“How much money did we lose?” James asked.
“We’ve lost an average of six million per year for the last three years.”
James looked out over the board for reactions, but he saw none. Some weren’t even paying attention.
Cal said, “I just don’t see the point. It’ll turn around. It always does. All of us here are taken care of, and so are the upper management. If some low-level shits have to lose their jobs, so be it. Let’s just hang on and see what happens.”
“What will happen is that we will go bankrupt, gentlemen. We can’t wait. This merger with Sands Corp will change the playing field. Separately, let’s be honest, we’re mediocre casinos, but together, we could have the emerging gambling markets cornered. We’ll establish ourselves as the gambling destination of the world.”
Cal looked at his fellow board members. “We’ve talked about it, Bill. We’re going to vote against it.”
“Talked about it? When the fuck did you talk about it? Where was I?”
“We’re sorry, Bill. The answer’s no.”
The board members rose and began to file out. James sat, incredulous, watching them as if he were watching aliens on a foreign planet. They were going to allow the company to crumble. They didn’t care-it wasn’t their baby. It was a risky investment for them, and they couldn’t see the future.
Part of the trouble was that they didn’t understand business. They saw the endeavor as a temporary fix, something they could use to make quick money and then abandon. They didn’t care if they left anything behind because it wouldn’t matter to them anymore. He saw it as something else entirely.
James turned to his bodyguard, Phil, who was standing behind him. James gestured for him to come over. He came and leaned down next to James.
“Cal,” James said, “has a mistress he’s keeping in those condos over on Hollywood. You know where they are?”
Phil nodded.
“Go knock her around a little bit. Don’t let anyone know it was you.”
Phil rose without a word and left the room. Milton and Raj sat looking down at the table, pretending they hadn’t heard anything.
“Bad move?” James asked.
Milton shrugged. “It’s just a mistress. Will he even care that much?”
“The old fart’s a sucker for women. He thinks they’re angels, or whatever poetic bullshit he’s bought into. It won’t change the deal, but it’ll fuck with him for a few days.”
“Won’t he retaliate?” Raj asked.
“I got nothing in my life for him to retaliate against. We got more pressing problems anyway. What do we do about the board?”
“They won’t approve this, boss,” Milton said. “There’s no way.”
“They’re idiots,” James said.
“No, they’re cowards.”
James held up his index finger as if a powerful idea had struck him. “You’re right-they are cowards. How do we get them the necessary courage we’re looking for?”
Raj said, “We need to make the alternative worse. It has to be more costly for them not to go through with the merger than to go through with it.”
“And how do we do that?”
“I don’t know yet.”
James exhaled loudly and rubbed his head. He had a massive migraine, and he hadn’t eaten yet that day. “Think about it and get back to me.”
The two men glanced at each other, rose, and left the room, leaving James alone. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. He realized he no longer lived in the Las Vegas of his youth, the one where cheats were taken to the desert and forced to dig their own graves. There was a different set of rules at play now.
He pulled out a cigar from one of the silver cases on the table and lit it. He hadn’t given an order like that in a long time. He wondered if that was what he needed, what had been missing in his life. It was a chilling thought, and he pushed it down deep inside him as he sat puffing the cigar and looking out the floor-length windows at the streets below.
5
McCarran International Airport was packed with the weekend crowds when Stanton stepped off the plane and into the terminal. He walked down to the baggage claim and gathered his two gym bags. Being without his firearm felt odd, but he had already put in a request to Orson for a.45 Desert Eagle.
Outside the terminal, a man in a button-down shirt and sports coat held a sign that said,Stanton.
“I’m Jon Stanton.”
“How’s it goin’? Marty Scheffield. I’m with the police. Sheriff Hall’s havin’ me pick you up.”
Marty took his bags and loaded them into the trunk of a Cadillac CTS parked on the curb. He climbed into the driver’s side as Stanton sat in the passenger seat and secured his seat belt.
“I love the car,” Stanton said. “Yours?”
“I wish. This is your car while you’re here.”
Stanton noticed the slight delay in Scheffield’s speech, which was indicative of damage to his Broca’s area, the portion of the brain that was just in front of the motor cortex and controlled speech. He wanted to ask about it but knew it would be rude.
Scheffield drove out of the airport and onto the congested freeway. Stanton hadn’t been there in a long time, and he was struck by the number of billboards. They were spaced hardly more than fifty feet apart, and the majority advertised personal-injury or criminal-defense lawyers.
“So how long you been with LVPD, Marty?”
“Two years now.”
“What’d you do before?”
“I was a student over at UNLV.”
“What’d you study?”
“Criminal Justice. I heard you was a professor before being a cop?”
“Yeah, psychology.”
“Do you really have a PhD?”
“Yeah.”
“So, why are you still a cop? If I had a PhD, I wouldn’t be a cop.”
“It’s hard to do too much good grading papers.” Stanton began searching restaurants on his phone. “Where do you think the best pizza is, Marty?”
“Um, pizza? Probably the Pie at Caesar’s Palace.”
“Can we stop there really quick?”
“Yeah, sure.”
The strip was clogged with cars, cabs, trucks carrying billboards for strippers and escorts, and the occasional city bus. Stanton watched the shows playing on the large screens set up near the roadside by the casinos. Then Marty pulled the car to a stop out front of Caesar’s Palace.
“I’ll be right back,” Stanton said.
He ran and took two wrong turns before he asked one of the employees in a clothing store where he could find the Pie. She pointed him toward the fountains. He ordered three pizzas and pasta then waited near the fountains while his order was prepared. The water was far louder than he’d expected it to be, and the people sitting outside the restaurant couldn’t hear each other over the noise unless they yelled.
He looked around at the statues, which imitated the original marble statues in Italy, remnants of Rome and the Renaissance. They portrayed an ideal of physical and intellectual perfection that he felt had been lost through the centuries. While his culture emphasized the physical, they had demonized the intellectual. He had heard one of his professors say that modern humanity lived as half-men.
The hostess signaled to him that his order was ready, and he walked back, paid, and left the mall, to find Marty sitting on the hood of the car, smoking.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
They climbed in, and Marty pulled away from the curb.
“What are the pizzas for?”
“Just a welcoming gift.”
Because of the traffic, the trip to the precinct on Martin Luther King Boulevard took nearly half an hour. The precinct office building was a modern design, made of steel and glass. Where the Northern Precinct in San Diego was neglected and forgotten, the Las Vegas Metro Police headquarters looked as though it were being constantly cleaned and renovated, as did the surrounding property.
Marty parked up front in a reserved spot, and Stanton got out then waited for Marty to tuck in his shirt, which had come out in the back. The pizzas were cold now, and he could feel the grease soaking through the boxes.