by Chris Ewan
Lower down, his arms were folded across his chest, fingers clawed, and the downy hairs on his forearms were stained and matted with dried blood. Beneath his arms, his trademark white T-shirt was no more than a sodden, dark-red rag, torn and ripped. He looked to have been stabbed many times over, and the entry wounds were scattered from his neck right down to his lower belly.
I felt like I’d seen enough, and others seemed to agree. Rough hands shoved me aside and I stumbled on the tarmac before turning to see the twins crowding the rear of the car. They groaned and staggered backwards, as though reeling from a small explosion, and one of them started yelling at a security guard to go fetch a medic. I wasn’t sure that was strictly necessary. True, my track record was a little patchy, but I would have bet the house limit that Josh was dead.
I tried to catch Victoria’s eye, but she was busy leading Caitlin away towards the valet booth. Meanwhile, one of the twins ordered his security detail to clear the area while his brother barked commands into a two-way radio. Something about the scene jarred with me, and it took me a good few moments to figure out why.
I forced myself back to the trunk of the Lexus. Josh didn’t look a great deal healthier. I watched over him for just a short while longer and then I leaned into the trunk and shrouded his face with the bloodied black cape he’d used to make his escape from the theatre.
Over at the valet booth, Victoria was clutching Caitlin’s face to her chest and stroking her hair and making shushing noises. I beckoned Victoria towards me. She scowled, but when I repeated the gesture, she pressed a tissue into Caitlin’s trembling fist, kissed her forehead and drew near.
‘Where’s Ricks?’ I asked.
‘Is that all you wanted? I have no idea, Charlie.’
I turned on the spot and scanned the area. Ricks wasn’t anywhere close, and I couldn’t recall seeing him after the valet had pulled up in the Lexus.
‘Don’t you find that strange? He’s one of their main security advisers.’
‘I’m trying to look after Caitlin here, Charlie.’
There was a queasy sensation in my stomach, but it had nothing to do with the sights or smells I’d just experienced. The puzzle was beginning to assemble itself in my brain and I didn’t like the picture that was forming.
‘Charlie, it is Josh in the car, right?’
‘The cabinet,’ I said, all of a sudden.
‘Excuse me?’
‘In the theatre. He must have made for the stage.’
‘What are you gibbering about?’
‘I have to go,’ I said, and started to run.
‘Charlie?’
‘It took me long enough,’ I called over my shoulder. ‘But I’m onto him now.’
Of course, I hadn’t been looking where I was going, and I ran straight into the twin on the two-way radio. I knocked the radio from his hand and stooped towards the ground, my knuckles grazing concrete. The twin snatched at my ankle but his reaction was slow and my momentum carried me free.
‘Hey,’ he shouted. ‘Hey, quit running.’
I didn’t quit running. I zeroed in on the revolving glass doors at the front of the casino, bracing my cuffed hands out in front of me.
‘Somebody stop that guy,’ the twin yelled. ‘He’s getting away.’
It didn’t feel like I was getting away. It felt like I was running headlong into trouble. The criminal part of my psyche seemed to be having difficulty understanding what I was up to. The law-abiding part couldn’t understand it, either.
Three security guards were ahead of me. They hunkered down with their feet spread and palms raised, as if I was a runaway freight train they were aiming to stop. I didn’t have a lot of time to consider my options, but I did know that I couldn’t dive through their legs without piercing a glass panel with my head. I opted for a late swerve and dodged to my right. The guard nearest to me stuck out his leg but I vaulted his shin and crashed into a swing door, doing a good job of displacing my knee cap.
I hauled the door back, then toppled inside, lurching for the handle of a giant slot machine to stop myself from falling. The handle dropped, the drums spun, and the bride and groom who’d been posing for a photograph beside the machine looked appropriately startled.
