by Blake Crouch
“That means I have to be alive tonight.”
She smiled. “Yes, it does.”
14
There were now four people waiting inside of Letty’s room at the Wynn.
Isaiah.
Mark.
And two men she’d never seen before.
Isaiah sprang off the bed, said, “There she is.”
As the door closed behind Letty, she noted that the temperature in the room had changed. There was now a palpable pregame energy. The air juiced with nerves, fear, anticipation.
Ize walked over and took her by the arm, said, “Meet Jerrod.” She smiled at the tall, rugged man leaning against the dresser. He sported a patchy beard and long, walnut-colored hair bundled up into a ponytail.
Isaiah motioned to the other man. “And this is Stu. Three of us helped spread freedom to the Middle East.”
“I’m Letty, nice to meet you.”
Stu didn’t rise from the bed.
Just gave her a slight nod.
His hair was curly and black, and he didn’t boast the intimidating build of either Isaiah or Jerrod. But his eyes were as hard as any she’d ever met.
Letty looked at Isaiah. “You intercepted the call?”
He smiled.
“It came in two texts. First the time. Then the room number.”
“And it corresponds to a room in this hotel?”
“Tenth floor. East side of the building. In terms of location, it’s pretty close to perfect.”
“How so?”
“If they took the money any higher, we couldn’t rappel out from the room below. We’d have to get a second room closer to ground level. That would mean riding elevators. Exposing ourselves to cameras. It would represent a substantial escalation of risk.”
“Rappel?”
“What’d you think, Letty? We were going to tote this shit out in duffel bags through the lobby?”
“What’s the time frame?”
“They’re moving the money at oh-two hundred. To your civilian ass, that’s—” He glanced at his watch. “—a little more than eleven hours from now.” Isaiah looked at Mark. “Our rental van is ready for pick up. Go get it and scope the parking deck one last time.”
Letty said, “What about Richter?”
Mark grinned. “One of the cooler things I managed was to program an incoming call control feature into Richter’s phone.”
“English.”
“Using the clone, we can call him from any number.”
“So tonight,” Isaiah said, “just before we suit up, we’ll send Richter a text from his Secret Santa, hit him with a fake room number and a fake ETA on Sunday night.”
Letty said, “So by the time he realizes the grift...”
“We’ll all be long gone.”
She had to smile. “So what happens now?”
“While Stu and Jerrod bring over the toys, I got a little job for you.”
“Okay.”
“Your outfit’s in the bathroom.”
# # #
Letty walked down the hallway on the ninth floor.
At the door, she straightened her hunter green blazer and smoothed her skirt.
Knocked.
A groggy-eyed man answered.
Sleep lines down the right side of his face
She said, “Mr. Sax?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Amanda, RDM here at the Wynn.”
“RDM?”
“Rooms Division Manager. We’ve had a maintenance issue crop up. It’s impacting the air quality for a segment of rooms on floors eight through eleven. Unfortunately yours is one of them. We’re going to need to move you to another room.”
“But we’re already unpacked and—”
“I understand.” She smiled. “Of course, we’ll be upgrading you to a Salon Suite, which is nearly two thousand square feet, three times the size of your current room. We’ll also be giving you two hundred dollars in chips as a token of our appreciation for your understanding. We’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience.”
# # #
Letty hit a brisk stride on her way back to the Palazzo.
It was almost five o’clock, and she had six hours to kill before Ize’s crew was set to rendezvous in the room directly below 1068.
Waiting at the crosswalk on Sands, she dialed Christian’s mobile.
“Hi, Letty.”
“Something’s come up. Can we do an early dinner?”
“Sure, when?”
“I’m free right now,” she said. “I just need to change. Let’s meet in the lobby in thirty minutes. And wear a coat. I’m taking you someplace special.”
“A proper last meal sounds nice.”
# # #
She asked the concierge to point her toward the best restaurant in town. At first he demurred. A twenty spot pulled a definitive answer out of him—a French place down the Strip at the MGM Grand. But he feigned doubt that reservations could be procured on such short notice. Forty dollars secured said reservations.
Christian met her at the same bench where she’d found him coming to pieces earlier in the day.
He’d cleaned up. He looked good and smelled good and she told him so, then took his arm as they walked together out into the scorching Vegas evening.
The sun was falling, reflecting off all the chrome and glass.
So hot it seemed like combustion would’ve been a certainty if there was anything green in sight.
The restaurant sent a limo.
Riding down the boulevard, Letty was struck with the feeling that it wasn’t just Christian’s last meal, but maybe hers as well. Something about the golden quality of the late light. A sadness, a finality to it.
She stared out the tinted window and thought about her son.
# # #
They went all-in on a sixteen course tasting menu.
It was like eating in a library—hushed and reverent—but the food was out of this world. Letty wouldn’t drink but insisted Christian have the wine flight. She had been worried going in that the conversation would be heavy, but they found common ground.
