Void Moon

22

KARCH followed the same route out of the Cleopatra that he had watched the woman take on the video screen a few minutes before. As he wound his way around the tables and circumnavigated the idiots who lazily walked into his path, his mind became preoccupied by thoughts of the woman on the video. She had come close to pulling off a perfect caper. One glance too many and too long at the mark while at the baccarat railing. Her only mistake. Otherwise they'd probably still be scratching their heads. Still, he had to admire her. He was looking forward to the moment he would meet her. And he had no doubt that moment would come. She was good but he was better. Their time would certainly come.

He gruffly pushed by a man in shorts who had slowly shuffled into Karch's path while absentmindedly looking up through the glass panels of the atrium.

"Well, pardon you," he protested as Karch went by.

Karch looked back at him without slowing his stride.

"Fuck you, dipshit. Go back to losing your money."

"Hey!" the man called after him.

Karch stopped and turned back toward the man. The man quickly realized he had overstepped and started shuffling away in the opposite direction. Karch watched him go until the man glanced back and their eyes locked. Karch was smiling, letting the man know he had made him run away like a boy.

Karch followed the River of Nile hallway to the exit the woman had used and soon was on the Strip walking toward the Flamingo, a block away. He realized as he got to the venerable and many times expanded and renovated casino that he needed some cash. He silently chastised himself for not asking Grimaldi for expense funds and thought about going back but knew the delay would probably set Grimaldi off. Instead he looked around inside the Flamingo until he found a cash machine and then withdrew the three-hundred-dollar maximum his account would allow. Usually, Don Cannon charged him five hundred for a trail but the three would have to do. He didn't think Cannon would be a problem. The money came out in hundreds, unlike any machine found outside of a casino. While still standing at the machine, Karch folded the three bills twice so that they could easily be palmed. He creased the bills and put them in the palm of his right hand. He closed it slightly and let it hang naturally at his side. He thought about Michelangelo's hands. The master. He envisioned David's right hand hanging loosely at his side. Or the casual repose of the hands of the figure portraying Dusk at the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici. Karch's father had gone as a young man to Italy to study the hands of the master. The son didn't have to bother. There was a full-scale replica of Michelangelo's David in the shopping rotunda at Caesar's Palace.

Karch went to the telephone alcove off the lobby area and picked up a house phone. He asked for Don Cannon in security and the call was transferred to an intermediate, who asked who was calling. Karch was then put on hold once more and this time waited more than a minute. He used the time to think about what he would say. Cannon was a shift supervisor in the tube room. Karch had met him on a missing-person case five years earlier and he had been cooperative – for a price – ever since. In a dozen years working the Strip Karch had made connections like Cannon in almost all of the casinos. They were all legitimate except for his relationship with Vincent Grimaldi. But now, one way or the other, he was seeing a way out of Grimaldi's grasp.

A voice barked on the other end of the line.

"Jack Karch!"

"Don? Howzitgoing?"

"Keepin' my powder dry. What can I do you for?"

"I'm working a case and could use a little help from your cameras."

"You want a little electronic magic, huh? What's the case?"

"Pretty basic. Guy at the DI got ripped off by a hooker. He calls me because he's trying to keep it low profile, if you know what I mean. No coppers, no official record. But the broad took some jewelry – a watch and a ring – that've got sentimental value. You know, inscriptions and bullshit like that. He can't replace them on short notice and if he goes back to Memphis tomorrow without this stuff, he's going to have a hard time explainin' it to the wife."

"I get the picture. What's it got to do with the Flamingo?"

"I think she parked in your garage – the one fronting Koval. My guy met her at the bar in Bugsy's last night, then they cabbed it to the DI. She ripped him after he passed out. I trailed her through the Desert Inn Casino to the sidewalk and I think she was heading here. This was about four in the A.M. today."

"You said here. You're here now?"

"Downstairs."

"Why didn't you say so? Come on up."

