Murder in Vegas

LIGHTNING RIDER by Rick Mofina

Jessie Scout tightened her grip on the wheel of the armored car when she spotted her crew members, Gask and Perez, emerging from the casino lobby. Their canvas bags were now empty of cash. Another delivery done.

Relax, she told herself.

Her utility belt and the holster cradling her Glock gave a leathery squeak as she ran a perimeter check of the mirrors around their truck. All clear. Wait. A stranger was getting way too close to her.

“Bobby? Hey Bob, check this out, buddy!” A man laughed.

Scout picked them up, distorted on the driver’s side convex mirror. A couple of all-night rollers. White guys. Forties. Midwesterners. Mid-management. Suburban. Wife and kids back home. Skip the buffet, Skippy. Bloody Marys for breakfast. Riding higher than the morning desert sun. Don’t come near the truck Don’t you dare.

“Hey Bob. Get this.” The first one is reaching into his pocket.

Scout’s right hand brushed the butt of her Glock. Her two crew members were still far off on her right side. They can’t see the guy or the flash of metal in his hand. He’s too close.

“What’s the pay off if I play a dollar here? Ha-ha.”

He starts to fiddle with a gunport. Jerk. Scout spanks the horn. He recoils, his reddening face contorting in anger aimed up at her as he passes by the front of the truck, hands up, palms open.

“What’s a matter? Can’t you take a joke?”

Scout eyeballs him hard and cold from behind her dark glasses.

He’s mesmerized. She’s a young goddess. Tanned, high cheekbones. Chestnut hair, long and braided. Her face betrays nothing. He concedes he is out of his league. No fun here. The rollers walk away.

She heard keys jingle, then the tap of metal on the steel passenger door. It was Gask and Perez, their faces moist, their shirts darkened with sweat under their armpits. “C’mon, Scout, we’re cookin’ here,” Gask shouted over the idling motor, air conditioner, and the truck’s sound-absorbing armor.

Scout unlocked the doors from the inside. Gask heaved himself into the passenger seat. Perez sprung up the step of the side delivery door, into the rear with the money. Both men locked their doors as Jessie eased the truck down the casino’s driveway and onto Las Vegas Boulevard.

“What’s the problem, you hittin’ the horn, Scout?” Gask studied his clipboard, then shouted through the sliding viewer window of the steel security wall separating the cab and the rear of the truck. “Next drop is ATMs, Perez. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“I asked you, what’s the problem, Scout?”

“No problem.”

“I think you still don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”

Scout didn’t answer. Gask’s face hardened.

“I swear to God, I don’t know why they hire you people.”

Scout said nothing.

“My last week on the job and this is what you give me?”

“I said it was no problem.”

“You sure? You seem a little tense today. Is it a woman thing?”

Scout rolled her eyes. What a pig. “A tourist was touching the truck. I scolded him. He backed off. No problem.”

“Fine. Put it in the log. Time. Place. Description. Incident. I’m retiring with a spotless record. Got it. Christ, you got a brain in there?”

“I know the procedure.”

“As long as you’re sure,” he grunted. “Call in the drop.”

Scout grabbed the radio handset and said: “Ten sixty-five.”

“Go sixty-five,” the radio responded.

“Six clear.”

“Ten four, sixty-five.”

Gask shifted in his seat. “Damn gun, digging into me.” He removed his uniform cap and dragged the back of his hairy forearm over his forehead. “You got the AC on full, Scout? You got it up full?”

“Full.”

“You sure you know how to operate that thing. Might be complicated for someone like you.”

Scout concentrated on the road. Gask had been her crew chief since she was hired as a driver for U.S. Forged Armored Inc., four months ago. Today was his first day back from a vacation and he was bursting to tell her and Perez about it that morning at the terminal while downing his ritual breakfast of chocolate glazed donuts. They were finishing up coffee, ready to head out on deliveries.

“Know where I went, Scout?” he’d asked.

As if she cared.

“Aryanfest,” he sucked on his teeth, working them over with a toothpick. “Up north, near your old reserve. Pretty country. Lots of white. On the mountaintops. We burned a cross,” Gask smiled. “Once I punch out of this job, I’m going to buy me a lake cabin near the border.”

Scout and Perez looked at each other, saying nothing. Gask did not keep his beliefs secret. Experience taught them to avoid trigger topics like Martin Luther King, the pope, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, or civil rights. Scout could deal with his insults but despised the way Gask treated Perez, who had three years with the company.

