Murder in Vegas

by Connelly, Michael

  “Ok?”

  “It burns a little, but I’m fine.”

  “I’ll patch it up.”

  Two Knives opened the first aid kit. Scout removed her shirt. She jerked when he dabbed iodine in her wound, more so than when she was shot. He dressed her wound.

  “We’re almost through. Stand up.”

  Scout undid her utility belt, letting it drop to the floor. Two Knives dropped the Glock in the truck. Scout undid her pants, handing them to him. He ripped them near the zipper.

  “We’re coming up on half an hour,” he said, scooping up the knife, tape and kit, dropping them in the trash as he rushed to the small office. Scout, now stripped down to her bra and panties, gathered her hair as she hurried to the garage’s washroom.

  In the office, Two Knives changed into new, pressed slacks, pin-striped shirt, Gucci shoes, and a conservative jacket. He combed his neatly trimmed silver hair, then slipped on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

  Taped to the bottom of the desk was a brown envelope with several passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards, cash. He tucked it into his breast pocket. Then he gathered everything from the worktable and tossed it in the trash, except the radio scanner. That went in the car. He left a window down so he could still hear it. He opened the trunk. A wheelchair was folded inside. Next, he inventoried the entire garage, nothing was left. Nothing. He closed the doors of the Forged truck then unfurled a white nylon sheet that he cast over the van, pulling it down at spots where it was uneven. He checked the printed note he had taped earlier to the window of the front door.

  Closed Indefinitely Due to Death in Family.

  “Ready,” said the old woman who’d stepped from the washroom. She was wearing a light-knit knee-length sweater over a flower print caftan, flat-soled shoes. An emerald scarf hid her neck, her gray hair reached to her shoulders, framing her face, which was sallow and frowning under large, dark glasses. She was wearing rubber gloves and clutching her brown purse. She was hunched as if she were ill or enduring pain as she walked to the car’s front passenger seat.

  Two Knives grabbed the trash from the washroom, then tied three large garbage bags from the garage and tossed them in the car’s trunk. He hit the switch for the electronic door, drove the car outside, stopping to close the garage door before they drove off down the rear alley.

  Several blocks away, he stopped to drop the trash bags in a warehouse dumpster. He knew the schedule. This dumpster would be emptied the next morning.

  They were well along Interstate 15 southbound, which paralleled the Strip, by the time their portable scanner crackled with the first dispatch of an armored car heist at a casino on Las Vegas Boulevard.

  “So far, so good,” he said, tossing the scanner out the window as they neared the Exec Air Terminal at McCarran.

  Scout said nothing. She was looking west to the mountains.

  The clerk at Desert Airstream Services moved from behind her counter to greet the old woman in the wheelchair and her physician.

  “Dr. Hegel. Everything’s ready. That’s a pretty scarf, Mrs. Duggan,” the clerk said after summoning the ground crew. They assisted Hegel getting his patient, Heather Duggan, comfortably aboard her chartered jet, for her one-way flight to Orange County.

  Duggan, a reclusive casino heiress, had a terminal condition, her doctor had explained a few weeks earlier. It was her wish to die in California where she was born. Hegel had arranged the trip, paying cash in advance. He’d included large gratuities for respecting the eccentric woman’s privacy.

  The fresh-cut roses in the jet were a nice touch, Two Knives thought as the small Cessna Citation shot over the Spring Mountains, about ninety minutes after Scout had driven off with $3.7 million in unmarked cash.

  That evening after dinner in the restaurant of the Ramada in Santa Ana, Two Knives told Scout that he wanted to do something he’d dreamed of doing all his life and they drove to Newport Beach where they watched the sun set on the ocean.

  “I never really knew you Jessie,” he said as they walked near the surf. “I was angry at Angela for being with a white man. I’d thought, how could my sister betray her people, her blood. I was consumed with anger. I’d lost my way in the world and ended up in a cell.”

  Gulls cried above them.

