Private Entrance (The Butterfly Trilogy) (17 page)

     Flanked by two bodyguards—no one ever had a meeting with Fallon alone—Julio muttered a modest, "Thanks." But excitement shone in his eyes. Only last week Manny Rosenbloom got a brand-new Cadillac for catching a crooked dealer. You never knew.

     "Hey," Fallon said, tapping Julio's abdomen. "What's this? Putting on extra luggage there?"

     "You know how it is."

     Fallon blushed and laughed as he patted his own abdomen. "You and me, Julio, we're entering our spare tire years."

     And Julio laughed in agreement.

     Fallon sipped his scotch. "So, Julio, I saw you talking to my daughter this morning."

     Julio shrugged. "I said hello. You know."

     "You put your hand on her arm."

     "I did?"

     "She was wearing a tennis dress. Sleeveless. Her arm was bare. You touched it."

     "I did?" he said again, his forehead suddenly sprouting sweat. "I don't remember. I mean, I didn't intend any disrespect. You know that, Michael. I wasn't thinking."

     "Sure," Fallon said with ease. "I understand. We all do things without thinking. But I don't like anyone touching my daughter."

     His nod to the two bodyguards was so subtle that Julio didn't see the first punch coming. It snapped his head sideways and sent a tooth flying out of his mouth. The second punch knocked the air out of his lungs, making him double over in agony, and the third dropped him to his knees. The men alternately punched and kicked him, their feet making sick thudding sounds, Julio sobbing and then silent, the sound of a bone snapping, until he was unconscious and blood streamed from his nose and mouth and the cuts on his face.

     "Drop him in the desert," Fallon said dismissively. Then with a tug on his French cuffs, said to Uri, "Keep me informed on that business with Abby Tyler. I'll be upstairs saying good night to Francesca." It was Michael's nightly ritual. But as he started to leave, he stopped and said, "What?"

     Uri raised his eyebrows.

     "You look funny," Fallon said.

     "I do?"

     "You have a problem with how I handled Julio?"

     Uri met his friend's eyes and for the first time in their four decades together, felt a prickle of fear. "No, not at all, Mike."

     "Hey," Fallon put a hand on Uri's shoulder, "you and me go back a long way, don't we?" Fallon had asked Uri to be his daughter's godfather, and at the christening, a big affair in a Catholic church, Uri had worn a yarmulke and had sung a Hebrew prayer over the baptismal font. The priest had been a little nonplussed but everyone loved it and Michael Fallon cried with unabashed sentimentality.

     But now the hand on Uri's shoulder felt heavier than it should. "No problems," he said, for the first time in his life uncomfortable beneath his friend's scrutiny.

     The moment stretched, Uri's Adam's apple went up and down, and finally Fallon's face broke into a sunny grin. He slapped his old friend on the back and said, "Just fucking with you!" and, with a laugh, walked out.

     Pulling out a handkerchief, Uri mopped his forehead. He had never passed judgment on Fallon's brutal form of justice. But he didn't think Julio
deserved getting beaten up like that. Mike was tense these days, because of the wedding. Uri just hoped no one else got in his way.

     In high school she had been voted the girl most likely to keep her head in a disaster, and her friends at Harvard Business School had teasingly called her Ms. Spock, after the Star Trek character—Francesca was that level-headed.

     Wouldn't they all be surprised to see her tonight, looking at her fiance's picture and wondering why she was marrying him?

     She wouldn't be the first daughter in history to get married just to get away from an overbearing father. But at least
she
had chosen Stephen, she had that consolation. And the fact that her father had taken an instant liking to him. Her father had disapproved of all her previous relationships.

     Francesca had an MBA from Harvard. It was her father's dream for her to go into business law. If Francesca had ever had a dream of her own, she had long forgotten it. She had met Stephen through a mutual client named Featherstone, who wanted to create a chain of fitness centers for women around the country. When she had told Mr. Featherstone the growth potential was tremendous, he had brought in a venture capitalist from Carson City, Stephen Vandenberg. During the months they had worked putting the plan together, romance had blossomed.

     But now, with the wedding only four days away, Francesca felt doubts niggling at her. Was it really love she felt for Stephen? All her life, her emotions had been overshadowed by her father. They only ever had each other—no aunts or uncles or cousins. She didn't remember her grandfather, Gregory Simonian, who died in a freak accident when she was four. Nothing Francesca did or felt was ever separate from her father and her feelings for him. How could she expect to ever know anything about herself?

