Void Moon (1999)

by Michael Connelly

  "Okay, good night, sir. Have a good trip home."

  "I will. Oh, and here. Almost forgot."

  Hernandez held out his hand and Martin raised his. Cassie heard the click of casino chips being dropped into the security man's hand. There must have been a lot of them and they were of high value. Martin's exclamation of thanks came through the door loud and clear.

  "Mr. Hernandez, thank you! Thank you! "

  "No, thank you, Martin. Have a good one."

  "With this I'll have more than one!"

  Hernandez laughed and closed his door after hooking a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the handle. Martin disappeared from Cassie's point of view. She heard Hernandez turn the deadbolt and then there was the metallic click of the flip-over lock being slapped closed. She stood motionless and not breathing for five seconds. Nothing happened. She knew her work on the door had gone unnoticed.

  Cassie turned and leaned against the door and then slid down to the floor. She quickly unzipped the black gym bag and pulled out the receiver/recorder. She opened the screen and raised the antenna, then quickly hit the button that put the view from the bedroom smoke detector camera on the screen.

  The bedroom became visible, though the screen was largely in shadow because the only light came from the slight break in the curtains.

  She waited.

  The door opened and the light came on. Hernandez stepped into the room, the briefcase still at his side. Cassie leaned in close to the screen and saw that the case was attached to his wrist with a handcuff. It put a little shiver of excitement in her. Leo's spotter knew how to pick them.

  Hernandez was smoking a fresh cigar and blowing clouds of smoke toward the ceiling while he stood in the center of the room and looked around, never once looking up at the camera. He then stepped beneath the camera and into the alcove leading to the closet and the bathroom.

  Cassie switched screens to the closet cam and waited. The screen wasn't completely dark. Light from the bedroom slashed through the slats. In a moment she saw Hernandez's legs through the slats and then the door opened. Cassie hit the record button in case Hernandez opened the safe.

  But he didn't. He apparently rustled through his clothes, though Cassie couldn't see this because of the camera angle, then stepped out of the closet. Cassie thought of the gun and retraced her actions with it. She was sure she had returned it to its place in the jacket pocket exactly the way she had found it.

  She returned to the bedroom cam and just caught a glimpse of Hernandez going through the door to the living room. She immediately lamented not setting up a camera in the living room. But she just as immediately dismissed the regret as Monday morning quarterbacking. The fact was that if she had installed a camera there, she might not have had the time to install the bedroom or closet cameras, which were necessities.

  Getting up quickly, Cassie moved with the receiver/recorder to the table in her suite. Spread on the table were tourist magazines, hotel information and room service folders, a pad and pencil, and a bottle of chardonnay from Robert Long Vineyards with a generic welcome card on it. She pushed everything aside so she would have room to work.

  She checked the screen again and saw Hernandez was back in the bedroom. He had placed the briefcase on the bed while he worked a key into the cuff and detached it from his wrist. Once free of the encumbrance he reached over and picked up the foil-wrapped mint that had been left on the pillow as part of the turndown service. He ate it in one bite, returned the cigar to his mouth and then turned toward the closet alcove, reaching into the inside pockets of his suit coat and removing thick sheaves of money as he approached.

  Cassie switched screens to the closet camera and hit the record button. This was it. All her work had been to put her in this position.

  On the screen the light came on in the closet and Hernandez's big left arm followed by part of the upper portion of his body dropped into the picture. He reached down to the combination and started tapping the numbers. But before he was done his right arm swung through the picture and he put his hand on the top of the safe to support himself.

  SHIT NO! Cassie wanted to yell. But instead she brought a clenched fist up to her mouth.

  Hernandez opened the safe's door, dropped to one knee and reached inside. He brought out a two-inch stack of currency and placed it on top of the safe, then put down the equally thick stack he had just removed from his pocket. He reached into the side pockets of his jacket and took out two more wads of cash. He combined all of the currency into one thick stack he could barely hold in one hand. He hefted it. Cassie could not see his face because of the angle of the camera but she knew he was smiling.

  Hernandez put the cash into the safe and closed it, then got up and closed the closet door, extinguishing the overhead light.

  As Cassie watched she wondered about the briefcase. It appeared that it was too large to fit into the safe. But why hadn't Hernandez taken the cash that must be in it and placed it in the safe?

  She switched to the bedroom camera but there was no sign of Hernandez. The briefcase was lying flat on the bed. Her question about the case and Hernandez's decision not to put its contents into the safe did not hold her attention long. There was a more important question she had to answer. She switched the receiver/recorder to the playback program and began watching the recording of the closet camera. She grabbed the hotel pad and pencil and hit the slow-motion button just as Hernandez's hand dipped into the picture.

  "Come on, baby."