  “I never meant for that man, the armored car guard, to die like that in San Diego. It was a terrible mistake. A terrible thing and I paid for it with twenty-five years of my life.” The sun painted the creases of his sad, weary face with gold as he searched the horizon. “I did a lot of thinking in those twenty-five years, thinking how I could set things right.”

  “My mother was angry that I’d written to you in prison. She said you were no good, Joe.”

  “She has a right to her opinion of me. Especially now. I heard she has less than three months with her illness.”

  Scout nodded.

  “Jessie, your letters kept me alive during my darkest times. Gave me a reason to want to make up for deserting my own blood when they needed me.”

  “You’re the only one who knows the truth about all the things that happened when I was young.”

  “It hurt me more than you’ll ever know, to read of your pain. I knew in my heart you did nothing to deserve it. I believe you were owed a life, and that I could help you get it.”

  Scout took her uncle’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Remember, you must never call your mother, or see her. Once the FBI puts everything together, they’ll watch. If you’re going to survive you must let her spend her last days thinking you are dead. It’s better this way. You’ll see her in the next world.”

  Scout brushed a tear from her cheek.

  As if reading her mind, he said: “Not even a letter, Jessie.”

  She nodded. They’d gone over every detail.

  “This looks like a good spot.” He stopped, pulled a hotel towel from his bag and began to undress. Jessie was surprised. He was wearing swimming trunks. “I’ve always dreamed of swimming in the ocean,” he said.

  At fifty-four, he had the firm muscular body of a man thirty years younger, a dividend of keeping in shape during his time in Folsom. Scout noticed a small tattoo over his shoulder that looked like a storm over mountains.

  “What’s this mean?”

  “Ah, that,” he said. “I got it from an old chief I met on C-Yard the second year I was inside,” he said. “Funny. I wanted an eagle. But he was very insistent that I have this one.”

  “What is it, what does it mean?”

  “He said it was for the entity who delivers calm after the storm. Pretty cool, don’t you think?”

  Jessie nodded.

  “The old man called it, The Lightning Rider.”

  Two Knives walked into the ocean, leaving Scout standing alone on the beach brushing her tears, feeling the warmth of the fading sun.

  GRIEVING LAS VEGAS

  JEREMIAH HEALY

  Ed Krause lay on his back, staring up at the night sky, his sports jacket surprisingly comfortable as a pillow beneath his head. The desert air in mid-May was still warm, considering how long the sun’d been down. And the stars so bright—Jesus, you could almost understand why they called it the Milky Way, account of out here, away from any city lights, more white star showed than black background.

  At least until Ed turned his head to the east, toward Las Vegas, which glittered on the horizon, like a cut jewel somebody kept turning under a lamp.

  Jewel?

  Ed coughed, not quite a laugh. Better you stuck with carrying diamonds and jade. But no, this new deal had sounded too good to pass up, especially the final destination and the cash you’d have for enjoying it. From that first day, at Felix …

  … Wasserman’s house. In San Francisco, on one of those crazy fucking hill streets near Fisherman’s Wharf that had to be terraced and handrailed before even an ex-paratrooper like Ed Krause could climb up it.

  Felix Wasserman was an importer, which is how Ed had met him in the first place, seven—n
o, more like eight—years ago. Just after Ed had mustered out of the Army and was nosing around for something to do with his life. A buddy from the airborne put him onto being a courier, which at first sounded like the most boring duty Ed could imagine, worse even than KP in the Mess Hall or standing Guard Mount outside some Godforsaken barracks in the pits of a Southern fort.

  Until the buddy also told him how much money could be made for carrying the right kind of stuff. And being able to stop somebody from taking it away from you.

  After climbing thirty-five fucking steps, Ed found himself outside Wasserman’s house. Or townhouse, maybe, since it shared both its side walls with other structures, what Ed thought was maybe earthquake protection, since he’d seen signs down on more normal streets for stores that were temporarily closed for “seismic retrofitting.” Wasserman had his front garden looking like a Caribbean jungle, and Ed had to duck under flowers in every shade of red that grew tall as trees before he could ring the guy’s bell.

