Читать книгу Stacked Deck - Terry Watkins - Страница 11

Beth quoted the movie lines with Grace Kelly’s silky purr:

“‘Hold them. Diamonds…the only thing in the world you can’t resist. Then tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. Even in this light, I can tell where your eyes are looking.’”

Randolph, a short, plump, bald stylist, chuckled. “Believe me, honey, as wonderful as your assets are, they’re not in my portfolio of thrills.”

Beth laughed as she sat in Randolph’s boutique in a trendy Washington D.C. neighborhood getting a makeover.

While he did his magic, she watched clips of Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief on her PDA, mimicking the heroine’s classy intonation. Grace was a woman’s woman. Someone to emulate, to watch, to impersonate. Beth wondered just how much of it was an act. Was Grace Kelly the consummate actress on the silver screen and in real life?

“‘Ever had a better offer in your whole life? One with everything?’”

Randolph stopped fussing with her hair and looked at Beth in the mirror. “You’re good. You sound just like her. She was a princess, wasn’t she? Such class. And that hair, like spun platinum.”

Randolph fitted yet another wig on Beth’s head, this one honey-colored and shoulder-length. “How do you like this, darlin’? Hot and sexy? I think the color looks fab with your hazel eyes.”

Beth twisted from side to side to get a better look in the mirror. “It’s close, but I want it a little shorter.”

Randolph slipped the honey wig off and replaced it with a blond, jaw-length bob.

“You’re in a play, right?”

Beth decided to go with his guess. “Yes. Off, off Broadway. It’s a spoof on Grace Kelly movies.”

Beth had always loved morphing into an imaginary “other” ever since she was a child living a desperate life with her gambler father, bouncing from losing streak to losing streak. They were flotsam in the rapids of Las Vegas gaming, caught, injured, then tossed back into the current.

Her father, who had predicted he would end up buried in the desert, ended up dead in a Dumpster.

Her mother was only a figment of Beth’s imagination, having fled before Beth could know her. So Beth created and recreated her life, her image, her history, shedding skin like a rattlesnake in August. It made her an accomplished actress on the world stage.

Beth tugged at the wig, getting it straight on her head. She liked this one. It gave off the right look—wealthy, without being too brash. Plus, it had just the right amount of retro to give her that elegant Grace Kelly look.

“Perfect,” she said. “I want my hair lightened this exact shade of blond and cut in this style.”

“Wish I could see you perform. I bet you’re good.”

“I’m a method actor, dahlin’,” Beth purred. “I scare ’em and excite ’em at the same time.”

Randolph laughed. “Ooh, you play rough.”

“Sometimes, but I’m worth it.”

He stepped back from the chair and gave her the once-over. “Yeah, I can see it. You’ve got that edge to you. Like you’re hiding a tiger under a pink dress.”

They both laughed.

As Randolph worked his magic on her, she thought about how crazy her life had been growing up in Vegas. As a kid, she never felt anger or hatred or even animosity toward her father. She had seen too much of his struggle, his love for her, his ambition—even in hopeless failure—to give her a better life. It was his purpose, his goal. And though he’d died when she was only twelve, without accomplishing that goal in the end, above all else, his love for her was the source of her great inner strength. Because he believed in her, she never doubted who she was beneath the disguises. She merely used them as a means to an end, not as an attempt to erase her true self.

The following day, wearing several thousand dollars’ worth of designer clothes, shoes and obscenely expensive jewelry, carrying Louis Vuitton luggage filled with more of the same, Beth, aka Anne Hurley, rich widow, poker player, businesswoman and passionate lover of open wheel Formula One racing—and the tango—left Dulles International for the four-thousand-mile flight to Nice, France, followed by a seven-minute hop to Monaco by helicopter.

She’d changed her voice, her walk and her attitude to fit her new persona. The next part of the metamorphosis was done at a fabulous villa Delphi had rented for her on a Monaco hillside above the Monte Carlo casino.

She spent much of the next forty-eight hours out on the patio working on her laptop, stopping once in a while to take in the breathtaking view of the French Riviera, while a soft breeze rising from the Mediterranean washed over her.

Periodically she’d look down at the yachts settled like a great flock of white birds on the deep blue sea, the steep hillside covered with pastel villas bathed in the golden sunlight and the endless blue sky above. What could be better, she wondered, than to be filthy rich in Monaco, playground for the rich and the royal?

With her near photographic memory and a capacity to focus for long periods of time, Beth could inculcate volumes of information quickly. To fake a background with success she needed the fine details, the particulars people in the profession paid attention to, the latest jargon.

She listened to dozens of CDs, watched DVDs, read bios of drivers and memorized the complete history of Formula One.

Through a tiny pair of binoculars she carried in her purse, she could see the Sapphire Star Casino on an adjacent hill. It had the look of old Europe to it. Understated. The home of her target: Salvatore Giambi.

We will meet soon, Mister Giambi, she thought. He’d been made aware of her arrival, and had been given advance notice that she was interested in investing in his racing team.

And she knew he was desperate for investors. Not just because of financial problems, but, according to the files she’d been reading, his marquee driver, JD Hawke, had a bad boy history that scared off would be investors. JD’s on-track fights, off-track mouth, and daredevil driving had made him a pariah. Only his great talent, and Giambi’s willingness to gamble, made a comeback possible.

On the fifteenth floor of the Sapphire Star Casino, Salvatore Giambi stormed into his office. He was in a sour mood.

His race driver, JD Hawke, was seated at Giambi’s desk playing a video game on an open laptop.

