The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas (4 page)

FIVE

All of which brings us back to that pesky bathroom door.

You’ll recall that I’d coaxed the handle down and nudged the thing open, being careful to do so as soundlessly as possible. You’ll also remember how unnecessary it had been for me to check on the bathroom in the first place. I’d given the matter a good deal of thought and I’d concluded, not unreasonably, that it would be ludicrous to think there could be anyone inside.

In support of my logic, the door hadn’t been locked. Now, if there really had been someone in there, and if they were hiding from me, they would have bolted the door. But I’d eased down the handle and it had opened without any resistance. So all things being equal, I was as certain as I could be that the bathroom would be empty.

But of course it wasn’t.

It was very large, in keeping with the rest of the suite, and it was stylish and expensive-looking. The floors and the walls were done out in grey marble tiles and there were two circular sinks, with gold-plated taps, set into a slab of black granite that was adorned with fluffy white towels and monogrammed toiletries. There was a toilet, a walk-in shower cubicle large enough to accommodate an NFL team, a flat-screen television, and a bath (or a tub as our American friends like to call it) that was perhaps a little smaller than your average swimming pool. The bath was square-shaped and very deep and it was dotted with plastic Jacuzzi nozzles. It was also filled close to the brim with water. Oh, and there was a naked woman inside it.

Now, as this isn’t a piece of erotica, allow me to add that while she was slim and petite and nubile, she was also face down in the water and she wasn’t moving in the slightest. Her arms and her legs were floating out from her torso, just below the waterline, and her head was fully submerged. Her flame-red hair was congealed on the surface in sodden knots and tangles, like some extraordinary plant from the South China Sea. The bathwater was as still as her body, and she looked as though she might have been floating there for many hours or even days.

Just then, I caught my reflection in the mirror behind the double sinks. I looked fairly shocked, which wasn’t altogether surprising, but I also looked kind of shifty, poking my head through the gap in the door like that. Even so, in the seconds that followed, I was really quite stunned to see my reflection moving through the door and approaching the bath.

One thing I absolutely wasn’t going to do was to check for a pulse. I’d touched a dead woman before, not so very long ago, and I’m not ashamed to admit that it was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. The sensation of her cold, lifeless skin was still very real to me, and I didn’t doubt that it would linger for a long time to come.

By way of compromise, I removed my left glove and slid my index finger into the water at the end of the bath, as far from her toes as I could get. The water was cold. If she’d drowned while taking a bath, the temperature suggested that it had been quite some time ago and there wasn’t a hope of saving her. And if she’d been killed by someone else, well, then they would have made sure that she was dead in the first place. And to be blunt, I wasn’t all that keen to take my involvement any further. What could I do, after all? Telephone hotel security and explain that while I had, admittedly, committed one misdemeanour by breaking into Masters’ suite, they had no reason to trouble themselves with the notion that I might have committed another, more heinous crime?

Listen, if there’d been a chance that I could have saved her, I would have given it my absolute best shot, and to hell with the consequences. But she was way beyond that now, and I couldn’t risk hanging around. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate a number of hazards associated with the line of ungainful employment I’ve tended to pursue, and while being caught is one of the least appealing, being caught in the vicinity of a floating corpse is even worse.

So I’m afraid I turned to leave, and it was only as I did so that I noticed a hotel robe lying crumpled on the floor behind the door. The robe was burgundy in colour, matching the felt on the gamingtables downstairs, and it had a fifty-cent coin embroidered on a chest pocket in silver thread. Tangled up with the robe was an item of clothing of an altogether skimpier design, fashioned from pink Lycra. I prodded it with my foot and discovered that it was a one-piece leotard with a short, frilly skirt. It seemed like the type of thing a Vegas showgirl might wear. I looked again at the body in the bath. She had the athletic build of a dancer, though perhaps the legs were a trifle short. But if it wasn’t a showgirl’s costume, then what could it be? It certainly didn’t remind me of any of the outfits I’d seen on the casino floor.

