Vegas, Lies, and Murder

by Sibel Hodge

  I turned to Hacker, who was the only one of us with a decent camera. ‘So, it looks like the tacky shopping is out, and the video shopping is in. Let’s talk megapixels and HD.’

  Chapter 24

  Suzy and Elvis left us to go back to his house. She said she was going to teach him some deep-breathing techniques to keep him calm. Yeah, right.

  The rest of us went shopping for handheld video recorders at a large electronic shop off the Strip that Elvis had told us about.

  Hacker, in his disguise of baseball cap, sunglasses, and Hawaiian shirt, stared around, taking in all the displays and aisles, nodding his head appreciatively. ‘I’m going to see if they’ve got the same camera I’ve got. It’s a great piece of kit. Good clarity with an amazing zoom and really easy to use. If we each have one, we can make sure there’s no room for error.’

  A short, spotty salesman dressed in the store’s uniform was talking to an elderly lady at the end of the TV aisle, who wore a thick tweed coat despite the ninety-degree heat outside.

  ‘Why do you only sell black TVs?’ she asked him. ‘Black is satanic! You should be ashamed of yourself for selling devil communication tools!’

  The salesman’s eyes widened. ‘We have silver ones, too.’

  ‘I don’t want black or silver. Silver is the sign of a polygymph.’

  ‘A what, ma’am?’

  She leaned in closer to him. ‘A polygymph. Don’t you know what that is? What are they teaching you in schools these days?’

  ‘Um… um… well…’ the salesman spluttered.

  ‘Don’t you have any pink ones?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no.’

  ‘What about purple?’

  ‘Um… no. These are standard colours made by the manufacturers.’

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ she huffed. ‘I’ll look at cameras instead.’ She barged past him and walked off.

  ‘The cameras are that way.’ He called out after her, pointing to the next aisle over, but I don’t think she heard.

  We walked down the aisle that clearly said Cameras and Video Equipment and found a shiny display of all models in different shapes and sizes. Hacker picked one up and examined it before picking up another. We stood around watching him size them up for our requirements.

  The elderly woman appeared from the opposite end of the aisle and stared at some cameras.

  The short salesman walked up to us. ‘Do you need any help?’

  ‘No, thanks. We’re just looking,’ I said.

  He nodded and walked farther up towards the woman. He stood beside her, but she was so engrossed she didn’t notice until he said, ‘That’s a good model, ma’am.’

  She practically jumped out of her skin then glared at him suspiciously. ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘Do what?’ he asked.

  ‘How did you just appear like that, as if by magic?’

  ‘No, I just—’

  ‘Do you have magical powers?’

  ‘Um… no.’

  ‘Omigod! You’re one of them, aren’t you?’

  ‘One of what?’

  ‘You’re a polygymph!’ She pointed at him, a look of terror on her face, mouth hanging open.

  ‘No, I’m not. I don’t even know what one—’

  She backed away from him very slowly, making a chest-crossing sign with her forefinger. ‘Get away from me, Satan!’

  ‘No, I’m not S—’

  ‘I said get away, demon!’ She ran away past us all with surprising speed for an old lady, leaving the salesman stunned.

  ‘Er… you do know she just stole that camera in her hand, don’t you?’ I said to him.

  ‘What?’ he asked, scratching his head and looking bewildered. The alarm on the entrance sounded then, and he ran towards it, muttering, ‘Oh, crap. These shoplifters will try any distractions these days—even acting like crazy old ladies.’

  Hacker selected four cameras for us. We completed our purchases without seeing a single polygymph and exited the shop just as Dad’s phone burst into life.

  Dad answered it. ‘Hi, Jerry. What’s going on?’

  We all stood on the scorching pavement, waiting for Dad to give us an update.

  ‘Are you nervous?’ Tia asked me. ‘Do you want to do a spell to make sure it goes in your favour and you catch the baddies? I’ve been thinking of a perfect one you could do with a dice and some rosemary oil. All we need to do is just go and buy a couple of bits for it.’

  ‘No way. No more spells,’ I said sternly. ‘Ever! You need to stop watching so much Harry Potter. It’s turning your brain to mush.’

