Vegas, Lies, and Murder

by Sibel Hodge

  Half an hour later, I banged on Suzy’s door while Brad knocked on Mum and Dad’s farther up the corridor.

  She opened it, hair mussed up, a sheet wrapped around her. ‘What time is it?’ She blinked rapidly, her eyes adjusting to the light.

  ‘It’s eight-thirty. We’re meeting up for brekkie. There have been some developments.’

  Elvis appeared from behind her, a towel wrapped around his body—his very naked body.

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Were you doing some research into that sex-and-grief phenomenon? I bet you could write a medical paper on it, now, eh?’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Elvis asked.

  ‘We’re heading off to the diner just down the road,’ I said. ‘Meet us there when you get dressed, and we’ll fill you in.’

  I roused Hacker and Tia next, then Brad and I walked off towards the café, past a mixed group of party revellers just coming back home from a crazy night out. We found a booth at the back corner of the restaurant that was fairly private. Our waitress came over and handed us some menus to peruse while we waited for our drinks: green tea for Brad and a mocha for me.

  Twenty minutes later, the others walked in. I waved them over and waited until they’d got menus and ordered drinks before giving them an update.

  ‘Wowzer!’ Tia said, her jaw dropping open. ‘This is about rhino horn and ivory?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Elvis sat back, stunned.

  ‘And how much of the stuff is in the warehouse?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Fifteen tons, apparently,’ Brad said. ‘Worth around thirty million dollars.’

  ‘Those poor rhinos and elephants,’ Tia said, her eyes tearing up. ‘Think of all the animals that must’ve been murdered for it.’

  ‘It’s sickening,’ Mum said. ‘Why are they destroying it? Wouldn’t it be better to sell it to fund conservation or protection for the animals left?’

  ‘From what we read, it seems they can’t sell illegally confiscated horn or ivory because of CITES regulations,’ I said. ‘And keeping the confiscated stash is a security headache because there’ve been a lot of thefts of stockpiles all over the world, which puts a strain on finances and resources that are there to protect them.’

  ‘A lot of countries also believe that any future legal sales of ivory or rhino horn would result in more poaching,’ Brad said. ‘Any governments buying it can manipulate the selling price, which happened before in China in 2008. Instead of keeping the price down to undercut the illegal market and reduce poaching, the sudden influx of legal and more expensive ivory meant there was a higher demand for the cheaper poached ivory.’

  ‘And there’s no way to make sure any funds raised from the legal sales would ever go towards conservation and actually helping the animals left,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose keeping stockpiles sends a mixed message,’ Dad said. ‘Which only undermines any demand to reduce the trade and probably actually promotes ivory and rhino horn as something incredibly valuable instead. Plus, if it’s destroyed, there’s no way it can make its way back onto the black market.’

  ‘It’s heartbreaking,’ I said. ‘In satisfying their own selfish desires, humans have forgotten to be human. We’re supposed to be the most evolved species on the planet, and yet we’re the most inhumane.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Mum said. ‘We call ourselves “mankind”, but there’s nothing kind about what we do to other species or the planet.’

  ‘I just can’t get my head round this.’ Elvis rubbed at his forehead. ‘Dana was killed because some sickoes think that an elephant tooth or piece of keratin can be used as a cure-all medicine?’

  ‘It looks that way,’ I said.

  Suzy put a hand on his arm and squeezed it. ‘It’s deplorable.’

  ‘Any word from Dansinger?’ Brad asked Dad.

  ‘No. I’ll try him again now.’ Dad pulled out his mobile phone and pressed Redial.

  The waitress bought their drinks over and left us to read the menu.

  ‘Hello, Jerry?’ Dad stood up and scooched out of the booth to take the call outside, where it was quieter.

  ‘Good,’ Mum said. ‘At least he’s got hold of Jerry now. How long would it take for him to get here from New York?’

  ‘Um…’ Tia, our expert on all things American, tilted her head, thinking. ‘About five hours.’

  ‘That’s plenty of time, then, supposing he can get a flight out here soon,’ Hacker said.