And then, all too gradually, my thoughts clicked into place like the slowing drums on a slot machine. What was it Victoria had said about Josh Masters’ show? Something to do with volunteering during one of his tricks because his assistant had come down with a bug? Well, Christ, it must have been some variety of super bug if it was capable of sweeping a redhead off her feet and drowning her in a tub of bathwater.

Leaving the robe and the costume and the girl where they were, I closed the bathroom door behind me and raised my hand to my forehead, asking myself if I should put the casino chips back where I’d found them. And of course, the sensible response was absolutely, no question, but it was being drowned out by the buzz of fear and panic swarming around my head. And my feet, the traitorous little blighters, had already carried me through into the sitting area before my rational self could take control of the situation, and by the time my rational self had gathered its senses, my irrational self had sided with my feet and was yammering away about how I should get the hell out of Dodge before I spent the rest of my days rotting in an American penitentiary for a death I’d had nothing to do with.

Next thing I knew, I was scurrying along the hotel corridor towards the service stairs, and by the time I was careening downwards and hauling myself around the banister rail, the game was truly up and there was no way my brain could conceive of a set of circumstances in which it would be sensible for me to break back into a hotel suite with a dead woman inside it.

So the casino chips were still in my jacket pocket, and not in the closet safe, and Josh Masters’ wallet was in the closet safe, and not in my pocket (or indeed, his). And I guess I should have been a bit more troubled by all of that than I presently was, but strange as it may sound, I could just about glimpse the merits in holding onto sixty thousand dollars’ worth of chips. Heck, if nothing else, it was going to make a mighty useful getaway fund, because fleeing Sin City was the first thing I intended to do once I’d found Victoria and brought her up to speed.

There was no way we could stay in the hotel, you see, because as soon as the body was discovered, I’d be in a great deal of trouble. Yes, I’d thought it fair to assume that security didn’t spend their time watching over closed-circuit cameras in the hotel corridors, but that didn’t mean those cameras didn’t exist. And once the body was found (which might not take very long, considering there was a nightly turn-down service), the cameras would be checked and my face would be seen. And with every member of staff briefed on exactly who to look out for, I wouldn’t be in a position to order room service in a hurry.

To make matters worse, I’d checked into the hotel under my own name, with my own passport, and short of inventing a time machine, it wasn’t a mistake I could easily remedy. All I could really do was run, and if that meant that the USA was forever shut off to me and that I’d need to spend the rest of my days living under an assumed name in a country I’d never even heard of, then maybe that was for the best. After all, Victoria had been suggesting that I write something under a pseudonym for quite some time.

Victoria
. I had to find her, and quick. And not just because I needed to make myself scarce, but also because I had to make sure that she was safe. The redhead in the bath might have drowned accidentally or she might have committed suicide, but there was also the possibility that she’d been killed, and either way she’d died in a suite belonging to Victoria’s new best friend.

I’d lost count of how many flights of stairs I’d rushed down in my panic, but judging from the way my lungs were burning and ominous black spots were beginning to cloud my vision, it had to be a fair number. I leaned against the wall and tried to catch my breath, meanwhile stuffing my gloves inside my pocket. Then I moved out into the corridor, trying my best not to appear like a murder suspect to the first person I ran into.

As it happened, I didn’t run into anyone until I reached the elevator bank, and there I met a collection of guests all at once. They were a family group, ranging from grandparents through to sullen teenagers, and they turned and muttered greetings as a set of doors parted on an empty carriage. I squeezed in after them, feeling conscious of the heat and sweaty odours radiating from my body, and then my stomach lurched as the capsule plunged downwards and a gushing infomercial encouraged us all to come revel in the captivating aura of the great Josh Masters.

SIX

The theatre was undeniably impressive. True, an even grander stage on the far side of the casino hosted the nightly Rat Pack extravaganza, but this was no school assembly hall. The seating was tiered, running through rows A to W, and from my position in the front of the auditorium I couldn’t see the entrance doors unless I stood from my chair.

