An Offer He Can't Refuse Page 2

They were the Carusos…a.k.a. the California Mafia.

  Two

  “Luck Be a Lady”

  Frank Sinatra

  Guys and Dolls (1963)

  Johnny Magee reached for the phone on his desk, paused, then drew back his hand. “Who said ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’?” he asked idly.

  With the rest of the tech team at lunch, the only other person in the large Las Vegas penthouse office was Johnny’s right-hand geek, twenty-five-year-old Calvin “The Calculator” Kazarsky. Cal continued peering at one of the three computer monitors crowded onto his desk. “Eaten cold. Ricardo Montalban to William Shatner, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”

  Johnny frowned. “Not Shakespeare?”

  “Then there’s a line in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. French novel, written in 1782. ‘La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid.’ Mange froid. Eaten cold.”

  No doubt Cal’s French accent was Parisian perfect, but it sounded damn fishy—and swishy—to Johnny. “I could have sworn it was Shakespeare,” he murmured. And served cold.

  “Is that why we’re changing bases?” Cal looked up, and the sun streaming through the fortieth-floor windows caught in the lenses of his thick-framed glasses.

  Johnny blinked against the glare. Until this moment he hadn’t been sure the other man actually grasped the fact that they were relocating the brains of the business from Nevada to Palm Springs, California. “Is what why we’re changing bases?”

  “Revenge.”

  Out of Cal’s mouth, the word sounded harmless enough. But Johnny avoided answering by reaching for the stack of sports pages on his desk. He didn’t have time for this conversation because he was a busy man. Of course, they’d already invested the organization’s money on the Monday night game playing later that evening, but there were dozens of college and NFL events to consider for the upcoming weekend.

  He could feel Cal’s four eyes aimed his way, but Johnny ignored them to focus on the Los Angeles Times. It led with a weekend roundup of college football injuries. Stanford’s defensive tackle had sprained a knee and would sit out the next two games. During the fourth quarter on Saturday, the Bruins freshman cornerback was carted off the field with a possible concussion. On the next page, Phil Campbell’s gossipy column hinted at major marriage trouble between the Raiders QB and his very pregnant wife.

  Mentally filing the details away, Johnny set the Times aside and pulled another sports section forward. Other gambling syndicate managers didn’t bother with the papers, relying solely on computers to analyze past performances and then crystal-ball future results, but not him. His full-time crew of handicappers and tech-heads punched up daily statistical reports, hell yes, but it was his job to handicap the handicappers—which meant knowing how and when the public would bet a particular game. And the public read the papers.

  From the 42-inch plasma TV on the wall across the room came the familiar trumpeting fanfare of KVBC, the local NBC affiliate. Then LaDonna Carew’s high cheekbones and hooker mouth blazed on the screen, bigger than life. In Vegas, even the midday news anchor looked like she was noon-lighting from a midnight floor show at the MGM Grand.

  Johnny used the remote to mute the sound, but when her mouth moved he could still hear LaDonna’s voice. Not relating the latest story of alleged City Hall corruption, though; instead it was a replay of the last words she’d spoken to him eight months before. “The problem is, Johnny, you’re too good at this. You’ve got style and you burn me up in bed, but for such a sophisticated guy you obviously only want shallow relationships.”

  As he’d watched her fine figure stalk out his door for the very last time that day, he’d merely felt relief—and a little twinge of guilt for never before noticing that she was smarter than she looked.

  He turned the TV off completely. Then, aware that Cal was still studying him from his seat three desks away, Johnny made a big play of opening the Kansas City Star. But he found he couldn’t concentrate on the vertical columns of black and white, damn it. The other man’s continued silence was blaring louder than the combined hum of the room’s desert-duty air-conditioning vents and the cooling fans of seventeen CPUs.

  Johnny swallowed an irritated sigh. On the rare occasion when The Calculator swam up to breathe the air of the real world, he had an annoying tendency to remain at the surface for far too long.

