Coffin Dodgers

by Gary Marshall

  We arrange to meet in The First and Last just after ten. Amy's on back shift and can't make it any earlier, although Dave and I wander in just after nine to get a few pints. There's no point going through the story of Seymour's call twice, so Dave and I talk about nothing in particular until Amy turns up. She arrives at quarter past and brings three beers over to our table.

  "Thanks," I say. "How was work?"

  "Usual. What's up?"

  I tell Amy and Dave about Seymour's call, but they don't seem particularly bothered. Dave's probably too busy thinking happy thoughts about Sunny. Amy, though, seems to have expected it. She looks at Dave, rolls her eyes and turns back to me.

  "Fine," she says.

  "Fine? Burke can't help us. Now Seymour can't help us. Unless Everett has a sudden change of heart and makes a full confession, we can't touch him."

  "That's true," she says. "So let's get him to confess."

  Amy's plan isn't particularly complicated, but it sounds pretty good to me.

  "We keep coming up against the same problem," she explains. "No evidence. So if we can provoke Everett or Sleazy Bob to do something dumb when there's plenty of people around, we might be able to change that."

  Adam Everett is the guest of honour at a charity event the day after tomorrow, raising money for people with Kynaston's Disease, and it's the sort of high profile, touchy-feely thing that Sleazy Bob will want to be associated with.

  So we're going to sabotage it.

  We spend most of the evening talking about the plan and working out who's going to do what. I think we've covered all the angles, but there's something that's been bugging me for a few days. "Here's a thing," I say. "Ever since Everett caught us on his boat, I've been waiting for them to do something. I mean, Sleazy Bob knows who I am, he can find out where I live easily enough, and Everett will have told him about the bug." Amy and Dave both nod. "So why hasn't he done anything?"

  "Maybe Everett hasn't told him anything," Dave suggests. "We know they don't do details on the phone, so if they haven't had another meeting then Sleazy Bob won't know all the details yet."

  "There could be an even simpler explanation," Amy adds. "Sleazy Bob is as dumb as rocks. Maybe he hasn't realised that you're the same guy Everett caught."

  "Yeah, that makes sense," I say. "When you're talking about Sleazy Bob, the dumb explanation is probably the right one."

  "Or maybe he does know everything," Amy adds. "Maybe he's just waiting until you turn up at work."

  "Which I'll have to do the day after tomorrow."

  "Yep."

  "I think it'll be okay," I say. "I don't see Sleazy Bob hiding in his office, scanning cameras. Not when there are people to slime."

  "As long as he's not watching, I don't think we'll have a problem," Dave says. "None of the staff are going to notice anything. It's not as if we've quit or been fired. We just haven't been turning up."

  We talk some more and agree on our respective roles. Amy's going to be working the event anyway, Dave's going to be scanning the cameras for unwanted guests, and I'm going to do the actual sabotaging. For that, I need to do two things. I need to get my hands on some gadgets, and I need to track down Rodeo Rick.

  Rodeo Rick does the sound for various functions at the casino, and according to Sunny he's the person most likely to be working the charity event. She was offered the gig, but she'd already taken a booking for somewhere else. The rodeo bit -- which he doesn't know about -- comes from his love of country music. Not the cool, modern stuff, but the traditional, whiny country music where everybody's crying into their beer because their dog done left them or their grandma done got hit by a meteorite. Rodeo Rick takes this kind of stuff very seriously, not just in the way he dresses -- it'll be a cold day in Hell before he goes anywhere without wearing cowboy boots -- but in the way he talks. He's adopted what he clearly thinks is an authentic country and western accent, but it just sounds as if he's suffering from a terrible disease. Factor in a bit of a personal hygiene problem and a face that looks like a huge potato and you won't be entirely surprised when I tell you that Rodeo Rick doesn't have a lot of luck with the ladies. Some people look like international playboys. Rodeo Rick looks like the sort of person who interferes with livestock. He's not a bad guy, though, and the plan won't work if I can't get him on board.

