by Steve Brewer
“This is Tony,” Leo said. “The guy I was telling you about. A real pro.”
Nick nodded, but didn’t reach to shake the thief’s hand. If he did, Leo might want to get in on the act and Nick didn’t want to grasp one of those creepy pincers. He pulled a metal folding chair out from the table and sat across from Tony.
Leo clattered around a cabinet in the corner. He turned back to them, holding a grimy white cup in one of his claws.
“You fellas want some coffee?”
Nick managed not to make a face as he and Tony declined.
“Suit yourself,” Leo said. “I’ll leave you to get better acquainted.”
The old man shuffled from the storeroom, shutting a scarred wooden door behind him.
Tony still hadn’t moved. He measured Nick with his eyes, but that didn’t bother Nick. He’d known a lot of hard men over the years, and they all felt they had to come on strong at first. Nick was too old for that macho shit, too tired. Better to get right to business.
“Leo tells me you have an experienced crew.”
“That’s right.”
“Ever hit a casino?”
“Lots of easier places to rob.”
Nick held up an index finger. “But casinos are where the money is.”
“How much?”
Right to the point. Nick liked that.
“On a good day at the Starlite, we rake in over a hundred grand. In cash.”
Tony loosed a low whistle. “And I thought I was a robber.”
Nick grinned. “That’s gross, of course. Out of that, I’ve got to pay all my people, cover the payouts, keep the lights on.”
“Still, that’s not bad.”
Nick shifted on his chair. He wore the same black suit as the day before, and he felt rumpled and out of sorts. He cleared his throat and said, “My partners rake their end off the gross. Sometimes, there’s not much left.”
“Your partners. Mob guys?”
Now it was Nick’s turn to dole out the hard squint.
“You, my friend, just crossed over into the Land of None of Your Business.”
Tony smiled. “Just wondering who I was dealing with here.”
“You’re dealing with me, and that’s all. But let’s say my partners aren’t the kind of guys who take ‘no’ for an answer, so I keep telling them ‘yes.’ Some months, I’m lucky I can pay my own salary. I’ve got bills, an ex-wife who’s busting my balls. I need a way to get out from under.”
“A robbery will do that for you?”
“I think so. I get a cut of the proceeds. Say, thirty percent?”
Tony cocked his head to one side.
“Okay, we’ll come back to that. Anyhow, I get a cut, plus I report a bigger loss to the insurance company. I got this woman on my staff, an accountant, who can dummy up the paperwork, inflate the numbers.”
“You trust her?”
“Sure.”
“Who else would know about this?”
“Nobody.”
“I don’t want somebody ratting us out because you got carried away, jacking up the losses.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Nick scratched at his ankle where the holster chafed. “I can’t afford a leak. I’ve got plans for that money.”
“What kind of plans?”
Nick’s first reaction was to say, “What it’s to you?” But the guy seemed sincerely interested. What the hell, how could it hurt to tell him?
“I’m gonna use some of the money to put a new coat of paint on the Starlite, bring it up to date. Then I’m gonna get my partners to buy out my share, and retire off the profits.”
“You seem young for retirement.”
“Yeah, but I feel old. On the inside.”
Tony smiled again. “As old as Leo?”
“Nobody’s that old. Leo’s older than God.”
The thief laughed, loosening up a little. Nick felt the tension ease from his own shoulders.
“Nice of him to bring us together, though,” Tony said.
Nick snorted. “Yeah, nice. Cost me five grand to set up the meet.”
Tony cocked a dark eyebrow.
“Leo didn’t tell you that part, huh?”
“No, but I assumed as much.”
“That’s all right,” Nick said. “It’ll be worth it, if we can pull this thing off.”
Tony leaned toward him, his elbows on the table.
“I take it,” he said, “that you’ve got some idea of how to do it.”
“I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to do your business. However you work it suits me, as long as we keep the, um, collateral damage to a minimum.”
“That’s always the plan.”
“Here’s what I can offer: Inside info on the security system, the counting room, the armored cars that pick up the cash. I can’t make any major changes to the process, not without drawing suspicion to myself, but maybe I can tweak things a little, if that’ll help—”
“No, we don’t want anybody looking at you after the fact. You’re the victim here, and we’ve got to keep it that way.”
“All right.”
Tony sat back. Nick could see the wheels turning behind his eyes.
“So,” he ventured, “you’ll do it?”
The heist man shook his head.
“Can’t say yet. I’ve got to talk to my crew. Something with this much risk, I’ve got to make sure they’re all in.”
“I thought you were the boss.”
“We’re a pretty democratic bunch,” Tony said. “We like to vote on stuff.”
Nick wondered if he should’ve met with the whole gang rather than just this guy, let them all hear his pitch, but he immediately dismissed that notion. They were limiting their exposure, same as he was doing. It was the smart thing.
“Okay,” he said. “Talk to them. But don’t take too long or I’ll have to find somebody else.”
“You’re set on it, huh?”
“Seems like the best way to get out of Lost Vegas, once and for all.”
Tony shook his head slightly, like maybe he could think of better solutions, but he said, “I’ll get back to you.”
Nick took out a business card and slid it across the table.
