Private Vegas (Private 9)

“Since I’m the one with the wheels, I guess I get to choose the venue,” she said, shooting me a grin, snapping her briefcase closed.

I talked Justine out of the keys and drove her Jag to one of our favorite places, the Water Grill.

I thought about what she’d said about Tommy.

It was true that Tommy was complex and devious and that a car fire, even a quarter-of-a-million-dollar-car fire, was small spuds. But he’d made his twenty-million-dollar offer just hours after this morning’s explosion.

Maybe I was wrong to connect the two events.

But Tommy and I both love sports cars. The big-bang wake-up call had Tommy’s warped sense of humor all over it.

Chapter 22

THE WATER GRILL is appointed in brass and leather, has marble columns and vaulted aquamarine ceilings that give the restaurant an airy feel. I ordered an amaretto sour for Justine and Ellie’s Brown Ale for myself, and by the time the drinks arrived, the aromas from the kitchen had driven me half crazy with hunger.

Our waiter announced the specials and we ran the table, ordering Nantucket bay scallops, line-caught swordfish, and the risotto du jour.

Justine was telling me about one of our clients, a woman who’d been caught stealing from her mother, and she was giving the story a hilarious spin.

“Rita’s mom is ninety-four,” Justine was saying. “Jack, Rita wrote herself a check for two hundred dollars, and her mom hired Krauss and Maber to sue her for damages. I think Sandy Krauss bills his time at twelve hundred dollars an hour—”

Justine’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it, said, “Sorry, I need a second, Jack.”

Justine typed a text, received one, typed a reply, and by then, my thoughts had gone to Bobby Petino.

Bobby looked like a tough guy from Central Casting; he was handsome, smooth, and had been LA’s district attorney for about a decade. A while ago, Petino hired Private to work a particularly gruesome series of killings. A dozen high-school girls had been murdered by assorted methods, baffling the cops, leaving them frustrated and clueless for two years.

Justine had asked to be Private’s lead investigator on the case. I called her Princess Do-Good and said, “Don’t get emotionally involved.” She said, “Shut

up, Jack,” then did nothing but work the case until she nailed it shut. It was heroic. It was historic.

Justine and I were going through one of our off-seasons at the time, and she was dating Bobby Petino. Bobby used the closed-schoolgirl case as a political springboard to run for governor and tried to mend his broken marriage at the same time.

Petino didn’t get what he wanted. He lost the election, his divorce was finalized, and now he was back as our city’s DA. I’d heard that Bobby was working on Justine, had told her that things would be different for them this time. That this time, he wouldn’t break her heart.

Same kinds of things I told her.

Bastards. Both of us.

Justine said my name. I came back to the moment, said to her, “Sorry. I was thinking about Tommy.”

“Well, stop doing that,” she said.

We talked, we joked, we savored the chocolate cherry devil’s food cake, and I wondered if Justine had made plans with Bobby for later that night.

The check came. I put my card down, looked up at Justine, who was looking at me.

She’d said that as far as our relationship went, we were both free agents. Since I’d been unfaithful to her, it was fair for Justine to set the rules.

No matter how much it killed me.

She pulled the clip out of her hair and tossed her mane. My heart rate ticked up by twenty beats a minute. All these years of knowing her, and I still got a rush when I smelled her hair.

“Where to, Jack?” Justine said. “Beach house or my house?”

Chapter 23

LESTER OLSEN SAT alone at the exclusive Club Privé in the Bellagio Hotel. The private casino was richly appointed in art deco style: black lacquer, dark wood, veiled with silver screens and textured glass. The air smelled like freshly mown money.