Private Entrance (The Butterfly Trilogy) (21 page)

     And Mike Fallon, mogul of the gambling scene, famous for bringing the masses to Las Vegas and turning it into a thrill-seeker's paradise, Fallon in his white slacks and open-necked shirt to show off his olive skinned chest, his black hair showing not a strand of gray despite his sixtieth birthday being just two years away, observed it all with intense pride. A secret vow he had made on the night of his daughter's birth had come true at last. He and Francesca, ruling the world.

     "She's beautiful," said the blonde next to him. She wore a smart sailor outfit of white and navy with little gold stars over each breast. Fallon vaguely recalled having had her in bed—she had been wild and insatiable and particularly
liked sucking on him. He had given her a rare opal ring and told her she was the best.

     Fallon looked over at Francesca sharing a joke with the Bishop of Las Vegas, who stood out in the crowd in his long black cassock and purple sash, three-cornered
biretta
on his head. The Bishop was going to personally conduct the wedding ceremony and Fallon was going to show his appreciation by donating a new building to the Catholic school.

     Francesca was tall, her chestnut hair radiant in the setting sun. Francesca, the center of Fallon's universe. On Saturday, she would enter the rarified world of Nevada royalty, when she married Stephen Vandenberg III.

     After renovating the Wagon Wheel, changing the name to Atlantis, and making it the most profitable casino hotel on the Strip, Fallon had learned that money wasn't enough. People like the Vandenbergs even looked down their noses at millionaires, if the millionaire's bloodline was questionable. That was when he had realized the only entry into their world was through marriage. They would accept him then because they had to.

     Fallon searched the crowd for his future son-in-law and found Stephen deep in conversation with a state supreme court judge. From their gestures, it looked like they were discussing golf. Stephen's parents weren't at the party. They lived in a massive historical mansion in Carson City and had been unable to cancel plans to fly down. Fallon didn't mind. He also didn't mind that they disapproved of the marriage. There wasn't a damn thing they could do about it.

     Fallon had experienced a moment of panic six years back, when Francesca had fallen in love with a professional skydiver. She had breathlessly confessed to her father that she had found her soul mate. The man was penniless and performed at air shows. If it hadn't been for the tragic accident with the parachute, Michael Fallon might have had to call the young man "son" for the rest of his life. Luckily, a pair of scissors in the right hands could be bought for five grand.

     Francesca's grief over the boy's death had startled Michael. He hadn't thought her love for the skydiver ran that deep. What had worried him even more was her vow that she would never fall in love again because it was in Michael Fallon's plans for Francesca to marry. She was his ticket into the world he had hungered to join.

     Fortunately, by the time Fallon contrived for her path to cross that of venture capitalist Stephen Vandenberg III, Francesca had gotten over the skydiver and was receptive once again to love.

     Fallon left the flirty blonde and went to mingle with his guests like a king greeting peasants. There were bodyguards in the crowd. Francesca didn't know it. He knew how she felt about his obsessive protection. Years ago he had pretended to ease up and give her more freedom. Fallon had simply turned the personal surveillance into a covert operation.

     Fallon knew first hand how easy it was to steal a baby.

     As he moved through the crowd, enjoying the warmth of the late sun on his shoulders, he spotted Uri Edelstein over by one of the outdoor bars, chatting with the Mayor of Las Vegas. Fallon noticed the mayor's wife giving Uri the once-over—at fifty-seven, Edelstein was himself in fit shape and attractive in a horn-rimmed glasses, cerebral way. But Uri was pointedly ignoring the woman. His sex life baffled Michael. Still with the same woman, after all these years. How could he stand it? Where was the mystery? Women were like fortune cookies—crack them open and you never knew what you were going to get. But who ever cracked open a fortune cookie
twice?

     Michael was on top of the world. Or nearly so. Saturday's wedding was going to clinch it. As long as word about his past didn't get out. He had spent years diligently plugging leaks here and there, silencing anyone who might talk. Two remained. Abby Tyler, whom Fallon was keeping a close eye on, and his mother who still carried a secret that, if found out, could destroy everything.

     Francesca still didn't know about a grandmother tucked away in Florida, the Irish Lucy Fallon. And Francesca certainly hadn't a clue that her father might be the bastard of a Vegas mobster. Years ago Michael invented a story to explain their last name. "When my great-granddaddy immigrated to America, his name was Antonio Falconelli. But the immigration agent at Ellis Island wrote it down as Fallonelli. His grandson, my father, shortened it to Fallon to make it sound more American. But you're a Falconelli through and through, sweetheart," he had assured her.

     Fallon blinked suddenly into the setting sun. All this thinking about his father must have created a hallucination because, if he didn't know better, he
would swear that standing at the gate, arguing with the armed guards, was none other than Gino Gamboni, a crony from his past.

     Jesus. It
was
Gamboni.

     Michael strode over, instructing the bodyguards to let the man in. They embraced. Gino Gamboni smelled of moth balls. He had prison pallor and fleshy, liver-colored lips. His sorry story was that he had kept working for the Chicago mob long after Michael was smart enough to quit. Arrested and convicted for tax fraud back in '74 and had been in and out of prison since.

