Nobody Dies in a Casino (10 page)

CHAPTER
11

E
VAN'S HOME WAS
your regular Southern California expatriate stucco and marble—vast in design, limited in imagination. Brand-new, with peeling paint and expensive tile applied with south-of-the border labor, slipping and chipping. Even in home building for the rich, Las Vegas knew how to take the customer.

Half the full-grown desert palms were dead or dying, propped up with two-by-fours. All had come from California tree farms. They were often planted by helicopter.

Charlie had one in Long Beach that would put any of the live ones on Evan's property to shame. But then, the whole first floor of her condo would fit nicely into his foyer.

Bradone wore a long, low-cut cream-colored creation set off by an allover tan, gold chains, and amused blue eyes with color-matching shadow. Richard glowed in proud accompaniment.

Evan Black, obviously taken by her too, tore himself away to tug Charlie into a pantry with a dumbwaiter and announce, “Hilsten's interested in the project. Thank you, thank you.”

The producer/writer/director picked up Charlie and her split skirt, whirling around with them at arm's length like a postal employee with an assault rifle, and managed to tip over a tray of crystal too leaded to break. The sound was impressive though.

“Anything you want, just tell me, Charlie love. It's yours.” He was actually wearing a suit, black, of course, and without collar or lapels, but the closest to one she'd ever seen him in, The purple shirt sort of demolished the effect.

“You talked to Mitch?” How was it, when Charlie
did
do something, nobody noticed?

“To his agent and his agent talked to him.”

“Evan, put me down. Now.”

“Charlie, with Hilsten on board, we've got Ursa Major tied up. I just know it.”

“Then why are you thanking me?” But she knew the superstar. “You used my name.”

“All I said to his agent was that you were
my
agent. Anything wrong with that?” Evan Black had stopped whirling Charlie, now he hugged her. He had a black belt in something or other and a lot more strength than necessary. “Oh Charlie, the sky's the limit. I owe you one, doll. When you decide what it is, just ask.”

“I'm asking—I don't want you getting me in any more trouble like that flight yesterday and Mitch Hilsten in none.”

“Babe”—he chucked her under the chin—“you're not in any trouble. Dr. Evan's magic is going to fix everything.”

Dr. Evan swept back to his guests, leaving her to face the not-so-dumb waiter who had to pick up all the crystal.

*   *   *

The screening room had couches and love seats, and recliners that vibrated, instead of theater seats. It had floor cushions, a small screen and a huge screen and a medium-sized one, all movable like stage props. It had two bartenders and small movable tables with round marble tops to hold food and beverages.

The screens moved on wheeled mechanisms—a few of which needed oiling. No buffet hors d'oeuvres here. Caterers in faux tuxes—ultrashiny and ill-fitting—maneuvered among the seated and the sprawled with trays of delights that made Charlie's overworked system shudder. She grabbed a recliner so she could be alone and accepted a glass of lemon springwater and two crackers to nibble slowly so the wandering servers would leave her alone.

Soon surrounded by people on floor cushions, she felt like a fat Cleopatra on a barge only slightly above the plebeian waves.

“So, uh, you want this thing to vibrate?” A large hand with manicured nails rested on the left arm of her recliner, the index finger poised above one of the buttons on its tiny console. Charlie didn't want to contemplate what else this chair could do.

“No,” and she grabbed the hand with the impending first finger, only to have it flip over to hold hers. Charlie looked into the patient eyes of Mr. Thug.

He used his other hand to press the button and the chair began to gently quake.

“Why are you following me?” You think I saw you help shove Patrick Thompson under a car. You know I described you and your bald buddy to Officer Graden, the bicycle cop. Now that he's dead, I'm to be next, huh?

“You see too many movies.” He gave her hand a forceful squeeze and let go of it to lean against the recliner and watch as their host stepped to the front of the room.

Evan grinned, rolled his shoulders up and back repeatedly as if warming up for a workout, his swarthy skin so smooth, it looked greased, his voice pure Teflon. “You”—and his gesture swept them all in—“I am so amazed you could come on such short notice, and so grateful. Me”—and he hugged his shoulders—“I'm so excited about my new project, I couldn't wait to let a few of my closest friends in on it. I'm like a damn kid at Christmas. You know?”

