by Glenn Cooper
"He said he was hexed. The count was thirteen, you know, a code word for thirteen. She joined the table when the count was high. I think he dropped a swizzle stick to signal her."
"So he counts and decoys, the chick bets and collects."
"They probably have a code word for every count, like 'chair' for four, 'sweet' for sixteen."
The phone rang and Flores answered it and listened before saying, "Yes, sir."
"Well, Peter Benedict, it's your lucky day," Flores announced. "Victor Kemp wants to see you up in the penthouse."
The view from the penthouse was dazzling, the entire Strip snaking toward the dark horizon like a flaming tail. Victor Kemp came in and extended his hand, and Peter felt his chunky gold rings when their fingers entwined. He had black wavy hair, a deep tan and gleaming teeth-the sleek, easy looks of a headliner at the best club in town. His suit was a shimmery blue that caught the light and played with it, a fabric that seemed unearthly. He sat Peter down in his cavernous living room and offered him a drink. While a maid fetched a beer, Peter noticed that one of the wall monitors at the far end of the room had a shot of Gil's office. Cameras everywhere.
Peter took the beer and considered doffing his cap but kept it on-damned if he did, damned if he didn't.
"An honest man is the noblest work of God," Kemp said suddenly. "Alexander Pope wrote that. Cheers!" Kemp clinked his wineglass against Peter's beer flute. "You have lifted my spirits, Mr. Benedict, and for that, I thank you."
"You're welcome," Peter said cautiously.
"You seem like a very clever guy. May I ask what you do for a living?"
"I work with computers."
"Why am I not surprised to hear that! You spotted something an army of trained professionals missed, so on one hand I'm pleased you are an honest man but on another I am displeased at my own people. Have you ever considered working in casino security, Mr. Benedict?"
Peter shook his head but said, "That's the second job offer I've had tonight."
"Who else?"
"A guy at my blackjack table, the CEO of an insurance company."
"Silver hair, slim fella in his fifties?"
"Yes."
"That would be Nelson Elder, a very good guy. You're having quite a night. But, if you're happy with your job, I've got to find some other way to thank you."
"Oh. No. That's not necessary, sir."
"Don't sir me! You call me Victor and I will reciprocate by calling you Peter. So, Peter, this is like you just found a genie in a bottle but because this isn't a fairy tale you only get one wish and it's got to be, you know, realistic. So what's it going to be, you want a girl, you want a credit line, some movie star you'd like to meet?"
Peter's brain was capable of processing a tremendous amount of information swiftly. In a few seconds of thought he worked through various scenarios and outcomes and out popped a proposition that, for him, was high impact.
"Do you know any Hollywood agents?" he asked, his voice quavering.
Kemp laughed. "Sure I do, they all come here! You're a writer?"
"I wrote a script," he said sheepishly.
"Then I'm gonna set you up with Bernie Schwartz, who's one of the biggest guys at ATI. Will that work for you, Peter? Does that float your boat?"
Joy-soaked, he exulted, "Oh yeah! That would be unbelievable!"
"Okay, then. I can't promise you he'll like your script, Peter, but I will promise you that he'll read it and meet with you. Done deal."
They shook hands again. On his way out, Kemp put his hand on Peter's shoulder in a fatherly way. "And don't be counting cards on me now, Peter, you hear? You're on the side of righteousness."
"Isn't that interesting," Bernie said. "Victor Kemp is Las Vegas. He's a prince of a man."
"So what about my script?" Peter asked, then stopped breathing to await the answer.
Crunch time.
"Actually, Peter, the script, as good as it is, needs a bit of polishing before I could send it out. But here's the bigger thing. This is a big budget film, you got here. You got a train blowing up and a lot of special effects. These kind of action films are getting harder and harder to make unless they've got a built-in audience or franchise potential. And you've got a terrorism angle which is the real killer. Nine/eleven changed everything. I can tell you that very few of my projects that got cancelled back in '01 have been resurrected. Nobody wants to make a terrorism picture anymore. I can't sell it. I'm sorry, the world has changed."
