Betting on Hope (28 page)

“Look at this!” he said, swinging it at Big Julie’s head and connecting solidly. Stunned by the unexpected blow, Big Julie swayed on his feet. Johnny Red took advantage of the moment and dumped Big Julie unceremoniously into the laundry cart.

“Nice work,” Johnny Red said to Alexei, dusting off his hands. “Who knew we’d find a blackjack in here? Except it’s—you know. Pink.” He looked at it more carefully. “And not a blackjack. It’s—a symbol of a corrupt capitalist regime. Could be useful, though. Bring it.” He turned to the maid, who, tied and gagged, was cowering in the corner.

“Don’t you worry none,” Johnny Red said, not unkindly, to her as he released her from her bonds. “We’re all gonna go now, out the door and downstairs through the casino to the loading dock. You’re gonna push the laundry cart. You do what we say, you forget our faces, nobody’s gonna get hurt. But you gotta shut up. You make any noise, you’re gonna do laundry for the angels. You capiche?”

The maid bobbed her head, looking terrified.

“You’ll be fine if you don’t scream no more,” he reiterated, not reassured by her frantic nodding. “We just gotta get through the casino, and you gotta have a short memory. That’s it. Okay, let’s roll.”

Johnny Red arranged the Egyptian cotton bath sheet, now slightly the worse for wear, over the unconscious Big Julie. Then Yakov, Markov, and Igor pushed the laundry cart out of the apartment and over to the elevator and punched the call button. Alexei, holding the pink dildo in one hand and the maid’s elbow in the other, carefully locked and closed the door after them.

The elevator car arrived, the doors opened, and the triplets pushed the laundry cart into the empty carriage.

“Okay, Comrade, take over.” Johnny Red pushed the maid behind the laundry cart. She took hold of it gingerly.

Johnny Red sighed. “Just act normal,” he told her. “Just go like you always go.”

They descended a few floors in silence.

“I don’t ride the guest elevators,” the maid ventured. “Ever. Always the service elevator. Otherwise, we are fired.”

Johnny Red rolled his eyes. Obviously there was more to being a proletariat than he’d realized.

“You see your boss, you tell him that you are bringing us more towels,” he said. “The guest is always right.”

“We don’t get the towels from this elevator,” the maid said. “Or put them in this kind of cart.”

Johnny Red hissed.

“Did I not just tell you the guest is always right?” he asked. “
I am a guest. I am right.
If anybody asks, you are getting us towels. And then shut up. Do you understand?”

“Si,” the maid said. “Only—”

“And now
shut up!
”

The car opened on the eighth floor, where a large group of happy vacationers was waiting to go down. Johnny Red moved to the middle of the opening, where he reached out his arms, resting his hands on either side of the doors, blocking the entrance.

“This one is full,” he said. “Take the next one.”

The happy vacationers took one look at Johnny Red standing in the way, Alexei holding the pink leather dildo, the triplets, and the terrified maid with the laundry cart, and they backed off. Just then Big Julie groaned and stretched, recovering consciousness, which caused the laundry cart to twitch. The vacationers gasped.

“Alexei,” Johnny Red said.

Alexei stepped forward and swung the pink dildo into the cart at Big Julie’s head. Big Julie went quiet.

The elevator doors closed.

Johnny Red turned to the maid. “See? Not hard at all.”

“Si,” she said, very pale.

At the ground floor, the Russians got off first, and Johnny Red courteously held the doors open while the maid struggled to get the cart off the elevator. The flimsy wheels got trapped in the track for the door, and finally Johnny Red reached in, grabbed the cart, and yanked it out.

“Come on,” he said, leading the way down the shopping atrium.

“Senor!” the maid said, momentarily abandoning the cart and trotting after him. “It is forbidden! The cameras! We will be stopped! I will lose my job and be sent back to Mexico! My children.
Please,
Senor.”

Of that plea, Johnny Red had heard only one—the most important—word.

