The Player, The Thief and The Broken Heart - Chapter Ten - Fast Cars and Fast Women

Yuri Yushenko stood in the doorway to his large and ostentatiously luxurious office, all walnut wainscoting, antique furnishings and polished bronze fixtures. His assistant gawked out the window across from them, offering a floor-to-ceiling view of the Las Vegas strip. "Come," Yushenko said, pocketing his keys and beckoning the man to follow him inside.

"This is my office, where you will be working the next few days." He watched his assistant admire the room's finery an appropriate length of time. Yushenko had wanted it to resemble a late 1800s London solicitor's office, with the shimmering replica of Paris Paris's Eiffel Tower outside as the focal point on his wall of glass. Others may have derided it as tacky, but for him it was perfect. Old meets new. For now he kept the lights off and stared out at the glittering neon sea.

"Come, I will show rest––we are best resort on strip. We have best nightclub, best casino, best hotel suite." Yushenko locked his office again and escorted his assistant down a baroque hallway lined with more walnut wainscoting, flanked with marble statues and suits of armour. A crimson carpet, plush enough to sleep on, muffled their footsteps.

"To answer earlier question," Yushenko said, stopping at a pair of heavy red drapes blocking the end of the corridor, "this is indeed where tournament will be held." With a magician's flourish, he tore between the drapes.

"This is reserved strictly for most elite customer," Yushenko said, leading him into the lounge. To their left, and curving around to the far side of a space roughly the size of a gymnasium. Floor to ceiling windows looked out onto the ever-twinkling Las Vegas Boulevard. At the far end, a nearly invisible door led out onto a patio of flagstones and gravel where only a three-foot high wall stood between the patrons and a sheer drop of several hundred feet. "Here we have best high rollers lounge with best view of in all Las Vegas," Yushenko said with the pride of a man showing off his first grandchild.

He patted the long varnished bar that ran along the right hand side of the room. "This was salvaged from pub in London where Charles Dickens drank." The assistant seemed less impressed by that, and gave it only a cursory glance. His attention was focussed more on the site of the tournament itself, a sunken area in the center of the lounge ringed by a bronze railing. A poker table large enough to host a banquet was covered in green felt rimmed with a wide, leather edge. Yushenko did a quick count––eleven high-backed leather chairs were set around, leaving enough room for a large man like him to pass between them and the railing without too much trouble.

"Perfect." The assistant's eyes gleamed in the semi-darkness. For now the lounge was lit by emergency lights around the floor, and the multi-coloured glitz coming in through the window.

"This is where the action will take place. Friday night," Yushenko said, brimming with anticipation. He was tempted to walk down the three steps to his seat like he had earlier in the afternoon. Instead he turned and lifted the wooden flap his staff used to go behind the bar. Everything appeared to be in order. All the bottles arranged on the recessed shelves were full, and free of dust.

"How many serving staff will you have on hand?" the assistant asked, probably not because he was actually interested, but for the sake of asking his boss something.

"One should always have a man for the ladies, and a lady for the men," Yushenko said, investigating the stacks of coasters and cocktail napkins, then the rocks glasses full of plastic swords and paper umbrellas. "So two. And both are very charming. I will have Gianni behind the bar––he knows when to entertain and also when he should not distract. For the floor I will have Rebecca Marks. She knows how to flirt, but clientele will know with her where they should keep their hands at all times. She also has ... connections."

They ambled along the length of the bar toward a seating area on the far side of the sunken area. Black leather tub chairs and low glass tables had been set around for all the guests accompanying the players. The assistant gazed up at the corridor leading into the darkness.

"That one leads to the administrator's office, the toilets and a supply room."

"And the safe?" the assistant asked, hesitantly.

"The far side of bar, is another corridor. Next to office," he said in a low voice. "That reminds me, we must review guest list."

They exited the lounge and headed along the main corridor that led to the penthouse lobby. Both of them nodded to the guard seated at the desk across from the elevator. While they waited, the assistant drew his phone out of the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

A bell dinged and the etched steel elevator doors rolled open. They stepped inside. Yushenko pressed the button for the ground floor. The doors rolled shut. "Tell me about this David Benson who is playing in my tournament."

"He's a hedge fund manager in London," the assistant said, scrolling through something on the screen of his phone.

"I never heard of him."

"He engages in Private Wealth management for a very select client base. Discretion is his specialty."

Yushenko brooded over this. He didn't like the idea of anything being so select that he had never heard of it. These Anglos liked having their own private club segregated from others, regardless of wealth or status.

"Mr. Benson was recommended by Andras Szabo, who was winner of the Crown Australian Championship and the World–"

"I know. Unfortunately we need star to attract rest of player." Andras Szabo was the one real threat to Yushenko's hopes for winning the entire jackpot. The one man he continuously failed to beat, from Macao to Monaco and everywhere in between.

"Andras boasts that with his winnings he will take up race car driving."

As the elevator doors opened to the hotel lobby on the ground floor, Yushenko was struck with an idea. Underhanded, but that was how he climbed the ranks. Ethics had never been his concern, so long as he evaded detection from anyone who was in a position to do anything about it. "He likes fast car, you say."

"Fast cars and fast women is his boast."

"Fast women," Yushenko repeated, the gears in his brain turning.