Void Moon (1999)

by Michael Connelly

  "So you see," Karch suddenly said, "if there's anybody you should blame it's you, not me. You had the kid in your belly and you told him the news. What do you think about that, Cassie Black?"

  She didn't answer. She gripped the wheel so tightly her knuckles glowed white in the dim light from the dash gauges. She felt a deep-rooted tremble go through her. It started in her chest and then made her shoulders shake. It moved like a wave down her arms until control of the wheel was in question. Finally, it passed. She tried to put thoughts about Max aside, to be dealt with later. Jodie was the important thing. She had to concentrate on Jodie.

  "You know something?" Karch said. "Now that I understand what happened in that room with Max, the one thing I don't understand is what happened in the room with Hidalgo. I mean, why'd you do it?"

  Cassie didn't understand why he asked such an obvious question.

  "Why else? The money."

  "But why put the guy down unless you had to and it didn't seem to me that - "

  "What are you talking about? Hidalgo? Hidalgo's dead?"

  "You should know that better than - "

  "No! I don't know what you're talking about!"

  "It looked pretty cold-blooded to me. Guy sitting there in bed in his underwear, defenseless, and you pop him like that."

  As he spoke Cassie remembered her last moments in the room. Hidalgo was restless, waking up. She stood at the foot of the bed and raised the gun. She had been ready and willing to do what was necessary. To cross the final line. Had she done it, had she crossed, and then blocked it from her memory? Impossible.

  "Karch, listen to me. If he's dead somebody else did it."

  There was a pause and then Karch's voice came back.

  "Sure. Whatever you say. It still doesn't change things. You're coming back here with the money and - "

  "Karch?"

  "What?"

  "How do I know you even have her?"

  He laughed in a fake way into the phone.

  "That's just it. You don't."

  "I need to talk to her. Before I come there, I need to know you have her. And that she's alive. Please, Karch."

  "Oh, well, if you're going to be so polite about it . . ."

  She listened. She thought she heard a horn honking and then Karch cursed at someone. She realized he was in a car and guessed it meant that he had pulled over and maybe cut someone off. She heard a rustling sound and then Karch's voice again, but not directed into the phone.

  "Wake up, kid," he said. "Somebody wants to talk to you. Say hello."

  Cassie heard her daughter's breathing before her voice. Then she spoke one word that went through Cassie's heart like a diamond-tipped drill.

  "Mommy?"

  Cassie involuntarily drew her breath in and held it. She tried to halt the torrent of tears she knew was waiting to come down. She opened her mouth and tried to respond to the first word her daughter had ever said to her. But before she could form a sound, Karch's rude and gruff laugh loudly filled the inside of the car.

  "Out of the mouths of babes, right?" he said. "The Cleo by midnight, Cinderella, or your pumpkin gets smashed."

  He killed the connection and Cassie was suddenly riding in silence and darkness. In the tunnel.

  She thought about calling Karch back but knew that all that was to be said had been said. She gazed out the windshield at the WELCOME TO LAS VEGAS sign as it passed. She had lied to Karch. She was coming in right behind him. It would give her a time advantage - a few hours to get ready - but little else. She had no idea what it was she would be getting ready for.

  41

  THE girl sat up in the backseat of the Lincoln and took in the dazzling lights of the Strip.

  "Where are we?" she asked.

  "We're almost there."

  "I want my daddy."

  Karch turned the rearview mirror and looked back at her. It sounded like she was going to start crying again. Halfway from L.A. she had started crying and screaming for her mother and father. Karch had had to pull off in Barstow and calm her. Mostly he bribed her with French fries and a Coke. He got her to agree to stop the outburst until they got to the hotel in Las Vegas where her daddy was waiting. The one good thing was that all the crying made her tired and she slept most of the rest of the way.

  "Remember our deal. No crying and no outbursts until we get to the hotel room and you see your daddy. Okay?"

  "I don't care. I want my daddy."

  "We're almost there," he said. "You're going to be with your daddy real soon."

  He smiled, though he knew she would never comprehend the joke.

  "Are we in France now?"

  "What?"

  He checked the mirror and saw her staring out the window to her right, the reflection of neon light playing on her young face. He looked out the windshield to the right and saw what she was looking at. They were passing a half-size Eiffel Tower fronting a casino.

  "Could be, kid. Could be."

  After a few more minutes he turned the car into the Cleopatra's entrance and followed the signs that said SELF PARKING to the rear of the property. He drove into the west parking garage as he had told Grimaldi he would. He found a parking slot on the fourth level and then he and the girl took the stairs down to the ground floor. Karch walked quickly, holding the girl by the hand and tugging her along.

