Void Moon (1999)

by Michael Connelly

  Her hand eventually came down on something flat and hard and she knew she had found the briefcase. She slowly began lifting the bedspread until she had uncovered the case and the handcuff link to Hernandez's right wrist.

  Realizing she needed the keys to remove the case, she went back to the closet and reopened the safe. As she did this she noticed that she had left the gun sitting on top of the safe. She grabbed it, opened the safe and carefully removed the keys. In the green vision of the goggles she studied them. There were four keys and Cassie had had enough experience with handcuffs to know the little key with a round barrel went to the handcuffs. She detached it from the others so that she could work with it without causing the others to jangle and left the closet once more for the bedroom.

  Hernandez hadn't moved. Cassie put the gun down on the bed and silently worked the key into the cuff attached to the steel handle of the case. She turned it and the cuff came open with a metallic clicking sound. She started to remove it just as Hernandez, possibly alerted by the sound, began to stir.

  Cassie quietly removed the handcuff and straightened up, taking the briefcase off the bed. She reached down and grabbed the gun. Hernandez let out a sigh and started kicking his legs beneath the covers. He was waking up.

  Cassie raised the gun. She told herself she could do it if she had to. She could blame it on the bad timing of a phone call, on the void moon or on simple fate. It didn't matter. But she could do what she needed to do. She held the gun straight out and pointed it dead center at the moving mass on the bed.

  19

  THE first thing Jack Karch noticed as he walked through the Cleopatra Casino was that the crow's nest was empty. He knew Vincent Grimaldi wouldn't be up there right now because he knew exactly where Grimaldi was. But the custom and practice of the casino since the day it opened had been always to have somebody up in the nest. That was twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If it wasn't Grimaldi, then it was usually somebody else. Karch knew it was all imagery. Sleight of hand. The illusion of security created security. But right now nobody was watching from above and that told him the thing Vincent had called him in to handle was big and important. This realization juiced Karch's blood a lot better than the twenty-two-ounce cup of 7 -Eleven coffee he had gulped down on the drive.

  As he cut between the gaming tables and weaved around drunken, all-night gamblers who crossed blindly into his path, Karch kept his eyes on the door behind the pulpit, half expecting someone to come hustling out of security, maybe adjusting his collar or his tie as he took his position. But nobody ever came and Karch finally dropped his eyes when he got to the Euphrates Tower elevator alcove.

  The alcove was empty except for one woman who was holding her plastic change cup and waiting. She looked at Karch's severe face and then turned away, putting her free hand over the top of her cup as if guarding its contents. He casually stepped over to the sand jar beneath the call button and brought his foot up onto the edge of it, bending over as if he were about to tie his shoe. He did this so his back was to the woman. Instead of tying his shoe he dipped his finger into the black sand, which had been freshly cleaned of cigarette butts and smoothed. He cut his finger through the sand until it found what he knew would be there. He withdrew the card key and straightened up just as an elevator chimed its arrival.

  After following the woman into the elevator, he blew the dust off the card key and used it to engage the PH button after the woman had pushed the six button. Standing next to her Karch could glimpse between her splayed fingers and into her cup. It was about half full of nickels. She was the smallest of the small-timers and either didn't want him to know it or she actually thought there was something suspicious about him. She was about his age, with big hair. He guessed she had come to Las Vegas from somewhere in the south. She stood with her face cast downward but he knew she was keeping an eye on his reflection in the polished wood veneer of the door. Karch knew he had the kind of face that made people wary. His nose and chin were sharply drawn, his skin was always sallow despite a life beneath the desert sun, and his hair was as black as a limousine. These features all took a backseat to his eyes. They were the color of puddle ice and looked just as dead.

  Karch reached into his pocket and pulled out his smokes. Holding the four fingers of his right hand together as a blind to the reflection, he shook two cigarettes out, palming one while passing the second to his left hand. He half expected her to protest the very sight of a cigarette but she said nothing. He then expertly performed the ear-to-mouth trick his father had taught him so many years ago. Holding the second cigarette at the end of all four fingers and the thumb of his left hand, he created the illusion of pushing the cigarette into his ear and then using his right hand to pull it out of his mouth and into place between his lips.

  He watched her reflection and could tell she had seen the gag. She turned slightly as if she was about to say something but then caught herself. The door opened and she stepped out on six. As she turned to the left to leave the alcove and the elevator doors began to close, Karch called out to her.

  "Made you look."

  He then laughed to himself as the doors closed on his vision of the woman turning back toward him.

  "Next time take your nickels to Branson," he said after the elevator began its ascent again.

  Karch shook his head. The Cleo had once had such promise. Now it was the destination of the nickel-and-dimers, a place where the carpets were worn thin and the pool was crowded with men wearing sandals and black socks. One more time he wondered what he was doing, how and why he had ever sold out to Vincent Grimaldi.