As it happened, I was standing right now, and I was turning on the spot and covering my eyes with my hand, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t spot Victoria. She wasn’t in the seat that had been reserved alongside me, and she hadn’t been at the roulette-table, or wandering the gaming floor, or waiting outside the theatre. No message had been left for me at the ticket booth, and when I’d hurried up to my hotel room, I hadn’t found a note slipped under my door or a light blinking on my telephone. I was completely in the dark, and now that the lights had gone down, so was everybody else.

A hush passed over the crowd and I dropped into my plush theatre chair and scratched my head. At the rear of the stage, a twinkling silhouette of the Vegas skyline became visible against the black velvet curtains. I could see the pyramid of the Egyptian-themed Luxor at one end of the curtain and the needle-shaped Stratosphere Tower at the other. The silhouette began to flicker in and out, as if the wiring was dodgy, and then the sound system kicked in, playing a big band number loud enough to make my kidneys shake. The music was all strings and brass, like the opening score from an old black and white movie. Puffs of dry ice billowed across the stage and silver spotlights cut through the smoke, sweeping left and right before settling on the upper left corner of the curtain. From somewhere above the gathering music I heard the roar of an engine, and then Josh Masters appeared on a flying motorcycle.

A flying motorcycle? Yup. I might have witnessed some pretty daft sights in my time, but I’d never seen anything quite like this.

It wasn’t simply that Masters was dressed like Marlon Brando in
The Wild One
, right down to his black leather jacket, white T-shirt and peaked biker’s cap. It wasn’t even that his teeth gleamed more brightly than the chrome on the motorbike. No, what really topped it all was the way flames spurted from the exhaust when he cranked the engine.

It looked plumb idiotic to me, but the crowd seemed enthralled. They gasped as Masters dipped and soared and twirled. They whooped at the noise and the fire and the lights. And when, at last, Masters lowered the motorbike to the stage, the acclaim he received was beyond anything I’d ever experienced.

He milked his bow and tipped his hat, then clicked his fingers and jumped from the bike to gather a glittering silk cape from the floor. He showed us the cape, front and reverse. He snapped it in his hands in time with the music. He tossed it into the air and allowed it to fall gracefully over the motorbike.

He raised his fingertips to his temples and closed his eyes, as though fighting hard to concentrate. Then, after a short pause, his eyes opened and he thrust his hands towards the motorcycle.

But the motorbike hadn’t moved. Its outline was still visible beneath the sparkling cape.

The show music ceased with an abrupt screech, as if a stylus had been yanked away from a record, and Masters fixed a look of wry confusion to his face. He cupped his chin. He tapped his foot. He even went so far as to shrug his shoulders. Then he reached out and whipped the cloth away to reveal a rusted old pushbike with a dented front wheel and bent handlebars.

The audience hooted and whistled and clapped. They stamped their feet and pumped their fists and cackled joyously. But none of them enjoyed it anywhere near as much as Josh. It might have been the five thousandth time that he’d pulled off the trick but he gave the impression that it had never happened so perfectly before. And as he removed his biker’s cap and tossed it out into the audience, I had to admit that the goof knew how to put on a show – and that he gave no indication of being the least bit concerned for the welfare of his poor assistant.

Eventually, the acclaim began to fade, and Masters grinned sheepishly and rubbed his hands together before speaking into a flesh-coloured microphone bud. He welcomed us all to the magnificent Fifty-Fifty and wished us a swell vacation, and then he told us, in an intimate tone very nearly as authentic as his tan, how as a kid growing up in Utah his big dream had been to appear as a magician in Vegas. People clapped and others sighed. Josh acknowledged them with a humble smile and a wave, and then in a hushed voice, he added that his dream had grown. It was no longer enough to simply appear on a Vegas stage. Now he longed to make his act bigger and more spectacular than any magic show that had ever appeared on the Strip before. But, he added with a raised finger, some of the very finest tricks involved the kind of close-up magic that he’d started out with all those years ago. And so, after meeting my eye with uncanny accuracy and pulling a deck of cards from his pocket (an ordinary deck of cards of the kind used in the Fifty-Fifty casino, no less), he waded into some sub-David Blaine
shtick
that filled a good ten minutes.

