or with friends. I send a babysitter along with them. A big, tough babysitter.”
As the limo got close to Sands Avenue, the Venetian loomed into view. St. Mark’s Square had been transplanted to Las Vegas with everything but the pigeons. They drove around the canal to the entrance. As Jackson left the limo, Ava said to him, “Just leave a tip. I’ll pay for the ride.”
He looked at her as if she was joking. “That’s a change.”
“I told you — I don’t need a job,” she said.
The limo left the Venetian, glided past the Palazzo, and entered Steve Wynn’s world. Wynn Las Vegas was, by Vegas standards, the epitome of class. The only theme was luxury. The forty-five-storey hotel had close to three thousand rooms and had cost almost three billion dollars to build. Its curved exterior was sheathed in bronze glass, with Wynn written in gold across the top. Inside, its marble and glass walkways were lined with high-end boutiques, including Cartier and Chanel. Overhead hung hundreds of light fixtures and chandeliers made of colourful blown glass. The casino occupied more than 100,000 square feet and was serviced by cocktail waitresses whose breasts almost touched their chins.
Ava had booked a deluxe resort room. It was more than six hundred square feet and decorated in soft creams and modern furnishings. She imagined that the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows would flood the room with natural light during the day. The bellboy spent a few minutes showing her the high-tech controls for the drapes, the massive flat-screen TV, and the en suite bathroom. She was less enthralled when he told her that if she put anything in the room’s mini-fridge it would result in a charge. She also didn’t like the idea that if she picked up a can of cashews for more than sixty seconds, she owned them. As classy as they try to be in Vegas, she thought, there’s always a hint of a tart.
She booted up her computer to find emails from Martin Littlefeather and Jack Maynard. She pulled out her notebook and copied the corporate and personal information that Martin had provided on The River, David Douglas, and Jeremy Ashton.
Maynard’s email was long and rambling, and he had attached a photo of David Douglas.
Ava now saw why Douglas was called “the Disciple.” He was older than she had imagined — she guessed around sixty — and had a strange build: tall, narrow in the shoulders, and with a hollow chest that swelled into a large, pronounced pot belly. His face was bony and angular; he had a sharp chin, a pointed nose, and eyebrows that were thickets of curls. The look was topped off by a head of long, wiry silver hair that had been coiffed into a puffy Afro resembling a halo. Maynard had written, The hair is his trademark. He thinks it makes him look saintly.
Maynard explained that Douglas was considered an elder statesman of the poker community, someone who took his wins and losses calmly, never gloating, never whining. He had acquired his nickname from his unique coif, as Ava had thought, but also from his habit of casting his eyes skyward whenever he had a difficult decision to make at the poker table.
Maynard closed his email with a comment that Ava found telling. It is every poker player’s fantasy to be able to see his opponents’ cards, to be completely in control. That prick Douglas took that fantasy and made it a reality. He must have felt like he was some kind of god, fucking around with us miserable mortals.
Martin Littlefeather’s email was more concise and all business. The River was controlled by a holding company that was registered in Cyprus. It had three shareholders: Douglas, Ashton, and a company called Duncon LLP. There was no mention of who owned Duncon. Littlefeather had included the names and addresses of the banks The River dealt with. One was in Las Vegas; the other, not surprisingly, was in Cyprus.
The Mohneida had run rudimentary background checks on both men. Born in New Mexico, Douglas had been playing professional poker since he turned twenty-one, when he had moved to Las Vegas. He had been married and divorced twice and had no children. No bankruptcies, no arrests, no drug or alcohol issues. His entire life seemed to revolve around poker. The report noted that, like Maynard, Douglas was well respected by his peers. He had won three World Series of Poker bracelets, but none in recent years. The report also commented that although Douglas’s best playing days were probably behind him, his reputation would be an asset in terms of promoting The River.
Jeremy Ashton had been born in Sheffield, England, and attended the University of Leeds, where he graduated from business school. He had worked with Smyth’s Investment Bank in London for less than a year, and then he went to New York to work as an analyst at Whiteburn. He’d never married and, like Douglas, he seemed to be free of scandal.
Ashton had met Douglas while he was at Whiteburn; he left the firm to help him start The River. They seem to have raised the money they needed quite quickly, Martin Littlefeather wrote in his email, but competition was fierce and the site struggled.
