Giles Blunt - No Such Creature

“I know Max,” Stu said. “Did a job for him years ago.”

“Shit,” Zig said. “Is he going to recognize you?”

“Doubt it. Not unless he gets close.”

“Well, don’t let him. I bumped into him and his so-called nephew earlier at Slots-a-Lot and followed him. Turns out he’s staying at a fucking trailer park. Unfortunately, I don’t know which trailer is theirs-I didn’t have a card to get through the gate. But I want you guys to keep an eye on him. And I mean a close eye.”

“What kinda guy brings a kid to Las Vegas?” Clem said. “How can you have a good time in Sin City if you got, like, offspring with you?”

“Maybe he really is his nephew, who knows,” Zig said. “He was okay for a teenager. Very polite.”

“Gives me hope for the world,” Stu said, and took a sip of his Corona. He’d asked for it with no lime, but the bartender had stuck a lime in it anyway. In Stu’s experience girls never made good bartenders.

Clem raised his hand to get her attention. “Bar mistress!”

Zig grabbed Clem’s wrist. “You don’t need another drink. What you need to do, the both of you, is keep an eye on the trailer park, starting at, like, dawn. Follow Max and this kid and see who his associates are. If this is a working vacation he’s on, and you can bet your ass it is, he’s gonna be staffed up. I want to know who’s with him and what they’re up to.”

“How we gonna know what they look like?” Clem said.

“Stu’s met Max, dipstick. The kid will be with him.”

Max was reading aloud in the back of the limo. They had made the papers-even the Las Vegas papers-thanks to the celebrity of Evelyn del Rio.

“‘He was completely charming,’ Ms. del Rio said. ‘Or at least, as charming as a man can be while he’s robbing you. Yes, I was terrified at first, but it became clear very quickly that they weren’t going to hurt anybody, they just wanted their loot and out.’

“‘The loot and out,’” Max repeated. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

A voice addressed them from the front of the limo in a strong Indian accent. “You are utterly bewitched by this woman,” Pookie said. For some reason he had it in his head that all limo drivers hail from the Punjab.

“Just drive, Pookie. Please don’t act.”

Max was dressed in baggy khaki pants, sandals and a pale pink polo shirt. He wore a baseball cap on his head that said Las Vegas , and he had covered the exposed skin of his arms and face with makeup that turned him lobster red, over which he had added little curls of “peeled skin.” An ancient Aer Lingus travel bag was slung across one shoulder. Owen had never seen him look so bad.

Not that Owen was doing much better. His hair was red tonight, his face and arms freckled. He had yellowed his teeth, and even blacked out one bicuspid as if it were the casualty of a bar brawl. For pants he had selected extremely baggy shorts with elaborate pockets that went badly with his battered pair of green high-tops. The Guinness T-shirt was new, and its deep black made Owen’s skin look extra pale.

The MGM Grand of course contained a casino, and casino security staff are the masters of facial recognition software, so in addition to the wardrobe Max had expended a good deal of effort adjusting their brows, noses and jawlines. They wouldn’t stand up to the full sun, but would be convincing under artificial light.

“Right to the door, if you please, driver,” Max said with a Dublin lilt. “Don’t go droppin’ us a country mile downstream.”

“Yes, sir, of course, sir,” said Pookie the Punjabi. “Many plenty good.”

“Pookie,” Max said in his normal voice, “just be your normal, rude, untutored self and all will be well.”

“You are being the boss, sir. But enlighten me, please-who is this odd-looking carrot-top?”

Owen laughed.

Pookie turned onto the Strip and slipped into a school of limos cruising the shoals of coral and ruby lights.

“Don’t let’s lose our fizzy stuff,” said Irish Owen, handing a two-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne to Max. It was a good prop for a show like this; plus, there was always the chance that you might end up actually drinking it.

Pookie pulled up in front of the Grand and opened the door for them. Max and Owen headed for the entrance, Owen weaving a little, Max extremely upright in the manner of the self-conscious drunk. A svelte youth over-decorated with gold braid opened the door for them.

They had the elevator to themselves.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this,” Owen said.

“I’ve always been in it for the money, myself.”

“But why a break-in? Always before it’s been the dinnertime thing. Now here we are, it’s the middle of the night, and we’re breaking into someone’s hotel room? Besides which, she’s not even a Republican. She campaigned for Obama.”

“Don’t be so conservative, laddie. One must evolve or die.”

“This is not good, Max. You know it.”

“Relax, boyo. I’ve done the research. Her fancy-man actor and her bodyguard are going to be at the concert.”

They got off on the twentieth floor. The corridors had the solemn hush of a good hotel, with thick pile carpeting that ran halfway up the walls. Although there were no security cameras, Max maintained his stately gait all the way down the corridor.

Except for the champagne, they were travelling light. As Max put it, you could explain being on the wrong floor, but you couldn’t explain bolt cutters. At the end of the corridor they took a stairwell down four flights.

Their destination was the corner suite on sixteen. This was where Max’s research in all those issues of Rolling Stone, Variety, Hotelier, Town amp; Country, Hollywood Reporter, Premiere, People and Hospitality paid off. He had determined that Angela Lake would be staying in suite 1601 for the full two weeks of her engagement at the Grand. Her last set was due to finish at two a.m.

They listened at the door for a full minute, but there was no sound of voices, television, running water-nothing.

Max, who was a champion pickpocket, had liberated a card key from a manager earlier that afternoon. Now he slipped it into the slot and the lock clicked open. Owen sensed impending disaster.

They entered a living room. The hotel billed itself as a nonsmoking environment, but there was a strong smell of nicotine in the air-the acrid after-smell that clings to clothing, as of someone who had just come in after stepping outside for a smoke.

Owen tugged at Max’s sleeve, but Max just scowled at him and moved farther into the room. The curtains were open, and ambient light from nearby buildings was enough to cast his bulky shadow low on the wall.

Between the living room and bedroom lay a dressing room and bathroom. Goodies were lined up on the dressers like a midnight snack set out for Santa Claus: two watches, a sparkling necklace and a fat wad of cash in a money clip. With one swift motion Max swept it all into the Aer Lingus bag.

Owen checked the closet safe; it was open and empty. He was just turning back when a voice said, “Get out of here. Now.”

“Nora?” Max said, not even looking. “Darlin’, that’s a considerable frog you’ve got in your throat.”

The man stood just inside the bedroom doorway. He was about forty, with close-cropped hair and dark circles under his eyes. Owen recognized him instantly. This was bad. This was not supposed to happen.

“I’m telling you again,” Tony Tedesco said, “get out of here.”

Tedesco was the kind of actor producers cast as the cop’s badass partner, the tough bastard who turns out to have a heart of gold. More recently he had been taking smaller parts in independent films.