Politics.
Children.
Movies.
Letty sat on a velvet couch, propped up with pillows. Rich royal purple drapes everywhere she looked. Ivy walls. Candlelight.
She had the best lamb she’d ever tasted. Must’ve been fed gold flakes and the milk of the gods.
The bread cart was legendary.
Like baked clouds.
Everything plated as beautifully as jewelry. The artistic detail more precise than coinage.
Over espressos, Christian said, “I hope that whatever has really brought you to Vegas won’t keep you from seeing your son again.”
“It’s a risk. But I just have this fear that if I were to walk away and drive up to Oregon to be with my son, that within a few months, I’d be broke. Living out of a motel. Strung out. Maybe dead.”
“Sounds like your business here could produce the same end result.”
“Yeah, but at least I wouldn’t be doing it to myself. Truth is, I think about dying all the time. I think about my son finding out. And of all the possible scenarios, Jacob hearing that mommy was found OD’d and decomposing in a motel, is the worst.”
“So you are back in the game.”
“Are you judging me?”
“No.”
“Look, it fills this hole in my soul that I used to throw drugs at.”
“Your son doesn’t fill it?”
“Only part way.”
“So you’re saying it’s either crime or drugs for you. Can’t live without one or the other.”
“If I take drugs I will definitely die. If I... ...”
He finished her sentence: “Steal?”
“Then I’ll only maybe die. I’m fighting for my life here, Christian.”
“And this thing—it’s tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you afraid?” he asked.
“Of course.”
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“And do you find fear to be a help or a hindrance?”
“It helps. For sure.”
“How so?”
“It keeps me uncomfortable and sharp. Heightens my senses.”
“And you have no doubts about going through with it?”
“Jobs like this—they’re the only time I don’t think about using. You helped me to see that. You haven’t asked for any details,” Letty said. “Thank you.”
“And you haven’t asked me if I’m going through with my plans tonight. Back at you.”
“Are you?”
“What exactly are you doing?”
They laughed.
“Sounds like a big night for both of us,” he said. “The suicide and the thief.”
“What would it take?” she asked, “for you to keep on keeping on?”
“It’s funny. That’s all I’ve been asking myself lately.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. Some new experience maybe? Something that made me feel like a different person. Like I was living a different life.”
“I hope you find it.”
# # #
They rode back in the limo.
It was ten o’clock. She could feel the job looming, but she pushed it out of her mind just a little while longer.
She looked up at Christian as they passed Paris Las Vegas. All of the lights and the neon playing across his face like an ecstasy dream.
Then they were parked out front at the Palazzo and the driver was coming around to get their door.
They embraced in the lobby.
Christian said, “Take care of yourself, Letty.”
And she said, “You too. Thanks for everything.”
Neither asked the other to reconsider.
Neither said goodbye like how the moment called for it. Like goodbye forever.
The elevator ride up to her room was the only window in which she allowed herself to cry.
15
Room 968 at the Wynn looked like a construction site.
Between the end of the bed and the mini-bar, a folding ladder stood in a pile of sawdust and plaster dust. A man high up the rungs was waist-deep in the ceiling, a large segment of which lay in pieces on the floor.
Letty locked the door after her and made her way inside.
Detected a muffled hum—the work of a quiet motor.
Dust rained down out of the hole in the ceiling.
She spotted a large black duffel bag in the corner, bulging.
Unzipped it.
Zip-ties.
Kevlar vests.
Face masks.
Ball gags.
Shotguns.
“What’s this, Ize?” she said, lifting a semi-auto tactical shotgun.
“S’all good,” he said.
“How exactly is this all good? Aside from the fact that you said ‘no guns,’ you fire off one shell and you’ll wake the entire Strip.”
“We won’t be firing any shells.”
“How’s that?”
“Keep digging.”
She thrust her hand deeper into the duffel until her fingers grasped a cartridge the size of a twelve-gauge shotgun shell. She lifted out a clear capsule packed with copper wiring and a four-pronged electrode. TASER XREP had been engraved into the plastic.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Nasty is what that is. It’s a taser on steroids. Fires out of a shotgun and delivers debilitating pain for up to twenty seconds. I let Jerrod pop me with one. Standard Taser ain’t no thing, but I’d hate to meet a man that shell can’t drop.”
“It’s not lethal?”
“Nah. Only makes you wish you were dead.”
Over by the window, Jerrod was cranking down on a clamp that held a large suction cup to the glass.
Isaiah knelt over an REI store’s worth of climbing equipment, just the sight of which tightened Letty’s stomach. He was in the process of outfitting each harness with a locking carabiner and an ATC belay device.
She stepped over a neat coil of climbing rope.
Ventured a glance out the window.
The view was east over the lighted pools and a maze of lower rooftops dotted with AC units. Beyond it all, a golf course shone green in the night.
“It’s just seventy feet down to the rooftop below,” Isaiah said.
