The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas (18 page)

‘Sit down, Charlie.’

Despite my better judgement, I skulked across the room and climbed onto the bed, shuffling backwards until I was sitting with my back resting against the stacked cushions and my knees raised up by my chest. I gripped hold of my shins.

‘Victoria, your voice is sounding funny.’

‘I’m sorry. I meant to tell you this earlier, but then you started to talk about Maurice and the juice list, and . . . well, I forgot.’

‘Forgot what?’

Victoria gave me a searching look, chewing her lip some more, then said, ‘Charlie, are you absolutely certain she was dead? The girl in the bath, I mean.’

‘Of course.’

‘You checked for a pulse?’

I scratched the back of my head. ‘Well, no, not exactly. But there was no need. She wasn’t moving.’

‘Did you touch her?’

‘I didn’t want to, Vic.’

‘So what did you do exactly?’

I sighed and shook my head, as though everything Victoria was asking me was entirely inconsequential.

‘I put my hand in the water and found it was cold. Then I watched her for a while. She didn’t move the whole time I was in the bathroom.’

Victoria smiled glumly and removed the Houdini biography from her handbag. She passed it over to me, saying, ‘Look at the inside cover.’

I did as she said. There was a message written there.

Caitlin. Some inspiration for your new act. Doesn’t hurt to learn from the best. Love always, Josh
.

‘Okay, so it was Caitlin’s book. Big deal.’

‘But somebody has made notes throughout the book, Charlie. They’ve also highlighted certain passages. It was annoying me when I was reading it, but it was something I could live with. And then I saw
this
.’

Victoria flipped through the book until she found a right-hand page with its top corner folded down. It was headed with the words
The Domestic Magician
. She pointed at a particular passage that had been highlighted in yellow ink. An asterisk had been scrawled beside it in pencil.

I read the highlighted lines and a hollow queasiness began to form in the pit of my stomach. I gulped, and it felt as though I was swallowing gravel. The words swam before my eyes, but there was no denying what they said.

Houdini’s New York home was furnished to accommodate his passion for magic. Extensive shelving housed his numerous reference books, and whole rooms were devoted to his collection of stage props. The crowning glory was his bathroom, where a large, bespoke tub was installed so that Houdini could fill it with ice-cold water and discipline himself to hold his breath for long periods of time, by way of preparation for the rigours of his Chinese Water Torture Cell.

TWENTY-SEVEN

‘Oh boy,’ I said.

‘You think she might not be dead?’ Victoria asked me.

I turned my mind back to the scene in the bathroom. How long had I been inside? A minute? Maybe two? If Caitlin was well-practised at holding her breath, there was every chance she could have lasted that long. It would explain why she hadn’t moved, because staying absolutely still would have helped her to preserve oxygen. And with her head and ears submerged, there was no reason why she would have sensed me standing over her or heard me moving about. True, I’d put my hand in the tub to test the water, but I’d done it away from her feet, and since I was under the impression that she was dead at the time, I’d been really quite delicate.

‘Maurice told me that Caitlin had been working on a new act,’ I said, my voice a little shaky. ‘He said it would be perfect for the Atlantis. I didn’t make the connection at the time. He must have been talking about the water theme.’

‘Wowzer.’ Victoria freed the book from my hands and scanned the passage again for herself. ‘So it sounds like you’re not a suspect in her murder any more.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Though it doesn’t explain why Josh went back to his suite after he disappeared. I mean, if she wasn’t dead, then he didn’t have a body to dispose of.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t go back.’

‘Then where did the key card go?’

I glanced towards the receptacle on the wall near the door to my suite. My own key card was there, enabling the air-con to function.

‘Think about it. If Caitlin was alive, and she was using Josh’s bath to practise holding her breath, then when she was finished she could have taken the card with her.’

‘Oh, I get it. She dries herself, gets dressed, empties the bath, takes the room card, and leaves.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Though it doesn’t fit with your theory about Josh confiding in Caitlin about the juice list, and Caitlin telling her brothers.’

