***
“Just ripped a 20K necklace!!!” A text message from Rob.
So in addition to Stan’s watch, Jesse will sell the necklace to Dell’s, one of Vegas’s many pawn shops, specifically one that Max knows buys hot items.
When I was a kid, I asked Max why there were so many pawnshops in Vegas. He explained desperate gamblers created the demand. I remember him saying that at the height of his sickness, he would have pawned his soul for a thousand bucks if they’d have been willing to buy it.
Since the items are stolen, Jesse will probably only be able to get 50% of their value, but that’s still five for the watch and ten for the necklace.
So with Jesse heading south to Dell’s, we split paths.
My next two jobs come right in a row. Both at Caesars. Each goes smoothly. Each puts another four grand in my purse.
I make my way out of the sprawling Caesars grounds, cutting through the Forum shops to get to The Strip. The painted ceiling of the Forum shops resembles the sky just before dusk. Giving it the sense of perpetual twilight. What time is it really? Exhaustion has caused me to lose all sense of time.
I glance at my watch. Do the math. Fewer than 11 hours before the game.
Once out on The Strip, I head back towards home base. Treasure Island sits two casinos away. Yet it looks so much closer than it actually is. TI has an architectural feature that makes it look smaller (and therefore closer than it actually is). Each window covers four rooms on two floors. These huge windows make the casino appear much closer than it is. This façade makes people say, “Oh, hey let’s head over to Treasure Island. It’s right there.”
Even though I know the illusion exists, it still gets me every time. It appears like Treasure Island’s right there, and it still takes me another ten minutes to walk home.
When I drop off the newly earned $108,000, Max gives me an update. Including my most recent scores, we’re up to $700,000.
“We’re 70% of the way there.”
“With ten hours to go,” adds Max.
“Where’s Rob?”
“Downstairs. At Cirque de Soleil.”
Little tiny hairs stand up on my neck and arms. As if they’re lining up in an army of angry little hairs. Rob’s catching a show? While the rest of us are hustling the entire city of Las Vegas? But then the hairs stand down. Rob is downstairs working not watching Cirque de Soleil.
It actually provides a great setting for him to pick pockets. Dark. Crowded. Lots of distractions. It reminds me of hearing about his escapades at the Kings of Leon concert. Hopefully this time he won’t end up fleeing into the storm drains.
Grabbing a bottle of water on the way out, I head to the elevator. I don’t have an appointment for the next two hours, so I head to a high-end martini bar at the south end of The Strip. I know this bar to be a venue where men pick up escorts. I’m not the first woman to enter a bar or club, pretend to be a pro, and then rob or con the would-be client.
But this is my first attempt. Max always forbade this tactic because of the risk. By not knowing who your client is, Max insists that you increase the variables and therefore the risk. The person could be a killer or a rapist. They could have no money at all. They could be an undercover police officer. They could be some sicko who set up a nanny-cam in the room before picking up a prostitute.
All risks I’m willing to take today.
As I approach the bar, two cops arrest a blond woman beside a bus stop. She screams at the top of her lungs about some municipal code. I can barely understand her slurred words; she’s wasted. But she screams them over and over again, and by the third time, I can actually understand the garbled sentence. “Las Vegas Municipal Code 10.76.010 allows you to carry your alcoholic beverage out of the casino and onto The Strip, goddammit!”
“But it doesn’t permit public intoxication,” replies one of the cops as he roughly handcuffs her.
At first glance, she might appear to be just another drunk tourist, but her sunburn and worn shoes give her away as homeless.
I try to navigate the crowd, but a rush of tourists has crowded around the poor woman, making it difficult to squeeze through.
Whenever I see a homeless blond woman – and there is every brand of homeless in a city with this much alcohol and gambling – I always look twice, wondering if it’s Madeline.
After skirting the crowd, I duck into the martini bar. An old blues song plays in the background. I walk through the bar and choose a seat. Within thirty seconds, a gentleman wearing a charcoal suit sits down next to me.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“Sure. Just know that I’m working.”
The guy hesitates. Squints one eye and tilts his head as he stares at me.
“Yes, I mean what you think I mean.” There’s an irritation in my voice, not because I’m annoyed with this fellow, but because I don’t have time to chat. The guy walks off. Not before he shakes his head at me condescendingly. Wow, a guy hitting on me rather than buying me. As refreshing as it is, it’s not what I need right this second.
The next guy to sit down beside me: a red haired gentleman in a tracksuit.
“I’m looking for a way to spend the next two hours. I was thinking of buying ringside seats to the fight. But they’ll set me back fifteen hundred. If there was an entertainment option cheaper than that…”
As he trails off, I try to estimate the most amount of money I can get out of him. Prostitutes are more like art than used cars. There’s no blue book to tell you how much a prostitute should cost. Most wealthy men are not going to hang a $10 painting in their study, no matter how good the painting is. To these wealthy individuals, expense implies merit. The same goes for women. A prostitute priced at $200 implies low quality. Quality encompasses cleanliness, looks, age and yes, quality of the act. Some men pay thousands of dollars for a woman, not just because they have the money, but because that price makes them confident they’re getting the highest quality.
