CASINO SHUFFLE (31 page)

“Ever ride that thing?”
 
Mark asked, pointing to the man lift.

“A few times,” said Antonio.

“Ain’t getting me on that,” said Mark.
 
“I don’t even know if I’d fit through them holes.”

“Got him,” said Chloe, clapping her hands together and wheeling backwards from the monitor.
 
“
Beat
your ass,” she said, pointing at Chewie.

“Whatever,” he murmured.
 
“I helped you out with the time.”

“Knock it off,” said Mark, stepping over to Chloe’s terminal.
 
“What have you got?”

Antonio leaned forward.
 
The image was paused.
 
There was a man in an engineering uniform standing in the hallway outside the Sachem Suite.
 
The view was from the top and to the man’s left.
 
“That’s Ang Wang.”

“Play it,” said Mark.

Chloe pulled herself back to the counter on her wheeled chair and hit a button.
 
The picture was fuzzed at the edges, and a digital count, in military time, ran down by seconds in the top right corner of the screen.
 
The disguised paparazzo lingered in the hallway, holding a work bag of some kind.

“What’s he waiting for?”
 
Mark squinted at the screen.
 
“I bet he called somebody in housekeeping to let him into the suite.”

“He’s not wearing an employee badge.”
 
Antonio frowned.
 
“I hope none of the Villa staff would allow him access to any of the rooms.”

“Want to put some money it?”

Antonio arched an eyebrow at him.
 
“I don’t wager on policy.”

Chewie said, “I’m in for ten bucks.”

Chloe added, “I would take that bet.”
 
She leaned her elbows on the counter.
 
“I think I remember this now.”

“He keeps looking over his shoulder,” said Antonio.
 
“Can you tell me what’s behind him?”

Chloe moved to another laptop and began typing, checking the time on the monitor and inputting it into the surveillance system, along with the camera ID code.
 
“Got it.
 
There’s a guest over there on their cell phone, holding a briefcase.”

“He’s not sure if it’s vacant,” said Antonio.
 
“He wants to make sure the man isn’t going to go into the Sachem Suite.”

Mark asked, “How long’s he been standing out there?”

Chloe checked the time.
 
“Minute.”

“The guest just walked past Ang and continued down the hall,” said Antonio.
 
“He’s reaching into his pocket.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Mark.
 
“Where the hell did he get a key?”

On screen, Ang swiped a key through the lock on the door.
 
Seconds later he was inside the room.

“Back that up, if you would,” said Antonio.
 
“And please zoom in on the key he used.”

“Got it,” said Chloe.
 
She paused the image, rewound it, and clicked on an icon that allowed her to click a section of the screen and zoom.
 
“Let me focus the image, hold on a sec.”
 
She used an on-screen enhancement menu to change resolution and contrast.
 
“Can’t get much.”

“That’s enough,” said Antonio.
 
He turned to Mark.
 
“Can you tell what type of key that is?”

“Yup,” said Mark.
 
“Villa keys are gold.
 
That ain’t gold.”

“Looks gray,” said Chloe.
 
“Oh shit.
 
It’s a hotel master key.”

Mark sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.
 
“Security, engineering, hotel, housekeeping, executives.
 
There’s so many masters out there that might work.”
 
He spoke into his cuff mic.
 
“M1 to base.
 
I need a lock interrogation on the Sachem Suite ASAP.
 
Time 20:35 hours.”
 

“Excellent idea.
 
That will give us the exact key number.
 
We can backtrack to see which department it’s assigned to.”
 
Antonio stared at the image.
 
“Ang Wang has a partner in crime.”

“I hate traitors,” said Mark.
 
“When I find him I’m gonna bury his body in the woods.”

“Speaking of finding somebody,” said Chewie.
 
“Check this guy out from earlier today.
 
This the dude?”

Mark and Antonio stepped over to the monitor.
 
This screen showed what appeared to be a family of Asians in a lower floor hotel hallway.

“Which one?”
 
Mark frowned.
 
“This one?
 
That ain’t him.”

“The man in the baseball cap,” said Antonio.
 
“On his cell phone.
 
That’s Ang Wang.”

“I knew it!”
 
Chewie pumped his hands up and down in the air.
 
“When I was watching them earlier I figured he was with the family, you know?
 
But then everybody goes into the room except him.
 
I tried to find him in the stairwell or in the hallway, afraid he was going to start banging on doors to find his group, but he was gone.
 
Watch.
 
There they go into the room…”

“And he disappears,” said Mark.
 
“Vending area?”

“Wrong end of the hallway,” said Chewie.

“Maybe he did go in and we just missed it.”
 
Mark looked at Antonio.

Antonio asked, “What floor was this?”

“Twenty-one,” said Chewie.

“The attic,” said Antonio.

“Where they store all the furniture?”
 
Mark shrugged.
 
“Why not?
 