‘It doesn’t?’

‘Come on. She’d hardly be using his suite to practise holding her breath while all that was going on.’

‘Maybe she was really serious about practising.’ I reclaimed the Houdini book from Victoria and fanned the pages. ‘Any other revelations in here?’

‘Not that I found. I checked the other highlighted passages but nothing leaped out at me.’

‘So no mention of how to crack a Schmidt and Co safe?’

‘No mention of juice lists, either.’

‘Typical.’ I lifted the book before my eyes and frowned at it. ‘Call yourself a plot device? One lousy clue, that’s all you’re offering us?’

Victoria barely laughed. Maybe she was too tired. Or maybe I wasn’t quite as funny as I liked to believe.

‘At least we can contact the police now,’ she said.

‘How’s that?’

‘Well, if Caitlin’s not dead, you’re not a potential murder suspect. So we can call them in and avoid getting killed.’

I shook my head. ‘Ricks and the twins have enough evidence to have us arrested for casino theft. Two counts, in your case.’

‘I’d rather that than be killed.’

‘But we don’t know for certain that Caitlin is alive.’

‘Charlie.’

‘What? She looked dead when I saw her, Vic. And yes, maybe we have a possible explanation for that now. But we don’t know for certain one way or the other. It could be she was practising and it went wrong.’

‘So what are you suggesting, exactly?’

I considered our options for a moment. It seemed like there were a couple of things we could do.

‘I think you should look for Caitlin. If she’s alive, she might not be too hard to find. People here at the casino must know her. Someone will be able to tell you where to look.’

‘And what about you?’

‘If Ricks hurries up and tells me where I can find the croupier with the one-hand card shuffle, I’ll go and speak to him and see if he can put us in touch with Josh.’

‘And if that doesn’t work?’

‘I’ll steal the juice list.’

‘Just like that.’

I tapped my temple. ‘Positive mental outlook, Vic.’

‘Inspirational. So when do you want me to begin looking for Caitlin?’

I studied her face. The only way she could have looked any sleepier was if an anaesthetist had just jabbed a syringe into her rump and asked her to begin counting down from ten very slowly.

‘Listen, we’re both shattered. I say we take a nap for an hour, then get started. It’ll be much better if you’re thinking straight when you find her.’

‘
If
I find her. But I suppose getting some rest does make sense. Would you mind if I stayed here? I don’t think I have the energy to get off this bed.’

I told her that was fine.

‘And Charlie, if we get close to the deadline and none of this has worked out, will you promise me we can call the police?’

I locked onto her eyes and held them, nodding as sincerely as I could. ‘If the time comes, we’ll call them. But that’s not going to happen.’

Victoria turned her back on me and reached for a pillow, tugging it beneath her head. She sighed and flexed her toes, wiggling a small hollow in the covers.

‘You know this positive outlook thing . . .’ she said, in a dozy voice.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I was thinking – at least you have plenty of material for your short story.’

I couldn’t sleep. I tried stretching out and nodding off but it wasn’t happening. I was too wired.

After a good deal of huffing and complaining, I propped myself up on my elbow and looked down at Victoria. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing steadily. One hand was curled on her pillow, barely holding a coil of her hair. Her jaw wasn’t locked, she wasn’t grinding her teeth, and so far as I could tell she was enjoying some respite from it all.

It’s funny how mistaken you can be about somebody. I never would have guessed that Victoria’s father was a crook. The idea that he was a judge had seemed to fit so well with everything I knew about her, that I’d never had any reason to doubt it.

I can’t say that I was troubled by the revelation. In some ways, I was even quite glad. She obviously cared about her father, in spite of his faults, and knowing that made me a little more comfortable in my own skin.