Before I can respond with a price, a taller, balder, and much more direct gentleman sits down on the other side of me. “I think you’re stunning. I’d like to buy you for the evening.”
Time to play auctioneer and try to incite a bidding war. “The gentleman next to me just offered me fifteen hundred, so if you can beat that, then this is all yours.” I say it loud enough so that the red haired man can hear me.
The bald man leans over and whispers, “Two thousand?”
The red haired man counters, “Twenty five hundred.”
Three minutes later I’m riding up the elevator with the red haired man. The bald man topped out at fifty-five hundred, and so the red haired man won the war with an even six thousand.
In his hotel room, he offers me a drink.
“Before the celebrations, let’s get the business out of the way.”
“Okay. No problem.”
He heads over to a suitcase where he pulls out some cash. As he counts out the cash, I debate which con to use. I want to get out of here as soon as possible with as little physical contact as possible. Before I can decide, he brings over the money and politely asks, “Will you excuse me for a moment?”
“Of course.”
The red haired man proceeds to walk into the bathroom and close the door. I can hear him whispering on the other side. I picture the guy in the bathroom giving himself a pep talk in the mirror.
For a moment, I simply stand. Then I glance at the closed bathroom door. I look over at the suitcase where I now know he keeps his cash. What a joke. He’s not even going to make me work for this. All the complex cons I’ve pulled over the years… this one I call the “walk out the door” con.
I dump the empty suitcase in a dumpster behind the casino. In addition to the six thousand he handed me, the guy had another four thousand in his bag. Ten G’s. Even though it was riskier to pull this mark out of a martini bar, at least there won’t be any fallout drama with an escort service.
While en route to my next appointment at Harrah’s,
I make a mental note to avoid the martini bar for the rest of the evening. Just in case the red-haired man returns looking for me. Won’t he?
***
Only $800? My client at Harrah’s supposedly had two grand to spend on a girl, but I only find him with 800. When I press him on it, he claims he wasted most of his cash gambling. His wasted cash has become my wasted time. The $800 wasn’t worth the 45 minutes it took to get.
When I emerge from the lobby just outside the casino, I contemplate whether I have time to hit a club and pick up a stranger before my next scheduled job.
Standing here on the sidewalk, I’m leaning towards squeezing in a quick job when someone’s warm breath touches my neck. A familiar cologne hits my nose just before I turn to see Ladislav standing right next to me. My throat closes up. We’re not five feet from his Town Car.
“Hello, Sarah.”
I try to look less flustered. “Oh, hey.” Fail.
How is this happening? How is this happening? How did he find me? How am I going to get out of this? How the hell did he find me? Should I run? Should I scream?
“I have had trouble getting in touch with you. I thought you wanted to see me again.”
Run? Scream? Instead I decide I must play it cool.
“I did.”
“The escort service said they haven’t been able to get a hold of you either.”
“I’ve been feeling sick. I’m sorry.”
“What happened with your sister?”
“Sophie? She’s going to be okay.”
Fuck. I said Sophie. But he’s talking about my fictitious sister Kathleen. The one who got in the car accident.
“Sophie? I thought it was Kathleen. No?”
“It is Kathleen. Sophie’s her middle name. The service says we’re not supposed to use real names, so I used her middle name.”
“And you’ve been feeling sick? You look well at the moment.”
“Must’ve been a 24-hour thing. I feel better tonight.”
“Don’t you want to know how I found you?”
“I have to run, Ladislav. Maybe we could hang out tomorrow night?”
Ladislav stares at me. Like he’s already picturing my dead body.
To convince him nothing is wrong, he can’t know how terrified I am. How can I convince him he doesn’t frighten me?
“Here, why don’t I give you my number? That way you don’t have to call the escort service or anything.”
“Get in the car.” There’s that commanding voice again. He motions to the Town Car. Then he opens the back door. “Get in the car, Sarah.”
“I can’t tonight. I’m sorry. How about tomorrow?”
Ladislav leans in closer. I don’t understand what he’s doing. Is he leaning in to kiss me? But then my eyes lower. He’s flashing me a glimpse of a gun concealed in his jacket. “Get in the car.”
He has a gun. I can’t not get in the car. But I know if I climb in that car, there’s a good chance I’m dead by morning. And if I’m dead, who will save Sophie?
“Sarah. Now. In the car.”
“Okay,” I say. “At least take the gun off me.”
But he doesn’t. The gun remains pointed at my sternum.
“Get. In. The. Car.”
Right now, I can’t get to my purse for my own gun. Not while Ladislav has his gun on me. But maybe I’ll have the opportunity once inside the car. Once things settle down.
I take one step towards the open car door, when I see something in my peripheral vision coming towards me. I look to my left just in time to witness a fiercely swinging golf club strike Ladislav in the temple.
Before I can even grasp what happened, Jesse grabs my hand and pulls me away from the car. Several tourists see Ladislav on the ground and start screaming. As Jesse drags me away from the scene, I can’t help looking back. I can see blood pooling on the street like a red halo around Ladislav’s head. The driver leaps out of the car and rushes to Ladislav’s side. He pulls out his own gun and scans the scene, trying to figure out who attacked his boss.
