Stacked Deck

As JD obviously crushed his cyber opponent, he held up his arms in complete victory and looked up, beaming. “I thought you said tonight.”

Giambi stared at JD for a moment, wondering what the hell was so exciting about those damn games. “Can you do that somewhere else, I have work to do.”

“Sure,” JD said as he closed out and stood up.

“Let me know when she gets here.” He walked toward his desk just as JD was leaving it. “How much did I say was transferred to her account with us? I forgot.”

“An even million. If you took that Ginkgo biloba I bought you, your memory would improve.”

“I hate pills.”

“It’s a vitamin.”

“I don’t care what you call it, it’s still a pill.”

“It’s your choice, but I—”

“I don’t have time for this.” He waved JD’s statement away. “She didn’t want a comped room. What, my five-star hotel isn’t good enough for her?”

“Apparently she’s got friends to stay with,” JD said, as he tried to leave.

“Don’t get lost. I want you to meet this woman when she gets here.”

JD tossed him a look. He didn’t like being treated as if he was one of Giambi’s assistants, but the way Giambi looked at it, the guy had nothing to do but train with weights, party all night with his friends and wait until he, Giambi, got him a seat in a race car. Nice life if you could get it. “You might as well do something besides play video games and party.”

“Okay, boss,” JD said, with that Tennessee drawl of his.

Giambi didn’t particularly like the way JD called him “boss” like he was making fun of him. Like the way Paul Newman said it in that movie. What was it called? Shit! He couldn’t remember, but it had something to do with prison.

JD left and Giambi settled in behind his desk. He was moving money as fast as he could out of Monaco and out of Europe. He knew he was being targeted by Prince Albert personally in this crusade against money laundering.

No respect.

And after all he’d done protecting the principality and the Grimaldi family over the years.

God he hated that Rainier and his beautiful princess were gone. Those were the days. When they were in power, Monaco was the greatest country on earth.

He blamed the Bush administration’s war on terrorism more than the European Union for the present crackdown.

At the same time he was dodging the new regime, that bitch who was blackmailing him was demanding a bigger piece of his pie. Between her, the Monaco cleanup, and investors in his racing team suddenly getting scarce, Giambi felt the walls closing in. He was being forced to reach out to people he had never done business with and he didn’t like it. You reach out, you don’t know who you’re gonna get.

That tended to kick his normal paranoia up a notch.

Now it was the time of the month, as with every month, that he had to wire the money to the biggest mistake of his life. One that was slowly bleeding him to death. He wanted be rid of her in the worst way, but he’d all but given up trying to kill her. Half the intelligence agencies in the world had been no more successful than he had.

He unlocked the drawer of his desk and pulled it out. The laptop came up into position. He opened up the secret account. The bitch seemed to know exactly what his take was each month and she made sure he handed the lion’s share over to her. It was a double transfer from his bank in Monaco, through an intermediary, and eventually to her accounts in Puerto Isla. She changed numbers and destinations so often he’d begun to think she wasn’t a person but an organization.

Hell, maybe she was dead and he was paying some rogue CIA group!

Giambi made the transfer, then made a call to check on the progress of a Greek shipping magnate’s yacht, which was heading for Monaco. He was a billionaire with an interest in the proposal Giambi had made about building a casino in Kestonia. Giambi was talking up the small, Eastern European country as the next Vegas. It was also a place a man could work his money without worry. If Giambi could bring the Greek on board his casino venture, then get the rich widow to invest in his Formula One team, life might start looking good again.

He had a printout about this rich widow, Anne Hurley. Worth upwards of a hundred million dollars, she definitely could be the solution to some of his immediate problems. He wanted his race team up and running again, but it would take millions to accomplish that and he couldn’t afford to go it alone.

Sometimes, and this was one of them, he’d just stop his mind. Just suddenly stare off into space at the truth. He was seventy-eight years old, and time was shooting by on a fast train to nowhere.

In those few seconds, when he stared that truth dead in the face, it scared him to the quick.

All those vitamins and longevity formulas he tried to down, all the care he took of his body by working out every damn day, none of that could erase the years.

And that reality pushed Giambi to get things done and get them done now. He still had ambitions, big ambitions.

If it weren’t for that damn blackmailer, he’d be one of the truly big players. Steve Wynn and Donald Trump wouldn’t have had anything on him. He’d have been as big as both combined. And as far as racing was concerned, Christ, he could have teamed up with Paul Newman in the Indy league and coaxed him over into Formula One.

One of these days, he promised himself, he was going to hunt that bitch down and put a bullet in her himself. At his age, he was beyond worrying about consequences.

His phone rang. It was the concierge in the lobby. “Anne Hurley just phoned and requested a limo,” the rough voice said. Giambi didn’t know which of his employees was speaking to him, he only knew that at that moment the guy deserved a raise.

“What time will she be here?”

“Around nine-thirty, sir.”

“Let me know the minute she arrives.”

“Will do.”

He hung up, and downed three extra-strength Tums to neutralize some of the acid in his stomach. Then he walked over to his bar to pour himself a scotch and get a cigar.

I still have a good fifteen years, Giambi thought, and Ms. Hurley is going to help me enjoy every damn minute of it.

He lit his cigar and gazed out the window. “Cool Hand Luke! That was the name of that damn Paul Newman film. Ginkgo biloba my ass.”

Chapter 5

While waiting for the limo, Beth checked her Judith Leiber bag to ensure that the cloner and tiny antenna were in the right pocket. This was her means to pick up a signal from a smart-card badge. She would catch the signal emitted from the badge and download the data onto her cloner, then later make the transfer to her computer. She had other B&E tools for getting in and out of secure places, and she’d been provided instructions, but not a lot of practice. Her main means of entry, she hoped, would be JD Hawke, once she figured out how to get some leverage with him.

The limo picked her up at 9:15 p.m. On the way to Giambi’s place the limo passed Le Grand Casino on 1 Ave Princess Grace, then over to the Sun Casino on 12 Ave des Spelugues, and, of course, the Monte Carlo Sporting Club.

The playboys and playgirls of the moneyed world were out and about cruising in their Mercedes, BMWs and Ferraris.

Beth had had a great time here several years ago, gambling and dancing at Jimmy Z Dance, mingling with the trendsetters at this premier hot spot on the French Riviera.

When the limo pulled up in front of Sapphire Star, a dapper casino valet dressed in a red shirt, black vest and black pants opened her door.

“C’est avec le grand plaisir that we welcome you to the Sapphire Star Casino, Monaco.”

She nodded as if her entire life was an entrance to sumptuous digs and servile attention. “Merci beaucoup.”

She stepped out of the limo wearing a hot blue, butterfly-lace dress with black trim that hugged all the right places on her toned body; her bling bag dangled from her shoulder, and Manolo pumps on her feet gave a feminine look to her long, athletic legs.