Void Moon

11

TRAFFIC into North Las Vegas was a miserable crawl. By the time Cassie got to the Aces and Eights Club she was fifteen minutes late. But before going in she still took the time to sit in the car and put on the wig she had bought for the Lookout Mountain Road open house. She flipped down the visor and used the mirror to style the wig and then used an eyebrow pencil to darken her eyebrows to match. She added a pair of pink tinted glasses she had bought at a Thrifty drugstore.

The Aces and Eights was a locals bar and up until six years ago Cassie had been a regular. Most of the patrons made their living off the casino trade – legally or otherwise – and if there was anyplace where she might be recognized, even after a six-year absence, it was the Aces and Eights. Cassie had almost told Jersey Paltz to choose another spot for the rendezvous but she'd gone along with his choice so as not to spook him. She also had to admit to herself she was a bit nostalgic. She wanted to see if the old hangout had changed.

After checking herself once more in the mirror, she got out of the Boxster and went inside. She carried her backpack over one shoulder. She saw several men at the bar and could tell by their uniforms or the colors of their dealer's aprons what casinos they worked for. There were a couple of women in short dresses and heels with their pagers and cell phones on the bar – hookers waiting for jobs and not worried about being obvious about it. Nobody cared at the Aces and Eights.

She saw Paltz in a circular booth in the rear corner of the dimly lit bar. He was leaning forward over a bowl of chili. Cassie remembered that the chili was the only thing on the menu that the regulars dared to eat. But she'd never eat it again, here or anywhere else, after having to eat chili every Wednesday for five years in High Desert. She walked up and was sliding into the booth when Paltz began protesting.

"Honey, I'm waiting for – "

"It's me."

He looked up and recognized her.

"Little early for Halloween, isn't it?"

"I thought there might be people in here who'd remember me."

"Shit, you haven't been around in six years. In Vegas that's ancient history. You know, I was just about to give up on you but figured, hey, you haven't been here in six, seven years. You don't know how bad traffic's gotten."

"I just learned. I thought L.A. was bad but this is…"

"Makes L.A. look like the fucking Autobahn. They need about three more freeways here, all the building they been doin' around here."

Cassie didn't want to talk about traffic or the weather. She got right to the point of the meeting.

"Did you bring me something?"

"First things first."

Paltz slid around in the booth until he was right next to Cassie and moved his left hand under the table and started patting and feeling her body. Cassie immediately stiffened.

"Always wanted to do this," Paltz said with a smile. "Ever since I saw you that first time with Max."

His breath was chili and onions. Cassie turned away and looked out into the bar.

"You're wasting your time, I'm not – "

She stopped when he brought his hand up her torso to her breasts. She pushed his arm away.

"Okay, okay," Paltz said. "You just can't be too careful these days, you know? You got eighty-five bumblebees in that bag?"

She looked out of the booth and across the bar to make sure no one was watching. They were clear. If people were noticing their serious looks, they were dismissing it as a pointed negotiation between a big-haired hooker and a john. No big deal. Even the pat-down could be seen as part of the negotiation; these days a buyer had to be sure of the quality and gender of the product.

"I brought what you told me to bring," she said. "Where's the kit?"

"In the truck. You show me what I need again and we'll take a walk."

"We already did this once," Cassie protested. "Move back."

Paltz slid back to his spot. He scooped some chili into his mouth and took a long pull on a bottle of Miller High Life.

Cassie moved the backpack across her lap and put it down on the seat between them. She pulled the flap back halfway. Her rubber tool satchel was now in the bag. On top of it was the sheaf of currency. Hundred-dollar bills – or bumblebees, as some of the longtime locals called them. It was Vegas slang dating back several years to a time when thousands of counterfeit hundred-dollar chips had flooded the Vegas underworld. They were perfect counterfeits of the black-and-yellow hundred-dollar chips used at the Sands. They were called bumblebees. The fakes were so good that the casino had to change the colors and design of their chips. The Sands was long gone now, demolished and replaced by a new casino. But the underworld code of calling a hundred-dollar bill or chip a bumblebee remained. Anyone who used the term had been around a while.