  An emergency exit door that Karch knew led from the elevator lobby of the Euphrates Tower directly to the parking garage had been left propped open for them with a towel tied around the inside push bar and then looped around the edge of the door and tied to the outside handle. By entering here he would be able to bypass all of the cameras in the casino. He could not allow there to be any video documentation of himself with the girl. Once they were through the door Karch yanked the towel free so that the door closed and locked. He left the towel on the floor.

  In the elevator lobby Jodie Shaw stopped and tried to jerk her hand out of Karch's grip. It reminded him of the slightest tug of a throw-back fish on a fishing line. He looked down at her.

  "Where's my daddy?"

  "We're going up to see him right now. You want to push the button?"

  He pointed to the elevator call buttons.

  "No, I'm almost six years old. Not three."

  "Oh, okay then."

  Karch pulled her to the panel and pushed the button. He then glanced around and made sure no one was paying attention. He dipped his fingers into the sand jar below the buttons and eventually pulled out the card key Grimaldi had had planted there for him. An elevator opened and Karch pulled the girl into it. He used the card key to engage the penthouse button. Once the door was closed he let go of her hand. He looked up at the camera in the corner. There was no light or other means of determining if it was on or had been shut down per his instructions.

  He looked down at the girl and he could tell she was confused and about to start crying again. He squatted down to her level and smiled.

  "It's all right, kid. This will all be over in a few hours."

  "I want my mommy and daddy now."

  "You will all be together real soon. I promise. Hey, tell you what, did I show you this?"

  He took the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and shook one out. He then performed the in-the-ear-and-out-the-mouth transfer flawlessly. The girl's eyebrows arched in wonder. He lit the cigarette with a lighter and blew the smoke up over her head.

  "That's magic," he said. "My daddy taught me that."

  He stood up.

  "Or at least the guy who thought he was my daddy."

  The doors opened and he led the girl out into the alcove. They stepped into the hallway and went to the first door to the right. He used the card key to open the door and the girl charged in ahead of him.

  "Daddy!"

  He watched her look around expectantly and then go through the open double doors leading to the bedroom. Karch closed and locked the door, dropped the card on a little table beneath a mirror in the entranceway and followed her into the be
droom. She was leaning against the bed, her face down on the spread.

  "Where's my daddy?"

  "I guess we have to wait for him."

  She turned and looked up at him with accusing eyes.

  "You told me he was here."

  "Don't worry. He's around somewhere. We just have to wait for him to come back. I'll make some calls to see if I can find him, okay? In the meantime, this here is the room where you are going to wait. You can get on the bed and go back to sleep or you can watch TV, whatever you want. They have a channel just for cartoons, right? Why don't you check it out?"

  He looked at the girl nodding and smiling but she wasn't with the program. She hardly seemed mollified and Karch was just about out of patience. The next move would be to tie the kid up and put her in the shower with a gag in her mouth. He decided to try once more before going to that extreme.

  "Tell you what, you hungry? I'll order us up some room service. I'm fucking starved. How about a nice, juicy steak?"

  "Gross. And you talk dirty."

  "That I do, that I do. All right, no steak. What would you like instead?"

  "Spaghetti-Os."

  "Spaghetti-Os? You sure about that? They got some great cooks down there. You sure you want Spaghetti-Os?"

  "Spa-ghetti-Os."

  "All right, all right, Spaghetti-Os. Tell you what, you watch the TV in here and I'll go call room service."

  He took the remote off the top of the TV and turned it on. He handed her the remote and walked out of the room. He then remembered something and came back in and disconnected the phone. She watched silently as he left the room with the phone. Just as he closed the double doors she called out from within.

  "And a Coke, too."

  He wondered for a moment whether a child that age was allowed to have Coke. He then dismissed the thought because it didn't matter.

  "Okay, one Coke coming up."

  Karch took the phone cord and wrapped it around the necks of the two doorknobs. He doubted she would try to make a break but it didn't hurt to be thorough. He then walked over to the little desk and picked up the phone. He dialed Grimaldi's direct line again and the casino director answered immediately.

  "You're in."

  "You turned the elevator cams off, right?"

  "And the garage. Just like you asked. Routine maintenance. If you stayed clear of the casino then there's no record of you coming in."

  "Okay. What about the stairs?"

  "I've got people in every stairwell. And we know she doesn't have a card because Martin got his back. So she can't use the elevators. Just the stairs. You want somebody up there in the penthouse, like in the hallway?"

  "No."

  "You sure she's going to come back with the money? Just for the kid?"

  "She's coming, Vincent. I guarantee it."

  "With your life, Jack. You understand that?"

  Karch didn't answer. Grimaldi was trying to reassert himself but it was too late for that. Karch still had control.

  "She says she didn't put Hidalgo down on the bed like that."