  ‘Yeah, but I think it could—’ Luckily, she was cut off by Dad.

  ‘OK, they’ve managed to charter a flight, but they’re not able to leave until seven p.m., which means they won’t touch down until ten to midnight.’

  Brad stared off into the distance, thinking. ‘That’s going to be cutting it fine. The storage unit is probably a twenty-minute drive from the airport. They might be able to make it just in time to catch Ivan’s crew still loading up.’

  But would we be able to pull this off without getting spotted before they got there? I didn’t voice the thought, in case I jinxed it, as I seemed to manage to do with everything. Instead, I squashed it into a little unjinxable corner of my brain and hid it there.

  Everything will be fine. Everything will work out, I repeated over and over in my head for the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening. I was still saying it when Hacker and Dad knocked on our bedroom door at ten o'clock at night. Jerry and his agents were in the air and on their way, and we’d arranged to get in position early so we’d be ready and waiting in case they didn’t make it.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Brad looked at me as we got into Elvis’s Cadillac.

  ‘Yep. It’s showtime,’ I said.

  ‘I think “It’s Now or Never”,’ Elvis said, his jaw flexing. ‘I want to see them “Caught in a Trap” tonight.’

  The Strip was packed as we drove down it. There were huge crowds outside the MGM Grand, waiting for news of the big fight that was about to start. Police were everywhere.

  ‘Who do you think’s going to win the fight?’ Hacker said to Brad.

  ‘Pacquia definitely.’

  ‘Hmmm… I’m not so sure.’

  ‘I think Mayweather,’ Dad said.

  ‘We are,’ I said, catching Brad’s eye.

  ‘Definitely, Foxy.’ He flashed me a killer smile, and I allowed myself to think about this time tomorrow, when all the crazy shit would be over and we could finally get Elvis to slot us in and marry us.

  ‘Hell, yeah!’ Hacker agreed.

  We parked up in the A-Plus Storage lot, hiding the car at the rear of the eerily dark main building. We were all dressed in black. Unfortunately, since Brad hadn’t bought me any black clothes when he was replacing mine, I’d had to borrow Mum’s black catsuit, which was stiflingly hot.

  We made our way silently to the small garage units at the perimeter, camcorders slung over each of our shoulders by their straps. Keeping our eyes peeled for any signs of life, we stood in one of the metre gaps between the units and stared at the government warehouse across from us. The floodlights over there were on, illuminating the loading bay, but the police officers from earlier were nowhere to be seen. It was deserted, just as Paul Winger had told Ivan it would be. Apart from a lizard scuttling across the dusty floor, we were the only ones in the area.

  We split up. I went into one space between the single units to wait. Brad was in the next one to my left, Hacker and Elvis after that. Dad was farther up to my right. I pressed myself against the chain-link fence in the darkness, feeling the metal cool against me. There was a slight breeze, but it did nothing to stop the sweat forming between my shoulder blades or on my forehead, plastering hair to my head. My heart hammered in my throat. My pulse whooshed in my ears as I strained to listen to every little sound.

  I held the camcorder in my clammy hand so tight my fingers shook. I glanced at my watch but
couldn’t see a thing since the hands weren’t illuminated. It felt as if I’d been standing there, rigid, for hours. I worked my tight neck from side to side. I rolled my shoulders round and round, trying to get rid of the coiled tension in my muscles. I licked my lips and swallowed, feeling the dry heat sapping the moisture from my mouth.

  Any second now, Ivan and his team would get here. How far behind them would Jerry be? All our phones were turned to silent mode. As soon as we saw Ivan’s gang arrive in their vehicles, Dad was going to text Jerry to let him know what was going on. The rest of us would hit the Play button on the camcorders and video them from the shadows.

  I heard the chuffing of air brakes before I saw the lorry smash through the gates in front of the warehouse. I turned the video on and zoomed in on the crime scene, creeping closer to the fence. Through the viewfinder, I had a perfect shot of the lorry as it pulled to a stop outside the loading bay.

  Bruce was driving. He got out and ran to the back, unlocking the cargo doors. Five other guys jumped out. Pinhead was the only other one of them I recognised. The passenger door opened, and the light illuminated Ivan’s face before he jumped down on the other side and was hidden from view by the vehicle.

