Brian Freeman - Stripped

It didn’t really matter, though. Their marriage, Boni’s only marriage, lasted just three years. Eva had lived only a few months longer than Amira. She had died in childbirth, and Boni was left with his one child, Claire.

He and Serena waited almost ten minutes in the foyer of Boni’s suite before the double doors suddenly opened with a click and swung silently inward. An attractive woman of about twenty-five, with pinned-up brunette hair and a tailored business suit, was there to greet them.

“Detective Dial? Detective Stride? Please come in. We’re very sorry to keep you waiting.”

She waved them into a lounge that seemed to stretch the length of a football field. The north wall was completely made of windows looking out on the Strip, with views to the mountains on the west and east.

“Mr. Fisso will join you in just a moment,” she told them. “We have breakfast set up here, so please, help yourself.”

She left them alone, disappearing through a door in a leather-clad wall that led to the rest of the suite. Stride eyed the buffet and realized he was hungry. The spread on the mahogany bureau could have served twenty people. He took a plate, spread cream cheese over half a bagel, and layered it with pink lox. He poured a glass of orange juice and did the same for Serena.

The room, which had a rough western feel to it, featured cowboy artists like Remington. There was sculpture, too, with a rodeo motif. Stride had a hard time imagining Manhattanborn Boni Fisso in a cowboy hat. He was about to make a joke to Serena, then was glad he hadn’t when he realized that Boni Fisso himself had made a silent entrance into the room.

Boni read his mind. “All men are cowboys at heart, Detective. Me, I’m an Italian cowboy. You’ve heard the term ‘spaghetti western’? That’s me.” He laughed, a loud, deep-throated bellow that echoed in the large room.

He moved with remarkable grace and speed for a man in his eighties. He shook both their hands and maneuvered them toward the full-length windows, where he pointed with a sweep of his arms at the view. “Look at that city! God, what a place. You know what they say, every world-class city has a river running through it. Fuck ’em. We’ve got dust and yuccas and rattlesnakes running through ours. Only river here is money. I’ll take that over all the sewage and fish heads floating through the Missouri or the Hudson.”

“You don’t miss the old days?” Stride asked him. “Everyone else from back then seems to think Vegas was better in the 1960s.”

“Hell, no!” Boni exclaimed. “Sure, I wish I had the body and half the energy I did in those days. We all think that, right? I’ve lost a lot of friends, too. Everybody gets old. You know the saying. Tempus fuck-it. But that’s the beauty of this town. It’s always young. Bulldoze the past, and get on with it Magic is what you grew up with, Detective. I guarantee you, forty years from now, old people will be talking about how they miss Vegas in the 2000s.” Boni poured himself a glass of champagne from the buffet “Come on, you two, eat, eat. God, I sound like my grandmother.”

There was no way around it. Boni was charming. Stride had to work to remind himself that the man wouldn’t think twice about ordering a homicide if it suited his purposes. He thought about Walker in the wheelchair, having been beaten nearly to death by Boni’s goons. About Amira and her crushed skull.

Boni fixed him with sparkling blue eyes, and Stride thought that the man knew exactly what he was thinking. It was probably the same thing that everyone who came into this room and met the man for the first time thought.

“Fill your plates, and then let’s sit down,” Boni told them. He took a red leather armchair for himself, and Stride noticed that it had been designed low to the ground, so that Boni’s feet lay flat on the floor. He was short, no more than five-foot-six. The chair itself was on a slight riser, higher than the sofas around it. His throne. Stride half expected a ruby ring to kiss.

Boni was dressed all in black. He wore a turtleneck, a tailored ebony blazer, and creased black dress pants. His shoes were patent leather, shined to a mirror finish. He still looked very much like he did in the photos from decades ago, when he already had a balding crown of black hair. The hair was gray now, and his forehead was mottled with liver spots. He had sunken crescent moons under his eyes and a five o’clock shadow that a razor couldn’t scrape away. Despite his age, he was fit and strong, and his eyes were piercing and alert. He still had movie-star teeth.

Assuming the movie was Jaws, Stride thought.

“Mr. Fisso-” Serena began.

“Oh, please. It’s Boni, Boni. Don’t make me feel so goddamn old.”

Stride saw that Serena was uncomfortable being on a first-name basis with the man, but she struggled to spit out the name. “Boni, then. My name is-”

Boni interrupted her again. “No need, no need. Serena Dial. You’re from Las Vegas by way of Phoenix, if my sources are correct.” His tone was light, but Stride had the feeling that Boni could have rattled off every detail of Serena’s past, maybe more than he could have done himself. “And you’re the new kid on the block,” he continued, turning to Stride. “From Minnesota? Lots of lakes there. I’d ask what the hell you’re doing in the desert, but that’s pretty obvious.”

He winked at him and glanced at Serena, and it was clear that he knew all about their relationship. Stride wondered if it came from Sawhill.

“I have to thank you,” Boni told Serena. “I haven’t talked to my daughter in years. It was good to hear her voice. Once upon a time, I thought she’d be living here, running my empire right beside me. Girl had a business sense like no one I’ve ever met. Hell, she must get it from her old man, right? I mean, Eva, her mother, she could cut you a new one, but her gift was spending money, not making it. No, my baby Claire, she’s the talented one in the family, I can’t hold a candle to her.”

“Why are you estranged?” Serena asked.

Boni’s face hardened like concrete. “A police detective concerned about my family values. That’s very nice. You didn’t really come here to help me patch things up with Claire, did you?”

“No, it’s just that-”

“Look, Claire and I didn’t see eye to eye about my business ventures. So she went off to sing her sad songs, just to spite me. And to live in that little apartment, when I know perfectly well she’s made millions in the market.” Boni watched Serena, who couldn’t keep the shock off her face. “She probably told you it’s because she likes to sleep with girls. That’s not the Catholic way. Well, I’d have been happier if she married some strapping fellow like Detective Stride here. I made her go on a few dates with some good-looking guys. Any sin in that? But no, I have to deal with Claire in confession every Sunday, God help me. Father D’Antoni always asks about her, to see if she’s come back to God’s way. I think he just likes hearing the details, if you ask me.”

“Have you heard her sing?” Serena asked.

“I have. She’s primo. That girl would run Nashville if she moved out there. It’ll never happen, though. She’s all Vegas at heart.” Boni settled back in his chair and took a sip of champagne. “But we have other things to talk about, don’t we? Claire says you two wanted to have an off-the-record conversation with me, no goddamn lawyers around. I have to respect that. I’m a lawyer myself, and I have to tell you that most of them might as well stick a talking parrot on their desk that says, ‘No, no, no.’ And they’d bill the parrot out at a thousand dollars an hour. So there’s no lawyers here, Detectives. Just the three of us. This conversation never happened. Got it?”