by Chris Ewan
‘Is that so? You expect me to believe you haven’t been tossing guest rooms for the money you need?’
I shook my head. ‘No tossing. I’m studiously neat. And you can rest assured that my night didn’t go nearly so well as I might have hoped.’
Ricks looked from me, to Victoria, then rested his chin on his chest and shook his head.
‘We don’t have a great deal of time left.’ I checked my digital watch and scared myself with how true that happened to be. ‘Can’t you at least give us a chance to save ourselves? Don’t keep Victoria locked in here.’
Ricks firmed up his jaw, then released a gasp of air and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I don’t know why I’m even listening to this.’
‘We won’t gamble again,’ I went on. ‘Not one bet at one table.’
‘Charlie, be serious.’ Victoria moved across from the wall. ‘You can’t promise him that.’
‘Sure I can. After all, not gambling is a Newbury family rule.’
‘If I even catch you with one chip in your pretty English hand,’ Ricks warned Victoria, before letting the words trail off and allowing his shoulders to sag. ‘Lady, you should know that your father is the only reason I’m even entertaining this.’
‘Do we have a deal?’ I asked, and offered Ricks my hand.
‘Shoot,’ he said, and shook my hand wearily, like a man doomed to confront the fate he has just set in motion.
‘Victoria?’
‘Okay, fine.’ She snatched up her ring from the surface of the table and held it between her thumb and forefinger, thrusting it towards Ricks’ face. ‘But I’m keeping my lucky ring.’
Ricks shook his head some more and gathered up his cardboard folder. ‘Way I see things, you may just need it.’
He approached the heavy metal door and unlocked it with his key, then heaved the thing open and motioned for us to leave. I guided Victoria outside with my hand on the small of her back, where the sequined material of her cocktail dress met with her skin. I was crossing into the hallway when I paused and leaned close to Ricks’ ear.
‘There is one more thing,’ I said, in what could have passed for a whisper.
‘You don’t know when to quit, do you, guy?’
‘An address,’ I went on. ‘And a name. For the croupier working the roulette-table Josh was fixing. The one likely to end up with a hook where his hand used to be.’
‘That all?’
‘That’s the last of it.’
Ricks pouted, and tipped his head to the side. ‘I’ll have someone look into it.’
‘Terrific.’ I patted him on the shoulder. ‘You’re a gentleman. And you’ve done a very noble thing here today.’
‘Save it,’ he said. ‘Quit trying to work me, and get out of my sight before I change my mind.’
‘Consider it done,’ I told him, and with that I whisked Victoria away along the corridor without a backwards glance.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘I can’t believe you’re smoking again,’ Victoria said.
‘Really?’ I exhaled. ‘That’s what you want to lead with?’
We were sitting across from one another in a cushioned booth in the Fifty-Fifty’s Starlight Eaterie. Our table was a landfill of crockery. When we’d first joined the queue for the breakfast buffet, I hadn’t felt hungry. Then I’d seen the mountains of food on offer, and my stomach had begun to plead its case. I’d loaded my plate with cooked meats, eggs (scrambled and poached), hash browns and grilled tomatoes, then returned for pancakes, waffles, fresh fruit, maple syrup and cream. I’d washed it all down with orange juice and enough coffee to see around time, and then I’d begun to debate whether I should loosen off my belt buckle and assess the muffins. After a good deal of thought, I’d concluded that it might be more appropriate to ignore the No Smoking signs and light a cigarette, and it was this decision that had prompted Victoria to speak for the first time in more than ten minutes.
‘But you were doing so well.’
‘I was a walking nicotine patch.’
‘I just hate to see it.’
‘Well now, we can’t all be perfect, can we?’