“Cameras?” he asked.

She pointed to the chandelier. To the light sconce on the wall. To the molding above the doorway.

“Si,” she said. “Everywhere.”

Damn.
He should have remembered that about these big, corporate casinos. The guest bedrooms weren’t bugged and miked and watched 24/7, but the hallways, elevators, restaurants, and gaming rooms were. You couldn’t pick a booger around here without every slick guy in a suit knowing about it.

Now what? It might be too late—but it might not.

“Heads down,” he ordered. “Keep ‘em down. Alexei, go get us some disguises. Right now.”

“Here?” Alexei said, looking around. “
Now?
”

“You can find us something.
Go!
”

Alexei patted the maid on the shoulder and took off. The others stood in the opening of the shopping atrium, staring at the floor.

Five minutes later, he was back with a small bag. “These were all I could get on short notice,” he said. He opened the bag and pulled out six pairs of Groucho Marx glasses, with the big plastic noses and heavy eyebrows attached.

Johnny Red scowled. “These don’t hide our looks none!”

Alexei grabbed a pair and put them on. “No,” he said, “but think about it. What will somebody say when they ask who pushed the laundry cart through the casino? They’ll say, five guys and a maid wearing Groucho Marx glasses. They won’t remember what else we looked like.”

Johnny Red put on his glasses. The others followed suit. Alexei handed the last pair to the maid. She looked confused, but put hers on, too.

“Okay,” Johnny Red said. “Igor, you got the parking stub? Get the car now. Meet us out at the loading dock where we said. Space number eighteen, the one behind the kitchen.”

Igor nodded, and wearing his Groucho Marx glasses, dashed off to validate the parking stub and retrieve the car. The others set off through the shopping atrium, heading for the exit, clearly marked, that would lead to the service entrance and loading dock. They soon discovered that the cart, with Big Julie’s two-hundred-fifty pound body at dead weight and sprawled at odd angles, was too heavy and clumsy for the maid to steer by herself. She kept driving it into tourists and sometimes the blackjack tables. Alexei helped her push it. Johnny Red lead the way, and Yakov and Markov brought up the rear. The cavalcade moved forward, and the crowds of tourists, gamblers, and employees flowed around them like water.

“See?” Alexei said reassuringly to the maid. “You’re fine. Nobody is paying any attention to us.”

Upstairs in a small, windowless room filled with banks of monitors, a small table, and a couple of orange plastic office chairs, FBI Agent Roy Frelly played gin with casino guard Mavis O’Toole. She was up by fifteen dollars so far, and at this rate she’d be able to get herself a very nice lunch, courtesy of the federal government.

Her partner, Justin Trinkler, the junior member of the team, worked the flat gray and white surveillance monitors, his eyes darting from scene to scene across the casino. The walls were bare, but taped to the console were wanted posters with grainy photos of Johnny Red and six other gambling miscreants the casino wanted to keep off its floors and away from its machines and tables.

From his vantage point across the room, Trinkler started to laugh.

“You should see this,” he said.

“Gin,” Mavis said.

“Dammit!” Frelly said. “I thought I had something going there. Let’s see.”

Mavis put her cards down.

“Crap,” Frelly said, looking at her winning hand.

“No, really,” Trinkler said. “You guys should look at this.”

“What?” Mavis asked, marking the score card.

“Just come over here. You won’t believe it.”

 Mavis sighed, but she got up and went to look over Trinkler’s shoulder. She could afford to give up the game. With this most recent hand, her triumph over Frelly—the worst card player in Las Vegas—was complete. She now had earned enough for the steak sandwich special at the grill. In Mavis’s opinion, the steak sandwich special, when offered, was not to be missed.

“What?” she asked again.

“Take a look.” Trinkler pointed out the screen.

Then Mavis laughed, too.

“Roy, get your butt over here and take a look,” she said. “You’ll like this.”

