The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas (7 page)

‘I don’t think I can stand much more of this.’

‘We’ll be okay,’ I said, an unavoidable wobble in my voice. ‘They won’t treat us like that.’

I hoped it sounded more convincing to Victoria’s ears than it did to my own. Because the moment the twins re-entered our room and stood panting in the doorway, any certainty I’d felt quickly evaporated.

The one with the pipe and the mad grin was short on breath but high on adrenaline. His knuckles were white around the shaft of the pipe and the end of the metal was clotted with what I sincerely wished was steak haché.

His brother was sweating profusely. He ran a damp hand through his ginger hair, kicking it up at the front as though he’d just applied pomade.

I was beginning to wonder what I should say when Victoria banged her fists onto the table and jumped in ahead of me.

‘What the hell have you done to that poor man?’

The twins turned to one another. Smiles played around their lips, as if they were two unruly school pupils revelling in the dressing down they were about to receive.

‘Lady, we can’t have dealers cheating our tables. We paid that guy a fair wage. Benefits. Medical Care. And that’s how he repays us?’

‘Medical Care? You’ve ruined his hand.’

‘Guy knew the consequences of his actions. Just as you should too.’

He lifted the pipe and waved it between us, as though he was playing a game of Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo. I found myself covering the knuckles of my bad hand beneath the table. Sure, my arthritis was a problem, and even with my medication it could hurt like merry hell, but that would be nothing compared to the damage the pipe would do. Screw dealing blackjack. My days of burglary would be behind me for ever, and a long future of typing novels with only my left hand lay ahead.

‘Listen,’ I began. ‘You have all of the chips that I took. If you let us go, we won’t be any trouble to you. We’ll check out of your hotel, and we won’t set foot in your casino again. Come to mention it, we’ll leave Las Vegas altogether.’

‘Not so fast,’ the twin with the pipe said. ‘Maybe we don’t want you to leave in a hurry.’

‘Yeah,’ his brother added, pointlessly.

‘Maybe we think that you owe us.’

I sneaked a look at Victoria. ‘Like I’ve told you, my friend really had nothing to do with any of this.’

‘Save it. And listen to what we have to say.’

I did as I was asked and listened to what they had to say. And when they were through talking, my eyes very nearly popped out of my head.

‘You can’t be serious,’ I said.

‘We’re always serious.’

‘But this is ludicrous.’

‘I guess that depends on your perspective.’

Well, from my perspective, it was verging on insane. What we’d been told, you see, was that there were two options available to us. The first was to hand them Josh Masters. If we did that, we’d be excused. If we refused, we could opt to repay every last cent our ‘team’ had stolen. We had twenty-four hours to comply. Oh, and if we failed, some less than sketchy allusions had been made to a one-way trip into the Nevada Desert, of the kind you couldn’t ordinarily book through one of the tourist booths stationed along the Strip.

‘I don’t know what to tell you,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Neither one of us has any idea where Josh is right now. And we don’t have that kind of money.’

‘Then you have a problem.’

Victoria threw up her hands and made a choking noise. ‘Am I to understand that you’re actually threatening to kill us?’

‘I guess you could view it that way.’

‘But that’s abhorrent. It’s illegal.’

‘So is stealing from our tables. You can do a long stretch in Nevada State because of it. What we’re doing here is offering you an alternative.’

‘You’re talking about murdering us.’

‘Only if you don’t repay the money you stole.’

‘Plus interest,’ added the twin with the pipe.

They shared a look.

‘Did I forget to mention the interest?’

‘I guess you hadn’t got around to it just yet.’ He jerked the pipe at me. ‘Call the debt an even two hundred.’

‘What the hell is this?’ I asked. ‘The old bad twin, bad twin routine? I thought the gangster theme in your casino was just that.’

The twin with the radio smiled flatly. ‘Funny guy. I like that. And we can be reasonable. Take the sixty thou you had in chips. We’ll set it against the two hundred.’

‘We’re not bartering over a used car here,’ Victoria told him. ‘I’d rather you called the police.’

‘No,’ I snapped.

‘Charlie, they’re threatening to kill us.’

Yes, I thought, but if the police become involved, they’ll want to take a look for Masters up in his suite. And then they’ll find the same thing I found. And then they’ll check the security tapes from the hotel corridor. And I’ll be in all kinds of trouble.

Come to mention it, every minute we spent in the interrogation room was a minute longer for somebody to find the redhead’s body. So yes, I admit, I wasn’t exactly cock-a-hoop about the ultimatum we’d been given, but a period of twenty-four hours in which to track down Josh Masters seemed a hell of a lot more appealing than taking my chances as a murder suspect. And besides, who was to say the police weren’t in cahoots with the Fisher Twins? I mean, Vegas was meant to have cleaned up its act, but from what we’d just experienced, I wasn’t convinced we could take that chance.

