Murder in Vegas

GRIEVING LAS VEGAS by Jeremiah Healy

Ed Krause lay on his back, staring up at the night sky, his sports jacket surprisingly comfortable as a pillow beneath his head. The desert air in mid-May was still warm, considering how long the sun’d been down. And the stars so bright-Jesus, you could almost understand why they called it the Milky Way, account of out here, away from any city lights, more white star showed than black background.

At least until Ed turned his head to the east, toward Las Vegas, which glittered on the horizon, like a cut jewel somebody kept turning under a lamp.

Jewel?

Ed coughed, not quite a laugh. Better you stuck with carrying diamonds and jade. But no, this new deal had sounded too good to pass up, especially the final destination and the cash you’d have for enjoying it. From that first day, at Felix…

… Wasserman’s house. In San Francisco, on one of those crazy fucking hill streets near Fisherman’s Wharf that had to be terraced and handrailed before even an ex-paratrooper like Ed Krause could climb up it.

Felix Wasserman was an importer, which is how Ed had met him in the first place, seven-no, more like eight-years ago. Just after Ed had mustered out of the Army and was nosing around for something to do with his life. A buddy from the airborne put him onto being a courier, which at first sounded like the most boring duty Ed could imagine, worse even than KP in the Mess Hall or standing Guard Mount outside some Godforsaken barracks in the pits of a Southern fort.

Until the buddy also told him how much money could be made for carrying the right kind of stuff. And being able to stop somebody from taking it away from you.

After climbing thirty-five fucking steps, Ed found himself outside Wasserman’s house. Or townhouse, maybe, since it shared both its side walls with other structures, what Ed thought was maybe earthquake protection, since he’d seen signs down on more normal streets for stores that were temporarily closed for “seismic retrofitting.” Wasserman had his front garden looking like a Caribbean jungle, and Ed had to duck under flowers in every shade of red that grew tall as trees before he could ring the guy’s bell.

His doorbell, that is, seeing as how Ed Krause was what he liked to call in San Fran’ a “confirmed heterosexual.”

Wasserman himself answered, turned out in a silk shirt that looked as though his flower trees out front had been spun into cloth for it Pleated slacks and soft leather loafers that probably cost-in one of the tonier “shoppes” off Union Square-as much as Ed’s first car.

“Felix, how you doing?”

“Marvelously, Edward,” said Wasserman, elegantly waving him inside. “Simply marvelously.”

Give him this: The guy didn’t seem to age much. In fact, Wasserman didn’t look to Ed any older than he had that day when Ed-working for a legitimate, bonded courier service then-first laid eyes on him. It was after maybe the third or fourth above-board job he’d carried for the gay blade that Wasserman had felt him out-conversationally-on maybe carrying something else for his “import” business. At a commission of ten percent against the value of the parcel involved.

Now Ed just followed the guy up the stairs to a second-floor room with the kind of three-sided window that let you look out over the red-flower trees across to the facing houses and up or down the slope of the hill at other people’s front gardens. Only, while there were two easy chairs and a table in the window area, Wasserman never had Ed sit there during business.

Too conspicuous.

Another elegant wave of the hand, this time toward the wet bar set back against one wall. “Drink?”

“Jim and Coke, you got them.”

“Edward,” Wasserman seeming almost hurt in both voice and expression, “knowing you were coming to see me, of course I stocked Mr. Beam and your mixer.”

Ed took his usual seat on one couch while his host first made the simple bourbon and cola cocktail, then fussed over some kind of glass-sided machine with arching tubes that always looked to Ed like a life-support system for wine bottles. Coming away holding a normal glass with brown liquid in it and another like a kid’s clear balloon with some kind of red-is this guy predictable or what, colorwise?-Wasserman handed Ed his drink before settling into the opposing couch, a stuffed accordion envelope on the redwood-see?-coffee table between them.

“Edward, to our continued, and mutual, good fortune.”

Clinking with the guy, Ed took a slug of his drink, just what the doctor ordered for that forced march up the screwy, terraced street. Wasserman rolled his wine around in the balloon glass about twelve times before sniffing it, then barely wetting his lips with the actual grape juice. Ed wondered sometimes if the wine was that good, or if the dapper gay guy just didn’t want to get too smashed too quick.

“So, Felix,” gesturing toward the big envelope, “what’ve we got this time?”

Wasserman smiled, and for the first time, Ed wondered if maybe the guy had gone for a face-lift, account of his ears came forward a little. But after putting down the wine glass, Felix used an index finger to just nudge the package an inch toward his guest. “Open it and see.”

Ed took a second slug of the Jim and Coke, then set his glass down, too. Sliding the elastic off the bottom of the envelope and lifting the flap, he saw stacks of hundred-dollar bills, probably fifty to the pack.

Ed resisted the urge to whistle through his bottom teeth. “Total?”

“One-quarter million.”

Since they both knew Ed would have to count it out in Wasserman’s presence over a second drink, the courier just put the big envelope back on the table, three packs of cash sliding casually over the open flap and onto the redwood.

Ed said, “For?”

A sigh and a frown, as Wasserman delicately retrieved his glass by its stem and settled back into his couch. “I expect you’re aware-if only in a general way-of the rather distressing state of the economy?”

“I remember hearing something about it, yeah.”

A small smile, not enough to make the ears hunch. “Ah, Edward, both dry and droll. My compliments.” Wasserman’s lips went back to neutral. “My rather well-heeled clientele hasn’t been consuming quite as conspicuously these last few seasons, feeling that fine jewels, no matter the rarity nor brilliance, can’t quite replace cash as hedges against the uncertain miasma within which we find ourselves floundering.”

Ed just sipped his drink this time, kind of getting off on the way Wasserman made up sentences more elaborate than his garden out front.

“However, the landlord still expects his rent for my shop, and the bank its mortgage payments for my home. And so I’ve shifted my sights a bit, importwise.”

“Meaning?”

Wasserman took an almost normal person’s belt of his wine. “Heroin.”

Ed would have bet cocaine. “Let me guess. I take the package of money from here to there, and pick up the powder.”

“Precisely. Which, of course, would do me no good, since fine Cabernet,” swirling the wine in his glass now, “constitutes my only source of substance abuse. Fortunately, though, I have a business contact in the Lake Tahoe area who will gladly buy said powder from you, as my representative, at… twice the price.”

Ed did the math. “You’re saying my cut of this will be ten percent of five hundred thousand?”

“Precisely so. From Tahoe you’ll transport the remainder of the cash involved to Las Vegas.”

Christ, even a bonus. Growing up in Cleveland, Ed’d always had an itch to sample the glitzy life, but in all his time in San Fran’, he’d never been to Vegas. He’d heard everything there-thanks to the casino action-was bigger and better. spectacular tits and ass on the showgirls, classy singers and magicians, even lion tamers. Not like the trendy shit that passed for culture in the “City by the Bay.”

