The Good Thief's Guide To Vegas

by Chris Ewan

  I closed the door to the corridor behind me and immediately swung the beam from my penlight around the darkened bathroom and the rest of the suite. Once I was sure that I was alone, I gripped my penlight in my teeth, cracked the knuckles on my left hand and approached the suitcase.

  The suitcase was filled with women’s clothes. There were another two suitcases down on the floor and the same was true of them. If I had a shoe fetish, there would have been plenty to excite me, and if I’d had the desire to dress in women’s underwear, I could have quite readily satisfied the urge. But so far as money or casino chips or gold bullion were concerned, there wasn’t anything to get giddy about.

  There was, however, still the room safe to consider, and it would have been remiss of me not to seek it out. A built-in closet with louvred doors was positioned alongside the first of the beds, and I slid the left-hand door open and shone my penlight over a clothes rail, a hotel laundry bag, an ironing board and a fold-out suitcase stand. I tried the right-hand side. More empty hanging rail. Oh, and the safe. It was on a shelf above the rail, at around eye-level.

  This particular safe didn’t have a credit-card reader but it did have a numbered keypad. The exterior had been fashioned from a cream, hardwearing plastic, with a sculpted handle built in, and it had one feature that especially pleased me – a small enamel badge bearing the manufacturer’s name. The lozenge-shaped badge was held in place by two screws, and I had no trouble removing them with one of my screwdrivers while I held my penlight between my teeth.

  Behind the badge was a modest hole. The hole in question functions as a back-up, of sorts, because it allows a qualified locksmith to open the safe without the code. Mind you, it also permits a trained monkey to do much the same thing.

  The hole, you see, grants access to an electric motor that drives the components that do the physical locking and unlocking. And clearly, if you can operate the motor quite independently of any code, why, then Robert’s your mother’s brother, and you have an easy way in.

  Now, you might imagine that independently driving the motor requires some pretty complicated kit. And you’d be wrong. It takes a paperclip, a 9-volt battery and two short lengths of electrical wire.

  Naturally, I always carry a paperclip – it’s a dim thief indeed who doesn’t arm himself with the most universal picking tool known to man. But my spectacles case can only carry so many items, and until I’d returned to my room earlier at the Fifty-Fifty, it hadn’t been stocked with the 9-volt battery and the electrical wire. Now that it was, I gleefully removed the ingredients for my classic safe-cracking recipe and set to work.

  First, I unbent the paperclip and poked one end inside the hole. I jiggled it towards the reverse of the keypad, where the motor wiring was located, until it wouldn’t budge any further, then I attached one strand of electrical wire to the negative terminal on the battery and another strand to the positive terminal. I connected both ends to the paperclip, running a charge through to the motor wiring on the safe. And you know what? A wonderful four-letter word flashed up on the digital display above the keypad, the motor buzzed and the door popped open.

  I stood on tiptoes and flashed my penlight inside. There’s not much you can fit inside a hotel safe and it certainly wasn’t stuffed with casino chips. Thankfully, there was some cash, and I pulled it out and counted it. Four hundred and twenty dollars. Given my predicament, it wasn’t to be sniffed at, so I gratefully slipped the bundle into my pocket. Alongside the notes was a bottle of perfume, which I suppose was to be sniffed at, though I didn’t bother to sample the odour for fear it might make me sneeze. Next to the perfume were two passports. I reached for them and had a quick peek. It was sheer curiosity that made me look, though it never hurts to check these things.

  It hurt on this occasion. The passports belonged to two British women from Bolton. They’d been born within a year of one another, and their dates of birth put them somewhere in their early forties. And while passport photos are terrible things and very rarely flattering, these photos didn’t make the women appear altogether wealthy.

  I felt a pang of guilt. How often, I asked myself, did the women get to take a holiday like the one they were currently enjoying, and would the robbery I was committing ruin it for them?