‘Charlie, I’m not the least bit comfortable with this,’ Victoria said, in a stern voice.

‘I get that, Vic. But I’m asking you to trust me. Just pretend I’m asking for a small extension on a deadline.’

‘Yes, but that phrase really means something on this occasion, doesn’t it?’

‘Enough already.’ The twin with the pipe consulted his watch. ‘It’s nine forty-five. You can have until ten o’clock tomorrow night.’

‘What about the croupier?’ I asked. ‘He must have some of your money too.’

The twin snatched a look through the mirror glass, a neutral expression on his face. ‘No money. Masters was due to pay him his cut after his show. The croup says he has no idea where Josh has gotten to either.’

‘And you believe him?’

The twin raised the bloody end of the pipe before his eyes. He turned it slowly, as if he was mesmerised. ‘Guess he would have told us if he could have.’

‘But that leaves us with a hundred and forty thousand dollars to find.’

‘That, or your buddy the magic man. And don’t even think about running. We have eyes at the airport.’

‘And we’ll need your passports,’ added the other twin.

‘Oh yeah,’ his brother said. ‘Hand us your passports already.’

TEN

I don’t recall a great deal about our journey back to my hotel room, but one thing I do remember is that we didn’t talk. I was busy thinking and Victoria was busy fuming and that kept us occupied until I closed the door behind us and collapsed onto my bed with a groan.

‘Get up.’ Victoria kicked my foot. ‘And start packing. We have to get out of here.’

‘You heard those nutters,’ I said, into the mattress. ‘They have “eyes” at the airport.’

‘They can’t watch every departure gate.’

‘Maybe they can.’

‘So we’ll hire a car and drive somewhere else. We’ll find an airport where they don’t have “eyes”.’

I turned over on the bed and rubbed my face with my hand. ‘I think it was just an expression, about the airport. What they mean is, they’ll be watching us. And besides, they have our passports.’

‘Passports don’t matter. We can get to a British Embassy and wait for new ones.’

‘And meantime they’ll file a police report connecting us to a casino theft. Showing up at an embassy would be like handing ourselves in.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Yes, necessarily.’

I rolled off the bed and dropped to my knees. My holdall was right beside me and I unzipped it and started to root around inside. I hadn’t unpacked just yet, so my holdall was stuffed with my clothes and possessions – my laptop, my framed first edition of
The Maltese Falcon
, my writing notebooks and pens. And somewhere, way down towards the bottom, my spectacles case.

Aha. My fingers tightened around the dimpled plastic shell and I pulled it from my bag.

‘Aha,’ I said, and went to show Victoria.

But Victoria had moved from where she’d been standing. She was over by the desk with the telephone on it. The telephone receiver was hooked under her chin. Her fingers were prodding numbers.

‘Who are you calling?’

‘The police.’

‘Oh no, you don’t.’ I raced across and pressed down on the cradle, cutting her connection.

‘Charlie, let go.’

‘Not until you put the phone down and listen to me.’

I reached for the receiver but Victoria snatched it away. Her skin had taken on a greyish tone and she was visibly shaken. Whether from anger or fear, I wasn’t entirely sure.

‘We have to call the police, Charlie. Those psychopaths have threatened to kill us.’

‘Yes, and I got the impression they meant it. But we can’t get the police involved.’

‘Whyever not?’

I sighed and pressed the flat of my hand against my forehead. ‘Take a seat,’ I told her. ‘I need to tell you something.’

‘Charlie?’

‘Please just sit down.’ I motioned towards the corner of my bed. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re not going to like what I have to say.’

For once, I was absolutely right. Victoria didn’t like it one little bit. She didn’t like me very much either, but I have to say I was prepared for that. After all, it’s hard to explain to your best friend how you ignored their advice and lost a small fortune at poker, or why petty jealousy led you to steal a man’s wallet. It’s harder still to admit that you broke into that same man’s room and raided his safe out of pure spite, and it’s even more difficult to put into words what compelled you to rob him of sixty thousand dollars of casino chips. But all of that pales into insignificance when you’re faced with confessing how you stumbled upon a dead woman and left her just where she lay (or happened to be floating) without alerting anyone to her plight.

Every one of the excuses I’d come up with for the benefit of my own conscience sounded utterly ludicrous when I heard myself speaking them aloud, and long before Victoria said anything in response, I already knew there was no way of justifying my behaviour.