Victoria slumped in her chair and crossed her arms over the scooped neck of her cocktail dress. If we’d been anywhere other than Las Vegas, I imagine she would have felt kind of slutty to be eating breakfast in (it must be said) a rather revealing outfit. But in a funny way, it seemed entirely fitting, and if only I’d been sporting my tux I could have convinced myself that we’d spent the night playing high-stakes baccarat and were now the dishevelled stars of a quintessential Vegas moment.
Victoria kicked me in the shin. ‘You might as well go ahead. I can see you’re dying to goad me.’
‘I’m shocked, is all.’ I placed my hand on my heart and widened my eyes. ‘It’s not every day that you learn a dark secret about your best friend.’
‘So I lied to you, Charlie. Whoopee! And yes, I get that you think that it’s not terribly different from how you lied to me about the way you really look. And in your eyes, that makes me a hypocritical bitch for the way I reacted. So I guess you’re entitled to crow about it before you grow up and realise that we’re even.’
‘Even? You had me believe your father was a bastion of respectability. A High Court judge.’
‘Well, what would you have had me say?’
‘The truth. Christ, out of everyone you know I’m probably the most likely to understand.’
‘It’s not something I’m especially proud of.’
‘Well, from what Ricks said, maybe you should be. Your father must have been good.’
Vic squinted. I raised my cigarette to my mouth and did likewise. The brand I’d stolen was stronger than I was used to. I was starting to like it.
‘Oh, give me one of those,’ Victoria said, and reached for the packet.
‘You’re kidding me.’
Victoria offered me an insincere smile as she removed a cigarette. She struck a match from a book with the hotel’s logo on it and raised the flame towards her face. Sounds corny, but I was beginning to see her in a whole new light (and I don’t just mean the one from the match).
‘I didn’t know that you smoked.’
‘Oh Charlie. There’s an awful lot that you don’t know about me.’
She drew expertly on the cigarette, her chest expanding as her cheeks hollowed out. She held the cigarette very elegantly between her fingers, with her bare elbow cupped in her palm. How someone smokes can be such an intimate, revealing thing. Watching Victoria, I could almost picture her back in her university days, sitting on a windowsill with a college scarf around her neck, a volume of poetry in her hand and a faraway look in her eyes.
‘So tell me something else that I don’t know about the mysterious Victoria Newbury.’
She leaned her head back and exhaled smoke towards the ceiling. A doped smile stretched her mouth.
‘Dad’s still active, for one thing.’
‘He is?’
She pointed at me with her cigarette. ‘You remind me of him in that way. Can’t help himself. Enjoys the life too much.’
‘And he’s successful?’
She nodded. ‘Very. He works in the Far East these days. Likes to go where the casinos and dealers are new. Says they’re vulnerable while they’re learning the trade.’
I blew a plume of smoke from my lips. ‘And what does your mum think of all this?’
‘She dislikes the risks involved, but at the same time she enjoys the lifestyle. It used to be she was raising us while he was away in Europe and America, so she never got to experience it for herself. Nowadays, I’d say she’s a lot more understanding.’
‘And does he work alone?’
‘Nuh uh.’ She took another hit on her cigarette. ‘You need a good team. Dad works with five or six like-minded people around his own age. Mostly they card count. The other moves – past posting, for instance – it’s too easy to get caught.’ She exhaled and wafted the smoke away. ‘As you saw for yoursel
f.’
She reached across and tapped some ash into the saucer I was using. I took another draw myself. The smoke and the coffee were beginning to make me feel a touch light-headed. If it wasn’t for the weight of all the food in my stomach, I might very well have floated up from my seat.
‘So how much do you know about cheating a casino?’
‘More than the average person.’ She cocked her shoulders. ‘Less than an expert.’
‘Your father taught you?’
She nodded, and her eyes lit up, as though she was recalling a fond memory.
‘He wasn’t home as much as I’d have liked. Partly it was the work, but you could always tell he relished the travel too. That’s another way in which you remind me of him. A wandering soul.’ The skin crinkled at the corners of her eyes. ‘I suppose it made the times he was home more special. He had a den – still has, in fact – and it’s like a mini-casino in there. He has a French roulette-table and a blackjack felt, a little faded and frayed these days. When we were kids, he used to play with us.’