Exhale. He felt light-headed.
Roz came in. "Mr. Schwartz, your next appointment is here."
"Where's the time gone!" Bernie sprang to his feet, which made Peter levitate too. "Now, you go and write me a script about high-stakes gambling and card counters and throw in some sex and laughs and I promise I'll read that. I'm so happy we were able to meet, Peter. You give my regards to Mr. Kemp. And listen, I'm glad you drove. Personally, I won't fly anymore, at least commercial."
When Peter got back to his small ranch house in Spring Valley that night there was an envelope sticking out from under his welcome mat. He tore it open and read the handwritten letter under the porch light. Dear Peter, I'm sorry you struck out with Bernie Schwartz today. Let me make it up to you. Come over to Room 1834 at the hotel tonight at ten. Victor
Peter was tired and dispirited but it was a Friday night and he had the weekend to recover.
The check-in desk at the Constellation had a room key waiting for him and he went straight up. It was a big two-bedroom suite with a great view. The coffee table in the living room sported a fruit basket and a bottle of iced Perrier-Jouet. And another envelope. There were two cards inside, one a voucher for $1,000 of merchandise in the Constellation shopping plaza and the other a $5,000 line at the casino.
He sat down on the sofa, stunned, and looked down onto the neon landscape.
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in!" he called out.
A female voice: "I don't have a key!"
"Oh, sorry," Peter said, sprinting for the door, "I thought it was housekeeping."
She was gorgeous. And young, almost girlish. A brunette with an open, fresh face, firm ivory flesh pouring out of a clingy black cocktail dress.
"You must be Peter," she said, shutting the door behind her. "Mr. Kemp sent me to say hello." Like many in Vegas, she was from somewhere else-her accent had a hillbilly twang, dainty and musical.
He blushed so brightly his skin looked like it was made of red plastic. "Oh!"
She slowly walked toward him, backing him up toward the sofa. "My name is Lydia. Am I okay?"
"Okay?"
"If you'd prefer a guy, that's cool. Didn't know for sure." She had a charming ditziness about her.
His voice got squeaky from laryngeal constriction. "I don't like guys! I mean, I like girls!"
"Well, good! 'Cause I'm a girl," she purred with practiced artifice. "Why don't you sit yourself down and open that bottle of champagne, Peter, while we figure out the kind of games you'd like to play."
He reached the sofa as his knees were buckling and went down hard on his rump. His brain was swimming in a sea of juices-fear, lust, embarrassment-he'd never done anything like this before. It seemed so silly, yet…
Then, "Hey, I've seen you before!" Now Lydia was genuinely excited. "Yeah, I've seen you tons of times! It just hit me!"
"Where? At the casino?"
"No silly! You probably don't recognize me because I'm not in that stupid uniform. My day job is at the reception desk at McCarran Airport, you know-the E.G. and G terminal."
The rouge drained from his face.
This day was too much for him. Too much.
"Your name's not Peter! It's Mark something. Mark Shackleton. I'm good with names."
"Well, you know how names are," he said shakily.
"I get it! Hey, none of my beeswax! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, honey. If you want to know the truth, my name's not Lydia."
He was speechless as he watche
d her strip off her black dress, showing all her black lacy gear underneath, talking a mile a minute as she went. "That is so cool! I've always wanted to speak to one of you guys! I mean how crazy must it be to commute to Area 51 every day. I mean it's like so top secret it basically makes me hot!"
His mouth fell open a little.
"I mean I know you're not allowed to talk about it but please, just nod if we've really got UFOs we're studying out there cause that's what everybody says!"
He tried to keep his head still.
"Was that a nod?" she asked. "Were you nodding?"
He composed himself enough to say, "I can't say anything about what goes on there. Please!"
She looked bummed then brightened up and started to work again. "Okay! That's cool. Tell you what, Peter," she said, swinging her hips, slowly approaching the sofa, "I'll be your personal UFO tonight-unidentified fucking object. How would that be?"