  I'd originally planned to go to the electronics shop first and then find Rodeo Rick afterwards, but thinking about it the whole thing's pointless if I can't persuade Rick to do what I want to do. I don't know where he lives and I don't want to show my face at the casino just yet, so I decide to hang out in the casino car park and hope he turns up -- and that Sleazy Bob doesn't. I'm in luck. There's no sign of Sleazy Bob, but I've been in the car park for less than an hour when Rodeo Rick turns up in a dusty black panel van and parks just four spaces away from me. As ever he's in cowboy boots, too-tight jeans and a faded T-shirt with some country and western band's logo on it.

  "Hey, Rick. How's it going?"

  "Good," he drawls. "Real good."

  "Keeping busy?"

  "Yeah."

  Rodeo Rick isn't the world's greatest conversationalist.

  "Are you doing the Monroe suite tomorrow night?" All the casino's function suites are named after Hollywood greats, probably because Sleazy Bob thinks that's classy.

  "Yeah."

  "Fancy a night off?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I could do the shift for you."

  "Well..."

  "You'd still get paid for it. It's just a set up and forget job anyway, isn't it?" When you do sound, some jobs are more difficult than others. If there's a live band or a string quartet or something like that then the sound guy's in for a busy night moving microphones and tweaking the mixing desk pretty much constantly. If it's just people talking, though, it's a doddle: test the microphones before it starts, hit start and stop on the music player at the appropriate time, be there in case anything important explodes or electrocutes people and that's about it.

  "Yeah. It's an easy one." Rick looks at me quizzically, his little eyes almost disappearing into his face. "Why do you want to do it?"

  "I want to impress a girl," I grin.

  Rick grins back.

  Excellent.

  Traffic's light and I make it to the electronics shop in five minutes flat, only to spend ten minutes sighing as the grey-haired man in front of me asks a hundred thousand questions about audio cables. Eventually he buys something -- one of those cables wrapped in pseudo-science that costs ten times as much as any other cable because it's made of angels' hair and space metal, or some such crap -- and I'm back on my bike two minutes later, a cheap digital music player and a cable adapter in my pocket.

  I head home, make a sandwich and look at my purchases. The music player's barely the size of my thumb, but it's packaged in eight inches of extremely tough transparent plastic. I try tearing it open without success, and I end up stabbing at it with a knife, nearly severing a finger when I misjudge the angle and the knife slips. After about ten minutes I finally free the music player from its plastic prison, hook it up to the computer and transfer Dave's edited version of the recording we made of Everett. I check the battery level -- it's fully charged -- and then make sure I've bought the right cable adaptor. I have, so I wrap it around the music player and stick them both in my jacket pocket so I won't forget to take them with me tomorrow.

  By the time I've done all that there's just time to tidy up -- well, to get rid of the most obvious health hazards, anyway -- before the buzzer goes and Amy and Dave turn up.

  "How did you get on?" Amy isn't even inside my front door before she's talking.

  "Good. I spoke to Rodeo Rick and he's cool with me taking his shift."

  "Did you get the bits?"

  "Yep."

  "Me too," says Dave. "Here." He tosses a small brown paper bag to me. It contains what looks like two small bits of beige-coloured rubber.

  "Earpieces," Dave says. "One each. As long as
you're inside the building, I'll be able to talk to you."

  "Can we talk back?"

  "No, they're one way. But I'll be able to see you."

  "Cameras?"

  "Cameras." Dave's other job for today was to find out whether he could access the casino's cameras from the security office. Looks like the answer is yes.

  "Cool."

  "I went to see Burke earlier," Amy says.

  "How did it go?"

  "Oh, you know, he was full of optimism, happiness and encouragement. We're crazy, it's dangerous, that sort of thing."

  "Is he going to help?"

  Amy smiles. "Of course he is."

  We've been over it several times already, but we walk each other through the plan one more time, trying to find any flaws we haven't already considered.

  "Are you sure you won't get spotted?" Amy asks.

