by Wesley Lewis
“You gotta understand,” continued the male cashier from his swivel chair in front of the closed window, “that those flyboys from Nellis tended to look down their noses at any fellow not in uniform. So one Saturday night, a couple of them sit down at my table over at Caesars, each with a showgirl on his arm, and start giving me the third degree about why ain’t I serving my country like a good American.”
Patrol Officers Hall and McMahon seemed genuinely enthralled by the story.
“Now, mind you,” added the cashier, “these two greenhorns hadn’t seen no action beyond a jet trainer, and I’d done two tours in the bush. But I didn’t say nothing right then. I just dealt the cards and kept smiling like I was supposed to. After a couple of hours, both of them are drunker ’n’ snot, and one of them is losing pretty bad, and he starts getting loud.”
The female cashier took an envelope of cash from a woman at the window and placed the bills in the counting machine. Crocker added it to his mental tally, which was still nowhere near eight hundred thousand.
The male cashier continued, “This guy accuses me of cheating him and threatens to take me outside and whoop my ass. It’s all I can do to keep from laughing, because this kid is too drunk to walk, much less fight. But I see a couple of our security guys walking toward my table and—” He paused. “You gotta understand that back then the security guys on the floor were real security guards, guns and everything, not bellhops with pepper spray like we have now. Before the corporations took over and tried to rebrand Las Vegas as a family destination, we never had to call in freelancers to handle our business. No offense.”
“None taken,” said McMahon, the larger of the two new guys.
“The Strip was a different place in those days, you know? People still dressed up before coming downstairs.”
“Dressed up?” asked Hall, the shorter, boxier rookie. “You mean beyond matching their socks to their sandals?”
“Ha!” snorted the old man. “Back when the boys from Kansas City and Chicago ran things, one of our armed guards would toss you out on your ass if you walked onto the gaming floor dressed like that. When the mob left town in ’eighty-four, they took all the guns and suits with them.”
The two new guys laughed. Crocker gave a polite smile. He’d heard the same line from at least a dozen old-timers over the years.
A loud buzzer cut through the cash cage, bringing everyone to attention.
The male cashier spun his chair back toward the closed window and acted busy.
“What’s that?” asked McMahon.
“Door buzzer,” said Crocker. “Probably the vault manager.” He checked the video monitor above the door and saw a high-angle black-and-white image of a broad-shouldered man of perhaps thirty-five wearing a La Condamine blazer and pushing a cash cart.
McMahon moved toward the door. “I got it.”
“Hang on,” said Crocker. “I don’t recognize him. Tell him to come around to the window and show his ID.”
The old cashier glanced at the monitor. “It’s okay. He’s on loan from one of our sister properties, filling in for either Ted or Todd. I forget which one it is, but one of them is gone for a funeral or something.”
Fuck, thought Crocker, now I’m dealing with three new guys.
McMahon stood with his hand on the door handle, awaiting an answer.
“Okay,” said Crocker, “let him in.”
McMahon opened the door, and new guy number three pushed the fresh cart into the cage.
“Morning,” said the vault manager. “Is my baby ready to be put to bed?”
“Just about,” replied the old cashier. “It’s a light load.”
“It’s early.” The vault manager positioned the empty cart beside the one the cashiers had been filling. “Things will pick up.”
The old cashier walked to the small metal desk in the back corner of the room. On the wall above the desk hung a ring of keys on a lanyard. He grabbed the keys and walked back to the partially filled cart. The retractable leash unreeled behind him like a fishing line.
Crocker watched as the old man flipped through the keys, found the one that matched the number on the side of the cart, and locked the small steel door.
“McMahon,” said Crocker, “it’s time to pop your cherry. You’ll escort this first deposit.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Jennifer’s dignity was long gone, but her modesty remained intact. After confirming that her little black dress would not keep her covered while she peed, she’d thrown a towel over her lap, to the obvious disappointment of her chaperone. Now back on the bed, with her foot chained to the footboard, she searched for the courage to implement plan B.
Some small part of her still hoped that help was on its way, that a search-and-rescue team led by Sheriff Cargill would burst through the door and put a bullet between Jesse’s eyes. But she knew she couldn’t count on that. Even if somebody knew to look for her, how would they ever locate this hellhole? She had to save herself.
She watched Jesse and wondered how long it had been since he’d slept. Based strictly on her sense of smell, she guessed that his day had started at least twenty-four hours ago. That wasn’t much to go on, but it offered a kernel of hope. If he was even more sleep deprived than she was, that might give her an advantage. She watched for any signs of fatigue.
Sitting on the love seat, thumbing through his tattered copy of Hustler, he looked all too alert.
Just do it, she thought. If you don’t, you’re as good as dead.
She watched her toadlike captor and considered for a moment that a quick death might be preferable to seeing this plan backfire. Then she remembered that hers wasn’t the only life on the line. Wherever they were, Crocker and Larry were running out of time just as quickly as she was.
