Mistress of the Game

Two years later, Tommy King found the first two needles: William Mensch and Federico Borromeo. Billy Mensch was a small-time drug dealer turned contract killer from Philadelphia. Borromeo was a friend Billy had made in juvenile detention in 1970, a con artist and compulsive gambler with no known history of violence.

Both had died in a car crash in Monaco in 1993, the year after Lexi’s rescue.

When Tommy King first told her, Lexi, then aged eighteen, refused to believe it. She wrote to Tommy, demanding to see pictures of the bodies. After four months spent painstakingly grooming the lonely, overweight receptionist at the Monaco Medical Examiner’s Office, Tommy obliged. Along with the pictures he sent a bill, and a note of his own, asking if Lexi wanted to continue to search for the third man.

In two years, I’ve discovered no trace of him. As you know, the FBI also drew a total blank. I feel it only right to advise you that, in my opinion, we will not be able to track down this individual and that continuing the case would be a waste of both my time and your money.

One week later, Tommy King received a check for $20,000 from Lexi Templeton, along with a one-word note.

Continue.

Two years later, he got a lead on a man calling himself Dexter Berkeley, a known rapist and petty thief from the San Francisco area. Berkeley regularly visited the Far East as a sex tourist.

Tommy King booked a flight to Bangkok.

In Thailand, Dexter Berkeley had disappeared again like a fish swimming into a sewer. Every few months, Tommy King saw him leap like a salmon out of the river of filth. In Bangkok, he surfaced as Mick Jenner, insurance salesman; in Pattaya, he was Fred Greaves, toy manufacturer; in Phuket, he was Travis Kemp, taxi driver. Only in his latest incarnation had Tommy King been able to get any sort of grip on his slimy, sewage-slick form:

John Barclay, aka prisoner 7843A.

John Barclay had taken a ten-year-old hooker back to his five-star hotel room and been arrested at gunpoint by a Thai vice squad fifteen minutes later with his pants around his ankles.

Ten years. No parole. No prepubescent pussy.

Too bad, Dex. Or whoever the hell you are.

Tommy King sat at the bar, waiting for his BlackBerry to buzz.

One thing you could say for Lexi Templeton. She wasn’t one to let the grass grow under her feet. Not with news like this.

Sure enough, within sixty seconds, Tommy’s phone jumped to life. He allowed himself a single, gold-toothed smile.

Thank you. Your employment is now terminated. I will wire the rest of the money to your Bahamanian account first thing Monday morning. Good-bye, Mr. King.

Tommy wondered briefly what would happen now. Would Lexi wait ten years for the guy to get out-assuming he lived that long-before taking her revenge? Or would she consider a decade taking it up the ass in a Thai jail punishment enough?

Whatever. It wasn’t his problem anymore.

Good-bye, Ms. Templeton.

Good riddance.

Six blocks from Lexi’s apartment, Max was having dinner at home with his mother.

“What’s the matter, darling? You look tense.”

Six feet of gleaming mahogany separated Eve from her son. The table was laid formally, as usual, with full silver service. A Cordon Bleu cook prepared all Eve’s meals, taking care to keep her daily calorie intake below eighteen hundred. Keith may have stolen her face decades ago, but even now, at fifty-five, Eve was vain enough to obsessively maintain her trim figure. Unable to go to restaurants for fear of being photographed, she tried to make meals at home as luxurious and pleasurable as possible. She dressed for dinner, and expected Max to do the same. Tonight she was wearing a full-length jade-green evening dress with a high neck and deep V that plunged down her back, almost to the start of her buttocks. It was a young woman’s dress, but Eve could carry it off.

“It’s nothing.” Max forced a smile.

Eve examined her son’s handsome face, its predatory, sensual features accentuated by the stark black of his tuxedo.

He’s breathtaking. Not an ounce of his father in him. But how could a son of mine be such a terrible liar?

“I don’t think it’s nothing, Max. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Max hesitated. “It’s Lexi. We had a team meeting today. She kept trying to shoot me down.”

Eve’s scarred, stretched eyelids narrowed. “Go on.”

“She’s got August Sandford eating out of her palm. I’m sure Jim Bruton wants to screw her, too.” Max shook his head. “At first I thought the board was just humoring her with this internship. But now I’m not so sure. She wants the chairmanship as much as I do. She’s smart.”

“She’s deaf, Max.” Eve’s voice dripped with disdain. “Are you telling me you can’t outwit a girl who slurs her words like a drunk? Like a retard?”

“Of course not, Mother. I-”

“She’s a slut! She’s a joke!” Rancor poured out of Eve like pus from a boil. “Falling out of nightclubs at five every morning with her skirt pulled up around her hips.”

This wasn’t exactly true. Lexi might be promiscuous, and she might enjoy a party or twenty, but she was very conscious of her public image. Not that Max was about to argue. He loathed his cousin every bit as much as Eve did. The fact that he wanted her sexually only made his loathing stronger. Lexi was all that stood between him and Kruger-Brent. Between him and his mother’s love. Lexi was trying to take Eve away from him. She was ruining everything.

Eve raged on. “You’re not a man. You’re a queer like your cousin Robbie. Like your father.”

“No! I’m nothing like Keith.”