It Is Las Vegas After All: Triple Play, #1

By Howard Weiner

Two physicists are in a race with federal authorities and three former CIA agents to detonate a dirty bomb in Las Vegas. The physicists deploy several explosive devices, hidden in plain sight, that can be detonated at any time. Federal authorities realize too late that their best technologies, people, and staff cannot detect the existence and movement of small bombs. The safety of Las Vegas depends on three former CIA agents brought together by an employer with ill intent and strong ties to venture capitalists funding the latest crop of entrepreneurs. Who wins? Will Las Vegas be saved?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Howard Weiner
• Release date: Oct 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386042358

Howard Weiner

Howard Weiner is a recent addition to the literary genre of fiction. Writing mysteries, thrillers, crimes—with a touch of romance—an approach described by one reader as “one bubble off.” Many authors sharing the genre have characters whose fortune is determined by others. They literally have dodged the bullet that otherwise would have killed them. Weiner’s characters make their own fortune—good or bad—and they live with the results. Weiner’s own experiences are blessed with no small number of noteworthy characters and events. He brings these slightly off-kilter individuals to life, complete with their own stories and dramas. Like the child prodigy in his first novel, It Is Las Vegas After All, who comes to the starting edge of adulthood and then loses the approval of his doting parents, the sponsorship of one of America’s great institutions of higher education, and gains the enmity of his girlfriend’s father—an international arms dealer—to become a home-grown terrorist operating on U.S. soil. A survivor of rich, nuanced bureaucracies in the public and private sector, Weiner writes about characters whose career choices and decisions are morally questionable. A student of personal behavior in complex circumstances, Weiner brings these often cringe-worthy characters to life. Some are amoral, others immoral in a narrow slice of their lives, yet they otherwise look and act like people we all know from work or even childhood. Like one of the female leads in his novel, Serendipity Opportunity, an out-of-the-box thinker who flunks most of life’s basic relationship tests, yet she is someone you never want pursuing you in the cause of justice. There’s a former foreign security official who uses his protected status as a witness for federal prosecutors to provide cover for his own mayhem and murder in Weiner’s third novel, Bad Money. Many of Weiner’s stories are born out of real life events: The mix-up in luggage claim at the airport in, Bad Money, the chronic high school slacker in Serendipity Opportunity whose one stroke of good fortune creates his opportunity to perpetrate a complex series of frauds, or the brilliant student in It Is Las Vegas After All who uses his prodigious talents toward an evil end.

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Copyright

IT IS LAS VEGAS AFTER ALL. Copyright 2017 by Howard D. Weiner. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher/copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, please contact Howard D. Weiner, 200 Hoover Ave, Unit 1907, Las Vegas, NV 89101.

ISBN: 9781520894751 (paperback)

ISBN: various (ebook)

It Is Las Vegas After All is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Cover design by R.L. Sather of www.selfpubbookcovers.com.

Editing by Wendy F. Weiner

Additional editing by Laura Copland

Books by Howard Weiner

F I C T I O N

THE TRIPLE PLAY NOVELS

It Is Las Vegas After All¹

Serendipity Opportunity

The Big Lowandowski

HAIR ON FIRE NOVELS

Bad Money

By Any Other Name²

THE BLOOD RELATIONS NOVELS

One for the Price of Two

Deadly Walkabout

A C A D E M I C

Introduction to Structured COBOL: A Programming Skills Approach

¹Also available on audiobook

²Forthcoming, 2019

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my bride,

Wendy Weiner, on whose

shoulders, I stand.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Books by Howard Weiner

Dedication

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Overland Park, Kansas

The taste of BLOOD was the first thing Joe McRory noticed. His face was on fire and his swollen tongue felt sluggish. He knew talking would be difficult even before he tried to say anything.

The blindfold robbed him of sight, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing. The room was quiet except for the hum of the air conditioner. The carpet beneath his feet felt thick and new. He knew then that he was in the room his ex-wife designated the office even though the space was empty. Hell, except for the second-hand mattress on the floor in the bedroom and the wobbly table and mismatched chair in the kitchen, she had taken everything else.

Why am I tied to a chair, blindfolded? he thought. He tried to make sense of what led to his current circumstances without any luck.

He was sufficiently awake to conduct an inventory. Toes and feet fine. Legs immobilized and bound to the chair. Ribs sore, maybe one broken, but he could still breathe with some discomfort. The back of his neck was sore. Like it was awakening from a nap in a sitting position with his chin languishing on his chest. How long was I out? Yet another question without an answer.

