The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas (17 page)

I shook my head. ‘No tossing. I’m studiously neat. And you can rest assured that my night didn’t go nearly so well as I might have hoped.’

Ricks looked from me, to Victoria, then rested his chin on his chest and shook his head.

‘We don’t have a great deal of time left.’ I checked my digital watch and scared myself with how true that happened to be. ‘Can’t you at least give us a chance to save ourselves? Don’t keep Victoria locked in here.’

Ricks firmed up his jaw, then released a gasp of air and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I don’t know why I’m even listening to this.’

‘We won’t gamble again,’ I went on. ‘Not one bet at one table.’

‘Charlie, be serious.’ Victoria moved across from the wall. ‘You can’t promise him that.’

‘Sure I can. After all, not gambling is a Newbury family rule.’

‘If I even catch you with one chip in your pretty English hand,’ Ricks warned Victoria, before letting the words trail off and allowing his shoulders to sag. ‘Lady, you should know that your father is the only reason I’m even entertaining this.’

‘Do we have a deal?’ I asked, and offered Ricks my hand.

‘Shoot,’ he said, and shook my hand wearily, like a man doomed to confront the fate he has just set in motion.

‘Victoria?’

‘Okay, fine.’ She snatched up her ring from the surface of the table and held it between her thumb and forefinger, thrusting it towards Ricks’ face. ‘But I’m keeping my lucky ring.’

Ricks shook his head some more and gathered up his cardboard folder. ‘Way I see things, you may just need it.’

He approached the heavy metal door and unlocked it with his key, then heaved the thing open and motioned for us to leave. I guided Victoria outside with my hand on the small of her back, where the sequined material of her cocktail dress met with her skin. I was crossing into the hallway when I paused and leaned close to Ricks’ ear.

‘There is one more thing,’ I said, in what could have passed for a whisper.

‘You don’t know when to quit, do you, guy?’

‘An address,’ I went on. ‘And a name. For the croupier working the roulette-table Josh was fixing. The one likely to end up with a hook where his hand used to be.’

‘That all?’

‘That’s the last of it.’

Ricks pouted, and tipped his head to the side. ‘I’ll have someone look into it.’

‘Terrific.’ I patted him on the shoulder. ‘You’re a gentleman. And you’ve done a very noble thing here today.’

‘Save it,’ he said. ‘Quit trying to work me, and get out of my sight before I change my mind.’

‘Consider it done,’ I told him, and with that I whisked Victoria away along the corridor without a backwards glance.

TWENTY-FIVE

‘I can’t believe you’re smoking again,’ Victoria said.

‘Really?’ I exhaled. ‘That’s what you want to lead with?’

We were sitting across from one another in a cushioned booth in the Fifty-Fifty’s Starlight Eaterie. Our table was a landfill of crockery. When we’d first joined the queue for the breakfast buffet, I hadn’t felt hungry. Then I’d seen the mountains of food on offer, and my stomach had begun to plead its case. I’d loaded my plate with cooked meats, eggs (scrambled and poached), hash browns and grilled tomatoes, then returned for pancakes, waffles, fresh fruit, maple syrup and cream. I’d washed it all down with orange juice and enough coffee to see around time, and then I’d begun to debate whether I should loosen off my belt buckle and assess the muffins. After a good deal of thought, I’d concluded that it might be more appropriate to ignore the No Smoking signs and light a cigarette, and it was this decision that had prompted Victoria to speak for the first time in more than ten minutes.

‘But you were doing so well.’

‘I was a walking nicotine patch.’

‘I just hate to see it.’

‘Well now, we can’t all be perfect, can we?’

Victoria slumped in her chair and crossed her arms over the scooped neck of her cocktail dress. If we’d been anywhere other than Las Vegas, I imagine she would have felt kind of slutty to be eating breakfast in (it must be said) a rather revealing outfit. But in a funny way, it seemed entirely fitting, and if only I’d been sporting my tux I could have convinced myself that we’d spent the night playing high-stakes baccarat and were now the dishevelled stars of a quintessential Vegas moment.