Cassie made sure Paltz got a good look at the money and then flipped the backpack closed just as a barmaid came to the table.

"Can I get you something?" she asked Cassie.

Paltz answered for her.

"No, she's fine," he said. "We're just gonna go outside and then I'll be right back. I'll need another beer then, sweetheart."

The barmaid walked away and Paltz smiled, knowing that what he had just said would leave the waitress thinking that they were going outside to complete a sexual transaction. This didn't bother Cassie because it played into her cover. But what did annoy her was his calling the waitress "sweetheart." It always bothered Cassie when men called women they did not know by endearing names they didn't mean. She bit back on an urge to call Paltz on it and started sliding out of the booth.

"Let's do it," she said instead.

Once they were out the door Paltz led the way to a van parked at the side of the bar. He unhooked a set of keys from his side belt loop and unlocked the sliding door on the passenger side. The van was parked so that the open door was only a few feet from the side wall of the bar. No one could look into the van without coming right up to it. Cassie understood this to be good and bad. Good if Paltz was going to be legit with her. Bad if this was a rip-off.

Paltz climbed into the van and signaled Cassie to follow. The front cab was partitioned off with a wall of plywood. In the rear of the van two bench seats faced each other across a work area. Various tools hung on hooks protruding from punch boards on the walls and five-gallon buckets contained more tools, equipment and rags. Cassie hesitated in the open door. She was carrying close to ten thousand dollars in cash in her backpack and was being beckoned into a van by a man she had not seen, let alone dealt with, in more than six years.

"Well, you want it or not? I don't have all night and I thought you didn't either."

Paltz pointed to a medium-sized American Tourister suitcase that was on the floor. He picked it up and sat down on a bench seat with it on his lap. He opened it, raising the lid against his chest so that Cassie could see the equipment displayed in foam cushioning in the case.

Cassie nodded and climbed into the van.

"Close the door," Paltz said.

She slid the door closed but kept her eyes on Paltz as she did it.

"Let's do this quick," she said. "I don't like being here."

"Relax, I'm not going to bite you."

"I'm not worried about getting bit."

Now that she was closer, Cassie looked at the case again. Pieces of electronic surveillance equipment were placed in cutouts so they would not move during transport. Cassie recognized most of the pieces from prior use or from electronics magazines and catalogs. There were pinhole cameras, a microwave transmitter, a receiver and several pieces of related equipment. There was also a pair of night-vision goggles.

Like a door-to-door salesman, Paltz waved his arm in front of the display and started his spiel.

"You want me to go over everything or you think you've got a handle on it?"

"Better show me everything but the NVGs. It's been a while."

"All right, then, let's go from image capture to picture delivery. First, the cameras."

He pointed to the upper half of the case. Four small black squares with open circuitry and circular centerpieces were displayed in the foam rubber.

"You've got four chip cameras here – should be enough for any job. When we spoke before you didn't say if you needed color but – "

"I don't need color. I don't need audio. I need clarity. I need to read numbers."

"That's what I figured. These are all black and white. The first three you see here are your standard pinhole board cameras. When I say standard, I mean Hooten L amp;S standard. Nobody puts together a better board right now. With these you get four hundred lines resolution from a linear electronic iris. Very clear. Runs four to six hours on a dime battery. How's that work for you, timewise?"

"Should be fine."

Cassie felt herself getting excited. Keeping up through electronics magazines was one thing, but actually seeing the equipment was dipping the hot wire into her blood. She could feel the blood pounding in her temples.

Paltz went on with his show.

"Okay, then this fourth board is your green camera. It's called the ALI – like Muhammad Ali. That's why we call it the 'greatest little camera of all time' in the catalog."

