Murder in Vegas: New Crime Tales of Gambling and Desperation Read online

  “Just,” he said, “you look more like Jane. Ann. Mary.”

  She smiled. “Tell my folks.”

  “You up?” Taylor asked. He and Angel walked between rows of fifty-cent slots, like passing through an Alice-in-Wonderland honor guard of people’s backs.

  “Enough.”

  Enough, Taylor thought. How right you are.

  He cashed out, Angel too. $402,500, a nice win at the Trop but not earthshaking. The floor boss walked away with a solemn congratulatory nod.

  “Where are you staying?” Angel asked.

  “I’m not.”

  Angel nodded. Just came to play, she knew about that. “I’m at the Luxor.”

  They walked outside, Taylor braced for a blast of hot desert wind but getting just exhaust, spray from the Tropicana fountain, recorded birdsong, and disappointment. His own, or what was in the air? He wasn’t sure. Angel tipped her head toward the footbridge that would take them over the highway to the Luxor, letting him know.

  “Wait,” he said. “Another minute.” It wasn’t even a minute. The men in polo shirts and khakis materialized and approached.

  “That’s Bennie’s,” one said, pointing to Taylor’s bag.

  Taylor handed it to him.

  The men looked surprised; Angel looked surprised.

  “Tell Bennie, ‘Fuck you,’” Taylor said.

  The man with the bag opened it, checked for the money. This easy, it had to be a trick, Taylor knew he was thinking that. “No trick,” said Taylor. The man closed the bag, nodded, walked away. The other man glared at Taylor another little while, brow furrowed. Surprised, and angry, also, that one, lost his chance to break some bones. Too bad, thought Taylor, but that’s Vegas for you: a mile-high pile of lost chances.

  Actually, Taylor was surprised, too. Not surprised that he’d given over the bag so easily, no argument, no tightening of his grip, no pang at such a huge stake slipping from his fingers. Surprised, though, that he’d been able to use it in the way he’d hoped, and not told himself he’d hoped, to fill it with his debt to Bennie and send it on its way, with Bennie’s people, without him.

  The people climbed into a cab. Taylor watched the doors slam and then he turned away. Maybe they drove off, red taillights dwindling as they headed for the airport. Maybe they sat in the driveway all night, and maybe they beamed back to the mothership.

  He didn’t give a damn.

  “Jack?” It was Angel, a few paces away, her eyes wary. Maybe he wasn’t what she thought he was. What she was. Oh, but I am, he said, silently, this time he knew that, Oh, but I am.

  He told her. “From Bennie. My bookie. I’m into him.”

  “For all that?”

  “Just about.”

  “You know them?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know, then? Where they’re going? They could skip.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “You’ll be on the hook.”

  “God,” Taylor said, “it’s hot out here.” This because a blast of dry desert wind had broken over them, the grit riding on it scouring the fountain mist and the car exhaust out of the air, blowing away everything fake, the birdsong and the forced smiles and Bennie’s goddamn money, his goddamn money.

  Taylor turned, faced into the wind. Daybreak, the sun just cracking the sky above the low hill behind the airport (the sun heading to Vegas from New York, just like he had! He wondered, did it hate it when it got here, too?) and already too hot to breathe.

  Angel smiled at him. “The Luxor’s cool. A little too cold, even.”

  The sun found her, outlined her for him, a fierce glow edging her black hair, her curved hip, her supple wrist. Ah yes, the sun was doing its job here, just like he had, but it was angry. Didn’t want to be here. Angel raised a hand to shadow her eyes, and he looked into them, so like his.

  He might have answered, he might have turned with her, taken her arm, walked over the bridge and into the glass and neon palace across the way; might have, but he saw it coming, saw the smothering gray wave rolling toward him—he’d never seen it before, always been taken by surprise when it smashed him down—and so he stood and looked at her and then he shook his head. “Something I have to do,” he said.

  She nodded. “Later?”

  He didn’t have an answer to that. “Thanks,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “Luck.”

  He turned, walked east.

  The airport was close; half an hour of walking as the sun stalked higher into the sky, he was almost there. A plane was landing. Shirt-sleeved men, women in shorts would soon be grabbing their bags, jostling each other in their rush to get to the illusion, the lies. Some, so desperately eager to believe, would stop in the terminal to play the slots.