  The heavy quiet continued for another few moments, until Johnny gave up. “Fine,” he said, wishing he could slap the paper shut, but settling for a controlled fold instead. “You want to know why we’re leaving? It’s because we’ve attracted too much attention lately.”

  “We didn’t win a bracelet two years running. You did.”

  The championship bracelets weren’t the problem. It was ESPN and the other cable channels that had made Texas Hold ’Em and the World Series of Poker hot.

  After the first victory Johnny had felt hot too, juiced-up, invincible. But following the second win last May, he’d fielded one too many reporters’ questions about his background and his day job. And started to worry. He owed discretion to the dozen other investors in the syndicate.

  The only thing he took seriously—as money-making was just one game after another and women just something to do between games—was his responsibility to those who trusted him. You could bring the boy to the land of high-rollers and long-gammed showgirls, but you couldn’t take the stolid, solid, Magee Main Street values out of the boy. No matter that he was a Magee in name only.

  “The fact that it’s my bad doesn’t change a thing,” he told Cal. “The business will be more secure away from the casinos’ radar. And hey, you’ll like Palm Springs. It’s green there.”

  Cal shrugged. “I don’t go outside much.”

  Hence the sickly neon-tube tan, Johnny mused. He pushed back his leather chair to prop his feet on top of his desk and then cross his ankles, conveying the image of a man in complete control of his business, his emotions, his world. Which, of course, he was.

  “You need to get out more, Cal. Take up tennis or golf. The place I bought has a sweet three-hole practice course right outside the front doors of the guest bungalows. You’ll enjoy the course, the exercise, the whole setup.”

  Cal appeared to consider the idea, the sunlight winking in his glasses as he slowly nodded his head. “That’s what I thought. This move has something to do with that house.”

  “No!”

  “You’ve been checking the real estate listings for almost a year. You snapped up that address the nanosecond it went on the market.”

  “How did you—” Johnny slammed his feet to the floor. “Have you been hacking into my files?”

  “Exactly what kind of friend do you think I am? I haven’t touched your computer files.” Cal had the nerve to look offended, even though Johnny knew for a fact that the younger man’s fingertips should be registered as weapons lethal to privacy laws. “I’ve been eavesdropping on your half of your telephone calls.”

  “Damn it, Cal—” Johnny started, then broke off, forcing himself to take a breath. Where the hell was his poker face when he needed it? Sucking in more air, he reminded himself of his cover story. He’d prepared it weeks ago, and there was no reason not to trot it out now.

  “Look, I chose Palms Springs because of my brother. I told you he works near there and that he just got married. I’d like to be closer to him and his new wife.”

  Cal kept looking back. Then one brow rose above eyeglass frame to take skeptical refuge beneath a shaggy fringe of hair.

  Johnny frowned. “Besides, there’s the syndicate…. You know I’m right about that. The sports books won’t take our action if they get wind of who we are and what we’re doing.”

  It wasn’t that their business was illegal, but the Nevada casinos were like any buck-ninety-nine, all-you-can-eat buffet on the Strip—they had the right to refuse service to anyone. And they didn’t like to service consistent, very consistent and very big, winners. As it was, the syndicate had to avert attention by c
onstantly rotating those who marched up to the windows at the casinos’ sports books to physically place the bets.

  “So the move’s about Palm Springs.”

  Johnny shrugged. “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “And that house.” Outside their windows an airplane flew by, its tiny reflection mirrored in Cal’s lenses. “That specific house. Don’t bother denying it.”

  So Johnny shrugged again, aware that the microprocessor inside his friend’s skull was busy decoding and analyzing all input data. To preclude providing anything further, he looked down at his desk and faked an interest in the Kansas City paper again.

  “What I can’t figure is what it has to do with that woman. That Téa Caruso.”

  Johnny kept his gaze on the front page photo from the Chiefs-Texans matchup without really seeing it. Téa Caruso. He’d never laid eyes on her outside of two fuzzy stills he’d found in the newspaper archives on the web—and even then she’d been no more than a smudge of a face in a crowd. But he had a feeling that…

  Searching for a way to describe it, he looked up, his glance happening to land on the clock atop one of the lunching tech-heads’ desks. 1:09:09.