  His doorbell, that is, seeing as how Ed Krause was what he liked to call in San Fran’ a “confirmed heterosexual.”

  Wasserman himself answered, turned out in a silk shirt that looked as though his flower trees out front had been spun into cloth for it Pleated slacks and soft leather loafers that probably cost—in one of the tonier “shoppes” off Union Square—as much as Ed’s first car.

  “Felix, how you doing?”

  “Marvelously, Edward,” said Wasserman, elegantly waving him inside. “Simply marvelously.”

  Give him this: The guy didn’t seem to age much. In fact, Wasserman didn’t look to Ed any older than he had that day when Ed—working for a legitimate, bonded courier service then—first laid eyes on him. It was after maybe the third or fourth above-board job he’d carried for the gay blade that Wasserman had felt him out—conversationally—on maybe carrying something else for his “import” business. At a commission of ten percent against the value of the parcel involved.

  Now Ed just followed the guy up the stairs to a second-floor room with the kind of three-sided window that let you look out over the red-flower trees across to the facing houses and up or down the slope of the hill at other people’s front gardens. Only, while there were two easy chairs and a table in the window area, Wasserman never had Ed sit there during business.

  Too conspicuous.

  Another elegant wave of the hand, this time toward the wet bar set back against one wall. “Drink?”

  “Jim and Coke, you got them.”

  “Edward,” Wasserman seeming almost hurt in both voice and expression, “knowing you were coming to see me, of course I stocked Mr. Beam and your mixer.”

  Ed took his usual seat on one couch while his host first made the simple bourbon and cola cocktail, then fussed over some kind of glass-sided machine with arching tubes that always looked to Ed like a life-support system for wine bottles. Coming away holding a normal glass with brown liquid in it and another like a kid’s clear balloon with some kind of red—is this guy predictable or what, colorwise?—Wasserman handed Ed his drink before settling into the opposing couch, a stuffed accordion envelope on the redwood—see?—coffee table between them.

  “Edward, to our continued, and mutual, good fortune.”

  Clinking with the guy, Ed took a slug of his drink, just what the doctor ordered for that forced march up the screwy, terraced street. Wasserman rolled his wine around in the balloon glass about twelve times before sniffing it, then barely wetting his lips with the actual grape juice. Ed wondered sometimes if the wine was that good, or if the dapper gay guy just didn’t want to get too smashed too quick.

  “So, Felix,” gesturing toward the big envelope, “what’ve we got this time?”

  Wasserman smiled, and for the first time, Ed wondered if maybe the guy had gone for a face-lift, account of his ears came forward a little. But after putting down the wine glass, Felix used an index finger to just nudge the package an inch toward his guest. “Open it and see.”

  Ed took a second slug of the Jim and Coke, then set his glass down, too. Sliding the elastic off the bottom of the envelope and lifting the flap, he saw stacks of hundred-dollar bills, probably fifty to the pack.

  Ed resisted the urge to whistle through his bottom teeth. “Total?”

  “One-quarter million.”

  Since they both knew Ed would have to count it out in Wasserman’s presence over a second drink, the courier just put the big envelope back on the table, three packs of cash sliding casually over the open flap and onto the redwood.

  Ed said, “For?”

  A sigh and a frown, as Wasserman delicately retrieved his glass by its stem and settled back into his couch. “I expect you’re aware—if only in a general way—of the rather distressing state of the economy?”

  “I remember hearing something about it, yeah.”

  A small smile, not enough to make the ears hunch. “Ah, Edward, both dry and droll. My compliments.” Wasserman’s lips went back to neutral. “My rather well-heeled clientele hasn’t been consuming quite as conspicuously these last few seasons, feeling that fine jewels, no matter the rarity nor brilliance, can’t quite replace cash as hedges against the uncertain miasma within which we find ourselves floundering.”

  Ed just sipped his drink this time, kind of getting off on the way Wasserman made up sentences more elaborate than his garden out front.

