Void Moon

41

THE girl sat up in the backseat of the Lincoln and took in the dazzling lights of the Strip.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"We're almost there."

"I want my daddy."

Karch turned the rearview mirror and looked back at her. It sounded like she was going to start crying again. Halfway from L.A. she had started crying and screaming for her mother and father. Karch had had to pull off in Barstow and calm her. Mostly he bribed her with French fries and a Coke. He got her to agree to stop the outburst until they got to the hotel in Las Vegas where her daddy was waiting. The one good thing was that all the crying made her tired and she slept most of the rest of the way.

"Remember our deal. No crying and no outbursts until we get to the hotel room and you see your daddy. Okay?"

"I don't care. I want my daddy."

"We're almost there," he said. "You're going to be with your daddy real soon."

He smiled, though he knew she would never comprehend the joke.

"Are we in France now?"

"What?"

He checked the mirror and saw her staring out the window to her right, the reflection of neon light playing on her young face. He looked out the windshield to the right and saw what she was looking at. They were passing a half-size Eiffel Tower fronting a casino.

"Could be, kid. Could be."

After a few more minutes he turned the car into the Cleopatra's entrance and followed the signs that said SELF PARKING to the rear of the property. He drove into the west parking garage as he had told Grimaldi he would. He found a parking slot on the fourth level and then he and the girl took the stairs down to the ground floor. Karch walked quickly, holding the girl by the hand and tugging her along.

An emergency exit door that Karch knew led from the elevator lobby of the Euphrates Tower directly to the parking garage had been left propped open for them with a towel tied around the inside push bar and then looped around the edge of the door and tied to the outside handle. By entering here he would be able to bypass all of the cameras in the casino. He could not allow there to be any video documentation of himself with the girl. Once they were through the door Karch yanked the towel free so that the door closed and locked. He left the towel on the floor.

In the elevator lobby Jodie Shaw stopped and tried to jerk her hand out of Karch's grip. It reminded him of the slightest tug of a throw-back fish on a fishing line. He looked down at her.

"Where's my daddy?"

"We're going up to see him right now. You want to push the button?"

He pointed to the elevator call buttons.

"No, I'm almost six years old. Not three."

"Oh, okay then."

Karch pulled her to the panel and pushed the button. He then glanced around and made sure no one was paying attention. He dipped his fingers into the sand jar below the buttons and eventually pulled out the card key Grimaldi had had planted there for him. An elevator opened and Karch pulled the girl into it. He used the card key to engage the penthouse button. Once the door was closed he let go of her hand. He looked up at the camera in the corner. There was no light or other means of determining if it was on or had been shut down per his instructions.

He looked down at the girl and he could tell she was confused and about to start crying again. He squatted down to her level and smiled.

"It's all right, kid. This will all be over in a few hours."

"I want my mommy and daddy now."

"You will all be together real soon. I promise. Hey, tell you what, did I show you this?"

He took the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and shook one out. He then performed the in-the-ear-and-out-the-mouth transfer flawlessly. The girl's eyebrows arched in wonder. He lit the cigarette with a lighter and blew the smoke up over her head.

"That's magic," he said. "My daddy taught me that."

He stood up.

"Or at least the guy who thought he was my daddy."

The doors opened and he led the girl out into the alcove. They stepped into the hallway and went to the first door to the right. He used the card key to open the door and the girl charged in ahead of him.

"Daddy!"

He watched her look around expectantly and then go through the open double doors leading to the bedroom. Karch closed and locked the door, dropped the card on a little table beneath a mirror in the entranceway and followed her into the bedroom. She was leaning against the bed, her face down on the spread.

"Where's my daddy?"

"I guess we have to wait for him."

She turned and looked up at him with accusing eyes.

"You told me he was here."

"Don't worry. He's around somewhere. We just have to wait for him to come back. I'll make some calls to see if I can find him, okay? In the meantime, this here is the room where you are going to wait. You can get on the bed and go back to sleep or you can watch TV, whatever you want. They have a channel just for cartoons, right? Why don't you check it out?"

He looked at the girl nodding and smiling but she wasn't with the program. She hardly seemed mollified and Karch was just about out of patience. The next move would be to tie the kid up and put her in the shower with a gag in her mouth. He decided to try once more before going to that extreme.

