An express glass elevator—smoked windows, bulletproof glass—took them to the rooftop suite in the northernmost building of the Charlcombe Towers. To Boni’s lair.
Stride thought about MJ as they shot upward, watching the earth recede below them at a dizzying speed. MJ had lived in the same complex as Boni Fisso and looked out on the same casino where his father’s life had been destroyed. Where Walker Lane’s lover had died under the glow of the Sheherezade sign. Stride wondered if MJ had ever met Boni, if he had even a glimmer of the titanic conflict between Boni and his father. It was little wonder that Walker was so desperate for his son to move.
He looked at Serena, who was quiet, staring out at the Strip. All the way home, listening to the hum of the Gulfstream’s engines, he had asked himself how he felt about her and Claire. He still didn’t know. He had half expected her to be gone, but she was in their bed, awake, when he arrived home in the middle of the night. Without him asking, she had blurted out that nothing happened. Then she made love to him, as intensely and passionately as he could ever remember, and he couldn’t help wondering if some of her attraction to Claire was spilling over into their bed.
Not that he was complaining about it right then.
The elevator doors slid open.
They stepped out into a small, brightly lit foyer. A whitewashed wall blocked the way, with mammoth double oak doors in the center. The floor, too, was white marble, shiny and spotless. Stride noted a total of four original paintings lining the wall on either side of the door, all of them done by realist painter Andrew Wyeth, from the Helga series. He guessed it was meant to soothe visitors while they waited for admittance to the inner sanctum—and perhaps to send the message that Boni was about class, not just money. If Steve Wynn could put Picassos at the Bellagio, Boni could build a gallery, too.
Stride had heard the stories about Boni, although it was hard to know which were true and which were spin. Like the rumor that he used to keep a rat, trained to chew the balls off casino cheats. Then he made the would-be thieves eat the droppings when the rat shit. Stride thought that one smelled like an urban legend. Or the story that half the politicians in the state had worked in his casinos when they were young and ambitious, and that Boni owned their souls. He figured that one was probably true.
Rex Terrell had done a long profile of Boni in LV a year ago. Bonadetti Angelo Fisso had been born in New York in the mid-1920s. His father made pennies driving trucks in Manhattan but managed to send his oldest son, Boni, to Columbia (with help, it was said, from the mob bosses). With degrees in law and business, Boni emerged from Columbia smart, polished, and clean. He ducked the draft with a 70 percent hearing loss in one ear and, in the boom following World War II, began buying and selling businesses up and down the East Coast. The rumors clung to him that his stakes were funded by the mob and that Boni’s companies were a laundry service for blood money, but several generations of FBI agents had devoted a lot of taxpayer money to proving Boni was dirty and wound up with nothing but wrist slaps for little fish in Boni’s empire like Leo Rucci.
Boni arrived in Las Vegas in 1955. He took over a series of low-roller casinos, added hotel rooms, lavish shows, and half-naked cocktail waitresses, and turned them into profit machines. He also nurtured an image as a grand benefactor, building hospitals, landscaping park land, and paying college tuition for the children of longtime casino employees. In public, he was a saint, always with a smile and a joke. The hard stuff went on behind the scenes. Bodies disappeared in the desert. Teeth got yanked, bones broken. The rat got fat, if you believed that kind of thing.
The Sheherezade was Boni’s jewel. It was the first property he had built himself from the ground up, and when it opened in 1965, it attracted the top-line entertainers of the era, along with the Sands and the Desert Inn. Boni had already figured out what later generations of Vegas entrepreneurs discovered—that the city had to be always new, always reinventing itself. So Boni never let the Sheherezade get stale. He found new shows, new stars. Like Amira and Flame. He found new ways to shock and tempt people. And the money flowed.
Stride had seen photos of Boni’s late wife, Claire’s mother, with whom he had a short and tempestuous relationship. Eva Belfort was a beautiful, aristocratic blonde, a distant cousin to French royalty. Marrying her gave Boni an aura of European style. The truth was, like everything else in Boni’s life, Eva was bought and paid for. Her family owned a château in the Loire valley and was about to lose it for back taxes when Boni, on a tour of the wine country, met Eva. The family soon became rich again, and Boni had his trophy bride. It must have killed her, Stride thought, a wealthy child of the French countryside forced to live in a sand-swept version of hell. According to Rex Terrell, Eva was a spitfire, and she and Boni had argued ferociously over Boni’s penchant for affairs with his dancers. Stride wondered if Eva knew about Amira.