  So far, so good.

  Pinhead and a couple of others hauled a minigenerator and some kind of huge cutting tool off the back of the lorry. They started up the generator and tool and got to work busting open the roller-shutter locks. Sparks flew everywhere, but after only a few minutes, they were through. Ivan lifted the door up, and I zoomed in farther. Inside, I could see there were piles and piles of huge tusks, horns, tables, chairs, lamps, statues, ornaments—all that was left of what were once free, wild animals. Ivan’s goons reappeared from the warehouse with armfuls of tusks and loaded them into the lorry before going back inside to repeat the exercise. Jerry would hopefully have landed by now and be on his way. Even with seven guys, it was probably going to take them a while to load it all up.

  Backwards and forwards they went as I watched through the viewfinder, catching it all on camera. I started counting the seconds in my head to when backup would get here.

  One Mithithippi, two Mithithippi, three Mithithippi. I forgot where I got up to because my heart was pounding so hard it made me lose concentration. In the end, I didn’t need to try, because a short while later all hell kicked loose.

  Chapter 25

  Three black minivans arrived in a cloud of dust, bumping up the driveway from the warehouse gates to the loading bay. They skidded to a stop in front of the lorry, blocking off any escape route. Before the drivers had even yanked on the hand brakes, agents jumped out in a swarm of black, with the letters FBI clearly visible in white on their bulletproof vests. Some of them stormed into the unit in a blur, guns drawn.

  There were shouts everywhere from the agents. ‘FBI. Drop your weapons!’

  ‘Put your hands up!’

  ‘Hands where I can see them.’

  ‘Get down on the ground!’

  Two officers spotted Pinhead in the open lorry, which had just been loaded. They stood a couple of metres from the rear door, guns pointed at him.

  Pinhead fired off a shot from inside the lorry, illuminating the scene for a brief flash. One agent stumbled backwards, clutching his shoulder. Pinhead had hit his target.

  The agent next to him pulled the trigger of his gun at Pinhead, still inside the lorry, and kept on going. I heard a dull thud coming from the vehicle. It sounded like a body hitting the metal.

  The agent stepped inside the vehicle, arm outstretched, pointing the gun at Pinhead, who was hidden from view. Then he disappeared inside.

  Bruce and Ivan fired off some rounds from the warehouse at the other agents who were now inside. A bullet bounced off the far edge of one of the units I was hiding between with a zing!

  The shock made me exhale the breath I’d been holding in a sharp blast. I jumped back farther into the shadows and dropped the camera. Damn!

  I heard a muffled cry but couldn’t tell where it came from over the shouting. I picked up the camera and refocused on the scene again. One agent shot Ivan in the thigh, and he dropped to the floor, clutching his leg and rolling on the ground, squealing. Another shot Bruce in the arm, sending his gun clattering out of his hand and bouncing on the floor. It was quickly kicked out of his reach by another agent.

  Realising they were outmanned and outgunned, Ivan’s other cronies put their weapons on the ground and stood with their hands in the air. The agents ran towards them to secure them with cuffs.

  Another agent rushed up to the one who’d been shot by Pinhead and shouted into a walkie-talkie, ‘Agent down! Agent down! We need urgent medical assistance.’ He crouched over the poor guy for a brief moment before rushing inside the warehouse to assist his colleagues.

  There was more shouting going on from the unit. The agents had managed to get Bruce and Ivan and the others on the ground by that point.

  ‘Get the fuck off me!’ Ivan yelled, trying to shake off the agent who had yanked his hands behind his back and was about to cuff him.

  ‘Thath hurting!’ Bruce wriggled on the floor, bucking against the agent who sat on his back, pinning him down.

  When the area was secured and I heard someone say, ‘You have the right to remain silent,’ I stared up at the stars twinkling in the black night and blew out an almighty breath of relief.

  I crept out from between the shadows of the storage unit and looked out. Brad, Hacker, and Elvis had emerged, too.

  ‘You OK?’ Brad asked me.