  Another ten minutes and he was past it (it was so small, really, when you thought of airports and not of magic gates to fabulous kingdoms). He kept walking, following the road.

  After another hour he was alone; everything had stayed behind. Or maybe the gray wave had come and swept it all away. Or maybe—this, he thought, coughing in the heat, the dryness, this was what was true—maybe everything was nothing, it had faded away, it was never here at all. This was here: the sand, the wind. In the shimmer at the corner of his eye he saw Angel. He turned. She was not there. In the other direction, Lily, and she also was not there. He smiled: looking into the swaying waves of heat above the asphalt, he did not see Bennie, so fuck you, Bennie.

  Another hour, or maybe less, or more, and the road began to curve north, into the hills. It didn’t face into the sun now, so Taylor left it, stepped from it onto the hard flat sand to keep heading east, as though that were home. The sun blinded him, pushed against him like walking into wind. Or water. He was having trouble breathing, he was choking in the heat. Like the wave! The desert, the sun; the thick gray wave—no difference! The smothering heat, the enveloping fog—the same thing!

  Taylor laughed, cracking the marble mask, laughed to finally know this.

  East, heading east, he walked out over the sand. Grit scraped his face, clung to his skin like salt spray.

  He walked.

  Sweat poured down him.

  He walked.

  Like wading into the ocean, deeper, deeper, before the dive, the last, ecstatic plunge.

  Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

  The same thing.

  DUST UP

  WENDY HORNSBY

  10:00 a.m., April 20 Red Rock Canyon, Nevada

  Pansy Reynard lay on her belly inside a camouflaged bird blind, high-power Zeiss binoculars to her eyes, a digital sound amplifier hooked over her right ear, charting every movement and sound made by her observation target, an Aplomado falcon hatchling. As Pansy watched, the hatchling stretched his wings to their full thirty-inch span and gave them a few tentative flaps as if gathering courage to make his first foray out of the nest. He would need some courage to venture out, she thought. The ragged, abandoned nest his mother had appropriated for her use sat on a narrow rock ledge 450 vertical feet above the desert floor.

  “Go, baby,” Pansy whispered when the chick craned back his neck and flapped his wings again. This was hour fourteen of her assigned nest watch. She felt stiff and cramped, and excited all at once. There had been no reported Aplomado falcon sightings in Nevada since 1910. For a mated Aplomado falcon pair to appear in the Red Rock Canyon area less than twenty miles west of the tawdry glitz and endless noise of Las Vegas, was singular, newsworthy even. But for the pair to claim a nest and successfully hatch an egg was an event so unexpected as to be considered a miracle by any committed raptor watcher, as Pansy Reynard considered herself to be.

  The hatchling watch was uncomfortable, perhaps dangerous, because of the ruggedness of the desert canyons, the precariousness of Pansy’s rocky perch in a narrow cliff-top saddle opposite the nest, and the wild extremes of the weather. But the watch was very likely essential to the survival of this wonder child. It had been an honor, Pansy felt, to be assigned a shift
to watch the nest. And then to have the great good fortune to be on site when the hatchling first emerged over the top of the nest was, well, nearly overwhelming.

  Pansy lowered her binocs to wipe moisture from her eyes, but quickly raised them again so as not to miss one single moment in the life of this sleek-winged avian infant. She had been wakened inside her camouflage shelter at dawn by the insistent chittering of the hatchling as he demanded to be fed. From seemingly nowhere, as Pansy watched, the mother had soared down to tend him, the forty-inch span of her black and white wings as artful and graceful as a beautiful Japanese silk-print kite. The sight of the mother made Pansy almost forgive Lyle for standing her up the night before.

  Almost forgive Lyle: This was supposed to be a two-man shift. Lyle, a pathologist with the Department of Fish and Game, was a fine bird-watcher and seemed to be in darned good physical shape. But he was new to the Las Vegas office and unsure about his readiness to face the desert overnight. And he was busy. Or so he said.

  Pansy had done her best to assure Lyle that he would be safe in her hands. As preparation, she had packed two entire survival kits, one for herself and one for him, and had tucked in a very good bottle of red wine to make the long chilly night pass more gently. But he hadn’t come. Hadn’t even called.