He hung up before Karch could say anything else. Karch walked to the elevators and took a ride up to the second floor. As he rode he took a handkerchief out of his back pocket, balled it and stuffed it into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He pushed it down so that it could not be seen but still served to hold the pocket open about an inch. He then checked his pocket for change and came up with a quarter and a dime. They were both recently minted and very shiny. He bent down and slid the quarter into one shoe and the dime into the other. One at a time he shook his feet to move the coins below the arches. He hoped Cannon wasn't watching him on one of his cameras.

Out of the elevator he went left to the security complex entrance and rang the buzzer to the left of the steel door. There was a two-way speaker mounted on the wall above the buzzer but it remained silent. After five seconds the door buzzed and he went in.

Don Cannon was a big and burly dark-haired man with a full beard and glasses. It was likely he had been hired for his size and what he could do with it when necessary on the casino floor. But over the years he had graduated to inside work, and the only parts of the casino he usually saw these days were on the video screens he and his minions monitored in the so-called tube room. He was waiting for Karch in a small anteroom on the other side of the steel entrance door. They shook hands as they always did and the folded hundred-dollar bills were seamlessly passed from one right hand to the other. As with most hotels on the Strip, it was the Flamingo's policy not to accept any remuneration to itself or its personnel for help given on criminal investigations. However, Karch knew the value of a gratuity and how it would keep that steel door's lock buzzing for him the next time he called.

"I'm a little light today," Karch said in a low voice. "I'll have to catch you later on that, if that's okay."

"No problem. I loaded the four o'clock chip while you were on the way up. Come on back."

Pocketing the currency as he moved, Cannon led Karch into the tube room, which was not unlike the casino security center at the Cleo. Video techs sat at rows of twelve-screen multiplex consoles, their eyes endlessly moving from screen to screen and using keyboards and joysticks to choose and manipulate camera angles and magnifications. They watched over everything, but most of all the money. It all came down to the money.

Cannon stepped up onto a stage at one end of the room where a lone console was situated so that as shift supervisor he could monitor cameras and video techs at the same time.

"You said she came in from the DI, right? Did she walk?"

Cannon slid into a seat on rollers and then pulled it close to the console. Karch stood behind him.

"Looks like it. A little after four."

"That's a long walk. Okay, let's see. We'll try the north entrance first."

His fingers started flailing across the keyboard as he typed in search commands. He continued talking.

"We went digital since I think you were last in here. It's a blast."

"Great."

Karch didn't know what going digital meant but it wasn't important to him.

"Okay, here's the door starting at four. I'll put it on double time until you see something."

He pointed to the large master screen directly in front of him in the console. It was divided into a matrix of twenty-four different camera angles. He moved the joystick and an arrow moved across the screen to one of the small squares. He hit the enter button and the image on the small square took over the entire screen. The image was from a camera showing an angled overhead shot of a set of automatic glass doors. The image was moving quickly. Cars seen in the distance through the doors sped by and people passing by on the sidewalk seemed to move at a quick trot. Karch stared intently at the screen and at the figures occasionally entering and leaving through the doors.

"There!" he said after nearly three minutes. "I think that was her. Back it up."

"All right."

Cannon moved the digital image until the figure that had gone by so quickly reappeared going backward out the door.

"There."

The image was frozen and then replayed on slow motion. The automatic doors opened and the woman Karch had watched on the video tubes at the Cleo entered carrying her backpack and the canvas bag containing the briefcase.

"That's her."

"Not bad-looking for a hooker. Too much hair, though. Wonder what she charges."

"Five bills minimum, my guy told me."

Cannon whistled.

"There's your rip-off right there. I don't care what a woman looks like, no piece of ass is worth five bills."

Karch laughed dutifully.

"She take the guy's luggage, too?"

"Yeah. But he doesn't care so much about that. He just wants that watch and ring."

"I don't know, she's holding that one bag like it's got Fort Knox jammed into it."

