Cassie slowly moved down to the floor and sat with her knees up and her back against the safe. She brought her wrist up and pressed the button that lighted the face of her watch. It was now 3:20 and she felt a searing sense of loss. She folded her arms on her knees and put her head down. She knew she wasn't going to leave the closet until well after the void moon began. She couldn't risk it.
Cassie thought about Leo. She wondered if he was awake this late and if he was thinking about the void moon, if he was checking his watch. He had called it a bad luck time. But to Cassie, the bad luck had come before the void moon had started. It was that phone call to Hernandez. That was the bad luck. She would have to tell Leo that. Explain it. Surely he would understand. And if he didn't, Cassie would make him.
18
AT 3:46 A.M. Cassie Black opened her eyes in the bedroom closet of the man she was trying to steal from. That man had finally started to snore again and Cassie knew it was time to make her final move. She slowly stood up and pushed the closet door open. She pulled the goggles up over her eyes and looked at the bed. She could see Hernandez under the covers with his head propped up on two pillows. If he opened his eyes he would be staring right at her, but his deep breathing and the guttural pitch of his snoring indicated he was down deep into sleep. It didn't matter to Cassie anymore if he awoke. She was tired of waiting. It was time for her to find the briefcase and get out of the suite and out of Las Vegas for good.
She stooped down and massaged her left calf. It had cramped up while she waited. When she was ready she wrapped the pillowcase around her hand and again slowly pushed the closet door all the way open.
For a moment Cassie stood motionless in the bedroom and studied the sleeping hulk on the bed. It was always the strangest part of a job, to observe the mark sleeping. It was like knowing a secret you weren't supposed to know. She began a sweeping look around the room in search of the briefcase but it was nowhere in sight.
She backed into the alcove and checked the bathroom. Nothing. She came back into the bedroom, got down on the floor and reached the penlight under the bed. She flicked it on, revealing the space to be empty save for an assortment of dust balls and a room service menu.
Cassie got up and went into the living room, where she surveyed every square foot of the room but found nothing that even hinted at the location of the briefcase. She started panicking and thinking about her decision earlier to go down to the bar for a cherry Coke and to rekindle memories of her last moments with Max. During that time had Hernandez possibly gotten up from bed, left the suite and stashed the briefcase, only to return and go right back to sleep? It seemed ludicrous, except for the fact that she could not find the briefcase.
Suddenly she remembered the safe. Hernandez's keys had inexplicably been inside it. Cassie tried to determine what this could mean and quickly came to a conclusion. The keychain held keys that opened the briefcase and the handcuffs. To put those keys in the safe rather than to take measures safeguarding the case and its contents would be done only if those measures had been taken in some other way. If Hernandez had not left the suite, how else other than with use of the safe could he safeguard the case?
Cassie moved back into the bedroom and surveyed the bed. She visualized what she had seen through the peephole when Hernandez had opened the door. The briefcase had been attached to his right hand. She came around the right side of the bed and gently pressed her hands down on the rumpled bedcovers, careful to stay away from formations created by Hernandez's body. She didn't breathe as she did this. It was the closest she had ever come to a mark. It was too close and every one of her senses was focused on the bed and the huge body that snored beneath the covers.
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.