In fact, Ed had also seen-three times, at cineplex prices-that Nick Cage movie, Leaving Las Vegas. Got the guy an Oscar, and he fucking well deserved it. I mean, who’d ever believe that anybody’d want to check out of the genuine “City That Never Sleeps”?

Felix allowed himself another couple drops of his wine. “When you reach Las Vegas itself, a friend of mine will-shall we say, hand-wash-the actual bills for his own fee of a mere five percent, after which you shall bring the balance back here to me.”

Ed thought about it. A little complicated for his taste, given the number of stops and exchanges. But fifty thousand for what would be maybe three, four days tops of driving? And he didn’t give a shit whether his share was laundered or not, since Ed would be passing it in far smaller amounts than Wasserman probably had to pay his creditors.

“Felix, with all this running around, I’m gonna need a cover story, and an advance against expenses.”

Now a pursing of the lips. “How much?”

“That’ll depend on where I’m picking up the powder to begin with.”

Another sigh, but more-what the fuck was the word? Oh, yeah: wistful. “Edward, I actually envy you that, even though the Cabernet varietal, in my humble opinion, doesn’t really thrive there. You’ll make your first exchange in Healdsburg. Or just outside it.”

Ed had noticed the town’s name on maps, maybe two hours up U.S. 101 from the Golden Gate, in one of the many parts of the state called “wine country.”

He said, “Three thousand, then, upfront, given the cover story I’m thinking about.”

“Which is?”

“Bringing a chick along, camouflage for flitting around all these vacation spots like a butterfly.”

“A woman.” The deepest frown of all from Felix Wasserman. “That I don’t envy you, Edward.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Brandi Willette, trying to size up whether this guy who never plunged for more than three well-drinks at a sitting-but did tip her twenty percent every time he settled a tab-was on the level. “You want to take me-all expenses paid-with you on this whirlwind trip over the next four days?”

A nod from his side of the pub’s bar, the guy wearing an honest-to-God, old-fashioned sports jacket. “Maybe even longer, we like it in Vegas enough.”

Brandi had been there only once, on the cheap with a girlfriend, splitting every bill down the middle. The girlfriend turned out to be a drag, but Brandi loved the gambling, believing firmly that if she could just sense her luck changing, she’d make a fortune, even from the slot machines. The kind of money that’d let her get out from behind a smelly, tacky bar, listening to offers from guys like this… uh, this… “It’s ‘Eddie,’ right?”

“No. Just ‘Ed,’ like you’re ‘Brandi’ with an ‘I’.”

She shook her head, then had to blow one of the permed blond curls out of her face. “Okay, Ed. We go together, same room, same bed, but if I don’t feel like doing the nasty, we just share the sheets, not stain them?”

“That’s the deal.”

Brandi gave it a beat. Then, “So, how come you’re asking me?”

The guy seemed to squirm a little on his pub stool, which sort of surprised her, since Ed had struck Brandi as the ultramacho type. Probably six-one, one-ninety, with a military haircut and big, strong-looking hands. Her pre-dick-tion: A fuck buddy who’d come up skimpy on the foreplay but be a piledriver during the car chase.

“Well?” she said, wondering if maybe the guy was a little slow in the head.

“It’s part of a business transaction.”

“What kind of ‘transaction’?”

“Just some documents. I exchange what this person gives me for what that person gives me, then I do the same thing a couple more times.”

“What, these ‘persons’ don’t trust Federal Express?”

“They trust me more.”

“And why is that?” asked Brandi.

“It’s confidential.”

“Confidential.” The curl spilled down over her eye again, and Brandi blew it back away. “You’re a spy?”

“No.”

“Private eye?”

“No.”

Given the guy’s limited active vocabulary, Brandi didn’t waste her breath on “lawyer,” but she did cock her head in a way that she knew guys dug, kind of a “persuade me” angle, like Sarah Jessica Parker did on Sex and the City. “So, we’re gonna be sleeping together, in the same room, and you can’t even share why you’re picking me?”

“All right.” More squirming. “It’s because we don’t know each other very well.”

Huh, that was sure the truth. On the other hand, Brandi figured she could always just fuck the guy senseless, then while he snored away, search through his stuff, find out what was really going on.

And Vegas would put Brandi one step closer to making her fortune. To attending catered dinner parties at swank homes instead of nuking some frozen muck in the microwave before spending the night surfing the cable channels.

“Okay, Honey,” said Brandi, “I want to see your driver’s license, and then I’m gonna call three of my girlfriends-who you don’t know at all-to tell them I’m going on this grand tour.”

Ed seemed to mull that over. “All right.”

“And one other thing.”

“What?”

Brandi leaned across the pub’s bar, used her forearms to push her breasts a smidge higher against her tank-top, give him a little more reason to be nice to her. “You ever eaten at Masa’s?”

As the slipstream from a passing trailer-truck tried to knock the little Mustang convertible onto the shoulder of U.S. 101, Ed Krause heard Brandi say from the passenger’s seat, “I think it’s another two exits from here.”

He glanced over at the chick, her pouty face buried in a road map from the rent-a-car company, and began to question his own judgment. Not that Brandi with a fucking “I” wasn’t the right type. Just to the “maybe not” side of slutty, with only one nose-stud and six earrings as body piercings, a small tattoo on the left shoulder that looked professional, not homemade. Decent boobs and legs, too, but overall not so smart or good-looking he thought she’d turn down his offer of a free trip.

Or his offer to help her through the night.

But “eating” at Masa’s on Bush Street the night before turned out to be at the bar, since they didn’t have reservations. Actually, Ed kind of counted his blessings on that one, because the very chi-chi, black-and-chrome restaurant didn’t exactly price out as reasonable. He had to admit, though, he’d tried stuff off the “tastings” menu that the bartender suggested, and it was the best fucking food he’d ever eaten. Ed even had wine, served in Felix-like balloons, and Ed could tell that Brandi was impressed by the way he rolled the grape juice around the inside of his glass before sniffing and sipping it.

Not, however, impressed enough to take him to her place or vice-versa to his, for a little “tour preview.” No, Brandi begged off, saying she needed to pack something more than the tote bag she’d carried from the pub to the restaurant-“It’s Nine West, Honey, and only forty-nine-ninety-nine, but the real reasonI bought it is how the last three numbers on the price tag all lined up the same, like it was gonna bring me luck?”

Thinking, Vegas at the end will make all this shit worth my while, Ed just picked her up the next morning outside Macy’s on Geary Street, thinking too that once he got her hammered on a wine tour and fucked her senseless back in their room, he could always go through the chick’s stuff, get a last name and address off her driver’s license.

In case you ever want to… visit her later.