Charlie hadn't noticed any talent in the room, but there must be money. This warm-up act smelled of sales pitch.

“What you are about to see is uncut, unedited, raw. It's the germ of my next creation. It's not even thought out yet. Right now, it is without sound, music, concept. All I've got, my friends, is theme. And a damn good agent.”

Whereupon he gestured directly, unmistakably at Charlie. Whereupon everyone swiveled to stare at her as she tried to sink out of sight in her quaking recliner. All agents want to be famous—off-camera, offscreen, off-line. In
Variety,
in
Publishers Weekly.
But not in person.

“Mitch Hilsten is even now on his way here to see what you are about to see first. I think he'll like it. And if he does, he will have the lead in what will come of this germ. I ask you to keep in mind one thing only, a word. That word is”—and he paused as the lights dimmed and sky and cloud filled the midsized screen—“
conspiracy.
”

“You never told me Hilsten was coming here,” her boss rasped in an attempt at a whisper. Yucca Mountain from God's viewpoint appeared at an angle on the screen. A clearly defined, ragged shadow ditch Charlie didn't remember seeing when she flew over it emanated from either side and extended to the horizons. But she'd had her eyes closed a lot.

“Phony fault line,” the man at her side complained. “There's no quake activity out there. Damned enviros screw everything around to suit their prejudices.”

After several dead frames, the shadow of a small aircraft scudded over rocks and gullies and sagebrush and scratchy-looking bushes, mean sand, and scoured rock.

Richard had crawled through the bodies to her barge. He snarled back at the shushes rising around him, not that there was any sound from the film to be masked. “You gotta stop pissing me off, kid.”

“I didn't know, Richard. Remember, you didn't have time to discuss Evan and his project this afternoon at the pool.” And somebody with more clout than Charlie Greene should have advised Congdon and Morse's hot new client that this kind of advance, “not even thought out yet” screening was a big mistake. Like her writers killing a story by talking it to death before writing it. But that wasn't what was important right now. “I told you there was trouble.”

She stressed the last word of that sentence and tried to gesture with her eyes toward the gray-tinged curls beside her chair.

Either Richard Morse, a man with incessant nervous tics, trembled with anger or her quaking chair caused her to move, which made it seem as if
he
moved. “I got news for you, Greene—”

Charlie never heard the news, because she looked past him to the screen to see a live Patrick Thompson in the pilot's seat of a small, cramped aircraft. The cameraperson sat in a rear seat and the hunk turned with a gorgeous smile, his eyes electric with excitement. She hadn't seen how truly hunky he was when he had exchanged threats with someone at McCarran International on his cell phone. He hadn't been happy and excited then. He hadn't when walking, dazed, out of Loopy Louie's either. Charlie hugged herself so hard, it hurt her elbows, trying to not remember the thing he had become in the gutter.

The next shot showed Charlie in a rear seat, throwing up her Yolie's lunch into a plastic bag.

Richard still whispered from the floor in front of her, but the low voice to the side of her chair cut through her haze of fear, revulsion, and indigestion.

“There any trouble in this town you don't have a piece of, lady?” The Thug rubbed the deep cleft in his chin with his left hand. He wore a turquoise ring similar to that of the floorman at the Hilton.

Why would Evan invite you here? “I came here for a vacation. I just want to play blackjack.”

The plane's shadow crawled up and over a low sullen mountain range and dove down the other side.

“And Lazarus keeps hinting you're going to jump ship for ICM. I'll sue your socks off, Greene,” her boss threatened, unaware she hadn't been listening. Lazarus Trillion was Mitch Hilsten's agent. “He's also worried Hilsten will switch to you if you do. Then I'll sue more than socks.”

