Shit.He had to kill seventeen minutes. Well, he knew he couldn’t survive seventeen minutes of being beaten by this rhino. He could, however, survive seventeen minutes of being chased by him. In a vintage Three Stooges move, Tox engaged his massive biceps and pulled together the two guys holding his arms, then pushed them into Shamu. Qi pulled a Glock, but Tox quickly nailed him with a combat-booted foot to the chest, sending Qi flying back into the surveillance equipment, disrupting the feed. At least his partner could finish up undetected. You’re welcome, Steady. A gunshot rent the air. Apparently, Gigantor realized he wouldn’t be able to catch Tox if he ran. At six-five and two-thirty, Tox was by no means nimble, but his opponent had to weigh in at over four bills. The Ruger semi-automatic acted as an ersatz starter’s pistol, and Tox bolted for the street.
The shout was even louder than the bang of the door, and the last vestiges of Calliope’s composure dissolved. She flew to her feet, a flimsy excuse on her lips.
“Who’s the luckiest bastard on the fucking planet?!!!”
Calliope didn’t think Phipps Van Gent was expecting a response, and when she didn’t reply, he continued.
“I am, Cathy.” He hadn’t bothered to learn her name. Cathy was the name of his former assistant. “I just won two hundred thousand dollars on one hand of poker.” When her eyes widened, Phipps smiled with glib satisfaction. “Wanna know how?”
Calliope glanced briefly at the flash drive still sticking out of the computer and nodded.
Phipps stumbled and expelled an alcohol-tinged huff of air. He righted himself and, with the deliberate care of a drunk, tried to make the hand he used for support on the desk look casual rather than essential. “Because everyone fucking bluffs.” He seemed to contemplate propping one hip on the desk, then reconsidered and flopped down on the taupe suede couch. He continued with his head on the butter-soft arm and his Gucci loafers propped up.
“I’m in a penthouse at the Wynn courting this whale. He’s supposedly some totally infamous mobster, but he’s worth a quarter of a billion, and he’s looking for an asset manager. Money’s money. It’s all dirty, so what the fuck?”
He was talking to the ceiling now, and Calliope wondered if he realized she was still in the room. “I chased him around for two straight days. I finally landed him and got an invite to this high-limit poker game in his suite. The guy provided everything: coke, whores, cards, booze. Everything but sleep,” he chuckled. “So the last hand, every asshole in the room wants to show how big his dick is, but I know I’ve got it. Not the dick stuff cause mine’s nothing to write home about, but my hand of cards is something for the record books.”
Calliope thought that her editor really might be onto something when he voiced his suspicion that Phipps Van Gent was a con artist running a Ponzi scheme. Phipps sounded more like a street thug than American ex-pat and the product of Cambridge and the London School of Economics that he claimed to be.
“It’s hold ‘em. I get dealt two fours down. The flop is a four, a four, and a nine. Right off the fucking bat, I’ve got four of a kind. Four of a kind, Cathy. Do you even get how rare that is? The odds of it…well, it’s insanely rare, like Powerball rare.”
He seemed satisfied he had made his point and continued the story. “The turn is a jack. I don’t even remember the river because who the fuck cares? So I’m guessing someone at the table has a full boat, maybe a flush. Or they’re all fucking bluffing. Doesn’t matter. Lil’ ol’ me is sitting back and watching with four of a kind. Oh, it gets better. This other fucker, high as a kite, is out of cash, claims his credit card has some kind of travel block so he can’t transfer funds, so he sends a guy to his room and comes back with this little tube and tosses it onto the table.”
Phipps felt around in his carry-on bag to retrieve it, but it slipped from his grip and rolled across the rug out of reach. Calliope watched it roll. It was white and capped and only about twice as large, in both diameter and length, as the center tube in a roll of paper towels. Phipps extended his hand in a grabbing motion like a toddler asking for an out-of-reach toy, then abandoned his effort and continued. “Says what’s in the tube will cover the bet.”
He half-gestured toward the bar. “Pour me a scotch, Cath.” Apparently, now they were on a wrong nickname basis rather than a wrong first-name basis. Calliope pushed back to stand and quickly snatched the flash drive, dropping it into her messenger bag that sat open on the floor. She fetched his drink, so nervous she didn’t realize Phipps was still talking...“So I flip my hand and the guy, he shoots up from the table like a bull ready to charge. Then he drops dead.
