AllFreeNovel
Share Us
* * *
Alternatives. Options. I couldn’t imagine what he meant. A bank or bankers who would back the estate? Back him, perhaps? Did the Morleys have family who would sell him the BP? Or did he have revenge on his mind, some sort of gang war counterattack? This was, after all, Las Vegas.
My job security seemed more tenuous than ever. Everyone who worked at the casino was afraid.
After Yevgeny had hung up, he’d emailed me links to articles about Futurium and Bitcoin and crypto technology, and it was all over my head. I told myself I would understand it better when I wasn’t distracted by everything else going on, but the idea of digital wallets and transactions recorded in blockchains and money that existed without banks left me knackered.
But it seemed there were Bitcoin ATMs in Las Vegas, despite the fact that most bricks-and-mortar casinos, including mine, did not yet accept crypto on the gambling floor, which was where the real money was made. I read that Erika Schweiker was a big fan of crypto, and the fact she was popping up in my life even here was not lost on me. She boasted in one article that she trusted crypto more than banks, and was thrilled to see Futurium in Vegas.
What left me curious was this: If one of the benefits of crypto was anonymity, why in the world would people who visited a bricks-and-mortar casino see an advantage to it? And weren’t the virtual casinos that used crypto already a threat to the real ones? Why, if you were the Bellagio or the BP or the Paris, would you encourage people to gamble in a fashion that meant they didn’t have to come to your concrete world? The answers, I supposed, were somewhere in the opacity beneath the deepest waters: the very secrecy that cloaked crypto allowed for money laundering or skimming or losing money with a velocity that might break the sound barrier. Just try drawing down five or ten thousand dollars from a traditional ATM at a casino. But at a Bitcoin ATM? No worries.
Sex workers seemed to love it, too. Cryptocurrency was a great way to get paid. No bank policies or regulations to dial down anyone’s libido. It was also useful for corporations that wanted to get their data unlocked after a ransomware cyberattack. Nearly 100 percent of ransomware payments were made in crypto.
But it seemed there was nothing untoward or illegal about anything Futurium did. At least nothing confirmed. One of their three offices was in Grand Cayman, a notorious (or renowned) location for money laundering and offshore shell companies, so the Internet was filled with conspiracy theories about their alleged wrongdoing.
Tomorrow Yevgeny was off to a conference in Dubai. I told him, when I heard, that I was more confident than ever he was a spy. In response, he urged me to be content.
But that had grown difficult now that the Morleys were dead and, it was clear, I was about to have to reengage with my sister and meet my niece.
* * *
I didn’t want my sister near the Buckingham Palace. There was just too much going on.
And yet it was also business as usual. I received one cursory visit from two police officers asking me about the last time I had seen Artie. We spoke in my dressing room. I told the pair what Eddie had recommended: Artie had indeed seemed broken to me, but I thought that was natural since his brother had recently taken his own life. They asked what we talked about, and I said mostly my show: Artie wanted to be sure that I was happy with such details as their marketing, my time slots, and my band. I reported that I told Artie I was. And that was it. I had felt my heart beating faster than usual as I lied, but I knew my performance was solid. My interview with the police lasted fifteen minutes. They were, I gathered, speaking to other BP employees, though they suggested that the only thing suspicious about Artie’s suicide was the reality it had occurred only days after his brother’s. (I restrained myself from observing how, when it came to things that looked suspicious, that struck me as a pretty damn conspicuous red flag.)
In any case, when Betsy texted the next morning that she and Marisa had arrived in Nevada and spent their first night in their new apartment, I suggested we meet at one of the area’s more renowned culinary abominations, an around-the-world buffet outside of the city in Summerlin. Within seconds my phone rang—Petula Clark singing “Downtown”—and I saw it was Betsy.
“I don’t have a car,” Betsy said. “Can you pick us up? Or we could call an Uber. I don’t want to put you out.”
Of course, she didn’t have a vehicle. She’d flown here. “What did you do with your Subaru?” I asked. “Did you sell it?”
“Uh-huh. I figured I’d buy something more ‘Las Vegas’ out here. You know, like your convertible.”
“I’ll pick you up. Give me your address.”
I’d heard of the street, though I didn’t know precisely where it was. But the fact I recognized the name made me uncomfortable, because I didn’t get out much, and the idea that it was familiar to me suggested proximity.
* * *
I retrieved my lime-green Mini from the casino parking garage (I had a free space) and punched Betsy’s new address into the dashboard GPS. Sure enough, it was only 2.5 miles away, and I threw a minor wobbly in the car, banging my hands nonsensically against the steering wheel. But then I took a few slow, deep, cleansing breaths and started off, leaving the dim shadows of the parking garage for the blinding klieg lights that illuminate midday in southwest Nevada. I was wearing a scarf and sunglasses that were more Jackie O. than Lady Di, but they were still on point for a diva hiding out at a buffet in Summerlin. I kept the convertible roof closed and set the air-conditioning on deep freeze.
I was at their apartment in minutes, and there was Betsy standing in the two-story complex’s parking lot with a man. There was a pool behind a fake wooden fence and some withered palms rising up on the far side. I was happy for Marisa: if you were going to be stuck in the pizza oven that was Las Vegas, a crap pool was better than no pool. I had a hunch the fellow was this mystical Frankie, her new squeeze. He had a robust, salt-and-pepper shag carpet bristling atop his head, and his eyes were hidden by aviator shades. He was tall and thick-waisted, and yet had rather twig-like legs in his khaki pants. I pegged him for early fifties. Most of the cars in the lot were low end, the exception being the black Tesla that I was sure was his.
“I thought I’d pop over and say hello,” he said, extending his hand as I climbed from my Mini. “I’m Frankie Limback. I have to tell you: I can’t wait to see your show.”
“Thank you,” I said, surprised by the Bay Shore in his voice. I had assumed an investment banker would annoy me with one of those WASP affectations that turns all a sounds into ah’s. Nope. “I’m Crissy,” I added, “but it seems you’ve figured that out.”
“Hi, Sis,” said Betsy. She looked like me, I thought, if I didn’t care for my skin and wear makeup and go to a nearby spa and gym. (The BP had a gym, but no spa. Besides, I wanted my privacy when I was making the faces one makes around free weights and treadmills.) She looked tired. She needed a facial and, just maybe, a massage. As she’d told me, her hair was strawberry blond, though there were strands of gray, and it hung long past her shoulders. God, I thought, if my hair were still black, would I be plucking white hairs from it? The idea would have made my legs buckle if I hadn’t popped an extra half tab of diazepam. I was the big sister, but she seemed like the older one: the horse that’s been ridden hard and put away wet, which was ironic since she’d been living in Vermont, which is among the mellowest places on earth. Apparently, the last year had not been kind to her—which felt right. Kill your mother and you should be cursed with sallow skin and early-onset gray hair.
“You made it,” I said. We embraced, and it was awkward, as if we had lost our muscle memory as siblings.
“God,” Frankie observed, grinning, “you two look identical. It’s uncanny. It’s like you’re twins.”
“Well, we’re not,” I reminded him, though a part of me was thinking, Shit. If that’s what I look like, my days on stage are numbered.
He nodded. “Still, it’s amazing. Anyway, I wanted to introduce myself.”
“Very kind of you. Welcome to Sin City.”