Victoria kicked me in the shin. ‘You might as well go ahead. I can see you’re dying to goad me.’

‘I’m shocked, is all.’ I placed my hand on my heart and widened my eyes. ‘It’s not every day that you learn a dark secret about your best friend.’

‘So I lied to you, Charlie.
Whoopee!
And yes, I get that you think that it’s not terribly different from how you lied to me about the way you really look. And in your eyes, that makes me a hypocritical bitch for the way I reacted. So I guess you’re entitled to crow about it before you grow up and realise that we’re even.’

‘Even? You had me believe your father was a bastion of respectability. A High Court judge.’

‘Well, what would you have had me say?’

‘The truth. Christ, out of everyone you know I’m probably the most likely to understand.’

‘It’s not something I’m especially proud of.’

‘Well, from what Ricks said, maybe you should be. Your father must have been good.’

Vic squinted. I raised my cigarette to my mouth and did likewise. The brand I’d stolen was stronger than I was used to. I was starting to like it.

‘Oh, give me one of those,’ Victoria said, and reached for the packet.

‘You’re kidding me.’

Victoria offered me an insincere smile as she removed a cigarette. She struck a match from a book with the hotel’s logo on it and raised the flame towards her face. Sounds corny, but I was beginning to see her in a whole new light (and I don’t just mean the one from the match).

‘I didn’t know that you smoked.’

‘Oh Charlie. There’s an awful lot that you don’t know about me.’

She drew expertly on the cigarette, her chest expanding as her cheeks hollowed out. She held the cigarette very elegantly between her fingers, with her bare elbow cupped in her palm. How someone smokes can be such an intimate, revealing thing. Watching Victoria, I could almost picture her back in her university days, sitting on a windowsill with a college scarf around her neck, a volume of poetry in her hand and a faraway look in her eyes.

‘So tell me something else that I don’t know about the mysterious Victoria Newbury.’

She leaned her head back and exhaled smoke towards the ceiling. A doped smile stretched her mouth.

‘Dad’s still active, for one thing.’

‘He is?’

She pointed at me with her cigarette. ‘You remind me of him in that way. Can’t help himself. Enjoys the life too much.’

‘And he’s successful?’

She nodded. ‘Very. He works in the Far East these days. Likes to go where the casinos and dealers are new. Says they’re vulnerable while they’re learning the trade.’

I blew a plume of smoke from my lips. ‘And what does your mum think of all this?’

‘She dislikes the risks involved, but at the same time she enjoys the lifestyle. It used to be she was raising us while he was away in Europe and America, so she never got to experience it for herself. Nowadays, I’d say she’s a lot more understanding.’

‘And does he work alone?’

‘Nuh uh.’ She took another hit on her cigarette. ‘You need a good team. Dad works with five or six like-minded people around his own age. Mostly they card count. The other moves – past posting, for instance – it’s too easy to get caught.’ She exhaled and wafted the smoke away. ‘As you saw for yourself.’

She reached across and tapped some ash into the saucer I was using. I took another draw myself. The smoke and the coffee were beginning to make me feel a touch light-headed. If it wasn’t for the weight of all the food in my stomach, I might very well have floated up from my seat.

‘So how much do you know about cheating a casino?’

‘More than the average person.’ She cocked her shoulders. ‘Less than an expert.’

‘Your father taught you?’

She nodded, and her eyes lit up, as though she was recalling a fond memory.

‘He wasn’t home as much as I’d have liked. Partly it was the work, but you could always tell he relished the travel too. That’s another way in which you remind me of him. A wandering soul.’ The skin crinkled at the corners of her eyes. ‘I suppose it made the times he was home more special. He had a den – still has, in fact – and it’s like a mini-casino in there. He has a French roulette-table and a blackjack felt, a little faded and frayed these days. When we were kids, he used to play with us.’