I garbled an apology, then turned and kicked on without waiting to see if we’d won the sports car that happened to be revolving on the podium above them. I lifted my bound hands before my face and pumped my knees, hollering at the people in my way to clear a path. It didn’t work. They froze and stared, perhaps asking themselves why the loony guy in plastic tie-cuffs was running into the middle of the casino instead of making for the exit.
The loony guy in plastic tie-cuffs wasn’t entirely sure.
Facing me was a security guard with a nightstick. He wet his lip and raised his baton in a two-handed grip, as if he was a baseball player looking to strike a home run. I let go of an almighty scream and drove forwards with my shoulder. The nightstick thudded against my bicep and my shoulder met with his chin. He went down hard and I lost my balance and pitched forwards. An action hero would have pulled off a tumble roll and sprinted on. I belly-flopped onto the carpet, with my crotch smothering the poor chap’s face.
‘Sorry,’ I yelled.
‘Geroff me,’ he mumbled.
I scrambled up from my knees but the idiot grabbed hold of my foot. I tried shaking him loose but he clung on until I was forced to tear my foot from my shoe and totter forwards into a run. It was a lopsided kind of run. If I’d had time to haul off my other shoe, I could have balanced things out, but there was no way that was going to happen.
I glanced up and got my bearings. The high-stakes area was way off to my left. The keno pit was dead ahead. The theatre was away to my right.
I veered towards it, skirting a craps table where all of the players were gawping at me, their game momentarily forgotten. A cocktail waitress blocked my way. I dodged left and so did she. We both went right. Her drinks tray teetered. I bent at the waist and hoisted her onto my shoulder. She yelped and slapped her tray against my back. Beer and soda rained down on me. I ditched her on an empty roulette felt and scurried on.
Behind me, the security guards were gaining, running hard in their vintage uniforms with their nightsticks drawn, like a motley crew of Keystone Cops. A pit boss in a sharp suit and trilby watched over me and raised a telephone handset to his ear. Two cigarette girls stood beside one another, their painted mouths frozen in a double ‘O’. If only the sound system had been playing some jaunty piano music instead of mid-tempo jazz, I could have believed I was trapped in the chase scene from an old silent movie.
The crowds thinned as I neared the theatre. The ticket booths were closed and laminated signs informed me that the show was temporarily cancelled. The entrance was roped off and I would have been trapped if it hadn’t been for the one door I could see that was slightly ajar.
Yanking the door back, I darted past a locked concession stand and burst through into the auditorium. Darkness embraced me and the carpet fell away beneath my feet as I ran between the rows of tiered seating.
I was halfway towards the lighted stage before I saw Ricks. He was on his knees at the front of the cabinet, with the sleeves of his blazer rolled up on his forearms and his hands buried deep in sand. The sound of my one-sock, one-shoe shuffle must have drawn his attention, because he flinched and peered out into the black. I wasn’t sure if he could tell who was coming, so I shouted at him in my best English just to make sure.
‘Hold it, Ricks. That’s enough.’
He ignored me and kept digging. I sucked air and tried to gather what was left of my strength. I had a stitch in my gut, my lungs were on fire and the plastic restraints were biting into the skin of my wrists.
The stage seemed higher than I remembered. I jumped up and hooked my arms and legs over the edge as if I was climbing out of a swimming pool, then picked my way between the footlights and cables and stood panting before Ricks.
‘Security are coming.
’ I pointed out into the darkness of the auditorium at the footsteps I could hear.
Ricks grinned disconcertingly and removed his hands from the sand. There was something wrapped in his right fist. His grin widened and he moved as if to get up from his knees.
I’d really had my fill of things by now. I’d been scared half out of my mind with the idea that I’d found a drowned woman; had a haul of casino chips taken away from me; been locked up, interrogated and threatened; trapped myself inside a closet; been ripped off by a hooker; got caught in the middle of a robbery; been kicked while I was down (repeatedly), and come face to face with the gruesome corpse of a mid-ranking magician. And now Ricks was grinning at me.
