Vero blinked at the psychic as she held the door open for us.
“Come on,” I said, nudging Vero through it. “You heard the woman. We’re going to find him.”
CHAPTER 25
Vero and I took the elevator to the thirty-fourth floor of a condominium building that reminded me of a tacky department store dressing room. Every wall was mirrored, every surface was veneered, and every carpet looked like it could have been ripped from the aisles of a 1980s movie theater.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, checking my wig in the mirrored walls. We had changed clothes in the alley behind Romelda’s shop. My jumpsuit still reeked like a bath bomb, but at least it had dried.
Vero tugged on her wig and smoothed it down.
“We’ll wait until we’re inside Russo’s office, and then we’ll jump him.”
“And then what?”
“We’ll search the place for Marco’s ledger and make Russo tell us how he got it.”
The elevator doors opened into a vestibule with a small sitting area. A man in a three-piece suit stood sentry beside a door. His jacket strained around his broad chest, and a disconcertingly large bulge protruded near his belt.
“There’s a security guard,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth.
“Let me handle this,” Vero whispered back. She fluffed her blond locks as she strutted slowly out of the elevator, the gym bag slung casually over her shoulder. The security guard stood in her path as she reached to knock.
“Name?”
Vero tossed her hair, staring down her nose at him. “Tell Mr. RussoLa Reinais here.”
The security guard checked his phone, his eyes bouncing between us and an image on his screen, probably one captured by the camera in the casino last night. “Turn around and face the wall,” he said, returning his phone to his pocket. I put my hands on the wall as he conducted a very thorough frisk.
He gestured for Vero to assume the position.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you cop a feel, I will make you regret it.”
He considered that a moment before doing a hurried pat down and confiscating her gym bag. Unzipping it, he examined the contents. He raised an eyebrow, withdrawing a leather whip in one hand and a ball gag in the other.
“Seriously?” I whispered.
“It was either that or a glow-in-the-dark dildo,” she whispered back. “Which would you have picked?”
The guard shook his head at a pair of pink fuzzy handcuffs before returning the items to her bag. He handed it back to her and pushed a buzzer on the wall.
A moment later, the door swung open. The middle-aged man framed inside it wore a bright red Speedo, a shower towel around his neck, a pornstache over his mouth, and an expansive terrain of manscaping that could have warranted its own HGTV show. I stared at his flip-flops, too repulsed to speak.
“You’re Enzo?” Vero asked with an expression of mildly checked disgust.
“In the flesh.”
“So it would seem. We’re happy to wait out here while you get dressed,” I suggested.
“No need,” he assured us in a thick New Jersey accent. “It’s just a body, right. Two beautiful women like you have probably seen plenty of ’em before.”
“You have no idea,” Vero muttered.
I shoved an elbow in Vero’s ribs. “It’s just that we didn’t expect to see quite so much of yours.”
He scratched his chest. “What can I say? I’m feeling generous.” He consulted a calendar on his phone. “Which one of you isLa Reina?”
“She is,” Vero and I said in unison, each of us pointing at the other.