Karch started to perspire. He had hoped Cannon would run the video trail for him without being too interpretive.

"Well, let's see where she goes," he said, hoping to get Cannon to stop analyzing what he saw and just move through the video.

It seemed to work. Cannon grew silent and he trailed the woman through the matrix of camera angles until she left the casino building through the rear entrance and entered the eight-story self-parking garage at the rear of the property on Koval Road.

"That's gotta be a wig she's wearing, but even so, she looks new to me," Cannon finally remarked after five minutes of silence. "If you want, we can check our hooker bin for her."

"Hooker bin?"

"That's what we call it. We've got most of the working girls in town on computer file. Might be able to come up with a name if we can match her photo. Trouble is, she hasn't so much as looked up a single time. We don't have a clear shot of her so far."

And you're not going to get one, Karch thought.

"Well, let's see what she does and then worry about that after," he said instead.

In the garage the woman took the elevator to the eighth floor. She then walked to a blue unmarked van that was backed into a space in the corner farthest from the elevator. This time of night the upper floors of the garage were nearly empty. There was not another vehicle within twenty spaces of the van.

"No plate," Cannon said. "Looks like this girl takes precautions. You sure she's a hooker, Jack? Like I said, she doesn't look all that familiar to me and, besides, mosta these girls use drivers. Especially your five-hundred-an-hour variety."

Karch didn't answer. He was intently watching the screen. The woman opened the driver's door with a key, then loaded in the bags and climbed in. The lights came on as she started the van. Before putting it in gear the woman reached back and knocked on the partition between the front and the rear cargo area. Karch watched her lips move as she said something. Someone was obviously in the back of the van.

"Don, show that part again, will you?"

"No problem."

Cannon reversed the digital image and showed the woman knocking on the partition again. He froze it and went through some computer commands in an effort to clean up the picture. He then switched to the roller ball and slowly advanced the recorded image again.

"She said something," Cannon said. "I don't… it looks like maybe, 'How are you doing?' or 'How's it going?' Something like that."

"How's it going back there," Karch said.

"Damn, Jack, I think you're right. You're good, man. We could use you up here."

"I'd go stir-crazy inside a week. You going to be able to get a rear shot of the van?"

"As soon as she drives out."

Cannon went back to the matrix – now displaying only garage cameras – and followed the van down the seven levels until it went out the exit to Koval. As it passed through the exit, the van's rear end was recorded by a ground-level camera focused at the average height of a license plate.

The van's rear plate was missing as well.

"Damn!" Karch cried out, surprised by his own outburst.

"Wait a sec," Cannon said.

He reversed the image and replayed it in slow motion. He then froze the picture and magnified it. Karch looked at him and then at the screen and then finally understood what he was doing. The van's plates were gone but there was a parking sticker on the left side of the bumper. Cannon expertly moved in on it and expanded it. The larger letters and numbers became almost clear. Karch could see the current year on the sticker and was trying to make out the letters when Cannon whistled.

"What?"

"It looks like HLS to me."

"Me, too. What's that?"

"That's Hooten Lighting and Supplies. Their logo. You know, the company that makes all of this shit."

He indicated the console with his hand.

"Okay."

Karch didn't know what else to say. The discovery was making the cover story he had told Cannon seem more and more of a stretch. For the first time he realized how cold it was in the tube room. He folded his arms across his chest.

"I don't get it," Cannon said. "A hooker driving herself in a van from Hooten's. You sure this, uh, client of yours told it to you straight?"

He looked up at Karch, who decided he had to extricate himself from this situation.

"Nope. But that's what I'm going to go find out before I take another step on this thing. If the guy's lying, I'm flying. Thanks for your help, Don. I better get back over there to the DI and talk to this guy."

"Yeah, it sounds kind of hinky to me. You want to look through the hooker bin anyway? Got some real beauties in there."

Karch frowned and shook his head.

