Tonight she would put to work all the street smarts and charm she could muster. Like a final exam, she thought. If it worked, hard days would be over. Several of her Washington regulars had wanted to see her tonight and that had provided her the opportunity to play the supply and demand game. “Oh, I wish you’d called sooner,” she’d said, but she had no one other than Jag on her mind and he’d called that morning. Just as she knew he would.
“Oh, Jag, you’re my fave,” she’d breathed into the phone. “But you’ve called so late. I’ll have to see if I can get out of anoth—”
“Work it out!”
“I’ll try, Jag,” she’d said. He was powerful in Washington and according to her research, rich. That was the main thing. And he was hooked on her. He was the right man for her plan, and he’d taken the bait, right down to the last hour.
Frank Gallardi, the developer, owner and operator of the Golden Touch, widely considered the top casino and hotel on Atlantic City’s legendary Boardwalk, was going over the words he would deliver that evening downstairs in the Austin Quinn Ballroom, the largest and grandest of all those in the Golden Touch. He’d agreed to emcee the Quinn celebration that was to take place in the room named after Austin Quinn himself. Gallardi saw politics as an evil to be tolerated, but Quinn was due a lot of credit for the reality of casino gambling in the state. Gallardi had managed the industry side of the legalization process and fed Quinn, then a state senator, the technical knowledge he needed in his political negotiations and the eventual crafting of the legislation in Trenton. It took eight years in all. Gallardi was awarded the first casino license issued in New Jersey and Quinn’s reward was election to the United States Senate. Gallardi named the walnut-paneled ballroom after Quinn as a tribute to him by the industry and an eighteen-karat gold plaque signed by all the original casino owners on the Boardwalk adorned the entrance to the Austin Quinn Ballroom.
Gallardi expected to see a lot of his Washington regulars at the Quinn party. At least a dozen of them had called today to say hello. Some of them were rarely seen or heard, and others frequently made the Business & Finance pages of the Wall Street Journal, but all of them were powerful and wealthy. They liked being at his place, and Gallardi knew they wanted him to know they were there.
Even President McNabb might make an appearance at Quinn’s roast. The Secret Service was busy putting their security in place but told Gallardi that McNabb’s appearance was iffy due to a developing incident with North Korea. It was great publicity to have the president visit the Golden Touch but the last time he was there his security network caused a ripple through the casino.
The hotel was full tonight and the game rooms reserved for members of its private Trophy Club were jammed. The Precious Metal, the Tiger’s Tail and every other casino on the Boardwalk also had its own VIP club with private elevators and secluded gambling rooms for high-stakes gamblers who wanted separation from weekenders and honeymooners, even the usual run of professional gamblers, but none was as successful as Gallardi’s Trophy Club. Frank knew from the start it would take more than showgirls and glitz to attract the icons of politics and entertainment he wanted in his place. They would come for luxury-class treatment, plenty of action and the chance to leave their identity at the door for a change. No damning front-page photo in tomorrow’s paper after a night letting their hair down.
He sent that promise along with complimentary Trophy Club membership to every man and woman in the U.S. House and Senate, to all the president’s cabinet members and to U.S. ambassadors to fifty countries. To the governor of every state, field-grade officers in the military, and to appointed top officials in all three branches of government. To well-known high-stakes gamblers, and even the heads of all the other Boardwalk casinos. To his friends in the business world and hundreds in the entertainment field. The promotion alone cost five million dollars up front but now the Trophy Club’s game rooms and other reserved areas bustled with the people Gallardi wanted in them. Most of the casinos on the Boardwalk were owned by large corporations with unlimited budgets and were twice the size of the Golden Touch, but Gallardi didn’t care about size. He’d built the Golden Touch for close to a billion dollars and by now had paid off his loans and owned it outright, and the Trophy Club’s success had earned him the respect — and envy — of the other casino owners.
On the twelfth floor, the man Karly Amarson called Jag stood at his window overlooking the Atlantic in what could pass for reverence for the power of the sea as wave after wave slammed against the shore. The cold December rain had stopped for now and the few who ventured out onto the Boardwalk, perhaps to seek better fortune at another casino, were shapeless figures, changing from dim to dimmer and back to dim in the sea mist as they passed from one lamppost to the next. Hostile ocean waves like the ones below had always held a strange appeal for Jag. Despite their might, or maybe because of it, he felt in control. He could taunt them with his closeness, yet with all their fury they could do him no harm.
He nodded unnoticeably at the thought of seeing Karly tonight, and wondered, as he’d done since meeting her three years earlier, what was so different about her. Women before her had been plentiful but his interest in them was usually measured in hours. Karly was mysterious. Smart. Not too available. Never to be taken for granted. In a dream one night, he could never get a clear look at her because of a whorl of smoke between them. He could see her tempting smile, the suggestion of her perfect body through a sheer covering, and hear her call out to him, but when he tried to approach her she turned her face to him and flashed her long eyelashes tauntingly as she disappeared into the mist.
Karly had known he’d be in town tonight but told him on the phone this morning she was busy. She would try to work it out. He tolerated her bullshit games, but the other side of the coin was that she demanded nothing of him. No visits to the boutiques or restaurants downstairs and no guilt-trip lectures even if he didn’t call or show up for weeks. Just the wad of hundreds he put into her hand when he would leave her, which he could afford. And liked. It was a small price for the freedom to appear and to leave when he wanted to, to not be expected to account for his whereabouts. For anything. A mutually-rewarding relationship that existed on weekends, when he’d leave the government and his wife and head for Atlantic City. There he could dismiss his personal armor whose week-long job it had been to defend against all the official intrusions on his limited time and allow his hormones that had been pushed aside all week to take their inalienable role. That’s when he would become Jag, as Karly had branded him the first time they met. But that tag was between them and he intended for it to stay that way.
He downed his second Glenfiddich 18 and checked to be sure he had all the parts to his tux. He’d bought a red bow tie with gold stripes to wear this time. There needed to be some distinction between the servers and the served. As he shaved, he thought about the party. He still had time to see Karly before it started if she called, but if not he’d see her afterwards and spend the night in her suite upstairs, as usual when he was in Atlantic City.