  The numbers could clearly be seen on the screen. Hernandez's finger hit 4-3-5 but then his right arm, reaching for support on the safe, swung through the frame and obscured the final two numbers. Cassie reversed the recording and replayed it with the same result. She was short the final two numbers of the combination.

  "Son of a bitch!"

  She got up from the table and paced across the room to the curtains. She pulled them open and looked out, the view going across the Strip to the dark outlines of the mountains far from the city of neon. She looked up and saw the moon.

  She knew she couldn't go in with just three numbers and hopes of trying various combinations of the final two to open the safe. The Halsey safes had built-in tampering devices. If three successive erroneous combinations were entered on the keypad, the locking mechanism would freeze. It would then take a visit from security and an electronic device called a D-Lock to open the safe. The D-Lock was usually kept under lock in the hotel manager's safe.

  There was only one alternative, Cassie decided. A fire drill.

  15

  CASSIE watched the screen and waited. The alarm was blaring in the hallway and she could smell the smoke. But Hernandez showed no sign of moving from his room. He was fully clothed and lying propped on a pile of pillows on the bed. He was watching the television but the angle of the smoke detector camera prevented Cassie from seeing what was on the screen.

  She dialed his room and watched as Hernandez lazily reached for the extension on the bedside table.

  "Yes?"

  "Mr. Hernandez, this is hotel security. We have an alarm and a report of smoke on your floor. We are going to need you to evacuate immediately."

  "A fire? I heard the alarm."

  He sat up abruptly.

  "We're not sure yet, sir. We have people coming up. But other guests are reporting smoke on the twentieth floor. Please, sir, gather your valuables and evacuate down the emergency stairs until we can evaluate what is happening."

  "Okay, bye."

  As Hernandez jumped up from the bed Cassie was surprised at the big man's agility and speed. As he was putting his shoes on, Cassie switched screens to the closet camera and hit the record button. She waited.

  In a few moments the door opened and this time Hernandez knelt in front of the safe instead of leaning over it. He reached to the combination pad and hit the buttons, in full sight of the camera. Cassie could tell the last number was 2 and wrote it on the hotel pad.

  As Hernandez quickly pulled the money from the saf
e and started stuffing his pockets, Cassie blew out her breath excitedly and hit the playback program on the receiver/recorder. She once more played the opening of the safe in slow motion.

  This time she got it. She wrote the last missing number down on the pad.

  4-3-5-1-2

  She took no time to celebrate. She switched back to the live feed from the bedroom cam. Hernandez was standing at the desk, locking the briefcase onto his wrist. Cassie picked up the phone and called his room. Hernandez grabbed the phone quickly.

  "Yes?"

  "Mr. Hernandez, this is security. We have isolated the problem and there is no risk. You do not have to evacuate your room."

  "What was it?"

  "We think someone left a cigarette on a room service cart near a smoke detector. It set off the alarm."

  "Well, can you turn it off now?"

  "We're working on it, sir. Sorry for the incon - "

  "Did Vincent tell you to call my room?"

  Cassie was momentarily taken aback.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Vincent Grimaldi."

  "Uh, no sir. We're just following standard practice. Good night, sir."

  She hung up. It was the second time in the past half hour that the name Vincent Grimaldi had been mentioned. Cassie was sure she had heard it before. As she was thinking about it, the alarm from out in the hallway was finally turned off.

  She went to the suite's door and listened at the jamb. She heard men talking from far down the hall. She could not make out the words but she assumed they had found the cigarette she had left burning on a room service cart under a smoke detector.

  Now all she needed was for Hernandez to go to sleep.

  She switched the receiver back to the bedroom cam and saw Hernandez had stripped to boxer shorts and a T-shirt. He was back on the bed watching television. All the lights were off except for the glow from the television. Cassie checked her watch; it was almost midnight. She thought about the name Hernandez and the security escort had used. Vincent Grimaldi. It had a resonance but she couldn't place it.

  Cassie picked up the phone, dialed the hotel operator and asked to be connected to Vincent Grimaldi. A moment later the connection had been made and the call was picked up after one ring.

  "Security," a man's voice said. "Mr. Grimaldi's office."

  "Oh," Cassie said. "I think I have the wrong number. I wanted to see about getting a line of credit in the casino. Does Mr. Grimaldi handle that?"

  The man at the other end of the line chuckled.

  "Well, you could say he's in charge of all of that but he doesn't handle applications. He runs the casino, ma'am. He's the director of all casino operations. So what you need to do is just go down to the casino and apply for credit at the big cashier's station next to the Sphinx. They'll take care of you."

  "Okay, I'll do that. Thanks."

  Cassie hung up as she now remembered the name Vincent Grimaldi and who he was. Six years earlier, his name had been in all of the papers in the days following Max's last caper. He had been part of the cover-up.

  She remembered that at the time Grimaldi was identified as the chief of casino security at the Cleo. In the six years since, he had moved up the ladder to director. Maybe it was what had happened with Max that had sent him on his way.

