The Good Thief's Guide To Vegas

by Chris Ewan

  ‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll play blackjack. I’ll start with our stake money and see how things go for the first few hours. And meanwhile, you can do what you do best.’

  ‘This is no time for me to hammer out a quick novel.’

  ‘Idiot.’ I received another crack on the head. ‘We’ll go to a different casino. I can’t imagine the Fisher Twins will let us play here. And while I play, you can . . . you know.’

  ‘Steal things?’

  ‘If you want to be crass about it.’

  I turned and reached for Victoria’s curled fingers. There was no response, almost as though she hadn’t fully engaged with what she was suggesting. As though she’d switched off.

  ‘Are you okay with this? The gambling and the stealing?’

  Victoria didn’t speak. I was about to ask what had come over her when she slid off the bed onto her knees and extended a finger towards the keypad. She punched in four digits, and a moment later, the safe whirred and clunked and the word OPEN appeared.

  ‘Fifty-fifty,’ she said, as the door sprang back. ‘Pretty good, eh?’

  I groaned and gave myself an imaginary crack on the head for being such a dunce. Then I shone my penlight inside the safe. The contents weren’t anything to write a love song about. I found an MP3 player, a digital camera, a gold necklace and a curled bundle of dollar notes. I reached for the notes and counted them off. One hundred and ninety dollars. I passed them to Victoria, who juggled them like a hot coal, and then I rested a finger against my chin and considered my next move.

  The electrical equipment and the necklace were valuable, sure, but I didn’t have the time to track down a likely pawnbroker or a dive bar where I might sell them on. We needed cash or casino chips, and we needed them fast. In the hour it might take me to shift the valuables, I could break into another two hotel rooms, with the chance of finding just what we were after.

  With my mind made up, I closed the door to the safe and re-entered the code so that everything (aside from the money) was locked away, and then I took a quick peek around the rest of the bedroom and the bathroom before telling Victoria that we were done.

  ‘We can leave?’

  ‘Absolutely. In fact, I’d positively recommend it.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief.’

  I smoothed the bedcovers where Victoria had been perched, and then I straightened the clothes in the closet and shut the closet doors. I shone my penlight around the room to make sure we hadn’t left anything behind, and then I shone the light in Victoria’s face.

  ‘I do wish you’d stop doing that,’ she said, squinting.

  ‘Where’s the coat hanger?’

  ‘Oh. I might have left it in the other room.’

  She was right about that. I found the coat hanger on the glass dining-table. I eased it up inside the sleeve of my jacket, and then I led Victoria to the front door and put my eye to the peephole. Assuming my diminutive friend wasn’t waiting on the other side, all looked to be clear, so I hauled back the door and waved Victoria through.

  We were making our way down the service stairs before I paused between levels, reached inside my trousers and removed an item that made Victoria’s eyes boggle.

  ‘For you,’ I said, handing her the Houdini biography.

  ‘Oh Charlie, I really wish you hadn’t.’

  ‘Well, I had.’ I shrugged. ‘And unless you want to put it back, it’s yours now.’

  ‘And when exactly am I supposed to find the time to read this?’

  ‘When we’re out of this mess. Or maybe before. Houdini was the king of escaping sticky situations, right? Perhaps you’ll pick up a few tips.’

  FOURTEEN

  We returned to our rooms, and while I set about changing into some unremarkable black trousers, ditching my jacket and arming myself with a few choice pieces of equipment, Victoria slipped into something a little less comfortable.

  ‘Tra la!’

  I glanced up from my holdall to find her performing a dinky curtsey in the doorway between our suites. Gone were the loose-fitting clothes that she’d selected as burglar-chic, replaced by a midnight-blue cocktail dress, a matching clutch purse and a pair of high heels. She also appeared to have acquired a plunging neckline and a nicely proportioned pair of legs, though I refrained from saying as much.

  ‘How do I look?’ She clasped her hands together, lowered her eyelids and worked an expression that beat the hell out of bashful.

  ‘You look fine.’

  ‘Just fine?’

  I stepped into a pair of polished black shoes and ducked down to tie my laces, hiding my face. ‘What did you expect me to say?’