And Brandi was good enough at navigating, Ed could keep his eyes on the rear and side mirrors, make sure nobody stayed with them as he first did fifty-five for a while, then sixty, then a little over before dropping back down to fifty-five. It was a beautiful day, and frankly the slower speed with the top down was a lot more enjoyable than just putting the pedal to the metal.

There were a bunch of exits for Healdsburg, but give the chick credit: She picked the right one for the Inn on the Plaza. As they were shown to their rooms by a pert brunette younger than Brandi, Ed could tell his cover story was watching him to see if he was watching their guide. But all he did was listen to the brunette tell the story of the “bed-and-breakfast,” how it had so many skylights because it used to be a “surgery,” which Ed took to be where doctors operated before there were hospitals, much less electricity to let them see what they were cutting.

The room was pretty spectacular, even by Ed’s images of the Las Vegas glitz to come. For now he could see high ceilings and a king-sized brass bed, a big tiled bathroom and Jacuzzi for two.

If all went according to plan.

Just as Ed was about to tip the brunette and get her out of there, he heard Brandi behind him gush, “Oh, God, he’s so cute!”

Which is when Ed noticed the chick grabbing a teddy bear off one of the many throw pillows at the head of the bed and hugging it between her boobs.

Right on cue, the brunette said, “They’re even for sale, at our desk downstairs.”

As Brandi squealed with delight, Ed Krause hoped that the tab for their dinner the night before wouldn’t be an omen for thestuffed animal and everything else on the trip to Vegas, even if Felix Wasserman was fronting expenses.

“I still,” said Brandi Willette, around a hiccup she thought she stifled pretty well, “don’t understand why we couldn’t stop at that last winery?”

Driving them, top down, along the nice country lane, Ed-not “Eddie”-seemed to put a little edge on his voice. “Same reason we didn’t stop at the other two-of seven, I’m counting right-you wanted to hit: I couldn’t see the car from the tasting room.”

Brandi swallowed a second hiccup. “Five wineries in one afternoon isn’t really enough, I don’t think.” Then she got an idea. “Is that the same reason you brought your briefcase from the car to the room and then back again?”

“Yes,” the edge still there.

The idea turned into a brainstorm. “And how come we have to put the roof and windows up at every stop,” she gestured at the beautiful day around them like she’d seen a stage actress do once, “even though there’s not a cloud in the sky?”

“That’s right.” Ed pointed toward the glove compartment. “A little yellow button inside pops the trunk, and I don’t want somebody giving it a shot.”

“Couldn’t-” Brandi tried to stifle yet another hiccup, but it was just not to be denied, “-Oh, excuse me, Honey. Couldn’t ‘somebody’ take a knife to the roof, or break one of the windows, or jimmy open one of the doors, and then pop the trunk?”

“They could,” Ed’s voice getting a little nicer, so when he slid his right hand over and onto her left thigh, Brandi didn’t brush it away like she had on the drive up from the city. “But they’re not likely to try it when I can see the car, and anyway that’d give me time to get out there and stop them.”

Brandi didn’t ask Ed how he would stop them, because she’d kind of accidentally stumbled into him at the fourth winery-or maybe the fifth?-and felt something really hard over his right hip.

A gun.

Which, to tell the truth, excited Brandi more than scared her. She figured when he pitched the trip to her back in the pub that something was maybe a little dangerous about the guy, with his overall aura and “confidential transaction.”

And besides, Brandi thought-closing her eyes and letting her head just loll against the back-rest, living the moment with the breeze in her hair and the sun on her face and the birds singing around her-what girl doesn’t like something… hard now and then?

“I still don’t see why I can’t come in with you?”

Ed Krause just looked at her, sitting in the passenger’s seat of the Mustang. He’d left the top down for fresh air, but put Brandi in the shade of a big tree in the circular driveway of a large stucco house with orange roof tiles. Let her kind of doze off some of the incredible amount of wine she’d put away, maybe-please, Christ?-even lose the hiccups doing it.

Of course, despite all the “I still don’t understand this” and “I still don’t see that” bullshit from her, there was no reason to make the chick mad, just as she was letting his nondriving hand, and then his lips, start to soften her up for later, in that brass bed.

Or better, the Jacuzzi.

“Like I told you,” he said to Brandi, nice as he could. “This is the business part.”

She nodded. Sort of. “The confidential part.”

Con-fuh-denture-pah. Ed shook it off with, “Yeah. Just sit tight, enjoy the afternoon, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Brandi seemed to buy it, slumping deeper into the seat with a sappy grin on her face, so he kissed her once and quickly, slipping his tongue in just enough to know she wouldn’t fight more of the same back in their room. Then Ed opened the trunk, took out the briefcase Felix Wasserman had given him to hold the money, and went up to the front entrance, painted the same orange as the roof tiles.

The door swung inward before he could knock or ring, an Asian guy standing there, but more like an owner than a servant. Ed shouldn’t have been surprised, since he knew Wassermandealt with a lot of Chinese guys on the imports, only Ed also thought his gay blade could have prepared him for this by providing more than just a first name.

“Edward?”

“Yeah, though ‘Ed’ is fine. You’re Tommy?”

“The same. Please, come in, though I take it your friend is more comfortable outside?”

“Let’s just say I’m more comfortable that way.”

A wise smile. “I see.”

The guy led Ed into a first-floor living room done up all-Spanish with heavy, dark woods, bullfighting capes and swords, and funny lamps. The guy took one patterned chair and motioned Ed toward its mate.

The courier looked around before sitting down, feeling on his right hip the heft of the Smith & Wesson Combat Masterpiece with its four-inch, extra-heavy barrel-for pistol-whipping, in case he had to discourage some jerk who didn’t require actual shooting. “No security?”

Another wise smile. “None evident, shall we say?”

Ed nodded, kind of liking the guy’s-what, subtlety maybe? “Any reason not to get down to business?”

“As you wish, especially since I don’t wish to keep you from your friend.”

Tommy clapped his hands twice, and two more Asian guys appeared from around a corner. One carried a briefcase the same make and model as the one Ed had, the other a submachine gun so exotic that even the ex-paratrooper didn’t recognize it.

Letting his stomach settle a minute, Ed took his time saying, “And if you clapped just once?”

“Then, regrettably, you’d be dead, and your friend soon thereafter.”

Ed trusted himself only to nod this time. They exchanged briefcases-both unlocked, as usual-Ed looking into the one he was given. “Felix told me I didn’t have to test the stuff.”

“If you did,” said Tommy, “he wouldn’t be doing business with my family in the first place.”

“Good enough.” Ed glanced at the guy with the exotic piece. “Okay for me to leave?”

“Of course,” said Tommy, standing, “Enjoy your visit to our valleys.”

“My friend already has,” Ed rising and feeling he could turn his back on these guys as he walked to the door.

“Oh, God,” said Brandi Willette, nursing the worst hangover she could remember and afraid to look over the side of the car, because the road just fell away down the steep, piney slope. “I think my ears are popping again.”