JUNE 23, 2009
NEW YORK CITY
W ill had a devastating hangover, the kind that felt like a weasel had woken up warm and cozy inside his skull then panicked at its confinement and tried to scratch and bite its way out through his eyes.
The evening had begun benignly enough. On his way home he stopped at his local dive, a yeasty smelling cave called Dunigan's, and downed a couple of pops on an empty stomach. Next up, the Pantheon Diner, where he grunted at the heavily stubbled waiter who grunted back at him and without exchanging any fully formed phrases brought him the same dish he ate two to three days a week-lamb kebabs and rice, washed down, of course, with a couple of beers. Then before decamping to his place for the night he paid his wobbly respects to his friendly package store and picked up a fresh half gallon of Black Label, pretty much the only luxury item to adorn his life.
The apartment was small and spartan, and stripped of Jennifer's feminizing touches, a truly bleak uninteresting piece of real estate-two sparse white-walled rooms with shiny parquet floors, meager views of the building across the street, and a few thousand dollars' worth of generic furniture and rugs. Truth be told, the apartment was almost too small for him. The living room was fourteen by seventeen, the bedroom ten by twelve, the kitchen and bathroom each the size of a good closet. Some of the criminals he had put away for life wouldn't see the place as a major upgrade. How had he put up with sharing the flat with Jennifer for four months? Whose bright idea was that?
He hadn't intended to drink himself stupid but the heavy full bottle seemed to hold so much promise. He twisted off the top, cracking its seal, then hoisted it by its built-in handle and glugged a half tumbler of scotch into his favorite whiskey glass. With the TV droning in the background he sofa-drank, steadily sinking into a deep dark hole as he thought about his effing day, his effing case, his effing life.
Notwithstanding his reluctance to take on the Doomsday case, the first few days had been, in fact, rejuvenating. Clive Robertson was killed right under his nose and the audacity and perplexity of the crime electrified him. It reminded him of the way big cases used to make him feel, and the kicky pulses of adrenaline agreed with him.
He'd immersed himself in the tangle of facts, and though he knew that epiphanous moments were the stuff of fiction, had a powerful urge to drill down and discover something that had been missed, the overlooked link that would tie together two murders, then a third, then another, until the case was cracked.
The distraction of important work had been as soothing as butter on a burn. He started by running hot, pounding the files, pushing Nancy, exhausting both of them in a marathon of days bleeding into nights bleeding into days. For a while he actually took Sue Sanchez's words to heart: Okay, this would be his last big case. Let's ride this sucker out and retire with a big old bang.
Crescendo.
Decrescendo.
Within a week he'd been burnt out, spent and dispirited. Robertson's autopsy and toxicology reports made no sense to him. The seven other cases made no sense to him. He couldn't get any feeling for who the killer was or what gratification he was getting from the murders. None of his initial ideas were panning out. All he could fathom was a tableau of randomness, and that was something he had never seen in a serial killer.
The first scotch was to dull the unpleasantness of his afternoon in Queens interviewing the family of the hit-and-run victim, nice solid people who were still inconsolable. The second scotch was to blunt his frustration. The third was to fill some of his emptiness with maudlin remembrances, the fourth was for loneliness. The fifth…?
In spite of his pounding head and hollow nausea, he stubbornly dragged himself into work by eight. In his book, if you made it to work on time, never drank on the job, and never touched a drop before happy hour, you didn't have a booze problem. Still, he couldn't ignore the searing headache, and as he rode the elevator he clutched an extra large coffee to his chest like a life preserver. He flinched at the memory of waking, fully clothed, at 6:00 A.M., a third of the mighty bottle empty. He had Advil in his office. He needed to get there.
Doomsday files were stacked on his desk, his credenza, his bookcase, and all over the floor, stalagmites of notes, reports, research, computer printouts, and crime scene photos. He had carved himself walking corridors through the piles-from door to desk chair, chair to bookcase, chair to window, so he could adjust the blinds and keep the afternoon sun out of his eyes. He made his way through the obstacle course, landed hard on his chair, and hunted down the pain relievers, which he painfully swallowed with a gulp of hot coffee. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, and when he opened them Nancy was standing there, looking at him like a doctor.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine. You look sick."