He has a master key.”

“Nope,” said Chloe.
 
“The attic is a hard key, not a magnetic lock.
 
The mechanism was never changed out after original construction.”

Chewie pushed away from the monitor.
 
“And I don’t have camera coverage down at the end of that hall because there’s no guest rooms.
 
Can’t see shit.”

“So it’s not the attic,” said Mark.
 
“He can’t get in there unless he got a key from his mystery friend on the inside.
 
And only housekeeping has that key.”

Antonio inhaled deeply, thinking.
 
“We cannot underestimate our opponent.
 
He has proven extremely resourceful thus far.”
 
He removed his BlackBerry and scrolled through his email, brining up the images of the broken furniture from Ang Wang’s suite.
 
He held it out to Mark.
 
“Ah-ha.”

“Ah-ha,” said Mark.

Chloe and Chewie looked at each other, then back to Antonio and Mark.
 
“Ah-ha-what?”

“Tricky little jerk,” said Mark.
 
“He busted up the furniture in his suite so Housekeeping would have to replace it with stuff from the attic.”

“Thus allowing access.
 
Is there camera coverage in the stairwell on that floor?”
 
Antonio asked.

Chewie nodded.
 
“Yeah, but it doesn’t record.
 
We don’t even pay attention unless someone calls us to tell us to watch the stairwells.”

“What about the woman that was taking a whiz?”
 
Mark tapped the counter.
 
“You were watching that.”

Chloe said, “We followed her in there real time.
 
She was stumbling around drunk.
 
Figured she was going to throw-up and we wanted to give Housekeeping a head’s up.”
 
She shrugged.
 
“Sorry guys.”

“That’s fine,” said Antonio.
 
“I believe we can assume he waited in the stairwell until Housekeeping arrived with the broken furniture from his suite.
 
When given the opportunity he extricated himself from the stairwell and caught the door before it closed, or simply slipped inside unseen while it was propped open.”

Chewie smiled at Chloe.
 
“Extricated.
 
I love listening to him talk.”

Mark tapped Antonio on the shoulder.
 
“Hey.”

“Yes?”
 
Antonio turned his attention to a monitor on the wall where Mark was pointing.
 
It was the Villa corridor.
 
On the screen the door to the corner suite opened and Max Allen could be seen dropping an armload of what appeared to be all the food from his kitchen into a pile in the hallway.
 
Antonio watched in astonishment as Max looked first one way down the hall, then the other, and then ducked back inside his room and closed the door.
 
“I need to see the footage of five minutes before that moment.
 
Then I had better be going.”

“I’ll check out the attic.”
 
Mark was glaring at his wristwatch.
 
“This night is
never
going to end.”

Chewie said, “By the way you owe me ten bucks, dude.”

“Oh shut up.”
 
Mark popped the tab on his soda.
 
“Dude.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

As Max rifled through the kitchenette cabinets of his corner suite, grabbing what was left of the snack foods, he could hear Shannon running water in the small guest bathroom off the entryway.
 
Arms full of Doritos, Fritos, a six-pack of Diet Coke and a few Snickers bars clutched in one hand, he hurried past the closed bathroom door and pressed his body against the front door of the suite, trying to find the handle with his free hand.
 
The bag of Doritos exploded in his arm.
 
His heart exploded in his chest.

Brandon
shot me through the door!

That ridiculous thought left as quickly as it came with the smell of powdered cheese and the feel of Doritos cascading down his legs.

Shannon
called out from the bathroom behind him.
 
“What was that noise?”

Max said over his shoulder, “Huh?”

“I heard a noise.
 
Is everything okay?”

“I stepped on a…balloon.”

“A what?”

Max looked down at the marble entryway now redecorated with a broken mosaic of tortilla chips.
 
“There was a party in here last night.
 
Guess housekeeping didn’t finish cleaning up.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Just give me a minute before you come out.”

“I don’t mind.
 
As long as they changed the sheets on the bed.”

Max opened the door as quietly as possible and dropped the food in the pile in the hallway.
 
He looked up and down the corridor again.
 
Thank god it was late enough where no one was out there to see what he was doing.
 
With his foot he swept the fallen chips into the hallway, and brushed the remaining crumbs into the closet.
 
He rushed back through the suite.
 
Why had he done this?
 
This was completely ridiculous.
 
What other choice had he had?
 
Shannon
needed another room.
 
He had no idea if the villas were all rented out, and even if they weren’t, he didn’t know which ones were vacant, and even if he did, he had given the master key back to the security guard.
 
The only suite that he knew for a fact that had nobody inside it was his own corner suite.
 
The problem was it had all his
stuff
inside it, and it did
not
look vacant.
 
Luckily
Shannon
wanted to clean up in the bathroom and take her sleeping pills, giving him time to get rid of everything.
 
But the food wasn’t everything.
 
What else…