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I think about what he says, and decide it could have gone down that way.
“Okay, you can have your lie back. Now tell me about the device.”
“I liked Ropic because, like you said, they had a lot of cash, and no one knows this, but the accountant was one of my employees. He’d made money with me before, but never had any real cash to bet. Plus, he was frustrated, tired of counting other people’s money all day. I convinced him I had some locks, some sure-thing bets, and kicked him back fifty grand for every million he got me. He used his share to mirror my bets, meaning, we both lost everything. But there was another reason I liked Ropic: their research team owned patents on super-secret technology the government needed for high tech weapons. For a corporation that size, a government contract would have made the stockholders rich.”
“But that didn’t work out.”
“Right. Because the new administration cut the funding, and the military backed out. Our products had no use beyond weaponry that’s illegal for civilians to own. I thought about selling it to the enemy, but our tech people said no one else has the technology. Our devices were just one piece of a sophisticated weapons system. So I called a board meeting and said, ‘what the fuck do we own that we can make money with?’ And the answer was ‘Nothing.’ Can you believe it? Ropic had all their eggs in one government basket.
“So the board says, ‘Good thing we’ve got that sixty million dollars. We can buy some technology, stamp our name on it, and start a whole new dog and pony show.’ And that’s when me and Stevie went into a panic.”
“Stevie the accountant?”
“Right.”
“I’m falling asleep here, Lucky. Tell me about the device.”
“After the board meeting, Phyllis—Dr. Willis, I mean, brought me a little metal box. It was like something you’d see in the movies. She said, ‘What I’m about to tell you, no one knows.’ She said she went to a secret government facility and watched a doctor implant a heat chip into Connor Payne’s brain. The chip has a four-digit code that can be entered from anywhere in the world by using a remote unit that looks like a large wrist watch. When you punch a code into the wrist unit, the chip will instantly kill Mr. Payne.”
“Jesus!” Gwen says.
“Right. And then Dr. Willis said that the government thought they had the only two wrist devices ever made, but Ropic Industries actually had three more that no one knew about.”
“Three?”
“Three.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“That’s what she said. Five wrist devices were manufactured.”
Darwin had one, Doc Howard had the second, which he sold to me for a hundred million bucks. I took Phyllis’s unit with me after killing her. Which leaves two wrist devices unaccounted for.
“Where are they?” I ask.
“Phyllis had one. I don’t know what happened to it. Probably the cops have it. But this morning—or is it yesterday morning?—Anyway, Connor Payne showed up at Phyllis’s office. She figured he knew about the device and planned to kill her. So she input the code, thinking he’d die in her lobby. But it didn’t work.”
“And why’s that, do you suppose?”
“Someone must’ve reprogrammed the chip.”
“But there’s a small device in a metal box that Phyllis gave you.”
“Right. That little device can override any code. You plug it into one of the wrist units, punch in any four numbers, and the chip will boil Mr. Payne’s brains anywhere in the world.”
“Were you planning to blackmail Mr. Payne?”
“Hell no! You think I’m crazy? The whole thing gave me the creeps. I told Phyllis I didn’t want any part of it. Told her to hide the device and never tell me where she put it. But Connor Payne has to know about the device.”
“If he doesn’t have it, he might start killing Ropic board members until he finds it?”
“Exactly,” Lucky says.
“So you hope to find the chip, place it with a wrist unit, and kill Conner Payne?”
“Yes. In self-defense.”
“A pre-emptive strike.”
“Exactly.”
“Only now you can’t find the wrist unit or the device.”
“Right. But if I get the chip back, maybe I can find out who has the other wrist units.”
It was giving me a sick feeling too, wondering who might have them.
“You should have a record of the sales,” I say.
“I doubt they were sold. I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe they’re locked away in a storage container somewhere.”
I think about it from Lucky’s point of view. “This whole Connor Payne thing has sidetracked you from raising money to recover your losses.”
“It has.”
“As I see it, you need two things: Connor Payne out of your life, and capital to finance your play till your luck changes.”
“Exactly.”
“Let’s go home, get some rest. I’ll keep Conner Payne at bay while you meet more investors.”
“I still want to search Phyllis’s house. I doubt we’ll find anything, but we need to try.”
“It’s your call,” I say.