Gil Perez was a quiet, soft-spoken father of two little girls. He was loyal, honest. Hard working. Dreamed of starting his own car wash business, but one day he made the mistake of telling Gask, who’d spit on his dream every chance he could.

“Ain’t gonna happen for you, Refried. You just don’t have what it takes. Trust me. I know you, your abilities. It exceeds the reach of your people. Scout’s too. In both cases, your folks generally lack the motivation, the dedication, the drive of red-blooded Americans like me to succeed. You’d best invest all your energy in your job here and maybe one day, if you’re real lucky, which I doubt, but maybe one day, you’ll have your own crew like me.”

Like you?

Scout shuddered at the notion of anyone making themselves in the image of Elmer Gask, Forged’s most senior guard and legendary asshole. According to the dinosaurs who knew Gask’s story, Elmer was Mississippi white trash, whose familymoved in the night to avoid debts. Gask’s granddaddy was a Grand Dragon who oversaw the firebombing of churches before he died of complications arising from syphilis. Gask was a former bull with the Nevada State prison system, fired for severely beating a black con.

Then he was hired at U.S. Forged where he earned mythic status. Over his twenty-two years on the job, Gask safely moved up to twenty million dollars daily among the casinos and banks of Las Vegas without a single dollar loss. Not a cent. There had been attempts. Three men had died in botched hits on Gask’s watch. Two drifters from Minnesota in ’88 when they jumped him and his partner making a two million dollar drop at the Nugget. In 1983, Gask shot dead a 24-year-old Brit named Fitz-something, who was AWOL and wired on LSD when he tried to run off with two bags of newly minted one-hundred-dollar bills outside Caesar’s Palace.

No one had, or would, win against Gask. He was the money mover king of Las Vegas. He kept the casinos lubricated, kept things humming. In this town, where every move was a gamble, Gask had the edge and he enlightened every newcomer that his greatness was the reason U.S. Forged entrusted him with the heaviest deliveries and rookie staff. He knew the business and its vulnerabilities, how to inventory a casino during a drop. How to scan faces and sense trouble like a county sheriff’s bloodhound. Gask had no family. No wife. No kids. He was the job. U.S. Forged profited by his intense dedication and bigoted intimidation. All packaged in a six-foot-two-inch, two-hundred-thirty-pound button-straining frame.

The cost: $33,500 per annum. With a $22,000 retirement bonus coming his way for his twenty-two ‘loss-free’ years of service.

Moving north along the Strip, they stopped for a red light near the Hacienda. Gask scanned his clipboard. “We gotta load six ATMs at the next drop. Best use the dolly, Refried.”

Perez’s face appeared at the viewer window.

“Don’t call me Refried, Elmer, please.”

Gask’s eyebrows ascended. “Why’s that?”

“Because I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like it?” Gask watched the casinos roll by.

“Call me Gil, or Perez, please.”

“Or what? You gonna complain to the ACLU?” Gask bit hard on his toothpick. “You forget who you’re talking to?”

“I’m just making a respectful request.”

Gask sucked on his teeth. The muscles of his lower jaw pulsated.

“Well, well, well,” he said as they passed the mammoth Ex-calibur with its fairytale turrets. “Here I am in 1993, crew chief of ‘Gil, please don’t call me Refried Perez and Pocahontas.’ Ain’t America the land of equal opportunity. This is what I get for my last week on the job? Attitude from the two of you.” Gask shook his head. “And I get this shit-hole truck today, a heavy day. Still no transmitter. How many times have I told Rat to fix the goddammed transmitter in this one? Today I get the bottom of the heap.”

Gask had deliberately not mentioned that Scout had alerted him to the fact they were skedded to have this truck weeks ago. He couldn’t stomach anyone telling him anything, let alone a woman. Even worse, a Native American woman. He ignored her. The truck they had was a far cry from the war wagons they usually used. Today they had the company’s ten-year-old armor-plated Econoline van. The back up. Each crew used it for one shift every second week while the new trucks were serviced. But Scout thought it best not to debate facts. Let him rant. “Nothing better happen today on my goddamn watch, right Scout?”

She didn’t answer.

He looked at her. “What’s with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? I don’t think so.”

Gask sensed something wasn’t right. He was sniffing at something, Something about her was eating at him, something he couldn’t quite figure. She was as indifferent as she was on every shift. Maybe it was because he’d been away a week? He kept staring.

“Aren’t you embarrassed riding in this tin can today, Scout?”

“I’m embarrassed riding with you today, yes.”