  Now I really wished I hadn’t looked at their passports. Stealing from my compatriots was one thing, but being able to picture the expression on their faces when they opened their safe was quite another. I tightened my fingers around the cash in my pocket, unsure what to do. Ordinarily, I liked to think of myself as a gentleman thief, a pretty classy kind of crook. But what I was involved in right now was petty theft, and they call it petty for a reason.

  Then again, I wasn’t sure I could afford to be all that decent. Victoria needed stake money if we were to have even the slightest chance of raising the cash the Fisher Twins were demanding. And anyway, I told myself, the women were bound to have travel insurance. Hell, they might even finesse their claim and compensate themselves for any money they’d lost at the casino tables.

  Before I could tussle with the rights and very wrongs of my actions any longer, I left the money in my pocket and put the passports back where I’d found them. Then I reached up and grabbed the final item from the very back of the safe. A packet of cigarettes.

  Boy, this was going to be harder than I’d thought. I checked the time on my watch. Then I checked the time on Josh Masters’ watch. They both agreed. It was three days, six hours and thirty-four minutes since my last cigarette.

  For some reason, the exact merits of which still escape me, on my final day in Paris, I’d had the very dumb idea of kicking my smoking habit. And during a haze of early optimism, I’d had the even dumber idea of mentioning it to Victoria. Unsurprisingly, Victoria had made me promise to follow through, and while I’d slipped a number of times since, if there was one good thing to say about the peril I was facing in Las Vegas (and believe me, there really was only one good thing), it was that it had at least distracted me from my cravings. I guess that should come as no surprise. Finding a dead woman in the middle of a break-in, and then having your life threatened unless you can somehow pull together an inordinate sum of cash in just over twenty-four hours, tends to focus the mind somewhat. But now cigarettes were in front of me again. And I wanted one. Badly.

  One lousy cigarette. Was that really so much to ask? It might calm my nerves, make me feel more alert. And that had to be a good thing. Right?

  I got as far as locating an ashtray on the television cabinet before I finally got a hold of myself. Yes, it was a smoking room, but if the two women returned soon after I’d left, then in all likelihood they’d smell the fresh smoke. If they had any sense, they’d check their safe and they’d find that their money had gone. And then they’d report the theft, and my night of larceny would need to be cut very short indeed. I’d have to whisk Victoria off to a new hotel, and find a new way to access the guest rooms, and all the while it would be getting later and more people would be going to bed. And, well, those were enough reasons for me to show a little willpower and hold off from lighting up in the middle of a damn heist. So I did, although I have to confess that I also pocketed a free box of smokes.

  Re-locking the safe was easy enough. I simply closed the door and ran another charge through the paper clip until the word OPEN flashed up. Open? Well yes, that was an odd quirk of the technique, but the safe was locked solid. And even better, the code hadn’t been altered in the slightest. So whenever the women decided to check on their belongings, the same code they’d used to lock the safe would be fully capable of opening it again. Admittedly, once they discovered that their cash had gone walkabout, it might not strike them as the greatest consolation, but hey, at least it was something.

  I slid the closet door across and made sure that I’d put the suitcases back where I’d found them, and then I dragged my trolley out into the corridor. The corridor was empty again, and after the darkness of the hotel room, it seemed startlingly bright.
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  Out of curiosity, I lifted the tablecloth on the trolley and opened up the warming oven I’d been wheeling around. There were two plates inside, both covered with metal warmers. I used my gloved fingers to take a peek at what was on offer. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, or spaghetti bolognese. I prodded the spaghetti with my finger. I was beginning to feel a little hungry, but I thought it would stay warm for a little while yet.

  Up ahead, another door seemed to be calling to me, and I pushed the trolley close before applying the brake and knocking confidently. When nobody responded, I slid my coat hanger out from where I’d hidden it beneath the tablecloth and dropped to my knees. I was just about to feed the coat hanger under the door when all of a sudden the damn thing swung open and I almost rolled forwards into the room.

  Ten hairy toes confronted me. I looked up and discovered that the toes belonged to an overweight type in Daffy Duck boxer shorts and a wife-beater vest. I whipped the coat hanger behind my back and scrambled to my feet.