  ‘Brad, Hacker, Dad, and I will go to the storage facility after breakfast and scope it out while Jerry hopefully gets on a flight out here.’

  ‘I want to come tonight on the raid,’ Mum said. ‘I want to bust a cap in their ass!’

  ‘What?’ I asked, wondering if I’d heard her wrong.

  Mum shrugged. ‘I’ve always wanted to say that.’

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ Tia said. ‘I want to help.’

  ‘I don’t want either of you anywhere near that place,’ I said. ‘Or you,’ I said to Suzy, even though I wouldn’t have minded shooting her myself on a very frequent basis. ‘I couldn’t live with myself if things went wrong, and one of you ended up dead or injured.’

  ‘Too right,’ Suzy said. ‘I’m not going!’

  ‘I want to be there, too,’ Elvis said. ‘You’re not going without me. I’m doing this for Dana.’

  ‘Well, hopefully none of us will need to be there at all,’ I said. ‘Jerry and his colleagues should be able to handle it all from here.’

  Dad walked in, and the waitress reappeared.

  ‘Are you all ready?’ she flashed us a smile.

  ‘I’ll have the mushroom bacon burger,’ I said.

  She went around the table, and I jigged my knee up and down impatiently. I was dying to hear what Dad had to say about his conversation with Jerry. When it was Suzy’s turn to order, she faffed around, as usual.

  ‘I’ll have the spicy breakfast burrito with no jalapenos, and I want the bacon and mushrooms on the side,’ Suzy said.

  The waitress frowned. ‘You want the spicy burrito with no spices?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you want the filling on the side?’

  ‘Only the bacon and mushrooms. I’ll have the egg and cheese inside the tortilla.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ The waitress scratched her head and scribbled something down.

  I rolled my eyes and sent her silent hurry up messages, which she didn’t receive because our frequencies were obviously tuned into opposite wavelengths.

  ‘Actually, I’ll have the tortilla on the side, too,’ Suzy added.

  ‘So you want the burrito but no filling in it? You want the tortilla served separately, and the bacon, egg, mushrooms, and cheese on another plate?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Finally, she was finished, and the waitress left with a confused look on her face, staring at her pad.

  ‘What did Jerry say?’ Mum leaned in to Dad.

  ‘He said his mobile number changed years ago, and he’s only just got back from annual leave, which is why he hadn’t returned the message I left on his office voicemail until now. But…’ He leaned forward and spoke quietly. ‘He said the FBI has been running their own undercover investigation into bent police officers in the Vegas Police Department, and they’re already well aware of Paul Winger, but they need something concrete to bring him down. He said there’s been a history of corruption in the police department here.’

  ‘I suppose with all the money, girls, and drugs flying around Sin City, it might be too much temptation for a lot of law enforcement,’ Brad said. ‘No wonder corruption is rife.’

  ‘Did they approach Dana to be an informer?’ I asked.

  Dad shook his head. ‘No. They weren’t yet aware of Winger’s activities at Polesque. It seems like Dana was acting off her own back when she took that video evidence.

  ‘Jerry said that because the Las Vegas FBI agents’ investigation into Winger hasn’t been progressing as planned, he suspects they also have a rogue age
nt who’s working for Winger. So Jerry and his team are going to bypass their Vegas field office and handle it from here to make sure no one gets tipped off from their end. They’re going to book the next flight out here, which leaves at two p.m.’

  ‘Fabadoodledoo,’ Tia said.

  ‘They should arrive at seven, then,’ Hacker said.

  ‘When they land, they’re going to meet us at Hell so we can talk more before they head off to stake out the warehouse,’ Dad said. ‘I told them we’re going to do a reconnaissance soon so we can fill them in on the layout of the place for their stakeout when they get here.’

  ‘Well, at least you won’t all have to go tonight, then, if the FBI are taking over,’ Suzy said.

  ‘I want to go,’ Elvis said. ‘I still want to shoot the motherfuckers.’

  ‘Is that the title of an Elvis song, too?’ Mum asked. ‘I don’t remember that one.’

  Suzy put a hand on his arm. ‘Violence isn’t the answer.’

