Michael Connelly - Void Moon

"Yeah, well, call me then. I don't care how nervous he is, what am I going to do about it at a quarter after three in the goddamn morning?"

She pulled the gun out.

"Yeah, yeah, later. Good-bye."

Cassie heard him slam down the phone.

"Fuck!" he called out.

The blue glow from the television was extinguished, dropping the closet into complete darkness. Cassie heard the bedsprings move as Hernandez tried to get comfortable and return to sleep. She was pulling the goggles up into place when Hernandez let out another expletive.

"Fuck!"

A light in the bedroom was turned on. Cassie heard the bed protesting and then heavy footfalls on the carpet, coming closer. Hernandez was coming toward the closet. She slowly backed as far into the closet as she could and raised the gun in a two-handed, elbow-locked grip. She told herself that she would not shoot. She would only back him off until she could escape.

Hernandez's wide shadow eclipsed the light coming through the slats. Cassie braced herself.

But then the shadow was gone and the closet doors didn't open. Cassie dropped her aim and took a step toward the door. In a few moments she heard the toilet seat bang against the tank, then came the sound of Hernandez urinating. She lowered the gun all the way and fought the urge to cut and run, to grab the pillowcase and go for the door. She could be on the stairs before Hernandez figured out what was going on. And she would have the gun. He could do nothing but call security. This time of night it would be a skeleton crew. She'd be out of the hotel before anyone could react.

But she stayed in the closet and waited. She knew the best escape was the undetected escape. But that wasn't her reason. The briefcase was the reason. She wanted that case. She needed it.

After the toilet was flushed another long period passed and then Hernandez finally walked back past her viewing point and got back into the bed. The light went out without his noticing that the wallet and gun were missing from the bed table.

Cassie slowly moved down to the floor and sat with her knees up and her back against the safe. She brought her wrist up and pressed the button that lighted the face of her watch. It was now 3:20 and she felt a searing sense of loss. She folded her arms on her knees and put her head down. She knew she wasn't going to leave the closet until well after the void moon began. She couldn't risk it.

Cassie thought about Leo. She wondered if he was awake this late and if he was thinking about the void moon, if he was checking his watch. He had called it a bad luck time. But to Cassie, the bad luck had come before the void moon had started. It was that phone call to Hernandez. That was the bad luck. She would have to tell Leo that. Explain it. Surely he would understand. And if he didn't, Cassie would make him.

AT 3:46 A.M. Cassie Black opened her eyes in the bedroom closet of the man she was trying to steal from. That man had finally started to snore again and Cassie knew it was time to make her final move. She slowly stood up and pushed the closet door open. She pulled the goggles up over her eyes and looked at the bed. She could see Hernandez under the covers with his head propped up on two pillows. If he opened his eyes he would be staring right at her, but his deep breathing and the guttural pitch of his snoring indicated he was down deep into sleep. It didn't matter to Cassie anymore if he awoke. She was tired of waiting. It was time for her to find the briefcase and get out of the suite and out of Las Vegas for good.

She stooped down and massaged her left calf. It had cramped up while she waited. When she was ready she wrapped the pillowcase around her hand and again slowly pushed the closet door all the way open.

For a moment Cassie stood motionless in the bedroom and studied the sleeping hulk on the bed. It was always the strangest part of a job, to observe the mark sleeping. It was like knowing a secret you weren't supposed to know. She began a sweeping look around the room in search of the briefcase but it was nowhere in sight.

She backed into the alcove and checked the bathroom. Nothing. She came back into the bedroom, got down on the floor and reached the penlight under the bed. She flicked it on, revealing the space to be empty save for an assortment of dust balls and a room service menu.

Cassie got up and went into the living room, where she surveyed every square foot of the room but found nothing that even hinted at the location of the briefcase. She started panicking and thinking about her decision earlier to go down to the bar for a cherry Coke and to rekindle memories of her last moments with Max. During that time had Hernandez possibly gotten up from bed, left the suite and stashed the briefcase, only to return and go right back to sleep? It seemed ludicrous, except for the fact that she could not find the briefcase.

Suddenly she remembered the safe. Hernandez's keys had inexplicably been inside it. Cassie tried to determine what this could mean and quickly came to a conclusion. The keychain held keys that opened the briefcase and the handcuffs. To put those keys in the safe rather than to take measures safeguarding the case and its contents would be done only if those measures had been taken in some other way. If Hernandez had not left the suite, how else other than with use of the safe could he safeguard the case?

Cassie moved back into the bedroom and surveyed the bed. She visualized what she had seen through the peephole when Hernandez had opened the door. The briefcase had been attached to his right hand. She came around the right side of the bed and gently pressed her hands down on the rumpled bedcovers, careful to stay away from formations created by Hernandez's body. She didn't breathe as she did this. It was the closest she had ever come to a mark. It was too close and every one of her senses was focused on the bed and the huge body that snored beneath the covers.

Her hand eventually came down on something flat and hard and she knew she had found the briefcase. She slowly began lifting the bedspread until she had uncovered the case and the handcuff link to Hernandez's right wrist.

Realizing she needed the keys to remove the case, she went back to the closet and reopened the safe. As she did this she noticed that she had left the gun sitting on top of the safe. She grabbed it, opened the safe and carefully removed the keys. In the green vision of the goggles she studied them. There were four keys and Cassie had had enough experience with handcuffs to know the little key with a round barrel went to the handcuffs. She detached it from the others so that she could work with it without causing the others to jangle and left the closet once more for the bedroom.

Hernandez hadn't moved. Cassie put the gun down on the bed and silently worked the key into the cuff attached to the steel handle of the case. She turned it and the cuff came open with a metallic clicking sound. She started to remove it just as Hernandez, possibly alerted by the sound, began to stir.

Cassie quietly removed the handcuff and straightened up, taking the briefcase off the bed. She reached down and grabbed the gun. Hernandez let out a sigh and started kicking his legs beneath the covers. He was waking up.

Cassie raised the gun. She told herself she could do it if she had to. She could blame it on the bad timing of a phone call, on the void moon or on simple fate. It didn't matter. But she could do what she needed to do. She held the gun straight out and pointed it dead center at the moving mass on the bed.

THE first thing Jack Karch noticed as he walked through the Cleopatra Casino was that the crow's nest was empty. He knew Vincent Grimaldi wouldn't be up there right now because he knew exactly where Grimaldi was. But the custom and practice of the casino since the day it opened had been always to have somebody up in the nest. That was twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If it wasn't Grimaldi, then it was usually somebody else. Karch knew it was all imagery. Sleight of hand. The illusion of security created security. But right now nobody was watching from above and that told him the thing Vincent had called him in to handle was big and important. This realization juiced Karch's blood a lot better than the twenty-two-ounce cup of 7 -Eleven coffee he had gulped down on the drive.