"Ali?"

"A-L-I. Ambient Light Iris. With this one you have vision with lights on or off. With infrared you sometimes get exposure blooms on your LED screen when lights are on. So we developed this. It operates with what light is in the room and gives you enough picture to see what you have to see – shapes, shadows, movement. Green field of vision, as usual. Tell you what, t'night's supposed to be a full moon. If you – "

"A void moon, too."

"A what?"

"Never mind. Go on."

"I was just saying that if you can get some moonlight into the area you are filming, then that'll be all you need for this camera to work."

"Okay, sounds good."

Cassie only needed to be able to see enough to confirm the mark's location in the darkness of his room. The ALI seemed to be all she needed.

"Good, then moving on, you can take any of these boards and use them in any of the shells contained here."

He removed a false smoke detector and showed it to her. There was a small drill hole in the cowling. On the inside he showed her where the board camera would fit, aligning the lens with the drill hole.

"Now if you need a lower angle…"

He next removed a phony electric wall socket plate. The board camera could be installed behind the upper socket. He handed it to Cassie and she marveled at how small it was.

"This is great."

"But a little risky. Guy could try to plug something into it and – bingo – he finds a fucking camera in his room. So if you use this one, put it in a spot where it's not likely the guy will want to plug in his computer or shaver or whatever."

"Got it."

"Okay, good. So what you do is connect your cameras to the batteries like so."

Paltz plugged tiny round batteries into cradles attached by wires to the board cameras.

"Then install. You then have to hook the cameras to the transmitter. This is all going to be short run, right?"

Cassie nodded.

"Right. Eight, ten feet at the most, probably less."

He pulled out a roll of what looked like Scotch tape and held it up.

"Conduct-O tape. You used to use this, right?"

"Yeah, toward the end… on a few jobs."

Paltz went on with his explanation as though Cassie had said the opposite.

"It's your magic tape, man. It's got two conductors in it, one for video and one for ground. You connect to the camera and then run it to your transmitter. Just remember, keep it short. The longer the run, the more image distortion. You don't want that if you're readin' numbers."

"Right. I remember."

Sweat was running out of Paltz's hairline and down both of his cheeks. Cassie didn't think it was warm enough inside the van to create such a response. She watched him raise his arm and wipe his face.

"Something wrong?"

"Nothing," Paltz said as he reached into the suitcase. "It's getting toasty in here, that's all. This is a four-channel transmitter."

He pulled a flat square box about the size of a cell phone out of its place in the foam. It had a six-inch stub antenna.

"This is omnidirectional – it don't matter what angle you place it at. Just get it close to your cameras for the clearest signal. You notice this is not disguised in any way. Since it ain't a camera, you can hide it just about anywhere – under a bed or in a drawer or a closet or wherever. It, too, has a battery – lasts about as long as the cameras. Okay?"

"Got it."

"Now what this transmitter does is send your captured image to your remote. This little baby."

He pulled from the case the largest piece of equipment. It looked like a small laptop computer. Or maybe a space-age lunch box. Paltz flipped open a screen and folded up another stub antenna.

"This is your microwave receiver/recorder. You can set this up to two hundred yards from your transmitter, depending on the knockdown, and still pull in a decent picture."

"What's the knockdown?"

"Nothing you'll probably have to worry about. Water mostly. Tree sap is a killer too. You're not going to be working near a forest, right? Those trees just send a signal into the dirt."

"There a forest in Las Vegas, Jersey?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then no forest. No trees, no sap."

She was getting annoyed with his manner and his nervousness. It was getting contagious. She realized that without any windows in the back of the van she had no idea whether there would be someone waiting outside for them – or for her – when they opened the door. This rendezvous had been a mistake.

"What about the pool?" Paltz asked.

The question took Cassie out of her thoughts. She thought a moment and remembered the pool at the Cleopatra was at ground level.

"No pool."