It didn’t really matter, though. Their marriage, Boni’s only marriage, lasted just three years. Eva had lived only a few months longer than Amira. She had died in childbirth, and Boni was left with his one child, Claire.
He and Serena waited almost ten minutes in the foyer of Boni’s suite before the double doors suddenly opened with a click and swung silently inward. An attractive woman of about twenty-five, with pinned-up brunette hair and a tailored business suit, was there to greet them.
“Detective Dial? Detective Stride? Please come in. We’re very sorry to keep you waiting.”
She waved them into a lounge that seemed to stretch the length of a football field. The north wall was completely made of windows looking out on the Strip, with views to the mountains on the west and east.
“Mr. Fisso will join you in just a moment,” she told them. “We have breakfast set up here, so please, help yourself.”
She left them alone, disappearing through a door in a leather-clad wall that led to the rest of the suite. Stride eyed the buffet and realized he was hungry. The spread on the mahogany bureau could have served twenty people. He took a plate, spread cream cheese over half a bagel, and layered it with pink lox. He poured a glass of orange juice and did the same for Serena.
The room, which had a rough western feel to it, featured cowboy artists like Remington. There was sculpture, too, with a rodeo motif. Stride had a hard time imagining Manhattan-born Boni Fisso in a cowboy hat. He was about to make a joke to Serena, then was glad he hadn’t when he realized that Boni Fisso himself had made a silent entrance into the room.
Boni read his mind. “All men are cowboys at heart, Detective. Me, I’m an Italian cowboy. You’ve heard the term ‘spaghetti western’? That’s me.” He laughed, a loud, deep-throated bellow that echoed in the large room.
He moved with remarkable grace and speed for a man in his eighties. He shook both their hands and maneuvered them toward the full-length windows, where he pointed with a sweep of his arms at the view. “Look at that city! God, what a place. You know what they say, every world-class city has a river running through it. Fuck ’em. We’ve got dust and yuccas and rattlesnakes running through ours. Only river here is money. I’ll take that over all the sewage and fish heads floating through the Missouri or the Hudson.”
“You don’t miss the old days?” Stride asked him. “Everyone else from back then seems to think Vegas was better in the 1960s.”
“Hell, no!” Boni exclaimed. “Sure, I wish I had the body and half the energy I did in those days. We all think that, right? I’ve lost a lot of friends, too. Everybody gets old. You know the saying. Tempus fuck-it. But that’s the beauty of this town. It’s always young. Bulldoze the past, and get on with it. Magic is what you grew up with, Detective. I guarantee you, forty years from now, old people will be talking about how they miss Vegas in the 2000s.” Boni poured himself a glass of champagne from the buffet. “Come on, you two, eat, eat. God, I sound like my grandmother.”
There was no way around it. Boni was charming. Stride had to work to remind himself that the man wouldn’t think twice about ordering a homicide if it suited his purposes. He thought about Walker in the wheelchair, having been beaten nearly to death by Boni’s goons. About Amira and her crushed skull.
Boni fixed him with sparkling blue eyes, and Stride thought that the man knew exactly what he was thinking. It was probably the same thing that everyone who came into this room and met the man for the first time thought.
“Fill your plates, and then let’s sit down,” Boni told them. He took a red leather armchair for himself, and Stride noticed that it had been designed low to the ground, so that Boni’s feet lay flat on the floor. He was short, no more than five-foot-six. The chair itself was on a slight riser, higher than the sofas around it. His throne. Stride half expected a ruby ring to kiss.
Boni was dressed all in black. He wore a turtleneck, a tailored ebony blazer, and creased black dress pants. His shoes were patent leather, shined to a mirror finish. He still looked very much like he did in the photos from decades ago, when he already had a balding crown of black hair. The hair was gray now, and his forehead was mottled with liver spots. He had sunken crescent moons under his eyes and a five o’clock shadow that a razor couldn’t scrape away. Despite his age, he was fit and strong, and his eyes were piercing and alert. He still had movie-star teeth.
Assuming the movie was Jaws, Stride thought.
“Mr. Fisso—” Serena began.
“Oh, please. It’s Boni, Boni. Don’t make me feel so goddamn old.”
Stride saw that Serena was uncomfortable being on a first-name basis with the man, but she struggled to spit out the name. “Boni, then. My name is—”
Boni interrupted her again. “No need, no need. Serena Dial. You’re from Las Vegas by way of Phoenix, if my sources are correct.” His tone was light, but Stride had the feeling that Boni could have rattled off every detail of Serena’s past, maybe more than he could have done himself. “And you’re the new kid on the block,” he continued, turning to Stride. “From Minnesota? Lots of lakes there. I’d ask what the hell you’re doing in the desert, but that’s pretty obvious.”