I quickly lost interest and turned in my seat, scanning the dark recesses of the theatre for any sign of Victoria. I was feeling more than a little anxious by now. My every instinct was telling me to flee the hotel as quickly as possible. Sure, it’d be nice to cash in my stash of casino chips before I left for good, but every minute I stayed was a minute longer for trouble to brew. It was trouble I couldn’t readily afford. But despite it all, I remained in my seat, willing Victoria to show so that I could be certain that she was okay.

I suppose if you’d asked me to speculate on the precise danger Victoria might be in, I would have found it difficult to give you a satisfactory answer. One thing I would have conceded, however, was that it was unlikely that Masters could harm her during his performance. Which was all well and good, until my brain suddenly caught up with his act and I noticed that he’d summoned a volunteer from the middle of the audience, and that the volunteer in question was Victoria.

She passed me without even a wave and accepted his hand as she climbed onto the stage, her green blouse shimmering in the bright lights. The audience welcomed her with polite applause, and then Masters asked her a series of questions. In response, she told him her name, that she was visiting from London and that she happened to be staying in the Fifty-Fifty.

‘Which room?’ Masters asked, with a devilish wink.

Victoria blushed. ‘Never you mind.’

‘Hey, no worries, maybe you’ll tell me later, as a thank you for the trip I’m about to send you on. Say, Victoria, how’d you like to pay a visit to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil?’

The audience cooed.

‘Sounds good, huh?’

‘It sounds wonderful.’

‘And you have your passport with you tonight?’

‘Er, no.’

‘Well, don’t sweat it. I’ll get you there without your passport. Without even an airplane.’ He paused for dramatic effect and wiggled his eyebrows disconcertingly. Then he gestured towards the wings with a sweep of his arm. ‘Bring on the teleporter.’

A crescendo of music sounded and a burly, bald-headed stagehand appeared, dressed all in black and dragging what looked to be an old bedroom closet towards the centre of the stage. The closet was tall and narrow and rudimentary in design. It had brass castors on all four corners and two hinged doors at the front. The wood enamel was chipped and scratched, but when the stagehand twirled the closet before us, it seemed to be solid right the way around.

The closet didn’t have a room safe inside it. In fact, once the stagehand had made himself scarce and Masters had flung back the doors, it didn’t appear to have anything inside it at all. The interior was pitch black, like every other magician’s cabinet I’ve ever seen.

‘You like my teleport machine?’

‘It’s . . . delightful.’

The audience tittered at Victoria’s quaint English ways.

‘Would you like to step inside and begin your trip?’

Victoria slipped off her heels and did as she was asked.

‘You have packed your bikini, right?’

She raised a hand to her mouth, as if scandalised. Masters offered the audience a palms-up gesture and another of his trademark grins.

‘Can’t blame a guy for trying,’ he said. ‘Now, Victoria, you want to be secure in case of turbulence, right? So I need to strap you in nice and tight.’

He reached inside and fastened Victoria to the rear of the closet with a set of black fabric straps that fitted across her chest like a parachute harness. Then he stepped back and closed both doors. There was a circular porthole through which we could see Victoria’s face. She didn’t appear altogether comfortable, but that was nothing to her expression when the stagehand returned and passed Masters a pair of sizeable metal blades.

Josh slapped the blades together, demonstrating that they were real. Then he beamed inanely at the audience, like some Hammer Horror bloodsucker.

‘Can’t teleport you all in one piece, Victoria. So I’m going to have to send you in chunks. Okay?’

For the first time, Victoria zeroed in on my eyes, and for just a moment she looked almost as alarmed as I felt. Then she squared her shoulders and set her jaw and nodded as though having somebody threaten to run her through with razor-sharp blades was an everyday occurrence.

Masters held the blades in one hand and used his spare hand to flip down two hatches, revealing a pair of slots at around the height of Victoria’s waist and neck. Victoria gazed towards the ceiling, as if she was trying to avoid an unpleasant scene in a gory movie.