The mental image of his face told him he’d suffered a beating. The non-stop pain confirmed it. And the taste and smell of his own blood made it difficult to detect any other scent or odor. So, he was surprised when he heard the noise to his left and realized he was not alone. I’m not alone. He tried to ask, Who’s there? What he spoke was so garbled even he couldn’t make any sense of the sounds coming from his mouth.

Tell him what he wants to know, said the other occupant of the room—almost a whisper. Maybe the beat down will stop. It doesn’t look like you can take much more.

The voice was low, and he couldn’t be certain of the speaker’s gender. Maybe a high-pitched male. Maybe a deeper throated female. He was in no condition to turn the brief lecture into a discussion. And the person sharing his space didn’t offer anything more.

What the fuck? he thought. What happened? Why am I here—with this other person? Who was my captor? What secret am I hiding? How much more of a beating can I endure?"

Despite the pain and blood, he lapsed back into the comfort of unconsciousness.

CHAPTER ONE

Overland Park, Kansas

McRory’s workout—and his life—had become stale and uninteresting. Getting to the gym each day, once something he welcomed, was now a daily chore. His once active social life drained away. Drinking a tall, healthy smoothie at the Juice Bar didn’t improve his outlook.

At least he was in good shape. He’d added five pounds to his large frame since graduation from the CIA’s Camp Peary. His instincts, however, weren’t as sharp as they once were. He was no longer practicing a spy’s tradecraft. Instead of an ever vigilant 360-degree field of vision, he focused on what lay immediately before him. He found that depressing. He’d lost a few steps. He tried to console himself that despite aging twenty years since he was a rookie intelligence agent, he remained in the top five—maybe even the top one—percent of his age group. Unfortunately, that might also place him in the bottom one percent of active agents. Not good for a spy. Not good at all.

Is this seat taken?

Before he could answer, the woman asking threw her gym bag on the small table top, pulled out the chair, and very ungracefully collapsed into a seated position. A vision of loveliness she wasn’t. She was still sweating. Her hair plastered to her forehead, and the armpits of her tee shirt rivaled the worst of those he’d seen in the weight room on a steamy summer’s day. And she smelled bad.

That looks good, she said as she reached across the small table, grabbed his smoothie, and proceeded to significantly reduce what remained in the tall glass. Her lack of grace extended to the way she consumed the health drink. First, no one who drank one of these things did so because of the taste. In fact, based on taste, this drink was near the end of the line behind water drawn from a pond filled with yellow slime. Second, no one downed these smoothies like they’d just emerged from a hike across Death Valley. And she made loud noises as she gulped the drink.

The gym bag smelled even worse than she did, if that was possible.

No, help yourself—the drink, too, if you’d like, always the gentleman but far from convincing.

Setting the glass back on the table she belched her thanks. Then she made a fist and tapped her chest and smiled just as junior high school boys did who were lacking in the social graces. He couldn’t help himself.

Good workout? Good thirst? He couldn’t resist the urge to offer a smiling, but still snide, commentary.

"Look, Missy, she started. At the home, you reached first, ate before the others, and didn’t worry about how you looked. Those who did worry ate last or not at all. Being first isn’t always pretty, but it sure beat finishing out of the money and leaving the table with a hunger burning a hole in your belly."

So, you’re an orphan?

No, she thoughtfully responded. I’m an adult.

But you were an orphan? Now he was interested in this one small point, not the whole package.

No, with a bit of an edge to her voice. She leaned across the small table, which was rapidly shrinking, as her face was now only a few inches from his.

And her breath smelled.

We’re a bit nosy, aren’t we?

Nooo, he slowly responded and closed the remaining distance between the two of them. "We’re freshly showered, clean shaven, clean brushed teeth, with clean clothing, and until just recently, not imposing on anyone." He sat back with his stern facial expression softening into the very slightest of smiles—a smile more of self-satisfaction than good will.

Her face remained impassive as her open hand flew up from the table and made contact with his nose. He never even saw it coming. Now it could be argued that he’d lost more than just a few steps in his situational awareness.

You broke my nose! He was bleeding, and not just a little. He was the human equivalent of an open fire hydrant with blood everywhere.

Oh, what a pussy! She hissed through clenched teeth. You couldn’t create more of a spectacle if you tried. She reached into his gym bag and pulled out his jockstrap pushing it into his face to stem the bleeding.

Again, he didn't see that one coming. Score one less for tradecraft and self-defense. Yet he did have a sense of how stupid he looked. Blood everywhere and the jockstrap pressed to his nose. No Nike Ad he.

His rut, his dry spell, just came to an ignominious end.

