The Good Thief's Guide To Vegas

by Chris Ewan

  The twin shifted uncomfortably. ‘How do you think we knew the list was gone?’

  ‘We’ll run it for prints anyhow. And I’ll have somebody sweep the room.’

  ‘You did that last week.’

  Ricks straightened, his knee joints popping. ‘That was for bugs. I want to be sure that whoever did this is gone.’

  The twin stiffened in his chair, eyes wary. His brother glanced over his shoulder, as if he feared he might be in the presence of a ghost.

  ‘You think they’re still here?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘I figured they left already.’

  ‘Could be. But my guess is the job was carried out during the alarm evacuation. When was the last time you checked the safe?’

  ‘Two days ago,’ said the one who was scared of ghosts.

  ‘Time?’

  He was about to answer when he was interrupted by a sharp, unexpected trill. Cold panic flushed through me. The chirping was coming from right beside me. To be exact, it was coming from my record bag. The awful truth was, I’d forgotten to set Victoria’s mobile to silent. And now the damn thing was ringing.

  Of all the asinine mistakes I’d made in my life, this one really topped the list. I lurched for my bag and plunged my hand inside, groping desperately for the stupid contraption. It twittered and vibrated gaily, and still I couldn’t find it.

  At last, my fingers touched upon the treacherous hunk of plastic, but the telephone slipped from my sweaty palm like a bar of wet soap and shot out from beneath the desk. I thrust an arm out after it, only to stub my fingers on the toe of Ricks’ shoe.

  I gazed slowly up and Ricks gazed slowly down. He clucked his tongue and said, ‘Why don’t you crawl on out and answer your cell? Must be an important call.’

  I looked from the telephone, to Ricks, and back again. I didn’t dare look at the Fisher Twins. The telephone was chirping like a deranged cricket, skittering across the floor. I flipped it open and angled the screen towards me. Withheld Number. I raised the device to my ear.

  ‘Charlie? It’s Victoria. Good news. I just found Caitlin and she’s willing to talk with us. We’re on our way to the Fifty-Fifty. Where are you exactly?’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  My exact location was somewhere close to ‘thoroughly screwed’. I didn’t say as much to Victoria. Instead, I gambled and told her in a rather strained voice that it would be helpful if she and Caitlin could meet me on the theatre stage where Josh had performed his show.

  ‘The theatre? Are you sure that’s safe?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Charlie, are you all right? You sound a little strange.’

  ‘Never better,’ I told her, and snapped the phone closed.

  I locked eyes with Ricks. There was a coldness and a stillness in his pupils. He was breathing heavily and his ears seemed to twitch, as though they were resonating with the angry thoughts banging around his mind.

  I heard movement to my left and was in the process of turning when one of the twins introduced me to the toe of his right shoe, spinning my head around on my shoulders. My vertebrae made the sickening noise of a football rattle, which didn’t strike me as a good sign, and my sight had already blurred before the pain even registered in my temple. I yelped and clutched my hands to my head, trying to protect myself from a follow-up blow. The next two chipped at the base of my skull, as if he was aiming to split my head like a coconut. I tried to roll under the desk but he stomped on the small of my back, then grabbed me by the ankles and heaved me onto the edge of the mosaic.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Ricks said, but the twin didn’t agree.

  A couple more digs were aimed at my kidneys. I wrapped my arms around my chest, curling in on myself. It maybe wasn’t the most heroic of reactions, but I found it impossible to think beyond the instinct.

  ‘Stealing from us again, huh, guy? What is it with you anyway?’

  ‘I didn’t steal,’ I yelled, as he kicked at my elbow. ‘Ouch. Stop it. It wasn’t me.’

  ‘Where’s the list? Where is it, you prick?’

  My arm came loose and I snatched it back beneath my body, afraid that he might stomp on my fingers.

  ‘Aarrgh. Will you listen to me? I don’t have your damn list. I couldn’t get inside your safe.’

  The twin shaped to kick me again and I rolled away from the blow. The strike never came. Cautiously, I peered out from under my bicep. The twin was standing on one leg with his foot in the air.

