But where was the fellow? Earl roamed and roamed the territory, moving constantly back around the cottages, then out again, moving, moving, questing, like a hunting dog that’s lost the scent. And it remained quiet out there. Too quiet.
He walked again around the side of the hotel toward the front, one more time, and saw the big motor home just turning in from the Strip, bowing and nodding up the entrance drive to turn rightward, toward the nonresident visitor parking lot. There seemed to be a woman driving it, in a hat.
Earl watched the big vehicle move across the nearly empty lot, the only moving vehicle in sight. It came to a stop over there, and Earl turned away, aiming his attention elsewhere. He walked past the front of the building and saw the doorman seated beside the entrance on a little stool, half asleep. The stretch limo was still there, the patient chauffeur at the wheel; he gave Earl a friendly wave, and Earl waved back. Poor fellow; had to wait out here hour after hour. And here it was, almost four in the morning.
Earl turned back, retracing his steps, looking this way and that, and his eye was snagged by that motor home. The woman was still seated there, at the wheel. Nobody had got out of the motor home, though its lights were on inside, behind drawn shades.
Why would a motor home come visiting at four in the morning? Why would it stop, and nobody get out of it?
Hmmmm. Earl strolled over that way, seeing that the woman’s hat was one of those tall things with fruit, like a salad. She was just sitting there, as patient as the chauffeur, hands on the wheel.
Was she waiting for somebody who was supposed to come out of the casino at this hour? Waiting, like the limo driver? Earl’s curiosity was piqued. A sixth sense told him there was something meaningful about this motor home. He walked closer to it, wary, watching this way and that, watching the door in the side of the thing, waiting for it to open, but it didn’t.
The woman finally did turn her head to smile down at him when Earl stopped beside her window. “Hello, there,” he said.
The window was closed, and probably she couldn’t hear him. She smiled, and nodded.
Mouthing carefully, raising his voice a bit, Earl said, “Who are you waiting for?”
Instead of answering, the woman smiled some more and pointed backward, gesturing for him to walk along the side of the motor home. He frowned up at her, and also pointed down in the same direction: “Down there?”
Her smile redoubled. She nodded, and made rapping motions in the air with one fist, then pointed down along the vehicle again.
She wanted him to go down there and knock on the door. All right, he would, and he did. The woman, and her smile, and her hat, had made him less suspicious than before, but still just as curious. He knocked on the door, and a few seconds later it opened, and a smiling guy in T-shirt and brown pants stood there, saying, “Hi.”
Earl said, “You folks waiting for somebody?”
“We are,” the guy said.
“Who?”
“You,” the guy said, and brought his hand out from behind his back with a Colt automatic in it. “Come on in,” he invited.
58
It was just a horrible night for Brandon Camberbridge. His hotel, his beloved hotel, under siege, full of strangers, mercenaries. Nell not here to console him, and the big cheese over there in cottage one acting as though he blamed Brandon for something. Blamed Brandon! For what? For loving the hotel?
He couldn’t follow his normal routine tonight, he just couldn’t. Normally, he was out and about, everywhere in the hotel, smiling, greeting, nodding, encouraging the staff, beaming on the beauties of his paradise, circulating all night as the great hotel sailed like a wonderful ship through the darkness, himself out and about until his bedtime at four in the morning, like the captain of the wonderful ship, walking the decks, feeling the great hum of it, alive beneath his feet.
But not tonight. He couldn’t stand to be out there tonight, the tension, the strange faces of the imported security people, the knowledge that the big cheese was brooding in cottage one, festering in cottage one.
No, no, Brandon couldn’t walk the deck of his great ship tonight; the hotel had to sail without him, while he sat here in his office, the control center of it all, waiting for disaster to strike.
For a while, he’d phoned security every now and then, just to check in, but at 11:30 Wylie Branch had come on the line and had been extremely sarcastic: “Let my boys do their job,” he suggested. “Anything you need to know, they’ll be in touch. They got your number, believe me.”
So for the last four and a half hours he’d just been here, listening to a local news radio station, trying to go over old paperwork, waiting for the phone to ring. What’s happening? Has the war started? Has the disaster struck?
Four A . M . Time to go to bed, though Brandon seriously doubted he’d get much sleep tonight. Still, he ought at least try to maintain his normal schedule; it wouldn’t help anybody if he were to come down with a bug tomorrow, would it? So, at 4:00 A . M . exactly, he switched off the news station—grateful that he’d heard no news at all about the Gaiety—and left his office.
Brandon’s managerial office suite was directly behind the check-in desk, but his primary route in and out was via a short corridor to a door that opened onto the public space around the corner from the main desk, between that and the coffee shop, and facing the glass doors out to the pool area. Coming out here tonight, he wasn’t surprised to see no one in the coffee shop or walking by; 4:00 A . M . on a Monday night was always very slow. But he ought at least look in once on the guests in the casino, just to reassure himself with a faint echo of his normal routine, so that’s the direction he turned.
There was no one visible at the desk, but that was also normal. No guests would be checking in at this hour, and if anyone did have a question they could press the bell on the desk and the young woman from the office behind it would step promptly out to be of service.
Brandon walked on by, and saw no one at all at the slot machines, which was slightly unusual. Slot players have more staying power than any other human beings on the planet. Reflecting on that, he walked on by, just peripherally registering the fact that two players were there, crumpled on the floor in front of machines, cardboard cups of coins spilling from their limp hands, when his attention was drawn horribly to the sight of four people unconscious at a blackjack table.
Good God! The dealer and three players, all sprawled on the half-moon-shaped table, dead to the world. And beyond them, another table, three more sleepers.
Brandon stared. He couldn’t believe his eyes. People were sleeping on the crap tables! They were sleeping on the floor! They were sleeping—
Were they sleeping? Or were they . . .
Poison! Thoughts of botulism, death from his own kitchens, scrambled in Brandon’s brain as he hurried forward to the nearest table. Oh, please be alive! Please be alive!
They were alive. Their arms were warm. Several of them were snoring. They were alive, they were merely asleep.
“Wake up,” Brandon said, and prodded the nearest dealer, a heavyset middle-aged man, who kept right on sleeping. “Wake up,” Brandon insisted. “What’s going on here?”
But the man would not wake up. Brandon stared around, and it occurred to him he could see none of his guards, none of the security people, not a uniform in sight. Where were they all? What’s happened to everybody?