Michael Connelly - Void Moon

"Flat on my ass on the living room floor."

She pointed to the briefcase.

"The fucking thing tried to electrocute me."

"What?"

"Built-in stun gun. I tried to open it and it was like getting hit by a bolt of lightning. It knocked me out cold, Leo. Three hours. Look at this."

She leaned forward and used both hands to spread the hair on the top of her scalp apart. There was a surface cut and a swollen bump that looked painful.

"I hit the corner of the table when I went down. I think that knocked me out more than the bolt."

Leo's look of anger over her lack of communication was immediately replaced with a sincere look of surprise and concern.

"Jesus, you sure you're all right? You better get that checked."

"I feel like I have that baseball guy Nolan O'Brien's arm."

"Ryan."

"Whatever. It feels like it's dead. My elbow joint hurts worse than my head."

"You've been lying on the floor of your house all this time?"

"Just about. I got blood on my carpet."

"Jesus. I thought you were dead. I've been going nuts here. I called Vegas and you know what I was told? My guy said something's screwy over there."

"What are you talking about?"

"The guy disappeared. The mark. It's like he was never there. He's not in the room and his name's off the computer. No record of him at all."

"Yeah? Well, that's not the worst of it. Take a look."

She reached for the briefcase's latches but Leo quickly reached for her arms to stop her.

"No, no, don't!"

She shrugged him off.

"It's okay, Leo. I got some heavy-duty rubber gloves – like the ones the guys who work on the power lines use. It took me almost an hour to work the picks with the gloves but then I got it open. I disconnected the battery. The case is safe but not what's in it. Look at this."

She unlatched the case and opened it. It was lined side to side with stacks of hundred-dollar bills bundled in cellophane and marked with a " 50 " in thick black ink. She watched as Leo's mouth dropped open and then a look of dismay crossed his face. They both knew that seeing a case full of cash of high denomination was not immediate cause for celebration. It was not the pot of gold at the end of every thief's rainbow. Rather, it was cause for concern and suspicion. Like a trial attorney who never asks a question of a witness that he doesn't already know the answer to, professional thieves never steal blind, taking something they do not know the consequences for stealing. Legal consequences are not the issue. The concern is over consequences of a more serious kind.

It was a good ten seconds before Leo managed to speak.

"Fuck…"

"Yeah…"

"Fuck…"

"I know…"

"You count this?"

Cassie nodded.

"I counted the bricks. There are fifty of them. If that fifty on each one means what it looks like it means, then you're looking at two-and-a-half million in cash. He didn't win this money, Leo. He came to Vegas with it."

"Hold on, hold on a minute. Let's think about this for a minute."

Cassie started unconsciously massaging her sore elbow.

"What is there to think about? They don't pay you at the cashier's cage in fifty-thousand-dollar bricks wrapped in plastic. He didn't win this money in Vegas. Period, Leo. He brought it with him. It's a payoff of some kind. Maybe drugs. Maybe something else. But we took it – I took it – before it was delivered. I mean this guy, the mark, he was just an errand boy. He didn't even have a key to the case on him. He was just going to deliver it and probably didn't even know what was in it himself."

"He didn't have a key?"

"Leo, have you heard anything I've said? I got knocked on my ass trying to open this with picks. Would I do that if I had the guy's key?"

"Sorry, sorry, I forgot, okay?"

"I took the guy's keys. He had a key that opened the cuffs but none to the briefcase."

Leo dropped into his chair as Cassie put her backpack on the desk and started digging through it. She took out four rubber-banded stacks of hundreds and put them down.

"This is what he won. A hundred and a quarter. And half of the info you got from the spotter or your partners was for shit."

She snaked her hand back into the bag. She brought out the wallet she had taken off the bed table in room 2014 and tossed it to him.

"Guy's name isn't Hernandez and he isn't from Texas."

Leo opened the wallet and looked at the Florida driver's license behind the plastic window.

"Manuel Hidalgo," he said. "Miami."

"He's got business cards in there. He's a lawyer for something called the Buena Suerte Group."

Leo shook his head in the negative but he did it too quickly. More like he was trying to shake the information off than deny knowledge of it. Cassie didn't say anything at first. She put her palms flat on the desk and leaned down, looking at him with a face that said she saw the move and wanted to know what he knew. Leo glanced out at his pool and Cassie followed his eyes. She could see the hose of the automatic vacuum moving slowly on the surface, the vacuum somewhere down below.

He looked back at her.

"I didn't know a fucking thing about this, Cass, I swear."

"I believe you about the money, Leo. What about Buena Suerte? Tell me what you know."

"It's big money. Cubans from Miami."

"Legit money?"

Leo hiked his shoulders in a gesture that suggested the answer could go either way.

"They're trying to buy the Cleo," he said.

Cassie dropped heavily into the chair opposite Leo.

"It was a payoff on the license. I stole a fucking payoff. "

"Let's just think about this."

"You keep saying that, Leo."

She laid her injured arm across her body.

"Well, what else are we going to do? We have to think this out."

"Who were these people you did this for? You wouldn't tell me before. But you have to tell me now."

Leo nodded but then stood up. He went to the sliding door and opened it, then moved out by the pool. He stood at the edge and looked down at the vacuum gliding silently along the bottom. Cassie came up behind him. As he spoke he never took his eyes off the water.

"They're from Vegas by way of Chicago."

"Chicago. You mean the Outfit, Leo?"

Leo didn't answer but in his silence was the answer.

"How the hell did you get involved with the Outfit, Leo? Tell me."

Leo started walking along the edge of the pool, his hands deep in the pockets of his robe.

"Look, first of all, I'm smart enough to know not to intentionally get involved with the Outfit, okay? Give me a little fucking credit, okay? I didn't have a choice in the matter."

"Okay, Leo, I understand. Tell me the story."

"It started about a year ago. I met these guys. I was at Santa Anita and saw Carl Lennertz over there, you remember him, right?"

Cassie nodded. Lennertz was a scout, always had an eye out for what he called a good book – a score. He sold tips to Leo, usually collecting a flat fee or ten percent of the gross taken out of Leo's end. Cassie had met him once or twice with Leo and Max several years before.

"Well, he was with these two guys and he made the introductions. They were just two guys who hung around the track and were looking to back a move here and there. They said they were venture capitalists."

"And you just took them at their word."

A truck with a bad muffler system roared by on the nearby freeway and Leo didn't answer the question until the noise had abated.

"I had no reason to doubt them and they were with Carl and he's good people. Besides, at the time things were drying up and I was scratching bottom. I needed setup money and here were these two guys. So I set up a meeting for later and we got together and I asked them to, you know, back me up on a couple things I had on my desk. They said sure, no problem."