  Hernandez's having dropped Grimaldi's name did not seem unusual to Cassie. It seemed legit for a high-rolling, comped guest of the casino to know the casino's director by name. Cassie tried to dismiss the whole thing but remained troubled by the memories the name Vincent Grimaldi conjured in her mind.

  Needing a distraction, she put the receiver/recorder on the floor next to the chair where she sat, then opened the front pocket of her backpack and took out the deck of cards she had bought at the Flamingo. She removed the jokers from the deck and put them back into the box and off to the side.

  She began running through her old warm-up routine - one-handed deck cuts followed by spread and rolls and then up-and-down shuffling. The shuffling felt clumsy through the latex gloves and at one point the cards exploded in her hands, several falling to the floor. She stripped off the gloves and picked the cards up. She then began dealing blackjack to five nonexistent players at the table and to herself, the house.

  As she played she went through the dealer's patter in her head as she turned cards over. Man with an axe, boy meets girl, jack takes five . . .

  But soon her mind traveled and she remembered the first time she met Max. She would always remember it as the random collision of matching souls. Something that didn't happen often in the world, something that surely would never happen to her again.

  She had been dealing Caribbean poker at the Trop on a slow midnight shift and he had taken the number two seat. She had one other player, an old Asian man in the seven seat. Max was a beautiful man. He had a presence and Cassie couldn't help watch the way he handled his cards, cupping them and opening them in a tight spread, then quickly laying them flat and making his bet.

  But he bet recklessly and soon it became apparent that he wasn't a schooled gambler. He lost money but didn't seem to mind. After a dozen hands Cassie surmised that he wasn't at the table to gamble. He was there to watch the other player. Max was on a con of some sort and that made him all the more intriguing.

  When she went on break she waited near the cashier's window and watched Max watch the Asian gambler. Eventually, the mark slid off his stool and called it a night. After a few moments, Max followed suit and started trailing the Asian. He turned off after watching the Asian step onto an elevator.

  And that's when Cassie made her move. She walked right up to him.

  "I want in," she said.

  Nonplussed, Max just looked at her.

  "I don't know what it is you're doing but I want to learn it. I want you to teach me. I want in."

  He looked at her for a few more minutes and then a small smile curved his mouth.

  "My name's Max. You want to get a drink or is that against the rules for the dealers here?"

  "It's against the rules but I just quit the rules."

  Now his smile widened into a grin.

  As she dealt the cards on the table Cassie periodically checked the screen on the receiver/recorder. When she checked at one o'clock the glow of the television still lit the room. But Hernandez was sprawled across the bed and under the covers with his face turned away from the screen. She noticed that the light from the screen was steady. There was no flickering from changing images. She knew that he was asleep and the pay movie he had been watching was over. On the television screen was probably just a blue screen or the unchanging movie menu.

  She checked her watch. She figured that by two forty-five Hernandez would be in the deepest part of the sleep cycle. She decided she would go in at three. That would leave plenty of time for her to be in and out before Leo's void moon began.

  She slid the playing cards back into their box and returned it to her bag. She decided to do something she knew put her at unneeded risk and that Max would have never done. But she felt she needed to do it. For Max and for herself.

  16

  CASSIE made her way through the still crowded casino to the cocktail lounge off the hotel lobby. It was crowded here as well but the table she wanted was empty. She sat down and looked out across the gaming room but no longer was really seeing it. She was remembering Max and the run they had had, how the Sun and the Review-Journal had called them the "high-roller robbers" and the Las Vegas Casino Association had put a reward up for their arrest and conviction. She remembered how after a while it hadn't even been about the money. It was about the charge it put in their blood. She remembered how they could stay up the rest of the night making love after a job was finished.

  "Can I help you?"

  Cassie looked up at the cocktail waitress.

  "Yes. A Coke with a cherry in it and whatever you have on draft."

  The waitress put down napkins, one in front of Cassie and the other opposite her spot at the small round table. Sh
e smiled in a world-weary sort of way.

  "Is somebody coming or is the second drink to keep the hitters away?"

  Cassie smiled back and nodded.

  "I just want to be alone tonight."

  "I don't blame you. It's a mean crowd tonight. Must be the moon."

  Cassie looked up at her.

  "The moon?"

  "It's full. Didn't you see it? It's burning brighter than any of the neon they've got around here. A full moon always adds an edge to things around here. I've been here long enough. I've seen it."

  She nodded as if to cut off any debate on the subject. Cassie nodded back. The waitress left then and Cassie tried to ignore what she had said and concentrate her thoughts on remembering the night six years before when she had sat in the same spot at the same bar. But no matter how hard she thought of Max's beautiful face she could only focus on the bad that followed. She still marveled at how a moment of wonderful joy then could be the same moment that incited so much pain and dread and guilt now.