Michael Connelly - Void Moon

"And the garage. Just like you asked. Routine maintenance. If you stayed clear of the casino then there's no record of you coming in."

"Okay. What about the stairs?"

"I've got people in every stairwell. And we know she doesn't have a card because Martin got his back. So she can't use the elevators. Just the stairs. You want somebody up there in the penthouse, like in the hallway?"

"No."

"You sure she's going to come back with the money? Just for the kid?"

"She's coming, Vincent. I guarantee it."

"With your life, Jack. You understand that?"

Karch didn't answer. Grimaldi was trying to reassert himself but it was too late for that. Karch still had control.

"She says she didn't put Hidalgo down on the bed like that."

"Who says this?"

"Cassie Black. She says she didn't pop him."

"Bullshit. What's she going to say? 'Things went wrong up there and I did it?' No, they never cop to anything, Jack, you know that."

Karch thought about this.

"All right," he finally said. "I guess you're right."

"I know I am. So you're all set up there?"

"Yeah – oh wait, one last thing. I need you to call room service and have them send up a steak. Make it bloody rare. And…"

He looked toward the doors to the bedroom. The low sound of cartoon gunfire was coming from the room.

"What?"

"And do they have any Spaghetti-Os down there?"

"That canned shit?"

"Kids like it."

"No, Jack, no fucking Spaghetti-Os. This is a four-star kitchen."

"Well, then something close to it. And two Cokes, no ice. Tell them to knock on the door and leave it outside. Tell them I don't have to sign for it. Nobody can see me up here, Vincent. You understand?"

"Perfectly. Anything else?"

"That's it. This will all be over by midnight, Vincent. You'll have the money, everything. Miami will get the Cleo, you'll run the show, and Chicago gets fucked."

"I'll be very grateful, Jack."

"You bet your ass you will be."

He hung up. He then took the cell phone out of his pocket and used it to check his messages. There were a couple of new missing persons referrals but nothing else. Karch knew that one way or another his missing persons days were going to end soon.

When he put the phone back into his inside suit pocket he felt something in there and remembered he had taken Leo Renfro's date book. He took it out and opened it. He had only glanced through it before, at the time hoping there would be a clue to the whereabouts of the money or Cassie Black. Instead, he found the calendar pages filled with penciled notes about astrological conditions. It fascinated him that there were people who made life decisions based upon configurations of the stars and the sun and moon. He felt that it was stupid and what happened to Leo sure proved it.

He now paged through the calendar to see what Leo had written about the future he didn't live to see. He started to smile when he got to a particularly large notation penciled into the block denoting the current date.

"Hey, we got a void moon rising tonight," he said out loud. "Ten-ten till midnight."

He thought maybe there was something valid to all of this. After all, he knew the night was going to be bad luck for somebody. He put the date book down and stood up. He stepped to the corner and opened the curtains, revealing the floor-to-ceiling window. He stood back and appraised the view and the glass. He pinpointed the spot where Max Freeling had hit the glass and crashed through.

He looked over at the bedroom doors. He heard the signature Beep Beep of a Road Runner cartoon and he knew the coyote was on the case.

CASSIE analyzed and reanalyzed everything Karch had said during the cell phone-to-cell phone conversation. She was in Vegas now, parked in the Flamingo garage again. She sat with her hands on the wheel even though the car was stopped in a parking slot. She stared at the wall in front of her and analyzed the conversation once more. At one point Karch had mentioned the scene of the crime. He also said that when she called after arriving he would have someone bring her "up" to him. This meant to Cassie that he was waiting for her in the penthouse of the Cleo. In room 2014 to be exact. The scene of the crime.

But then she overanalyzed things and began to wonder if the clues he had dropped into the phone call had been dropped intentionally. Perhaps Karch knew she had been lying and was on the road just behind him. Perhaps he knew that she would make a move to rescue her daughter. Finally, though, she dismissed this latter possibility. Looking at it from the standpoint of Karch's believing he held all the cards this time, she decided that he had something else in mind when he chose 2014 for their meeting and supposed exchange of money for the girl.

One thing that needed no analyzing was the exchange. Cassie knew as an absolute given that there would be no trade. Whatever Karch had in mind did not include Cassie's leaving Las Vegas with her daughter. She knew that if she went through with this Karch's way that she would be going to her death. Karch was a no-witnesses man. And to him an ex-con hot prowler wasn't worth a second thought. While she was pretty sure that she could and would trade her life for Jodie's, she was also absolutely sure that Karch's no-witnesses ethic would even apply to a five-and-a-half-year-old innocently caught in the crosswinds of her mother's fatal mistakes.

So after all the furious thinking there was no choice. It came down to a given. She had to get back into the Cleopatra and up to the top floor. She then had to get into room 2014 again. Using that resolve as a foundation, she finally hatched a plan from which she hoped at least one person – a child – would come out alive.

Thirty minutes later she was moving through the casino at the Cleopatra with a new wide-brimmed hat on and a determined step in her walk. She carried a matching black gym bag she had also bought at one of the shops at the Flamingo. It contained more cash than was on the entire casino floor at the moment. It also contained the fanny pack with the tools of her trade but no gun. If things worked out as she planned a weapon would not be necessary. If a weapon became necessary she knew she'd already be lost.

She had to assume the stairwells were being watched. It was the only way up without a key. So she ignored them and headed directly to the Euphrates Tower elevator alcove. She pushed the up button.

Before an elevator arrived two couples walked into the alcove, the male half of each pushing the already lit call button. Cassie needed an elevator to herself. When one arrived she stepped back and let the others have it, then pushed the button again. This happened two more times until she started to think she would never get her own elevator. Finally, she decided to take her chances and got on an elevator with a woman carrying a plastic change cup. She waited until the other passenger chose her floor – luckily it was the sixth floor – and then punched the button for the nineteenth floor.

While they rode up Cassie checked her watch. It was ten o'clock. As soon as her fellow passenger stepped off the elevator, Cassie pushed the buttons for the seventeenth and eighteenth floors as well. She then removed her hat and hooked it over the camera in the upper corner. She did it in such a way that the hat was held between her face and the camera until the camera was blocked. Her hope was that when the tampered camera was discovered and investigated it would be written off as a prank.

Cassie slipped her lock picks out of her back pocket and put them in her mouth. She hooked one arm through both straps of the gym bag, then put one foot up on the railing that ran along the side wall of the elevator. She hoisted herself up with her back to the corner and put her other foot on the railing on the rear wall. Braced against the corner she went to work with the picks on the lock on the elevator's overhead door.