  Pansy sighed, curious to know which he had shunned, an evening in her company or the potential perils of the place. She had to admit there were actual, natural challenges to be addressed. It was only mid-April, but already the desert temperatures reached the century mark before noon. When the sun was overhead, the sheer vertical faces of the red sandstone bluffs reflected and intensified the heat until everything glowed like—and felt like—the inside of an oven. There was no shade other than the feathery shadows of spindly yucca and folds in the rock formations.

  To make conditions yet more uncomfortable, it was sandstorm season. Winds typically began to pick up around noon, and could drive an impenetrable cloud of sand at speeds surpassing eighty miles an hour until sunset. When the winds blew, there was nearly no way to escape both the heat and the pervasive, intrusive blast of sand. Even cars were useless as shelter. With windows rolled up and without the AC turned on you’d fry in a hurry. With the AC turned on, both you and the car’s engine would be breathing grit. If you could somehow navigate blind and drive like hell, you might drive clear of the storm before sand fouled the engine. But only if you could navigate blind.

  People like Pansy who knew the area well might find shelter in random hollows among the rocks, such as the niche where the hatchling sat in his nest. Or the well prepared, for instance Pansy, might hunker down inside a zip-up shelter made to military specs for desert troops, like the one that was tucked inside her survival pack. Or navigate using digital GPS via satellite—Global Positioning System.

  Not an environment for neophytes, Pansy conceded, but she’d had high hopes for Lyle, and had looked forward to an evening alone with him and the falcons under the vast blackness of the desert sky, getting acquainted.

  Pansy knew she could be a bit off-putting at first meeting. But in that place, during that season, Pansy was in her métier and at her best. Her preparations for the nest watch, she believed, were elegant in their simplicity, completeness, and flexibility: a pair of lightweight one-man camouflage all-weather shelters, plenty of water, a basic all-purpose tool, meals-ready-to-eat, a bodacious slingshot in case snakes or vultures came to visit the nest, good binocs, a two-channel sound amplifier to eavesdrop on the nest, a handheld GPS locator, and a digital palm-sized video recorder. Except for the water, each kit weighed a meager twenty-seven pounds and fit into compact, waterproof, dust proof saddlebags she carried on her all-terrain motorcycle. The bottle of wine and two nice glasses were tucked into a quick-release pocket attached to the cycle frame. She had everything: shelter, food, water, tools, the falcon, a little wine. But no Lyle.

  Indeed, Lyle’s entire kit was still attached to the motorcycle she had stashed in a niche in the abandoned sandstone quarry below her perch.

  A disturbing possibility occurred to Pansy as she watched the hatchling: Maybe Lyle was a little bit afraid of her. A champion triathlete and two-time Ironman medalist, Lieutenant Pansy Reynard, desert survival instructor with the Army’s SFOD-D, Special Forces Operational Detachment—Delta Force, out of the Barstow military training center, admitted that she could be just a little bit intimidating.

  10:00 a.m., April 20 Downtown Las Vegas

  Mickey Togs felt like a million bucks because he knew he looked like a million bucks. New custom-made, silver-gray suit with enough silk in the fabric to give it a little sheen. Not flashy-shiny, but sharp—expensively sharp, Vegas player sharp. His shirt and tie were of the same silver-gray color, as were the butter-soft handmade shoes on his size eight, EEE feet. Checking his reflection in the shiny surface of the black Lincoln Navigator he had acquired for the day’s job, Mickey shot his cuffs, adjusted the fat Windsor knot in his silver-gray necktie, dusted some sand kicked up from yesterday’s storm off his shoes, and grinned.

  Yep, he decided as he climbed up into the driver’s seat of the massive SUV, he looked every penny like a million bucks, exactly the sort of guy who had the cojones to carry off a million-dollar job. Sure, he had to split the paycheck a few ways because he couldn’t do this particular job alone, but the splits wouldn’t be equal, meaning he would be well paid. One hundred K to Big Mango the triggerman, one hundred to Otto the Bump for driving, another hundred to bribe a cooperative Federal squint, and then various payments for various spotters and informants. Altogether, after the split, Mickey personally would take home six hundred large; damn good jack for a morning’s work.