  ‘Oh, never mind.’ She slapped her hands against her thighs. ‘So, are you going to show me the Strip?’

  The Strip hit me like a blow to the face. The night air was warm, spiked with engine fumes and the odour of suncream on burned skin. It was late already, just gone midnight, but the sidewalks were awash with light – a mixture of garish neon, coloured marquee bulbs, flashing video screens, car headlamps and traffic signals. I swayed at the ankles, dizzied by the unexpected heat and the glare. Terrific, I thought. As if my body clock wasn’t messed up enough with jetlag, now I was adding perpetual twilight to the mix.

  Vehicle traffic on the multi-lane Strip was constant. High-end sports cars, bling SUVs, stretch limos and blacked-out Hummers competed for tarmac and attention, their paintwork glimmering like liquid beneath the lights. Crammed Deuce buses groped for the kerb outside the hotel, and low-slung taxis weaved between lanes. A flat-bed truck crawled along, towing a double-height advertising hoarding that featured a bikini-clad goddess and a slogan for some variety of strip club. I tried not to gawp, but I didn’t try all that hard.

  ‘Look.’ I pointed out the shapely beauty with the words Girls, Girls, Girls! scrawled above her raised derrière. ‘We have twenty-two hours left. You want to catch a show?’

  ‘Pig,’ Victoria shouted, above the noise. ‘Don’t these people know what time it is?’

  ‘Look on the bright side. At least they’re not in their hotel rooms.’

  Just as I finished speaking, we were jostled by a group of college girls drinking alcoholic slushies from novelty glasses shaped like the Statue of Liberty. The girls were pursued by a line of frat boys in pressed khakis, smelling of cologne, with plastic beer kegs strapped to their chests. They barged between us, and I stumbled into a suit and tie conventioneer slurring cellphone greetings to his wife, then apologised and stepped aside just as an old lady in a motorised wheelchair very nearly amputated my toes.

  ‘Come on.’ I reached out and grabbed Victoria’s hand. ‘Let’s get moving.’

  I led her south towards the toxic-pink glow of the Flamingo Casino Hotel, forcing our way through revellers and around palm trees and concession stands and yellow fire hydrants, darting beneath the upraised arms of drunken co-eds and skirting the crowds of people waiting for the pedestrian lights to change so that they could experience the pleasures of Caesars Palace. In the shadows, dusty men and women wearing coloured bibs riffled flyers and pressed cards offering call girl services into unsuspecting hands. The spent cards littered the sidewalk like sordid confetti.

  We passed over a cross street on a skybridge and were almost parallel with the elegant façade of the Bellagio, nearing the illuminated Eiffel Tower outside Paris-Las Vegas, when I dragged Victoria up the curving pavement towards the entrance of Space Station One.

  We’d just missed the final performance of the casino’s big low-roller draw – a simulation of a space-shuttle launch. The shuttle was juddering back down a crane-like structure that extended way up into the night sky, and dry ice billowed out from the fiery hole in the ground from which it had emerged. Based on the disgruntled mumblings of the few onlookers, I wasn’t altogether sorry we’d missed the spectacle. And judging from the crowds of revellers across the street, singing along to Elvis Presley’s ‘Viva Las Vegas’, it certainly wasn’t as popular
as the Bellagio fountains.

  The main entrance to Space Station One was a hangar-like structure that protruded outwards in a glossy white arc, like the front end of the Starship Enterprise. Coloured laser beams trawled the perforated metal walkway in front of the doors, and dry ice snaked around our ankles. Oversized robots that already looked a decade behind the times moved their arms and heads in a jerky fashion, while casino staff in tired alien outfits and latex masks posed for photographs with middle-aged housewives and Japanese pre-teens.

  The revolving casino doors twirled around to a sound effect straight out of Doctor Who, and one of the robots offered us a computerised greeting in a voice I recognised from my old ZX Spectrum.

  ‘Welcome to Space Station One, earthlings.’

  I wondered if it said the same thing on the way back out.