  ‘What’s that you say?’

  ‘It wasn’t me. I couldn’t crack your safe.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’ His face darkened and his foot ratcheted backwards.

  ‘It’s true,’ I told him. ‘You can search me. I don’t have it.’

  The twin watched over me for a moment. I could tell he was tempted to strike me again, but maybe his foot needed a rest.

  ‘Do it,’ he said to Ricks. ‘Search the prick. Find out if he’s lying.’

  Needless to say, after I’d staggered upright, Ricks didn’t find the juice list inside my record bag or on my person or even beneath my Sinatra mask. He did find plenty of evidence to suggest that I’d been tampering with the safe, but there was nothing to prove that I’d been the one to get inside it. Well, nothing other than the fact that the juice list was gone.

  One of the items Ricks found among my things was Josh’s wallet, and he flipped it open and checked its contents. As soon as he saw the name printed on the credit cards, he treated me to a suspicious glare and a wag of his head.

  ‘I found it,’ I told him.

  ‘Where?’

  My face shrugged. ‘His pocket.’

  ‘You want to explain that?’

  ‘It was from before he disappeared. The two things are wholly unconnected. I give you my word.’

  Ricks snarled, as though he didn’t rate my word very highly, and meanwhile he tucked Josh’s wallet into the inside pocket of his blazer. He pushed my record bag and the Sinatra mask to one side and twirled his finger in the air, gesturing for me to turn. I summoned up my strength and did as he asked, spreading my palms on the surface of the desk. Ricks patted me down until he found my own wallet and the pack of Circus Circus playing cards that I’d taken from Jared’s apartment. When he was satisfied that there was nothing unusual about either of them, he returned them to me.

  ‘I know who took the list,’ I said.

  I leaned against the desk and rubbed at the back of my neck. It felt uncommonly warm, as though I’d ripped a good many muscles. I couldn’t turn it all the way to the right, and if I tried to turn it to the left I feared I’d pass out from the pain. At least it distracted me from the wet gash on my temple, and the way my ribs felt as though they were puncturing my lung each time I breathed. And it sure put my earlier nosebleed into context.

  ‘Go on,’ said the twin in the club chair. He was still rubbing his toes from his battle with the mosaic hatch. I was almost sorry he hadn’t been the one to start kicking me. I could only guess what injuries he might have sustained.

  ‘I think it was Josh Masters.’

  The twins looked at Ricks. Ricks stroked his beard, turning over my response.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘He was the one who told me about the list.’ I raised a hand to my temple and winced, as though processing the thought was more painful than the ache in my forehead. ‘When we were planning the roulette fix,’ I gasped. ‘He told me where it could be found.’

  ‘That all?’ asked the twin in the chair.

  I met his gaze, which wasn’t easy considering I was seeing two of him. Or was that his brother?

  ‘He disappeared, didn’t he? He ran when you turned up to his show. He must have thought you were onto him.’

  He quit rubbing his toes and sniffed his fingers, recoiling from the smell.

  ‘You have our money?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘So let me get this straight. You figured the smart play was to rip us off?�
��

  ‘I was getting desperate.’

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘What about your lady pal?’ Ricks cut in. ‘She here too?’

  I shook my head. ‘That was her on the phone. I came here alone.’

  ‘Yeah? Then how’d you open the mosaic?’ He gauged the distance over to the second desk. ‘You’re kind of wiry, but your arms ain’t that long.’

  ‘I used a Band-Aid to stick down one of the buttons. You saw the box in my bag, right?’

  Ricks walked around the rear of the desk I was propped against, checking behind and beneath it. He did the same with the second desk, then moved on past the twin with the up-tempo feet and approached the fireplace. He crouched down and peered up at the chimney, as if he suspected my back-up was Santa Claus. When he didn’t find anyone, he approached the rear of the club chair the twin was sitting in.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, trying to keep the urgency from my voice. ‘I think I’ve figured out where the juice list is. Where Josh is, too.’

