Vegas Vengeance Read online

  Her eyes glistened in the streetlights. Hawker did not respond when she threw her arms around him, crying.

  “Oh, Hawk, there was no reason for saying what I did. It was cruel of me—especially after what you had to do tonight.”

  Hawker patted her shoulder noncommittally. “It’s okay, Barbara. Really. I’m just tired. I need to get some sleep.”

  He tried to pull away from her, but she wouldn’t allow it. “No. You’re still mad. And besides, you’re tight as a drum. I can feel it in your shoulders. They’re all knotted. You won’t be able to sleep even if you try.” She took his big hand and tugged him back toward the Doll House. “I owe you a dinner and an apology. And if you go off and leave me feeling the way I do, James Hawker, I really never will speak to you again.”

  So, feeling sheepish and silly, Hawker allowed himself to be led back to the suite; allowed her to hum and cluck over him while a striking blonde served them roast quail and wild rice and fresh strawberries and a French wine so good that he actually drank two glasses before ordering the beer he had wanted so badly.

  And when he stood to thank her for the meal, Barbara Blaine took his hand once again and pulled him along behind her. She took him out onto the patio and into a small adjoining building. The structure smelled of cedar and heat.

  The tiny room in which they stood was tiled from wall to ceiling, and there was a stainless steel table near the shower stall. “That,” said the woman, pointing toward a large window through which Hawker could see cedar benches, “is the sauna bath. The girls have had it on most of the night, so the temperature should be about one-seventy. Right outside is a Jacuzzi. We keep it at about one-ten. You need to relax, and those two will relax you.” She pointed to the table. “That is for massages. One of my girls is an accredited masseuse, and I will send her down in about half an hour—”

  “Barbara, that’s really not necessary—”

  “Not a word, James Hawker. You’re going to have a proper massage, whether you like it or not. Her name is Mary Kay O’Mordecai Flynn, and Mary Kay O’Mordecai Flynn is also going to bandage your cuts and soothe your wounds, and make you feel altogether human again—”

  “I think I’ve already turned down that offer—”

  “A massage, James, and some tender loving care—nothing more. I will send down a girl immediately with a bucket of ice. In that bucket of ice, you will find a fresh bottle of beer. Drink the beer and then soak those awful knuckles of yours in the ice. Every twenty minutes thereafter, I will send another beer and another bucket.” She stood to her full height, fists perched on her hips. It was the first real smile Hawker had seen on her haunting Mediterranean face, and he realized that she was really enjoying this opportunity to please him.

  He smiled. “You really are something, Barbara Blaine.”

  She stuck out her small hand. “Friends again?”

  “Friends.”

  Mary Kay O’Mordecai Flynn had flaming red hair, the body of a centerfold, the face of a country saint, the personality of a Midwestern homecoming queen, and the finger strength of a professional wrestler.

  Hawker had sweated himself in the sauna, soaked himself in the Jacuzzi and dutifully drunk the three prescribed beers. Now he lay naked on the table with a towel thrown over his hips. Even if he had had the energy to move, he wouldn’t have.

  Mary Kay O’Mordecai Flynn wore a lime-colored body stocking cut low enough at the bosom to show the healthy swell of tanned cleavage; cut high enough at her hips to display the long, lithe thighs and the indentation of partially bared buttocks.

  She didn’t massage Hawker’s muscles, she attacked them, pushing and pulling and kneading as if there were evil creatures inside him that damn well needed exorcising.

  “Does this hurt, Mr. Hawker?”

  “Arrrrg …”

  “Does this hurt, Mr. Hawker?”

  “Oooooh …”

  “Does this hurt, Mr. Hawker?”

  “Oh, lordy …”

  “Is there any place on your body that doesn’t hurt, Mr. Hawker?”

  “Only one spot, Mary Kay, but you keep those meathooks of yours away from it!”

  But soon the pain melted away, replaced by a bone-deep relaxation that Hawker had not experienced for a very long time. The girl rolled him over on his back and began to work on his chest and stomach muscles.

  Her breasts hung temptingly over his face, and Hawker found it easier to endure if he closed his eyes.