‘And did he play fair?’

She grinned. ‘Fair wasn’t anything he cared about, or anything he taught us. He just liked to win. And counting cards, or using a twinkle, those were simply ways of achieving that. To him, the entire life is a game. He’s just very thorough in the way that he plays.’ Victoria stubbed her cigarette into a smear of ketchup. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t as interested as he wanted me to be. It’s like your lock-picking. I can understand the theory, but to get good at something, you really have to practise. I just didn’t care enough.’

‘So what happed at Space Station One?’

Victoria slumped back against the vinyl booth cushion. ‘Desperation. We needed money fast and I didn’t see the sense in leaving it to luck.’

I blew the last of the smoke from my lungs and stubbed out my own cigarette. I twirled the packet on the table.

‘Quite a risk.’

‘You’re telling me. Ricks was right. Dad would have been mortified.’

‘How come?’

She sighed. ‘Twinkles? They went out of fashion around the era this hotel is meant to represent. And past posting without a team behind you? Well.’ Victoria threw up her hands, as if it was explanation enough. I wasn’t sure that I followed her.

‘Did you think you’d be caught?’

‘I realised there was a reasonable likelihood I might be.’

‘So why try?’

‘You mean aside from the fact we might be killed tonight?’

‘Yup.’

She reached for the sugar dispenser and tipped sugar granules into her palm. ‘It was Josh, actually.’

‘Masters? What did
he
have to do with it?’ I searched out her eyes and peered hard into them, trying to pick up on what she was saying. She smirked a little, as if I was being altogether too slow. ‘Wait. You knew he was cheating, didn’t you?’

‘There you go.’

‘But how?’

She ditched the dispenser and dusted her palms together, sprinkling sugar over the table. ‘I was watching him, while you were playing poker. He was being so brazen about what he was up to. It intrigued me.’

‘You could see he was using one of those bottle tops to trade up his chips?’

‘Not to begin with. The first thing I noticed was that he was palming some of the chips that belonged to the woman sitting across from him – the sweet old lady with the gold lamé jacket? Then I noticed that he was past posting too.’

‘The cheeky rogue. And you were willing to help him?’

‘Not with the old lady. I told him to put her chips back.’

‘And did he?’

‘He didn’t have much choice. I would have exposed him if he didn’t.’

‘Christ. No wonder he gave you free tickets to his show.’

‘Oh, I imagine he enjoyed it. All men like to show off, right?’

‘I’ve heard it said.’

Victoria stretched her arms way above her head. She yawned and groaned somewhat indulgently.

‘Charlie, we’re really stuffed.’

I put my hand to my belly. ‘I know. I think it was the pancakes.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, we’re screwed. I messed up and got caught and now we can’t gamble any more.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I told her.

‘Like hell. I suppose we could head downtown to Freemont Street.’

‘Seriously, Vic. I’ve found a way to make the money we need.’

She propped her elbows on the table and pushed her face towards me. ‘Then I’m all ears.’

I checked over my shoulder. ‘Can we discuss this upstairs in my room?’

‘Works for me. I have something to tell you myself, as it happens. But let me just ask you one thing. Is it legal?’

‘Oh, Vic,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you know me at all.’

TWENTY-SIX

‘Ah, sweet, sweet bed. It feels so good to have found you again.’

Victoria flopped onto my bed as if she’d been crawling across an arid desert for many days and had finally chanced upon a glistening oasis. She spread her arms wide, luxuriating in the thick cotton bedcovers, lifted her legs into the air and kicked off her shoes.

‘Oh, that feels good,’ she said.

I dropped into an easy chair beside the mini-bar and rested my face in my hands. ‘I’m shattered.’

‘Me too. So come on, tell me how you’re going to save our hides before I’m completely unconscious.’