The sad truth is that I don’t have many friends. I move to new cities too often to build lasting relationships, and since I spend most of my time writing novels or stealing from people, I’m not the most social of creatures. I don’t like to be interrupted when I’m working on a new book, and I most certainly don’t like to be disturbed when I’m breaking into somebody’s home, and that doesn’t leave me much scope to forge close friendships. I suppose I don’t have the inclination, either. But I did have Victoria, and I trusted her implicitly, and she was the one person in all the world that I didn’t want to let down.

With that in mind, I stopped watching over her and moved to the other side of the bed, where I reached a hand into my holdall and removed a spiral notepad and a pen. Turning to a fresh page in the notepad, I pulled the lid from the pen and went through the motions of preparing to write. But who was I kidding? I couldn’t write with everything that was happening. Sure, I might have had plenty of new material, but who wants to spend a half-hour sketching out an idea for a short story if there’s a chance they might be dead before they get an opportunity to write the damn thing?

I put the notepad down and picked up the Houdini biography. It was a weighty volume, and the text was quite small, so it wasn’t something I’d be able to read in a hurry. I returned to the highlighted section Victoria had shown me and I read over how Houdini had practised holding his breath in the oversize bath. I guessed it was a good way to learn. After all, you had to put yourself in a position where it was impossible to breathe, because otherwise it would be too tempting to cheat. And how else could Caitlin do that from the comfort of a hotel suite, short of constructing a glass tank and having a couple of burly friends standing nearby to hoist her inside and watch over her with safety axes?

So it struck me as plausible that she’d been holding her breath, and that I’d leaped to the wrong conclusion in thinking that she was dead. And while that made me look rather stupid, I have to confess that I was relieved. Victoria was right to say that I’d run into more than enough corpses just recently, and it would make a refreshing change if I was able to leave Vegas without adding to my personal body count.

I sighed, rather theatrically, and fanned the pages of the Houdini biography. The sheer amount of highlighted text surprised me, and I could understand why it had bugged Victoria. I also knew that she hadn’t found anything of significance beyond the reference to Houdini’s bathroom activities, but I figured it would be remiss of me not to take a look for myself.

I started at the back of the book and worked towards the beginning, for no other reason than it seemed the contrary thing to do. Nearly all of the highlighted passages related to illusions that Houdini had performed, and some sections were accompanied by handwritten notations. The handwriting was difficult to read, and on the few occasions when I managed to decipher it, I didn’t learn anything of significance.

Some way towards the front, I found a passage that tweaked my curiosity, but it wasn’t capable of telling me where I could find Josh, or why exactly he’d run, or where his glamorous assistant might be found (assuming she wasn’t dead). I sighed again, as if to bookend my reading experience, and then I set the biography aside and consulted the time on Josh’s watch.

Just for a change, his watch had stopped, and I asked myself if perhaps it was a magic timepiece that only worked when it was attached to his particular wrist. I loosened the strap and freed it from my hand, and then I wound the mechanism tight and set the time to match my cheap, reliable, digital watch. Finally, I turned Josh’s timepiece in my hand and studied the back of the casing, and what I saw there caused me to pull the type of face I tend to pull when I see something that doesn’t altogether surprise or disappoint me.

I added a shrug, then fastened the watch on my wrist again and turned back to Victoria. It was time for me to wake her, and I was about to do exactly that when I heard a shuffling noise over by the door to my suite and jerked my head around just as a square of paper was pushed underneath.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The slip of paper contained a name and an address, written in a very neat hand. The black ink had smudged from where the paper had been folded, and I was reminded of the fountain pen Ricks favoured. I snatched open the door as soon as I’d read the note, but by the time I poked my head out into the corridor, whoever had delivered it was nowhere to be seen.

‘What is it?’ Victoria mumbled, and I turned to find her peering over her shoulder at me from the far side of the bed.

I held up the square of paper. ‘Contact details for the croupier.’ I shrugged. ‘At least, I think that’s what it is.’

‘From Ricks?’

‘Must be.’

Victoria rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand and stifled a yawn. ‘You could call him and check. He gave you his card, right?’