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
He dropped the harness he’d been working with and rose to his feet.
Tapped the glass.
“Once we get down there, we gotta make it across the convention center roof. Mark will be waiting for us with the van at the top of the parking deck.”
Letty stared at a tower of empty duffel bags in the corner.
“Lot of bags.”
“Lot of cash.”
“We going to be able to carry it all out?”
“It’s a concern—our abundance of riches.”
Jerrod said, “Should I start scoring this glass?”
“Yeah, get that shit done.” Isaiah lifted one of the duffels. “Assuming the denominations are high, best case scenario, we fit about four mil into each bag.”
Letty watched as Jerrod applied cutting fluid to a wide circle.
Using a Bohle tool kit, he carefully scored a circle with a four-foot diameter into the glass.
“How many pounds we talking?” Letty asked.
“Twenty-two pounds per million dollars.”
“That’s eighty-eight pounds per bag. I can’t carry that.”
“Nobody expecting you to. That’s all on me and my badass friends. If the haul comes in at thirty-five or thirty-six, that’s nine bags. Three trips across the convention center rooftop.”
“That’s a helluva lot of time humping back and forth out in the open.”
“Well aware.”
“Lot of time for things to fall apart.”
“I ever say this would be easy-peasy?”
Jerrod removed the glass cutter, said, “I think I’ll go ahead and just take out the circle.”
“Might as well.”
From a foam-lined aluminum case, Jerrod lifted a new tool.
“What’s that?” Letty asked.
“Called a cut opener.”
“Cool.”
He smiled, eating up the attention. She could’ve cared less, but making nice with Isaiah’s cohorts didn’t strike her as the worst idea she’d ever had.
He turned a knob. “I’m just setting the tapping force. Watch this.”
Holding the device to the surface of the window, he placed the head of the glass tapper to the score line, then squeezed the lever. The cut opened in inch-long segments, slowly forming a perfect circle.
Up in the crawlspace, the hum of the motor had stopped.
Stu climbed down out of the ceiling with a circular saw, his face frosted with dust.
Isaiah said, “We happy?”
Stu grinned, wiped a sheen of sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.
“I was able to get an angle on the subfloor. Cut out a four-by-four section. Little glitch. There’s a slab of marble over top of it. It’s gonna take two or three of us to move it. I was only able to lift it a quarter of an inch, and just for a second.”
“Well, let’s do this. See what we got to work with.”
# # #
Letty tugged on a pair of latex gloves and went up first.
Richter’s contact had said two a.m., but what the hell did that mean? Surely someone would sweep the room before the money showed.
She climbed over a tube of ductwork and emerged into a bathroom.
Swung the beam of her flashlight across the walls.
Swanky.
Giant Jacuzzi tub. Triple vanity. A TV embedded in the mirror. Double-headed shower with more floor space than some apartments she’d rented in her darker days.
She spoke into her headset, “This is not a mirror of our room. It’s a large suite. How we doing on time?”
Isaiah hit her back, “
No idea, but stay cool. We need some recon.”
Letty struggled onto her feet. Her heart banging away.
She moved across the bathroom and through an archway.
Everything dark.
Perfectly quiet.
“Bathroom opens into the master suite.”
“Take it slow and low, that is the tempo,” Isaiah said. “There could already be cameras or motion sensors in place.”
That gave her pause.
“Really?”
“Really.”
At the open doorway of the master suite, she killed the light. Stared hard into the darkness.
“Would it be the end of the world if I turned on a proper light?” she asked.
“Nah, go for it.”
She found a panel of dimmer switches next to the entertainment center and brought up the lights. Her eyes burned for several seconds.
The living room boasted a wet bar, a desk, in-room dining area, plasma high-def, and a sitting area adjacent to a floor-to-ceiling window.
The curtains had been swept back.
The desert floor glittering below like crystals in a cave.
Isaiah said, “Are the curtains drawn?”
“No, they’re open.”
“Close them.”
She pulled the curtains, then moved on toward the front door.
Said, “There’s a powder room and a room with a massage table by the entrance. Otherwise, we’re early to the party.”
“All right. We’re coming up.”
# # #
Letty sat on one of the white leather sofas, staring at the time on her iPhone.
12:23 a.m.
One hour and thirty-seven minutes.
Isaiah, Jerrod, and Stu had been circling the suite for the last fifteen, studying the floor plan.
Jerrod said, “We have to already be here when they roll in.”
Stu was shaking his head.
They moved out of the bedroom and eased down onto the couches.
“We don’t attack until we know what’s coming through that door.”
Isaiah said, “Intel says six men.”
Jerrod said, “What if it’s a dozen?”
“Then we go home,” Stu said.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Isaiah said. “They’ll send two men in to sweep the room before they cart in the cash. Confirm all’s cool. We can’t be in here when that happens. How many cams we got, J?”
“Three, I think. They’re with Mark. Where is he, by the way? He was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.”