The Disciple of Las Vegas by Ian Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

in moving downtown. What he really wanted was to meet some women who weren’t the usual Chinese princesses he dated. She had left a key to her condo for him with the building manager and told him she would let her friend Mimi know he was moving in. The moment she had said it, she felt a flutter of regret.
    Ava deleted Derek’s message and opened an email from Mimi. The subject line read MARIA .
    Ava,
    I gave your name and email address to a woman last night. Her name is Maria Gonzalez and she’s an assistant trade commissioner at the Colombian consulate. I met her at a business function and we chatted. She flirted with me in a nice, shy kind of way. I asked her if she was gay. She is. So I talked about you and told her she should contact you. I know how private you are and I’m sorry if you think I was being indiscreet, but Ava, this is a wonderful young woman. She’s beautiful, tall, graceful, and smart. Don’t be surprised if she contacts you. And don’t worry, I’ll take care of Derek.Love,Mimi
    Ava sighed. The last thing she needed was for her personal life to get in the way of business. She lay on the bed and tried to nap, but her mind was racing. Uncle’s information about Jackie Leung had caught her off guard, and now as she digested it she felt surprise and a touch of alarm. She had been threatened before by people she had rousted, but it had always amounted to nothing. She wondered if this could be different.
    Leung’s case had been a nothing job, a simple matter of the active partner in a business trying to move the company’s assets before the passive partner, the investor, caught on. She had cornered Leung in Ho Chi Minh and forced him to give everything back. That had meant keeping him locked in a hotel room for most of a day and dunking his head in the toilet every hour or so. She was new at the game then, less sure of herself and less sure about what tactics would work. When he finally capitulated, they drove in his car to the bank to make the money transfer. Just outside the bank he said he needed to get some papers from the trunk, and then he charged at her with a crowbar.
    Ava had broken his arm and his nose. She took him to a hospital to get patched up and then drove back to the bank to conclude the business. When they returned to his car, she locked him in the trunk. She had no idea how long it took for someone to find him.
    She thought she had handled Leung with only as much force as was needed. If he hadn’t attacked her he wouldn’t have been hurt at all, except for his ego and his wallet. Just as she was wondering what part of the ordeal had made him angry enough to pay people to come after her, her phone rang.
    â€œThis is an interesting account,” Johnny said.
    She noticed he was using his cellphone. “What did you find?”
    â€œIt looks like it was used as a transit account — money in and then, just as quickly, money out.”
    â€œCan you give me the amounts and dates?”
    â€œDo you have a notepad? There’s quite a bit of detail here.”
    â€œIn front of me.”
    â€œI’ll give you the deposits first.”
    â€œGo ahead.”
    There were fifteen deposits, all of them less than $5 million, just as Louis Marx had described. The dates were random. In one week three deposits had been made and there was a gap of close to three weeks between two others. The very first deposit was for $4 million, Ava saw. Marx had said that Cousins fronted $2 million. That meant that the $2 million Cousins was supposed to have put in the account was never deposited. As Johnny gave her the deposit amounts, Ava kept a running tally. They totalled $58 million, a bit more than Chang had said.
    â€œWhat a strange pattern,” Ava said.
    â€œThe withdrawals are even weirder,” Johnny said.
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œThe day after each of these cheques was cleared, a wire was sent to Costa Rica for almost that exact