Private Vegas (35 page)

BARBIE SUMMERS COOPER was wearing short black silk pajamas when she met Lester Olsen at the veranda doors to the main house. She gasped, clasped her hands together, threw open the doors, and then, with a little shout, she jumped into his arms and wrapped her legs around his waist.

“Oh my God. Our day has come.”

He kissed her on the lips, a seal-the-deal kind of kiss, and patted her behind.

“Has anyone told you lately how cute you look in black?”

“Why, nooo,” she said. “But I’ve heard that black is the new gold.”

“And in your case, a great huge pile of it.”

He lowered Barbie to the ground, said soberly, “Now, you’re sure you’re sure, cutie? Not having any last-minute change of heart?”

“Don’t make me laugh, Lester. How about you? Any regrets? Will you please come inside, dear? Please.”

Lester entered the house and found himself in a great room of magnificent proportions: high cathedral ceiling held up by impressive beams, anchored with a stone fireplace you could roast a steer in.

Barbie said, “What are we going to do, Lester? I mean, what do I do? What do you do?”

“Where’s Bryce now?”

“I put the Ambien into his choc’lit. Triple his normal dose. Then I took him upstairs. He should be asleep.”

Lester said, “See this?” He took a little kit out of his jacket pocket, unzipped it, showed her the hypodermic needle. “It’s loaded with potassium chloride. This will stop his heart mid-beat. Guaranteed.”

“Is that one of your money-back guarantees?” She grinned. “Because I have put in my time, mister. I’m ready to be cut loose. I guarantee you
that
.”

“Shall we say good night to your husband?”

The staircase gripped the high fieldstone wall and climbed to the second-floor mezzanine, which was a half-floor deep by the width of the great room. Olsen followed Barbie across the floor, feeling that he was crossing a bridge into his new life.

At the end of the corridor was a massive handmade wooden door, which Barbie pushed open with the palm of her hand.

Bryce Cooper was in the middle of an enormous bed near the windows, ensconced in soft bedding and a dozen European-size pillows. Across from him, an old cowboy movie played on a sixty-two-inch screen.

“Barbie,” Lester said softly. “Sit down on the bed and just make sure he’s good and asleep.”

“Oh, once he closes his eyes, Lester, he is gone,” she said.

“Perfect,” Lester said. He held the needle up to the light of the television as Barbie gently called out, “Sweetie, I’m turning off the movie now.”

A flashlight beam appeared without warning, the light coming from a dark corner between a cabinet and the wall. It shone in Olsen’s eyes, blinding him and almost stopping his heart.

“Who’s that?” Barbie yelped.

She switched on the lamp on the end table. A man was sitting in a rocking chair at the far side of the armoire. The man kept the flashlight on Olsen as he got to his feet.

“I’m Bryce’s self-appointed bodyguard,” said the tall blond-haired man. “Don’t anyone move. I’ve got a gun.”

SCOTTY PINNED BARBIE and Olsen with his flashlight beam. He had no backup and absolutely no authority to be in this house. Barbie could shoot him and be well within her rights.

Still, Pretty Boy Olsen had a syringe full of murder and would certainly send Bryce Cooper into the tunnel of death if he had two minutes alone with him.

The bedside lamp cast a romantic glow, but it left corners of the room unlit. If Scotty was going to survive this ad hoc rescue, he needed more hands—one to hold the gun, two to cuff Olsen, and another to call the cops.

Scotty saw how the situation could go wild in a hurry.

He said loudly, “Olsen, lie facedown on the floor. Barbie, interlace your fingers behind your head and do not move, understand me?”

Olsen wasn’t buying it. He said to Barbie, “Who is this guy?”

“He’s in computers. I don’t remember his last name. His first name’s Chris.”

Olsen made a move toward Barbie, casual-like, but this was no good. Scotty dropped the light, put his gun squarely on Olsen, and held it with both hands.

“I said get down, Olsen. Do it quick or I will fire and I won’t miss.”

Olsen dropped the needle and kit, leaned forward with his hands out in front of him as though he were going to kneel. But it was a feint. He snatched Barbie from behind, held her in front of him like a shield. She let out a surprise squeal.

“Feel like taking a shot now, cowboy?” Olsen jeered. “Put down your gun and let’s talk. This is a big pie. It can be sliced three ways and everyone will be happy.”

A lot happened in the next few seconds.

Scotty lowered the barrel of his gun and squeezed the trigger; the bullet struck Olsen’s foot. Olsen screamed, and Barbie spun away from him. Scotty fired again and Olsen dropped to the ground, grabbed his knee, and howled even louder, “You killed me. You fucking killed me.”