  The interior was like nothing I’d ever seen, and yet at the same time it was eerily familiar. It was as though every sci-fi movie that had ever been made had been cut up, swallowed down and spewed out onto the space before us. Key characters, scenes and props were everywhere, ranging from Star Wars through to Alien, E.T. to Buck Rogers, Blade Runner to Independence Day. Most curious of all was how many guests were walking around in costume. The croupiers and pit bosses were all dressed in white, NASA-style jumpsuits, but among the everyday folk at their tables I could see several Flash Gordons, numerous Darth Vaders, two Spocks, a handful of Princess Leias and at least one Chewbacca.

  ‘Now I know what hell looks like,’ Victoria grumbled.

  ‘Bet you’re glad you got dressed up.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I feel a little under-dressed. What on earth possessed you to bring us here?’

  ‘The geek quota.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It’s a well-known fact that sci-fi fans are nocturnal. So I figured if we came here, I’d have a better chance of finding empty hotel rooms.’

  ‘Not too empty, I hope.’ Victoria scanned the tables in front of us. ‘It’s hardly the classiest venue. Do you think you’ll find much cash?’

  ‘Hope so. But hey, look at it this way – at least our stake money won’t be sneered at.’

  I directed Victoria towards an ATM that was positioned alongside a bank of Battlestar Galactica slot machines. We withdrew as much cash as we possibly could, and after adding a little extra that Victoria had been carrying in her purse and the bundle of notes I’d taken from the room safe in the Fifty-Fifty, we approached a nearby blackjack table.

  Victoria took a seat on a raised metal stool beside a pair of Stormtroopers. The croupier was a young guy, mid-twenties at most, with a blond crew cut and a glint in his eye that went along with the name on his staff badge. Randy.

  ‘Welcome to Deep Space, ma’am. Table minimum is twenty-five Earth bucks.’

  Victoria laid three hundred dollars on the plush grey felt. While she waited to receive her chips, she popped the clasps on her handbag and reached inside. I glimpsed the cover of the Houdini biography, which made me smile, and then something metal caught the light. Victoria pulled out a signet ring made from polished silver and slipped it onto her finger.

  ‘This belonged to my father,’ she said, to her new friends around the table. ‘A lucky charm.’

  The Stormtrooper nearest to Victoria raised his bottled beer at the news. His beer had a drinking straw poking out of it.

  ‘Sure could use some luck tonight,’ he said, and lowered his masked face towards the straw.

  ‘Amen,’ his friend added, and slapped his gloved fingers against his buddy’s armour plating.

  ‘Well, let’s see what I can do,’ Victoria told them.

  As it happened, she couldn’t do all that much. She drew a five and a seven on her first hand, while Randy had a Jack of Spades face up. Victoria hit, playing the odds, but she caught a ten and bust out. Randy turned over his hole card. The Queen of Diamonds. The Stormtroopers lost too.

  ‘You might want to take the ring off,’ I advised Victoria. ‘Maybe your dad’s take on gambling is stopping it from working.’

  Victoria swivelled on her stool and hoicked her eyebrows towards the BacoFoil mock-up of Apollo 11 suspended above our heads. ‘Don’t you have something to take care of?’

  ‘Just offering a little moral support.’

  ‘I think I can cope without it.’

  I leaned towards her ear. ‘Well, be careful. I’m beginning to suspect that your two friends here work for the dark side of the Force.’

  Victoria introduced me to the back of her head and pushed another twenty-five-dollar chip into the betting circle on the grey felt. The Stormtroopers followed suit. I only hoped they weren’t gambling on duty – I’d heard the Galactic Empire took a dim view of such behaviour.

  The casino floor was every bit as confusing as I’d come to expect, though it was quieter than the Fifty-Fifty and the tables were more spaced out (if you’ll excuse the pun). Sure, the aliens and astronauts milling around made the entire place seem utterly surreal, but at least the information signs were in American English rather than Klingon. One of them even told me where the food hall was located, and after following a path that seemed to take me via every conceivable gaming-table and gambling machine in the known universe (and beyond), I eventually found myself on a downward escalator that led me to the Officer’s Mess.