“The change in altitude,” said Ed from behind the wheel. “And that bottle from the last winery you brought back to the room probably isn’t helping any.”

“Please,” Brandi holding her left hand out in a “stop” sign while her right palm went from the teddy bear in her lap to cover her closed eyes. “Don’t remind me about last night, all right?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think we both liked what happened next.”

Well, you can’t disagree with the guy on that one, at least the parts of it you remember.

Which were: Coming back to the room around five-thirty, after hitting the last row of wineries with names like Clos du Bois, Chauteau Souverain, and Sausal. Feeling free as could be from all the great stuff she’d tasted, and, although Brandi was still hiccuping, ready for anything. Including letting Ed slip her clothes off, the guy more gentle than she could have hoped. After a quick shower together, him touching her just about everywhere, them getting into the Jacuzzi-the guy must have had it filling up while he was stripping her in the bedroom and soaping her in the stall. And then getting a real good look at that snake he had down there, the head on it big as a cobra’s. And Brandi telling him to get in first, sit down, before lowering herself onto his soldier-at-attention. She stayed balanced by resting her palms on his shoulders, her nipples just skimming the surface of the sudsy water as she rocked up and down and back and forth-him laughing, because she still had the hiccups-until she came so violently and thoroughly it was like one long shudder that wasn’t a hiccup at all. In fact, took them away.

And then him lifting her up, not even bothering to dry themselvesoff, and onto the soft mattress of the brass bed-her new teddy bear watching-for another, and another, and…

“Hey,” from the driver’s side, “you’re gonna puke, hold on till I can pull over.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Brandi, hoping she’d have better luck controlling her gag reflex than she did with the hiccups.

“Okay,” said Ed Krause, nudging the chick on her bicep with his fist, “we’re here.”

He watched Brandi’s head try to find its full and upright position in the passenger’s seat. After three hours of complaining about everything under the sun, she’d finally fallen asleep-or passed out-a good ten miles from Tahoe City, and therefore she’d missed some of the best fucking scenery Ed had ever driven through. Snow-capped, purple mountains, sprawling vistas down to pine-green valleys. The whole nine yards of America the Beautiful.

And now Lake Tahoe itself.

Brandi said, “I’m cold.”

“Like I tried to tell you before, it’s the altitude. Walk slow, too, or you’ll start to feel sick.” Stick in the knife? Sure. “Again.”

The chick raised her hand like she had before, reminding him of a school crossing guard, but she managed to get her side door open.

After checking into the Sunnyside Lodge, Ed got them and their luggage to the suite, which had a little balcony off the living room and overlooking the waterfront, more mountains with snowy peaks kind of encircling the lake from high above. Brandi shuffled into the bedroom and flopped face down on the comforter, not even bothering to kick off her shoes. Ed heard snoring before he could secure his briefcase with the heroin behind the couch in the living room, pissed that the key fucking Tommy gave him for the handle lock didn’t fucking work, so all Ed could do was click the catch shut.

Leaving the chick to sleep it off, he went back downstairs and did a walkaround, first outside, then in. Big old lodge, darklog construction, security doors you’d need a computerized room key to open. A moose’s head was mounted on a woodenplaque over one fireplace, a bear’s over another, a buffalo’s over a third.

Ed liked the place. Rugged, with the taxidermy adding just a hint about the history of killing the lodge had seen.

But no pool, and when he asked at the lobby desk, the nice college-looking girl told him it was way too cold to swim in even the lake, because it never got warmer than sixty-eight degrees, “like, ever.”

When Ed got back to the room, Brandi was still snoring. But checking how he’d wedged his briefcase behind the bureau, it had turned a few degrees. Ed tilted the briefcase back to its original angle, then stomped his foot a couple of times, harder on the third one.

Brandi’s voice trickled out of the bedroom. “What the hell are you doing out there?”

The briefcase never budged. “Testing the floorboards. Be sure they can take us rocking that mattress.”

A different tone of voice with, “Wouldn’t we be better off doing your testing… in here?”

And that’s when Ed Krause knew in his bones that Brandi Willette-given how shitty she must still be feeling-had snuck a peek into his unlockable briefcase, just as he’d gone through her “lucky” totebag the night before at the Inn on the Plaza in Healdsburg.

“Honey,” said Brandi Willette, in the best seductive/hurt tone she knew, “I still don’t understand why I can’t come in there with you.”

“Keep your voice down.”

She watched Ed shut the driver’s side door, even almost slam it, in the yard he’d pulled into, a big Swiss-chalet style house on the lakeside in front of them.

Ed turned back to her. “It’s like the last time.”

“Confidential?”

He glanced into the next yard. “I said, keep your voice down. And stay put.”

“All right, all right,” Brandi flicking her hand like she couldn’t give a damn.

Only she did. After seeing all that “snow” in his briefcase back at the lodge, Brandi could care less about the real thing on the mountaintops and melting in the shaded clumps still on the ground under trees that must block the sun. As they drove, many of the houses-like the one next door to the chalet-looked like something out of that ancient Bonanza TV show with Michael Landon that Brandi caught on the cable sometimes, a program she figured he must have done even before that old show Little House on the Prairie, account of how much younger he looked as a son/cowboy instead of a father/farmer.

But the snow in the briefcase? Heroin or cocaine, had to be. Which meant big-time bucks, and maybe an opportunity for her luck really to change, even just riding with Ed.

Or figuring out a way to hijack him. After all, the three friends Brandi called from the pub in the city would go to the police only if she didn’t make it back.

Brandi watched Ed move slowly through the yard and toward the chalet. There’d been a wooden privacy fence between it and the road that wound around the lake. On each side of the fence’s gate were these totem poles, like Brandi remembered from a Discovery Channel thing on Eskimos-or whatever they were called when they lived more in the deep woods and not so much on icebergs.

And, sure enough, there were three guys doing landscaping in the next yard who could have been Eskimos themselves. Short, blocky guys, with square, copper-colored faces. The oldest of them seemed to be bossing the other two, one gathering up broken limbs and throwing them onto a brushpile, the other sweeping the driveway of huge pine cones from even huger trees looming overhead. Probably getting the neighbor’s place ready for the season.

Brandi noticed Ed giving the three Eskimos the eye as he reached the stoop of the chalet. Then the guy knocked and disappeared inside.

Brandi couldn’t believe how cold it could be in mid-May nor how her breathing still wasn’t back to normal from banging Ed and then just walking downstairs in the lodge and over to the Mustang. In fact, about the only other thing Brandi did notice was how, about five minutes after Ed entered the chalet, the oldest Eskimo in the next yard came strolling toward her side ofthe car, smiling and taking a piece of paper-no, an envelope?-out of a bulging pocket in his jacket.