CHAPTER TWO

Overland Park, Kansas

The cop couldn’t HELP but smile as he filled out the report. The small lady gym rat clearly got one over on gym man. The guy looked like he just walked out of one of those deodorant commercials, minus the black eyes, broken nose, and a river of dried blood. She was small, but the score card clearly showed her to be the winner.

Mr. McRory, do you wish to press charges? The smile bordering on a smirk.

What? Him press charges? The voice inside her was almost screaming. The crowd in the Juice Bar was now standing room only. Nothing drew a crowd like a good juice bar fight. Make the victor a woman and the crowd grew larger, invested in the outcome. Too many in attendance snickered. Some more animated than others. This was clearly a spectacle; a thing of which reputations are made or destroyed or both. He insulted me! Made fun of me! He even made a joke about being an orphan.

The bit about the orphan wiped the smile from the cop’s face. Sir, you could still press charges. I’d suggest that you don’t. A judge might come down on the side of an orphan.

Losing steps? He was in a full trot in the opposite direction of competence and preparedness. Nothing in his training at Camp Peary prepared him for this. A quick scan of the faces in the crowd told him he’d lost their support, if he ever had it at all. The look of disapproval upon hearing he’d picked a fight with an orphan—and lost—pushed the crowd even further into her corner.

No, officer. I’d rather drop the entire matter.

The cop shook his head twice, turned to the crowd. Okay folks. We all saw the little girl smash the crap out of the Mr. America here. The show’s over. Let’s clear the store, unless you’re here to buy something. A few minutes later, the Juice Bar returned to its core group of dedicated health nuts and the two former combatants looking warily at one another across the blood splattered table.

Without saying anything more, just wanting the whole debacle to be over and to escape with a few shreds of his manhood intact, he gathered up his personal effects and exited the store. Walking to his car he attracted strange looks from the tide of humanity moving in the opposite direction. What a sight he was. At that point, he couldn’t have convinced anyone that he was once a fully qualified and highly ranked intelligence agent.

Not a one.

CHAPTER THREE

Bath, England

Nothing got in THE WAY of a good investment return more than an entrepreneur with anger management issues and a sense of entitlement. Early venture capitalists might have missed this point. Yet their management committees never forgot. Too many investments cratered because a good idea proved to be insufficiently good or there arose a problem in execution, branding, or effectively managing growth. Then there were the great ideas and brands brilliantly executed and managed that unraveled with an act of domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, or a pattern of driving while under the influence. The enduring lesson: Vet the entrepreneur. Elsemere Assessments provided this service.

Elsemere Assessments’ global headquarters operated out of a stately residence located on the big hill connecting the city of Bath to the university of the same name. The decidedly upscale neighborhood digs and unassuming office staff belied the true nature of its work.

People did not walk in to Elsemere to place their orders or make their inquiries. In fact, none of its clients in the five-year history of the firm ever paid a personal visit. All prospective clients called or sent an email to a corporate address. Prospects did not become new clients unless an existing client made the referral. Repeat clients conducted business with Elsemere by video conference using highly encrypted and secure communications links. Telephones didn’t ring. Conversations weren’t overheard. There was not a shred of paper, a folder, or a single file cabinet in the office. All correspondence was exchanged electronically, stored in the cloud—again, using the highest levels of encryption, far beyond that used by financial institutions and almost all government agencies.

Elsemere’s researchers conducted assessments of the entrepreneurs and principals of the emerging firms in which a VC might invest. Poor assessments usually forecast loss of the investment, or a subpar return—so no investment. VCs investing despite a researcher’s recommendation to the opposite incurred a substantial risk, like investing in a road-side bomb guaranteed to explode. You just weren’t sure when the bomb would detonate. The resulting explosion inevitably rendered a VC’s investment worthless.

Joseph Lincoln McRory was only one of Elsemere’s researchers, all of whom were former intelligence agents—some, but not all, having served the U.S. Government. The one thing this rather unique group shared: None knew the existence or identities of the others. They were all independent contractors. They worked anywhere but Overland Park and they were scattered throughout the U.S., Europe, Israel, and Australia.

What distinguished the work product of Elsemere was the depth and quality of their assessments. Their researchers weren’t bound by the privacy laws of any government. Indeed, no one’s secrets were beyond the reach of an Elsemere researcher. After all, the governments who selected and trained these former agents had an overwhelming regard for outcomes and everything else was just not an issue.

Former agents knew companies like Elsemere existed. During their active agent years, their respective brotherhoods informally shared information about this market and its need for agents who no longer practiced the tradecraft expected by their respective government sponsors. Think of it as an informal retirement plan only available to former agents. The governments knew about these organizations but did nothing to stop their recruitment efforts. After all, safeguarding the privacy rights of its citizenry was just not a part of their respective charters. Just the opposite, in fact.