"Nah, maybe later. Let me talk to this guy first and see what's what. Oh, and I'll catch you later with the rest of what I owe you for the trail."

Karch nodded at the video console.

"Forget about it. Anyway, looks like I opened more holes for you than I closed. The only thing I want from you is a little sleight of hand. You got something to show me?"

Karch went into his act, feigning that he had been caught off guard by Cannon's request.

"Well…"

He patted his pockets for change.

"You got some change? A quarter or something?"

Cannon leaned back in his seat so he could work his hand into his pocket. He finally came up with a palm full of change. Karch pulled the sleeves of his jacket halfway up to his elbows and then chose a recently minted and shiny quarter, taking it off Cannon's palm with his right hand. He then performed a variation on the classic French Drop with an added toss-away vanish devised by J. B. Bobo. It was a sleight-of-hand trick he had been practicing since he was twelve years old. It was one he could do in his sleep. He expertly accomplished it with fluid motions and a practiced ease.

With his right hand palm up and chest high he held the quarter by its edges between his thumb and four fingers, tilting it forward slightly so that Cannon could see its face. He then brought his left hand over the top of the coin as if to take it away. As his left hand closed over the coin he let it drop down into his right palm, completing the fake take.

Karch closed his left fist and held it out toward Cannon. He started manipulating the muscles and balling his fist as if he were pulverizing the coin supposedly held within it to dust. At the same time he moved his right hand in a flat circular motion above his closed left fist. He never took his eyes off his left hand.

"To powder it goes, where it ends up nobody knows."

He made the circle with his right hand wider and wider until suddenly he snapped his fingers and opened both hands, palms out to Cannon. The coin was gone. Cannon's eyes quickly moved from hand to hand, then a broad smile cracked across his face. It was the usual response. The trick was a double misdirection. The skeptical viewer believes the coin never left the right hand but is baffled when the coin shows up in neither hand.

"Fantastic!" Cannon cried. "Where'd it go?"

Karch shook his head.

"That's the problem with this one. You never know where that coin's going to turn up. That part I never got a handle on. I guess you can add two bits to what I owe you."

Cannon laughed loudly.

"You're cool, Jack. How'd you learn that one, your father?"

"Yeah."

"He still around?"

"Nah, he's gone. Long time ago."

"And he used to work the Strip, right?"

"Yeah, here and there. In the sixties. One week he opened for Joey Bishop, who opened for Sinatra at the Sands. I have pictures of the three of them."

"Cool! The Rat Pack. The good old days, huh?"

"Yeah, some of them were good."

Karch had a vision of seeing his father coming home from the hospital after the incident at Circus, Circus. Both hands bandaged white. It looked like he was holding two softballs. His eyes looked like they were staring at something far, far away.

Karch realized he had lost his smile and looked at Cannon.

"Anyway, I better hit the road and get on this thing. Thanks for the help, Don."

He offered his hand and Cannon took it.

"Anytime, Jack."

"I'll find my way out."

He turned toward the steps and started walking away. But then he stopped and leaned on the railing.

"What the…?"

He raised his left foot and worked the shoe off. Without even glancing at Cannon but knowing he was being watched, he looked inside the shoe and then shook it. Something rattled inside and he turned the shoe upside down, dropping the quarter he had planted earlier into his other hand. He held it up and looked at Cannon. The big man banged a fist on his console and started smiling and shaking his head.

"Son of a gun, I told you," Karch said. "Never know where the damn thing'll go."

He flipped the coin to Cannon, who caught it in his fist.

"I'm saving this one, Jack. It's fucking magic."

Karch saluted and headed down the steps and out of the tube room. He waited until he was out of the Flamingo and away from the view of Cannon's cameras before reaching into the breast pocket of his suit coat and removing the handkerchief and the quarter he had dropped into it while circling his hand during the trick.

He would get the dime out of his shoe later, when he had time to sit down.