  Mickey Togs felt deservedly cocky. Do a little morning job for the Big Guys, be back on the Vegas Strip before lunch, get a nice bite to eat, then hit the baccarat salon at the Mirage with a fat stake in his pocket. Mickey took out a silk handkerchief and dabbed some sweat from his forehead; Mickey had trained half his life for jobs like this one. Nothing to it, he said to himself, confident that all necessary preparations had been made and all contingencies covered. A simple, elegant plan.

  Mickey pulled the big Navigator into the lot of the Flower of the Desert Wedding Chapel on South Las Vegas Boulevard, parked, and slid over into the front passenger seat, the shotgun position. The chapel was in a neighborhood of cheap old motels and auto shops, not the sort of place where Mickey and his hired help would be noticed. In a town where one can choose to be married by Captain Kirk, Elvis Presley, or Marilyn Monroe, where brides and grooms might dress accordingly, wedding chapels are good places not to be noticed. Even Big Mango, an almost seven-foot-tall Samoan wearing a turquoise Hawaiian shirt and flip flops, drew hardly a glance as he crossed the lot and climbed into the backseat of the Navigator.

  Otto the Bump, a one-time welterweight boxer with cauliflower ears and a nose as gnarled as a bag full of marbles, ordinarily might draw a glance or two, except that he wore Vegas-style camouflage: black suit, starched white shirt, black tie, spit-shined black brogans, a clean shave and a stiff comb-over. He could be taken for a maitre d’, a pit boss, a father of the bride, a conventioneer, or the invisible man just by choosing where and how he stood. As he hoisted himself up into the driver’s seat of the Navigator, Otto looked every inch like a liveried chauffeur.

  “What’s the job?” Otto asked as he turned out of the lot and into traffic.

  “The feds flipped Harry Coelho,” Mickey said. “He’s gonna spill everything to the grand jury this morning, and then he’s going into witness protection. We got one shot to stop him. Job is to grab him before he gets to the courthouse, then take him for a drive and lose him as deep as Jimmy Hoffa.”

  “A snitch is the worst kind of rat there is,” Otto groused. “Sonovabitch deserves whatever he gets.”

  “Absolutely,” Mickey agreed. Big Mango, as usual, said nothing, but Mickey could hear him assembling the tools for his part of the job.

  “How’s it going down?” Otto a
sked.

  “Federal marshals are gonna drive Harry from the jail over to the courthouse in a plain Crown Victoria with one follow car.”

  “Feds.” Otto shook his head. “I don’t like dealing with the feds.”

  “Don’t worry, the fix is in,” Mickey said, sounding smug. “I’ll get a call when the cars leave the jail. The route is down Main to Bonneville, where the courthouse is. You get us to the intersection, park us on Bonneville at the corner. We’ll get a call when the cars are approaching the intersection. When they make the turn, you get us between the two cars and that’s when we grab Harry.”

  “Whatever you say.” Otto checked the rearview mirror. “But what’s the fix?”

  Mickey chuckled. “You know how federal squints are, doughnut-eating civil servants with an itch to use their guns; they get off playing cops and robbers. A simple, good follow plan just doesn’t do it for them, so they gotta throw in some complication. This is it: Harry leaves the jail in the front car. Somewhere on the route, the cars are going to switch their order so when they get to the courthouse Harry will be in the second car.”

  “How do you know they’ll make the switch?”

  “I know my business,” Mickey said, straightening his tie to show he had no worries. “I got spotters out there. If the switch doesn’t happen or the Feds decide to take a different route or slip in a decoy, I’ll know it.” He snapped his manicured fingers. “Like that.”

  Otto’s face was full of doubt. “How will you know?”

  “The phone calls?” Mickey said. “They’re coming from inside the perp car. I bought us a marshal.”

  “Yeah?” Otto grinned, obviously impressed. “You got it covered, inside and outside.”

  “Like I say, I know my business,” Mickey said, shrugging. “Here’s the plan: Otto, you get us into position on Bonneville, and we wait for the call saying they’re approaching. When the first car makes the turn off Main, you pull in tight behind it and stop fast. From then till we leave, you need to cover the first car; don’t let anyone get out. Mango, you take care of the marshals in the second car any way you want to, but if you gack the marshal riding shotgun, you can have the rest of the bribe payment I owe him.”