She commando-crawled up the bed, turned and collapsed onto the pillows and cushions propped against the headrest. Her cocktail dress had ridden up on her thighs and she tugged the sequined material down at the hem, before covering her legs with a spare pillow.

Her legs really weren’t at all shabby. And there was a dizzied fatigue to her eyes that was sort of endearing. In other circumstances, at another time . . .

I rubbed my face, clearing my mind of the notion.

‘I tracked down Maurice,’ I said, with sudden focus. ‘The guy from the note we found in Josh’s suite.’

‘You did? How?’

‘Long story. The short version is that there’s a show at the Atlantis resort, a circus-type revue that features our friends from upstairs – the giant and the midget.’

Victoria winced.

‘The giant is called Kojar. The midg— Sorry,
the short one
is called Sal. And Maurice is a chap called Maurice Mills. He produces the show.’

‘And what’s this Maurice character like?’

‘In a word? Strange. He likes everything to be white. His clothes, his house, his furniture – all white. It’s kind of like meeting an angel with a personality disorder.’

‘And is he on the side of the angels?’

‘Hard to say. But he is the source of the money we need.’

‘So he’s rich?’

‘He certainly has a bob or two. And he has a plan to make an awful lot more.’

‘And is that where we come in?’

I laced my fingers together behind my head and yawned rather flamboyantly. ‘Pretty much,’ I said, and from there I went on to explain as much as I could.

I began by telling Victoria how Maurice was looking to make the step up from Vegas show producer to casino impresario, how Kojar and Salvatore were part of his crew, and how Josh had been promised the key role in the Magic Land theatre in return for helping them to obtain the necessary ‘juice’ to build the casino. I started to expand on what was meant by the term juice, but it seemed that Victoria was ahead of me on that score, and so I skipped forward and told her about the blackmail list that the Fisher Twins had compiled, and how Josh had failed to get his hands on it. From there, I told her that I’d been hired to steal the list in return for the one hundred and forty thousand dollars that we needed . . . and I was all set to go on and address some of the detail of what stealing the juice list would involve when Victoria interrupted me.

‘Hang on, let me get this straight,’ she said, with a face as tart as lemon juice. ‘Your solution to paying off the Fisher Twins is to steal something from them that’s more valuable than the money they’re after us for in the first place.’

‘In a nutshell, yes.’

Her eyes bugged out of her head and she gazed at me as if I was certifiable. ‘Don’t you think it might be better if we stole from somebody other than the people we actually owe money to?’

‘It would have been nice if things could have turned out that way.’

‘Charlie, if we get caught, I really don’t see it going down too well.’

‘They’ve already said they’re going to kill us, Vic. I don’t know how much worse it can get.’

She lowered her face and picked idly at the cotton pillowcase. ‘Hmm.’

‘Is that a “Hmm, yes, I can see how you’ve offered us the best possible solution to a tricky situation and, while I don’t feel altogether comfortable about it, I realise it’s the only shot we’re going to get”?’

‘No, Charlie. It’s just a “Hmm”. I really don’t know what to say.’

‘Nothing
to
say.’ I craned my neck and read the alarm clock on the bedside cabinet. ‘We have something like eleven hours left to pull it off.’

‘Eleven hours.’ She grimaced. ‘How difficult is this going to be?’

‘Well, it ain’t easy.’

‘I had a feeling you’d say that. Where is this juice list?’

It was my turn to grimace. ‘I’m told the twins keep it in their office. In a variety of safe that I’ve attempted to open three times before in my life.’

‘Just attempted?’

‘I got close once. If I’d had another hour or two, I’d have cracked it no problem.’

‘Oh good grief. And what does this juice list look like exactly?’

‘Maurice didn’t know for sure. But the likelihood is that it’ll be in electronic format, rather than a little black book, say.’

‘And just where is the twins’ office to be found?’

‘On the top floor of this hotel.’