  Shit. Shit shit shit. He ground his teeth against the icy-blade sensation that the simple series of numbers sent scraping down his back.

  That’s why he was moving to Palm Springs, to the house where his father had lived sixteen years before. Because those same numbers had been plaguing him since his last birthday, showing up out of nowhere to unearth memories and emotions that had no place in his don’t-wanna-scratch-the-surface life. He was so effing tired of looking up from his desk or waking up from a deep sleep to find it was 1:09:09, the exact time on the face of his digital watch when he’d heard the gunshots that had killed his father.

  Months ago, Johnny had packed his Rolex away. Most nights he didn’t close his eyes before 2:00 A.M. But damned if he still didn’t find those numbers everywhere he looked.

  He reached for the phone again. He needed to get on with it. Today. Now. Without further delay.

  In Palm Springs, in that house, back at the scene of the crime, he was betting he’d put an end to this torture-by-numbers by puzzling out the answers behind his father’s unsolved murder.

  As for revenge…he didn’t know why that had come to mind. His return to California had nothing to do with vengeance—well, at least not against Téa Caruso. But her last name meant she was a glimmer of possibility, a potential advantage, that’s all. Professional gamblers like himself didn’t bet on anything unless they had an edge.

  And he had a hunch that Téa Caruso was his.

  Three

  “The Man That Got Away”

  Judy Garland

  A Star is Born (1958)

  Following the brush with her grandfather, Téa escaped from the restaurant foyer to a corner booth. She grabbed up one of the waiting glasses of ice water and swallowed the liquid down, intent on drowning the sudden disquiet churning inside of her. The back of her neck prickled, and her gaze jumped across the room, catching the Caputo-Caruso woman casting her a nervous look over her lemon-sherbet shoulder.

  Maybe she should have changed her last name, Téa thought. She’d considered it dozens of times. But years ago she’d vowed not to allow any more deceit into her life.

  It was a promise made in response to her father’s abrupt disappearance and her sudden understanding of the trouble he’d brought them. Both explained her need to always know exactly where she stood. Both were why she never wanted a man to surprise, shame, shock, or betray her ever again.

  So she hadn’t run away from her last name and she hadn’t run away from Palm Springs either. Instead, she’d cut her ties to her grandfather. And those ties were still cut, she assured herself, forcing down another swallow of water. Still cut.

  Her mother and sisters were all the family she wanted. All the family she needed. The only people she truly trusted.

  So where were they now?

  She held the cold, sweating glass to her cheek, then checked her watch again, telling herself that three minutes tardy didn’t really mean twenty-three minutes late.

  It only felt that way. It only felt that way to her.

  At least that’s what her mother and sisters claimed. They teased her, claiming that along with a priggish appearance she was punctual to the point of compulsion.

  What was it, exactly, that made a woman’s closest female relatives feel entitled to identify her most serious character flaws? Not that they were wrong about Téa’s—the four of them knew each other just that well.

  The product, she supposed, of having their hearts broken by the same man.

  The thought sent uneasiness churning inside her again until her two sisters finally walked through the restaurant doors. Younger by less than a year, Téa’s half-sister, Eve, was dressed in a slinky, pearl-colored wrap dress. As usual, heads turned. With her golden-blonde hair and pouty mouth, she was the reincarnation of some sophisticated young starlet who’d spent her cocktail hours poolside in the Palm Springs of the 1950s. Beside her, in pipestem black pants, youngest sister, Joey, was oblivious to the attention. She pulled an impatient hand through the pieced-out chunks of her short hairstyle, further disordering its trendy disorder.

  Téa blinked, and the years dropped away. Once upon a time there were three little princesses…

  She saw them in her mind’s eye. Towheaded Eve, wearing a stiff pink tutu, spinning dizzying, show-offy circles while chattering Joey monkeyed up the back of their father’s chair. Plump Téa sat on his lap as it if were her throne, serene in her position as the oldest princess, the smart one.