Scout knew what Gask was thinking, that she was playing with him and he liked it. She was a challenge to him, an enigma. He knew virtually nothing about her. She said little and rarely smiled. But she knew men like Gask. Knew what theywanted. They told her with their eyes. She knew Gask enjoyed looking at her. Especially now. His eyes had lit on her uniform where a button had come undone, offering a glimpse of her ample breast. Firm and dark, bouncing in her bra until she caught him staring and, without a hint of shame, buttoned her shirt. Gask sucked on his teeth.

“You got a boyfriend, Scout?”

“I don’t need one.”

“Maybe you don’t know what you need.”

She said nothing and gazed beyond the glitz of the Strip west to the Spring Mountains, searching for answers. The meaning of her life. Jessica Mary Scout. Born in Browning, Montana. Her mother, Angela Scout, was Blackfoot. Her father was German, a philosophy student on exchange at MSU. He was conducting field research on Native American mysticism at the reserve when he met Angela. He was going to marry her and take her to Berlin. The day Jessie was born he borrowed a truck and was driving to the hospital. He swerved to miss a rabbit, the truck rolled. He was killed. Jessie’s mother was never the same. Her heart was broken, and she had buried a piece of it with the man she loved.

Jessie had grown up accepting that her life had brought death.

One of the old women called it the black wind, the bringer of misfortune. And when Jessie was ten, the old woman told her that it would never leave her until the Lightning Rider came for her.

“Grandmother, how will I know him?”

“You will see with your eyes and know in your heart, child.”

Until that time, the black wind would always be with her. Whispering. Laughing. Jessie began seeing it. Straw in a black wind. Hearing it in a crow’s cry. Felt its presence. She was its harbinger. This was her destiny. Did the mountains know, she wondered, for they reached back to her home.

Jessie had lived most of her life in Browning with her mother. She missed her. Ached for her sad sweet smile, her fragrance, her gentle hands, the way she filled their house with the aroma of bannock. She missed her voice. Was it out there in the mountains? She listened for it, but heard nothing. Jessie yearned at this moment to be with her mother. To ask her.Would it always be true, what the old woman said? Don’t think about it. But the black wind was kicking up, making her remember other times.

Several years after her father’s death, Jessie’s mother had a second child. A baby girl she’d named Olivia. The father was an alcoholic trucker Angela had met at a bar in Shelby. When Angela was in the hospital having Olivia, the trucker raped Jessie. After he finished, he threatened to kill them all if she told. Jessie was eleven. She didn’t tell. Then one winter day, they got word his rig had crashed near Standoff. He was dead. Angela locked herself away to mourn him as the cold winds blew down from the Bitteroot mountains.

As the armored car passed the Stardust, Jessie tried to drive the memories back. It was futile. Even now, a world away in Las Vegas. Please Olivia. Please… the wind… the black wind was there… scattering the snow. Blinding. Biting. The black wind was pushing her, punching her. Jessie was walking as fast as she could. The wind was stealing her breath. Snow melted in her eyes, blurring her vision. Faster. Walk faster. Holding her baby sister to her chest. Olivia naked against her skin. Feeling her tiny warmth. Growing colder. Wrapped in her shirt, worn coat, old blankets. Icy wind jabbing at Olivia through the holes. The halo of the car’s lights. Snow crunching under its tires as it crept beside her. Warmth spilling from it when the window dropped. “Where you going, there?” asked the Montana Highway Patrol officer. Jessie’s face was numb. “My sister’s sick.” The car squeaked to a halt. The door opened. “You got a baby under there! Let me see. Jesus! Get in. I’ll take you to the hospital in Cut Bank!” He was a young cop. Concern on his face. The rhythm of the wipers. He said things into his radio. The smell of his cologne. Her skin thawing, tingling and itching. Olivia is blue. Her eyes are wide open. She does not move. She does not breathe. The black wind is blowing, and the siren was screaming and screaming.

The armored car passed the Mirage. Jessie liked the way it caught the sun. She shrugged Gask off. People like Gask didn’t intimidate her. She feared no one. For the knowledge she possessed could not be measured by the twenty-six years of her life, a life steeped in pain, a life broiling with cosmic forces andancient truths. Her heart had traveled to regions few could conjure in dreams. It was reflected in her photo ID card clipped to her chest. Her pretty face was a mystery. A glint of arrogance in her eyes that squinted slightly to offer a smile. Or was it a sneer, one that revealed to people like Gask a hard fact they couldn’t bear: They were insignificant. Jessie’s face was a manifestation of righteous contempt for every injustice that had befallen her. It held a vengeful calm. Because she had purchased secrets. Paid in full with her tears. Her blood. Her life. She had come to Las Vegas, a city of risk, not to gamble.