  Ten seconds later he stepped out on the twentieth floor. He stepped into the hallway and found it empty except for a room service cart somebody had shoved into the hallway. It smelled rancid as Karch walked around it and headed down the hallway to the right.

  He looked up at the first door he passed and saw it was 2001 . He remembered that room from a long time before. It was in that room that he had made his first play to Vincent Grimaldi. It seemed to Karch to have been so long ago and so the memory annoyed him. How far had he come since then? Not far, he knew. Not far at all. Perhaps he, too, was a nickel-and-dimer in a nickel-and-dime palace. His thoughts jumped to the empty pulpit down in the casino and he imagined what the view of the gaming room was like from there.

  He came to room 2014 and used the card key to open the door.

  As he stepped in he saw Vincent Grimaldi standing at the floor-to-ceiling window of the suite's sitting room. He seemed to be staring out across the city toward the expanse of desert lying before the chocolate-brown mountains that edged the horizon. It was a clear, bright day out there.

  Grimaldi apparently had not heard Karch's entry and did not turn around. Karch came down the entrance hallway and into the suite. He noticed the bedroom doors were closed. The place smelled of old cigars, disinfectant and something else. He tried to place it and then his heart moved up a gear. Burned gunpowder. Maybe Vincent really needed him this time.

  "Vincent?"

  Grimaldi turned away from the window. He was a short man with a harsh and overtanned, V -shaped face with skin that looked as though it had been stretched too tight across the cheekbones. His iron-gray hair was slicked back perfectly and he wore an impeccable Hugo Boss suit. He always dressed as though the casino and hotel he ran was the Mirage. But he was the mirage. The Cleopatra was second tier, moving toward the third. Its location on the Strip was the only thing stopping that for the moment. But there was no doubt that Grimaldi was the captain of an old river barge in a sea of new luxury liners with names like Bellagio, Mandalay Bay and the Venetian.

  "Jack! I didn't hear you. Where you been?"

  Karch ignored the question. He looked at his watch. It was 8:10 , only forty minutes since he had gotten Grimaldi's page with the 911 emergency code added at the end. Forty minutes wasn't bad, especially in light of Grimaldi's refusal to tell him what the problem was over the phone.

  "What's up?" />
  "What's up is that we have a big fucking problem here."

  He stepped over and held his hand out for the card key Karch still held in his hand. Karch gave him the key and thought about lighting his cigarette but decided to wait.

  "You indicated that on the phone, Vincent. Now I'm here. What am I supposed to do, guess what the problem is or are you finally going to tell me?"

  "No, Jack, I'll show you. Check it out."

  He pointed to the bedroom door with his chin. It was a typical gesture with Grimaldi, who always employed an economy of physical movement as well as words.

  Karch looked at him a moment, awaiting further explanation, but none came. He turned and went to the bedroom door. He opened it and stepped into the room.

  The bedroom was dark save for a slice of sunlight that cut through the inch-wide break in the closed curtains. The light cut diagonally across the bed, where the body of an overweight man lay face up. The dead man's right eye was gone, obliterated when a bullet was fired almost point blank through the socket and into his brain. The wood headboard and wall behind the bed were splattered with blood and whitish-gray brain matter. Six inches above the headboard there was a bullet hole in the wall.

  Karch came around the front of the bed and looked down, studying the corpse. The dead man was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of pale blue boxer shorts. Karch saw that a pair of handcuffs had been attached to his right wrist - both cuffs around the same wrist. Also on the bed, a handgun was lying between the dead man's legs. Karch bent down and studied it. It was a Smith & Wesson 9 mm with a satin finish.

  Grimaldi came to the bedroom doorway but didn't come in.

  "Who found him?" Karch asked, his eyes still on the corpse.

  "Me."

  Karch looked over, his eyebrows raised. He had expected the answer to be that a maid had found the body, though it seemed kind of early for that. Still, not the director of casino operations. That was out of left field. Grimaldi picked up on the vibe and offered an explanation.

  "I had a seven A.M . breakfast with him. Rather, I was supposed to have one. When he didn't come down, I called. When he didn't answer, I checked. This is what I found. I called you."

  Now things were getting curious, Karch thought.

  "Who was he, Vincent?"

  "Just a courier. From Miami. Name is - was - Hidalgo, though we had registered him under an alias."

  Karch waited. Grimaldi said nothing else.

  "Look, Vincent, you want to take me in and tell me what's going on or am I supposed to bring up Seymour the Psychic from the lounge to guess for me every step of the way?"

  Grimaldi blew out his breath. Karch was enjoying the moment. The old man was in a jam and needed him. Karch already knew one fact for sure. He planned to milk this thing, whatever the fuck it was, for all he could get. And if that included finally putting Vincent Grimaldi back on his heels, then Karch would do that in a heartbeat. He thought about the crow's nest downstairs. He could see himself up there. Watching the money. Watching everything.

  "Yeah, I'm going to tell you."

