Stone Cold (Camel Club 3)

CHAPTER 12

JERRY BAGGER NEVER VENTURED much out of Atlantic City anymore. He had his own Learjet but seldom used it. The last trip on it had been the deadly visit to the unfortunate Tony Wallace in Portugal. He once had a yacht but sold it when he discovered he easily became seasick, an embarrassment for a man who prided himself on toughness. Indeed, he rarely left his casino anymore. It was really the only place he felt comfortable these days.

Ironically, Bagger hadn’t been born in Vegas or Jersey. The ballsy, streetwise urban boy had seen his first light in, of all places, Wyoming, on a ranch where his father labored for something less than minimum wage. His mother had lost her life on Bagger’s first day from pregnancy complications, complications any hospital could have easily taken care of. But there had been no hospital within three hundred miles, so she’d died. Bagger’s father had joined her eighteen months later after an accident involving whiskey and a cantankerous horse.

The Wyoming ranch owner had no interest in raising a bastard child—Bagger’s mother and father had not bothered to marry—and he was shipped off to his mother’s family in Brooklyn. It was in the close confines of this New York melting pot, not in the wide-open spaces of Wyoming, that Bagger was meant to be and had thrived.

He had eventually gone back west. After fifteen years of twenty-hour workdays, nonstop hustling and risking and then nearly losing everything he had about a dozen times, he had his own casino. And soon business was so good he started printing money. Then his temper got the best of him and he was eventually run out of Vegas and ordered never to return. He had honored that request, although every time he flew over it he looked out the plane window and ceremoniously flipped off the entire state of Nevada.

Bagger left his penthouse and took the private elevator down to the casino floor. There he walked through a sea of slots, gaming tables and sport betting rooms where gamblers from the novice to the experienced dropped far more money than they would ever get back. Whenever he spotted a kid sitting bored on the floor, with their parents hovering nearby feeding buckets of nickels into the slots—their hands blackened from the process—Bagger would order that food, books and video games be brought to the child, and he would slip a twenty-dollar bill in the kid’s hand. Then he would make a call and someone from the Pompeii would immediately confront the parents and remind them that while children were allowed in the casino, they could not be in the playing areas.

Bagger would crush any adult who crossed him, but kids were not to be screwed with. That would change when they hit eighteen—then everyone was fair game—but until then kids were off-limits. It was shitty enough being adults, was his opinion, so let the little punks enjoy the time they had not being grown up. Underlying this philosophy might have been the fact that Jerry Bagger had never had a childhood. Dirt poor, he had run his first racket out of a Brooklyn tenement house at age nine and never looked back. That hard life was a major reason for his success, but the scars ran deep. So deep he didn’t even think about them anymore. They were simply what made him what he was.

On his walk Bagger made three such calls for kids left in the playing area by their parents, shaking his head each time. “Losers,” he muttered. Jerry Bagger had never bet one dime on anything. That was for suckers. He was many things, but a fool wasn’t one of them. These idiots would scream and jump around after winning a hundred bucks, forgetting that they’d thrown away two hundred bucks for the privilege. And yet this weird psychological quirk humans possessed had made Bagger rich, so he wasn’t complaining.

He stopped at one of the bars and raised an eyebrow at a waitress, who rushed to bring him his usual club soda with a lime. He never drank alcohol on the casino floor, nor did any of his employees. He perched on a bar stool and watched the Pompeii operate at maximum efficiency. All age ranges were represented here. And the whack jobs were aplenty, he knew from decades of experience. There wasn’t a single category of nutcase that hadn’t at one point strolled into his casino. Truth was, Bagger related to them better than he did the “normal” folks.

He eyed a newlywed couple still in their wedding clothes. The Pompeii offered a cut-rate, tips-not-included deal for those wanting to get hitched, which provided a standard room with a sturdy new mattress, a cheap bouquet of flowers, the services of a properly licensed minister, dinner, drinks and twin massages to work out the kinks from all that screwing. And, most importantly, the deal provided fifty dollars’ worth of casino chips. Bagger had no interest in promoting love; he knew from experience that those fifty bucks of free chips typically turned into a two-thousand-dollar profit for the house by the end of a long weekend, even taking into account the freebies.

The couple he was watching seemed to be trying their best to swallow each other’s tongues. Bagger grimaced at this public display. “Get a room,” he muttered. “It’s the cheapest thing you’ll find in this town other than the booze. And the sex.”

Bagger had never married, chiefly because he had never met a woman who could hold his interest. Annabelle Conroy had captured and held his interest. She was beyond mesmerizing. He’d wanted to spend all his time with her. In fact, before he found out she’d conned him, he had wondered if after all these years he’d finally found a lady he could escort down the aisle. It seemed crazy now, considering what had happened, how she’d screwed him over. And yet with all that Bagger just had to grin. What a picture that would’ve made. He and Annabelle as husband and wife? What a hoot.

And then, as was often the case, Jerry Bagger had a brilliant idea while he wasn’t even trying to.

He finished his club soda and headed back to his office to make some phone calls to find out one thing. When she’d been conning him Annabelle had told him she’d never been married or had children. But what if in reality Annabelle Conroy had been married? Because if she ever had said “I do” it was a golden way to track the lady down.

CHAPTER 13

STONE REFUSED GRAY’S OFFER of a drink. The two men settled down in Gray’s comfortable study, which held as many books in as many languages as there were in Stone’s cottage, although here they were kept in much finer style.

Stone looked out the long window that faced the cliffs overlooking the water.

“Tired of Virginia farm country?” he said.

“My ambition as a young man was to be a sailor, see the world from the deck of a ship,” Gray said, cradling his Scotch, his wide face strangely offset by a pair of narrowly placed eyes. There was a lot in that head, Stone well knew. Gray was not a man that one could ever reasonably overestimate.

“A young man’s ambition, can there be a more fleeting prospect?” Stone said idly. The darkness outside the window was complete. No moon, no stars; an approaching storm had hidden the sky.

“I never thought John Carr would be given to lapses into philosophizing.”

“Goes to show how little you really knew me. And I don’t go by John Carr anymore. He’s dead. I’m sure you were briefed on it years ago.”

Unperturbed, Gray continued. “This place used to belong to another former director of CIA, who went on to become vice president. It has everything I need to be comfortable and secure in my old age.”

“I’m so happy for you,” Stone said.

“I’m actually surprised you came. After your little gesture outside the White House?”

“How is the president, by the way?”

“Fine.”

“Did you feel any homicidal impulses when he plunked that medal on you? Or are you over wanting to kill the man?”

“Without directly answering your ridiculous question, circumstances change. It’s never personal. You should know that as well as any man alive.”

“The point is, I wouldn’t have been alive if you’d had your way.” Before Gray could respond, Stone said, “I have some questions I want to ask you and I’d appreciate answers, truthful ones.”

Gray put down his Scotch. “All right.”

Stone turned from the window to look at him.

“That easy?”

“Why waste what time we have left playing games that don’t matter anymore? I take it you want to know about Elizabeth.”

“I want to know about Beth, my daughter.”

“I’ll answer what I can.”

Stone sat down opposite him and asked question after question for about twenty minutes. His final one was articulated with some trepidation. “Did she ever ask about me, about her father?”