So sure, my hands might have been cuffed and my ribs bruised, I might have been struggling for air and to stay upright, but there was no way – no how – that I was prepared to stand it for a moment longer.
I bowed my head and snarled and went thundering across the stage. If Ricks had moved aside at just the right moment, I would have looked pretty stupid, but he didn’t move and I didn’t stop, and I hit him smack in the forehead with everything I had.
Ricks crumpled and let go of a croaking gasp. The item he’d been holding onto slipped free and arced through the air. It landed near to the black velvet curtains at the rear of the stage and before Ricks could react, I dived for it and gathered it into my hands.
I uncurled my fingers. In the middle of my palm was a computer memory stick, coated in soft rubber and rounded off at each end, like a rather eye-watering suppository. There were no markings on it whatsoever, aside from a few grains of sand, but I was as sure as I could be that I finally had a hold of the juice list.
I swivelled to see the security guards lumbering across the stage, forming themselves into a semi-circle and closing in on me, eyes dark and chests heaving, like a pack of low-rent zombies.
‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’ I said, and cringed at the line. ‘He’s the one you should cuff.’
They glanced at Ricks, unsure what to do. Ricks cupped his temple and glared at me the way a boxer glares at an opponent shortly before he removes his head from his shoulders.
‘Throw that punk in a back room,’ he snarled.
‘Throw them both in, why don’t you?’
The security guards turned, and I squinted out into the darkness between their legs, watching in some confusion until the Fisher Twins moved into the light at the front of the stage.
‘Yeah, do it already,’ the one on the left said. ‘They both have some explaining to do.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
I found myself in the back room Jared Hall had occupied only a day before. It was just like the room where I’d been questioned with Victoria – same putty-coloured walls, same plastic table screwed to the floor, same uncomfortable plastic chairs – the only difference being that I was on the mirrored side of the two-way glass. I guessed Ricks was in the room next door. Maybe he was even looking at me through the glass partition. I raised my cuffed hands to wave at him and my battered reflection waved back.
I sighed and paced the room. I smelled of the beer the cocktail waitress had spilled on me and I was still one shoe down, so I moved with a limp. While I paced, I stretched my arms up above my head, testing the sore spot on my ribs and scratching the polystyrene ceiling tiles with my fingernails.
I was on my third circuit of the room when the door was unlocked and the Fisher Twins walked in. They stood with their backs against the wall and their hands in the pockets of their khaki trousers.
‘Sit down,’ one of them said, with a nod of his ginger hair and freckled face.
I studied him for a moment before doing as he asked. ‘Did Ricks confess?’
‘To what?’
‘Killing Josh.’
The twin held my eye. He didn’t answer in a hurry and I got a bad feeling about the delay. His brother cleared his stringy throat.
‘He figures you for it.’
‘He’s really playing that game?’
‘You deny it?’
‘Of course I deny it. I didn’t kill Josh.’
‘Then how about the juice list? Ricks says you were the one who put it under the sand.’
I spread my cuffed hands on the table and let go of a long sigh.
‘You do remember that you caught me in your office? You do remember that I hadn’t accessed your safe?’
‘Then how’d the juice list get out?’
‘I told you. It was Josh.’
The twins shared a look. They offered me the same troubled expression.
‘Ricks figures you hid the memory stick someplace when he searched you upstairs. Says you took us to the theatre and planted the stick under the sand, so you could return for it later.’
‘Well, that’s pretty dumb.’
‘Yeah? How else did it get there?’
I blew air through my lips. ‘If you want me to speculate, I’d say Josh was the one who broke into your safe, some time in the last couple of days. When you came to his show, he must have thought you were on to him.’
‘So?’
