Leopards Kill - Hardcover

Jim DeFelice is the author of many military thrillers and has frequently collaborated with New York Times bestselling authors Stephen Coonts, Larry Bond, and Richard Marcinko. DeFelice’s solo novels include Threat Level Black, Coyote Bird, War Breaker, and My Brother's Keeper.

Jim DeFelice is the author of many military thrillers and has frequently collaborated with New York Times bestselling authors Stephen Coonts, Larry Bond, and Richard Marcinko. DeFelice's solo novels include Threat Level Black, Coyote Bird, War Breaker, and My Brother's Keeper.

Chapter One

 

Vegas

 

You expect more things out of life as you get older, and you come to think of your expectations as natural. You start to think that the things you get are things that you're entitled to. You forget about the way luck plays its hand, about the little tricks of fate that take you to a certain place and time. You have what you deserve, then you are what you deserve, then the things that surround you become your identity. You start thinking of yourself as the man with the big house overlooking the hills, the guy with the well-kept lawn and the gunite swimming pool. You start measuring yourself by the vacations you take, and the car you drive, and the shade of granite your wife wants for the perfect kitchen counter. These become who you are, and you stop measuring yourself against the things that lie deep within your heart--the rage, the anger, the insatiable hunger.

 

You go on like that, unconsciously lulling yourself into thinking there is nothing else until you stand in a fancy hotel in Las Vegas, running your hand on the marble of the bureau top, gazing across the open room at your wife lying naked on the bed: you think, this is what I am, the Italian pants and loafers, the bespoke sport coat, the Cuban cigars waiting on the table. This is what I expect out of life and this is what I am.

 

"I'm going now," you tell your wife. "I'll be back."

 

She murmurs something. You tell her you love her. The voice comes not from your heart, not from that dark deep place where hunger and pain live, but from the surface, from the silk shirt and the gel that smoothes your hair. You remember how she felt beneath you an hour before. You tell her you love her again, vaguely uneasy, and you go, you leave, because it's business, and it's what you've come to expect.

 

 

 

When I left the room that night it was a little past eleven, Vegas time. My wife Sharon and I had come in from New York only a few hours before and our bodies were still on East Coast time. Most of my adult life has been spent changing time zones, and I'm used to the switches, but Sharon wanted to sleep. Which was fine with me, because I'd arranged to meet with the people who'd invited us here, security types who'd hired my firm to help review security at the Palatine, where I was staying, and another hotel farther up the Strip. They were interested in beefing up their coverage for high rollers and other VIPs, which was one of our specialties. My partner and I had dozens of specialties; we used to tell our clients that our company Iron Rock would do anything for them from mow the grass to kill their competitors, though not for the same price.

 

Some people laughed when I told them that. Others asked how much contract killings cost.

 

The head of security at the Palatine was a man named Johnny B. McCann--Johnny or Johnny B to his friends, Mr. B to employees. Johnny had started out as a Teamster in New York. Judging from the stories he told, his main job had been to grab stuff off trucks and walk picket lines when locals needed to strike. From there he got into restaurants, working as a front manager. This was back in the late sixties and early seventies when the Mob in New York had a heavy Teamster connection and ran about fifty percent of the restaurants, usually into the ground. I'm guessing that when Johnny went from trucks to tablecloths, he was simply moving from one division in the "company" to another, but Johnny would never be so indiscreet as to mention the Mob, especially in Vegas.

 

Johnny's big chance came one afternoon when a fire broke out at the restaurant. He jumped behind the counter, grabbed the cash register, and hustled it outside--protecting it from the firemen, he says. The bosses noticed; in a couple of months he moved to a restaurant with a shortage problem and took over as manager. The restaurant's medical insurance skyrocketed, but the shortage stopped. After that, Johnny's employers sent him to Chicago, and there he got involved with the Playboy Clubs, and then somewhere along the way, he got to Vegas and went legit, or at least as legit as anyone in corporate gambling can be.

 

Johnny B was waiting in the hotel lobby when I came down. He had one of his brighter lieutenants with him, a man called Peanut. Peanut had been in the U.S. Air Force and had left as a chief master sergeant. He'd had something to do with security on nuclear-missile bases, which sounds damn impressive unless you happen to have visited them.

 

Peanut was a hulk of a guy, looming over me and I'm a good six three. He wasn't in any sort of shape, but he was big, and size can cover a lot of mistakes. Unlike Johnny, who flashed a gold chain and exotic rings along with his black silk shirt and white jacket, Peanut was turned out in a sedate black suit, fitted so perfectly to his frame that you couldn't tell he carried a good-sized breadbasket with him. Where Johnny flashed a Rolex and a huge turquoise ring, Peanut's watch was tucked well up his sleeve. But it was a Patek Philippe, probably more expensive than Johnny's.

 

"The man himself," said Johnny as I got off the elevator. He walked toward me, pointing his finger like a gun. Johnny was a short guy, and though well into his sixties, he still moved with lithe grace, a boxer skating across the ring at the start of a fight. The strains of Hell's Kitchen played in his voice, and he had a way of tugging at your jacket and poking you when he said hello that suggested something beyond intimacy. The first time you met him you came away thinking he knew you all his life. You could go for months without seeing him, and there he'd be in the hotel lobby, pulling you along, asking where your cigar was, demanding whether you were finally ready to give up drinking that crap bourbon and move up to Scotch.

 

We shook hands, I said hello to Peanut, and we walked outside. A limo was waiting. All the doormen--there were a dozen--snapped to attention when we came out. My first drill sergeant in the army would have thought he'd found heaven.

 

"We'll pick up Freslevan and have a little fun," said Johnny. "You know Chris?"

 

Freslevan was the vice president for security at the Kingdom Casino, the other hotel I'd come to look over.

 

"I talked to him on the phone. That's it."

 

"You'll like him. Great friend of mine. Real character."

 

In Johnny's world, you were a player, a character, or a jerk. Most people were the latter.

 

The Kingdom was just as big as Johnny's casino and, while they were owned by the same conglomerate, in many ways a bitter rival. But the security staffs often worked together, sharing data and techniques; keeping the scumbags out was in everybody's interests. And getting along with other people when it was in his interest was Johnny B's style. His ego didn't get in his way, and he seemed not to be particularly jealous or competitive--at least not in the ways that most of us are. He could stand apart from things, above them, really. That was what I admired about him. That and the fact that he knew his business pretty damn well. He came off like a backslapping politician, and he was that, a throwback to the old-school glad-hander, the hustlers he'd grown up with in New York City. But his eyes saw a hell of a lot, and his ears caught what his eyes missed. The fancy suit and jewelry were a costume, camouflage for something very hard, very ferocious if it needed to be, but also very controlled. I had no doubt that if I ever got into...