“I’m going back later today,” he said. “Call me there.”
“Okay.” Tony didn’t touch the card. “Couple of days soon enough?”
“Sure.”
Nick scraped his chair back and stood up. Tony remained seated at the table. His hands were in plain sight, but Nick wondered if he had a gun in his lap. Or on his ankle.
“I’ll show myself out,” Nick said. “You leaving, too?”
“I’ll wait a while. It’s so pleasant back here.”
Nick cracked a smile. He kept his eyes on Tony as he reached back for the doorknob. Nick opened the door, half-expecting to find Leo on the other side, eavesdropping. But the old man was at the counter, at the far end of the tunnel of pawn.
Nick hustled out of there, barely slowing as Leo buzzed open the steel-mesh door.
“See you later, Leo.”
The old man waved a claw at him.
Then Nick was out in the damp air of San Francisco. His forehead felt chilled, and he swiped at it, surprised to find it covered in perspiration. He wondered if Tony had noticed.
“Christ,” he muttered. “I’m getting soft.”
Chapter 7
The crew was already assembled at Cooper Auto when Tony and Eve arrived at sundown. The garage was a cinderblock cube on a dead-end street within sniffing distance of the San Francisco zoo. Two roll-up bay doors, closed now, faced the street, next to a small office with grimy windows. A dozen cars in various states of undress were parked around the building.
Inside, the garage was immaculate, the concrete floor swept and tools arranged on pegboards around the walls. Ross and Don might have messy personal lives, with an irregular rotation of debts and girlfriends and other emergencies, but their workplace was always pristine.
Tony ad
mired the lines of a maroon Jaguar that crouched in one work bay. The bay next to the office was empty, and the Coopers had set up folding chairs there for the meeting. No such flimsy chair would stand up to the bulk of Angie Hernandez. He spread out on an upholstered bench that once had been the seat in a pickup truck, and noshed on a jumbo bag of tortilla chips labeled in big red letters: “Low Fat!” The others knew better than to comment.
Angie was dressed in sturdy denim head-to-toe, and the Coopers wore stained dark-green coveralls. A smudge of something black streaked Ross’ blood-red hair. Don wore a greasy Giants cap.
After they were all seated, the Coopers stared at Tony, eyebrows lifted expectantly. Made him want to laugh. They looked like they’d heard a distant whistle while waiting for a train.
Ross said, “Well?”
“It’s . . . interesting,” Tony said.
“Uh-oh.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Don said.
Angie said nothing, too busy chomping away. He used his big thumb to wipe his lips and thin mustache.
“This casino owner thinks he’s got it rigged so he can get paid twice,” Tony said. “He gets a cut of the haul, plus he gets his insurance company to reimburse him for a bigger loss than he actually takes.”
Ross, as usual, got right to the point: “How big a cut?”
“He said thirty percent, but it’s negotiable.”
“Hell, yeah,” Ross said. “We take all the risk, and he gets a third?”
“We’ll offer ten,” Tony said. “The guy says they rake in up to a hundred grand a day.”
“We’ll have expenses,” Don said. “Motels, meals, gas. It’s a long way from here.”
“We’d have to shut the garage a few days,” Ross said. “That costs us, too. Our customers are starting to wonder about all the deaths in the family. They worry there’s a plague.”
“Give the guy his cut,” Angie said, “then split the rest five ways, and the shares start to get pretty small. Maybe we can find a way to take them down for a whole week’s worth of receipts or something.”
“If we do it at all,” Tony said.
Silence for a second, then Ross said, “You don’t like the way it smells.”
“Too soon to say. I think we need to go over there, give it a look.”
“Oh, boy,” Eve said flatly. “A vacation. To beautiful Lost Vegas.”
“Any of you been there before?” Tony asked.
“I’d never even heard of it before,” Don said.
“I drove through there a couple of years ago,” Angie said, “taking the family to see relatives in Reno.”
“And?”
“It looks like the rest of Nevada.”
“Empty and dry?”
Angie nodded. “The town’s strung along the highway for a mile or two. Maybe goes three blocks deep either side of the road. Then nothing but desert. We stopped for gas, but that’s all.”
“You didn’t hit the casinos?”
“The kids were asleep in the back seat. I wasn’t about to wake ‘em.”
Tony pictured the four black-haired tots curled up together like puppies. Probably the only quiet moment Angie got on that trip.
“There’s five or six casinos along the highway,” Angie said. “A few restaurants and motels. That’s it.”
“Not exactly a resort destination.” Ross grinned at Eve, who rolled her eyes. “Why would anybody go there when they could go to Reno or the real Vegas?”
“You don’t visit on purpose,” Angie said. “It’s just a place to stop when you’re on that highway.”
“I looked at a map,” Tony said, “and Highway 95 looks like the only decent road in or out of Fowler.”
Angie nodded. “Makes an escape route kinda dodgy, don’t it?”
“That’s one of the things we’ll have to check out,” Tony said. “But here’s the question: Do we even want another job so soon? Normally, we’d take some time off.”
“There’s no heat from that last job,” Ross said. “No reason not to start working on another one.”
