“You don’t have to do anything, Vince. What I heard tonight doesn’t prove anything. I don’t know anything.”
“No, nobody was going to find out anything on that little fishing expedition. I thought your boyfriend was a bit more subtle than that.”
“It might have worked if I hadn’t been here.”
He just nodded his head; he’d already known that. Trying to get Vince to talk on wire was a long shot at best, but it had no shot whatsoever the minute I stepped into Vince’s condo.
“Come on in from the cold, Anna. Let’s talk about this,” he said softly, holding his hand out to me.
Everything I learned in a women’s self-defense class that Lor dragged me to came flooding back to me. First and foremost, never go anywhere with an abductor. You’re much better to stand and fight in a parking lot than to get into a car with anyone. I didn’t know if that applied to moving from a balcony to a – warm – living room, but at least out here there was nothing hidden.
I knew Vince was unarmed, that there were no weapons of any kind out here – Lord knows I’d looked – and if by chance it came time to scream, I had a much better chance of someone hearing me out here. “We can talk about it right here,” I said.
“You must be freezing,” he said. He walked over to the table. I edged further down the balcony rail, but he only grabbed the blanket placed on the back of a chair and tossed it to me. I held my hands out to grab it when I belatedly wondered if he’d rush me, or do something, if the blanket was just a decoy. But no, he didn’t move. I caught the blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders. I leaned against the railing of the balcony, its metal bars pressing into the backs of my legs.
We looked at each other for a moment when I finally tried to bluff my way out of this. “Look, Vince, like I said, I didn’t hear anything that the cops did on a wire – if that’s what they’re doing.”
“I’m sure they were.”
“Yeah, probably. But you obviously didn’t give them anything.”
“What if I told you there was nothing to give?”
I didn’t miss a beat. “I’d believe you.”
He watched me for a long time, but I didn’t flinch or look away. I just kept my normal look. Jack always said I had a tell, but no professional poker player I’d ever played had found it, and I didn’t think Vince would either.
He looked away, then quickly back at me. “God, you’re good. I can see why you’ve won all that you have.”
“I’m telling the truth, Vince.” He scoffed at that, but I could tell he was unsure. “And besides, what if I did believe Carla, that you killed Paulie and tried to set her up? The cops obviously can’t prove it or we wouldn’t be out here in the fresh air talking. You’d be in some holding cell.”
“Because, Anna, in your own way, you’re as tenacious as Schiller. If you believed it, you’d…”
“What? What could I do that the cops couldn’t?”
He didn’t have an answer because there wasn’t one. I was right. The cops had a ton of crime-fighting stuff at their disposal. If they couldn’t get the goods on Vince, how could I?
But he was right, too. I was tenacious. You didn’t survive – thrive – in this town for as long as I have if you weren’t. I wouldn’t let it go, and not because I felt the need to seek justice for Paulie. He and Carla had worked for a loan shark. Paulie had beaten the shit out of too many people to count, had probably even offed a couple over the years. And they’d both been stupid enough to steal from Vince. It was the world they chose, and Paulie had received what was his due in that world.
But him setting up Carla to take the fall for something he did – and most importantly, using me to do it – that would never allow me to drop it.
But he didn’t need to have that confirmed.
“Vince, this is silly. And between you and Carla and the cops. I’m not involved, I have no intention of becoming involved. And I don’t think you have much to worry about. The cops believe Carla’s story that she was set up, they have nothing on you, so this has all the makings of a very cold case.”
“Until they find the gun that killed Paulie hidden in Carla’s air-conditioning unit with her prints all over it.” He let out a deep breath after he said it, knowing by admitting it he had just sealed both of our fates.
One of us wasn’t walking out of here.
My shoulders slumped, the blanket slid down my arms and to the concrete floor of the balcony. “I’m not leaving this balcony with you,” I said softly.