‘I could, but I’m not going to. I think this is his way of helping us without drawing attention to what he’s up to.’ I squinted at the note. ‘What else could it be?’

Victoria raised her hand to her head, as if she was coming around from a concussion.

‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘A little under two hours.’

‘I feel awful.’

‘See? Didn’t I tell you that a quick nap would help?’

She groaned and shifted her legs sideways until she was perched on the edge of the bed, facing away from me.

‘So what’s his name, this croupier?’

‘Jared Hall.’

‘Huh. Sounds like a university residence. Does he live far away?’

‘No idea. This is just a street address.’

I approached my holdall and dug through it for a pair of battered jeans and some baseball shoes. Wriggling out of my black suit trousers, I pulled on the jeans and the baseball shoes, then transferred my wallet to my left pocket and Josh’s wallet to my right. I dived into the holdall again for my denim jacket, slipped it on over a clean T-shirt and dropped my trusty spectacles case and plastic disposable gloves into my jacket pocket.

‘I have a couple of hours before the twins leave for the golf course,’ I said. ‘I’m going to head to the taxi rank and see if I can get a ride to this address.’

Victoria stood up and turned to appraise my new outfit. ‘Would you like me to come too?’

‘Honestly? I think it’d be better if we split up and you try to find Caitlin. I thought perhaps you might begin with the theatre staff?’

‘Okay.’ She nodded. ‘I can do that. You still have my mobile, I think.’

‘Do I?’ I gathered my black trousers from the bed and checked the pockets. She was right. ‘You want it back?’

‘No. You keep it. That way I can call you if I learn anything.’

I pushed the telephone down into the back pocket of my jeans, then glanced up and met her gaze.

‘Sure you’ll be okay?’

‘I’m a grown woman, Charlie. I can look after myself.’

‘So I don’t need to worry about you being detained for cheating another casino?’

‘Go,’ she said, and waved me towards the door. ‘Meet me back here at two o’clock, unless I call you beforehand.’

‘Okay, Boss. Be good.’

I had no idea that the neighbourhood Jared Hall lived in was known as Naked City until my cab driver told me as much. I suppose I could have asked him to explain the source of the name, but the closer we got to the address on the scrap of paper, the more giveaways I saw. Like, for instance, the flashing neon signs for gentlemen’s clubs and strip joints, the lurid pink billboards featuring dark silhouettes of shapely dancers in high heels, the low-rise buildings advertising sex toys and smutty videos, and the women with high skirts and bare legs, soliciting from outside a failing burger franchise.

Naturally, there was more to commend the area to your average tourist than mere sex. There were also twenty-four-hour liquor stores and bail bond businesses, tattoo parlours and gun shops, EZ Loan credit outlets and Auto Spas. Heck, we even passed the Elvis-A-Rama Museum and Gift Shop.

Jared Hall’s condo was located on a cross street leading away from (or perhaps more accurately fleeing) the neighbourhood in the direction of the Strip. It was positioned in the shadows of the Stratosphere Tower, behind a bleached concrete sidewalk, a chain-link fence and a rusted and wheel-less station wagon. The building was two storeys in height, dirty cream in colour, and laid out on three sides around an oval swimming pool. There was no water in the pool, only a brownish sludge of mud and fallen leaves.

A faded sign on one side of the building directed me up a flight of concrete steps and along an open balcony towards an apartment in the far corner. The windows of the apartment were guarded by metal bars and obscured by dirt. I knocked on the front door and the door swung open. I didn’t like that very much. The neighbourhood didn’t strike me as the kind of area where an unlocked door went unpunished for long, and I’d written the scene enough times myself to know just how perilous it could be. For your average hero of a mystery novel, an open door invariably turns out to be a trick invitation. And if I played my role to the letter, I’d be expected to step inside and creep along the hallway until I found something very nasty indeed – like, perhaps, young Jared in a deathly mess, stinking of a foulness too loathsome to describe, with a swarm of flies circling his mutilated corpse.