Scotty said, “You, Barbie. Down on the floor. Don’t make me shoot you. I will do it.”

Holding the gun with his right hand, Scotty pulled his iPhone out of his shirt pocket, typed in 911, but before he could press Call, there was a commotion behind him.

He turned to see Bryce Cooper shrug off the bedding, hoist himself out of bed with a gun in his hand; must’ve been under his pillow. Bryce stumbled toward Barbie.

“Baby,” he called out. “Come to me, baby girl.” He turned to Scotty and said, “I’m Bryce and you’re a dead man.”

Cooper’s gun looked like an H&R .32 long-barrel revolver. Scotty couldn’t see if the safety was off. He knew that the guy was loopy from sleeping pills but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pull a trigger.

Scotty fired at the man’s hand, and the gun jumped into the air, landed on the carpet near Olsen. Olsen reached for the gun, then screamed as his fingers were flattened under Scotty’s foot.

Scotty scooped up Cooper’s gun and stuck it into the waistband of his jeans, and for the moment, the situation stabilized.

Scotty pressed the Call button on his phone, said to the 911 operator, “I need the police and a bus. Man down with two gunshot wounds. Yes, he’s breathing.”

He gave the dispatcher the pertinent details, then leaned against the inside of the bedroom door, kept his gun ready, and watched the show.

I WAS PULLING out of our underground lot when Justine darted out of the elevator, ran in front of my car, and slapped the hood.

“Jack. Wait.”

I opened my door and got out. “Christ, I could have hit you.”

“Mo-bot just got a call from a hospital in Las Vegas. Val’s been in some kind of accident. I don’t know what, Jack. Was she working on something for us?”

“Get in. Hurry.”

Justine was pale as she worked the phone, cajoling, pleading, arguing, but all she got from the hospital was that Valerie Kenney was in the ICU.

I wove around clotted traffic, passed in no-passing lanes as if I had flashers and sirens, was close to panic as I sped toward Santa Monica Airport, all the while wondering what had happened to Val, whipping myself for letting her take on an undercover job before she was ready.

Please God, let her survive.

Mercifully, we didn’t get pulled over, and when we got to Santa Monica AP, my plane was waiting for me on the tarmac, gassed up and ready to go. Justine’s legs were shaking as I helped her into the copilot’s seat. Justine is afraid of heights—and of flights in small planes. I thought she might be sick before we got into the air.

I climbed into my seat and reassured her over the roar of the engine.

“The Cessna 172 is an extremely stable aircraft,” I said, “very forgiving, even to a beginner. Plus, I know what I’m doing, as you know.”

“Let’s go, okay?” she said.

She buckled up. I gave her a pair of headphones, then I concentrated on my aircraft.

The sky was dark but with decent visibility. I went through my checklist, and once we were cleared for takeoff, I made sure my compass and directional gyro were aligned to the heading of the runway, then departed with a bit of a right crosswind.

I focused on the airspeed indicator, and while keeping the airplane running straight down the runway, I waited for it to reach the critical speed of about sixty before putting a little back pressure on the control yoke. As the spinning propeller exerted a leftward force on the airplane, I pushed in a bit of the right rudder.

Then I flew the runway heading until I was given vectors to proceed on course toward Atlantic Terminal, one of the private hangars at McCarran International, an hour and fifty minutes away.

The Cessna climbed out at a fairly standard five hundred feet per minute, and once we were at five thousand feet, I leveled out the plane and got us into cruise mode.

Los Angeles was lit up below us. The cars on the roads and freeways looked like a mechanical representation of a human circulatory system. Civilization glowed. After we cleared the suburban sprawl outside of LA, the vast desert was absolutely black.

We flew in a clear, starlit sky, and finally, my lovely, profoundly loyal, and very brave friend Justine relaxed. When we were about fifteen miles from McCarran, I began pulling the power back to 2,100 rpm, which set up a nice three- to four-hundred-foot-per-minute descent to the airfield.

Ten minutes later, we were taxiing toward the hangar, the hotels on the Strip looming in the background. When we were safely at a stop, I helped a very shaky Dr. Smith to the ground.

I hugged her.

She clung to me, and then, holding hands, we trotted toward the Atlantic Terminal and the hired car waiting to take us to the hospital.

THE RIDE FROM the airport to Mountain View Hospital was swift and silent. Justine and I arrived just after one in the morning and went straight to the ICU, where a dozen hysterical parents were waiting for news of their kids, casualties of a bus plowing through the doors of a nightclub.