Jackpot

58

The karaoke bar was not very far away from the casino. Teddy was about to head out after hanging up with Li Feng when he wondered if he should change his look. The average person wouldn’t recognize Billy Barnett, but he’d heard repeatedly that she was a fan of American movies and wanted to be an actress. There was a real chance that she had been watching the Academy Awards last year when he was on stage as a winner, and again after an explosion rocked the broadcast.

That would be just his luck to come halfway around the world only to be identified from a TV broadcast. As he thought about that, he realized he’d been telling himself a lie. There was no relaxation on the beach waiting for him back in L.A. Trouble followed wherever he went. Or rather, there was trouble everywhere in the world, and he felt obligated to use his skills to help friends — and occasionally former enemies — when they ran into trouble.

The last time he had tried to go away and relax was after his wife, Betsy, had died. He’d driven out to Santa Fe to visit an old friend and ended up saving his friend’s life as well as hunting down the man who killed Betsy.

And he enjoyed it. He could have quit and gone all in on Billy Barnett or Mark Weldon, but those were more than just fake names on fake paper. They were men with jobs and with family and friends and coworkers who didn’t have Teddy’s skills or Teddy’s connections. Many men and several governments had tried to kill Teddy, and it seemed that even Teddy himself couldn’t completely kill his original identity.

He looked around the suite for whatever was left of the production makeup he’d used for his disguises so far and wasn’t happy with what he saw. There was a knock at the door, and Dale’s face lit up with a giant smile that he hadn’t suspected she was capable of.

“Oh, good. I have a surprise for you,” she said.

“Is it the man you hired to kill me?”

“I’m not telling you when he arrives.”

Teddy didn’t laugh right away as a part of him believed she might only be partially kidding about that, but before he could think any longer about it, Dale had the door open and was waving in a man carrying into the suite what looked to be Teddy’s luggage.

“You didn’t,” Teddy said, giving his own unexpected wide smile. “Is this all my luggage?”

“I completely forgot I’d contacted the airport to send it here until they called to let me know it arrived. Sergeant Lam says hello.”

“I don’t believe that at all. This is wonderful and the timing couldn’t be better.”

Teddy tipped the luggage man and excused himself to the bathroom to get into costume. The first look he tried seemed natural in his head, but both he and Dale could tell when he emerged that a white man like Teddy dressing as an Asian man was a terrible idea, even if no offense was intended. Teddy went back to the bathroom and came out the next time dressed like a Russian hitman he’d met once named Zosima.

Without his driver and without Bingo by his side, Arrow Donaldson felt lost in Macau. He was one of the most important men in the city, but he might as well have been a tourist to those around him. Arrow viewed it as strong leadership to delegate so much to others in his organization, but he was realizing that he’d lost touch with the core of his business. His driver was waiting at the bunker for Li Feng to contact him, and Bingo was out doing his own search. But Arrow didn’t want to sit behind a desk and wait for a phone call.

He’d taken his car and driven himself along the main strip and then circled around the outskirts before parking in the underground lot at the Hollywood City Casino. Walking around among the shoppers and gamblers and families, he felt lonely and depressed. This was no way to live a life. Even if these people put millions of dollars a year in his pocket through their desperate attempts at a weekend of happiness, he had no interest in being around them. He was eating a pretzel from a vendor at the heart of the mall adjacent to the casino when Bingo called. Arrow spit the pretzel into a trash bin and answered.