  ‘Whaddaya want?’ he asked.

  The man was chewing on a chicken drumstick, with a bucket of wings tucked under his arm. Grease shimmered around his lips, and his cheeks and forehead were flushed. Tufts of dark chest hair poked out from around his vest, and his belly protruded from below the hem, weighed down like a balloon (a pink, hairy balloon) filled with motor oil.

  ‘R-r-room service?’ I stammered, and nodded towards the trolley.

  The man dropped his drumstick into his bucket and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He jabbed a slick finger towards my back.

  ‘What gives with the wire?’

  ‘Just some litter I found.’ I shrugged. ‘Don’t want anyone tripping.’

  He studied me with glassy eyes.

  ‘You know, I’m pretty sure I have the wrong room.’ I gazed beyond him towards the number on his door.

  ‘What do you got on the table?’

  ‘Er, it’s meatloaf and pasta with meat sauce. But I’m sure this is the wrong room.’

  The man looked towards the trolley, then back at me. He licked his lips.

  ‘Nah. That’s us, all right.’

  My eyes fairly bugged out of my head. ‘Um, are you sure, sir?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure. Bring it in.’

  He backed up and held his door open with a stubbed toe. I peered inside at the mess of clothes and bedcovers on the floor. The widescreen television on the facing wall was screening a NASCAR motor race.

  ‘What are you waiting for? You want it to get cold?’

  He didn’t know the half of it, and I didn’t feel as though I had any alternative. I let off the brake and wheeled the trolley into his room, and a few minutes later I shuffled back out with a dud receipt and a dollar tip for my trouble. The guy had just swiped my cover, not to mention my evening meal, and I had to ask myself: could things get any worse?

  SIXTEEN

  Things were certainly about to get worse for the two women from Bolton. Now that my trolley was gone, I had to find a new excuse to be knocking on doors, and their suitcases struck me as the neatest solution. Letting myself back into their room, I gathered up the two cases from the floor and emptied their contents into the closet. Then I tossed my coat hanger inside one of the cases and made good my escape.

  My escape was mighty timely. As I turned the corner at the end of the corridor, I walked into a haze of perfume, hair spray and coarse northern language. It seemed the women’s passport images hadn’t been as unkind as I might have believed, at least not when they were steaming drunk and leaning heavily on one another for balance.

  Luckily for me, there was nothing the least bit noteworthy about their suitcases. Looking at the women now, I was surprised that they hadn’t favoured bright pink plastic or fake Burberry prints. Not that I was complaining. Their drunkenness and my uniform seemed to combine to render me invisible, and when they lurched right, I swerved left and passed without comment.

  I headed straight for the service elevator. I had high hopes that the folks on Floor 12 would be far more honourable than the deviant who’d nabbed my trolley, and I also hoped that they stayed out a little later than the Bolton Babes. Time was moving on, nudging towards one-thirty in the morning, and every break-in I attempted was beginning to carry more risk. Before too long, I’d have to call it quits and make my way to the casino floor to see how Victoria was faring. And at some point, we’d need to sleep. Yes, we’d been in the States for close to a week already, and we were working to a pressing deadline, but I still hadn’t adjusted to the time difference completely, and Vegas had added another few hours to the burden. In Europe, dawn had been and gone, and I was feeling badly fatigued. My eyes ached and my limbs were weary, and all the nicotine patches in the world couldn’t make up for a well-timed doze.

  I tell you, just thinking about it made my head loll, and the laundry carts outside the service elevator suddenly looked mighty appealing. If it hadn’t been for the risk that I might wake in the middle of a fast-spin cycle in an industrial washing machine, I could very well have climbed inside and closed my eyes for a short while. But ever the professional, I resisted, and meanwhile I allowed my good friend the service elevator to save my legs the trouble of climbing four flights of stairs.

  The guest corridors on Floor 12 looked just like the ones down on Floor 8, and I only wished the same rooms would be empty too. Yes, there were a bunch of Privacy Please signs, and they definitely helped, but so far as the other doors went, it still felt as though I was playing a large game of Russian Roulette.