Victoria’s eyes swivelled towards the ceiling, as though she could see through the forty or so storeys that separated us from our goal.

‘Please tell me it’s dead easy for us to get to.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think ignorance could be bliss, but I suspect I should really know what we’re up against.’

I retrieved my hands from behind my neck and contemplated my nails, playing the part of a man barely troubled by the obstacles that confront him.

‘Well, for starters, there are just three ways to reach the twins’ office. The most direct route is a private express elevator that only the twins and a handful of staff are entitled to use. In order to operate the elevator, you have to swipe a key card and type in a six-digit code. There are security cameras fitted inside the carriage, and the cameras screen footage to two personal assistants positioned outside the twins’ office.’ I glanced up from my nails. ‘Actually, there are six personal assistants – they work a shift pattern so that two of them are always on duty at any one time.’

‘And the other ways?’

I clicked my teeth. ‘Option B involves the service stairs leading up from the floor below, where a security desk is manned twenty-four-seven and the door is protected by another six-digit code.’

‘Or?’

‘Option C – I start on the roof and get to perform my world-famous cat burglar routine.’

‘Christ.’

‘Only I have vertigo.’

‘Christ.’

‘And I’d need to know how to abseil – which I don’t – and I’d have to be able to break through a triple-pane glass window without making a sound – which I can’t – and it would really help if I could get out the same way and find a plausible escape route – which may involve a helicopter. Oh, and then there’s the challenge of doing it all without being spotted by the thousands of tourists outside this building at any one time, and with the kind of money and equipment we simply don’t have.’

‘We’re not filming
Ocean’s Eleven
here, Charlie.’

‘More like
Ocean’s Two
, on a really tight budget. Assuming you’re prepared to help, that is?’

‘Of course I’ll help. You know I’ll do what I can.’

Victoria smoothed her hands over the pillowcase and her brow wrinkled in a way that showed me she was clearly troubled by something. It wasn’t very long before she told me what that something was.

‘Do you really believe that Josh was planning to steal this juice list?’

‘I’m not sure I care. Right now, all I’m bothered about is paying off the Fisher Twins and getting out of Vegas alive.’

‘It bothers
me
.’

I found myself smiling. ‘That’s because you’re a stickler for tying loose threads together. And I appreciate it when you’re reading one of my manuscripts, but in a situation like this, you have to let some things go.’

‘And what if I don’t want to?’

‘You could sleep on it. You said you were tired, right?’

‘I can’t sleep with all this running around my head, Charlie.’

‘Vic, you should see yourself. I reckon you could sleep through a hurricane about now. In fact, I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if you’re not already asleep and this is just a bad dream. Why don’t you close your eyes and find out?’

She gave me a skewed look, as if her patience was running very thin indeed.

‘If it helps you to relax,’ I went on, ‘we can’t try anything before four o’clock this afternoon. Maurice tells me the Fisher Twins play golf at that time every day. There’s a course on an Indian reservation in the middle of the desert. It’s a half-hour drive from the Strip. So even if they only play nine holes, it should give us enough time.’

‘Will you at least hear me out?’

I gritted my teeth and cradled my forehead, as if someone was twisting a screw inside my brain and I wasn’t entirely thrilled about it.

‘Fine. Go ahead and put doubts in my mind. After all, there’s no sense in making any of this easier on ourselves.’

Victoria curled her lip and drew my attention to the middle finger on her right hand. Then she showed me her other fingers and began counting them off.

‘Point one, why would Josh do it? He already has a show that’s doing very well. The Fifty-Fifty is a prestigious casino and he’s making a lot of money.’

She held onto her index finger, poised to curl it down and move on to her second concern.

‘You want me to answer these one by one, or all at once?’

‘Point two,’ she went on, ignoring me, ‘he’s an illusionist, not a burglar. From what you say, the safe this juice list is stored in is difficult to open.’

‘Not if you have the code.’

