Michael Connelly - Void Moon

Cassie could not remember all of the words but she vividly remembered the scene as through the eyes of a child. Her father just sat on his stool and kept his place at the gambling table. He stared at the woman screaming at him as though she were a complete stranger. A thin smile played on his face. And he never said a word.

Her father didn't come home that night or any of the nights after. Cassie saw him only one more time – when she was dealing blackjack at the Trop. But by then he was deep inside the bottle and didn't recognize her. And she didn't have the courage to introduce herself.

She looked away from the house and again images from the house on Lookout Mountain Road intruded. She thought of the drawing on the easel in Jodie Shaw's bedroom. The little girl in the picture was crying because she was leaving her home behind.

Cassie knew exactly how she felt.

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.