Jake entered Michael’s hotel room carrying a bag and two large cups of coffee. In the almost three days they’d been in Las Vegas, coffee had been a constant companion of theirs. Michael cleared a space at the table, and Jake set the food down.
“Feels like déjà vu,” Michael said, reaching for the coffee.
It was late afternoon, but the two men had stopped being mindful of the time. The hours seemed to blend together, with little difference between night and day. There were no clocks in Las Vegas casinos; management didn’t want gamblers to be aware of the passage of time. Michael and Jake had mostly ignored their own sleep needs, but it was possible they were playing for more than high stakes. Lives could be on the line.
“You need to see this,” Michael said.
He turned his cell phone in Jake’s direction and played a short video. The footage was shaky, with jerky camera angles. There was also the screaming. A young woman was being held by her ankles while being dangled over the side of a building.
“My god,” Jake said.
“The woman you hear screaming is Suzanne Cleary. At the time this video was shot, she was an aspiring actress. The man holding her is a young Max Miller. The footage was taken more than a dozen years ago at one of his notorious full moon parties. At the time, Max was a Hollywood producer. That’s how Ms. Cleary entered his orbit.”
“How high up are they?”
The footage neared its end when others came to Cleary’s rescue and pulled her up to safety. In the background, party noise could be heard. The camera zoomed into a close-up on a sobbing Suzanne Cleary. Michael hit the pause button, so that he could better see the woman’s face.
“Notice her eyes?” he asked.
Jake leaned closer to get a good look. “Green.”
“I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Fewer than two percent of the population has green eyes, so why do women with green eyes keep turning up around Miller? After what he did to her, Cleary sued him. Miller’s defense claimed that they were both drunk, and that what they did was consensual.”
“Her screams kind of make me doubt that.”
“So does her story. Cleary said Miller had a thing for her eyes. It wasn’t sexual, she said, but it was bent. Miller told her that the goddess Circe and all great enchantresses had green eyes, but he had the power to resist such spells. She was convinced Miller would have dropped her if the others hadn’t been there. He was babbling to her about being a sacrifice to the full moon. She stopped singing, though, when Miller bought her silence and got her to sign an NDA.”
“How much was the payoff?”
“Unofficially, five million dollars.”
“By the sounds of her screams, she settled cheap.”
“I’m sure she wanted to put the whole incident behind her. The problem with that was it allowed Miller to walk. People like him don’t change. There’s a whole neuroscience around uncontrollable urges.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” Jake said. “I got to know opioid addiction firsthand, and the urges that came with it, when I became an unwitting junkie.”
“So, here’s Miller with these overpowering urges. How does he go about satisfying them? No matter how much therapy gets thrown at them, pedophiles can never be trusted around kids. I’m betting Miller’s sickness runs just as deep.”
“Where’s all this taking us that we haven’t already been?” Jake asked.
The men had spent their time in Las Vegas learning everything they could about Max Miller and the Yin-Yang Casino and Convention Center. Michael and Jake’s initial hope was that they could somehow penetrate or compromise Miller’s security team, but they’d made no headway on that front. Miller’s inner circle lived on the penultimate floor of the hotel and took their meals there.
“We free our princess from her high tower.”
“How?”
The top two floors at the Yin-Yang were surveilled about as well as a maximum security prison. Like all casinos, throughout the property there were eyes in the skies.
“While you were getting our food, I did some printouts.”
Michael passed Jake photographic images of the Yin-Yang shot from above. Jake said, “It looks like quite the foreboding castle.”
“That’s pretty much what it is. And let’s not forget there are trolls at every drawbridge we need to cross.”
“What’s your interest in all this eye in the sky stuff?” Jake asked.
“We’ve been spending most of our time scoping out the inside of the casino. I wanted a bird’s-eye view of the building, especially the penthouse.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the best way to meet my client.”
“You’re not telling me much,” Jake said.
“What I’ve got in mind could go south. Really south. It would be in your best interests if I didn’t involve you. This operation could send your career down the toilet, or worse.”
“I’ve already been there, done that. I was disbarred because I wasn’t willing to sit by and do nothing while innocent people died. So I’m all in, and I’m all ears.”
Michael took a deep breath before finding the words to speak. He had been prepared to go the mission alone—had thought that was the right thing to do—but now he found himself reassured by Jake’s steadfastness.
It took him almost an hour to go over everything. When he finished, Jake said, “It’s ironic that we’re here in Vegas, and you seem to have lifted your plot from the movie Ocean’s Eleven. Or is that Ocean’s Twelve?”
“I get all those movies confused, but I think it was in Ocean’s Thirteen that they tried to make sure the house didn’t win. That’s kind of what our mission is all about. We need to beat the house.”
“Then let’s pray that jokers are wild,” Jake said.
Michael’s cell phone started ringing. “It’s Deke,” he told Jake, picking up the call.
Without any preamble, Deke said: “I’ll be taking a red-eye flight to Vegas tonight.”
Michael’s response was as immediate as it was firm: “No. That’s a bad idea.”
The momentary silence on the line told Michael that his reply wasn’t what Deke had expected to hear, nor was it a directive an associate typically made to a general partner.
Deke said, “What you don’t know is that there were some big developments today. Tío Leo just finished coming clean to us.”
“That’s welcome news. But you still need to steer clear of Las Vegas.”
“You’re going to have to give me more than that.”
“No.”
That word again. But this time Michael amplified on it. “Your presence here would be counterproductive to our mission. We need you for C3—command, control, and communications, especially if matters don’t play out as hoped.”
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“That’s all I can say.”
“You’re missing something here. Based on what Rodríguez told us, I suspect my goddaughter Lily was the mysterious American in Driscoll’s compound. And I believe she was taken to Las Vegas.”
Michael suddenly realized what should have been obvious to him. Lily had green eyes.