  It didn’t look like the type of canteen you might find on a spaceship. In point of fact, it was just like every other food hall on the Strip, offering the usual pizza and pasta, Chinese food, hamburgers and fries, and coffees and pastries. I didn’t mind. Truth was, I was simply hoping to find a route into the service corridors that might eventually lead me to the main hotel kitchens, and after locating a likely door to the side of the pizza outlet, I’m pleased to report that I found just that.

  FIFTEEN

  I had on a dark red, collarless tunic with polished brass buttons and a plastic name badge. The badge told me that the tunic belonged to a gentleman by the name of Gerry, who’d been considerate enough to leave it on a hook in a staff cloakroom not too far from the hotel kitchen. Fortunately for me, it didn’t seem as though Gerry was particularly well-known, because when I stepped inside the kitchen and tried my best to look as though I knew exactly where I was going and precisely what I was doing, nobody stopped me to ask why the hell I was wearing Gerry’s uniform.

  Nobody asked me where I was taking the room service trolley I’d acquired, either. The trolley was draped with a white linen cloth and it was stocked with a coffee pot, a wine cooler with a bottle of white wine inside it, a carafe of iced water and the customary crockery, cutlery and napkins. Underneath the table was a small warming oven where the hot meals were to be found.

  I wheeled the trolley into a service elevator, dragged the wire cage across and pressed the button for Floor 8. There was a mirror inside the elevator and I took a moment to straighten my tunic and clear a spot of dirt from my black trousers. Ask any con man and he’ll tell you how effective the right costume can be. Go for something like a security guard’s outfit, and you have instant authority. Opt for a janitor’s get-up, and you can go almost anyplace you please. And while Gerry’s tunic was a couple of sizes too big and a little loose around the hips, it certainly helped to create the illusion that I belonged.

  As an added bonus, I’d found a pair of white cotton gloves in the pockets of the tunic. The gloves would be just as effective as my plastic disposables, and since they complemented the uniform, they’d be an awful lot less conspicuous. So as the elevator climbed, I used one of the serrated table knives to saw away fingers three and four on the right-hand glove, and then I slipped the little beauties on.

  At Floor 8, the elevator pinged, the doors parted and I wheeled the trolley out into the guest corridors, searching for a likely suite. I’d selected the eighth floor for good reason. My theory was that the lowest floors contained the most basic rooms and the guests with the least disposable income. By going just a little higher, I figured I’d improve my cha
nces of finding cash without running the risks associated with a concierge desk, or having to contend with the class of wealthier guest who might be inclined to deposit their valuables in the hotel’s main safe storage facility.

  Obviously, any door that had a Privacy Please sign hanging from it was one to avoid. There were quite a few doors featuring privacy signs, as it happened, not to mention one or two with dirty food trolleys outside, and it took me a good few minutes to select a possible candidate. Suite 844 seemed to fit my criteria, and so I rested my trolley against the wall, straightened my shoulders and knocked on the door. No answer. I checked the corridor around me, and once I was sure the coast was clear, I reached inside the sleeve of Gerry’s tunic and removed my coat hanger.

  Now, either my technique was improving or the door handles inside Space Station One were unusually large, because I had the thing hooked in close to no time at all, and then I yanked the wire down, poked the door open and scrambled inside.

  And a few minutes later I scrambled back out.

  Turned out there was a flaw in my plan. True, there was nobody inside the room, but there was nobody checked into it either. Just my luck. I’d eaten into something like forty minutes already, and I’d drawn a complete blank. Worse still, I had no way of improving my odds. All I could do was try elsewhere until I found a suite that happened to be empty of people but not of their possessions. And I had to hurry up about it, too.

  I hauled the trolley on down the corridor, passing two men in lounge suits and a woman in a bulging, XL Star Trek uniform. I kept going until I was out of earshot of anyone who might already have heard my routine and within sight of another possible target.

  Suite 858.

  Ah, I have such fond memories of the place. Not only did my coat hanger key work even quicker than before, but the first thing I spied upon wheeling my trolley inside was an open suitcase on the nearest of the twin beds.