     She knew what had triggered these fresh doubts: her father's wedding gift to her and Stephen—a brand new house in a gated community, right next to his own.

     She had hoped she and Stephen would move to Reno, be independent of their parents as they started their new life together. But her father had looked so hurt when she hadn't gushed with excitement over his gift that she had given in. They were to stay in Vegas.

     At least, she reminded herself once more time,
I
chose Stephen. It was
one of the few decisions in Francesca's life that had come from her. And that, she decided, was reason enough to marry him.

     Wasn't it?

     When Fallon reached the top floor of the hotel, he thought of how close he had come to losing all this, back when Francesca was a little girl.

     The story went that a crazy Armenian named Gregory Simonian was driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas back in 1941 when he stopped on the side of the highway to take a piss. As he was watering the sand he noticed the traffic whizzing by: all those California suckers heading for Glitter Gulch on Fremont Street to gamble away their money. It occurred to Simonian that someone should build a place out
here
, four miles south of downtown, on this strip of desert highway, catch the suckers before they got to Fremont. Everyone called him crazy for building his casino hotel in the middle of nowhere. But it worked. Folks stopped at the Wagon Wheel, stayed and gambled, Simonian got rich, and other men came to build casinos in this so-called middle of nowhere that was once the Los Angeles Highway but was now called The Strip.

     When Michael was young he had seen how everyone respected Gregory Simonian. That was the life Michael wanted. But being Simonian's son-in-law turned out not to be enough. Michael wanted to make his mark on Vegas. The Wagon Wheel was still the Wagon Wheel. What was needed was an eye-popping, show-stopping casino hotel outclassing all the others.

     His father-in-law lived at that time in a big house in the better part of town, with a water-guzzling lawn and six car garage. He was watching a boxing match on TV when Michael arrived to discuss making changes to the Wagon wheel. His wife, Gayane, had been dead four years. The only connection between the two men was little Francesca.

     Simonian wasn't interested in Michael's plans but Michael persisted. "You've been to Glitter Gulch," he had said that day, talking over the TV, "you've seen the kids waiting outside the casinos while their parents are inside gambling. We should create a place where parents can park the kids
inside
the casino. We offer games for the kids, make a mint."

     Simonian had kept his eyes on the TV and made a loopy gesture around his ear.

     "And there's a lot more working stiffs out there than high rollers. We should cater to factory workers and truck drivers, not the whales."

     "You're crazy."

     "I
know
how much money can be won from the smaller gamblers."

     Simonian had continued to shake his head, as he always did, until Michael suggested installing "loose" slot machines. Now Simonian lost his temper, jumping to his fee and shouting, "You're talking about paying out
more
jackpots? Are you out of your mind?"

     "Come on, Gregory. You and I both know that very little of those winnings ever leave the casino. It's a fever. And we feed it. Keep 'em winning and they keep pouring the coins back into the machines. We still win in the end."

     Simonian gave him a disgusted look. "You know? For a smart wop you sure are a dummy."

     Fallon's face darkened. "Gayane might not be around, but I am still the father of your grandchild and I demand respect."

     "You get nothing from me!" Simonian yelled. "I gave you job of casino boss so I can keep an eye on you. So you don't go back to working for your mobster friends. So my little Francesca is kept safe."

     "And what I'm talking about is
for
Francesca! You don't want her to inherit a third-rate casino, do you? I want to build it into something big. Into the biggest goddam attraction in Las Vegas."

     "You," Simonian said, pointing in Fallon's face, "son of a bitch, you don't get my casino, you don't get nothing!"

     Simonian paused to watch a punch thrown on TV, then returned to his son-in-law. "And another thing, Mr. Big Shot Gangster. Don't get any ideas about making me disappear the way you do everybody else. I got the goods on you, good and proper. I found out about the baby selling business, you running kidnapped kids across state lines. I got papers to prove it. And those papers are in safe keeping with two men," he had lifted his thumb, "my lawyer," he lifted his index finger, "and my priest. Sealed so they don't know what's in them, but insurance for me. They got instructions—I get shot or stabbed or poisoned, or I vanish, or anything, they take those papers to the Feds and you're put away for life.
You got that?"