He thinks about it a minute. “Let’s look for an hour. If we don’t find it, we’ll just have to live in fear.”
In the back seat, Gwen groans.
“What?” Lucky says.
“I’m starving.”
To me he says, “Can you go through the drive-through, get her some fries or something?”
I give him a look.
“Please, Mr. Creed?” Gwen says. “I love french fries.”
I look at her in the mirror. She licks her lips in a way that indicates far more than her love of french fries.
To Lucky I say, “You want anything?”
“Diet coke.”
“And a shake,” Gwen says. “If you don’t mind.”
“Uh huh.” Long as I’m a waiter, might as well go all in. “Anything else, Mr. Peters?”
“No,” Lucky says, “just the drink. And get yourself something. I’m buying.”
Something in his tone. Disrespect? Or maybe I just don’t like the man. I think about how he made his housekeeper, Tina, work tonight, and feel a twitch, the kind I get when bad things start to go down.
Lucky’s staring straight ahead, his eyes focused on something outside the car. Probably calculating the odds on what color car might turn into the lot next. His hands are in his lap, and all I can think of is how careless he is to offer me complete access to two unguarded targets. I’m three feet away. I could kill him two different ways with a single strike. He’s left me not only the temple, but the jugular as well. Temple or jugular. Temple or…”
“Mr. Creed?” Gwen says. “Fries?”
I glance in the mirror.
She does that tongue thing again, and now I’m thinking fries.
That’s me, in the white rental car. Donovan Creed, deadliest man on earth. Ordering fries, a Diet Coke, and a shake at the Wendy’s drive through. Telling the guy, “I’m only going through this line once, son. Don’t fuck up my order.” Him saying, “Relax, Pops. I’m on it.”
Pops?
22.
I drive past Phyllis’s house, turn the corner, and park the car. I tell them to wait two minutes, then circle the block, and drive the car right into the garage.
“You can break in that fast?” Gwen asks.
“Faster. But I want to check the house before you guys enter, to make sure it’s safe.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Lucky says.
“Connor Payne.”
“Good point.”
I have zero interest in searching Phyllis’s house for the second time in thirty hours. Gwen doesn’t want to be here either. She’s tired and bored, and it wouldn’t take much to set her off. Lucky’s a different beast. He claims to be exhausted, but gamblers have legendary stamina. They can sit at a poker table for three, four days at a time and never lose the ability to concentrate. In other words, fatigue is not going to make him quit. On the bright side, he’s losing faith in the device, because even if he finds it, he won’t be able to use it without the wrist unit.
I’m not the type of guy to purposely create friction in a marriage unless I’m trying to kill the husband or bang the wife. And even though I’d love to bang Gwen, it doesn’t appear I need to do much more than show up with a bag of fries to make that happen. But since I’m ready to call it a day, I decide to manipulate them into a major argument.
I break into Phyllis’s house quickly, and make my way to her bedroom. From my jacket pocket I retrieve the gift-wrapped box, the one that contains Lucky’s cufflinks and a condom, and the note that says, “Your turn to get lucky!” I place the box on top of the night stand next to her bed. As I head down the hall I can practically hear the time bomb ticking. Then I go to the garage and press the button to open the door.
23.
It’s a long ride back to Lucky’s house. The two are barely speaking to each other.
When they entered Phyllis’s house a few minutes ago, I arranged it so Lucky and I would start searching Phyllis’s office, and Gwen could check the bedroom. It took about ten seconds for her to notice the gift, and she brought it to us immediately.
“Should I open it?” she said.
I asked Lucky, “Does it look about the right size?”
He nodded.
“Go ahead,” I said.
She did.
She didn’t get mad.
She exploded with fury.
“You motherfucker!” she yelled. Then threw the box at him and stormed out of the house and sat in the car.
“She’ll warm up by the time we get home,” he said.
“You think?”
We gave up the search and went to the car. Lucky apologized to Gwen for what she’d seen, but claimed the gift didn’t prove they’d ever had sex. According to him it meant she wanted to have sex with him. Gwen clung to a more literal translation.
“The note said, ‘Your turn to get lucky.’”
“So?”
“It didn’t say, ‘Do you want to get lucky?’”
“I don’t get your point,” Lucky said.
“The point is, go fuck yourself.”