  Ricks was still moving towards the space behind the chair. I really didn’t want him to find Sal. It would only complicate matters if he did.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  He smiled benignly and looked down behind the chair. I braced myself for his reaction, not knowing what explanation I could possibly offer. He frowned and bent at the knees and straightened a moment later with something in his hand.

  ‘This yours?’ he asked, and held up my pencil.

  I nodded.

  ‘You really came here alone?’

  ‘Cross my heart.’ I gulped. ‘And if you’ll only let me, I really think I can find Josh for you too.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I experienced a mixture of emotions as I stepped inside the Fisher Twins’ private elevator. On the one hand, I felt relieved, perhaps even elated, to have got the twins away from their office without Sal being discovered. True, I had no way of knowing how he’d moved from behind the chair without any of us seeing him, let alone whether he’d be able to escape without being caught, but at least something had gone my way, and more to the point, I had a little more flexibility in what I could say to try and dig myself out of the pit of trouble I seemed to be in.

  On the other hand, my wrists had been bound in front of my waist with a pair of plastic tie-cuffs, the twins and Ricks were surrounding me, and I was about to lead them all to Victoria. I was tired and beaten up and more than a little scared, and I wasn’t at all sure that I was capable of thinking very clearly.

  ‘What happened to your golf game?’ I asked, if only to break the awkward silence in the elevator.

  The twins turned and looked past me at one another.

  ‘It’s just that I heard you play golf at four o’clock every day,’ I went on. ‘That’s why I thought it would be safe to be in your office.’

  The twin on my left (the one who’d kicked the mosaic hatch and had limped as we’d entered the elevator) cleared his throat. ‘Today is our birthday.’

  ‘We don’t play golf on our birthday,’ added his brother.

  ‘Your birthday? Wow.’ I stuck out my bottom lip. ‘I did not know that.’

  ‘We like to keep it low-key.’

  ‘Huh.’ I shuffled my feet. ‘Well, Happy Birthday, I guess.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ricks said, hefting my record bag awkwardly. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Appreciate it,’ the twins responded, just as a timely ping! and a sudden loss of momentum signalled that we’d arrived at our chosen floor.

  The theatre was in complete darkness, aside from a collection of dusty footlights pointed in at the stage itself. Otherwise, everything was as it had been when Josh had abandoned his show. The battered cabinet was still in the centre of the stage, its doors flung open to reveal the beach mural and the coarse sand spilling out from its base. The straw sunhat Victoria had worn was hanging over the top of one of the doors. Her other prop, the pink daiquiri glass, was resting on the wooden floorboards close by.

  Victoria was sitting at the front of the stage with her legs dangling over the blackened auditorium below. She glanced around skittishly when she heard us approach, and so did the redhead sitting alongside her. The redhead was really quite something. Sure, I might have seen the YouTube video of her performance, and I might even have stood over her while she lay naked in the bath, but nothing could have prepared me for my first real glimpse of her face.

  Her skin was creamy white and seemed almost to glow in the glare of the stage lights. Her lips were full and lush, her nose lean and neatly upturned, and her sparkling green eyes had an almost feline quality. Her hair topped it all. It fell around her face in luxurious loops and curls, collecting around her shoulders and her delicate neck like a blood-red shawl.

  She had on a scooped yellow top over a pair of admirably pert breasts and some figure-hugging jeans. True, I’d only seen her rear profile in the bath, but there was no doubt in my mind that this was the same woman.

  As we drew near, the redhead stood and wiped the dust from her hands. She treated me to a watchful assessment, then glanced at Victoria before finally flicking her eyes towards her brothers. Bewilderment clouded her features and I thought I could understand why. How could a beauty like this be related to the Fisher Twins?

  ‘Charlie, my God,’ Victoria said. ‘Are you all right? What have they done to you?’

  She hurried across the stage and cupped my bruised face in her hands, yanking my head towards the light and prodding a finger at the swollen welt on my temple. I winced, then moaned as my rib flared with pain.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I told her through gritted teeth. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it? Are you mad?’ She spun to confront Ricks. ‘Are you responsible for this?’ She did a double-take when she noticed that my record bag was knotted in his fist. ‘You’re despicable.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Ricks said flatly. ‘And what do you suppose he was doing upstairs when we found him?’

