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And they did.
And they do.
Have there ever been two more perfect bedfellows than casinos and crypto?
Even long after Elvis had left the building—or Celine or Sammy or Barry or Liberace or Cher or (yes) Diana—the souls at the slots would keep waiting for their luck to change.
Diana had the bad luck to marry a prince, but on her wedding day, everyone alive who watched the wedding on television thought she was the luckiest girl on earth. Years later, the night she died, she left the hotel in Paris with Dodi Al-Fayed after midnight to go to his apartment in the City of Light. Had the two of them spent the night at that hotel, would she be alive today? She had the good fortune—well, Dodi did—to be able to afford to stay at the Ritz as long as she liked. But they left.
They took a chance. They thought they could outrun the paparazzi, they could elude both the posse and who they were.
No one escapes who they are.
And yet we live for chance. We love chance.
He was dealt a bad hand.
She dodged a bullet.
I rolled the dice.
So, I did roll the dice. Elvis really had left the building—and I had had enough.
* * *
For a moment, there was silence. Frankie and Damon and Marisa and even the thug with the beard couldn’t believe that Rory had just shot Lara Kozlov in the head. Not right between the eyes. Through an eye.
But then there was madness. Frankie and Damon were asking him what he had done—why he had done it—Marisa was sobbing, and Betsy had run from the bar to the couch and was shielding her daughter as if the child were a toddler. The men were shouting and still Rory was waving that Glock, and only when he pointed it once more at Betsy did the room grow quiet.
“Lara was FBI,” Rory said. “One of our guys in Moscow told me today. She was undercover with the bank in Russia and then as a political consultant to get to Erika. Erika isn’t just one of our useful idiots, she’s one of their useful idiots. Russia’s. Lara was the one who turned Orlov.”
“So, you fucking killed her?” Damon asked. “Jesus Christ, you kill an FBI agent, and they will go balls to the wall to get you! Balls to the wall, Rory, balls to the fucking wall! It’s one thing to kill an asset like Orlov—and we had this princess here set up perfectly. But now? Lara—”
“She was going to shoot me.”
“Maybe threaten you, but she—”
“You don’t pull a gun on me. You don’t ever pull a gun on me. Want to know more? She gave Betsy a tiara with a SIM card hidden behind the big stone. The SIM was supposed to be a copy of the SIM on the phone for Nevada’s secretary of state. His passwords, his contacts, his history—just in case Erika needed a little help with vote counting. Instead, the SIM was malware. The moment Oliver or Neri opened it, all of the info and passwords on their phone would go straight to the FBI. You can be damn sure I checked it out before I let either of them do anything with it. So, today I got the word from Russia: Lara was not our friend.”
“Rory, it doesn’t matter,” said Damon. “You can’t shoot an FBI—”
“I can! I just did!”
Which was when I rolled the dice. It seemed this madman was willing to kill anyone, including Betsy, Marisa, and me. And so I grabbed the vase on the coffee table with the O’Keeffe orchid and hurled it at him like it was a bowling ball, and reflexively he put up his hands to knock it away, ducking, but still it hit him in the arm. His gun discharged—he didn’t consciously fire it—the bullet tearing a hole in the sheetrock, and Betsy, a woman who, as a teen, put the wreck in reckless, grabbed Lara’s pistol from amidst the avocado-tinged shards of the vase.
“Put the gun down, Rory,” she hissed.
“You won’t shoot me,” he said.
And so she did. She hit him in the right shoulder, and he cursed at her, but the gun fell from his hand with a thud. His arm was dangling, and the cardinal-colored stain on his shirt was blossoming like a red, red rose. Instantly, she was whirling, commanding Damon and Frankie and the fellow with the beard to raise their hands over their heads where she could see them; she told them to not even try to draw their guns. The only one who hesitated was the muscle with the ZZ Top beard, and so she shot him in the stomach. He bellowed, collapsing to the floor like a wounded moose. Betsy told me to take their weapons, because she knew all of them were, as always, packing. She was right. Suddenly I had deposited three pistols on the coffee table, while holding a fourth—Rory’s—in my hand, hoping like hell I wouldn’t have to use it.
“Betsy?” This was Marisa, and the voice was uncharacteristically small.
“Yes?” my sister said, but her eyes were moving among the four men.
“When the police get here? My tablet is between the wine fridge and the counter.” She pointed at the island.
“Why?”