“To hell with the prince! To hell with Monaco!” Giambi bellowed.

JD nodded without looking up. “What’s going on?”

Giambi stared at him. “JD, when the hell is this Anne Hurley supposed to show up?”

As JD obviously crushed his cyber opponent, he held up his arms in complete victory and looked up, beaming. “I thought you said tonight.”

Giambi stared at JD for a moment, wondering what the hell was so exciting about those damn games. “Can you do that somewhere else, I have work to do.”

“Sure,” JD said as he closed out and stood up.

“Let me know when she gets here.” He walked toward his desk just as JD was leaving it. “How much did I say was transferred to her account with us? I forgot.”

“An even million. If you took that Ginkgo biloba I bought you, your memory would improve.”

“I hate pills.”

“It’s a vitamin.”

“I don’t care what you call it, it’s still a pill.”

“It’s your choice, but I—”

“I don’t have time for this.” He waved JD’s statement away. “She didn’t want a comped room. What, my five-star hotel isn’t good enough for her?”

“Apparently she’s got friends to stay with,” JD said, as he tried to leave.

“Don’t get lost. I want you to meet this woman when she gets here.”

JD tossed him a look. He didn’t like being treated as if he was one of Giambi’s assistants, but the way Giambi looked at it, the guy had nothing to do but train with weights, party all night with his friends and wait until he, Giambi, got him a seat in a race car. Nice life if you could get it. “You might as well do something besides play video games and party.”

“Okay, boss,” JD said, with that Tennessee drawl of his.

Giambi didn’t particularly like the way JD called him “boss” like he was making fun of him. Like the way Paul Newman said it in that movie. What was it called? Shit! He couldn’t remember, but it had something to do with prison.

JD left and Giambi settled in behind his desk. He was moving money as fast as he could out of Monaco and out of Europe. He knew he was being targeted by Prince Albert personally in this crusade against money laundering.

No respect.

And after all he’d done protecting the principality and the Grimaldi family over the years.

God he hated that Rainier and his beautiful princess were gone. Those were the days. When they were in power, Monaco was the greatest country on earth.

He blamed the Bush administration’s war on terrorism more than the European Union for the present crackdown.

At the same time he was dodging the new regime, that bitch who was blackmailing him was demanding a bigger piece of his pie. Between her, the Monaco cleanup, and investors in his racing team suddenly getting scarce, Giambi felt the walls closing in. He was being forced to reach out to people he had never done business with and he didn’t like it. You reach out, you don’t know who you’re gonna get.

That tended to kick his normal paranoia up a notch.

Now it was the time of the month, as with every month, that he had to wire the money to the biggest mistake of his life. One that was slowly bleeding him to death. He wanted be rid of her in the worst way, but he’d all but given up trying to kill her. Half the intelligence agencies in the world had been no more successful than he had.

He unlocked the drawer of his desk and pulled it out. The laptop came up into position. He opened up the secret account. The bitch seemed to know exactly what his take was each month and she made sure he handed the lion’s share over to her. It was a double transfer from his bank in Monaco, through an intermediary, and eventually to her accounts in Puerto Isla. She changed numbers and destinations so often he’d begun to think she wasn’t a person but an organization.

Hell, maybe she was dead and he was paying some rogue CIA group!

Giambi made the transfer, then made a call to check on the progress of a Greek shipping magnate’s yacht, which was heading for Monaco. He was a billionaire with an interest in the proposal Giambi had made about building a casino in Kestonia. Giambi was talking up the small, Eastern European country as the next Vegas. It was also a place a man could work his money without worry. If Giambi could bring the Greek on board his casino venture, then get the rich widow to invest in his Formula One team, life might start looking good again.

He had a printout about this rich widow, Anne Hurley. Worth upwards of a hundred million dollars, she definitely could be the solution to some of his immediate problems. He wanted his race team up and running again, but it would take millions to accomplish that and he couldn’t afford to go it alone.

Sometimes, and this was one of them, he’d just stop his mind. Just suddenly stare off into space at the truth. He was seventy-eight years old, and time was shooting by on a fast train to nowhere.

In those few seconds, when he stared that truth dead in the face, it scared him to the quick.

All those vitamins and longevity formulas he tried to down, all the care he took of his body by working out every damn day, none of that could erase the years.

And that reality pushed Giambi to get things done and get them done now. He still had ambitions, big ambitions.

If it weren’t for that damn blackmailer, he’d be one of the truly big players. Steve Wynn and Donald Trump wouldn’t have had anything on him. He’d have been as big as both combined. And as far as racing was concerned, Christ, he could have teamed up with Paul Newman in the Indy league and coaxed him over into Formula One.

One of these days, he promised himself, he was going to hunt that bitch down and put a bullet in her himself. At his age, he was beyond worrying about consequences.

His phone rang. It was the concierge in the lobby. “Anne Hurley just phoned and requested a limo,” the rough voice said. Giambi didn’t know which of his employees was speaking to him, he only knew that at that moment the guy deserved a raise.

“What time will she be here?”

“Around nine-thirty, sir.”

“Let me know the minute she arrives.”

“Will do.”

He hung up, and downed three extra-strength Tums to neutralize some of the acid in his stomach. Then he walked over to his bar to pour himself a scotch and get a cigar.

I still have a good fifteen years, Giambi thought, and Ms. Hurley is going to help me enjoy every damn minute of it.

He lit his cigar and gazed out the window. “Cool Hand Luke! That was the name of that damn Paul Newman film. Ginkgo biloba my ass.”