Fuck it.
She stretched back and laid her head on a filthy decorative pillow.
“It’s too hot in here,” she said. “Can you turn down the air-conditioning?”
Jesse glanced up from his magazine. “There ain’t no air-conditioning.”
“No air-conditioning?” she asked, feigning dismay.
“Nope. Gets hot as hell here during the day.”
She uttered a pouty humph and began fanning herself with the hem of her dress.
Jesse stared across the top of his magazine. The girls of Hustler were apparently forgotten. He had a front-row view of a pair of real legs disappearing into a pair of bikini-cut lace panties.
♦ ♦ ♦
Like every other cash cage at La Condamine, this one featured a large digital clock mounted above the cashiers’ windows, visible only from the inside. Gamers were encouraged to lose track of time; employees were not. The clock read 7:47. Crocker stared at the numbers and fantasized about being on a big Boeing jet, headed someplace far, far away.
He watched as 7:47 turned into 7:48 and discovered that, without intending to, he’d brought his right hand up to the bulge in his jacket, as if some part of his brain perceived the clock itself as the threat. He patted the bulge and reminded himself that without a functioning firing pin, his gun was no threat to the clock or anything else.
He glanced at the video monitor above the door and saw only a patch of empty carpet.
Come on, already.
Ilya’s eight o’clock deadline was just twelve minutes away, and the vault manager still hadn’t returned for the second deposit. The random pickups could occur as close together as half an hour or as far apart as ninety minutes.
Luck, be a lady, you bitch.
At the windows, both cashiers logged envelopes of cash as fast as they could. The fresh cart left by the vault manager now held almost nine hundred thousand dollars. By eight o’clock, it would hold close to a million. Unfortunately, Crocker couldn’t wait that long.
He sat on the metal desk, twirling the ring of cart keys on the attached lanyard, like a Victorian gentleman twirling a pocket watch.
The attached key ring was one of the oldest and most effective security measures in the casino business. The ring held one key for each cash cart used in that cage. The vault contained a complete set of keys for all the carts used in the casino. There was no master key, and because the key rings couldn’t be removed from the cage or the vault, there was no way to open a cart en route without picking, drilling, or blowing the lock.
A more modern safeguard ensured that a would-be thief couldn’t simply walk out the front door with a cart full of cash: Buried inside each cart was a radio-frequency identification tag that triggered an alarm and initiated a lockdown if the cart got too close to an exit.
Crocker watched the female cashier take a stack of cash from the currency counter and wrap a paper band around the bills. The bundle went into a drawer in the cash cart, alongside a dozen or so identical bundles.
So close yet so far.
He’d considered a dozen ways of trying to steal the money while still in the cage, but he could not conceive of a single scenario in which he made it out of the casino with the money. He had no plan B. His only chance was—
The buzzer sounded.
His eyes found the monitor.
Thank God!
There on the black-and-white video monitor was the vault manager waiting with a new cart.
“McMahon,” snapped Crocker, “get the door. Hall, help wheel in that cart.”
The vault manager wouldn’t actually need help, but Crocker needed both McMahon and Hall facing the door. As they turned away, he reached down by his thigh and slid the cart key into the narrow gap separating the desk’s top drawer from the one beneath it.
McMahon grabbed the door handle and rotated it to the right. As the heavy bolt dropped, Crocker pulled up on the ring, snapping off the key at its base.
The female cashier was just putting her last bundle of cash into the cart.
Crocker pulled the freed key from between the drawers and stood. “Here, let me get that for you.” He carried the key ring to the cart, the lanyard unreeling behind him.
“Oh, I don’t mind.” She held out her hand for the keys. “I can get it.”
Crocker knelt beside the cart. “I insist. My mother would slap me upside the head if she saw me letting a lady get her own door. Even the door on a cash cart.”
The woman seemed both flattered and confused. “Well, thank you.”
Crocker shut the small steel door and, holding the freed key so that it appeared to still be attached to the ring, locked the cart.
“Do you want me to take this deposit?” asked Hall.
“No,” replied Crocker, “I think I’d better handle this one.” He stood and walked the key ring back to the security desk, moving slowly enough to let the lanyard retract.
“What’s the total?” asked the vault manager.
Crocker palmed the freed key as he hung the rest above the security desk.
“Nine forty,” replied the female cashier.
Crocker turned back to the group, slipping the key into his jacket pocket as he did.
“So close,” said the vault manager.
Crocker froze.
The vault manager gave the female cashier a good-natured grin. “A few more minutes, and you’d have had a million dollars in there.”
“Maybe next time,” she said.
The vault manager looked at Crocker. “Shall we?”
Crocker checked the clock. He had ten minutes.
