Michael Connelly - Void Moon

"We went digital since I think you were last in here. It's a blast."

"Great."

Karch didn't know what going digital meant but it wasn't important to him.

"Okay, here's the door starting at four. I'll put it on double time until you see something."

He pointed to the large master screen directly in front of him in the console. It was divided into a matrix of twenty-four different camera angles. He moved the joystick and an arrow moved across the screen to one of the small squares. He hit the enter button and the image on the small square took over the entire screen. The image was from a camera showing an angled overhead shot of a set of automatic glass doors. The image was moving quickly. Cars seen in the distance through the doors sped by and people passing by on the sidewalk seemed to move at a quick trot. Karch stared intently at the screen and at the figures occasionally entering and leaving through the doors.

"There!" he said after nearly three minutes. "I think that was her. Back it up."

"All right."

Cannon moved the digital image until the figure that had gone by so quickly reappeared going backward out the door.

"There."

The image was frozen and then replayed on slow motion. The automatic doors opened and the woman Karch had watched on the video tubes at the Cleo entered carrying her backpack and the canvas bag containing the briefcase.

"That's her."

"Not bad-looking for a hooker. Too much hair, though. Wonder what she charges."

"Five bills minimum, my guy told me."

Cannon whistled.

"There's your rip-off right there. I don't care what a woman looks like, no piece of ass is worth five bills."

Karch laughed dutifully.

"She take the guy's luggage, too?"

"Yeah. But he doesn't care so much about that. He just wants that watch and ring."

"I don't know, she's holding that one bag like it's got Fort Knox jammed into it."

Karch started to perspire. He had hoped Cannon would run the video trail for him without being too interpretive.

"Well, let's see where she goes," he said, hoping to get Cannon to stop analyzing what he saw and just move through the video.

It seemed to work. Cannon grew silent and he trailed the woman through the matrix of camera angles until she left the casino building through the rear entrance and entered the eight-story self-parking garage at the rear of the property on Koval Road.

"That's gotta be a wig she's wearing, but even so, she looks new to me," Cannon finally remarked after five minutes of silence. "If you want, we can check our hooker bin for her."

"Hooker bin?"

"That's what we call it. We've got most of the working girls in town on computer file. Might be able to come up with a name if we can match her photo. Trouble is, she hasn't so much as looked up a single time. We don't have a clear shot of her so far."

And you're not going to get one, Karch thought.

"Well, let's see what she does and then worry about that after," he said instead.

In the garage the woman took the elevator to the eighth floor. She then walked to a blue unmarked van that was backed into a space in the corner farthest from the elevator. This time of night the upper floors of the garage were nearly empty. There was not another vehicle within twenty spaces of the van.

"No plate," Cannon said. "Looks like this girl takes precautions. You sure she's a hooker, Jack? Like I said, she doesn't look all that familiar to me and, besides, mosta these girls use drivers. Especially your five-hundred-an-hour variety."

Karch didn't answer. He was intently watching the screen. The woman opened the driver's door with a key, then loaded in the bags and climbed in. The lights came on as she started the van. Before putting it in gear the woman reached back and knocked on the partition between the front and the rear cargo area. Karch watched her lips move as she said something. Someone was obviously in the back of the van.

"Don, show that part again, will you?"

"No problem."

Cannon reversed the digital image and showed the woman knocking on the partition again. He froze it and went through some computer commands in an effort to clean up the picture. He then switched to the roller ball and slowly advanced the recorded image again.

"She said something," Cannon said. "I don't… it looks like maybe, 'How are you doing?' or 'How's it going?' Something like that."

"How's it going back there," Karch said.

"Damn, Jack, I think you're right. You're good, man. We could use you up here."

"I'd go stir-crazy inside a week. You going to be able to get a rear shot of the van?"

"As soon as she drives out."

Cannon went back to the matrix – now displaying only garage cameras – and followed the van down the seven levels until it went out the exit to Koval. As it passed through the exit, the van's rear end was recorded by a ground-level camera focused at the average height of a license plate.

The van's rear plate was missing as well.

"Damn!" Karch cried out, surprised by his own outburst.

"Wait a sec," Cannon said.

He reversed the image and replayed it in slow motion. He then froze the picture and magnified it. Karch looked at him and then at the screen and then finally understood what he was doing. The van's plates were gone but there was a parking sticker on the left side of the bumper. Cannon expertly moved in on it and expanded it. The larger letters and numbers became almost clear. Karch could see the current year on the sticker and was trying to make out the letters when Cannon whistled.

"What?"

"It looks like HLS to me."

"Me, too. What's that?"

"That's Hooten Lighting and Supplies. Their logo. You know, the company that makes all of this shit."

He indicated the console with his hand.

"Okay."

Karch didn't know what else to say. The discovery was making the cover story he had told Cannon seem more and more of a stretch. For the first time he realized how cold it was in the tube room. He folded his arms across his chest.

"I don't get it," Cannon said. "A hooker driving herself in a van from Hooten's. You sure this, uh, client of yours told it to you straight?"

He looked up at Karch, who decided he had to extricate himself from this situation.

"Nope. But that's what I'm going to go find out before I take another step on this thing. If the guy's lying, I'm flying. Thanks for your help, Don. I better get back over there to the DI and talk to this guy."

"Yeah, it sounds kind of hinky to me. You want to look through the hooker bin anyway? Got some real beauties in there."

Karch frowned and shook his head.

"Nah, maybe later. Let me talk to this guy first and see what's what. Oh, and I'll catch you later with the rest of what I owe you for the trail."

Karch nodded at the video console.

"Forget about it. Anyway, looks like I opened more holes for you than I closed. The only thing I want from you is a little sleight of hand. You got something to show me?"

Karch went into his act, feigning that he had been caught off guard by Cannon's request.

"Well…"

He patted his pockets for change.

"You got some change? A quarter or something?"

Cannon leaned back in his seat so he could work his hand into his pocket. He finally came up with a palm full of change. Karch pulled the sleeves of his jacket halfway up to his elbows and then chose a recently minted and shiny quarter, taking it off Cannon's palm with his right hand. He then performed a variation on the classic French Drop with an added toss-away vanish devised by J. B. Bobo. It was a sleight-of-hand trick he had been practicing since he was twelve years old. It was one he could do in his sleep. He expertly accomplished it with fluid motions and a practiced ease.

With his right hand palm up and chest high he held the quarter by its edges between his thumb and four fingers, tilting it forward slightly so that Cannon could see its face. He then brought his left hand over the top of the coin as if to take it away. As his left hand closed over the coin he let it drop down into his right palm, completing the fake take.