  He shot her a look that said he totally disagreed with her.

  Half an hour later, suitably refuelled, I pushed my plate away and stood up. ‘OK, are you ready to “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”?’

  ‘That’s my line!’ Elvis said.

  Chapter 22

  We piled into Elvis’s car and drove to the outskirts of town. We slowed down as we drove past the government warehouse. Through the chain-link fencing and gates, we could see into the security booth. There was a man dressed in a security guard’s uniform inside, watching us, but I was betting he was actually a police officer in disguise. There were no signs outside advertising what kind of warehouse it was or what was stored in there. It was anonymous enough not to garner any unwanted interest. We pulled off the main road into the car park of A-Plus Storage Group’s facility next door and parked in the customer car park at the front.

  We entered a small reception office. Sitting behind a counter was a middle-aged woman with glasses and bouffant hair that probably used to be blonde but now had a greenish tinge to it.

  ‘Hi, I’m Lyndsey. How can I help you?’ the woman asked.

  ‘We’d like to rent a unit,’ Brad said.

  ‘Great. Do you know what size? We have units ranging from a hundred square feet to eleven thousand.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Those garage-sized units along the boundary look ideal for our requirements. Do you have any available we could look at?’

  ‘Sure. Let me just get the keys for some vacant ones.’ She consulted a list on her desk then disappeared through a doorway behind her. She reappeared with a bunch of keys. ‘If you’d like to follow me.’ She walked back outside, and we took a left past the main building, which seemed as if it went on for miles and was indeed made up of individual units of varying sizes, judging by the spacing of the doors and the numbers on the front.

  As we approached the perimeter units, I studied the government warehouse to my right, my gaze flitting around, taking in the details. The roller-shutter door at the loading bay was big enough to accommodate a large lorry. There were floodlights spaced out every five metres or so in front of it, which would provide good viewing of the raid at night. I noticed two men in plain clothes patrolling the area. Even though they weren’t advertising the fact with a uniform, they were definitely police officers. Takes one to know one, and I could spot it a mile off.

  Lyndsey paused outside unit 25F. She fumbled with her keys until she found the right one while I carried on checking things out. The gaps in between the storage units were about a metre wide. Jerry and his team would easily be able to hide in them and should be hidden from view. But there were security lights in front of the units. Would they be a problem?

  ‘Are the lights on permanently at night?’ I asked Lyndsey, pointing to them.

  ‘They used to be, but we’ve had to cut back running costs lately, so we only have them set to motion sensor now. If you come and access your unit at night, the lights will detect your movement and light up the entrance while you’re there. They turn off five minutes after the last motion is detected.’

  The lights were angled directly towards the unit doors. But as long as we were in the gaps between the units, the motion sensors wouldn’t pick up our movement. We’d need to get there early to make sure the sensors had time to turn themselves off before Ivan’s people arrived.

  I glanced at the government warehouse again. An image of the confiscated items in the warehouse popped into my head. I thought of all the animals that had been slaughtered and imagined their cries and fear as they were gunned down mercilessly. I thought about Dana, who’d been trying to do the right thing. My stomach clenched with rage.

  Lyndsey unlocked and pulled up the roller-shutter door with a clattering sound then stepped back to let us look at the unit.

  ‘Mmmm, this one looks good,’ Brad said, making a big show of looking around.

  ‘Yeah.’ Hacker nodded.

  ‘Shall we think about it and work out some costings?’ Dad said to Brad.

  ‘Definitely.’ Brad turned to Lyndsey. ‘Thanks for your help. We’ll be in touch soon.’

  ‘No problem.’ She beamed at him, and we headed back out.

  As we drove past the government warehouse again, I stole a glance over my shoulder at the police officer watching us from the security booth and wondered if he was one of the corrupt ones the FBI had been investigating.

  Chapter 23

  I glanced at my watch, which read 1:35 p.m. ‘Jerry and his team should be boarding soon,’ I said to the others.