  ‘Yep.’ I nodded, adrenaline coursing through my body and making my heart thud manically in my chest.

  A short, stocky agent with a buzz haircut hurried towards the boundary fencing, where he knew we’d be, holstering his gun. He spotted us. ‘You must be Tom’s guys. I’m Jerry Dansinger.’

  We nodded.

  ‘Good job.’ His forehead furrowed in a frown. ‘Where’s Tom?’

  I looked to my right. Dad should’ve come out of the other gap, but there was no sign of him. I heard a groaning noise.

  ‘Dad!’ I flew around the edge of the unit.

  Dad lay on the ground, holding his shoulder area and biting his lip as tears of pain glistened in his eyes. Even in the darkness, I could see his face was pale. A patch of blood had soaked through into the arm and chest areas of his shirt.

  ‘Dad! Are you OK?’ I yelled, rushing over to him.

  Chapter 26

  I sat Dad up, leaning his back against the building, praying that the bullet hadn’t hit a major artery or done much damage and trying to avoid looking at the blood. There was so much of it.

  ‘I took… a… hit,’ Dad said in between ragged gasps of pain.

  ‘Shit.’ Jerry crouched down in front of the fence separating us. ‘There are already a couple of ambulances on the way for Agent Parker and the perp we shot. They’ll take you both to the hospital. You hang in there, you hear me?’

  Dad nodded, clenching his teeth.

  Jerry stood and walked a short distance away with his walkie-talkie, updating the ambulance crew about the new casualty.

  I sat next to Dad on the floor, stroking his head. ‘You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be all right,’ I kept repeating.

  ‘We need to apply pressure and elevate your arm to stop the blood.’ Brad kneeled on the ground and pressed his hand against the wound.

  ‘Argh!’ Dad yelled.

  ‘Sorry, but it has to be done.’ Brad pressed harder.

  ‘He’s right,’ Hacker said.

  ‘It’s OK. Just do it.’ Dad winced as Brad supported Dad’s arm in the air.

  My heart squeezed in my chest while we waited for the ambulance. The patch of blood was getting bigger, and my stomach flipped with a mixture of fear and squeamishness.

  A couple of minutes later, an ambulance roared up to the government warehouse, lights flashing, sending strobes of red into the night. Another pulled into the storage company’s car park. A paramedic got
out, and Hacker directed him to Dad.

  The paramedic crouched down in front of Dad, cut his shirt away from the bullet wound, and examined the area. ‘It looks like the bullet’s lodged inside but not too deep. We’ll get you to the hospital in no time, and they can remove it.’

  ‘Will he be OK?’ I asked.

  ‘The doctors will know more when they get it out.’ He covered the wound with a pressure bandage and helped Dad up and onto a stretcher, wheeling him towards the ambulance.

  ‘I want to go, too,’ I said.

  The paramedic nodded.

  ‘We’ll pick up the others from the motel and meet you there,’ Brad said, wiping the blood from his hands on his jeans.

  I got in the back of the ambulance and clutched Dad’s good hand for dear life, but it was limp and cold in mine. He’d always been so full of energy and zest for life, but now he looked as if he’d aged about ten years right in front of my eyes.

  Please let him be OK. Please!

  We drove off, sirens blaring. When we arrived at the hospital, some doctors who were on standby met us. The ambulance crew must have alerted them. Agent Parker, whose ambulance had just pulled up ahead of us, was whisked away up a corridor. Dad was wheeled straight into a treatment room inside the Accident and Emergency department, with me hurrying to keep up behind. The room was packed with various machines and medical equipment.

  Doctors hovered around him as I stood at the entrance, chewing on my lip, wringing my hands. One gave him a shot of painkillers while another peeled back the dressing and examined the wound. Dad’s eyes were closed, his lashes fluttering against his cheeks, his breathing slow. A feeling of dread swept over me. My throat squeezed tight.

  Another older doctor with a bushy beard rushed past me into the room.

  ‘What have we got here?’ Dr Beard asked as the doctor examining the wound stepped aside for him.

  I heard the other doctor talk in medical speak that I didn’t understand, and I couldn’t take in anymore because a nurse led me out of the room, then, and into the corridor.