  "Who says this?"

  "Cassie Black. She says she didn't pop him."

  "Bullshit. What's she going to say? 'Things went wrong up there and I did it?' No, they never cop to anything, Jack, you know that."

  Karch thought about this.

  "All right," he finally said. "I guess you're right."

  "I know I am. So you're all set up there?"

  "Yeah - oh wait, one last thing. I need you to call room service and have them send up a steak. Make it bloody rare. And . . ."

  He looked toward the doors to the bedroom. The low sound of cartoon gunfire was coming from the room.

  "What?"

  "And do they have any Spaghetti-Os down there?"

  "That canned shit?"

  "Kids like it."

  "No, Jack, no fucking Spaghetti-Os. This is a four-star kitchen."

  "Well, then something close to it. And two Cokes, no ice. Tell them to knock on the door and leave it outside. Tell them I don't have to sign for it. Nobody can see me up here, Vincent. You understand?"

  "Perfectly. Anything else?"

  "That's it. This will all be over by midnight, Vincent. You'll have the money, everything. Miami will get the Cleo, you'll run the show, and Chicago gets fucked."

  "I'll be very grateful, Jack."

  "You bet your ass you will be."

  He hung up. He then took the cell phone out of his pocket and used it to check his messages. There were a couple of new missing persons referrals but nothing else. Karch knew that one way or another his missing persons days were going to end soon.

  When he put the phone back into his inside suit pocket he felt something in there and remembered he had taken Leo Renfro's date book. He took it out and opened it. He had only glanced through it before, at the time hoping there would be a clue to the whereabouts of the money or Cassie Black. Instead, he found the calendar pages filled with penciled notes about astrological conditions. It fascinated him that there were people who made life decisions based upon configurations of the stars and the sun and moon. He felt that it was stupid and what happened to Leo sure proved it.

  He now paged through the calendar to see what Leo had written about the future he didn't live to see. He started to smile when he got to a particularly large notation penciled into the block denoting the current date.

  "Hey, we got a void moon rising tonight," he said out loud. "Ten-ten till midnight."

  He thought maybe there was something valid to all of this. After all, he knew the night was going to be bad luck for somebody. He put the date book down and stood up. He stepped to the corner and opened the curtains, revealing the floor-to-ceiling window. He stood back and appraised the view and the glass. He pinpointed the spot where Max Freeling had hit the glass and crashed through.

  He looked over at the bedroom doors. He heard the signature Beep Beep of a Road Runner cartoon and he knew the coyote was on the case.

  42

  CASSIE analyzed and reanalyzed everything Karch had said during the cell phone-to-cell phone conversation. She was in Vegas now, parked in the Flamingo garage again. She sat with her hands on the wheel even though the car was stopped in a parking slot. She stared at the wall in front of her and analyzed the conversation once more. At one point Karch had mentioned the scene of the crime. He also said that when she called after arriving he would have someone bring her "up" to him. This meant to Cassie that he was waiting for her in the penthouse of the Cleo. In room 2014 to be exact. The scene of the crime.

  But then she overanalyzed things and began to wonder if the clues he had dropped into the phone call had been dropped intentionally. Perhaps Karch knew she had been lying and was on the road just behind him. Perhaps he knew that she would make a move to rescue her daughter. Finally, though, she dismissed this latter possibility. Looking at it from the standpoint of Karch's believing he held all the cards this time, she decided that he had something else in mind when he chose 2014 for their meeting and supposed exchange of money for the girl.

  One thing that needed no analyzing was the exchange. Cassie knew as an absolute given that there would be no trade. Whatever Karch had in mind did not include Cassie's leaving Las Vegas with her daughter. She knew that if she went through with this Karch's way that she would be going to her death. Karch was a no-witnesses man. And to him an ex-con hot prowler wasn't worth a second thought. While she was pretty sure that she could and would trade her life for Jodie's, she was also absolutely sure that Karch's no-witnesses ethic would even apply to a five-and-a-half-year-old innocently caught in the crosswinds of her mother's fatal mistakes.

  So after all the furious thinking there was no choice. It came down to a given. She had to get back into the Cleopatra and up to the top floor. She then had to get into room 2014 again. Using that resolve as a foundation, she finally hatched a plan from which she hoped at least one person - a child - would come out alive.

  Thirty minutes later she wa
s moving through the casino at the Cleopatra with a new wide-brimmed hat on and a determined step in her walk. She carried a matching black gym bag she had also bought at one of the shops at the Flamingo. It contained more cash than was on the entire casino floor at the moment. It also contained the fanny pack with the tools of her trade but no gun. If things worked out as she planned a weapon would not be necessary. If a weapon became necessary she knew she'd already be lost.