William Bernhardt - Strip search

"Just wish I'd done it about five grand sooner."

"Heard you had an altercation with one of my men out in the lobby."

"Well, yeah."

"Tell me he wasn't pushin'. I know you hate pushers."

"No, no. It was just a…personality conflict."

"What was the problem?"

"The problem was…" I sighed. "I'm trying to think of a nice way to put this. He was annoying as hell and made me want to rip off his testicles."

"Well, then," Olivestra deadpanned, "I'd say he got off easy." He took me by the arm and lowered his voice. "The money disappeared a little over an hour ago. We're still hoping we can handle this internally. Don't like the negative publicity. People visiting the Florence need to know they're safe."

"Understood. Can you show us where you think the theft occurred?"

He and Castle led the way to a much smaller room with a few chairs, curtained windows behind a high riser all along the far wall, and an elevator with only a down button.

"You're certain this is where it happened?" I asked Castle. He was short, especially standing beside me, but he had that Napoleonic swagger you sometimes find in guys his size. He was overcompensating with muscle, manner, and manicure. Immaculately groomed. Even wore French cuffs.

"It's the only place it could have occurred. We've reviewed the tapes. No one intercepted the money on the floor. If someone had stashed the dough in the elevator downstairs or intercepted it on its way to the vault, we'd have tape. And once it's in the vault, Superman couldn't get it out."

"Why don't you have a camera in here?"

Olivestra answered. "We did. The line was cut. The security officer in the video control room noticed immediately, but by the time he determined it wasn't a power or monitor blip-which was only about five minutes-it was all over. The thief thunked poor Dominic over the head, took the cash, and climbed out that window-we found it gaping open. It leads to a parking lot. From there, he could be halfway down the Strip in sixty seconds."

"And you're sure it wasn't taken from the vault?"

Castle looked at me as if I were stupider than stupid, but I got the general impression he thought anyone with breasts was stupider than stupid. "Let me guess-you've seen Ocean's Eleven? Let me assure you that in the real world, getting into a casino vault isn't that easy. You'd have better luck trying to steal plutonium from Los Alamos."

Which I believed, because I knew perfectly well he'd taken the money. But I didn't want him to know that I knew. "How much was swiped?"

Castle gave his boss a look, got the nod, then replied. "Two hundred sixty-eight thousand, four hundred twelve bucks."

I whistled. "Day's take?"

He gave me another withering look. "One hour."

"And none of your videos show any unauthorized personnel coming in here?"

"Unfortunately, none of the cameras are trained on the outer door to this particular room."

"That is unfortunate." Or perfect, if you're the thief. Or a person picking a place to pretend there was a thief. "Darcy, what do you think?"

Darcy was standing on a chair, his face flattened against the window-pane, sniffing the curtains.

"Darcy?" I repeated, wiggling my fingers. "Yoo-hoo?"

He looked up, startled. His foot slipped off the chair and he tumbled to the carpet, barely avoiding a head injury. He pulled himself up, tugged down his T-shirt, and grinned his goofy, angelic grin. "Did you ever know that humans spray two-point-five drops of saliva into the air for every word they speak?"

I was mildly puzzled. The expressions on the faces of Castle and Olivestra suggested that they were, well, more extremely puzzled. "No, I must confess I didn't."

"That comes to, on average, three hundred drops per minute. When someone is talking."

Castle appeared irritated and annoyed. "Is this some kind of joke? Is he making this up?"

"Darcy never makes anything up," I replied. "He doesn't know how."

Olivestra gave Darcy a quick once-over-the long shaggy brown hair, skinny frame, worn sneakers. Darcy was twenty-six but he looked younger. "May I ask what exactly is this young man's function? He doesn't appear to be a member of the police department."

"He works with me. As a consultant," I bluffed.

"But I was told you were-"

"And he's the consultant's consultant, okay? Don't sweat it; he won't cost you any extra."

Olivestra folded his arms, frowned, but let it go.

"Notice anything else, Darcy?" I asked.

"Did you see me try to get the window open? I tried really hard to get that window open. I couldn't make it budge."

"Perhaps you should reconsider that gym membership."

"I think that maybe even for a strong man opening this window would be tough."

"But the window was open," Olivestra insisted. "The shark was obviously strong if he clubbed Dominic unconscious, yanked open the window, and survived that jump."

Darcy ran his fingers through his hair, as if washing it with invisible shampoo. "No one jumped out of that window."

That caught us all by surprise. "How do you know?"

"That would be twenty-two and three quarters feet straight down to the concrete."

I glanced out the window. "Looks about right."

"That is exactly right. I think that if I had stolen that money-I mean, I would never steal any money, but if I did, I would be in a hurry. And I would be carrying a heavy sack or briefcase or something. I see no sign that there was a rope or ladder. The officer outside told us that they looked really really hard but they found no blood or torn clothing on the concrete. And look at the mud." He pointed down below the window. "That is from last night's rain. I do not see any footprints. Do you see any footprints?" He grinned sheepishly. "Or butt prints, depending on how well he fell. I do not think that anyone could possibly have jumped out that window with all that money." He continued staring at the transparent pane of evidence.

"I already had my boys go over that window with a fine-tooth comb," Olivestra said. "There's no prints on it."

"Which proves Darcy's point," I said. "If this was some outside crook or hopped-up crackhead making a desperate run for it, why stop to wipe his prints? No, the thief had to wipe the window clean after he got it open, because he knew you'd be able to ID his prints." I slowed, giving Olivestra a minute to catch up. "Because you print all your employees before you hire them, don't you, Frank?"

I didn't wait for him to respond. I already knew the answer. "The open window was just a decoy. A clever bit of misdirection. What else have you got on the thief, Darcy? Who he was?"

"Even though it was hard to get the window open," he replied, "he got the window open, so I think that he was a strong person. Do you think that he was a strong person? I do not understand why he would go to all the trouble of opening the window if he was not going to go through it, though. Do you think that maybe it was really hot in here? Because it does not seem that hot now."

In this perfectly climate-controlled casino? I don't think so. "Darcy, if you can't tell us anything use-"

"And he was five foot five."

"Excuse me?"

"Or less. Five foot five or less."

"But how-"

Darcy raced to the other side of the room, then pressed himself up against the wall, giggling excitedly. "See how all the chairs are lined up against the wall? Evenly spaced. Except one. I hate that. They should all be in an evenly spaced straight line. Don't you think they should be evenly spaced? And then I thought-maybe they're not evenly spaced-"

"Because he needed to move one to get up on the window riser."

"If he'd have been five foot six or more, he could've stepped up there himself. But five foot five-"

"He needed a chair." I glanced across at Mr. Castle, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable. I'm not nearly as good at estimating height or distance as Darcy-well, in his case, it isn't estimating, it's just plain knowing-but I'm almost six feet tall, and Castle appeared to be eye level with my clavicle. Which suggested to me…