‘Don’t worry,’ Masters bellowed. ‘This is top quality steel. Hardly ever snags.’

The audience snickered uncertainly but I didn’t join them. I had a fair understanding of how the illusion worked, so I was aware that there was an element of risk. And if you’re wondering how I knew that, might I encourage you to invest in a paperback edition of my second Michael Faulks mystery,
The Thief in the Theatre
?

The novel is available in all good remainder bins and it tells a diverting little tale about the theft of a very fine necklace from an operatic diva who happens to perform in a nightly West End variety show. As with all of my burglar novels, things don’t run smoothly for Faulks. Some way into the story, at around the point at which Faulks has developed a seemingly flawless plan to steal the diva’s necklace, he’s alarmed to learn that she’s agreed, for one night only, to participate in the show’s magic act. And not only that, but she’s prepared to allow her precious necklace to be placed inside a velvet bag and smashed into a thousand tiny pieces with a claw hammer.

Now clearly, the necklace isn’t really smashed. We’ve all seen that particular trick too many times to believe that it could be. But imagine the shock on the face of the diva, not to mention the sheer panic displayed by the magician, when our hapless conjurer reaches the moment of his big reveal, only to find that when he pops the giant balloon that has been floating above the stage for his entire performance, absolutely nothing drops out. The necklace was supposed to be there, and now it isn’t. The magician genuinely has no idea where it has gone. The diva is distraught. And Faulks? Well, he’s tearing his hair from its roots. Because it looks as though someone has beaten him to the loot, and if he plans on fulfilling his assignment, he’s going to have to figure out what on earth has happened.

Faulks wasn’t alone in that. When I wrote the scene, I hadn’t the faintest clue what had happened, either. Yes, I knew some close-up magic, and I liked to think that I was pretty good at sleight of hand, but I didn’t know a thing about illusions. And so I found myself having to read all kinds of books and magazines and manuals, until I ended up learning far more than I needed to know. And one of the illusions I’d come to gain some understanding of was the one Victoria was presently undergoing.

The solution had everything to do with perspective, which is one of the reasons why the interior of the closet was completely black. And while I didn’t know precisely how Masters intended to set about confounding his audience, I did know that the blades would be a fair distance away from Victoria’s skin at all times. Actually, everyone in the theatre knew that, but it was Masters’ job to make us believe otherwise. And what I didn’t want to happen, what I was positively afraid of, was that Victoria might panic. The illusion relied on the person inside the closet not moving in the slightest. That was something Masters’ assistant, the one who was currently floating face down in his bath, would have been well practised in. And yes, Victoria had been strapped in position to ensure that she didn’t move too much, but what if she flinched or jerked her head forwards? Couldn’t the blades catch her then?

Thunk – Thunk –

The audience sucked in a sharp, collective breath and I snapped out of my thoughts to see that it was all quite academic. Masters had run the blades through Victoria and so far as I could tell, she was still in one piece.

‘All set,’ Masters said, slapping the side of the closet. ‘You must be ready for that trip now, right? Could do with a little relaxation, I’m guessing.’

Victoria blew a gust of air towards her fringe.

‘Well, hold on, darling, we’re almost . . .
there
.’

Now perhaps if it hadn’t been Victoria in the closet, and if I hadn’t been so concerned for her welfare or so keenly attuned to Masters’ behaviour, I might not have registered the slight quaver in his voice, or the way in which he hesitated as he neared the end of his sentence. And if I hadn’t been sitting in the front row, I almost certainly wouldn’t have caught the way he frowned and gazed off to my right.

To most of the audience, his performance must have seemed flawless as he launched into the next part of his spiel, about how hot it was in Rio at this time of year and what a swell trip Victoria was sure to have, drinking cocktails and dancing the samba on the beach. But I had noticed, and so I looked to where he’d been looking, and I happened to see two men standing in the far aisle, one of whom was whispering into a two-way radio.