Michael Connelly - Void Moon

"I'll have it checked. You stay in touch. And remember, Jack of Spades, the clock is ticking."

Karch shot him with a finger and went out the door.

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.