I guess I must be a sucker for a classic set-up, because I shoved the door aside and moved forward into the hall. There was no loathsome smell or insect buzz – just a cramped, empty kitchen on my right and a lighted doorway at the end of the hall. I cleared my throat and delivered my line.

‘Hello? Jared? Anyone home?’

To my enormous surprise, there was no answer. I edged closer to the pearly sunlight up ahead.

Still no smell. Still no flies.

‘Hello? Is anyone dead in there? Are the cops on their way? Am I shortly to become a fugitive from justice?’

I took another step forward, readying myself for what I might find behind the open doorway, and was within striking distance of the next room when something thudded into my shoulders from behind and I accelerated so fast that my nose butted the wooden doorframe.

A brilliant pain lit up the space between my eyes and an enormous pressure swelled in the bridge of my nose. I blinked, and watched in horror as a torrent of blood gushed from my nostrils. Cupping my hands to my face, I moaned somewhat redundantly, and turned to see what the hell had just happened.

Jared Hall had happened, and I could almost have believed that he was more shocked than me. His mouth opened and re-opened wordlessly, his eyes bulged, and he staggered backwards down the hallway with his bandaged right hand in front of his face as though he was warding off a demon from his cruellest nightmares.

He wore bright orange beach shorts that exposed his spindly legs in all their glory, and a crumpled Yankees baseball shirt. His lank hair was uncombed and messy, a long way removed from the Brylcreem side-parting he’d sported at the Fifty-Fifty. His pimpled jaw quivered manically.

‘Who are you, man? What are you doing in my place?’

‘Ywa dwaar wzz aupan,’ I said, through my bloodied nose and cupped hands.

‘I can’t understand you, man. What are you doing here?’

I would have liked to have explained myself, but just at that moment I gagged on the blood running down the back of my throat. I did my best to swallow and breathe normally but my airways were blocked. I coughed, and coughed again, and a bubble of blood and saliva burst from my lips to coat my chin and spatter my T-shirt.

Now true, I’m not an avid fan of the sight of fresh blood, but when the blood in question belongs to yours truly, and when I happen to be choking on it, my usual reserves of composure and consciousness have been known to desert me. I remember being conscious of that fact, and reminding myself that the absolute worst thing I could do would be to faint in front of the one person who’d caused me such grievous harm in the first place. In fact, I can recall remonstrating with myself quite severely as my eyesight lost focus, my head went slack and I found myself pitching forward into the very blackest of black holes.

I came around with a start, and a damp flannel on my face. The flannel was fragrant (and not in a good way), but it was welcome all the same. I pressed it against my brow, then bunched it in my hand and dabbed at my nostrils.

A dry gust of wind tugged at my hair. I cracked open my eyes and squinted against harsh sunlight. I was sitting on a thin carpet with my back propped against a wall and my head resting on the aluminium frame of a sliding door. The door was open and looked out onto a concrete balcony surrounded with corroded iron railings. Beneath the balcony was a scrub yard and in the yard was a rabid dog. The dog was chained to a washing line, but it was straining at its leash, giving every indication that it planned to break free and scale the wall so that it might feast on my bones. I had no idea what breed the dog was – modern science couldn’t tell you what breed the dog was – but it had taken a clear and quite severe disliking to me.

I yanked at the sliding door until it closed with a puff of air. It didn’t stop the dog from barking, but at least the noise was muffled.

‘Who are you, man?’

I turned my dazed head in the direction of the question. Jared was sitting in a folding canvas chair, his hairy legs splayed, with his bandaged right hand resting on his knee and what appeared to be a barbecue fork in his left fist. A slanting rectangle of sunlight framed him in, as if he was in the glare of a spotlight at the end of a television quiz show. The light emphasised the acne bumps on his cheek and drained the colour from the dice tattoo on his neck – making it look like a drunken prank with a magic marker.