That didn’t make the things she had to say any easier to hear. And on that basis, I’d rather not repeat them in print. True, I might be a coward and a reprobate, but I’d much prefer to skip the details of just what a lowlife she took me to be, and jump ahead to the part where she began to run out of steam and throw her hands into the air and sum up her thoughts by saying, ‘What on earth were you thinking? I can’t believe you stole his wallet in the first place.’

‘I’m a thief, Vic. It’s what I do.’

‘But this was meant to be a holiday. Your words.’

‘What can I say? I’m a workaholic.’

‘Charlie. Be serious for once. Please.’

‘I can’t be serious. If I’m serious, I’ll have to admit what a git I’ve been.’

‘You have been a git. And you’ve placed us in real danger.’

Technically, I didn’t think it was fair of Vic to put all the blame on me. I mean, if she hadn’t gravitated towards Josh in the first place, none of this would have happened. Then again, since I wasn’t a complete numbskull, I wasn’t going to voice that particular theory.

Victoria glanced at her watch. ‘It’s almost half-past ten already. I feel shattered, and I’m angry and I’m scared. And now I really don’t know what we should do.’

‘There’s only one thing to do. I need to break back into Josh’s suite.’

Victoria leaned back on the bed and crossed her legs at the knee. ‘Well, that’s a terrible idea.’

‘Of course it’s a terrible idea. Unfortunately, it’s also essential.’

‘I fail to see why.’

‘Well, for starters, Josh might be there. But even if he isn’t, I might find something in his room that could tell us where he’s gone. The quickest way to satisfy the Fisher Twins is to find Josh.’

Tiny frown lines appeared between Victoria’s eyebrows. ‘He’s hardly likely to have left directions.’

‘Maybe not. But it’s worth checking.’

‘Is it? Wouldn’t it be a lot more sensible to work out how we can prove that we weren’t involved with him in the first place?’

‘Feel free to try. My take is that it’s not something the Fisher Twins are likely to entertain.’

‘Because of the chips you had in your pocket.’

I squirmed a little. ‘That, and the fact I happened to confess to being a part of the scam.’

‘But you weren’t a part of the scam.’

‘Christ, no. I already told you that. I only said it because it seemed like the best way to get us out of that room.’

‘You’ll forgive me for wanting to make sure.’

I bunched my hands into fists and pressed them against my chin. ‘Vic, I steal things, and I’ve always admitted as much, but I’m nowhere near stupid enough to try to steal casino chips under a bunch of security cameras on a casino floor.’

Victoria placed her head onto her shoulder. ‘Let’s not get into an argument about how stupid you are, okay?’

I paused and moved across to the window at the front of the room. Neon throbbed through the net curtains and I pulled them aside and peered out. I’d paid extra for a view of the Strip and it was alight in all its tawdry glory. Pinks and yellows and greens and whites. Car headlamps and brake-lights. I could glimpse a slither of the illuminated Colosseum Theatre outside Caesars Palace. A billboard out front told me that Elton John was in town. I didn’t imagine we’d be watching his show anytime soon.

‘I have to get going,’ I said.

‘But what if the twins have already sent someone to Josh’s room?’

‘Then I won’t go in.’

‘But what if you do go in, and then they turn up and find you with the dead woman?’

‘Then I’m in trouble. And the longer I stay here running through the variables with you, the greater the risk becomes that something like that might happen.’

‘You’re certain she was dead?’

‘That, or she’s the first aquatic human being in history. And she’s strangely underwhelmed by her status.’

Victoria snatched at her handbag and began to search through it. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she huffed and she sighed, and then she upended her bag above my bed and shook its contents out for the second time that day. She moved her makeup and purse around, but she still didn’t appear satisfied. She checked inside her purse, then let her shoulders fall.

‘Damn it.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t find the key card to my room.’

‘Maybe it got lost when you emptied your handbag downstairs.’

Victoria stamped her foot and squealed, and then she paced across to the double doors that connected our suites.

‘Will you open this door for me?’

I batted my eyelids. ‘But it’s locked.’

‘Oh, grow up.’

I didn’t grow up, but I did crouch down before the snap lock on the doors and open my spectacles case. From within the case, I selected a likely pick and screwdriver and a little over a jiffy later, the door popped open. I swung it back on its hinges and waved Victoria through. She brushed by me without acknowledging my prowess, tossed her bag onto her bed, lifted her right foot into the air and heaved off her shoe.

‘Are you going to take a nap?’ I asked.

‘No, I’m bloody not.’ She reached for her other shoe. ‘I’m changing into something more comfortable. And then I’m coming with you. You might be the buffoon who got us into this mess, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand idly by while you run around making it worse.’