  I passed beyond the guest elevators before slowing to look for opportunities. There was a store cupboard on my right and I poked my head inside, but since I didn’t plan on making my fortune by hawking vacuum cleaners, there wasn’t anything to delay me. Further along the corridor were a couple of doors with signs hanging from them requesting a room service breakfast, and they were followed by three doors featuring no signs whatsoever.

  I paused outside the middle door and tried listening for any noise – a toilet gurgling or a television blaring or a fat man inhaling chicken wings – but I couldn’t hear a thing. Dropping the empty suitcases beside my feet, I freed a crick in my neck and flexed my fingers and finally used my good knuckles in the way God had intended. And when nobody came to answer my call, I removed the coat hanger from my suitcase and used my fingers in the way I had intended, until I was inside yet another darkened hotel room where I had no right to be.

  I cast my penlight around the space and discovered that the room looked just like the ones downstairs. The bathroom was on my left as I entered, and while it was by no means as plush as the bathrooms at the Fifty-Fifty, it was perfectly respectable. There was the usual toilet and sink and shower and tub, and mercifully, there was no trace whatsoever of a floating corpse.

  Beyond the bathroom was the bed-sitting area. This particular suite only had one bed, though admittedly it was king-sized. Facing the bed was the customary flat-screen television, and the mini-bar, and an easy chair positioned close to a desk. The curtains hadn’t been drawn but a gauzy net hung over the window glass and I set the suitcases down on the floor and used an electric control panel on the wall to draw the net aside. The view wasn’t anything to write home about. The window looked out onto another hotel window that belonged to the Paris-Las Vegas resort across the street. And since this isn’t a Hitchcock movie and I don’t run into murder scenes quite as often as Victoria would have you believe, there was no beautiful blonde being throttled in front of me. There was just a blank window, no light, like a hundred others around it.

  I turned, and the beam of my penlight settled on a briefcase on the desk. The briefcase was upholstered in a supple black leather and it featured a pair of three-dial rotary combination locks. I sat in the easy chair and rested the briefcase on my knees and tried the double latches. No joy. Undeterred, I rolled the dials until every single one was set to the number nine and then I killed my penlight so that I could focus on my sense of touch.


  I applied sideways tension to the left-hand latch and pressed my gloved index finger down hard over the first dial, rolling it slowly upwards. Spinning the dial in the other direction was no good, because every number would seem to click and tense up. But by rotating upwards, and by being careful about it, I could feel the dial stiffen and the latch twitch when I hit upon the correct number. Once I had it, I repeated the process on the next two dials. The technique was one I’d practised many times in the past and it took barely a minute until I was done.

  I reached for my flash and read the code – 545. I turned the second pair of dials to the same sequence, tweaked both latches, and hey presto (as Josh Masters wouldn’t have said), the little beauty opened.

  Sadly for me, it wasn’t stuffed with casino markers. Instead, there were a good deal of business papers and a wide selection of cheap pens, as well as a pocket calculator and a BlackBerry device. I unhitched the strap shelf in the lid of the case and took a peek. I found notepads and highlighter pens and a Dictaphone. Oh, and a laptop. The laptop was one of those dreary, grey machines that weighed about the same as a truck and was a smidgen less aerodynamic. It was worth perhaps a couple of hundred dollars in the dark recesses of a parking garage, but I wasn’t inclined to sell it. I was, however, happy to open it up and see if it had any battery power.

  No, I wasn’t planning on writing the opening section of the short story Victoria had mentioned. All I wanted was to connect to the internet, and to my surprise and delight, it turned out that the owner of the laptop had already paid to access the hotel’s Wi-Fi service. It wouldn’t save me any cash, because naturally I’d been intending to charge my web time to one of the credit cards in Josh’s wallet, but it did save me a precious few minutes setting up an account. The laptop had one of those archaic red nipples instead of a track pad, and I moved the screen arrow to the address bar in the web browser before calling up YouTube.