Jesse hauls me farther from the scene as an overweight businessman staggers from his rental car yelling about a thief stealing his golf club. We round the corner, now out of view of the growing crowd.
At the next block, we cut through an alley. Jesse heads to a dumpster, but I catch his arm. “Jesse, don’t. Fingerprints.”
For a moment, Jesse stares at the golf club. Looks desperate to get rid of the weapon. But then he nods. “You’re right. You’re right.”
Back to walking. All the way to the far side of The Strip.
On a pedestrian bridge, between two street performers, Jesse stops. For a moment, he just stares at me, but then his rambling breaks the silence.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… I didn’t know what to do. I saw him talking to you. I saw the gun. I’m sorry.” I hug him hard. “I might have killed him. I might have killed him, Piper. I hit him in the temple. I wasn’t thinking. I just…” He finally shuts up and gives into the hug, his electric yammering subdued.
“Thank you,” is all I say.
***
Why tell the others what happened? I see no reason to alarm them or involve them. It will remain our secret. We’ll hope that no one saw anything. That no one could identify either of us.
To be on the safe side, when we get back to Treasure Island, I put the golf club in the back of my closet inside a long cylindrical container that formerly housed a giant Killers poster I bought for Sophie. My shallow breaths begin to deepen. With the club hidden and my anxiety partially relieved, now my curiosity is rehydrated.
“Where did you come from?” I ask Jesse.
“I saw one of Ladislav’s bodyguards in Treasure Island about an hour ago. So I knew they had at least figured out where you lived. I was worried about you, and Max told me you were in the middle of a job at Harrah’s. So I went to Harrah’s and waited for you in the casino. I wasn’t sure which set of elevators you’d come down. I waited in a spot where I could see both. By the three card poker tables. Twenty minutes later I saw you come out of the eastern set of elevators. I was walking over to you when I saw Ladislav trying to force you into the Town Car. And…”
He trails off. The rest, he knew I knew.
“Oh my god,” says Jesse. “What if it was on camera?”
“I know. It might’ve been,” I say. “But, Jesse, it might not’ve been. I know there’s a camera above the revolving doors at the entrance to the casino, but there was an airport shuttle parked at the curb that would’ve blocked that view.”
“Was that the only camera?”
“I don’t know for sure. But I think so.”
“Maybe that’s why he was waiting for you where he was,” Jesse says. “And not in the casino. Maybe he knew there weren’t any cameras there.”
It’d be natural for Jesse and me to spend hours analyzing what happened. Obsessing over every detail. Further speculating if there were more cameras outside the casino. Questioning if any witnesses got a good look at us.
But we have to get to a million dollars, and we only have four hours left. We’re still about 70 grand short.
***
The gun in my purse will serve as my back up plan, but I’d like to do this clean. Having seen Ladislav’s bleeding skull makes me even more uncomfortable using a gun. I meet my next client, an overweight man with a Boston accent, in the lobby of Aria.
I get us a room and tell him I’ll add it to his bill. Upstairs, I have a couple drinks. I slip it in there that I’m 17 years old. I flash him my fake prescription pills. Then I “pass out” on the floor.
He doesn’t flee immediately. He takes my pulse. Then he calls someone from his cell phone. He tells the person what happened. He’s on the phone for five full minutes describing what happened, what I drank, etc.
Who’s on the phone? His lawyer? A friend? I find myself recalling a George Clooney movie. I imagine my mark is talking to some “fixer”. Then I hear him moving around the ho
tel room. At first I assume he’s looking for the cash, which I hid in the bathroom. But then I realize he’s wiping his fingerprints down. Wow, this guy is careful. For a second, I almost respect him for his thoroughness, until I remind myself that he plans on leaving me here to die.
While I wait for what feels like eons for him to leave, my thoughts turn to Ladislav and the way Jesse struck him with the golf club. I keep visualizing the club connect with his head. The way the fire when out of his eyes as he slumped over.
Was he dead? Or just unconscious? It’d be hard to die just from getting hit just once in the head with a golf club. Wouldn’t it? But Jesse is strong, and he had hit him hard. Right in the temple. Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ladislav was dead. Ladislav dead could prove almost as troublesome as Ladislav alive. His death would mean greater pressure on the LVPD to find the attacker. And greater possible punishment for Jesse if the police caught him.
I can’t believe the fat Bostonian is still wiping down all of his fingerprints. After a few minutes that drag like hours, he finally leaves. As soon as the door slams shut, I hop to my feet. Off to my next appointment.
And then another one after that.
***
A massive crowd gathers to watch the signature Treasure Island free show. I have to fight my way past the tourists lined up to see the sexy pirates fight the sexy sirens. It’s 10:00 PM already? I thought it was only 9:00. But the shows are at 5:50, 7:00, 8:30, and 10:00. I know it’s after 9:00, so it must be 10:00. I glance at my watch.
Sure enough it’s 9:58 PM.
Kim, Jesse, Mars, and Max are all upstairs when I arrive. I hand Max my latest score.
I don’t have to ask. He knows I want to know the tally. “This should put us about eight thousand dollars short.”
I look down at my watch. A little over an hour to go.
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