"Good. Steel, concrete, all of that is no problem. Just stay inside with it and it should work perfect."

Paltz started working the buttons on the receiver/recorder. He turned it on and the screen came up full of static snow. He tapped a red button on the right side of the mini-keyboard.

"That's your record there. You can record everything or just watch it. You can quarter the screen and watch up to four cameras at once."

He hit a series of buttons and the screen split twice. It was still four views of snow.

"We won't get a picture because we don't have the cameras connected. But I've got your four camera freeks already loaded on here and it's good to go."

"Okay. It's a great kit, Jersey. You got anything else to show me? I gotta go."

"That's it. Now if you pay me what we agreed on, you can get out of here and I can go back to my chili – though it's gotta be cold by now."

Cassie pulled her backpack around to her lap.

"You working this one alone, Cassie?"

"Yup," she answered without thinking.

She pulled open the flap just as Paltz closed the suitcase and raised his other arm, revealing that he was holding a pistol pointed at Cassie's chest.

"What are you doing?"

"Stupid, girl," he said.

Cassie started to stand but he raised the weapon and nodded her back down with it.

"Look, man, I'm going to pay you. I have it right here. What's the matter with you?"

Paltz switched the gun to his other hand and lowered the suitcase to the floor of the van. He then reached out for the backpack.

"I'll take that."

He roughly grabbed the backpack out of her hands.

" Jersey, we had a deal. We – "

"Just shut the fuck up."

Cassie tried to remain calm while she waited for him to go for the money. Without flinching a muscle she took all the weight off her left foot and raised it slightly off the ground. Paltz was sitting directly across from her, his knees a foot apart. She spoke in a calm, measured tone.

" Jersey, what are you doing? Why put the kit together if you were just going to rip me off?"

"I had to make sure you were working this alone. Make sure you didn't go and get a replacement for Max."

Now Cassie began to feel the rage blooming inside her. This guy had played her. All along he had seen her as a victim. Someone he could rip off if she was alone.

"And you know what?" Paltz said, almost giddy now that he had the bag with the money. "Now that I think of it, maybe I oughta grab me a blow job for good measure. Get some of that stuff Max was keepin' to himself. I bet five years in stir, you could prob'ly use some practice sucking cock."

He grinned.

"You're makin' a mistake, Jersey. I'm here alone but I'm working for people. You think I just blew into town and picked a target at random? You jack me and you jack them. They won't like that. So why don't we just make the deal. You take the money, I take the kit. I forget about that gun and what you just did. And what you just said."

"Bullshit."

Keeping his eyes on Cassie, Paltz began reaching into the backpack for the money. Immediately there was an electronic snapping sound and Paltz let out a yelp. His hand recoiled from the bag and in the same instant Cassie's left leg shot out and she drove her thick-soled Doc Marten shoe into his crotch. Paltz doubled over with a loud grunt and pulled the trigger on the pistol.

The gun fired and the sound was deafening in her ear. Cassie felt a slight tug on her wig as the bullet tore through her false tresses. She felt the sting of burning gunpowder and discharge gases singe her neck and cheek. She leapt onto Paltz and grabbed the gun with both hands. She turned her body into his until she was almost sitting on his lap. She yanked his gun hand up to her face and bit down viciously on the top of his hand. It wasn't fear that charged her actions. It was rage.

Paltz screamed and let go of the gun. Cassie grabbed it and spun away from him. She pointed the gun – which she quickly looked down at now and determined was a 9 mm Glock – at Paltz's face from two feet away.

"You stupid piece of shit!" she yelled. "You want to die? You want to fucking die here in this van?"

Paltz was gasping for air and waiting for his testicles to recover. Cassie brought a hand up to her face and ran it along her skin looking for blood. She was sure the shot had missed but had always heard that sometimes you didn't even know it when you'd been clipped.