But to collect.

They had come to the next delivery. The armored car exited Las Vegas Boulevard for the casino’s driveway. Gask initialed his clipboard. “Ready back there, Re-Gil?”

“Ready.”

“OK, Scout. We got a lot of ATMs here. Going to be thirty minutes inside then we got four more big loads. You know the drill. Drop us at the back and pick us up out front. Main entrance. Think your half-breed brain can manage that?”

She was silent, maneuvering the truck through the casino’s parking lot.

“You hear what I said, Scout?” Gask looked at her.

“I know my job.” She stopped the truck neatly at the casino’s rear entrance, looked at Gask then radioed their arrival to Forged’s dispatcher. Gask’s jaw twitched. He spat out his toothpick and leaned toward her.

“Before this day is done, Scout, you and me are going to have a talk about your goddammed attitude.” Gask’s breath smelled of coffee and the celebratory retirement whiskey he mixed with it. “Maybe you fail to realize how close you are to having your Pocahontas ass kicked back to the reserve where you’ll be reading numbers off ping pong balls to old squaws with no teeth.”

Jessie looked at Gask calmly and said nothing.

Gask stared back hard and cold for a long time, then said: “Let’s go, Refried.”

Gask and Perez got out. Perez quickly loaded the dolly with delivery bags containing nearly a million dollars in unmarked bills while Gask scanned the area. The casino’s security cameras recorded their work while rollers and families slowed towatch, making the old joke about their jackpots having arrived. They wheeled the cash into the casino, Gask glancing at the rear of the truck as Jessie headed for the main entrance.

A black wind was kicking up.

Half an hour after they’d finished loading the last ATM in the casino, Gask savored the air conditioning and decided to take a leak before he and Perez started for the main entrance to meet Scout.

“You’re taking part in Las Vegas history, Gil, did you know that?” Gask said at the urinal while relieving himself.

Perez was bent over a sink, running cold water over his face.

“No.”

“When I punch out at the end of the week, I’ll be leaving with a spotless loss sheet, one nobody in this town can touch.”

“Didn’t Roger Maddison retire from Titan Federal, a few months back? He put in twenty-seven years without a loss.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“It was in the newsletter. Your record would be second to his. Third actually. Pike Radeaux at Titan packed it in last year. Twenty-five loss-free years.”

“No. You’re wrong.”

“I’ve still got the newsletter somewhere. I’ll show you.”

“That newsletter’s bullshit,” Gask flushed. “What the hell do you know, Refried? Let’s go. Jesus. Why do I waste my breath on you?”

The wheels of the empty dolly cart sank in the lobby’s carpet as Perez pushed it to the main entrance. Amid the eternal clanking of the slots, Gask strained in vain to locate the familiar colors of the Forged armored car through the glass doors. No truck. No Scout.

“That damned squaw better have an explanation!” Gask’s fingers clasped his radio, knowing the instant he called for Scout on the air, a fuck-up attributed to him was exposed fleet-wide.

He held off.

“Perez, quick. Check the back. Maybe she had a breakdown. I’ll search the front lot. Meet me back here. Hurry.”

Gask shivered as the sun worked on him, his keys chiming as he trotted. No trace of the truck out front.

Perez returned, breathless. “She’s gone, Elmer,” he doubled over gasping. “Maybe it was the last drop? Those guys touching the truck?”

Gask’s stomach tightened. Four days from retirement. Twenty-two years. His twenty-two thousand dollar bonus was melting here in a casino parking lot because of that stupid god-dammed squaw.

“Better call it in, right, Elmer?”

Gask couldn’t believe he was being screwed like this. Why?

“Elmer, she could have been taken hostage. Jesus! Call it in!”

Gask scanned the lot, willing the truck to appear. God-dammit. It was a hit. Had to be. On his goddamn watch. His twenty-two grand.

“Elmer! Call it in!” Perez’s hand shook as he ran the back of it across his dried lips. “They could kill Jessie!”

Gask put his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Sixty-five. Sixty-five. This is three. Radio check?”

“Elmer.” Gask was wasting time covering his ass.

“Sixty-five. Sixty-five. This is three. Radio check?”

Nothing.

“Dispatch to three. Is there a problem?”

Perez watched him.

Gask swallowed hard. “There’s been a hit.”

“Say again three?”

“A hit. We can’t raise our driver.”

