to take a break from the turf wars in Jersey. The Russians are trying to take over his territory. He goes to jail, they’ll be grateful, and you’ll be safe.”
“You think his organization won’t be upset if Big Julie got killed or went to jail?”
Frelly sat back and fiddled with his pencil. “You can break your probation and go to prison,” he said finally. “Or you can play cards. Like you always do. Only now, you wear a camera and report back to us. Take your pick.”
Tanner didn’t like it. He didn’t like getting face-to-face with the Mob. All of his assignments for the last nineteen years had been surveillance jobs from security offices, showing the FBI agents how someone was cheating or how a dealer was dirty. Nobody he’d ever turned over to law enforcement had known who he was. No suspect had ever seen him.
This situation was different. Now he’d have to play cards with and snitch on someone who’d be more than happy to do him serious bodily harm.
What were his choices? If he said no, he’d go to prison for twenty years. He didn’t want to go to prison. He’d just have to take his chances that he could outwit the Mafia. If Big Julie was anything like Roy Frelly, maybe that wouldn’t be so hard.
“Any money I win, I keep,” he said.
“If you win it legitimately,” Frelly said. “And pay taxes on it. Sure.”
Tanner sat another minute, trying to think of a different way, a better way to get out of the FBI’s deal. But he couldn’t see it. He looked at Sievers, raising an eyebrow. Jack looked back, pursing his lips.
Pacification maneuver.
“For how long?” Sievers asked.
“Until we get the evidence against Big Julie,” Frelly said. “Or until we say.”
“Until you get the evidence, or one month,” Jack said.
“Until we get the evidence, or three months,” Frelly said.
Jack looked at Tanner, turning palms up. Acceptance.
“Okay,” Tanner said, feeling the noose tighten. “It’s a deal.”
Chapter 4
Big Julie Saladino, wearing a white terry-cloth robe with the hotel’s name stitched in blue over the chest pocket, sat at the dining room table in his penthouse suite at the Desert Dunes Casino and Resort and shoveled in his eggs. The table was set for two, but he was alone in the five-thousand-square-foot apartment except for a bodyguard, who lounged on a sofa, checking the stock market quotes in the newspaper.
Big Julie was in a bad mood. So far nothing had gone right today, and it wasn’t even noon yet. He’d been woken up by his number-two lieutenant back in Jersey, who reported that one of the soldiers had a new girlfriend. That was the good news. The bad news was, she was the daughter of the Russian mob boss who was after Big Julie’s business. To get Big Julie’s turf, the Russians wanted to outfit Big Julie in a custom pair of cement shoes and take him for a long walk at the bottom of a deep ocean. Which was why Big Julie was in Vegas. Plenty of cement, sure, but no oceans.
The soldier was dazzled by the Russian girl’s big bouncing boobies, which turned one part of his anatomy to steel but turned his brain to oatmeal. The lieutenant told Big Julie how it happened: the soldier’s there enjoying an afterglow with the Russian girl and he asks her about her accent, and she says she’s from Georgia, so of course oatmeal brain thought she meant Atlanta, but she meant Tbilisi. The soldier couldn’t tell the difference between an effing southern accent and an effing Russian accent. That was the kind of help you got these days, where the oatmeal and the steel exchanged places when they shouldn’t, and that was the other reason Big Julie was staying in Vegas. Better help.
So that was the first thing.
Then when he hung up the phone with the number-two lieutenant, Big Julie realized that Baby wasn’t in bed and she wasn’t in the shower, either. So that meant that she could be, one, out shopping, two, getting her hair done, three, getting her nails done, four, out shopping. And sure enough, the phone rings and it’s the front desk asking him to approve a charge limit. And Big Julie wanted to know: what’s the point of bringing a hot piece like Baby to share a love nest in Vegas if she don’t want to stay in bed in the mornings and tempt him with her silicone-enhanced tits, her Brazilian-waxed legs, her