Jackpot

23

Bingo had just let himself into room 5318 when his cell phone rang. It was Arrow Donaldson and he briefly thought about ignoring the call, but Bingo made his way through the rest of the room and found the dead body of Ziggy Peng.

“Ziggy Peng is dead.”

“What? How?” Arrow asked.

“This was the work of Dale Gai and an American.”

“American?”

“He was in disguise, but he’s a movie producer named Billy Barnett.”

“Why would Dale Gai and an American kill Ziggy Peng?”

“This Billy Barnett seems to be more than a movie producer. And I think we both realize Dale Gai is more than an assistant.”

“Right,” Arrow said, slowly. Bingo knew Arrow to be a misogynist. He minimized the women around him at every opportunity, not realizing that it put him at a disadvantage.

“I’m also guessing he knows the attack on the CIA wasn’t the work of Sonny Ma.”

“We’ll deal with that later. I have to figure out what to do about this dead woman. I wonder if we should have just scared them with a minor attack instead of killing her.”

“Dead women don’t tell their secrets,” Bingo said.

Arrow disconnected from his call with Bingo and noticed Li Feng staring at him.

“You ask me to trust you, yet you lie at every opportunity?”

“And you lie to me,” Arrow yelled, waving his fists at Li Feng and clenching his jaw until his face began to twitch.

“This is all built on lies. So many lies.”

“I had a plan,” Arrow said.

“You had an idea. I helped you make it into a plan.”

“You agreed to that plan and for doing me a simple favor, I am going to provide you with a new identity so you can escape the life you have here and pursue whatever nonsense it is you want for your future. This vendetta against Sonny Ma has brought trouble to my organization that threatens to take us all down.”

“Your man said something to me in the car that might be relevant now,” Li Feng said.

“Do tell.”

“He asked me why I didn’t just kill Sonny Ma.”

“We’ve all asked that.”

“It’s not what I wanted at the beginning, but now that there is already a dead woman...”

“I’ll have Bingo kill this Billy Barnett and pin it all on Sonny Ma,” Arrow said.

“That sounds like a plan.”

Bingo was going to get something to eat when his phone rang. He almost didn’t answer it because he thought Arrow Donaldson was calling a third time. But the phone kept buzzing, to the point of distraction, so he took it out and noticed it was Kwok Lin, a local gossip who occasionally had useful information. It didn’t take long for Bingo to realize Kwok was calling to tell him about Billy Barnett.

“I’ve met many Americans and many movie producers. This man was too subtle, too smart, too quiet. It was quite disturbing,” Kwok said.

“My patience with this conversation is reaching its end,” Bingo said.

“The man was with a woman who works at the Golden Desert Casino. That’s Arrow Donaldson’s casino.”

It should not have surprised him that Dale Gai was involved. Bingo contemplated hanging up on Kwok Lin and going to follow Dale Gai to see what she was up to, but he wondered if he could use this fool first.

“Call the producer back,” Bingo said. “Tell him you found out that Sonny Ma is looking to get back into the crime business and this has all the marks of his operation.”

“Really? Sonny Ma is looking to get back in the game? I thought he made a bunch of money in the tech field.”

“Do as I say. Do not worry about context or truth.”