  Grimaldi stepped into the room and looked down at the body.

  "It's money, Jack. The fat fuck had two and a half million dollars with him. It's not here now and he can't exactly say what happened to it, can he?"

  "Two and a half? For what? I assume he didn't bring it to put down on a blackjack table."

  Karch saw a vein high on Grimaldi's temple start to tick. The old man was angry. Karch knew how dangerous he was when he was angry. But he was like a little boy standing at the Christmas tree with a broomstick. He had to see how fragile those glass balls really were.

  "He came to make a drop," Grimaldi said. "This morning. That's what the meeting was about."

  He gestured toward the body.

  "I come up this morning and find this. The fucking mutt brought somebody in here and now the money's gone. We have to get that money back, Jack. It's spoken for, know what I mean? We need to get it quick. We - "

  Karch shook his head, took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and cut in.

  "Spoken for by who?"

  "Jack, some things you don't need to know. You just need to get on this and find out who - "

  "Take it easy, Vincent. And good luck with this."

  Karch waved a hand and headed toward the door. He got all the way to the living room and was heading to the suite's front door when Grimaldi caught up with him.

  "Okay, okay, hold on, Jack! I'll tell you, okay? I'll tell you the whole thing, you think you need to know."

  Karch stopped. He was still facing the door with Grimaldi behind him. He noticed that the door's flip-over lock was missing. He reached up and touched the unpainted square on the door frame where it had been fastened. There was a grayish, waxy material in the screw holes. He rubbed some of this between his finger and thumb, thinking he had seen it before. He turned back to Grimaldi.

  "Okay, Vincent, from the beginning. If you want my help on this you have to tell me everything. Don't leave anything out."

  Grimaldi nodded and pointed to the couch. Karch stepped back into the room and sat down. Grimaldi went back to his position by the room's glass wall. From Karch's angle, he was completely framed in bright blue sky. He was the dark, angry cloud in the middle of that sky. Karch took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth and put it in his coat pocket with the one he had used during the elevator gag.

  "All right, this is the story," Grimaldi said. "Two weeks ago I got the word from somebody that there was going to be a problem with the transfer. Something came up on the background. What they call an association problem."

  Karch nodded. He wasn't as far inside the loop as Grimaldi, but his job gave him more than a general understanding of what was going on. The Cleopatra Resort and Casino was for sale. A Miami entertainment consortium called the Buena Suerte Group was lined up to buy. The Investigations Unit of the Nevada Gaming Commission had been working on a background inquiry of the buyers for twelve weeks and would soon submit a final report making a recommendation to the commission to approve or disapprove the sale. The commission - an appointed board - almost always followed the investigative branch's lead, making the report the key element in any bid to buy or open a casino in Nevada.

  "What happened?" he asked. "From what I heard, Buena Suerte was gonna come up clean."

  "It doesn't matter what happened. What matters is the money, Jack."

  "Everything matters. I have to know everything. What came up?"

  Grimaldi waved his hands in frustration and surrender.

  "A name came up, okay? They found a connection between one of the directors and a man named Hector Blanca. Now, you'll ask, who is Hector Blanca. Suffice it to say that he's a silent partner who was supposed to have remained silent. And that's all I'm saying on him."

  "Let me guess, Vincent. La Cuba Nostra?"

  Karch said it in an I-told-you-so voice. He and Vincent had talked about the mob hybrid before. Transplanted Mafia soldiers from the northeast teaming with Cuban exiles in Miami to take control of organized crime in South Florida. The word in criminal intelligence circles was that the group had secretly bankrolled a failed gambling referendum in Florida a few years before. It stood to reason that if they couldn't get casinos into Florida, they would look elsewhere to invest their money.

  That elsewhere most likely would include Nevada, where you didn't need a referendum approval to set up gambling operations; you just needed to get by the Gaming Commission and the short-term memory of the current city fathers. The fact that Las Vegas was born of a mobster's dream and run for decades by like-minded and associated men was being lost in the community's collective amnesia. Las Vegas had been reborn as the All-American city. It was pirate ships and half-scale Eiffel Towers, waterslides and roller coasters. Families welcome. Mobsters need not apply. The problem was, every time a new subdivision was approved and cut farther into the desert, the backhoes of progress came perilously close to digging up the reminders of the ci
ty's true heritage. And some of the sons and grandsons of those forefathers - even some of the ones buried out in the desert - could not let the old place go.

  "We're not going to talk about La Cuba Nostra," Grimaldi said, seemingly putting both an Italian and Cuban accent on the words. "My ass is on the line here and I don't give two shits about how smart you think you are."

  "Okay, Vincent, then let's talk about your ass being in the crack. What happened?"

  Grimaldi turned and gazed out the window as he spoke.

  "Like I said, I got wind there was a problem. It was brought to my attention and I was informed that the problem could go away, could be cleaned up, for the right price."