Frelly rose reluctantly and went to stand with the two casino security guards.

“What?”

“There.” Trinkler pointed.

Frelly blinked. Four men and a uniformed maid pushing a laundry cart, all of them wearing Groucho Marx glasses, lurched down the casino aisles, heading, presumably, for the exit he could see at the top of the screen.

He laughed too. Then the seriousness of the situation struck him.

“They’re stealing a laundry cart!” he said, straightening up.

“A heavy laundry cart,” Trinkler agreed.

“Something’s in it,” Mavis said.

“Probably a TV set!” Trinkler said.

“Probably more than one,” Mavis, the more experienced guard, said, looking at the cart.

“And the maid’s in on it!” Frelly said.

Mavis straightened. “Let’s just go get these guys.”

Grabbing their jackets, the three of them rushed out of the security office, leaving the wanted posters fluttering in their wake.

Chapter 21

Faith pulled into the service driveway of the Desert Dunes casino, did a three-point turn in the empty lot, and backed her refrigerated van into loading dock number eighteen, which led into the Ginger Palace restaurant. Today she was delivering vegetables to Kenji while Kenji was out at the ranch, working with Amber on their cookbook. It was funny how things happened.

She grabbed her orders clipboard, jumped out of the cab, swung the back doors open, and hopped into the cargo area. The boxes of produce had been labeled for each destination and loaded in the order that they’d be delivered. Faith checked off the boxes for the Ginger Palace, hung the clipboard on the hook by the door, and muscled the first four crates onto the dolly.

Farming, she’d come to realize, was not for lightweights. The hours were brutal and the work never-ending. On the other hand, she was her own boss. She was growing good food. And she never had to go to the gym.

With the crates piled four deep on the dolly, she dropped the bridge plate that let her roll her vegetables from the truck to the concrete loading platform. Glancing from side to side to make sure she hit the swinging doors squarely, she headed toward the kitchen.

With the unerring cunning of a wild forest creature, Johnny Red realized that he and his entourage were the object of pursuit long before they reached the exit sign at the end of the casino hallway. He turned his head to glance back at Alexei and the triplets. “Run!” he shouted, breaking into a sprint.

Alexei turned to see what Johnny Red was so worked up about. And then he saw it, too.

Two security guards—a young man with spiked hair and a middle-aged woman in glasses—followed by a gasping geezer in a sport coat, trotted after them. Johnny Red had been made, and no surprises there. The noose around their operations had been growing steadily tighter. They’d had trouble in Jersey—with the feds, the cops, and Big Julie Saladino’s unexpectedly loyal crew. Now here.

But, Alexei thought, he’d never expected that they’d be dodging the law while wearing Groucho glasses and pushing a laundry cart filled with a naked Jersey mobster across a Vegas casino floor.

They’d thought they could take over the east-coast protection rackets by taking out Big Julie here in Vegas. That was turning out to be a bigger challenge than they’d expected. Now instead of Big Julie dead and the Jersey rackets secured, they had Big Julie naked and unconscious in a laundry cart. This did not look like a step in the right direction to Alexei. If the cops out here knew Big Julie, then one call to the feds would tell them that his abductor was probably Johnny Red.

This attempted kidnapping and potential murder could not turn out well for a person who intended one day to practice the noble profession of law. If they were caught, Alexei didn’t see how he could explain it.

So Alexei’s bottom line was that they couldn’t get caught. He turned back to the cart and, leaning into it, broke into a sprint. “Run!” he yelped to the maid.

The maid turned, too, and when she saw the security guards in swift pursuit, she gasped in fright. She knew what they were after.

Her.

“La migra!” she shouted to the other workers in the casino. “Immigration!” She leaned into the cart next to Alexei and gasped with the effort to push it faster.

Yakov also turned to see what threatened him, and in the determined crew running after them, he saw a one-way ticket back to the old country. Reaching out, he grabbed the cart on the other side of the maid and helped them push.