“I’m sorry it has to be this way Anna. I know you thought you were doing me a favor by breaking the news about Carla to me, but you only…”
“I owed you, Vince. And I didn’t think I was telling you anything you didn’t already know. Besides, you were only asking me about the ledgers in case I hadn’t figured it out by myself. You wanted me to take that information to Jack.”
He chuckled. “The hell of it is, you didn’t owe me. I didn’t do it. I didn’t arrange for those men to refute Bubba Kinney. I have no idea who did, but it wasn’t me. You didn’t owe me anything. You could have said no to coming over and been home playing cards right now.”
After my initial, “Oh, fuck,” my mind raced with this new information and what it could mean. And then landed on a big, fat, answer. “Jimmy.”
“That’s what I figured, too,” Vince said. I hadn’t even known I’d said it out loud. “Who knew he still had those kinds of connections.”
“I knew,” I said, “I just thought yours were stronger.”
“They probably are, but I wasn’t going to call in any favors for Raymond Joseph. He’s a big boy, he knew what he was doing.”
“And if he’d ratted?”
“He never would have had a chance.”
“Quite the night for true confessions, Vince.”
A small smile quirked on his lips. “They say it’s good for the soul.”
He took a step toward me, and I inched closer to the corner where the waist-high balcony railing met dividing wall. “I told Ben this is where I was coming tonight.”
“And you did. You stopped in, we had a nice chat, and then you left. Carla can verify that no one else was here when she stopped in later.”
“Security cameras,” I offered up. I didn’t even know if his building had security cameras. It must. Vegas was the home of security cameras.
“There are blind spots. I made sure of that before I bought.”
Of course he did. What self-respecting criminal wouldn’t? “My car…,” I started, but I was running out of cards to play and he knew it. He had much more experience at this than I did.
Not that I wanted to beef up my résumé on the topic of having my life threatened. But this was my second time in just a month or so. You’d think I’d be getting a little bit better.
“Your car will be gone. As will you. Come on, Anna, we’ve played this game long enough.”
He held his hand out to me. He had maneuvered himself – and I had stupidly inched my way into a corner – between myself and the door to the condo.
“I’m not leaving with you, Vince,” I tried to sound solid and confident and I thought I did, but he only smiled at me, a tiny touch of pity mixed with patronization.
He walked the steps between us and grabbed my arm. “I’m with Vince Santini and I’m in danger. Call the police,” I yelled as loudly as I could. “I’m with Vince Santini and I – ” I felt Vince’s warm hand go across my mouth, and his other one grab my arm as he swung me around, my back to his chest, and tried to drag me toward the glass doors.
And you know what went through my mind? Not thoughts of Jack and never seeing him again, or of what would happen to Raymond now, or even my beloved Ben.
What I thought about was how could Vince’s hands be so warm when it’s freezing out?
Then he started to move with me, and I sprung into action. Better to have this out, now, where someone might hear my, albeit muffled, cries than in my Porsche in the desert right before I got a bullet in the head and my baby was torched.
I struggled, I tried to wrench my mouth free to yell. I went for the windpipe, the throat, the arch of his foot, the groin, all the places I’d learned to attack first in that self-defense class.
But Vince could have taught that class, because he seemed to know exactly where his vulnerable spots lay and protected them, pushing me this way and that so that I never got a clear blow.
He tried to pull me with him, but I looped my leg around one of the vertical bars that connected the railing to the floor. There was just enough room for me to slide my foot in and hook it around the back of the steel bar. I stayed in place, but had given up any kind of leverage with that side of my body.
I started to reach for his hands, his face, anything I could scratch. I’d get his skin under my nails in case…well, if it got to that, they’d probably never find my body. But at least I’d leave marks on Vince. Marks that hadn’t been on his face when Carla had come by. Let him explain that.
I got a good swipe at his face and heard his groan of pain. He probably wanted to call me all sorts of names, but he was trying to be as quiet as possible outdoors like this. I tried to hear any sounds around me, wondering if anybody would be able to hear my cries if I could just get my mouth free for a good yell.