U.S. Forged Amored Inc., immediately activated its loss incident procedure, alerting a Las Vegas 911 dispatcher then Len Dawson, Forged’s manager for Las Vegas. He notified Wade Smith, his supervisor at headquarters in Kansas City. Smith warned Dawson he would “have somebody’s head on a stick if we lost points.” Dawson drove to the scene calculating a multimillion-dollar loss with a severe detrimental impact on the company’s insurance rates. Maybe the casino could be nailed for partial liability? Dawson cursed the fact Gask’s crew hadthe truck with no electronic location finder. Scout’s well-being did not enter his mind as he monitored Forged’s attempts to reach her through the truck’s radio and cellular phone.

Unit 1065 was not responding.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police launched a bulletin across Clark County and the Valley. The Las Vegas FBI and Nevada Highway Patrol were alerted. Within two minutes, four marked Metro units arrived at the casino, followed later by an unmarked sedan and detectives Todd Braddick and Chester King from the LVMP robbery detail. Before they could enter the lobby, a crew from Channel Three and Ray Davis, the Review Journal’s crime senior reporter, approached them.

“Chester, you got a second?” Davis opened his notebook. “We hear it’s an armored car heist with big numbers?”

King smiled. He was six feet six inches tall, a gentle giant whose confidence came from twelve years as a robbery detective. His partner was another story. Braddick had less than two years as a detective, yet he was a brash cock-of-the-walk. Handsome. Single. His laser-sharp eye for detail was earning him a reputation as fast as his switchblade tongue. He exhausted King. They tried unsuccessfully to blow by the reporters.

Davis said: “We heard three to four million, that right, Chester?” King wouldn’t take the bait. Then Seleena Ann Ramone from Channel Three thrust her microphone toward him: “Have you found the driver, yet?”

Braddick shook his head. “Give us a break, Hon.”

“Hon?”

“Folks, please,” King spread his hands apart. “We just got here. You know more than we do. We’ll get back to you. Thanks.”

Inside, the detectives were directed to an office behind the main registration desk. Half a dozen people watched as Forged’s manager was going at it with Theo Fontaine, the casino’s security boss.

“… this is on you, not the casino,” Fontaine said.

“Just answer me. Did you, or did you not, seal the perimeter of your facility once my people reported the theft?” Dawson said.

“Your people never breathed a word to us. It was Metro who called us, sir. Don’t be putting this on us.”

“Excuse us, gentlemen,” Braddick said. “Metro Robbery. Braddick and King. We’d like to interview the armored car crew, please. My guess is that is you two?” He pointed at Gask and Perez. They nodded.

“Theo, could you pull all your recorded security video for us,” King said.

“Already on it, Chester.”

King nodded to Gask. “Sir, could you come with me. Detective Braddick will interview your partner. Theo, we’re going to need separate offices.”

“No problem,” he led them away.

“Detective,” Dawson said. “I’d like a word with my staff first, if I may? I’d like to go over the log and drop sheets.”

“And you are…?” King said.

“Len Dawson. Manager of Forged’s operations here.”

“Mr. Dawson, once we’re finished, they’re all yours.”

Fontaine led Braddick and Perez to a small meeting room. Plush carpet. Floor to ceiling one-way glass overlooking the outdoor pool. Big mahogany table. Thick leather chairs. Dark paneled walls. Gil Perez puffed his cheeks and exhaled as Braddick took his name and particulars, then asked:

“How much was in the truck when it vanished, Gil?”

“Three million seven hundred thousand. Unmarked nonsequential.”

“You sure about the number?”

“I’m the money man, the counter.”

“OK, tell me about the driver, Jessica Scout.”

“Jessie, was-is a good person. She always defended me in front of Elmer. He’s our crew chief.”

“You needing defending?”

“He called us names. Called me Refried. Called Jessie squaw, Pocahontas. She’s an American Indian. She stood up to Elmer. He’s good at his job. Never had a successful hit on his watch. Retires this week after twenty-two years. He’s a very tough boss.”

“Gil, what was Jessie’s demeanor today?”

“Same as any other day. She was quiet. Alone in her thoughts, she was a very quiet woman. What if she’s dead? What if she’s been killed?”

“Gil, we don’t have any evidence of anything. We’re only one hour into this. Do you remember anything unusual today?”

“Two guys.”

“What about them?” Braddick wrote carefully.

“At the drop before this one. Here, I wrote it on my drop sheet,” Perez handed it to Braddick, explaining. “Jessie said two rollers got too close to the truck. She sounded the horn to make them back off.”

“Maybe a distraction for something else?”

“You think so? What if they killed her, there was three point seven million left in the load. I was the money man today.”