He winked at him and glanced at Serena, and it was clear that he knew all about their relationship. Stride wondered if it came from Sawhill.
“I have to thank you,” Boni told Serena. “I haven’t talked to my daughter in years. It was good to hear her voice. Once upon a time, I thought she’d be living here, running my empire right beside me. Girl had a business sense like no one I’ve ever met. Hell, she must get it from her old man, right? I mean, Eva, her mother, she could cut you a new one, but her gift was spending money, not making it. No, my baby Claire, she’s the talented one in the family, I can’t hold a candle to her.”
“Why are you estranged?” Serena asked.
Boni’s face hardened like concrete. “A police detective concerned about my family values. That’s very nice. You didn’t really come here to help me patch things up with Claire, did you?”
“No, it’s just that—”
“Look, Claire and I didn’t see eye to eye about my business ventures. So she went off to sing her sad songs, just to spite me. And to live in that little apartment, when I know perfectly well she’s made millions in the market.” Boni watched Serena, who couldn’t keep the shock off her face. “She probably told you it’s because she likes to sleep with girls. That’s not the Catholic way. Well, I’d have been happier if she married some strapping fellow like Detective Stride here. I made her go on a few dates with some good-looking guys. Any sin in that? But no, I have to deal with Claire in confession every Sunday, God help me. Father D’Antoni always asks about her, to see if she’s come back to God’s way. I think he just likes hearing the details, if you ask me.”
“Have you heard her sing?” Serena asked.
“I have. She’s primo. That girl would run Nashville if she moved out there. It’ll never happen, though. She’s all Vegas at heart.” Boni settled back in his chair and took a sip of champagne. “But we have other things to talk about, don’t we? Claire says you two wanted to have an off-the-record conversation with me, no goddamn lawyers around. I have to respect that. I’m a lawyer myself, and I have to tell you that most of them might as well stick a talking parrot on their desk that says, ‘No, no, no.’ And they’d bill the parrot out at a thousand dollars an hour. So there’s no lawyers here, detectives. Just the three of us. This conversation never happened. Got it?”
They both nodded.
“The reason we’re here—” Stride began.
“The reason you’re here is you’re trying to catch a killer. And you want my help.”
Stride nodded. “That’s right.”
“I saw the sketch in the paper. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”
“He worked for your company,” Serena retorted. “David Kamen hired him at Premium Security. I’m sure you know that, because I’m sure Kamen called you.”
“Yes, he did,” Boni said. “But that doesn’t change a thing. I never met this Blake Wilde, and I don’t know how you can find him. I wish I could help.”
“You realize Claire could be his next target,” Serena said.
“I’m not a fool, Detective,” Boni said sharply. He fixed Serena with his blue eyes and added, “I always have people watching Claire. Even when she doesn’t know it, I’m always protecting her.”
Serena fired back. “Was Blake one of the people you had protecting her?”
Boni didn’t reply, and Stride thought she had hit a nerve.
“Mr. Fisso, may I speak candidly?” Stride asked.
“By all means, Detective.”
“It hasn’t been in the papers, but you probably knew even before we did that these murders have one thing in common. The Sheherezade. Or more specifically, Amira Luz. Blake Wilde, whoever he is, seems to be bent on avenging Amira’s death, because he thinks it didn’t go down the way the papers and the police said it did. He may very well be right about that. But we’re not here to reopen the investigation into the murder of Amira Luz. That case is closed.”
“Really? I understand you’ve been making a lot of inquiries about it, Detective. I hear you even paid a visit to my old friend, Walker Lane.”
“You know he’s in a wheelchair,” Stride said. “He has been since that night.”
“Terrible thing. A car accident, wasn’t it? A good lesson about not driving while intoxicated.”
“That’s not what Walker says.”
“Oh?”
“He says you had him beaten. Crippled. As payback for trying to take away your mistress.”
“I suppose he also accused me of killing Amira,” Boni replied placidly.
“Yes, he did.”
“Naturally. I liked Walker very much, Detective, but his behavior was reckless. When you make mistakes that have awful consequences, you often try to blame someone else.”
“So you didn’t have Amira killed,” Stride said.
“Of course not.”
“No? Wasn’t she your property? Didn’t you own her?”
Boni tut-tutted him like a child. “No one owned Amira. No one. Least of all Walker. I believe that frustrated him enormously.”
