The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [74]
Wayne tried to betray no feeling at all. “Any idea where she would go?”
“She doesn’t have any family, or none that she likes anyway. And friends to her are mostly just whoever’s around at the time. She leases everything, you know. Friends, apartments, cars, boyfriends. No long-term commitments.”
“As I understand it, she was pretty committed to you for a while.”
Amoyo said, “Why do you care so much, Wayne? Is she really such a valued employee at the Colossus these days? That would be funny after so many months of being public enemy number two? And I say that as public enemy number one.”
“She’s a friend.”
“Yeah. You probably think she’s special.”
To Wayne, it sounded like Amoyo was insulting both him and Nada, and the next thing just came out of his mouth. “I do. In fact, I’m still wondering what she saw in you.”
Amoyo sniffed indifferently and accepted a clear, lime-garnished drink in a highball glass from the waitress. “When I met her, she wasn’t special at all. She was okay-looking, I guess—maybe not dancer hot—but she had these crazy, unfocused abilities. Imagine if Tiger Woods had never played golf. Nada was moody and bored and lonely and agitated. Depressed. I taught her it was okay to be happy. Okay to laugh. Smile every once in a while. Have fun. You know, she’d never even played blackjack before me. She thought blackjack was all about luck. That it was beneath her. But when I showed her how to beat a casino, I showed her that she had power. I made her special. That’s what she sees in me. She knows that whatever it is you or anybody else finds attractive in her now, David Amoyo put it there.”
“So why did you let her go?”
“It’s not clear I have, based on the other night.” Amoyo paused to think about that, then seemed to disregard the notion. “Blackjack was all we had in common. When we got busted and banned from the Strip, there wasn’t much else holding us together.”
“And by then you were holding Sandy, right?”
“She told you about Sandy? That’s interesting.” Amoyo set his drink down on the black cube. “Are you fucking her?”
Wayne was quick to deflect. “You mean Sandy?”
A flash of jealousy came and went on either side of a blink. “Sandy also has great abilities. Actually, that’s not true. What Sandy has is charisma, which is another word for sexy, and that could take her far, when you combine it with her legs and her tits and everything else. Between here and here”—Amoyo put one hand at his collarbone and another just above his knees—“that girl is world-class. I’ll have her in Playboy by the end of next year. Maybe a reality show the year after that.” He picked up his drink. “She introduced me to the owner here and now I manage the place and run an event-planning business, as well. Celebs fly in to celebrate this or that and they want to throw a bash. I cut a deal with a hotel. I make sure the right people are there, call the media, find a sponsor. I can put the Colossus on my preferred list if you guys cut me some slack.”
“You mean let you back inside the casino?”
“That would be for starters. I see it wasn’t off the table as far as Nada was concerned. This ban is a drag on business, and I’m talking lots of money here. Great PR. Rock stars, movie stars, athletes. All making the Colossus their Vegas home.”
“Not for me to decide, David. As far as I’m concerned, you can do whatever you want in the hotel as long as you stay away from the tables. If you give me a card, I’ll pass it along to the marketing and catering folks.”
“With your endorsement?”
“Okay.”
“Great.”
Wayne wasn’t going to pass along any endorsement of Amoyo. It was something of a miracle that Steve Rhodes had agreed to let Nada back in the Colossus, and now that Wayne knew Nada was sleeping with David again—or had at least once—he wasn’t going to let Amoyo six steps into the casino before he kicked his ass back into the desert.
“Did she talk about a guy she met at the Colossus that week? An old guy?”
“No. She rarely mentioned anybody except