“Yes, you said. And she was scheduled to drive?”

“Yes.”

“And the truck without the finder? You knew about that today?”

“Yes. Each crew is scheduled in advance to take it.”

“In advance?” Braddick continued writing. “How long has Jessie been with the company?”

“Four, nearly five months.”

“And you? How long?”

“Three years.”

“What do you know about Jessie? You two socialize after work?”

“No. She’s shy, quiet.”

“Any money problems? Debts? Drugs? Gambling? She living beyond her pay?”

Perez shook his head.

“You know what she does after work? Who her friends are?”

“Like I said, she’s very quiet.”

“So you really don’t know her at all, do you Gil?”

“I-I guess, I, man, I worked with Jessie four months.”

“Gil, tell me why you said she was so quiet.”

“I figure, by the little she told me, she’d had a sad life.”

“How?”

“She started to tell me once how bad things always follow her.”

“What bad things?”

“Death.”

“Death?”

“Detective Braddick, what if she’s dead already?”

A few doors away, in a dim office, Elmer Gask fished out a stick of gum and a fresh toothpick from his chest pocket, crossed his arms, leaned back hard in his chair and watched King.

“She was a bitch to me all morning, is all I can attest to her ‘demeanor.’” Gask’s toothpick moved rhythmically with his chewing.

“What do you think happened?”

The toothpick froze as the gum chewing stopped.

“I’ll tell you what happened.” Gask’s eyes widened with cold rage. “I just lost a twenty-two thousand-dollar bonus because of that stupid squaw.”

King waited for an explanation.

“I retire at the end of the week. You clock out with a loss-free sheet, you get a grand for every year.”

“That’s a tragedy. What do you think happened?”

“If I knew that, we’d recover our load,” Gask resumed chewing. “She wasn’t careful. I told her to be cautious after the incident with the two jerks at the previous drop.”

“The two guys who approached the truck?”

“I told her to log it, to call it in to dispatch when we were in here servicing the ATMs.”

“Did she?”

“I doubt it.”

“What about her past, her personal and career history?”

“Squaw or half breed from some welfare-eating reserve in Montana, or some end of the world state like that. Supposed to have done a good job at security for some faggy antique dealer in New York. If you ask me, she was an equal opportunity hire. Right gender, right race, right useless.”

“You don’t think she was qualified?”

“I don’t hire ’em, Chester.”

“What kind of driver was she?”

“Substandard.”

“What about her past, any debts, habits, anybody leaning on her?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that shit.”

“Tell me about today, what sort of day was it?”

“Routine, we were just making our drops.”

“What about the truck? It had no finder?”

“That was her job as driver to deal with that. I told her to get that finder fixed. She ignored me.”

“Aren’t you her supervisor?”

Gask gave some thought to how he should answer.

“Yes and I supervised her to see the finder was fixed. I was intending to write her up for not following through.”

“I see. What do you know about Jessica Scout, her circles?”

“Not a goddamned thing. She never spoke to me. I told you, she was an ice bitch who acted like she was better than everyone.”

“Tell me about Gil Perez?”

“He’s kind of a shifty beaner.”

“That right?”

“Always talking about his dream of going away and starting his own car wash business. Only thing holding him back was lack of cash.”

“That so?”

“That’s so.”

“And what about you, Elmer, what do you talk about?”

“Football and America.”

“What about America?”

“She’s fucked up real good.”

“What really happened to the money?”

“Jessica Scout got herself jammed. Thought she knew it all. Let her guard down, now she’s gone.”

“That prospect doesn’t exactly bring tears to your eyes.”

Gask shifted his toothpick to the opposite side of his mouth then leaned to King. “Her stupidity cost me twenty-two grand.”

“But you break even.”

“How’s that, Chester?”

“Scout may have paid with her life.”

Later, Braddick and King compared notes at a quiet table at the casino’s nearest bar, which serviced a keno lounge.

Braddick started. “My guy fears she is dead.”

“Mine hopes she is,” King said before his pager went off. He read the caller’s number. “Looks like the feds.” He squinted, tilting the pager for better light. “Yup. FBI’s offering to help. I’ll call.”

“Three point seven. What do you make, Chester? Inside? Outside?”

“All of the above.”

Joe Two Knives’s dark glasses reflected the sun, cloudless sky and warehouses of a light industrial section of Las Vegas.

What if something went wrong? He watched the garage one hundred yards away. He did not want to be near it in case something went wrong. Nothing appeared suspicious. Everything had gone smoothly. Every detail of preparation had come off cleanly.