“One of the hired goons starts doing CPR, and that’s it for me. Anyway, glad I got cash from the other saps because the painting in that tube isn’t worth shit.”
With great effort, he sat upright, retrieved the tube with his foot, and popped off the cap. He upended it, and a small rolled canvas slid out. He unrolled it on the coffee table and weighted the edges with magazines. “It’s a reproduction of a Titian called The Thief’s Redemption. It’s the schmuck on the cross next to Jesus. The original is in Barcelona. I Googled it. This isn’t even the right size.”
He reclined again, yawned, and closed his eyes. “Certainly a fitting title, because I got robbed.” He chortled. “The Thief’s Redemption.” The scotch, perched precariously on the ridge of his gut, splashed in the glass. “Have my gal look at it on Monday. Could be it’s something else, but I doubt it. Maybe I’ll frame it and hang it at home. A memento of the one time Phipps Van Gent got taken.”
He tossed the plastic tube that held the painting in the direction of the small trash can and yawned. “I don’t mind losing money, but I do mind losing,” he grumbled. She started to ask if he even wanted her to have the painting examined, but he was already snoring softly.
Calliope plucked the tube off the floor. With the intention of putting it in the recycling bin, she shoved it into her bag and headed for the door. She glanced over her shoulder at Phipps passed out on the couch—one hand in his pants, one still holding his scotch—and bolted for the elevator. She almost laughed at the fact that she hadn’t uttered one word the entire time Phipps was there.
The ding of the elevator’s arrival before she had summoned it surprised her. She thought about ducking around the corner into a vacant conference room but decided against it. She had every reason to be here and nothing to hide—well, stolen files aside. When the doors parted, Calliope studied the occupant. A late-night client meeting was par for the course at Gentrify; Phipps would meet a prospective client any time, anywhere—as evidenced by his recent junket.
The elevator doors slid open. The man in the car was handsome if nondescript. He reminded her of one of those spit-polished stars from the fifties movies her mom loved to watch. Although with his dark eyes, black hair graying at the temples, trimmed beard, and smartly tailored suit, this guy would be the villain. He brushed by her without so much as a glance, his Aquatalia boots silent on the terrazzo. As she entered the elevator and hit the button for the lobby, she noticed him pause, like an animal catching a scent, and while the doors closed she briefly glimpsed him resume his pace. That will be a short client meeting. She rolled her eyes and imagined that pristine man trying to rouse a passed-out Phipps.
Just as the car began its swift descent, a deafening blast met her ears, then a second, quieter with the distance the elevator car had gained. Were those gunshots? Surely not. There was no one on her floor except for a comatose Phipps and the suited man she had just seen standing in the middle of the expansive office floor. Unless he was shooting computer terminals with some hidden cannon, he couldn’t have been the source. She was in that weird, paranoid panic mode, and the reminder of the late-night client and Phipps kept her blood racing. Once at the lobby, Calliope sprinted toward the security door. The guard watched her swipe her security pass to release the lock, then returned his gaze to the Islanders game playing on one of the monitors. She sprinted out into the New York night. And ran smack into a brick wall.
Tox looked over his shoulder and chuckled at the lug huffing and puffing behind him. He rounded a corner and barely broke stride when a black-haired butterfly of a girl smacked into him and landed on her bum on the sidewalk, the contents of her messenger bag scattering everywhere. Tox was about to sidestep her to fend for herself—man with a gun in pursuit and all—when he saw her sky-blue eyes and startled face. Her stunning, startled face.
“Calliope?”
“Tox?”
“No time. Let’s go.”
In her irrational panic, Calliope grabbed her bag from the bottom, upending it further. Her work phone smacked the pavement and shattered. She scrambled for the flash drive, the cylinder, the ruined phone, and the various odds and ends littering the sidewalk while Tox grabbed her around the waist and heaved her toward the open rear door of the black SUV that had screeched to a stop at the curb next to them.
“Need a lift?” Steady smiled from the passenger seat.
Tox grinned. “We could probably walk. That fucker’s big as a glacier and twice as slow.”
“Not his bullets, dipshit. Let’s move.”