I heard traffic, or course, but it was distant, and the sounds of Vince and I breathing heavily and the sounds of our struggle. But I heard something else. A ringing? Buzzing? I couldn’t quite make it out, or even where it was coming from. The street? A condo nearby?
My head as I started to lose the battle?
He wrenched me hard, and I felt my ankle pop as he tore me away from the bars. Shit, my bad foot. That was going to be a bitch to rehab. And yes, even though I was elbowing and gouging and trying to fight off a man six inches taller and a good seventy pounds heavier, the irony of the situation fled over me.
My first real brush with Vegas, all those years ago, started with my foot being mangled courtesy of Vince Santini. And now it looked like my last hurrah was going to end the same way.
Unless I could start screaming again and hope that whatever – and whomever – had produced that buzzing sound would be able to hear me. I tried to wedge my mouth open a tiny bit through Vince’s iron grip. Just enough to…there. I bit down with everything I had, catching mostly my own bottom lip, but enough of Vince’s hand to make him yelp and pull his hand away from my mouth.
“Help,” I screamed. We were standing about a yard from the railing, facing one of the divider walls, our back to the other. I opened my mouth to scream again and from the corner of my eye I saw Vince’s arm reach high – very high – a wind-up for a blow that would surely knock me senseless and end this whole thing.
I pushed back with my butt, trying to gain as much space as possible between our bodies, thinking that would lessen the blow. Vince’s other hand was still firmly grasped around my arm, on the railing side of our bodies. His arm started to descend, it seemed as if in slow motion.
But then my brain speeded up as I saw a flash of white coming from the condo. I heard a “No,” screamed very loudly, and not from me. And then the flash of white – a person – was flying at Vince, catching him with his arm up high, and just a bit off kilter from where I’d pushed back with my butt.
It was enough. The white blob’s momentum, Vince’s position and my last effort push was enough to send Vince back with a force that took him over the side of the railing. He fell, and I felt a rush of relief, until I was jolted by my arm…that Vince still held on to.
I tried to drop to the ground, to create as much leverage as possible, but I couldn’t, my arm was already, due to Vince’s momentum and body weight, over the side of the railing. He hung on to me, my knit Henley stretching as his grip slid down my arm. I thought for a moment he might just slide down and away, but he grabbed my hand with his. And, with a reflex so basic I didn’t have time to understand it, I grabbed back.
“Hang on,” I said. “We’ll get help.”
I looked to my savior. Carla. “Call for help,” I said to her. My arm felt like it could pull out of its socket at any second. I tried to brace my body as well as I could against the bars, sticking my legs in between the bars, turning to my side to ease the pressure, but I couldn’t seem to put much weight on my bad foot, and my hold on Vince was tenuous at best. At least the railing seemed to be solid enough to hold the weight.
Carla looked over the railing to Vince, who looked back at her. Years and years passed between them in that one look. Carla’s face turned up into a smile, but there was no joy there, only hatred. “We need backup,” she said with a sneer, confirming to both Vince and I that she had indeed been wearing a wire.
Vince looked at her, knowing that cops were seconds away. They would easily be able to pull him to safety. And then the cops would take him away. He looked at me.
“I always liked you, Anna,” he said to me, repeating the words he’d said to me ten years ago, the first time he’d sent Paulie my way to bash my foot.
I’d believed he meant it then. I believed he meant it now.
He let go of my hand and plunged twenty-five stories.
I turned away, not able to look. Carla had no problem, leaning over the railing to see Vince’s body. I think I even heard her spit in his general direction.
I slid down to the cement floor, my foot having taken all it could. I wrapped my arms around myself, finally allowing myself to shiver from the cold. “Thank you,” I said to Carla, but it came out rough. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Thank you.” I heard a bustle in the condo and saw people, led by Jack, rushing toward us.
Carla didn’t take her eyes off of Vince’s body. “Don’t thank me. I didn’t do it for you.” She took a deep breath, let it out. Just a lovely night on the balcony, getting a spot of fresh air.
“I did it for Paulie.”