‘So he must have been holding the memory stick at the time. At first, I guessed he’d hidden inside the cabinet and that he’d become stuck there. I was wrong about that, but not as wrong as I could have been. My thinking is that before he vanished, he lifted the gimmicked hatch in the back of the cabinet and hid the memory stick inside. Then, when the sand spilled out, the memory stick came with it.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Same reason Ricks suggested I might have. So he could return for it later. Say his disappearing act hadn’t worked. He wouldn’t have wanted to be stopped with the memory stick on him.’
‘Yeah? Then how’d he wind up dead?’
‘You’d have to ask Ricks that question.’
The twin on the left approached the table and leaned his weight on his clenched fists.
‘I’m asking you.’
I stared at him, not wanting to glance away and have him interpret it as a sign that I was lying. ‘Maybe Ricks found out that Josh was ripping you off. Maybe he was watching Josh’s show from the wings and saw him bolt. Then he confronted him.’
‘Why?’
‘The list is valuable, right? Ricks would have known that. I understand he helped compile parts of it. He could have made a lot of money if he delivered it to the right hands.’
The second twin left the wall and moved alongside his brother, stroking his chin.
‘Maybe you were the guy waiting for Josh.’
‘Duh. I was sitting in the front row of the theatre. And I was on stage just a couple of minutes after Josh vanished. You spoke to me. Then you locked me up with my friend next door.’
The twins exchanged another look. They still didn’t seem convinced.
One of them said, ‘Ricks was in here questioning the croup.’
‘The whole time?’
They didn’t offer me a response. It seemed likely they didn’t know for sure.
‘What about cameras?’ I asked.
They looked at me with question marks in their eyes.
‘Surveillance cameras,’ I went on. ‘If there are cameras where Josh’s car was parked, they might prove who killed him.’
The twin on the right pushed up from his fists.
‘Don’t try anything smart while we’re gone.’
I scraped back my chair and lifted my shoeless foot onto the table. ‘Do I look like the type who could?’
Not long after the twins had left, I turned my back on the mirror-glass partition and reached inside my shirt pocket for the biro Victoria had palmed me. Gripping the metal nib, I pulled the plastic casing away. Then, holding onto the flexible plastic tube containing the biro ink, I fed the nib down into the ratchet mechanism on my tie-cuffs. Once I was free, I dropped the cuffs and the biro parts under the table and sat rubbing my skin, luxuriating in the novelty of being able to move my hands freely again.
After a time, I stood and approa
ched the door to the room. I tried the handle and found that it was locked. There wasn’t a lot I could do about that. I didn’t have my picks on me and the biro and plastic tie-cuffs weren’t up to the job. And besides, I was pretty sure there was a security guard stationed outside, just waiting to beautify my face with his nightstick if I happened to cause any trouble.
I crossed to the mirror and pressed my face to the glass, cupping my hands around my eyes. If I focused right, I could just make out a dim murkiness beyond.
I returned to the plastic chair. A half-hour went by, and my head was just beginning to loll and my eyelids starting to droop when I was roused by the sound of the door being unlocked. The Fisher Twins walked back in.
‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Did you find anything on the surveillance footage?’
‘Come on, smart guy. Why don’t you just tell us why you did it?’
‘Huh?’
‘Don’t play dumb with us.’
‘You’ve lost me, I’m afraid.’
The twin nearest the door exhaled and rubbed at his eye with the heel of his palm, as though he’d just concluded a lengthy business meeting and was feeling especially jaded. ‘There is no footage.’
‘The recordings for the past day have been erased,’ his brother added. ‘The cameras in the parking lot were powered down.’
I gulped. It wasn’t what I’d been expecting to hear, but I wasn’t about to give up that easily.
‘Well, there you go,’ I told them. ‘Ricks is high up in your security detail. I’m guessing he must have had access to the recordings and that he deleted them to destroy the evidence. Case closed.’
‘Funny. He said the same thing about you.’
‘Given you’re a burglar, and all.’
I swallowed. My ears popped. ‘I didn’t erase that footage. I wouldn’t have known where to look or how to delete it.’
‘You knew where to look for the juice list, all right.’