‘And did he play fair?’
She grinned. ‘Fair wasn’t anything he cared about, or anything he taught us. He just liked to win. And counting cards, or using a twinkle, those were simply ways of achieving that. To him, the entire life is a game. He’s just very thorough in the way that he plays.’ Victoria stubbed her cigarette into a smear of ketchup. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t as interested as he wanted me to be. It’s like your lock-picking. I can understand the theory, but to get good at something, you really have to practise. I just didn’t care enough.’
‘So what happed at Space Station One?’
Victoria slumped back against the vinyl booth cushion. ‘Desperation. We needed money fast and I didn’t see the sense in leaving it to luck.’
I blew the last of the smoke from my lungs and stubbed out my own cigarette. I twirled the packet on the table.
‘Quite a risk.’
‘You’re telling me. Ricks was right. Dad would have been mortified.’
‘How come?’
She sighed. ‘Twinkles? They went out of fashion around the era this hotel is meant to represent. And past posting without a team behind you? Well.’ Victoria threw up her hands, as if it was explanation enough. I wasn’t sure that I followed her.
‘Did you think you’d be caught?’
‘I realised there was a reasonable likelihood I might be.’
‘So why try?’
‘You mean aside from the fact we might be killed tonight?’
‘Yup.’
She reached for the sugar dispenser and tipped sugar granules into her palm. ‘It was Josh, actually.’
‘Masters? What did he have to do with it?’ I searched out her eyes and peered hard into them, trying to pick up on what she was saying. She smirked a little, as if I was being altogether too slow. ‘Wait. You knew he was cheating, didn’t you?’
‘There you go.’
‘But how?’
She ditched the dispenser and dusted her palms together, sprinkling sugar over the table. ‘I was watching him, while you were playing poker. He was being so brazen about what he was up to. It intrigued me.’
‘You could see he was using one of those bottle tops to trade up his chips?’
‘Not to begin with. The first thing I noticed was that he was palming some of the chips that belonged to the woman sitting across from him – the sweet old lady with the gold lamé jacket? Then I noticed that he was past posting too.’
‘The cheeky rogue. And you were willing to help him?’
‘Not with the old lady. I told him to put her chips back.’
‘And did he?’
‘He didn’t have much choice. I would have exposed him if he didn’t.’
‘Christ. No wonder he gave you free tickets to his show.’
‘Oh, I imagine he enjoyed it. All men like to show off, right?’
‘I’ve heard it said.’
Victoria stretched her arms way above her head. She yawned and groaned somewhat indulgently.
‘Charlie, we’re really stuffed.’
I put my hand to my belly. ‘I know. I think it was the pancakes.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, we’re screwed. I messed up and got caught and now we can’t gamble any more.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I told her.
‘Like hell. I suppose we could head downtown to Freemont Street.’
‘Seriously, Vic. I’ve found a way to make the money we need.’
She propped her elbows on the table and pushed her face towards me. ‘Then I’m all ears.’
I checked over my shoulder. ‘Can we discuss this upstairs in my room?’
‘Works for me. I have something to tell you myself, as it happens. But let me just ask you one thing. Is it legal?’
‘Oh, Vic,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you know me at all.’
TWENTY-SIX
‘Ah, sweet, sweet bed. It feels so good to have found you again.’
Victoria flopped onto my bed as if she’d been crawling across an arid desert for many days and had finally chanced upon a glistening oasis. She spread her arms wide, luxuriating in the thick cotton bedcovers, lifted her legs into the air and kicked off her shoes.
‘Oh, that feels good,’ she said.
I dropped into an easy chair beside the mini-bar and rested my face in my hands. ‘I’m shattered.’
‘Me too. So come on, tell me how you’re going to save our hides before I’m completely unconscious.’