♦ ♦ ♦
La Condamine certainly wasn’t the oldest casino on the Strip, but it was old enough to predate the poker craze of the early twenty-first century. Shortly after ESPN had bestowed professional-sport status on Texas Hold’em, the managers at La Condamine had ordered the smallest of the resort’s three conference halls converted into a tournament room.
Only one shortcoming marred the otherwise seamless conversion: Because the new tournament room resided on the opposite side of the resort from the main gaming floor, tournament deposits en route to the vault had to travel via publicly accessible corridors.
Crocker trailed the vault manager, who had the undesirable task of pushing the heavy cart against the flow of people migrating toward the tournament room, and went through the motions of scanning for security threats.
They continued upstream for a little more than two hundred yards before emerging from the conference-center access corridor into the expansive hotel lobby.
The vault manager stopped and wiped his brow. “That was a goddamned workout.”
“We should keep moving,” said Crocker. “It’s not safe to stop.”
The vault manager nodded. “Just give me a second to catch my breath. I’m Bruce, by the way.” He extended his right hand.
Crocker accepted the handshake. “I’m . . . Matt.” He wasn’t sure what he hoped to accomplish by introducing himself as Matt instead of Crocker, but intuition told him to distance himself from the man he was about to rob.
“Nice to meet you, Matt. Shall we get going?”
Without waiting for a reply, Matt’s new friend Bruce resumed pushing the cart across the lobby.
Crocker followed, looking left and right, feigning a typical security scan. His eyes kept coming back to the restroom sign at the far end of the lobby.
Giving the best performance he could muster under the circumstances, he said, “Speed it up a little, Bruce. There are a couple of guys on our six acting suspicious.”
Bruce turned to look back.
“Don’t look!” snapped Crocker. “Just walk.” He raised his sleeve mic to his face and, without actually depressing the talk button, said, “Security, this is PPO seven escorting Tango Romeo full. I may have a tail. Main lobby.” He waited a second and added, “I see two. . . . No, make that three.”
Bruce’s legs were pumping. Crocker was pretty sure he’d never seen a fully loaded cash cart move so fast. The restroom sign was just a few yards ahead, on the left.
“Negative,” said Crocker into the dead mic. “The nearest secure was a hundred feet back, and we can’t turn around. I don’t think we can make the next one.” He tapped Bruce on the shoulder and pointed to the restroom sign. “Turn in there.” Into the dead mic, he said, “We’re going to secure ourselves inside restroom L3. Send SRT.”
Bruce turned toward the men’s room. Crocker slapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the third door, the one with a pictogram of a family on it. “That one.”
The cart barely fit through the restroom door, which Crocker was relieved to find unlocked. As soon as they were both inside, Crocker locked the door behind them and concluded his Oscar-worthy performance by lifting the mic and saying, “We’re secure inside. We’ll wait for SRT.”
In truth, the SRT was precisely what Crocker wanted to avoid. What the old cashier had said about most casinos no longer stationing armed guards on the floor was true, but every casino on the Strip employed an armed special response team, or SRT. In high-end casinos like La Condamine, the SRT was made up of highly paid ex-SWAT officers who spent their days playing cards in a hidden room, on standby in case of a shooting spree or a child abduction or some other event that necessitated an immediate armed response.
Crocker surveyed the restroom. Along with the hotel’s guest rooms, the restrooms were among the few areas at La Condamine not covered by multiple surveillance cameras. He held a finger to his earpiece and listened for the hiss of static that would precede an incoming transmission asking why he and the vault manager had just escorted a million dollars into the restroom. He’d worked out a fairly plausible excuse about needing a secure spot to fix a jammed wheel on the cash cart, but there was no hiss and no question.
Finally some luck, he thought.
With more than a thousand cameras to monitor, it was possible the forty video techs were all watching something else. The deposit from the tournament room might not be the most interesting thing happening at La Condamine at that moment.
That’s about to change.
He turned to Bruce. “Push the cart into the corner by the baby-changing table. I’ll guard the door.”
Bruce hesitated. “Yeah. Sure.” He muscled the cart toward the corner.
Crocker turned toward the door and drew his gun. He pointed the gun at the door and listened to the clattering of the cart’s wheels on the tile floor.
The clattering stopped.
“Like this?” asked Bruce.
Crocker took a deep breath, spun, and pointed the gun at Bruce. “Don’t m—”
Bruce had a Glock 23 trained on Crocker’s head.
Since when do vault managers carry guns?
The shadow of a smile formed at the corners of Bruce’s mouth. “Take it easy, Mr. Crocker. Mine is bigger, and it has all its parts.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The barrel of a Glock 23 is one millimeter wider than the barrel of a Glock 19. Crocker’s own Glock 23 was in the evidence locker at the Nye County sheriff’s station, and his Glock 19 had been reduced to an expensive paperweight, but his expertise with both told him he was staring down the barrel of a Glock 23. The eyes of the man holding it told him it wasn’t an idle threat.