Ava finished making notes and was about to shut down her computer when she saw that she had a message from an mgonzalez. She paused, and then she remembered the woman Mimi had mentioned and opened it. Dear Ava, My name is Maria Gonzalez. Your friend Mimi suggested I contact you, though I have to confess I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve been living in Toronto for only six months. I work at the Colombian trade consulate. I have found, truthfully, the transition to the city and the weather and the culture to be very difficult. Mimi thought we had a lot in common. I like movies, good food, I’m Roman Catholic, and I love to salsa. I apologize if you find this approach not to your liking. But Mimi urged me on, so I thought I would take a chance. I hope we can get together, maybe for a coffee or a drink? My best regards, Maria Gonzalez
Ava read the email twice before responding. Hi Maria, Mimi did mention your name to me. I’m away from Toronto on business, and I don’t know when I’ll return. If Mimi thinks we could be friends then I think it’s worth meeting. Let’s keep in touch. Oh, and I like to salsa as well. Ava
Ava flopped onto the bed and then grimaced. Her body was beginning to recover and the pain was less severe, but now and then it couldn’t help but remind her it was still there. She sat up. Her cellphone had been off since she left Victoria, so she turned it on to retrieve her messages. Her mother had called again to say she’d heard about Philip Chew and that the aunties were ready to kill Tommy Ordonez. Ava was relieved that no fingers were being pointed in her direction. And Uncle had phoned; he said simply, “Call me when you can.” She dialled his number after deleting the message.
“ Wei.”
“Uncle, it’s Ava. I’m in Las Vegas.”
“The Mohneida cooperated?”
“They did.”
“What did it cost?”
“Nothing. I just guaranteed that we would indemnify them from any legal action and try to shield them from negative publicity.”
“That is not nothing,” he corrected, and then paused so the words would sink in. “So, they were not involved?” he said finally.
“Not in any way that would matter.”
“You probably still promised them too much. We cannot speak for Tommy Ordonez.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle, but I needed their cooperation, and that’s what it cost. And there was one other complication I had to deal with.”
“With the Mohneida?” he asked.
“No, two poker players who lost money the same way as Philip Chew. They helped me figure out what happened and who did it. They demanded we get their money back in exchange for their cooperation. I know we never like to have two clients at once, even if it’s one thief we’re chasing, but I said we would do what we could for them. I didn’t feel I had any choice.”
“How much?”
“Seven million.”
“Our usual fee?”
“Of course.”
“If they helped that much — ”
“Without them I wouldn’t be in Vegas.”
“Who are you in Las Vegas to see?”
“A man named David Douglas. He’s a professional poker player.”
She could hear barking in the background and the sound of traffic. He was walking the dog. “Do you need any assistance?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. I need to locate him and then figure out how to approach him. There’s another man involved, a partner in his business named Jeremy Ashton, but I think Douglas will be my first priority.”
“Keep me up to date. Chang has called several times today. Ordonez is acting crazy where his brother is concerned. He thinks Chew’s attempted suicide was just another way for him to avoid taking responsibility. Chang is not sure how long he can keep Ordonez from doing something rash. The only thing holding him back is fear of losing face.”
“Things won’t work on my end if he blows up.”
“I have been telling them that.”
“And?”
“Chang agrees, but Ordonez is a man who needs to be in control and needs to be doing something. He is not accustomed to being made to wait.”
“I need time.”
“I will do what I can.”
Ava knew he would. Anything more she had to say would be redundant, if not insulting. “I’ll call tomorrow around the same time,” she said.
“Just a second,” Uncle said. “Jackie Leung — I found out that he is back in Hong Kong. Sonny is looking for him, and knowing Sonny, he will find him soon enough. In the meantime, I have been talking to Guangzhou. They do not want to unilaterally cancel the contract. They feel they have made a pact with Leung that they need to honour.”
Ava felt a tiny knot of anxiety in her stomach. “What does that mean, that they don’t want to unilaterally cancel the contract?”
“As long as Leung is alive we have to assume they will continue to look for you.”
“And if he’s dead?”
“No Leung, no contract.”
“And in the meantime what am I supposed to do?”
“Be careful. I cannot imagine they will find you before Sonny finds Leung. Leung is in Hong Kong, and not many people know Hong Kong better than Sonny.”
“How hard are they looking?”
“They are professional,” Uncle said.
Ava shook her head. She didn’t need this distraction, not now, not ever. “I’ll be careful,” she said.