     "Just got out again," the old man said as he gulped his first whiskey in five years. "You was smart, Michael. You saw it coming, the change in Vegas, back then. You knew it wouldn't be long before the Feds cleaned up the town. Spilotro and them, they didn't know their days were numbered. But you knew." He offered his glass for a refill.

     The bartender was generous with the Glenlivet.

     "Beautiful little girl you got there, Michael. A real princess." He looked at the tables groaning beneath ravioli, spaghetti, veal marsala. "I ain't tasted good Italian cooking in ages," Gino Gamboni said.

     Michael nodded in sympathy. What was life without lasagna and Chianti? But he had thought Gamboni was dead. Michael had to do some quick thinking. "How you doing, Gino? I mean, you gotta place to stay? You got money?"

     "Aw shit, Michael. It's rough. The world don't need guys like us any more."

     Without another word, Fallon reached into his pocket and pulled out a platinum money clip. Gamboni saw a lot of bills there. All hundreds. Michael counted out ten and pressed them into his old comrade's hand.

     "You need a job," Michael said, "you come by tomorrow. No friend of mine goes wanting in this town."

     Gamboni started to cry. "We come a long way from running drugs up from Mexico, hey Michael?"

     Fallon smiled. "Sure, Gino. It was a hundred years ago."

     Gamboni slugged back his drink. "Remember those baby trips we did? Back in sixty-eight? You know what I did one time? I get to Fresno with one of the babies and I tell the happy couple it was twice the amount. I said it was
outa my hands because I was told to collect twenty thousand. They want the baby bad. I say I have to take it back, they don't have all the cash. You know that? They come up with the extra ten grand and I keep it and that bastard Bakersfelt he didn't know a thing. Those runs were easy money," he added wistfully.

     "Hey Gino," Michael said, clapping him on the back. "Go easy on the liquor, okay? It's a celebration honoring my daughter, after all. Listen, I'm no snob, you know that. But you're not dressed for this occasion. No offense, but it's for my daughter. You know."

     "Yeah, sure Mike."

     "Listen, I'll have one of my men take you to the Atlantis. Set you up in a suite. You order from room service, anything you want. Play the tables. Whaddya say?"

     Gamboni cried openly. "You're the best, Mike. All heart."

     Gamboni was sleeping off a binge when something woke him in the dark. It took him a minute to remember he wasn't in a prison cell but one of the Atlantis' luxury suites. "What?" he said muddily and then the lights went on.

     Mike Fallon stood over him.

     "Listen to me you disrespectful piece of shit," Fallon said, pulling the man from the bed. "I take you into my home and I give you money, and you talk trash. The past is gone, Gamboni. I got nothing to do with it anymore. You don't ever mention the past again. Not to me, and especially not in front of my daughter. You got that?"

     Gamboni blinked owlishly as Michael dragged him to the room service cart covered in the remnants of Gamboni's steak dinner. Before he knew it, Michael had his hand pinned to the table and in the next instant speared it with a steak knife.

     Gamboni howled.

     "You spread the word,
capisce?
Nobody talks about the past. They do, they lose more than a hand. I take their dicks next time. Is that clear?"

     Gamboni nodded, his lips pressed together, eyes screwed shut tight in pain. He had gone white and sweat ran down his face. Blood streamed from his hand, pinned to the table like a New York cut.

     Michael beckoned to the two bodyguards at the door. "Take him to a hospital. Make sure he lives so he can pass the word to anyone else who's still alive from the old days."

T
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D.

     After she had broken the connection with the jeweler, Sissy had sat in shocked silence, staring at the primary colors of Bird of Paradise Cottage, desperately trying to convince herself that there must be some mistake.

     But in the end she could only put two and two together and come up with the unbearable fact that Ed was having an affair with her best friend.

     She had dialed Linda and when she got the machine again, dialed Linda's pager, something Sissy rarely did as Linda sold real estate and was often in the middle of a sale. She caught Linda in her car and at the sound of her friend's breezy voice, Sissy lost her cool. She had promised herself she would be adult and calm about the whole thing but it was just too much.

     Linda pulled her car over to the side of the highway and, when Sissy's tirade ran out of steam, said, "Girlfriend, I might be the horniest female in the state of Illinois and parts of Wisconsin but I would never do it with my best friend's husband."

     Sissy started to cry. Somehow, if Ed had to have a fling, there was some comfort in at least knowing who the woman was. Now it was with a stranger. "I'm sorry I thought it was you," she said, pressing a tissue to her eyes. "It's just such a blow. The rejection—"

     Sissy didn't have to explain. Linda knew all about Sissy's deep rooted fear of rejection. It went back to the day she found out she was adopted. "My birth mother gave me up!" Sissy had screamed. "What mother rejects her baby?" But it had explained why her adoptive mother—the woman she had thought for years
was
her mother—had raised her with such cool indifference. To be rejected by two mothers was devastating enough, but now to think that her husband...

     "Linda," she said, suddenly remembering something, "last night on the phone, you sounded guarded, like you were keeping something from me."

     With traffic whizzing by in the background, Linda said, "I was. Last year, when you said Ed was in Seattle on a sales trip, I saw him in Chicago. At a restaurant with an attractive blonde. She did not look like a machine parts buyer."

     "Why didn't you tell me?"