The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas (15 page)

TWENTY-ONE

The watery theme of the Atlantis-Las Vegas was painfully apt, since the resort-casino had fallen into administration twice in the last five years, and gags about it ‘going under’ or ‘sinking without trace’ still lingered. If the casino’s latest owners had possessed the funds to remodel the place, I’m sure they would have done just that. But apparently they didn’t, and evidently they hadn’t, and the Enchanting Lost City Beneath the Waves (as the publicists would have you remember it) went on struggling to stay afloat, not helped by its position at the very end of the Strip, way beyond the comic book Manhattan skyline of New York-New York, the castle turrets of the Excalibur and the burnished exterior of the Mandalay Bay party casino.

Even from the outside, the Atlantis looked and felt like a downmarket option; inside, that impression wasn’t helped by the stench of chlorine from all the fountains and ponds, not to mention the giant water slides that weaved through the ceiling space above the casino floor.

There’s a theory I was beginning to subscribe to that says you can judge the success of a Vegas casino by the cocktail waitresses who work there. True enough, while the drinks at the Fifty-Fifty had been served by women who looked as though they modelled in their spare time, and Space Station One undoubtedly had its fair share of beauty pageant winners, the Atlantis was staffed by mere mortals, of the kind I would have felt comfortable talking to if it wasn’t for the outfits they were required to wear. Skimpy is an understatement – you’d see less flesh at a burlesque review.

I guess just before seven o’clock in the morning wasn’t the fairest time to gauge the success of the place, but from the looks of how empty the casino happened to be, I didn’t think it would be long before it went bust yet again. Not that the lack of people concerned me. After all, it made finding the theatre an awful lot simpler.

Alas, the theatre was closed, which I supposed was understandable, considering how few people would be likely to queue before breakfast to buy tickets for a water-themed circus review. The main doors to the Oasis Stage were roped off, the concession stand was in darkness, and the ticket counter was secured behind a metal grill. The lock on the grill was worth no more than thirty seconds of my time, but I wasn’t intending to pick it. I was far more interested in the framed show posters displayed on the walls surrounding me.

The posters were enlarged versions of the advertisement I’d seen on the roof of the taxi cab, and I was certain by now that I’d tracked down the two men I’d seen outside Josh’s room. It wasn’t simply that the trapeze artist and the clown looked like the men I’d spoken with, it was also that their roles in the show made complete sense to me. A trapeze artist would need exactly the kind of physique belonging to the tall, muscular Eastern European, and I guessed his little pal had traded on his size to carve out a career in showbiz. As I peered into his eyes, staring out from behind his clown make-up, they erased any doubts that might have remained. The only problem now was finding them.

Sure, it was possible that they lived in the hotel, but it would be helpful if I could narrow it down a little further than that. There was a television screen above the ticket counter, screening footage of show highlights and information about performance times. I didn’t relish the prospect of waiting until the next show. Even supposing I could somehow access a backstage area, there was no guarantee they’d talk to me, and my deadline would be looming.

I picked up a flyer and turned it in my hands. No solution jumped out at me, but I read over it a second time, paying attention to the detail. Some of the stars of the show were mentioned, and it seemed the trapeze artist went by the name of Kojar and that his female partner was called Kitty. The lowly clown didn’t merit a name check, which was bad news for him as well as for me.

I scanned the rest of the flyer, and was almost done with the thing completely, when my eyes snagged on something at the bottom of the reverse side. I looked closer. Yep, there it was. Amid the show credits, in a tiny, light-blue font, I could just read the words:
Producer Maurice Mills
.

Now okay, it was a long shot, but I’d never met a chap called Maurice in my entire life, and I didn’t believe it was a common American name. Yes, there were likely to be more than a few men called Maurice in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, but how many men called Maurice could there be who happened to be connected to a seven-foot gymnast and a four-foot clown? Who also happened to be a part of the Las Vegas showbusiness fraternity, to which Josh Masters belonged? Who also happened to represent my only tangible lead?

Granted, it was tenuous, but I couldn’t afford to doubt myself, because once that happened, I’d start to worry about how little time was left, and whether Victoria was mad that I hadn’t returned to her yet, and if Ricks was giving her a hard time. And since I didn’t want to do any of that, it was far simpler to move forward without second-guessing myself.

Moving forward meant finding Maurice Mills, and I’d written enough mystery fiction in my time to know that finding Maurice Mills meant asking questions.

I started with a nearby cocktail waitress, doing my best to talk to her eyes rather than her cleavage. At first she played dumb, and then I discovered that she wasn’t just playing at it, and so I tried one of her colleagues who was working the keno pit.