  Soon he was asleep.

  He awoke in the midst of a dream. In the dream, Mary Kay O’Mordecai Flynn had begun taking liberties beneath the towel. In the dream, Hawker reacted the way most healthy men would react …

  But then his eyes fluttered open, and he felt the woman’s lips on him; could smell the light scent of the unfamiliar perfume—a wry, delicate musk; could feel her body tremble when he reached out and cupped the heavy, naked breast in his right hand.

  “Mary Kay?”

  The door was closed, and the room was a void of darkness.

  The woman did not answer.

  “Mary Kay? Is that you?”

  Still holding him in her small warm hand, the woman kissed her way up his chest to his lips, as if to silence him. Hawker slid off the table, too engulfed by the dreamy reality to question or moralize. He spread towels on the floor with his foot, then pulled the woman down with him, touching the softness of her face with his fingertips, then tracing the firm line of her body; tracing the curvature of ribs and the soft swell of thighs and the satin curl of vaginal hair.

  Since he could not see her with his eyes, he had to look at her with his fingers.

  Once again she found him with her lips as Hawker kneeled over her. When he could stand it no more, he set his tongue to work on her, massaging the delicate folds until she moaned and trembled and heaved.

  He entered her then; rolled her over on top of him, and entered from beneath, as the woman’s hips began the timeless lift, arc and fall of the final coupling.

  There seemed to be a fever in her body, a searing skin temperature that increased as the rhythm of their joining gained momentum.

  It was a strange pairing. Hawker had no idea who his partner was, yet there was an unexpected tenderness in their loving and an inexplicable charge of emotion.

  As the woman reached her climax, her lips betrayed a muffled cry as she clawed at Hawker, burying her face in the hair on his chest.

  It was the first time he had heard her voice, yet it was too distorted to tell him whom he had just made love with.

  Hawker tried to speak, but once again the woman covered his lips with her hands. They dozed for a while, then made love again—this time each making sure it lasted a long, long time for the other.

  When Hawker awoke again, a thin line of light filtered beneath the massage room door.

  It was morning.

  And the woman was gone.

  eleven

  Hawker spent the next morning, a Thursday morning, sleeping.

  He had wandered away from the Doll House at dawn, too tired to explain his leaving or to say good-bye.

  It didn’t appear anyone was up anyway.

  Back in his own suite, he opened the windows, turned the air-conditioning on high and tumbled into bed.

  He awoke four hours later to the sound of laughter. It was 11:35 A.M., and the showgirls were beneath his veranda again, sunning themselves at the pool.

  The long-legged beauty with the tawny red hair was there. Her bikini was wet, and Hawker could see the outline of upturned nipples through the thin material.

  As though she could feel Hawker’s eyes on her, the woman turned suddenly and caught him in his act of voyeurism.

  Hawker hadn’t blushed in a very long time, but he came damn close now. The woman seemed to sense it and grinned at him. Then, with a toss of her auburn mane, she dove headlong into the pool. Hawker felt the urge to slip on his swimsuit and trot downstairs for the obligatory inanities of introduction.

  I
t would be nice to escape from the dangers of this mission for a while.

  Hawker watched the auburn-haired girl swim. Her stroke was long and effective but surprisingly lacking in grace. Her buttocks pivoted alluringly with every kick, and the stirring he felt reminded him of the mystery woman who had come to him in the darkness. Who was she? Barbara Blaine? Mary Kay O’Mordecai Flynn? Or just one of the anonymous girls, a prostitute who had come to him with inexplicable desire?

  It was a pleasant mystery, and Hawker used it to take his mind off the girl in the pool.

  But then he cursed himself for mooning around like a love-struck adolescent. He had work to do, damn it. Important work. He had had enough of women for the time being.

  Hawker ordered breakfast from room service, then forced himself beneath a cold shower.

  After the fight he had had, he expected to feel more soreness. Instead, he felt pretty good—except for the knuckles of his right hand.

  The massage had apparently helped.

  Hawker dressed himself in worn twill slacks, a black cotton knit shirt and a pair of waxy soft boat shoes. He had already inventoried the armaments in the carefully packed crates, so it didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.