And right then, Brandi Willette, even without knowing what was going to happen next, could feel her luck changing, and visions of what that would mean in Vegas-and beyond-began slam-dancing in her head.

Natalya, a fat-to-bursting fortysomething who looked like no drug pusher Ed Krause had ever encountered, settled the two of them into over-stuffed chairs that suited her like Felix’s red flowers back in San Fran’ suited him, only different.

She said, “Tell me, do you prefer ‘Edward,’ ‘Ed’…?”

“Just ‘Ed,’ thanks.”

Natalya smiled. Not a bad face, you suck a hundred pounds off the rest of her, let the cheekbones show. She seemed to arrange their seating so he could enjoy the dynamite view of the lake through a wall of windows. Ed was pretty sure the chalet had been designed to be appreciated from the water, not the road.

But the view turned out to be less “enjoyable” and more distracting, as some fucking moron in a scuba wetsuit went waterskiing past, and Ed automatically glanced at all the interior doorways he could see.

The fat lady turned her head toward the skier, then turned back, smiling some more. “There’s a rather famous school that teaches that between here and your lodge, though I’ve always felt it a bit too frosty and… strenuous to be diverting.”

As soon as he’d entered the room, Ed had seen the sample case on the tiled floor next to the chair Natalya had picked for herself. He’d rather it be at least the same size as his briefcase, but then the two-fifty in hundreds had barely fit in its twin on the way to Healdsburg, and this would be twice as much, maybe some of it in smaller denominations to boot.

Natalya said, “May I offer you refreshment?”

“No, thanks. I gotta be going soon.”

“As you wish,” the fat lady sighing, as though if he’d said “yes,” maybe she could break some kind of weight-watching rule of her own by joining him. “I will be needing to test your product.”

A switch from Tommy in wine country. “And I’ll be needing to count yours.”

“Let us begin, then.”

“Before we do,” said Ed, leaning forward conversationally but also to free up his right hand to move more fluidly for the revolver under his sports jacket and over his right hip, “any security I should know about, so nobody accidentally gets hurt?”

“Security?” A laugh, the woman’s chins and throat wobbling. “No, Tahoe City is a very safe place, Ed.”

“Not even those guys next door?”

“‘Those guys?’”

“Mexicans maybe, doing yard work.”

“Oh,” a bigger laugh, shoulders and breasts into it now. “Hardly. And they’re Mayans, Ed. They drift up here from the Yucatan to do simple labor-like opening up the houses after the winter’s beaten down the foliage? My neighbor’s a retired professor of archaeology, and the one who first got them to do landscaping for a lot of us along the lake. In fact, that figurine on the table and the stone statue near the fireplace are both gifts from him.” Natalya paused. “I’d have said it was too frigid up here for them, frankly,” the fat broad stating something Ed had been thinking from the moment he saw them, “but my neighbor tells me our gorgeous topography reminds them in some ways of their native land.”

Ed thought that still didn’t ring right: Most people he knew who ever traveled far from home went from colder weather to warmer, not the other way around.

On the other hand, what do you know about Mexicans, period, much less “Mayans” in particular?

Then Natalya opened her hands like a priest doing a blessing. “Shall we?”

Ed brought his briefcase over to her, and he took her sample case back to his chair, accidentally scraping the bottom of the case against the tiles, the thing was that heavy.

“This is supposed to be the best restaurant in town.”

Brandi Willette heard Ed’s comment, but she waited till the waitress at Wolfdale’s-who looked like one of the retro-hippiesback in the city-took their drink orders and left them before glancing around the old room with exposed ceiling beams and a drop-dead-gorgeous view of the lake, kind of facing down its long side from the middle of its short one. “It better be the best, all the time you spent back there.”

Ed just shrugged and read the menu.

Brandi didn’t want to push how long it took him inside the chalet, but she did notice he was carrying a different bag coming back to the convertible. The guy wants to keep things “confidential,” that’s fine. But it didn’t take a genius to figure that if what Ed brought in there was drugs, what he brought out was money. Lots of it. And, given the size of the case, lots more than he used in Healdsburg to buy the shit with.

Then Brandi thought about the oldest Eskimo, and what he’d given her while she was waiting for Ed, what was now nestled in her lucky totebag. Plus what that gave her to think about from her side. For her luck, even her fortune, which was a nice fucking change of pace.

The dinner at Wolfdale’s turned out to be maybe the best food Brandi had ever eaten in her life-medallions of veal, asparagus, some kind of tricked-out potatoes. And a merlot that made even a lot of the great wines she’d tasted the day before seem weak. A perfect experience.

Just like the catered dinner parties you’ll be going to soon.

But, just as they were finishing dessert, Ed said, “How about we take a drive, see the lake by night?”

Remembering the mountains closer to the wine country they’d already gone up and down with her hangover that morning, Brandi said, “I’d rather see our bed by night.”

“We can do that, too. Afterwards.”

Well, what could a girl say to that? A guy who’d rather drive than get laid, there was just no precedent for dealing with such a situation.

“Ohmigod, ohmigod,” said Brandi Willette in a tone that made Ed Krause think of the word shriek.

“What’s the matter?” him taking the Mustang through itspaces on the ribbon of road-lit only by the moon-switchbacking up one of the mountains on the southwest end of the lake.

“What’s the matter?” came out as more what Ed would call a “squeal.” The chick pointed over the passenger’s side of the car without looking down. “There’s no fucking guardrail here!”

“Highway Department probably thinks it wouldn’t help. Either you’d go through it and down, or bounce off it and into a head-on with somebody coming the other way.”

“Don’t even say that.”

Another couple of miles-Brandi now groaning, even shaking-and Ed saw his lights pick up the “SCENIC VISTA” sign that fat Natalya had told him about back at her chalet, after she recommended Wolfdale’s for dinner. “Let’s give you a break.”

He pulled into the otherwise deserted parking area, which seemed, even at night, like just a man-made platform jutting out from the side-nearly the top-of the mountain. They’d passed a few other viewing points-not to mention the entire Nevada town of South Lake Tahoe, but when Brandi had said, “Why don’t we stop here for a while, try our luck?” Ed had glanced around at the penny-ante casinos with Harrah’s, Trump’s and a bunch of other evocative names on them, chintzy motels sprinkled among them, and replied, “Nah, I want to wait for the real thing. In Vegas.”

As Ed now came to a stop in one of the vista’s parking spaces, Brandi finally opened her eyes. “It’s dark out. What’re we gonna be able to see?”

He opened his door, came around to hers. “A fat broad told me a story about a guy, said nobody should miss it.”

Ed could tell the only reason the chick’d leave the car would be to feel her feet on solid ground again, and that was fine. She got out of the Mustang, leaving her lucky fucking totebag on the floor between her feet, and Ed took her hand, guiding her over to the edge of the vista’s platform.

“I don’t want to go any closer.”

“You have to, to appreciate the story I’m gonna tell you.”