This second waitress was a mousy brunette who shook her head when I pointed at the flyer and mentioned Maurice’s name, but she did it a little too fast for my liking. As in all the best private-eye novels, I tried asking again, only this time with the assistance of a twenty-dollar bill. Miraculously, her response changed, and she directed me towards a male dealer on a nearby blackjack table.

After playing two hands, and leaving another twenty-buck tip, a pit boss was summoned to talk with me. The pit boss had a hairless scalp and a barrel chest and an attitude that told me to get right to the point. I explained who I was and who I was looking for, and I dropped the name Josh Masters along with some more of the cash I’d stolen from the Bolton Babes, and without another word he approached a telephone behind a small podium.

Five minutes went by, and then a startlingly attractive woman in a fitted business suit came and shook me by the hand before escorting me out of the casino and ushering me into a waiting town car with tinted windows. I didn’t catch the address she gave the driver and I didn’t have an opportunity to thank her. The car pulled away before I’d even fastened my seat belt – and it wasn’t until the Strip was far behind us and we were racing along the bleached expressway that I started to wonder if I’d made a terrible mistake.

TWENTY-TWO

The town car stopped outside a squat, Spanish-style villa in a modern gated community. The villa had terracotta roof tiles, white-washed walls and a double garage with a soft-top sports car out front. The lawn grass was lush and finely trimmed, and two palm trees leaned on one another at the entrance to the paved driveway, like a pair of amorous drunks.

I stepped out of the car onto asphalt that was cleaner than most carpets, and approached the front door of the house. There was no sound whatsoever – no birdsong, no insect calls, no traffic noise. I pressed a muted doorbell, and turned to see the town car pulling off along the street, its engine so subdued it might have been running on air.

The woman who answered the door had a doughy, Asian face. Her eyes were dark, worn buttons and the skin around them was pinched and wrinkled like the fabric on an old chesterfield. She wore a button-down tunic that was white in colour, over matching cotton trousers. Her feet were bare, and very small, like the feet of a child. Her toenails were painted a startling lime green.

She beckoned me inside without a word and led me across a floor of white marble tiles and on through a pair of double glass doors into a stark living area. The room was furnished with more of the white marble tiles, a white marble fireplace and brilliant white walls. Two slim-line sofas, upholstered in white leather, faced each other from across the fireplace, and a white coffee-table was positioned between them. I was beginning to suspect that Maurice Mills was a fan of the colour white, and that was before my speechless guide led me through a set of patio doors towards a decked pool area that featured a collection of white marble sculptures.

I could see prancing horses, stalking tigers and leaping dolphins. It might have made a little more sense if the tigers had been emerging from behind some shrubbery, or the dolphins jumping out of the pool, but there were no plants to be seen and the sculptures were all positioned on the pale-grey decking. The combination of the white marble animals, white perimeter walls and sparkling blue water was beginning to make me wish I’d worn sunglasses.

Fortunately, my host appeared to be wearing sunglasses that were sizeable enough to share. They had very large, very round lenses, and were deep black in colour, so that they gave him the appearance of a fly. His fair hair was shaved close to the scalp and I could see a squiggle of purple veins at his temple. His left earlobe featured a matt black stud, and his bottom lip was pierced with a silver ring about the size of a dime. He was dressed in a white silk robe and white pyjama pants. The robe was open at his neck, exposing a pale chest that looked as if it had been waxed smooth.

He was reclining on a white, padded sunlounger, with his right knee in the air and a tall glass of milk in his hand. A white telephone handset and a white iPod were on the deck beside him, and a spare sunlounger was positioned close by, with a rolled white towel upon it.

‘Mr Mills?’

He studied me for a long moment without saying anything.

‘My name is Charlie Howard. I understand that you’re looking for Josh Masters.’

So far as I could tell, he didn’t react. But then again, his eyes were unreadable from behind his sunglasses.

‘I’m looking for Josh too,’ I went on. ‘I met some of your . . . associates. They were trying to find him.’

Still nothing.

‘Listen, I spoke to them just before they broke into Masters’ hotel suite.’

Mills leaned his head to one side and used the tip of his tongue to jostle his lip piercing. He slid a finger up and down his chilled milk glass.

‘You’re mistaken,’ he said, with the barest hint of a lisp.

‘I don’t think so. It was a big guy and a little guy, from your show at the Atlantis. They cadged a room card from a maid, and left Josh a note telling him to call you in a hurry. I know it for a fact, because I broke into his hotel room just after them.’

