by Chris Ewan
‘This is intolerable,’ Victoria told him. ‘Charlie’s already told you that he doesn’t have anything in his jacket. Here – do you want to check me too? You might as well see inside my bag if that’s your attitude.’
She popped the clasps on her handbag and shook its contents onto the tabletop. Everything fell out in a heap – her mobile phone, her make-up, a hairbrush, her room card, her purse and passport.
She tugged at Ricks’ sleeve. I appreciated the gesture but it didn’t work. Ricks merely snatched his arm free and backed me into the wall so that my head knocked against the television.
‘Touch the ceiling,’ he snarled, and after a moment’s hesitation, I found myself complying.
I really could touch the ceiling – it was that low. And just as I surprised myself with the revelation, Ricks reached inside my jacket and withdrew the sock full of chips.
I didn’t dare look at Victoria as he returned to his chair, untied the sock and upended it above the table. My haul of purple and silver chips rained down. He threw up his hands in mock surprise, and then he set about organising the chips into piles.
‘He could have won those for all you know,’ Victoria said, surprising me with the lengths she was prepared to go to on my behalf. ‘He was playing poker earlier this evening.’
‘Sure thing.’
Victoria flattened her palms on the tabletop and leaned towards Ricks. ‘You have absolutely no way of proving that those chips came from Josh Masters.’
Ricks snorted and lifted the sock for her to see. He held it by the hem, between his forefinger and thumb, revealing the embroidered initials J M.
Victoria swallowed. ‘I’m sure there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation.’
But there was no explanation, reasonable or otherwise. What could I say, after all? I couldn’t tell them how I’d really come by the sock and the chips for fear of placing myself at the scene of a murder. And I couldn’t think of any plausible stories I could weave. Sure, give me a few days, and I could probably have invented something in the same way I did for my books. But I didn’t have a few days. I had seconds. And I’m sorry to say my brain wasn’t capable of working that fast.
‘Charlie?’ Victoria prompted.
I contemplated the backs of my hands and let go of a faint breath. The silence in the room was almost too much for me to bear, but I had a feeling I might prefer it to whatever came next.
‘So I was on it. What now?’ I asked, chancing a sideways look at the twins.
They were standing shoulder to shoulder, as if conjoined. Their heads swivelled towards one another, naturally, and then the one on the right cleared his throat.
‘Tell us where we can find Josh.’
‘I don’t know that.’
‘Tell us where he is and we can come to an arrangement.’
‘I told you. I don’t know.’
‘What about these chips?’ Ricks asked. ‘Were you meeting him to hand them over?’
‘They were my cut.’
‘Mighty generous.’
‘I drive a hard bargain.’
One of the twins clucked his tongue, as if it was a metronome keeping time with his thinking. He stepped across to the table and gathered up the chips in his hands, tapping them together like a gambler pondering a large wager. It was hard to tell if he was angry or not. He seemed oddly calm. Almost too calm. He fixed on Ricks.
‘Watch over them awhile. We’ll go talk to the croup.’
The twins left us and entered the room next door. I watched through the tinted glass as the croupier slunk down in his chair and clasped his shaking head in his hands. If he was afraid before, he seemed terrified now. It was peculiar. The twins looked as if they were dressed to negotiate a banking loan, not to reduce a casino cheat to jelly.
‘What’s their story?’
‘How’s that?’ Ricks asked. He had occupied himself with the items Victoria had emptied out of her handbag. He undid her compact and checked beneath the circular foam pad, then unscrewed her lipstick and searched inside the lid. Victoria tutted loudly, but he ignored her.
‘The Fisher Twins,’ I went on. ‘They look too young to own a casino.’
‘Internet.’
‘Excuse me?’
Ricks lifted Victoria’s purse and prodded his finger inside the zipped compartments. When he failed to find anything of interest, he cast the purse aside and did the same with her handbag.
‘Made it big in Silicon Valley. Forget millionaires. These guys have more money than Elvis.’
Finally, Ricks grew bored of Victoria’s handbag and his hand settled upon her passport. He flipped to the laminated back page and lifted his pen to begin jotting down her details. His eyebrows jerked up a fraction and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
‘Newbury, huh?’
Victoria lunged forward and snatched her passport from his hands. She began to re-fill her handbag.
‘Used to know a Brit by the name of Newbury.’
‘Fascinating,’ Victoria said, gathering her lipstick and compact together.
‘Alfred Newbury. He a relation of yours?’
‘I very much doubt it.’
‘I guess I could check my records.’
‘I’m sure that whatever you choose to do with your time is no business of mine. Now, may I go?’
Ricks pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘Not my call.’
‘Listen,’ I told him. ‘Victoria wasn’t involved in any of this. She didn’t know what was going on.’
‘Tell it to them.’
And with that, Ricks closed his cardboard folder, stood up from the table, gestured with his pen through the tinted glass window at the Fisher Twins, and left us alone in the room.
