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“The only ones I recall are O’Hara and Kozlov. Kozlov was the woman.”
I took this in. There was a slanting beam of light on the bottle of curaçao behind the bar, and the blue grew dreamy and the curvature of the glass erotic. Booze was like that. Had there been Kool-Aid in the flagon, I would have thought no such thing.
“We’re doomed, Nigel,” I said. “The Morleys are dead. Best case, the BP’s fiscal plight was so dire they really did take their own lives. Worst case, they were executed and whoever did that will stop—”
“If they were murdered, it might have had nothing to do with the casino. You’re panicking, love.”
“I don’t think so. There’s an awful lot going on.”
“There is. But there will always be a place for Diana. My God, this city has a museum devoted to her.”
“In a mall. And malls are the giant pandas and snow leopards of commerce. They’re going extinct.”
“Well, then. You have your plan B,” he said, and he raised his eyebrows lecherously.
“Meaning?”
“Well, let’s see. You’ve had a tumble or two with a U.S. senator, and now you have your oligarch friend, Yevgeny—”
“Who is American,” I reminded him. Usually I didn’t think twice about discussing my lovers with Nigel. But now that Betsy had told me how she and our mum had speculated about Nigel’s and my relationship, I found myself more aware of my friend’s possible feelings.
“Not judging! But didn’t you tell me that some rich crypto geek’s fantasy is to have sex with Lady Di in Grand Cayman?”
I had told him this. I nodded. “True, true. One of Betsy’s bosses, Tony Lombardo, did want me to meet a friend of his. Oliver Davies. But I don’t know if he wanted me to actually shag him.”
He snapped his fingers. “Lombardo! That was one of the names, too. He was at the show tonight.”
I turned to him, now intensely alert. “Tony Lombardo?”
“Yes. That’s the name. Bud said it was his second time here.”
“Was Frankie Limback with him?”
“Your sister’s boyfriend? No.”
“Just Tony.”
“And four others. They had a tour of the whole property first. We were just the after-dinner mint, you might say.”
“They’re all Futurium,” I said.
“Your sister’s crypto company?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.”
“It’s more than interesting. It’s alarming. Tony Lombardo is a Futurium bigwig. When he asked if I’d ever do a special one-off for the company, I told him to, more or less, fuck off. I was polite. Mostly. Still, nothing like pissing off your potential new boss.”
He finished his gimlet, absorbing this. He signaled for Cassandra to bring him another drink. “Have you ever visited a crypto casino on your computer?” he asked.
“No.”
“You should.”
“I don’t own any Bitcoin or Futurium or whatever.”
“Me neither. But when you told me what Betsy was going to do for a living, I surfed around a bit. They’re just like online PayPal casinos, except you’re using your digital currency. Roulette, slots, blackjack. You move your money from your digital wallet to your casino wallet and, if you win, back into your digital wallet when you’re done. Maybe Futurium is about to open one—or, given the technology, more than one. Maybe that’s why they’re in Las Vegas.”