  We were in a pizzeria, where we’d met back up for lunch. Elvis wasn’t eating—he was too nervous—and Suzy was picking at some pasta. Mum was absent since she was having another massage to sort out her sciatica, which had returned with vengeance. When this was all over, I was so getting a massage, too. My legs were aching from being on my feet all night waitressing, and my shoulders were taut with worry about what was going to happen in just a few hours. Maybe I’d have one with chocolate massage butter, which I’d read about in one of the guidebooks. Who knew chocolate could be so good for your skin? Or better yet, I could get Brad to give me one. Naked. Mmmm, hold that thought.

  Dad had phoned Jerry on the way back, detailing the layout of the units next door to the warehouse and the best place for hiding and observing. Jerry had consulted the FBI’s own GPS systems and agreed. They decided one team would stake out the warehouse, waiting for Ivan and his cronies to load up with the confiscated goods, then they’d give the signal to another team to storm in and arrest the lot of them before they attempted their getaway.

  Elvis chewed on his bottom lip. ‘This waiting is killing me. I want those guys behind bars where they belong.’ His leg bounced around with nervous energy, making the whole table shake.

  Suzy patted his hand. ‘Don’t worry. The FBI will handle everything now. It won’t be long.’

  I swallowed the last of my chocolate thick shake and looked at my watch again. It was going to be a slow, long wait. ‘We’ve got just over five hours to kill, and it’ll do my brain in just sitting here waiting for them to arrive. How about we go shopping or something?’

  ‘Oooh, yeah,’ Tia piped up. ‘Dad’s thinking of opening an outlet here, so I think we should scope out the competition.’

  ‘I was thinking more of buying tacky souvenirs,’ I said. ‘I saw some cute T-shirts that had “Diva Las Vegas” on them and some little cheeky knickers that said, “Have you Pet the Kitty?”’

  ‘We can split up and meet later if you like,’ Hacker said.

  Elvis’s leg went into overdrive. ‘I can’t concentrate on anything. I think I’ll just go home and wait.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Suzy said, giving him a coy sideways glance that he was too worried to notice.

  Dad’s phone rang. He glanced at the display. ‘It’s Jerry,’ he said before pressing the answer button. ‘Hi, are you about to—’ Dad was cut off midsentence. He listened for a while, his face slowly creasing in a frown. ‘Oh. Bugger. Ri
ght.’ He listened some more. ‘We don’t have any firepower.’ More listening. ‘Yes. Uh-huh. OK.’ Dad shot us a concerned glance and kept the phone to his ear. ‘Right. That’s all we can do, I suppose. See you later.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Elvis sat upright, his whole body jigging up and down along with his leg, making the booth seats wobble. If he carried on, I’d feel seasick in a minute.

  ‘There’s been a bomb scare at the airport, and the whole place has been evacuated.’ Dad blew out a deep sigh. ‘Even when they’re given the all-clear, it’s going to take ages for the backed-up flights to take off. There’s probably no chance of them getting out of there in time to arrive before midnight, but his guys are trying to sort out a private charter from the nearest airport right now.’

  ‘Crapping hell,’ I groaned.

  ‘So, what are we going to do if they don’t get here in time?’ Tia asked, her blue eyes wide with worry.

  ‘We’ll have to go to Plan B,’ Brad said. ‘We stake out the warehouse to film them committing the theft and hand over the evidence to the FBI when they get here.’

  ‘The only problem is if they spot us hiding in between the units opposite,’ I said. ‘We don’t have any firepower to fight back with.’

  Brad turned in his seat and stared into my eyes. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t go. I don’t want anything happening to you.’

  ‘Are you kidding? If you’re going, then so am I.’ I weaved my fingers through his. ‘I’d be a nervous wreck sitting around waiting for you to come back in one piece. Nope. I’m definitely going.’

  ‘Me too,’ Elvis said.

  I hesitated for a moment then nodded. If I were in his shoes, I’d want to make sure those men got what was coming to them.

  ‘But don’t do anything unless we tell you to,’ Brad said to him. ‘We’re only going to get one chance, and we can’t risk anything messing it up.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t even blink unless you tell me,’ Elvis said, sitting upright and squaring his shoulders with a steely determination.