  It was a VL-34, brand named the Privacy Protector. It was built of red plastic, and considerably smaller than a paperback book. The VL-34 was the smallest and most advanced electronic bug-detecting device ever built.

  Hawker checked the batteries and drew out the retractable antenna. He pointed the antenna toward the television set. The little beeper alarm went off immediately, but the tiny fail-safe yellow flasher did not come on.

  No bugs there.

  Hawker went over the entire suite painstakingly. And found nothing.

  It was not good news. It meant there were now only three ways the mob could have found out about his plans to drive to Jason Stratton’s cabin: through a spy among Kevin Smith’s help, through Barbara Blaine or through a wiretap.

  The wiretap would be the easiest to check, and Hawker decided to take care of that after breakfast.

  But while waiting for his food to arrive, he pulled out Stratton’s cryptic journal and went through it carefully.

  Aside from a few seemingly unimportant entries, the only things Stratton had not written in code were the dates of his entries.

  He had been keeping the journal for just over two years. The entries had been made sporadically over that time period, sometimes weekly, sometimes daily.

  The last three entries were dated June 9, June 10 and June 13.

  Barbara Blaine said Jason had disappeared in mid-June.

  Hawker found a tablet and pen and sat at the desk with the journal. On the tablet he wrote:

  E-T-O-N-A-I

  These were the most often used letters in the English language.

  Beneath them he wrote:

  R-S-H-D-L-C-W-U-M

  These were the second most often used letters. Then he printed the rest of the alphabet in the order of the letters’ respective usage:

  F-Y-G-P-B-V-K-X-Q-J-Z

  That done, Hawker studied Stratton’s journal carefully. He looked for some immediate solution but found none. He couldn’t break the code into distinct words, spaces and punctuation. Some of Stratton’s sentences consisted of more than a thousand unspaced letters and numbers in a row.

  But Barbara had said he had invented the code when he was a teenager. It couldn’t be too complicated.

  Hawker hoped.

  He sat hunched over the desk for more than two hours. The wastebasket beside the desk slowly filled. At a quarter of one, Hawker decided Jason Stratton had been a very precocious teenager. At two P.M., Hawker decided the CIA had missed a good bet in not recruiting the young Stratton and putting him in charge of its covert operations section.

  He had made very little headway with the code. Very little. There was some definite correlation between the numbers that intermixed with the rows of letters. But Hawker couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It seemed just out of reach.

  By two thirty his eyes were tired and he realized the breakfast he had ordered from room service had still not arrived.

  Hawker found another Walther PPK in the armaments crate, pulled on a sports jacket and went outside into the corridor. After locking the door behind him, he tugged out a few strands of hair and wet them with saliva, then pasted them across the crack in the door.

  He had already had enough surprises in Las Vegas.

  He had given the mob two easy chances to kill him, and he wasn’t about to give them a third.

  twelve

  After grabbing a sandwich in the restaurant, Hawker found Kevin Smith in his office. A big, comfortable office of wood and glass and leather, for a stocky, comfortable man.

  Smith still looked more like a cop than a casino operator. Like a cross between Lou Grant and Rocky Marciano. Smith was in his early sixties. He was only a few inches under six feet tall, but his barrel chest and thick forearms made him look shorter. The graying hair was sparse enough to show a well-tanned head beneath. The face was full and jowly, and his small blue eyes crinkled when he smiled—and he smiled often.

  He listened intently as Hawker briefed him on his two clashes with the mob. When Hawker had finished, Smith tapped a pencil on his desk impatiently.

  “The bastards,” he said in soft exclamation. “It just doesn’t make any sense.” He thought for a moment, then reconsidered. “Well, maybe it does.”

  Hawker sat across from him in a heavy leather chair. The leather creaked whenever he shifted his weight. “What do you mean, Kevin?”

  Smith shrugged noncommittally. “I’m not sure, really, Hawk. But maybe I’ve underestimated the worth of the Five-Cs. I know the mob operates in Vegas. Hell, what cop doesn’t? But they aren’t nearly as strong as they were, say, thirty years ago. When the big legitimate conglomerates began to hear what kind of profits a casino made, they started buying out the mob. Howard Hughes paved the way.” Smith smiled. “Not even the mob could turn down dough like that.”