     Michael had gotten it.

     Seven months later, on May 16, 1977, the right landing gear of a New York Airways Sikorsky 5–61L helicopter failed while the aircraft was parked, with rotors turning, on the rooftop heliport of the Pan Am Building. The aircraft rolled over, killing passengers who had been waiting to board. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the cause of the accident was fatigue failure of the right main landing gear assembly.

     Among the fatalities was Mr. Gregory Simonian, Las Vegas hotel owner, who had literally lost his head in the accident.

     The tampering had cost Michael plenty, enough to keep the helicopter mechanic in tropical luxury for the rest of his life, but worth every penny because it had looked like such a freak accident that Simonian's attorney and Father Diran Papazian of the Las Vegas Armenian Church did not connect it to Fallon and so the sealed papers in their care, proof of Fallon's days as a baby-runner, remained sealed.

     Just to be sure, however, a month later, Fallon saw to it that the lawyer and the priest died in separate, unrelated accidents. No one reported certain documents missing from their respective offices because no one else had known about them. His secret had remained secret so that nothing had stopped Michael Fallon from going all the way to the top—the king of Las Vegas, with Francesca as his queen.

     He knocked lightly on the double doors of her suite, because sometimes Francesca was already asleep and he did not want to wake her. But she was awake—reviewing legal contracts, she said. So typical of his level-headed, focused daughter. Instead of fussing over guests lists and flower arrangements and which bridesmaid was to stand where, work came first for Francesca Fallon.

     The sight of her, as always, slammed him back to the night she was placed in his arms. His wife, Gayane, pale and bloody from hours of difficult labor, lying dead on the sheets. He had held the little newborn life in his arms and had cried like a baby himself, sobbing so hard he shed hot tears on the little pink thing, dropping into her open mouth so that the first thing Francesca tasted in life were her father's tears.

     He had not been prepared for the love. It had crashed into him like a desert twister, picking him off the ground and spinning him around until he didn't know up from down.

     Now he knew his own father hadn't abandoned him. Because Fallon understood a father's love, the utter depth of it. It was his mother's doing, keeping Fallon's father out of the picture. And because he knew this, he hated her all the more. The night Francesca was born, he went to the little house in the middle of dust fields, where his mother was ironing her waitress uniform, and told her she was moving to Florida. And so Francesca grew up not knowing she had an Irish grandmother named Lucy Fallon living in Miami.

     And if there were other Fallons, Michael didn't care. He despised his Irish half and embraced his Italian side with even more zest and gusto, passing this passion along to his daughter, teaching her how to say her nightly prayers in Italian, how to order in an Italian restaurant. Even her name, Francesca, was Italian. A baccarat dealer had once innocently commented on her Armenian eyes and the man was fired on the spot.

     Only one thing Michael didn't tell his daughter—that her Italian grandfather was most likely a mobster. There had been a lot of Italians in Vegas at the time of Fallon's conception: Michael Cornero, king of the western rum runners, and his crime partner, Pietro Silvagni. The boys from Chicago, Vito Basso and Carlo Bellagamba. The guys from Florida, Angelo Siciliano and Frank Taglia. And Nevada's own Joey "the Nose" Franchimoni. Michael would have been proud to be the son of any one of them—with the exception of Franchimoni who had been so determined to kick the Jewish mob out of Vegas that his anti-Semitic proclivities offended Michael's best friend, Uri Edelstein.

     Of course, they were all dead or retired by now, Michael having survived and come out on top. And not a single person had the goods on him.

     With two exceptions. And both were women.

     "Can I fix you a drink, Daddy?" Francesca asked, rising from her desk, tall and slim, shining chestnut hair dancing on her shoulders. A brilliant lawyer with a brilliant future. Everything perfect. And after Saturday, nobody was ever again going to call Mike Fallon a "dumb wop bastard" like the kids in school long ago. Michael silently congratulated himself for a job well done. Francesca had no idea that her meeting Stephen had been arranged by her father. Selecting Stephen Vandenberg from a list of twenty eligible bachelors, Fallon had then laid his plan: creating a dummy client who went
to Francesca with an idea for a chain of fitness centers. "Mr. Featherstone" had then brought in Stephen Vandenberg and, as Fallon had hoped, a few months of the two working closely together and nature had taken his course. Mike Fallon, matchmaker, he thought with a grin.