⁑ ⁑ ⁑

Overland Park, Kansas

MCRORY CHECKED HIS personal portal operated by Elsemere on the dark web. Access required both a special web browser and an invitation to access restricted areas, or domains. Originally, the province of drug dealers, human traffickers, weapons merchants, and underground bazaars where almost anything can be purchased, Elsemere’s network remained difficult to spot and even more challenging to monitor. Search engines, like Google and Bing, were of no use on the dark web. Users of the dark web knew where they were going before clicking on a web browser.

Once connected and authenticated to the Elsemere’s servers, McRory could read his correspondence, or mail, and update the status of his in progress assessments, submit expense reports, and direct Elsemere’s payments to him to the financial institutions on the company’s approved list. He could also secure legal representation or bail, if he’d been apprehended while gathering data for an assessment. Unfortunately, making a request for help meant he’d been apprehended violating privacy laws, appropriating someone’s identity, or trespassing and always marked the end of the relationship. Elsemere’s researchers were cultivated over time and always selected for their stealth.

Today, McRory’s mail produced the notice of a new assignment. VeriWard, a start-up located in Chicago, was attracting the attention and possible funding by an early round of VCs. Users of the VeriWard smartphone app received notifications when nearby retailers advertised goods and services identified by the smartphone owner. Looking for a great price on Cannondale’s Jekyll mountain bike? Walk by the high-end bike store and your smartphone grabbed your attention directing you into the store with an electronic coupon at the ready. Retailers liked targeting their advertising dollars directly to motivated buyers skipping over the larger population who had little or no interest in an overpriced toy for wannabe athletes. Buyers were willing to figuratively raise their hands and volunteer to buy expensive things.

VeriWard’s data scientists took the preferences of high-value buyers and merchants, the geo-locations of both, and blasted what they termed mating calls via the cellular telephone network. Their hit rate started low, but with time and better analytics, an advertiser was likely to sell a product in a mating call six times out of ten. Traditional modes of advertising couldn’t come close. So VeriWard charged a premium for their services, and unlike most start-ups, they were profitable—very profitable. But they needed additional funding to expand to other major metropolitan areas. Growth was expensive, and the VCs were interested and wary.

VeriWard’s founder, Todd Adams, presented a bio rapidly becoming a standard for new entrepreneurs. A graduate of Stanford University, Adams spent the first several years of his post-graduate career working for Apple, then Google, and finally, Yahoo as a product manager. When Melissa Mayer assumed the helm of Yahoo, she brought with her hope and enthusiasm for a once pre-eminent high-tech company that, like a deflating balloon, was no longer flying high. Great promises aren’t always fulfilled, however. Yahoo continued to stumble, and bright product managers within saw the handwriting on the wall. They bailed. Or, they were pushed out of the nest by Mayer as one strategy after another proved ineffective.

Adams left with a severance package exceeding what most people could hope to earn in a year. He also departed with an encyclopedic knowledge of VCs he could call, when—not if—he had the next great idea. And, he did. In the first round of funding he managed to secure slightly more than $2M to develop the software, systems, and marketing plans for VeriWard. Early funding VCs also provided legal representation to protect their investment, financial management since VeriWard was burning through their $2M, and coaching for Adams who no longer could rely on the vast resources of an Apple, Google, or Yahoo.

Early VCs face the greatest set of risks. The emerging products and services they fund are largely unproven, and most fail. By surrounding the entrepreneur with lawyers, accountants, and office space, early funders mitigate some of the risk. So the energies of the entrepreneur can focus, like a laser, on product development. Early VCs engage this risk for a substantial share of the new company and its product. Even a moderate success can throw off enough cash to pay for a small army of failures. A success like VeriWard can produce stunning returns.

Nothing breeds success like success. The first VCs to surround an entrepreneur have no difficulty in attracting even more VCs to add funding once success is less of a risk. The big money funders take their share of the new company in return for the momentum their money provides. Unfortunately, the high-tech world is littered with once promising products that failed to leverage VC funding to grow and expand. The latest VCs to join in wanted to be certain that Todd Adams wasn’t an explosive device awaiting detonation.

⁑ ⁑ ⁑

Overland Park, Kansas

JAMES MCRORY’S MORNING communication feed from Elsemere tasked him with an assessment of Todd Adams. In the early stages of an assessment, McRory mined the public sources of information to assemble a basic story line for Adams. Anyone in their late 20s or early 30s had a footprint in the Internet. Working with popular search engines, McRory was able to reverse engineer Adams’ life. A person working in a high-tech field, especially an up-and-comer like Adams, left footprints in the press coverage