  “What’s that have to do with the Five-Cs?”

  Smith hunched forward to make his point. “It’s this, Hawk. The mob has slowly been losing control. But the things they have held on to have been solid—either established casinos or a few selected outside businesses. Their outside businesses have nothing to do with gambling, but it gives them a place to wash any illegal money they have. We started the Five-Cs six years ago. We started small. Hell, we wanted to be small. That way, the outsiders wouldn’t be interested. Why would the mob want to bother with us? But our casinos are like no others in Vegas. They’re individualized. Very personal. I’ve been told they have kind of a hometown flavor. And maybe that’s why our success has been three times what we ever hoped it would be.”

  “You’re making a lot of money?”

  Smith nodded quickly, as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “Not compared to a really big casino. But we’re still making more than I ever dreamed. And maybe the mob found out. I mean, that has to be it, doesn’t it? Why else would they want a gambling complex? Maybe they decided the Five-Cs is the place to get their foot back in the door. Maybe they’re making another run at Vegas so they can get the same kind of control they had in the old days.” He stared out the window. “God knows, their methods are the same as in the old days. Extortion. Threats. Murder.”

  “You said the mob still controls some businesses that have nothing to do with gambling. What kind?”

  “I don’t know for sure, really. It’s just talk I’ve heard. A chain of carpet cleaner outlets. Liquor stores.” He grinned. “A religious supply company.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me right. Las Vegas has more churches than any city its size in the world, Hawk. And it’s not accidental. You see, the good citizens of this state can outlaw gambling anytime they want—at the voting booth. The mob and other casino owners have always been painfully aware of that. So to keep the citizens happy, they give them anything
they want. And because most of the antigambling sentiment comes from the churchgoers, people in the business have taken special care to make them happy. Twenty years ago, if a congregation wanted a new church, all they had to do was drop the word to the mob boss. Presto! The money magically arrived. Name any religious sect and I’ll guarantee they have a place of worship here. And it probably didn’t cost the happy flock a dime.”

  “The mob bought off ministers?”

  “And rabbis and priests and yogis and everyone else you can think of.” Smith laced his fingers behind his head and rocked back in his chair. “So you see, running a religious supply store is a way for the mob to get some of its money back. Clever, huh?”

  “Touching.”

  “The mob has always had a heart of gold. Believe me, I know. I’ve been in Vegas for more than forty years.”

  “And that’s one thing that bothers me, Kevin. You were a cop here. A damn good cop, from what I’ve heard. And all good cops make street connections—people who can tell them what the opposition is up to.”

  Smith nodded that it was true.

  Hawker looked at him pointedly. “So how is it you people don’t know who is trying to hit you? Certainly the word is out on the streets. But from what you’ve said, they came to you out of the blue. Two goons you had never seen before tendering a low-ball offer for your complex. When you refused them, the telephone threats began—just as they threatened Barbara Blaine. And then a couple of them jumped your associate, Charlie Kullenburg, and beat him half to death. And you still don’t have a clue who they are.”

  Smith’s face reddened slightly. “Goddamn it, Hawk, don’t you think I’ve tried? Don’t you think we’ve all tried? I agree, it’s confusing as hell. It doesn’t make any sense. But who else could it be but the old Vegas mob? Sure, the word should be on the streets—but it’s not. People on the in with the old mob families should know why they want the Five-Cs and just how far they’re willing to go to get it—but they don’t. I can’t explain it. It’s one hell of a mystery.

  “When it first started, I wasn’t worried a bit. I was confident there wasn’t anything the five of us couldn’t handle—we’re all cops, for Christ’s sake. And we’ve still got connections downtown.” He made a helpless motion with his hands. “But things have changed more than I thought in Vegas. It used to be I knew who the mob bosses were. I could recognize their goons a hundred yards away. But like I said, the big conglomerate money has shifted the center of power. The mob is still here. But they don’t run the place anymore, so who keeps up with them?”