I peered beyond Jared towards the shadowed corners of the room. It was all but empty. A wooden crate was positioned beside his feet – he was wearing battered espadrilles – and the crate appeared to be filled with a random collection of kitchen utensils and crockery.

‘My name’s Charlie,’ I croaked. ‘Don’t you recognise me?’

Jared leaned forward and peered at me over the glinting tines of his fork. The look of puzzlement on his spotty face failed to resolve itself.

‘I was at your roulette table yesterday evening.’

His confusion persisted.

‘With Josh Masters.’

Ah, that did the trick. His grip tightened around the fork.

‘What are we having, by the way? Sausages?’

He looked from me, to the fork, then back again. A deep crease settled into his brow and the skin pulled taut around the corners of his mouth, stretching his pimples.

‘You know Josh?’ he asked.

‘He’s more of an acquaintance, really.’

‘Know where he’s at?’

I let go of a sigh and raised a fingertip to the base of my nose. When I pulled my finger away, the tip was wet. At least I hadn’t been unconscious long enough for the blood to clot.

‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me,’ I said, sounding nasal. ‘I’ve been trying to find him.’

Jared lowered the fork a fraction. ‘How come?’

‘He didn’t tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

I shrugged. ‘Your ruse with the casino markers and the bottle top. Josh was palming me chips at the table.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘I really wish that were so.’ I paused as a wave of pressure passed through my nose. I got the feeling that speaking was making the bleeding worse, but I didn’t have a great deal of choice. I tipped my head back and said, ‘I hear he made off with your cut. Mine too.’

Jared stuck out his bottom lip and turned the fork upside down so that he could prod at the skin of his thigh. His eyes slid sideways and he contemplated his broken hand.

I said, ‘I was there when the Fisher Twins did that to you. They made me watch through the glass in the wall.’

He tensed. ‘You work for them?’

I held up the taped fingers on my right hand. ‘Not even close. I guess I was lucky. They just broke two of my fingers.’ I turned my hand in the light coming through the window, so that Jared could see the arthritic curl that my fingers had taken on. ‘Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to use them again some day.’

His jaw loosened and his arms went limp. He dropped the fork into the wooden crate and followed it with his eyes.

‘I haven’t seen him, man.’

‘I need to find him.’

‘Can’t help you.’ He looked up and fixed me with a plaintive, broken smile. ‘Guy screwed me bad. I’m gone. Vegas is over for me now.’

I frowned. ‘But there are other casinos.’

He shook his head, like he’d run the argument with himself already. ‘Nah, man. They put my face in the book. And my hand,’ he said, gesturing at it with his pitted chin, ‘it ain’t worth shit any more.’

He lifted his hand in the air and considered it for a long moment, gazing at it in a detached way, as if it was no more than a prosthetic.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Truly.’

He sniffed, and wiped his nostrils with the webbing of his bandage. ‘Yeah, and I’m sorry about your face. I didn’t mean for that to happen. Guess I just freaked, you know? Finding you here, an’ all. My bad.’

Funny, it hadn’t worked out so great for me, either. I re-folded the flannel beneath my nose and pointed my chin at the room we were sitting in.

‘I don’t know what you were worried about. You can’t have thought that I was a burglar – it doesn’t look like you have anything to steal.’

He considered the room himself, then picked at the bandage on his hand. ‘A buddy of mine has a breakdown truck around back of here,’ he told me. ‘Guess I was loading it when you arrived.’

I nodded carefully. It seemed to make sense.

‘Where will you go?’

‘My buddy’ll be back soon. He’s driving me to Reno.’

‘Reno?’

‘My hometown.’

‘Well, that doesn’t sound too bad.’

‘It sucks, man. Vegas is where it’s at for me. Was, anyways.’

I pushed myself up from the carpet with a groan, using the wall to aid my balance.

‘Any suggestions where I might look for Josh?’

He shook his head. ‘Some place other than Vegas if the guy has smarts. I never should have listened to his fix. I was set, man. I was good.’

‘And Caitlin? His assistant?’