“Honey, please. I’ll do you every which way but loose back in the room-”

“-the suite-”

“-whatever, but please don’t…”

“Hey, there it is.”

Ed had his hands on the sides of her shoulders now, marching her in front of him, teach her a lesson about going through his briefcase. She was arching over, pushing her butt into his groin, the grinding sensation of their little “dance” making him hard.

“Honey, please…”

“See? Right there, through the tree branches?” Brandi’s butt was writhing, like a wet cat trying to get free of the drying towel. “The moon’s lighting it up like noontime.”

“It’s a… all I see is this island-ohmigod, way down there?”

“This fat broad told me that back in the old days-eighteen-hundreds we’re talking-there was a caretaker for the house that’s on the mainland, back under the trees.”

“I don’t-”

“Seems this caretaker stayed all winter,” said Ed, “but he liked the island more, and his booze the best. Fact is, he’d row all the way from here to where we’re staying in Tahoe City-miles and miles through the cold, though the lake doesn’t freeze over like you might expect-to hit a saloon, then he’d row all the way back.”

“Honey, let’s go, huh?”

“But this caretaker, he fell in love with that island, so he built his own tomb on it. For when he died, to be buried there.”

“Why are you-”

“Only thing is, the poor old coot was rowing back from town one night with too much of a load on, and he went over into the water. They found his boat, but not him. Not ever. And so he’s at the bottom of the lake someplace, and his tomb’s just falling apart, empty, down there on that pretty little island.”

“Honey, this is too weird for-”

Ed dropped his hands from her shoulders to her biceps, and then lifted her off the ground-swinging her legs straight out-and sat her down, hard, on the ledge overlooking the drop-off.

Brandi lifted her face to the sky and screamed like a baby.

Ed said, “I invited you along on this trip-a complete freebie-and I didn’t move on you ’til you let me know you were ready for it.”

“Yes, yes,” the tears streaming down her cheeks from eyes clenched shut.

“And I don’t expect you to help me at all in what I’m doing, just be half the cover story of the nice couple on a vacation.”

“Anything, Honey, I will.”

“But if I ever…” Ed thrust his pelvis forward, into her butt, like Brandi was giving him a lap-dance and he was pounding her doggy-style. She screamed till her voice broke, then began just sobbing and gasping for breath. “Ever…” he banged her harder, nearly over the edge but for him holding her upper arms, Brandi now just choking on her own breaths, “… think you’re double-crossing me, you’re gonna join that fucking caretaker down there, deep at the bottom of the fucking lake. Or worse.”

“Don’t… Please, don’t…”

Ed pulled Brandi with an “I” back off the ledge, almost having to carry her toward the car. He would have done her on the rear seat, too, finish the lesson, but he could smell what she’d already done to herself, and so Ed Krause wanted her back in their suite and cleaned up first.

Standing under the showerhead, the water so hot she almost couldn’t bear it, Brandi Willette thought, Girl, nobody does that to you and gets away with it. Nobody.

Fuck Ed, the goddamned homicidal maniac, hanging you over the fucking edge of that fucking cliff. Literally fuck him as soon as you dry off, keep Dickhead happy and his fucking mind off killing you, but really fuck him good tomorrow, just like the Eskimo’s note said, just before telling you to tear it up.

Fuck Ed with the other thing that gardener gave you, too.

And, for the first time in hours, Brandi actually smiled, even if only to herself. Feeling the luck changing, guiding her toward the fortune she’d always felt she deserved.

About two hundred miles into the drive that next afternoon, the scenery now pretty much scrub desert on the eastern side of the California mountains, Ed Krause noticed that Brandi wasn’t all that interested in small talk anymore.

Hey, count your blessings, he thought, glancing again to therearview mirror, not such good viewing with the convertible’s top up, but necessary against the withering heat outside: At least today the chick’s not complaining every two minutes.

No, their time at the moonlit vista over Lake Tahoe seemed to have had the right effect on little Brandi. Or so Ed would have thought, from the way she romped him in bed after her shower back at the lodge. Good thing he’d taken the trouble, though, while she was still in the bathroom, to go through her stuff a second-shit!

Checking the rearview, like always, Ed saw the same vehicle again. Making three times in the same day, even after stopping the Mustang for lunch and once more for gas.

A dark Chevy Suburban, or some other fucking station-wagon-on-steroids, coming around the last turn behind their Mustang along one of the narrow state roads in Nevada that linked together like a poorly designed necklace from Reno to Las Vegas. Between the sun’s glare and the Suburban’s tinted windshield, though, Ed couldn’t make out the driver, much less how many others were in the thing.

“What’s the matter?” said Brandi.

Ed thought about how to play it, both with the Suburban and her. “Don’t turn around, but we’ve got somebody tailing us.”

Predictably, the stupid bitch started to turn her head, so he reached over and squeezed her thigh like he wanted to break the bones underneath.

“Owwww! That hurt!”

“It was supposed to. I told you, don’t turn around. Right now, they’ve got no reason to think I’ve spotted them, and I don’t want to give them one.”

“You didn’t have to hurt me for that.”

Ed just shook his head, not trusting his voice right then.

“So,” said Brandi, “what are we going to do?”

Different tone now, kind of “We’re still a team, right?”

He glanced again in his rearview, the Suburban dropping back a little. “Try to lose them.”

Ed nailed the accelerator, Brandi making a moaning noise, kind of like when they’d started again in bed back at the lodge the night before. But the Mustang at least didn’t give him any trouble, the V-8 he’d insisted on at the rent-a-car agency coming into its own.

Maybe five minutes later, Brandi said, “Aren’t you, like, worried about the police or anything?”

“Lesser of two evils,” said Ed, noticing nobody behind them now. Problem was, based on his study of the map that morning before heading out from Tahoe City, there were only so many roads you could take to get to Vegas, so the tail could probably find him, and he didn’t have the firepower onboard to stage an effective ambush.

At least not until he found a perfect spot, and after dark.

Brandi piped up now with, “Are they gone?”

Ed tried to remember whether he’d ever said “they” in talking about the tail, decided he had. “For now.”

“So,” the tone growing a little more impatient, “what are we gonna do?”

“Stay ahead of them. At least for a while.”

“How long a while?”

“Until sunset.”

“Uh-unh, no way, Honey.”

“What the fuck do you mean, no way?”

“I gotta pee.”

“So, do it in your clothes, like you did last night.”

“That’s not funny.”

Jesus Christ. “Okay. Around this next bend, then.”

“No. I want a real bathroom, not…” Brandi with a fucking “I” waving her hand “… some spot behind a bush in the desert where a snake could get me.”

“The desert, or your clothes. You decide how you want to feel, the next hundred miles to Vegas.”

“God, I hate you, you know that?”

Checking the rearview again, Ed was beginning to get that impression, yeah.