  “However, the landlord still expects his rent for my shop, and the bank its mortgage payments for my home. And so I’ve shifted my sights a bit, importwise.”

  “Meaning?”

  Wasserman took an almost normal person’s belt of his wine. “Heroin.”

  Ed would have bet cocaine. “Let me guess. I take the package of money from here to there, and pick up the powder.”

  “Precisely. Which, of course, would do me no good, since fine Cabernet,” swirling the wine in his glass now, “constitutes my only source of substance abuse. Fortunately, though, I have a business contact in the Lake Tahoe area who will gladly buy said powder from you, as my representative, at … twice the price.”

  Ed did the math. “You’re saying my cut of this will be ten percent of five hundred thousand?”

  “Precisely so. From Tahoe you’ll transport the remainder of the cash involved to Las Vegas.”

  Christ, even a bonus. Growing up in Cleveland, Ed’d always had an itch to sample the glitzy life, but in all his time in San Fran’, he’d never been to Vegas. He’d heard everything there—thanks to the casino action—was bigger and better. spectacular tits and ass on the showgirls, classy singers and magicians, even lion tamers. Not like the trendy shit that passed for culture in the “City by the Bay.”

  In fact, Ed had also seen—three times, at cineplex prices—that Nick Cage movie, Leaving Las Vegas. Got the guy an Oscar, and he fucking well deserved it. I mean, who’d ever believe that anybody’d want to check out of the genuine “City That Never Sleeps”?

  Felix allowed himself another couple drops of his wine. “When you reach Las Vegas itself, a friend of mine will—shall we say, hand-wash—the actual bills for his own fee of a mere five percent, after which you shall bring the balance back here to me.”

  Ed thought about it. A little complicated for his taste, given the number of stops and exchanges. But fifty thousand for what would be maybe three, four days tops of driving? And he didn’t give a shit whether his share was laundered or not, since Ed would be passing it in far smaller amounts than Wasserman probably had to pay his creditors.

  “Felix, with all this running around, I’m gonna need a cover story, and an advance against expenses.”

  Now a pursing of the lips. “How much?”

  “That’ll depend on where I’m picking up the powder to begin with.”

  Another sigh, but more—what the fuck was the word? Oh, yeah: wistful. “Edward, I actually envy you that, even though the Cabernet varietal, in my humble opinion, doesn’t really thrive there. You’ll make your first exchange in Healdsburg. Or just outsi
de it.”

  Ed had noticed the town’s name on maps, maybe two hours up U.S. 101 from the Golden Gate, in one of the many parts of the state called “wine country.”

  He said, “Three thousand, then, upfront, given the cover story I’m thinking about.”

  “Which is?”

  “Bringing a chick along, camouflage for flitting around all these vacation spots like a butterfly.”

  “A woman.” The deepest frown of all from Felix Wasserman. “That I don’t envy you, Edward.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Brandi Willette, trying to size up whether this guy who never plunged for more than three well-drinks at a sitting—but did tip her twenty percent every time he settled a tab—was on the level. “You want to take me—all expenses paid—with you on this whirlwind trip over the next four days?”

  A nod from his side of the pub’s bar, the guy wearing an honest-to-God, old-fashioned sports jacket. “Maybe even longer, we like it in Vegas enough.”

  Brandi had been there only once, on the cheap with a girlfriend, splitting every bill down the middle. The girlfriend turned out to be a drag, but Brandi loved the gambling, believing firmly that if she could just sense her luck changing, she’d make a fortune, even from the slot machines. The kind of money that’d let her get out from behind a smelly, tacky bar, listening to offers from guys like this … uh, this … . “It’s ‘Eddie,’ right?”

  “No. Just ‘Ed,’ like you’re ‘Brandi’ with an ‘I’.”

  She shook her head, then had to blow one of the permed blond curls out of her face. “Okay, Ed. We go together, same room, same bed, but if I don’t feel like doing the nasty, we just share the sheets, not stain them?”