She took her hand away and looked at it. No blood. She cursed loudly anyway. Paltz's ill-conceived decision to try to jack her complicated everything. She tried to think clearly but her ear was ringing and her neck was tingling with the surface burn.

"Lie down on the floor!" she commanded. "Get down! Fucking rapist! I oughta shove this gun up your ass!"

"I'm sorry," Paltz whined. "I was scared. I – "

"Bullshit! Just get on the floor. Face down. Now!"

Paltz slowly got down to his knees and then onto the floor.

"What are you going to do?" he whimpered.

Cassie stood over him, a foot on either side of his body, leaned down and pressed the muzzle of the gun into the back of his head. She palmed the cock back and the sound of it snapping back made Paltz's shoulders shudder.

"Hey, Jersey, what do you think, you want me to suck your cock now? You think you could get it up for me?"

"Oh, God…"

Cassie looked around the van and at the buckets of equipment and tools. She grabbed a plastic snap cuff used for bunching cables out of one of the buckets and told Paltz to put his hands behind his back. He did as ordered and Cassie noticed that one of the terminals from the stun gun had left a burn mark in the top of his hand. She wrapped the plastic strip around his wrists and through the lock, pulling it tight, to the point it was cutting into his skin. She then put the gun down on the floor of the van and grabbed more cuffs to bind Paltz's legs and ankles.

"I hope you had enough chili, asshole. It's going to be a while before seconds."

"I have to take a piss, Cassie. I drank two beers waitin' for you."

"I'm not stopping you."

"Oh, man, Cassie, please don't do this."

Cassie grabbed a rag out of one of the buckets and abruptly dropped her knees onto his back and leaned over close to his ear.

"Keep in mind that it was you who made the play, asshole. Now I'm going to ask you a question and you better give me a straight answer because it could mean your life. You understand?"

"Yes."

"When I open this door, is there going to be somebody out there waiting for me? Like one of your buddies you brought in on the jack?"

"No, nobody."

She picked up the gun and pushed the muzzle hard against his cheek.

"You better be straight. I open the door and see anybody, I'm going to empty this into your fucking head."

"There's nobody. It was just me."

"Then open wide."

"Wha – "

She shoved the rag into his open mouth, cutting him off. She looped two snap cuffs together and wrapped them around his head and across his open mouth, holding the gag in place. Paltz's eyes grew wide as she tightened the cuffs.

"Through your nose, Jersey. Breathe through your nose and you'll be okay."

Cassie unhooked the van's keys from the belt loop on his pants. She then got off him and went to her backpack, removing and unfolding a black gym bag. She started transferring the camera equipment from Paltz's suitcase to the bag.

"Okay, this is the deal," she said. "We're taking your van and I'm gonna go do this thing."

Paltz tried to protest but his words were mumbles into the gag.

"Good, I'm glad you agree, Jersey."

Once she had everything transferred, she hooked the backpack over one shoulder and moved to the sliding door. She reached up and turned the van's overhead light off and then opened the door with one hand while holding the gun ready with the other.

It was clear. She climbed out of the van, grabbed the gym bag and then locked and closed the door. She came around to the driver's side, still holding the gun up and ready. The parking lot was crowded with cars but she saw nobody waiting in any of them or watching from nearby.

She unlocked the driver's door and opened it. Before getting in she ejected the Glock's clip and thumbed out the bullets, letting them drop onto the asphalt. She then ejected the last round from the chamber and threw the gun and the clip onto the flat roof of the Aces and Eights.

She got into the van, started it and headed out of the parking lot. She noticed that the dashboard radio had a hole torn in it. The bullet Paltz had fired had gone through the plywood partition and into the radio. It reminded her of the burning sting on her neck and cheek. She turned the overhead light on and checked herself in the mirror. Her skin was red and blotchy. It looked as if it had a poison ivy rash.

She checked her watch next. Paltz's play had put her behind schedule. She turned off the light and drove toward the neon Strip, the glow of which she could see in the distance.