Brandi Willette, who’d looked forward so much to enjoying this trip to Vegas, now found she’d run out of tissues.

God, she thought, shaking herself dry as best she could before pulling up her panties. I can’t wait for this to be over.

Straightening from behind the bush, she looked over to the convertible. Dickhead was slouched in the driver’s seat, headback, eyes closed, still wearing that ugly sports jacket to “hide” his gun.

Well, girl, look on the bright side: He doesn’t suspect a thing, and that’ll make it all the sweeter, once it happens.

“No,” said Brandi, out loud but softly as she picked her way back to the car. “When it happens.”

Having slowed to fifty-five about twenty minutes before-just after he put the top down to enjoy the clear, crisp night air of the desert-Ed Krause kept one eye on the rearview and the other on the highway in front of him, figuring he didn’t have to worry about Brandi trying anything until they came to a stop.

She said, “Is it dark enough yet?”

Right on cue. “Dark enough for what?”

Brandi blew out a breath in the passenger seat next to him, like he noticed she did a lot of times-even during sex-to get the hair out of her face.

Why wouldn’t you just get a different ’do, the hair thing bothered you so much?

Brandi said, “Dark… enough… for whatever you’re planning?”

Another thing Ed didn’t like about the little bitch: the way she kept hitting her words hard-even just parts of words, like he was some kind of idiot who couldn’t get her points otherwise.

Shaking his head, Ed checked the odometer. Thirty miles from Vegas, give or take, its lights just blushing on the horizon. “Yeah, it’s dark enough for that.”

The Suburban had appeared and disappeared a couple times over the prior two hours, not taking advantage of at least three desolate spots where it could have roared up from behind, tried to force him off the road. Which made Ed pretty sure they were waiting for him to make the first move.

Or, like Brandi, the first “stop.”

“Okay,” Ed abruptly pulling off the road and onto the sandy shoulder. “Here.”

“Honey?”

Ed turned to her. Brandi was leveling a nickel-finish semiautomaticat him in her right hand, a Raven.25 caliber he’d seen only once before.

Brandi Willette had thought long and hard about how to phrase it to him-even rehearsed some, with the teddy bear as Ed-but decided in the end that less was more. And so she was kind of disappointed that Dickhead didn’t look shocked when she said just the one word, and he saw what Brandi had in her hand.

But that was okay. The asshole thought he was so smart, and so macho, and now Ed finds himself trapped and beaten by a girl, one whose luck had finally changed.

“Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he said.

Funny, Dickhead didn’t sound scared, either, like Brandi also expected. “I’m taking the money. Honey.”

Now it seemed like Ed almost laughed, even though she’d worked on that line, too. Make it kind of poignant, even.

“Brandi, Brandi, after all we’ve meant to each other?”

Okay, now she really didn’t get it. “You’re going to open the trunk and take out the case with all the money. Then you’re going to leave it with me and just drive off.”

Brandi saw Dickhead’s eyes go to the rearview mirror again, and she thought she caught just a flash of headlights behind them along with the sudden silence of an engine turning off, though Brandi didn’t dare look away from Ed, what with that big gun over his right hip.

No problem, though. Her luck was both changing and holding, just like it would in Vegas, when she hit the slots and the tables, or even the-

Dickhead said, “Your friends are here.”

That stopped Brandi. “My… friends?”

“When we got back to the room at the lodge, after our little talk about the Tahoe caretaker? While you were in the shower, I went through your totebag there and found that gun. I’d done the same thing at the Inn back in Healdsburg, and it wasn’t there then. So, I figure the only time you were out of my sight long enough to come up with a piece was when I was inside the chalet, and those Mayans were working in the yard next door.”

Mayans? “I thought they were Eskimos?”

Now Ed did laugh, hard. “No, you stupid fucking bitch. The fat broad in the chalet-Natalya-told me they were her neighbor’s crew, but I’m guessing they were hers instead, and one of them passed you that gun.”

Oh, yeah? “Well, smart guy, that wasn’t all he passed me.”

“Some kind of instructions, too, right? Like, wait till the courier stops, at night, near Vegas?”

Brandi was beginning to think she hadn’t torn up the note in the envelope, though she clearly remembered doing it. Then Brandi let her luck speak for her. “You’re the one who’s stupid, Honey, you know that? The Eskimo or whatever told me you’d never think to look for the little thingy he put under your bumper.”

No laughing now. Just a squint, the eyes going left-right-left.

Good. Finally, Brandi gets her man. The way it hurts him.

Your luck has changed for sure, girl.

Dickhead said, “A homing device, probably based on GPS.”

Brandi got the first part, at least. “So they could keep track of us, they lost sight of the car.”

“Christ, you dense little shit. Don’t you understand the deal yet?”

“The deal is that I get ten percent of all the money in the trunk. Because I’m making it easier for them to take it from you.”

“No, Brandi.” A tired breath. “The deal is that as soon as they see me get out of this vehicle, they’re going to charge up here, kill both of us, and take a hundred percent of the money.”

“No, that’s not what the note said.” Brandi kind of used the gun for emphasis. “What it said was, if you don’t get out of this car now, I’m supposed to shoot you.”

Ed’s chin dipped toward his chest. “Good trick, seeing as how I unloaded your little purse piece there.”

As Brandi Willette couldn’t help looking down at her gun, she felt Dickhead’s hand strike like a rattlesnake at her throat, clamping on so tight and yanking her toward him so hard, she barely could register the silver thing-like a Pez dispenser?-in the fingers of his other-

“Christ!” Ed Krause yelled, as Brandi’s head exploded next to his, the round carrying enough punch to spiderweb the windshield after it came out her right temple, leaving an exit wound like a rotten peach, blood and brains spattered over the dashboard and that fucking teddy bear. Ed ducked as a second round shattered the driver’s portion of the windshield, a sound like somebody whistling through water trailing after the impact.

Ed shoved Brandi’s rag-doll corpse against the passenger door, then yanked the floorshift back to DRIVE and took off. A second later, he thought the Mustang might be in the clear based on acceleration alone when he first heard and then felt the blowout of his right rear tire, the convertible wanting to pivot on that wheel rim, send him off the pavement.

Ed wrestled with the steering, finally getting it under some control, and whipped right, over to the shoulder and beyond it. He pictured the three Mayans from the yard next-door to Natalya’s chalet, and he hoped he’d put the Mustang’s engine block between him and any likely fields of fire from their vehicle. Ed also hoped they didn’t have much weaponry beyond the sniper rifle but knew he was probably wrong on that score, the way they’d handled everything else.

And, after their killing Brandi, there was no bargaining with them, no chance of “Take the money and let me live, or I’ll nail at least one of you right here.”

Nobody leaves a body and a witness behind.