“Richard, I don't know what you're talking about—but this guy right here is the one who—” Now, wouldn't you know, her boss wasn't listening to her. He'd turned when everybody else gasped and “whoa”ed and someone even swore at the sight of runways many times wider and longer than those at Denver International Airport. At immense shedlike buildings and a row of unmarked 737s parked at the edge of a runway near huge hangars. A series of rapid-play still shots showed full-sized buses with blackened windows moving in odd jerking paths toward the jets, some already unloading passengers, others driving off presumably empty. All seen through a faint orange haze.

Amid a few jeers of “Area Fifty-one” and “Dreamland,” delivered with a mixture of amusement and discomfort from the assembled, Richard said, “Listen, I want to know the minute Hilsten hits town. I mean it. And I'm through with this. Call a taxi, we gotta leave early.”

“Where are you going? You can't leave me here.”

“Bradone's got a date with the high rollers. Baccarat. I want to watch—what's your problem?”

“Richard, this man wants to kill me—you've got to listen.”

“What man?”

Charlie, still seeing orange, could see through it well enough to determine that the floor beside her chair was empty of thugs.

CHAPTER
12

R
ICHARD
M
ORSE
, B
RADONE
McKinley, and Charlie's murderous thug missed the highlight of Evan Black's screening—the casino robbery at the Las Vegas Hilton.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your eyes only, the proof of the pudding,” he said, introducing it with relish.

If the audience had been disturbed but dubious earlier, it turned downright hostile now. Yet no one got up and left. No outright jeering, but you could feel the exasperation in the air, hear the grunts of disgust as an infrared camera showed the Hilton's casino in varying shades of sickly luminescent green. It quite clearly caught three figures in identical dark clothing, gloves, and full head masks threading their way through the confusion of people caught in a crowd in total darkness.

These figures wore goggles and could obviously see where no one else could. One mugged for the camera by blowing out a cigarette lighter every time a guy in a Stetson tried to light it. He gestured with what appeared to be a stick, maybe a yard long, but didn't offer to hit anyone with it, more as if to make a point of the thing for the camera.

There had to be four people in the gang. One on the camera, which bobbed between the two making their way into the cage, and the guy snuffing out matches and lighters close by. When a guard with a flashlight searching out possible trouble in front of him began to turn his light back toward the cage, the light-snuffer shoved a disoriented tourist into him. She probably weighed in at over three hundred pounds. She and the guard went down while the light-snuffer took advantage of the guard's guard going down as well to grab the flashlight.

There were other flashlights approaching by now, but the two robbers raced out of the cage with bulging bags and leapt over the downed guard and his heavy oppressor. Charlie knew the casino at the Hilton well enough to detect the fact that the four fleeing robbers did not head toward the hotel's front door. They raced back toward the sport's book area and a back door she'd used today to catch a shuttle to Fremont Street.

This whole robbery and even the clowning for the camera had taken place faster than the time it would take to describe it. The cameraman turned for a shot of security guards armed with flashlights spilling out of a side door Charlie recognized as leading to the restricted area with its warren of security rooms.

It was then that the light-snuffer revealed the purpose of the mysterious stick. With the camera, and presumably the cage robbers behind him, he waved it like a wand across the phalanx of uniformed guards. They stopped. In midstride.

“Oh, come on, Black, not even the government's got that kind of weapon.”

“Yeah, man, you faked those shots. We know you.”

“Fancy laser, must be a phaser,” added someone who felt good enough to joke. “Beam me up, Scotty.”

This was a strange crowd for a money party. It had to be three-quarters male. Very few trophy blondes. And half the guys talked like her boss. Even stranger, the less delighted these people seemed with Evan's offering, the more delighted he appeared to be with them.

The wand and the camera panned around to the casino, where the guy in the Stetson stood with his cigarette lighter raised and eyes unblinking. The only moving thing in that confused crowd was the heavy woman who'd landed on the first casino guard. She moved, but as if she was clawing her way through Jell-O.

“Payoff time, cash only,” Evan said mysteriously from the back of the screening room when the film suddenly cut to the desert, a burning Mooney 201, and color. Charlie lay spread out on the abrasive sand, shadows of the leaping flames dancing on and around her, A scratchy bush that sat above her head like a tombstone whipped in the wind.