He checked his watch then the cell phone on the seat beside him. His hands were sweating inside the two pairs of surgical gloves he wore. The car’s air conditioner kept him cool. He kept himself calm. He had been through this before. Twenty-five years ago. No one will die this time. But what if she didn’t make it? What would he do? He didn’t know. It was the one event he did not plan for.

His phone trilled.

“Yes,” he said.

“ETA seven to ten.”

“Thank you.”

Two Knives drove along a back service alley, stopping at the rear of the garage which bore a small painted sign: AAA Armored Repair. It was a rectangular cinder block building. One story. The garage had three auto bays each with an electronic door in the front and rear. He unlocked the building, parked his car in one of the bays then closed the rear electronic door. The garage was clean and empty. It had a small office and a bathroom. He went to a worktable, switched on a scanner, listening as Las Vegas police dispatches echoed clearly.

A horn sounded two quick beeps in front of the building.

Two Knives hit a switch, the door rose, a motor revved, and a U.S. Forged armor-plated Ford van edged inside, the electronicdoor closing behind it. Jessica Scout stepped out and studied her watch.

“Nineteen minutes since I left.”

He tossed Scout two pairs of rubber gloves. “Every second counts. You know what to do.”

Scout unlocked the truck’s side door, entered, then slid three canvas bags to him. All together, they weighed about forty pounds, he figured, carrying them to the work table. The cash was wrapped in blue plastic, three packages of one hundreds, fifties, and twenties. They covered the table with the bundles, laying each one flat.

“Three million, seven hundred thousand,” she said. “Unmarked.”

He then took a metal detector wand and slowly passed it over the cash several times. No transmitters. He took one bundle, pulled up his pants leg and rubbed it against his moist skin. Then he took an ultraviolet lamp and illuminated his leg. Nothing. No chemicals. He carefully packed the bundles into white plastic medical containers, with lids cautioning:

DANGER DO NOT OPEN

MEDICAL WASTE

CONTAMINATED CADAVER TISSUE

He sealed the containers, placed them into three small, black suitcases, then loaded them into the car’s rear seat. Then he grabbed a utility knife, a roll of silver duct tape, and a small box. His eyes met Scout’s. “Ready?”

She nodded and climbed into the back of the truck. He taped her ankles together, then her knees, then her wrists, avoiding the rubber gloves, then her mouth. Again he looked in her eyes and stroked her hair.

She was prepared. Scout rolled onto her stomach.

Two Knives pulled her Glock from her holster. Examined it. He removed the safety, chambered a round, placed the muzzle against Scout’s back, laying it nearly flat while pressing it slightly into the fleshy part of her hip. The bullet would graze her. His finger slid around the trigger. Two Knives saw Scout’s pretty half-turned face, blinking in anticipation.

Just enough to bleed, he instructed himself.

She nodded.

He fired the gun. Scout lurched, grunting. A small tear, edges blackened with powder appeared on her uniform. Blood soaked the wound. He examined it. A small charred gash. Her skin was ragged and torn. He cut the tape from Scout’s mouth and wrists, making sure some blood was on the remnants. The used tape with her blood, hair and fibers from her uniform would be left in the truck.

“Ok?”

“It burns a little, but I’m fine.”

“I’ll patch it up.”

Two Knives opened the first aid kit. Scout removed her shirt. She jerked when he dabbed iodine in her wound, more so than when she was shot. He dressed her wound.

“We’re almost through. Stand up.”

Scout undid her utility belt, letting it drop to the floor. Two Knives dropped the Glock in the truck. Scout undid her pants, handing them to him. He ripped them near the zipper.

“We’re coming up on half an hour,” he said, scooping up the knife, tape and kit, dropping them in the trash as he rushed to the small office. Scout, now stripped down to her bra and panties, gathered her hair as she hurried to the garage’s washroom.

In the office, Two Knives changed into new, pressed slacks, pin-striped shirt, Gucci shoes, and a conservative jacket. He combed his neatly trimmed silver hair, then slipped on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

Taped to the bottom of the desk was a brown envelope with several passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards, cash. He tucked it into his breast pocket. Then he gathered everything from the worktable and tossed it in the trash, except the radio scanner. That went in the car. He left a window down so he could still hear it. He opened the trunk. A wheelchair was folded inside. Next, he inventoried the entire garage, nothing was left. Nothing. He closed the doors of the Forged truck then unfurled a white nylon sheet that he cast over the van, pulling it down at spots where it was uneven. He checked the printed note he had taped earlier to the window of the front door.

Closed Indefinitely Due to Death in Family.

