City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)(71)

Terri is just out of the shower. Body and hair both wrapped in towels.

With this look on her face.

Stricken.

“What?” Danny asks.

“I felt something,” she says, “in my breast.”



The woman is both buxom and statuesque. In her feathered headdress, she moves gracefully across the lawn like a beautiful, exotic bird.

Madeleine watches her.

All the models are dressed in Manny Maniscalco’s most iconic creations. Madeleine made sure that the showgirls wearing Manny’s greatest designs at the party following his funeral possessed the bodies to show them off at their best.

Some people in the greater Las Vegas community, the serious business types less associated with the Strip, think it vulgar and grotesque, this fete thrown on the grounds of his estate, with the scantily clad chorus girls wandering around displaying themselves. Especially so as it was the idea of a woman who, when they were married, regularly cuckolded her late ex-husband.

Madeleine doesn’t care what they think.

She knew that Manny, a deeply ugly man, loved above all things to surround himself with beauty, especially of the feminine kind.

So she wanted to give him this.

Madeleine had moved back to the estate when she found out that he was terminally ill. They’d stayed in touch over the years, on the phone or for the occasional dinner, and at one of the latter she saw that he was obviously sick and pried it out of him. When, weeks later, the doctors told him there was nothing more they could do, and Manny wanted to die at home instead of in the hospital, she simply moved in to take charge of his care.

She brought in round-the-clock nurses to administer medication and to wash him, but she sat with him most of the time, kept him company through the long nights, wiped his forehead, held his hand.

They talked and laughed about the old days, the trips they took, the dinners they had, the shows they saw, the characters they knew.

When he died, it was Madeleine who closed his eyes.

She went off and cried, then pulled it together and started in on the business of planning his funeral and this elaborate send-off.

Everyone who is anyone is there, for Manny was highly regarded and deeply beloved in all of Las Vegas’s interlocking circles. The mayor, the congressman, businesspeople, show people, casino types, and wiseguys stand chatting on the lawn, nibbling canapés, sipping fine wines and sharing stories about Manny.

And whispering about Madeleine, for the news about Manny’s will is already grist for the Vegas rumor mill, and the gossip is that she moved in on him during his last days to charm him in his weakened state, to bring in a lawyer and, in her presence, change his will.

It isn’t true.

No one was more shocked than Madeleine when the lawyer revealed that Manny had left her everything—the majority shares of Maniscalco Manufacturing, tens of millions in stocks and bonds, real estate holdings, more millions in cash. Everything is hers now—the estate, the mansion, the horses, the stables, the tennis courts, the pool.

The lawyer took her aside to assure her that Manny hadn’t changed the will recently; in fact, it had read exactly this way since the day they divorced.

“He told me that you brought him beauty,” the lawyer said.

So Madeleine, already rich from her own efforts, is now wealthy. She can easily afford the half million dollars she dropped on this party.

A full big band from one of the shows is playing “All the Things You Are”—one of Manny’s favorites—and earlier a big recording star with her own show sang “My Funny Valentine.”

One of Manny’s favorite comedians, one of those “insult comics,” did a roast of him—“When Madeleine said ‘I do,’ the minister asked, ‘You do?’ No, but Manny really liked the horses, you know. Why not? He had a face like one. Hey, don’t tell the horses I said that . . .”

Madeleine had brought in the whole Las Vegas circus—musicians, singers, comics, jugglers, acrobats, musicians, and, of course, the showgirls. Now they all circulate among the guests, performing their tricks or just displaying their beauty, and it’s a party that she knows Manny would have loved.

She’s admiring one of the showgirls when Pasco Ferri walks up to her.

The old mob boss traveled from Florida to pay his respects and to represent other bosses who didn’t think they should make an appearance in public. He was an old friend of Manny’s and Madeleine has known him for years.

“A beautiful party, Maddy,” Pasco says.

“I think he would have liked it,” she says. “Tell me, how’s my son?”

“Danny and me, we don’t talk much.”

“I know the feeling.”

“He’s a good kid, Danny,” Pasco says.

“He’s not a kid,” Madeleine says. “He has a child of his own now.”

“I heard. Every happiness.”

Madeleine shrugs. “I haven’t seen my grandson.”

“Danny’s like his old man,” Pasco says. “Stubborn. You heard about Irish Alzheimer’s? They forget everything but the grudges.”

“I worry about him,” Madeleine says. “This thing with the Morettis. Anything you can do there, Pasco, I’d appreciate it. You know I can open certain doors here. I’m not without influence with the gaming commission, for instance.”