  "I'm sure," I say. "You've been to loads of functions. Ever notice the sound guy?"

  "True."

  The plan itself is straightforward. I'll be doing the sound, Amy will be waiting tables, and Dave will be watching us on the cameras and talking to us if anything comes up. And that's pretty much it.

  "So what do you think's going to happen when it all kicks off?" Dave says.

  "No idea."

  "Ah, that's a relief. For a moment I was worried that we were going in with a half-arsed plan." Dave's grinning, but he's got a point. We've planned as much as we can, but the one thing we can't predict is how Everett is going to react.

  "We're just shaking the tree," I say. "If we shake it hard enough, maybe a monkey will fall out."

  "A monkey?" Amy says.

  "Yep."

  "You're weird."

  When I walk into the casino I keep expecting somebody to shout or grab my shoulder, but nobody pays the slightest bit of attention. I'm in the Monroe Suite by half past five. The interior designers are just finishing off, hanging digital posters around the room. Each one's as big as I am, and while each poster is different they all show essentially the same thing: a smiling holiday photo of a sixty-something man or woman, then a stark black and white photo of the same person some years later. In the second photo the smile is gone and the eyes are unfocused, and the lighting shows every crease and wrinkle in a deep black. The posters fade between the two images while text scrolls along the bottom. The scrolling text is mainly figures, telling you how many people are likely to get Kynaston's -- a lot -- and how much money can make a difference -- not very much, although of course the more generous you are the more of a difference you can make.

  It all seems a bit much. Don't get me wrong. I'm not unsympathetic -- Kynaston's is a horrible disease -- but the posters are laying it on a bit thick. And is it me, or is it a bit insensitive to have a charity do for people who can't remember stuff and then plaster the whole room with reminders of what the charity do's all about?

  The more I try not to think about it, the more I want to laugh. I'd better do something to distract myself.

  Rick's instructions are spot on. There's a little mixing desk on a table in the rear left hand corner of the room, about as far from the speakers' table as it's possible to get without being in the corridor. It's already set up and switched on with the master volume set to zero, and true to his word Rick has put a strip of masking tape along the bottom of the desk with handwritten notes saying what each set of controls is controlling: "intro music", "centre mic", "backup mic" and so on. It still looks pretty complicated -- mixing desks have hundreds of knobs, dials and sliders -- but if you know what you're doing it's all very straightforward. Each input has a great big sliding control that adjusts the volume, there are a couple of dials that adjust the bass and treble, and there are several other knobs that nobody ever uses. We had a very similar desk back when I played in the band, so there's nothing particularly strange or startling about Rick's setup.

  In addition to the volume, bass and treble controls each input has two little buttons marked "M" and "S" respectively. These are the ones I need. The M button means mute, and it silences the selected input. The one marked S means solo, and it silences everything but the selected input. I take my music player and cable from my pocket, connect them to a spare input and press play. I hit the solo button and Everett's voice comes through the speakers. I hit mute to turn it off again before he's even finished a word. I know what's on the player; I just needed to check that the cable worked.

  By the time I've finished fiddling it's just after six, which means I've got at least half an hour to kill. I decide to go and find a vending machine and leave the suite, nearly colliding with Amy in the corridor.

  "Sorry, daydreaming," I say. "You look nice."

  She does. Amy's wearing what she calls her Sunday uniform, which is what the girls have to wear when they're doing more respectable functions. It's still far too tight, but the skirt is a little bit longer than usual, the buttons go a bit higher on the top and while the heels are still high, the girls can walk without constantly fearing for their lives. It's still Sleazy Bob's idea of respectable, but on the right person -- and from where I'm standing, Amy is very much the right person -- it could make a Bishop think twice about that whole celibacy thing. Which, of course, is the whole idea.

  Maybe it's because we're about to do something really dangerous, or maybe it's just that everything I've been through recently has given me a whole new perspective. I don't know. But I think it's time I stopped mucking about and asked Amy out. So I do.

  "Amy?"

  "Uh-huh?"