She commando-crawled up the bed, turned and collapsed onto the pillows and cushions propped against the headrest. Her cocktail dress had ridden up on her thighs and she tugged the sequined material down at the hem, before covering her legs with a spare pillow.
Her legs really weren’t at all shabby. And there was a dizzied fatigue to her eyes that was sort of endearing. In other circumstances, at another time . . .
I rubbed my face, clearing my mind of the notion.
‘I tracked down Maurice,’ I said, with sudden focus. ‘The guy from the note we found in Josh’s suite.’
‘You did? How?’
‘Long story. The short version is that there’s a show at the Atlantis resort, a circus-type revue that features our friends from upstairs – the giant and the midget.’
Victoria winced.
‘The giant is called Kojar. The midg— Sorry, the short one is called Sal. And Maurice is a chap called Maurice Mills. He produces the show.’
‘And what’s this Maurice character like?’
‘In a word? Strange. He likes everything to be white. His clothes, his house, his furniture – all white. It’s kind of like meeting an angel with a personality disorder.’
‘And is he on the side of the angels?’
‘Hard to say. But he is the source of the money we need.’
‘So he’s rich?’
‘He certainly has a bob or two. And he has a plan to make an awful lot more.’
‘And is that where we come in?’
I laced my fingers together behind my head and yawned rather flamboyantly. ‘Pretty much,’ I said, and from there I went on to explain as much as I could.
I began by telling Victoria how Maurice was looking to make the step up from Vegas show producer to casino impresario, how Kojar and Salvatore were part of his crew, and how Josh had been promised the key role in the Magic Land theatre in return for helping them to obtain the necessary ‘juice’ to build the casino. I started to expand on what was meant by the term juice, but it seemed that Victoria was ahead of me on that score, and so I skipped forward and told her about the blackmail list that the Fisher Twins had compiled, and how Josh had failed to get his hands on it. From there, I told her that I’d been hired to steal the list in return for the one hundred and forty thousand dollars that we needed . . . and I was all set to go on and address some of the detail of what stealing the juice list would involve when Victoria interrupted me.
‘Hang on, let me g
et this straight,’ she said, with a face as tart as lemon juice. ‘Your solution to paying off the Fisher Twins is to steal something from them that’s more valuable than the money they’re after us for in the first place.’
‘In a nutshell, yes.’
Her eyes bugged out of her head and she gazed at me as if I was certifiable. ‘Don’t you think it might be better if we stole from somebody other than the people we actually owe money to?’
‘It would have been nice if things could have turned out that way.’
‘Charlie, if we get caught, I really don’t see it going down too well.’
‘They’ve already said they’re going to kill us, Vic. I don’t know how much worse it can get.’
She lowered her face and picked idly at the cotton pillowcase. ‘Hmm.’
‘Is that a “Hmm, yes, I can see how you’ve offered us the best possible solution to a tricky situation and, while I don’t feel altogether comfortable about it, I realise it’s the only shot we’re going to get”?’
‘No, Charlie. It’s just a “Hmm”. I really don’t know what to say.’
‘Nothing to say.’ I craned my neck and read the alarm clock on the bedside cabinet. ‘We have something like eleven hours left to pull it off.’
‘Eleven hours.’ She grimaced. ‘How difficult is this going to be?’
‘Well, it ain’t easy.’
‘I had a feeling you’d say that. Where is this juice list?’
It was my turn to grimace. ‘I’m told the twins keep it in their office. In a variety of safe that I’ve attempted to open three times before in my life.’
‘Just attempted?’
‘I got close once. If I’d had another hour or two, I’d have cracked it no problem.’
‘Oh good grief. And what does this juice list look like exactly?’
‘Maurice didn’t know for sure. But the likelihood is that it’ll be in electronic format, rather than a little black book, say.’
‘And just where is the twins’ office to be found?’
‘On the top floor of this hotel.’