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could use the money,” Don said. “I’ve got my eye on a ‘71 Mustang this guy’s selling over in Pacifica.”
“A rusted piece of junk,” Ross said.
“Sure, now. But when I get done with it, that car will be worth a bundle.”
Ross shook his head. His brother had a thing for muscle cars.
“I think it’s worth a look,” he said. “How often do you get a crack at a job like this, where the inside man is the head honcho?”
Tony shrugged.
“What does he offer in exchange for thirty percent?” Don asked.
“Ten percent,” Ross said.
“Whatever.”
“That’s a little foggy,” Tony said. “But he mentioned security info, schematics, things like that.”
“You think it’s a burglary job?” Ross said. “We sneak in? That doesn’t sound like us.”
“We need to look it over,” Tony said. “How about it, Eve? Feel like a road trip?”
“Sure, Tony. Just what I want. All that sand, and no ocean.”
Chapter 8
From San Francisco to Fowler was less than three hundred miles, but it took Tony and Eve six hours to drive there in Tony’s anonymous five-year-old Toyota. They battled through Bay Area traffic, eastward through Sacramento’s congestion, then onto ever-narrower highways up into the Sierra Nevada south of Lake Tahoe. The mountains were beautiful, with evergreens marching alongside the road and patches of snow still holding out on distant peaks. Then came the long downhill slide into Nevada, the landscape getting drier and starker as they descended.
Mountains and mesas jutted in the distance, but Fowler sat in a broad flatland the color of dried mud. Low sagebrush dotted the landscape, but there was nothing to block a howling wind that scoured everything in its path. Tony joked about flying grit stripping the black car’s paint job, but Eve seemed in no mood for humor.
“How do people live out here? It’s so barren. This is a place for snakes and lizards.”
“That sounds like gamblers to me.”
“Hmmpfh.”
It didn’t help her mood that the highway was blocked at the north end of town by two police cruisers with flashing red lights. A long line of cars and pickups inched toward the cops. Big trucks lined the shoulder of the highway, their pipes rumbling.
Tony and Eve speculated about an accident, but when they reached the roadblock, a wind-burned cop told them: “Founder’s Day parade. Highway will be blocked for half an hour. You can turn here and go around the crowds.”
He waved them onto a narrow, potholed road that ran between rusty trailers and swaybacked houses. The toy-littered yards consisted of swirling sand and yellow scrub grass that danced in the gusts.
“Better and better,” Eve muttered.
“I bet they brag that it’s a dry heat.”
“That’s what they say in Hell, too.”
At cross streets, Tony caught glimpses of people in jeans and tucked-in shirts, standing on the sidewalks of the town’s commercial strip. An old couple in lawn chairs waved little American flags. Others stood with their backs turned to the relentless wind, holding onto their straw cowboy hats.
“I’ll find a place to park. We can watch the show.”
“I love a parade,” Eve said.
“Say it like you mean it.”
“Hmm.”
He parked half a block from the highway.
“Want to get out?”
“Let me tie my hair back. I don’t want to get beat to death by the wind.”
“If you smile, the flying sand will polish your teeth.”
“Funny.”
Outside the air-conditioned car, the swirling hot air felt like the inside of a clothes dryer. Wearing sunglasses against the glare and grit, they walked to the corner.
The west side of the highway was lined by small businesses: stores, cafés, pa
wnshops, a few rundown motels. Across the road were the casinos, painted in desert pastels and surrounded by asphalt lots full of semis and RVs and clunkers. Two casinos had multistory hotels attached, but the other four were windowless boxes. Along the highway stood giant signs on poles like neon Popsicles.
Tony and Eve joined a handful of people in front of a boarded-up hardware store. In the distance, a marching band played a rousing version of “La Bamba.” The spectators straggled along the sidewalk looked south expectantly. Tony looked that way, too, and saw tractors and floats and trucks lining up for the parade.
“Not exactly organized, is it?”
He was speaking to Eve, but a squat, leathery woman in Wranglers and a plaid shirt said, “It’s always like this, hon. Trying to get a bunch of Westerners to line up is like herding fish.”
He smiled at the white-haired woman.
“You must not be from around here,” she said.
“Just passing through,” Eve said. “Since traffic was stopped anyway, we thought we’d check out the parade.”
“Hope you’re not easily disappointed. Our parades mean a lot to us, but that’s only because we know everybody in ‘em.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fun,” Eve said as she turned her back to the wind. “A little slice of Americana.”
The old woman winked at Tony. “You’ll quickly understand that we’re starved for entertainment here in Fowler.”
“What about the casinos?” He pointed across the road. “Plenty of entertainment there, right?”
“Those are for travelers like you. People around here can’t afford to throw their money away on gambling and nightclub acts.”
The band changed to an up-tempo march and somebody blew a whistle.
“Here they come,” she said.
People in the crowd clapped and waved and cheered as the parade crept toward them.
A shiny red pickup led the way, and it was nearly even with them before they could see the low trailer hitched behind it. Anchored on top the trailer was a palomino with a flowing white mane. A man in fringed cowboy attire sat astride the golden horse, holding onto the saddle horn with one hand and waving his ten-gallon hat with the other.