"I'm fine." He fumbled for a file at random and opened it. She was still there. "What?"
"What's the plan for today?" she asked.
"The plan is for me to drink my coffee and for you to come back in an hour."
Dutifully, she reappeared in precisely one hour. His pain and nausea were subsiding but his thinking was still milky. "Okay," he began, "what's our schedule?"
She opened the ubiquitous notebook. "Ten o'clock, telecon with Dr. Sofer from Johns Hopkins. Two o'clock, task force press conference. Four o'clock, uptown to see Helen Swisher. You look better."
He was curt. "I was good an hour ago and I'm good now." She didn't look convinced, and he wondered if she knew he was hung over. Then it dawned on him- she looked better. Her face was a little thinner, her body a little sleeker, her skirt didn't pinch as much at the waist. They had been constant companions for ten days and he'd only just realized she was eating like a parakeet. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure."
"Are you on a diet or something?"
She blushed instantly. "Sort of. I started jogging again too."
"Well, it looks good. Keep it up."
She lowered her eyes in embarrassment. "Thanks."
He quickly changed the subject. "Okay, let's take a step back and try to see the big picture," he said foggily. "We're getting killed with details. Let's go through these, one more time, focusing on connections." He joined her at the conference table and moved the files onto other files to give them an uncluttered surface. He took a clean pad and wrote on it, Key Observations, and underlined the words twice. He willed his brain to work and loosened his tie to encourage blood flow.
There had been three deaths on May 22, three on May 25, two on June 11, and none since. "What does that tell us?" he asked. She shook her head, so he answered his own question. "They're all weekdays."
"Maybe the guy has a weekend job," she offered.
"Okay. Maybe." He entered his first key observation: Weekdays. "Find the Swisher files. I think they're on the bookcase."
Case #1: David Paul Swisher, thirty-six-year-old investment banker at HSBC. Park Avenue, wealthy, all-Ivy background. Married, nothing obvious on the side. No Enron skeletons in his closet as far as they knew. Took the family mutt for a pr
edawn walk, found by a jogger just after 5:00 A.M. in a river of blood-watch, rings, and wallet missing, left carotid cleanly sliced. The body was still warm, about twenty feet out of range of the nearest CCTV camera located on the roof of a co-op on the south side of 82nd Street-twenty goddamned feet and they would've have had the killing on tape.
However, they did have a glimpse of a person of interest, a nine-second sequence time-coded at 5:02:23-5:02:32, shot from a security camera on the roof of a ten-story building on the west side of Park Avenue between 81st and 82nd. It showed a male walking into the frame from 82nd turning south on Park, pivoting then running back the way he came and disappearing down 82nd again. The image was poor quality but FBI techs had blown it up and enhanced it. From the suspect's hand coloration they determined he was black or Latino, and from reference calculations, they figured he was about five-ten and weighed 160 to 175 pounds. The hood of a gray sweatshirt obscured his face. The timing was promising since the 911 call came in at 5:07, but in the absence of witnesses they had no leads on his identity.
If not for the postcard, this would have been a street mugging, plain and simple, but David Swisher got a postcard. David Swisher was Doomsday victim one.
Will held up a photo of the hooded man and waved it at Nancy. "So is this our guy?"
"He may be David's killer but that doesn't make him the Doomsday Killer," she said.
"Serial murder by proxy? That'd be a first."
She tried another tack. "Okay, maybe this was a contract murder."
"Possible. An investment banker is bound to have enemies," Will said. "Every deal has a winner and a loser. But David was different from the other victims. He was the only one who wore a white collar to work. Who's going to pay to murder any of the others?" Will flipped through one of the Swisher files. "Do we have a list of David's clients?"
"His bank hasn't been helpful," Nancy said. "Every request for info has to go through their legal department and be personally signed off by their general counsel. We haven't gotten anything yet but I'm pushing."