The Last Witness (Badge of Honor 11)
She laughed. “Little Palm?”
He nodded. “I like to call it by its old name, Little Munson, just to remind the staff I lived next door before I even knew the place existed. You know, back in the day, Harry Truman and John Foster Dulles stayed there.”
“How nice. And now the soon-to-be Mr. and Mrs. Payne.”
“Huh,” Matt grunted. “
I don’t know, baby. I was thinking we’d go native. When was the last time you were in a tent?”
“Enjoy yourself. I’ll be getting room service and a massage in one of those thatched-roof cabanas oceanside that I saw in the photographs.”
He chuckled. “Fine. Be high maintenance. Dinner with Chad is at seven. He texted earlier to confirm.”
He then pointed to a pack of maybe ten high-performance boats that had appeared to the south of them. The boats, moving fast, were kicking up tails of white spray. A helicopter kept pace with the pack, then picked up speed and moved up the coast.
“That’s probably him playing with his buddies in their go-fasts,” he said. “He’s running the company’s new boat.”
Chad Nesbitt was being groomed to one day take over Nesfoods International, just as his grandfather had groomed Chad’s father. Chad recently had been promoted to vice president and put in charge of developing new brands at the Philadelphia headquarters.
“Oh, yeah,” Amanda said. “The boat you said that’s promoting their NRG! drinks.”
Matt nodded. “That caffeine-packed sugar water is making a helluva lot of money. He told me his new NRG! boat cost a cool million—and that’s for a forty-two-footer that only seats maybe eight. Its twin Mercury Racing engines pump out more than two thousand horsepower. Top speed is around one-thirty.”
“A hundred and thirty miles an hour? That’s insane. Why?”
“‘Healthier—Faster!’ That’s the marketing slogan. The boat’s been wrapped in custom vinyl to make it look like a giant can of the stuff. But simple answer? Chad’s come to love go-fasts after hanging out with Antonov. And because he’s got a big hand in the promotion, he gets to pick where they throw money. He said there will be race car promos, too. Guess I’ll have to change his name from the Soup King to Speed King.”
“Antonov? The casino guy?”
Nikoli Antonov was general manager of Philly’s year-old Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment, an enormous five-story complex that offered cavernous areas for gambling—2,500 slot machines, 100 gaming tables—fine dining, and performances by top music artists. Despite the competing casino that was nearly next door, Lucky Stars was said to sell the highest volume of alcohol in all the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Both casinos were just off the I-95 Delaware Expressway and overlooked the Delaware River, not far from Amanda Law’s luxury high-rise condominium building in Northern Liberties.
Matt nodded. “Nick Antonov has a couple of boats promoting the casino. One is supposed to be out there with Chad and the others. But I think Chad said someone other than Nick is running it.”
“And they’re doing this why?”
“Some children’s charity. I forget which one. Entry fee is maybe fifty grand, a drop in the bucket considering the cost of feeding a go-fast. But the quiet big money, just like with college and pro ball, is bet in Vegas and on the side. There are guys at Lucky Stars right now watching these boats on the betting TVs in between pulls on the slots. Not to mention the mob bookies in South Philly are running the odds. Which reminds me: the guy who was head of the Philly mob and just got out of the slam after ten years, Tony the Fixer?”
“What about him?”
“He now lives in Palm Beach. Says he’s just working on his tan.”
“I take it you don’t think so?”
Matt shook his head. “A condition of his release is that he can’t associate with any wiseguys—which is all he knows in Philly. Otherwise he’s back to jail. But it’s all BS. Fact is he can run the mob from down here, from anywhere, just as he ran it from the slam. And there were plenty of mob hits while he was in there.”
“Do you think he’s involved with this race?”
Matt shook his head again. “Not directly. Only with those South Philly bookies taking bets. There’s no racing involved here. It’s a Poker Run. Basically, the boats make five stops, drawing new cards at each one. They started this morning from a marina in the Conch Republic—”
“Key West?”
He nodded. “The whole thing is filmed—that was what that helicopter was doing. At each stop, other cameras show the hands as they get played. Then the boat with the best hand wins something like a new Mustang that’s donated by the local Ford dealer. Meantime, the charity gets a fat check.”
Amanda considered that for a moment, then said, “I think I’ll settle for just writing a check directly to the Shriners while sitting on this nice boat and watching the scenery drift by.”
In Philadelphia, Amanda could see the Shriners children’s hospital across the street from her office at Temple University Hospital.
Matt smiled.