Maurice moved his lip ring around some more, but he didn’t speak. Usually, I would have waited him out, or at least given it a shot. But I don’t know, maybe Vegas was getting to me. Or maybe it was the sensation of time running out. Either way, I decided to lay my cards on the table.

‘I’m a burglar, Mr Mills. A pro. Breaking into places is what I do for a living.’

My words carried so little impact that I might as well have told him I was a Bible salesman. I shifted my weight between my feet, and turned to my side, so that the morning sun wasn’t in my eyes. I glanced at the freeform pool. The water looked cool and inviting, though my host didn’t seem inclined to ask me if I’d brought my swimsuit along.

‘I see you’re wearing Josh’s wristwatch,’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘The man’s timepiece. You have it on your wrist.’

I nudged my shirtsleeve back and contemplated the face of the watch I’d stolen. The hands weren’t moving – the mechanism seemed to have stalled shortly after 3 a.m. If this was one of my mystery novels, the stopped watch would be a major clue. But the only significant thing to have happened at three in the morning was that I’d been brainless enough to fall asleep in a closet. And the only thing the stopped watch indicated was that I might very well have stolen a dud timepiece.

‘He gave it to me.’

‘He gave it to you?’ Maurice stuck out his bottom lip, giving his piercing some air. The back of his lip looked swollen and inflamed, the skin a sickly greenish-yellow. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘No?’

‘Is he dead?’

I let my wrist drop, along with my jaw. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘You have the man’s favourite timepiece. He can’t be found.’

‘He vanished in the middle of his show. He ran away.’

‘Where?’

I felt my eyes narrow as I tried to gauge how much I should say. I could have done with another cigarette while I considered the matter. My brain felt sluggish and my thinking delayed. Another jolt of nicotine would sharpen me up. Then again, pausing for a cigarette was unlikely to lend my words any more credence.

‘Hawaii.’

‘Hawaii?’

‘I think so. But I don’t know for certain. That’s why I came to speak with you.’

Maurice raised his glass of milk to his mouth, and I watched his throat bob as the liquid went down. He was studying me from over the rim of the glass, though I didn’t know what he hoped to see. Once he was done, he sucked on his bottom lip, clearing the milk from his piercing.

I noticed that I was fussing with Masters’ wristwatch, smoothing my fingers over the pitted face. I tucked my hands under my armpits to break the habit.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Speak to me.’

I moved across to the spare recliner and sat on it sideways. I propped my elbow on my knee and shaded my eyes with my hand. My host swivelled his head until I could see two tiny images of myself in the lenses of his sunglasses. A white marble stallion appeared to be vaulting my left ear.

The sensation of having him consider me from behind the glasses was unsettling, and for some unknown reason, I was just dumb enough to ponder whether he ran casting couch sessions with wannabe showgirls that began in a similar fashion.

‘Tell me how you know Josh. The truth.’

Talk about your starter for ten. Yes, I’ve heard it said that honesty is the best policy, and I suppose that’s absolutely right – if you’re a complete bonehead. But there was no way I could tell Maurice the truth if I wanted him to trust me. The only way I might mean anything to him was if he believed I was somehow important to Josh. Josh was clearly important to him, and I needed to close the circle.

At the same time, Maurice didn’t strike me as the type of individual who made his living through entirely legal means. To the outside world he functioned as a show producer, but I had a pretty thorough appreciation for the value of a good cover profession. Maurice hadn’t flinched when I’d told him what I liked to get up to in my less-than-law-abiding moments, so it seemed fair to assume that he had a somewhat relaxed sense of right and wrong.

‘The truth is we worked a scam together.’

‘Casino scam?’

‘There were three of us, plus the croupier. It was a roulette wheeze.’

‘Sounds kind of smalltime.’

‘We were starting out with something simple,’ I replied, meanwhile thinking that if he pictured Masters’ take in those terms, he definitely wouldn’t be impressed with the perilous state of my finances. ‘Getting to know one another, before moving on to something more serious.’

‘Huh. And this more serious work – was that riding on you, or Josh?’

Christ, what exactly had Josh been up to? Mixing writing with thievery was one thing, but combining high-profile stage magic with a criminal career seemed mighty ambitious.

‘Er, it was his job.’

‘Yeah, doing what?’

‘He didn’t say exactly.’ I let the words hang in the air while I thought about where to take things next. On balance, I couldn’t see any harm in adding, ‘I got the impression you were involved.’

‘You did, huh?’

‘He mentioned your name.’

‘But no details.’

‘I was all set to hear them when he pulled his disappearing act.’

His eyebrows scaled his forehead. ‘So you figured you’d break into his hotel room.’