  She blinked again and the image vanished, leaving behind the grown women her sisters had become.

  Her sisters.

  Of course!

  Her sisters were the solution. She could count on them to make sure their grandfather understood her position hadn’t changed, eighty birthday candles or no. Her sisters would help her maintain the safe distance she’d kept for all these years.

  She waved to catch their attention. Their gazes found her, and all at once identical expressions dawned across their very different faces. Téa froze, cemented to the chair just as her shoes used to stick to the floor of the bathroom they’d shared as teenagers. But it wasn’t a heavy layer of hair overspray that was gluing her down now.

  Oh, hell! she thought, parochial-school guilt tacking on an automatic pardon my French.

  But Oh, hell! Eve and Joey were beaming smiles her way. Nice, fake, “Hello, sucker-sister” smiles.

  Téa smiled back; there was no other choice. Anything less and they’d sense weakness—or even worse, willingness. And she was definitely not willing, because whatever it was they wanted, it had to be something terrible, very terrible, if it required those NutraSweet grins.

  The party sprang to mind. They wouldn’t…no. No. It couldn’t be that.

  But it had to be something. Thinking quickly, Téa pushed menus into their hands the instant they sat down. “Hello, hello! How are you?”

  Without another weapon available, she whipped open her own menu, using it and a torrent of talk as a shield until she could get a bead on what they were after. “Do you know what you want? I’m starving. What a morning! My early meeting ran late. A rug I ordered weeks ago is missing and needs to be tracked down. I have two appointments this afternoon and then a slew of paperwork to get through back at the office. Oh yes, and Mrs. Duncan…”

  She risked a glance over the top of the menu to gauge how her spur-of-the-moment plan of distraction was working. Her sisters were staring at her, Eve’s blue eyes wide and Joey’s narrowed into slices of bittersweet chocolate. If the two weren’t derailed from whatever they wanted as she’d hoped, they were at least disconcerted by the way she was rattling on about her day. No surprise there, because as the ever-responsible big sister she usually encouraged them to talk about their days—probing for problems and doling out advice, all the while trying to inconspicuously
nudge their water goblets away from their elbows or the table edge.

  A balding waiter glided up.

  “Are you ready to place your order?” he asked Eve.

  Téa’s sister started, then turned to him, sliding right into her regular routine: wiggling her butt, wetting her lips, waiting the second it took for the poor guy’s tongue to hang out. During the past sixteen years, each sister had developed her own way of handling the Caruso connection. Like her mother, Téa pretended it didn’t exist. Her sister Joey clung so closely to the Caruso’s legitimate side—the gourmet food company, La Vita Buona—that she was blind to the other.

  Eve diverted attention from who she was by how she looked.

  Long accustomed to the process, Téa let her gaze drop from Eve’s face to the glass of water in her hand and the bright crimson lipstick print along its rim. The last time they’d been out together, Eve’s latest escort—a tennis star named Alex, or was it a rock star named André?—anyway, the guy had caught Eve’s eye then shared her drink, turning it to sip from her raspberry-vodka martini right over the mark of her scarlet-tinged kiss. Téa had never witnessed anything so subtle yet so steamy in her life.

  But felt not the slightest pang that even though she wore EverPerfect, the lipstick that claimed to be “flawless, 24/7,” no date of hers had ever so much as picked up her smearless glass. Apparently the men who asked her out harbored a lingering, elementary-school fear that even grown-up girls had cooties, or perhaps her conservative attire made it clear she wasn’t in the market for hot-blooded passion. Anything that uncontrollable was dangerous to a woman harboring her kind of secrets.

  “And for you?” the waiter asked Téa. She requested her usual, the raw salad with the balsamic-lemon vinaigrette on the side. Then he took Joey’s order.

  As the man moved off, Téa’s sisters glanced at each other, took a collective breath, then shared another glance. Téa opened her mouth to put them off again, but Eve beat her to it.