  I'm blushing before I've even said anything. "I was thinking..."

  Amy's eyes widen, but I can't decipher her expression.

  "When this is all over --" I think I'm saying "um" more often than I'm breathing -- "do you want to go for dinner or something?"

  There. I said it.

  Amy's eyes widen, and I think she's starting to blush too. "Dinner?"

  "Yeah."

  "Like, a date?"

  "Yeah."

  She's definitely blushing. Me? You could fry an egg on my cheeks.

  "Okay."

  The apology is halfway out of my mouth before I realise what she's just said.

  "Really?"

  "Really. But I want candles."

  "Candles?"

  "Candles. Somewhere with candles."

  "Okay."

  We look at each other in silence, my hands in my pockets so Amy can't see them shaking. It's not an awkward silence -- well, it is, but it's not one of those awkward silences that's rubbish. It's more that neither of us knows what to say next. Amy's the first to break it.

  "I need to get in there," she says, indicating the function suite.

  "Yeah. I'm just going to get a Coke. Want anything?"

  "No thanks."

  "Okay."

  "Okay then," she says. "See you in there."

  "Yeah."

  "Okay."

  "Okay."

  I wait until Amy's gone through the double doors before I dare move. If Dave's already on the cameras then he's just seen me dancing around the corridor. I don't care.

  I grab a Coke from a vending machine and head back to the Monroe suite. The interior designers have gone and there's no sign of anybody, not even Amy. I double-check the mixing desk again and cue up the background music. It's what Dave calls "cheesy listening", jazzy versions of pop and rock hits. It's the sort of thing they play in lifts and in supermarkets, designed to be inoffensive to anybody who doesn't love music. I skip through a few tracks, and I'm not surprised that the entire playlist is terrible. Still, it's not aimed at me. I'm sure the guests will love it.

  All I need to do now is wait for everyone to arrive, so that's what I do.

  Things start to happen when Orange Annie turns up. A no-nonsense fortysomething with a taste for charcoal grey trouser suits, big shoulders and even bigger earrings, Anne Fulton is the Senior Events Co-ordinator -- that is, she's the senior co-ordinator rather than the person who co-ordinates events for seniors. Although the
y're pretty much the same thing, really. She's nice enough, but she's a tough boss: she can scan an entire room in two seconds and spot the slightest imperfection, from poorly polished shoes to a table display that isn't just so. She's easy to spot, too. I don't know whether it's fake tan or a weird choice of make-up, but her face crosses the line between "tanned" and "Jaffa orange".

  Within moments of her arrival the room is a hive of activity. Waiters and waitresses file in from the rear doors, champagne corks are popped and trays of glasses filled. Covers come off the trays of nibbles, and Orange Annie gestures to me to start the music. There's no flicker of recognition when she looks at me. Nobody notices the sound guy.

  Rick has done all the groundwork, so when I start the cheesy listening playlist it's at just the right volume, loud enough to hear but not so loud you can't hear anything else. At exactly seven o'clock Annie throws the main doors open and the guests amble in, grabbing glasses and nibbles without pausing their conversations. As they do there's a crackle in my ear and Dave says hello. "Remember, it's one way," he says. "I can see you fine, but I won't be able to hear you." I nod, but I don't bother looking for the camera. The Monroe Suite, like everywhere else, is full of the damn things, most of them hidden.

  I've got a good view of the room from the mixing desk, and I can see everyone coming in. It's the expected bunch of usual suspects, a collection of high rollers, retired high-flyers and their partners. I'd say the average age is a bit north of sixty, but the group is rich sixty: expensive watches and even more expensive jewellery, designer labels for the men and women alike and conversations about the stock market, interest rates and investments.

  Adam Everett arrives at around ten past, and he's immediately at the centre of a large group of well-wishers. This kind of thing is obviously second nature to him, and I watch as he effortlessly shakes off the more annoying hangers-on while greeting yet another group with a smile of what appears to be delight. He's a smooth operator, working his way through a few dozen people in a matter of minutes.