‘I can’t believe you,’ Victoria hissed, as soon as the door had clicked shut behind him. ‘We haven’t even been here a day.’
‘Careful. This room’s probably bugged.’
She tensed her jaw and tightened her hands into fists. I could see her nails digging into the flesh of her palms.
‘I’m so angry with you right now, Charlie. I can barely even look at you.’
‘If it’s any consolation, I’m not having the best of evenings myself.’
‘It’s no consolation whatsoever.’
‘I was afraid you might say that.’
Gingerly, I slid back the chair alongside her and sat myself down. If there was anything to be thankful for, it was that I had a few moments to think. Unfortunately, I couldn’t decide what I should be thinking about. The whereabouts of Josh Masters? The plight of his unfortunate assistant? The casino chips that I’d so recently forfeited?
As it turned out, I didn’t focus on any of them, because I was distracted by what was happening next door. The croupier was pleading, red-faced, with spittle flying from his lips, but the twins appeared completely unmoved. I couldn’t hear a word of what was being said, and I figured that was because the walls and the tinted glass had been soundproofed. I can’t say it was an altogether comforting realisation.
‘You have much planned for the rest of the night?’ I asked Victoria.
She groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose, as if she was suffering from a migraine.
‘Oh, lighten up,’ I told her. ‘I’ve been in police cells a lot longer than this. And we’ve given them what they were after. They have their precious casino chips.’
‘They have some chips, Charlie. Not all. And since they seem to think we’re both involved in a casino scam, I’d say they’re not going to let us leave anytime soon.’
‘Sure they will. There’s nothing more we can give them.’
‘I don’t imagine they’ll see it that way.’
‘Wanna bet?’
Let me just say, the glare I received was hands-down the most ferocious I’ve ever known.
‘Trust me,’ I told her. ‘We’ll be fine.’
But of course we weren’t fine. We were a long way from fine indeed. In fact, once I’d noticed tha
t one of the twins had acquired a length of metal piping, and that he happened to be waving it in the croupier’s face, I realised that I’d rarely been so far from fine in my entire life.
‘Er, Victoria?’
‘What?’
‘I don’t mean to alarm you, but have you seen what’s happening next door?’
Victoria turned and let out a yelp. She flattened her hands on the glass partition.
On the other side of the glass, the twin prodded the croupier’s chin with the metal pipe, tipping the man’s head back and exposing his throat. He leaned close and breathed right in the croupier’s face. The croupier gulped and clawed into his thighs with his fingertips. His lips trembled and he managed to stutter some words, but whatever he said didn’t seem to go down very well.
The twin spun around and swung the pipe hard against the wall. Plaster debris showered his torso and face. He hefted the pipe and curled his lip as he assessed the damage. The damage was really quite terrifying.
‘What’s he doing?’ Victoria asked. ‘Why is he swinging that pipe around?’
‘I think it’s safe to assume he’s threatening him.’
‘You don’t think he’d actually hit him, do you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. He’s not the type.’
‘What about his brother?’
As we watched, the second twin stepped forward and seized the metal pipe.
‘I’m not sure I can watch this, Charlie. Why doesn’t he just tell them what they want to know?’
‘He will.’
‘You think?’
‘Well, yes. Unless he’s a complete idiot.’
‘What if he doesn’t actually know anything?’
‘Then there’s no reason for them to hit him, is there?’
I wasn’t sure if I believed it or not. I felt a lot like a sports commentator trying to keep the home fans happy despite all the evidence suggesting that the visiting team were about to run amok.
‘Oh God. What’s the other one doing?’
I grimaced. ‘I believe he’s holding the croupier’s hand on the tabletop.’
I didn’t just believe it. I could see it too. The croupier appeared to be screaming – his mouth was wide open and the muscles of his neck stuck out like cords – but his scream didn’t reach us.
Meanwhile, the twin with the pipe moved it up and down above the croupier’s knuckles, like a woodsman lining up an axe blow.
‘Charlie, tell me they’re not going to do it.’
‘They won’t, Vic. It’s a bluff.’
Some bluff. Without further ado, the twin whipped the pipe up above his head and brought it down hard on the back of the croupier’s hand. There was a stunned pause and then blood misted on the mirror glass as the croupier bucked out of his chair, snatching his hand away from beneath the pipe and, it seemed to me, almost leaving his fingers behind.
Victoria screamed and buried her face in my chest just as the second twin lost his balance and clattered into the bloodied glass partition. His brother was grinning inanely, nostrils flared and eyes crazed. Specks of blood had mixed in with the freckles on his face, and when he wiped his lips with his sweater sleeve, a pinkish smear spread across his cheek.
‘Oh God. Is he okay? Tell me he’s okay.’
‘I hate to say this, Vic, but I really don’t think that he is.’
The croupier had formed himself into a ball in the far corner of the room. He was cowering there, crouched down around his hand as though trying to smother the pain. I wasn’t sure how much of his hand remained, but I didn’t think he’d be dealing blackjack anytime soon.
‘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.’