‘Well now, you can’t blame me for that. Your circus freaks had the same idea.’

Maurice set his milk down and reached for his lip piercing, pinching the silver ring between his fingers. I began to suspect it was a recent addition to his face – something he was still getting used to. His tongue must have been getting used to it as well. That would explain the slight lisp.

‘I still don’t buy him gifting you his watch.’

I let my shoulders fall. ‘I stole it. When I broke into his room.’

‘Just like that.’

I thought back to the croupier who’d been involved in Josh’s roulette fix.

‘He never paid me my share of the roulette take. When he ran, I figured he owed me.’

‘You speak to Caitlin about it?’

‘Caitlin?’

‘Yeah, Caitlin. His assistant.’

‘The redhead, you mean?’

‘That’s her.’

‘No. I was beginning to think she must have run away with him too.’

Maurice shook his head. ‘Wipe that. She’d never leave Vegas.’

‘No?’

‘Girl needs to perform. You catch her act?’

‘A little. She seems good.’

He threw up his hands, as though I’d just uttered the understatement of the century. ‘Girl has stadium talent. Word is she’s been working on something new – something folks here would go nuts over. Kind of act I could build an entire show around at the Atlantis.’

Not any more he couldn’t.

‘So why don’t you?’ I asked. ‘With Josh gone, she’ll be looking for work.’

Maurice jerked his head back, as though stunned by the suggestion.

‘She’ll never leave the Fifty-Fifty. Leastways, not while her asshole brothers still own the joint.’

Oh, terrific. That really did cap it all. Because assuming my ears weren’t deceiving me, it sounded as if the extravagantly talented Caitlin, whose buoyant cadaver you may just remember my bumbling across and abandoning in the early stages of this particular tale, was none other than the close blood relation of the terrible twins who were lately threatening to kill me. Could that really be right? I didn’t have an awful lot to go on, other than Maurice’s say-so. Although, now I came to think of it, the girl’s flame-red hair wasn’t all that far removed from the fair ginger locks of the Fisher Twins.

Hmm, so that was hearsay and genetics going against me, and just wilful denial on my side. Still, it’s refreshing to know that things can always get worse, and the revelation didn’t change my reasons for being there. I needed Maurice to tell me something that might give me the vaguest hope of contacting Josh, or failing that, raising close to one hundred and forty thousand dollars in cash.

‘Was I right?’ I asked. ‘About you being involved in Josh’s other job?’

Maurice nudged his sunglasses up on the bridge of his nose. ‘Maybe you should move on. Quit asking questions.’

I lowered my eyes and contemplated his bare feet. His toenails were painted a luscious black. I wondered if perhaps he split the cost of varnish with his silent housekeeper with the lime-green toes.

‘I need a lot of money,’ I told him. ‘Quickly.’

‘Is that right? And you figured your take would cover what you need?’

‘I wouldn’t have been wasting my time otherwise.’

‘And Josh was cool with that?’

I let go of a lungful of dry morning air. ‘We didn’t get into specifics. Hell, he hadn’t even told me what the job entailed. But he knew my reputation. He knew the kind of fee I’d have expected.’

‘So you’re good at what you do?’

It seemed wise to ignore the more recent entries on my resumé.

‘I’m very good.’

‘Tell me about it.’

I looked at him as though he’d scrawled a tough algebra problem on a nearby blackboard.

‘Come on, is it locks?’ he asked. ‘Josh was good with locks. You’ve seen his handcuff act, and the crate escape in his show, right?’

‘Locks are my speciality.’

‘Safes?’

‘I’m pretty handy with those too.’

‘Alarm systems? Movement sensors?’

‘It depends how advanced we’re getting.’ I raised a hand. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, but it’s beginning to feel as if I’m in therapy here. I seem to be the one doing all the sharing. I appreciate you talking to me, I really do, but if you can’t help me out, I might as well leave.’

I stood to do just that, and looked down over Maurice.

He worried his lip piercing some more, weighing my words. I was beginning to think I’d screwed up, that maybe I’d pushed things too far, but just as I was about to turn and make my way back through the house, he tugged his robe together and found his feet.

‘What’s up with your hand?’ he asked, and grabbed my forearm, turning my palm upwards so that he could study my taped fingers. ‘You trap it in a vault, or is this a memento from the Fisher Twins?’

‘Basketball,’ I told him.

He dropped my hand, along with the corners of his mouth, stepped back and assessed me from head to toe. I guess it’s fair to say that he wasn’t looking at somebody who appeared capable of pulling off a slam dunk.