"Tell you what, you hungry? I'll order us up some room service. I'm fucking starved. How about a nice, juicy steak?"

"Gross. And you talk dirty."

"That I do, that I do. All right, no steak. What would you like instead?"

"Spaghetti-Os."

"Spaghetti-Os? You sure about that? They got some great cooks down there. You sure you want Spaghetti-Os?"

"Spa-ghetti-Os."

"All right, all right, Spaghetti-Os. Tell you what, you watch the TV in here and I'll go call room service."

He took the remote off the top of the TV and turned it on. He handed her the remote and walked out of the room. He then remembered something and came back in and disconnected the phone. She watched silently as he left the room with the phone. Just as he closed the double doors she called out from within.

"And a Coke, too."

He wondered for a moment whether a child that age was allowed to have Coke. He then dismissed the thought because it didn't matter.

"Okay, one Coke coming up."

Karch took the phone cord and wrapped it around the necks of the two doorknobs. He doubted she would try to make a break but it didn't hurt to be thorough. He then walked over to the little desk and picked up the phone. He dialed Grimaldi's direct line again and the casino director answered immediately.

"You're in."

"You turned the elevator cams off, right?"

"And the garage. Just like you asked. Routine maintenance. If you stayed clear of the casino then there's no record of you coming in."

"Okay. What about the stairs?"

"I've got people in every stairwell. And we know she doesn't have a card because Martin got his back. So she can't use the elevators. Just the stairs. You want somebody up there in the penthouse, like in the hallway?"

"No."

"You sure she's going to come back with the money? Just for the kid?"

"She's coming, Vincent. I guarantee it."

"With your life, Jack. You understand that?"

Karch didn't answer. Grimaldi was trying to reassert himself but it was too late for that. Karch still had control.

"She says she didn't put Hidalgo down on the bed like that."

"Who says this?"

"Cassie Black. She says she didn't pop him."

"Bullshit. What's she going to say? 'Things went wrong up there and I did it?' No, they never cop to anything, Jack, you know that."

Karch thought about this.

"All right," he finally said. "I guess you're right."

"I know I am. So you're all set up there?"

"Yeah – oh wait, one last thing. I need you to call room service and have them send up a steak. Make it bloody rare. And…"

He looked toward the doors to the bedroom. The low sound of cartoon gunfire was coming from the room.

"What?"

"And do they have any Spaghetti-Os down there?"

"That canned shit?"

"Kids like it."

"No, Jack, no fucking Spaghetti-Os. This is a four-star kitchen."

"Well, then something close to it. And two Cokes, no ice. Tell them to knock on the door and leave it outside. Tell them I don't have to sign for it. Nobody can see me up here, Vincent. You understand?"

"Perfectly. Anything else?"

"That's it. This will all be over by midnight, Vincent. You'll have the money, everything. Miami will get the Cleo, you'll run the show, and Chicago gets fucked."

"I'll be very grateful, Jack."

"You bet your ass you will be."

He hung up. He then took the cell phone out of his pocket and used it to check his messages. There were a couple of new missing persons referrals but nothing else. Karch knew that one way or another his missing persons days were going to end soon.

When he put the phone back into his inside suit pocket he felt something in there and remembered he had taken Leo Renfro's date book. He took it out and opened it. He had only glanced through it before, at the time hoping there would be a clue to the whereabouts of the money or Cassie Black. Instead, he found the calendar pages filled with penciled notes about astrological conditions. It fascinated him that there were people who made life decisions based upon configurations of the stars and the sun and moon. He felt that it was stupid and what happened to Leo sure proved it.

He now paged through the calendar to see what Leo had written about the future he didn't live to see. He started to smile when he got to a particularly large notation penciled into the block denoting the current date.

"Hey, we got a void moon rising tonight," he said out loud. "Ten-ten till midnight."

He thought maybe there was something valid to all of this. After all, he knew the night was going to be bad luck for somebody. He put the date book down and stood up. He stepped to the corner and opened the curtains, revealing the floor-to-ceiling window. He stood back and appraised the view and the glass. He pinpointed the spot where Max Freeling had hit the glass and crashed through.

He looked over at the bedroom doors. He heard the signature Beep Beep of a Road Runner cartoon and he knew the coyote was on the case.