  ‘Nothing that could have justified this, I’m sure.’

  ‘How sure?’

  Victoria paused, then re-doubled her attack. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself. You should be locked up.’

  ‘It wasn’t him.’ I touched her arm, as if to confirm the information, and then I stepped towards the redhead, aiming to take control of the situation before somebody else did it for me. ‘You must be Caitlin. My name’s Charlie. I’d offer to shake your hand, only . . .’ I lifted my cuffed wrists and spread my fingers.

  ‘I guess that’s okay,’ she replied. ‘Victoria told me you might know where Josh is at.’

  Her voice was cautious, a lot like her manner. She looked past me and checked on her brothers, as if she expected them to forbid her from saying any more.

  ‘Actually, I was rather hoping you could explain his whereabouts.’

  ‘Me?’ She raised her hand to her chest and opened her mouth, as though breathless. ‘But I don’t have any idea where he’s gotten to. I wasn’t at the show when he went missing.’

  ‘Believe me, that much I’m aware of.’

  She backed off a fraction, perhaps unnerved by my response and only half-sure she wanted to know the reasons behind it. I gestured at the scarred wooden cabinet in the middle of the stage.

  ‘I’m guessing you know your way around this thing better than anyone.’

  I approached the cabinet, my footsteps echoing out into the auditorium. I reached for one of the doors with my bound hands and stroked the lacquered wood.

  The Fisher Twins stood blinking against the stage lights, peering fixedly at me with grim expressions. I didn’t doubt that they were annoyed with me for involving their sister in the entire mess, and from the way they were leaning forward on their toes, I got the impression they weren’t inclined to grant me a whole lot of time to explain myself.

  Hell, they could crowd me all they liked. Standing on that theatre stage, in front of the magic cabinet, I felt a sudden rush of confidence. It wasn’t
simply a renewed belief in the theory I’d been developing. It was also that I’d done this kind of thing before – in my burglar novels as well as real life – and there was something oddly fitting about gathering together the key players in a mystery before explaining what had happened and why. It was like a magic trick, in a way. First the build-up – the confusion, and the misdirection. Then the puzzle – the confounding of your audience. And now, the final flourish – the delivery of a solution so elegant that my culpability for what had happened might just be overlooked.

  ‘The last moment that anyone saw Josh,’ I announced, in a clear, confident voice, ‘he walked around the back of this cabinet in the middle of his show.’

  ‘Jeez,’ Ricks said. ‘Enough with the routine. You told us you knew where he was at. Let’s hear it.’

  ‘Patience.’ I stepped inside the cabinet on the coarse sand and turned to face my audience. ‘Victoria, when Josh disappeared, you were in my current position, helping out with the show. You were quite helpless inside the cabinet. You’d been strapped in securely and steel blades had been inserted on either side of you.’

  ‘The blades are just a diversion,’ Caitlin explained, walking closer to me.

  I nodded. ‘I suspected as much. And normally, you’d be the one in the cabinet, correct?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I smiled at her. ‘Do you mind my asking why you weren’t performing last night? Josh told us you were ill – but that was less than a day ago, and you look perfectly healthy to me.’

  I could feel Victoria’s eyes boring into the side of my head, but I willed myself not to glance in her direction.

  ‘I wasn’t sick.’

  ‘No?’

  The young woman threw up her hands. ‘I was just beat, I guess. I’d been bitching about doing another show since the matinée. And Josh, well, he told me to take a break. Said he didn’t want me to give a flat performance. Plus, I’ve been working on a new act, a water stunt for the show. I was kind of glad to have the opportunity to do some training.’

  ‘Indeed.’ I straightened my shoulders and lifted my chin, bracing myself against the rear of the cabinet. ‘Just so that I understand, you’d normally be standing where I am now, and at a certain point in time Josh would move behind the cabinet. Then, very quickly, the two of you would switch positions. That’s the pay-off, as it were?’