“So you’re saying Walker killed Amira?” Stride asked.
“As far as I know, a deranged fan killed her. Walker wasn’t here when Amira was killed. He had already left to drive back to Los Angeles. Coincidentally, I believe that’s when he had his accident.”
“And I’m sure we’ll find a police report about the accident if we go back far enough,” Stride said.
“I’m sure you would. Then again, in forty years, things get lost.”
“What about employment records from the Sheherezade back then? Did they get lost, too?”
“Why?” Boni asked. “Who are you looking for?”
“A kid who worked at the hotel during the summer as a lifeguard. His name was Mickey.”
Boni cocked an eyebrow at Stride. “Why would you care about someone like that?”
“He called your casino boss, Leo Rucci, the night of Amira’s death about a fight outside. I want to know more about it.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Detective. I’m sure the old employment records are in a warehouse somewhere in the city, half-eaten by cockroaches, but when we had college kids working here over the summer, I usually had Leo pay them in cash. It was more hassle than it was worth to worry about the paperwork and taxes.”
Stride felt as if he were battling an old elk with a massive set of horns and the willingness to bang heads all day.
“If there was nothing unusual about Amira’s death, why is Blake Wilde so intent on avenging her?” Serena asked. She looked like she was tired of watching the boys play a game of which one’s bigger.
“He’s a serial killer. You know the mind of that kind of man better than I do.” He couldn’t keep a small smirk off his face.
“If we knew why he was doing this, it might help us find him,” Stride said. “And I think you know why.”
“You already said it, didn’t you, Detective? He has some misguided ideas about what happened to Amira.”
Stride shook his head. “Look, I know you want him first. I know you want to get him and pay him back your way.” Stride paused and noted that Boni didn’t disagree with him. “But the main thing is that one of us catch him, soon, before he kills anyone else. If you catch him, okay, we’ll never know. But I don’t think there’s a downside for you if we get him first.”
“Think harder,” Boni said. The mask slipped. A glint of steel.
Stride knew he was right. It was a race, and Boni needed to win. Not just to squeeze Blake but to make him disappear quietly and quickly from the headlines. In custody, who knew what Blake might say? Or what he knew. His allegations alone would keep the heat on Boni and might drive investors away from his Orient project.
He wasn’t going to help them.
“What if you’re too late, Boni?” Serena asked. “What if he gets to Claire first? Is it worth the risk?”
There was silence as Boni chewed on that thought.
“Where did Kamen find him?” Serena asked.
“That won’t help you,” Boni said. “Wilde was a mercenary in Afghanistan. David used him sometimes for ops that weren’t on the books. He was good. Fearless. Ruthless. But that’s all shadow stuff. Fake names. No backgrounds.”
“Were there others Kamen worked with who might know him?”
Boni shook his head. “No way I’m giving you that. No way David gives you that.”
Stride knew there were military channels he could pursue, but if Wilde was a rogue player, the brass wasn’t likely to give them any more information than Boni. “Then tell us why,” he said.
Stride watched Boni grinding through calculations. It was all mathematics to him, debits and credits. The value of information. He thought at first Boni would stiff them again, but the old man leaned forward, his hands on his knees.
“I tell you this, and we’re done.”
They both nodded.
“Amira, she wasn’t celibate, you get the picture? She came to town, and she started sleeping with Moose. Smart girl. Moose had juice. Pretty soon she was lead dancer in one of our T&A shows. Then she went to Paris, okay? Special engagement. That’s where she came up with the idea for Flame.”
Boni seemed to enjoy the confusion on their faces.
“The thing is, she didn’t go to Paris,” he went on. “She was pregnant. She wanted to keep it under wraps. So I sent her away for a few months, and she had the kid.”
A baby, Stride thought. A secret baby. Sometimes the hardest problems were really the simplest. Blake Wilde was Amira’s son.
“What happened to the baby?” Stride asked.
“Adoption,” Boni said. “Amira couldn’t get rid of the baby fast enough. It killed her stuck up there all alone. She couldn’t wait to get back. She knew Flame would be a huge hit.”
“Moose didn’t know?” Serena asked.
“No one knew.”
Something niggled in Stride’s brain. A plate shifted, like in an earthquake, and a piece of the puzzle fell into place.
“You said ‘up there,’” Stride said. “Where did you send her?”
“An associate of mine had resort cabins in Reno near the lake,” Boni replied. “That was where a lot of the girls from Vegas went when they had problems like that.”
Stride and Serena looked at each other. “Reno,” they said.