Twenty minutes later I’m pulling into their driveway. The gate goons wave us through, and I park in the same place I parked earlier in the day. Gwen gets out of the car first and stomps toward the front door, while fishing her keys out of her purse. Lucky’s rushing to catch up. I get his bags out of the trunk and follow them inside. Gwen starts making a bee line to their bedroom. Lucky notices me and says, “Where do you think you’re going?”
Gwen stops abruptly and turns around.
“I was planning to check the house.”
“And then?”
“Stay in the room Tina set up for me.”
“No way.”
Gwen and I exchange a glance. She says, “You hired him to protect us, asshole.”
“He can protect us from outside.”
“What’s the problem?” I say.
“You want to know the problem?”
I shrug. “It’s why I asked the question.”
“The problem is, forty-five minutes ago you threatened to kill me. And now you think I’m going to let you sleep in my home?”
“If you don’t need me here, pay me what you owe and I’ll head back to L.A.”
“You signed on for a week. For the next seven nights, you can sleep in your car.”
“Pay me now and I will.”
“I don’t keep that much cash at the house. I’ll pay you tomorrow.”
“Then tomorrow night I’ll sleep in the car.”
He starts to say something, then sees Gwen moving quickly toward the bedroom. He runs to catch up. She gets there first and tries to slam the door. Lucky wedges his foot in the threshold just in time to keep from getting locked out, but the blow to his foot makes him cry out in pain.
There’s a lot of yelling between them and I catch myself chuckling at some of the combinations of curse words Gwen strings together. I know she doesn’t want me to see her act this way, but she can’t help herself. And Lucky isn’t helping his cause by yelling back.
“I hate to interrupt,” I say. “But I should check out that wing of the house.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Lucky says. “I don’t want you in the command center.”
“You can check out the bedroom and closet,” Gwen says.
As I enter the bedroom, Lucky rushes over to the door that leads to his command center and blocks it.
“I don’t care what you do in there,” I say. “I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
“If Connor Payne has been in there, I may as well be dead anyway. He can do what he wants to me.”
“I hope he does,” Gwen says. “I can’t believe you did that to me. Turned my name into a scam.”
“What name?” I say.
“Vegas Moon,” Gwen says.
“You came up with it?”
She starts to answer, but Lucky says, “Shut up, Gwen.”
And she does.
The bedroom is large, but there’s no place for anyone to hide except behind the curtains or under the bed. I check the curtains first. Then, feeling like an idiot, I get on my hands and knees and check under the bed, thinking it would serve me right if Connor Payne was under there. I check the windows, and the door that leads to the patio.
“Everything’s fine,” I say.
“Please check the closet,” Gwen says.
“Oh yes, please do!” Lucky says, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Their closet is enormous. At least six hundred square feet.
I walk through it as slowly as possible, trying to decide where Gwen might have hid the device. We’re talking about a white piece of ceramic that’s smaller than a dime. I notice twelve custom drawers on her side, six on his. There are numerous rows of shoes and boots and several racks of clothes. Lou Kelly told me Lucky and Gwen got married five months ago after a very brief courtship. That being the case, I’m amazed how many clothes she’s managed to accumulate this quickly. I move my hands through her dresses, pretending to check that no one’s hiding behind them.
As I exit the closet, Lucky says, “Don’t stay up late. We’ve got a breakfast meeting at eight.”
“I’m not going,” Gwen says.
Lucky says, “You might wish you had, if Connor Payne shows up.”
“He can’t be much worse than you,” she says.
Lucky looks at me. “It’s such a joy to be home,” he says. “You can’t imagine.”
Gwen looks at him and says, “If your ass still hurts, I’ll be glad to pound some ice up your rectum.”
24.
Gwen decides to go with us to breakfast after all, which tells me Lucky convinced her how badly they need the cash. Lucky’s mark is Hampton Hill, who insists on meeting us at Hometown Hearth. When he orders ham and hash Gwen and I exchange a look.
“Everything is double H’s with this guy,” Lucky says, by way of explanation. Then, filling his voice with warmth, he adds, “While I’ve only known Hampton a short time, he’s already one of my dearest friends. He says the Double H has always brought him luck.”
“H’s are like undertakers,” Hampton says.
“How’s that?” I say.
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