She glared at me. ‘Obviously. But Josh wouldn’t have the code because it’s not his safe. So why would anyone think he could get hold of the list?’

‘And point three?’

Victoria closed her hand into a fist and studied her knuckles, as if she was wondering what kind of imprint they might leave on my face.

‘I don’t have a point three,’ she said, stiff-jawed.

‘So what’s with the finger-counting?’

‘Does it matter? Aren’t those two questions enough to be going on with?’

I shrugged, somewhat half-heartedly. And if only I could have summoned another yawn, I would have added that too. Because the truth is, the same concerns had been nibbling away at the back of my mind, and I’d been trying my hardest to ignore them.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘as for your first point, I’d say that you can never underestimate the ego, ambition and greed of a cretin like Josh Masters. Okay, he had a pretty comfortable set-up here, but he wasn’t performing in the main theatre, and he wasn’t the casino’s headline star. So I reckon it was a status thing, not to mention a money thing.’

‘That sounds a little weak, Charlie.’

‘And as for your second point, it could be he
does
know his way around a safe. Maurice was telling me that Josh has some escapology built into his show. And granted, a lot of magicians use gimmicked cuffs and locks, but if Masters was even halfway serious, he’d have taught himself the basics of lock-picking and safe manipulation. Look at me. As a kid, I was into card tricks, and yes, as time went on, I became more interested in locks, but there’s nothing to say Josh didn’t have a similar background. And a lot of the stuff you see in magic carries over into the work I do. Dexterity, sleight of hand, misdirection.’

‘Even weaker.’

I stood up from my chair and paced the carpet. Pacing the carpet didn’t help a great deal. I moved over to the window and gazed out at the Strip. Traffic was as busy as ever. The sidewalks too. Opposite, the hotel towers of Caesars Palace thrust upwards into the white-blue sky as if a little piece of Benidorm – the worst piece of Benidorm – had been transplanted into the middle of the desert landscape.

‘All right,’ I said, tapping a finger on the window glass. ‘Ask yourself this. Why did he run away in the middle of his show? True, the Fisher Twins knew about his gambling scam, but that’s the kind of thing they could have resolved among themselves. God knows, there are enough stories about Vegas stars indulging in excess.’

‘So what are you suggesting?’

I turned and flattened my back against the window. ‘I’m suggesting that maybe he’d made a real mess of trying to get his hands on the juice list. If he’d screwed up so badly that the twins had found out what he was trying to do, then he had good reason to be scared.’

‘But if that’s the case, wouldn’t they have quizzed us about the list?’

It was a good point, and yet another one I hadn’t been able to reconcile in my mind.

‘All I can think, Vic, is that the twins assumed we were only a part of the gambling fix. Perhaps they believed we were just a distraction. So that’s more misdirection. And then there’s the twins’ sister, of course.’

‘Who?’

I stared quizzically at Victoria. It took me a while to realise that I’d forgotten to fill her in on that particular connection. I must have been more tired than I thought.

‘Caitlin. The dead girl in the bath – it turns out that she was their sister.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I’m afraid so. And when you factor that in, it’s another very good reason why Josh might have felt like he had to run. Hell, she could be the primary reason. Think about it – they worked together, they were friends. What’s to say Josh didn’t tell her what he was planning? What’s to say he didn’t ask her to help him and join him at Magic Land? Say he did, and say she couldn’t handle the idea of her brothers being duped, and so she told them what Josh was up to. That would explain why he killed her. And that would make sense of why he ran.’

I spread my hands against the window glass and waited for Victoria to acknowledge the logic in what I’d just said. She didn’t look entirely convinced. She didn’t appear all that comfortable either. She was squirming on the bed and chewing her lip and contorting her face in a most unseemly manner. Eventually, she patted the space beside her.

‘Sit down a minute.’

‘Eh?’

‘There’s something I need to show you.’

I remained standing. Victoria reached for her handbag and patted the bed once more.