Ed grabbed the little Raven.25 from the floor mat, slapped the magazine back into the butt of its handle, and slid the semiautomatic into the left-side pocket of his sports jacket. Then he slipped out the driver’s door, waiting for the Mayans to make their move. They took long enough before starting the Suburban’s engine, he was pretty sure one of them did the same thing he’d done: dropped out of their vehicle and into the desert, to flank him while the others rolled slowly toward him.

Just like Ed learned in Small Unit Tactics, back in the airborne. And just like the big land yacht was doing now.

Down on his hands and knees, Ed scuttled like a crab across the desert floor, away from the Mustang. And the money, but it was his only chance: Outflank the flanker, and come around behind all of them.

Ed went into the desert fifty or sixty meters at a diagonal to the road, angling slightly toward the direction he’d driven from. Figuring that was far enough, given the superiority of numbers and firepower the Mayans would think they had over him, Ed assumed the prone position to wait.

Listening to the desert sounds. Trying to pick up anything that didn’t move like a snake. Or a lizard, even a tarantula.

Or whatever the fuck else there’d be in this kind of desert.

And he did hear some slithering sounds, then a scratching sound, like maybe a mouse’s foot would make on wood, then a little squeak that Ed figured was curtains for that particular rodent.

But now, footfalls. Halfway between him and the road, mov-ng parallel to it. Jogging, the guy moving with confidence toward the Mustang.

Ed rose to a sprinter’s start, waiting for the Suburban to draw even with him. Then he used the noise of the receding vehicle to cover his own.

The running Mayan stayed on a line with the big vehicle’s rear doors. Smart: That way, its headlights wouldn’t silhouette him for a shooter still at the Mustang.

Bad luck, though, too: That relative positioning did pinpoint the guy-a pistol of some kind held muzzle up-just right for the angle Ed had from behind.

Closing fast on an interception course, Ed was all over the Mayan-Christ, no more than five-four, max?-before the little guy could have heard him. Ed used the extra-heavy barrel of the Combat Masterpiece to pistol-whip the Mayan across the back of his head, pitching him forward onto the sand with a “whump” sound from his body but nothing from his mouth.

Then Ed planted his left foot on the Mayan’s spine, and-with his free hand-hooked under the little guy’s chin and snapped his neck.

Scooping up the Mayan’s pistol-another semiautomatic, maybe a nine-millimeter but not enough light on it to be sure-Ed put it in his jacket’s right side-pocket, kind of balancing off Brandi’s Raven.25 in the other. Then he started to run, trying to match the pace of the Mayan he’d just killed.

Thinking: one down, two to go.

The Suburban was now enough ahead of him, he could see itclearly approaching his Mustang. When the driver nailed the gas and kicked in his high-beams, the third Mayan began shooting two-handed from the rear seat, Ed closing his eyes against the blaze from the muzzles, so as not to ruin his night vision. He heard both magazines empty into and around the convertible as they passed-some richochets, some thumps, depending on what the rounds hit. Then, hanging a U-ey, the Suburban came back hard. Ed was already prone again, eyes turned away from the headlights, but his ears picked up the sound of the third Mayan emptying another two magazines into the Mustang from the opposite direction.

Christ, a good thing you left the car. And picked off their flanker, who’d otherwise be standing over you right now, capping three rounds through your skull.

Ed turned again toward the Suburban. It hung another U-ey, this time moving back toward the Mustang real slow and weaving a little, let its high beams maybe pick up a dead or wounded courier against the convertible or somewhere near it.

Fuck this.

Ed got into another crouch, then sprang forward, letting Brandi’s.25 fill his left hand, since he couldn’t waste time fiddling with the maybe-on, maybe-off safety from the first Mayan’s semi. He matched that dead guy’s pace again as best he could, let the two Mayans exiting the Suburban-one at the driver’s side, of course, the other at the passenger rear door-think their pal was joining up. Until they were clear of the vehicle and fixated on the Mustang, each just forward of the Suburban’s front grille, using its high beams to blind anybody left alive to shoot back at them.

After drawing a deep breath and releasing it slowly, Ed emptied both of his weapons into those two Mayans, being careful not to hit their vehicle.

His new transportation, after all.

Ed’s targets spazzed out like puppets as his slugs hit them, Ed himself now pulling from his jacket pocket the first guy’s semi, to close and finish the fuckers. Then he caught the flash of another muzzle from the rear-passenger’s window of the Suburban and simultaneously the impact of two, three rounds spinning him around and down, hard.

Shit: A fourth fucking Mayan?

Hoping the semi did have its safety off, Ed squeezed the trigger, putting five shots into the rear door. Hearing a scream, he decided to save the remaining slugs, in case the guy was playing possum. But Ed started feeling dizzy, too, knew he was losing too much blood to wait any longer. Levering up on his elbows-Christ, like somebody’s hit you in the chest with a battering ram, tough even to breathe shallow-Ed staggered toward the Suburban, keeping the semi as level as he could. Getting there seemed to take an hour, but when he inhaled as much air as his lungs would hold, he yanked open that rear door, and saw the top half of fat Natalya ooze more than flop onto the pavement, another semiautomatic clattering on the asphalt like it was the tile floor in her chalet.

Fucking bitch didn’t trust her Mayans after all.

Then Ed walked around to the front of the Suburban, let its high-beams spotlight his shirt under the sports jacket. He said, “Shit,” and, a moment later, the same once more. After that, he didn’t see much else to say.

So Ed inched out of the jacket as best he could, found a soft, level spot on the desert floor, and rolled the jacket into sort of a pillow, rest a little easier.

Ed Krause opened his eyes, realized he didn’t know how long he’d been out, still just lying there on the desert floor. He was starting to feel cold, which he didn’t remember from before. And while some of the stars above him seemed to have changed position, there was no sign yet of dawn to the east.

Just the glorious, heavenly effect from the lights of Vegas.

Ed shifted his head on the sports-jacket pillow as best he could, to be able to stare at those lights, the promise of real money and seeing a place he’d always wanted to visit. Last two times he’d coughed, though, blood came up, so right now he wouldn’t bet on even seeing morning.

You’re gonna bleed out in this fucking desert, you might as well stay focused on the prize, huh? Shows… lions… show-girls… magic acts… tigers… casinos.

The Vegas lights started to go funny against Ed’s eyes, so he closed them.

Help the imagination, you know?

Slick cars like Maseratis, Ferraris, Rolls-fucking-Royces. Cruising the Strip, just like they did in the movies he’d seen. All the filet mignon and trimmings you could eat, all the Jim and Coke you could drink. Call-girls that’d make Brandi with an “I” look like fucking Spam.

Action of all kinds, nonstop. The genuine “City That Never Sleeps.”

Only you’re never gonna see it now.

Vegas, Las Vegas. Grieving…

“The house doesn’t beat the player.

It just gives him the opportunity to beat himself.”

– Nicholas (Nick the Greek) Dandalos

“A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.”

– American proverb