“Ready,” said the old woman who’d stepped from the washroom. She was wearing a light-knit knee-length sweater over a flower print caftan, flat-soled shoes. An emerald scarf hid her neck, her gray hair reached to her shoulders, framing her face, which was sallow and frowning under large, dark glasses. She was wearing rubber gloves and clutching her brown purse. She was hunched as if she were ill or enduring pain as she walked to the car’s front passenger seat.

Two Knives grabbed the trash from the washroom, then tied three large garbage bags from the garage and tossed them in the car’s trunk. He hit the switch for the electronic door, drove the car outside, stopping to close the garage door before they drove off down the rear alley.

Several blocks away, he stopped to drop the trash bags in a warehouse dumpster. He knew the schedule. This dumpster would be emptied the next morning.

They were well along Interstate 15 southbound, which paralleled the Strip, by the time their portable scanner crackled with the first dispatch of an armored car heist at a casino on Las Vegas Boulevard.

“So far, so good,” he said, tossing the scanner out the window as they neared the Exec Air Terminal at McCarran.

Scout said nothing. She was looking west to the mountains.

The clerk at Desert Airstream Services moved from behind her counter to greet the old woman in the wheelchair and her physician.

“Dr. Hegel. Everything’s ready. That’s a pretty scarf, Mrs. Duggan,” the clerk said after summoning the ground crew. They assisted Hegel getting his patient, Heather Duggan, comfortably aboard her chartered jet, for her one-way flight to Orange County.

Duggan, a reclusive casino heiress, had a terminal condition, her doctor had explained a few weeks earlier. It was her wish to die in California where she was born. Hegel had arranged the trip, paying cash in advance. He’d included large gratuities for respecting the eccentric woman’s privacy.

The fresh-cut roses in the jet were a nice touch, Two Knivesthought as the small Cessna Citation shot over the Spring Mountains, about ninety minutes after Scout had driven off with $3.7 million in unmarked cash.

That evening after dinner in the restaurant of the Ramada in Santa Ana, Two Knives told Scout that he wanted to do something he’d dreamed of doing all his life and they drove to Newport Beach where they watched the sun set on the ocean.

“I never really knew you Jessie,” he said as they walked near the surf. “I was angry at Angela for being with a white man. I’d thought, how could my sister betray her people, her blood. I was consumed with anger. I’d lost my way in the world and ended up in a cell.”

Gulls cried above them.

“I never meant for that man, the armored car guard, to die like that in San Diego. It was a terrible mistake. A terrible thing and I paid for it with twenty-five years of my life.” The sun painted the creases of his sad, weary face with gold as he searched the horizon. “I did a lot of thinking in those twenty-five years, thinking how I could set things right.”

“My mother was angry that I’d written to you in prison. She said you were no good, Joe.”

“She has a right to her opinion of me. Especially now. I heard she has less than three months with her illness.”

Scout nodded.

“Jessie, your letters kept me alive during my darkest times. Gave me a reason to want to make up for deserting my own blood when they needed me.”

“You’re the only one who knows the truth about all the things that happened when I was young.”

“It hurt me more than you’ll ever know, to read of your pain. I knew in my heart you did nothing to deserve it. I believe you were owed a life, and that I could help you get it.”

Scout took her uncle’s hand and squeezed it.

“Remember, you must never call your mother, or see her. Once the FBI puts everything together, they’ll watch. If you’re going to survive you must let her spend her last days thinking you are dead. It’s better this way. You’ll see her in the next world.”

Scout brushed a tear from her cheek.

As if reading her mind, he said: “Not even a letter, Jessie.”

She nodded. They’d gone over every detail.

“This looks like a good spot.” He stopped, pulled a hotel towel from his bag and began to undress. Jessie was surprised. He was wearing swimming trunks. “I’ve always dreamed of swimming in the ocean,” he said.

At fifty-four, he had the firm muscular body of a man thirty years younger, a dividend of keeping in shape during his time in Folsom. Scout noticed a small tattoo over his shoulder that looked like a storm over mountains.

“What’s this mean?”

“Ah, that,” he said. “I got it from an old chief I met on C-Yard the second year I was inside,” he said. “Funny. I wanted an eagle. But he was very insistent that I have this one.”

“What is it, what does it mean?”

“He said it was for the entity who delivers calm after the storm. Pretty cool, don’t you think?”

Jessie nodded.

“The old man called it, The Lightning Rider.”

Two Knives walked into the ocean, leaving Scout standing alone on the beach brushing her tears, feeling the warmth of the fading sun.