The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas

Praise for
The Good Thief’s Guide
series

‘In Charlie Howard, Chris Ewan has created one of contemporary fiction’s most unlikely yet likeable heroes – a razor-sharp Raffles for the 21st century, whose easy expertise in the dubious arts of breaking and entering intrigues as much as it entertains. Wacky, witty and above all great fun,
The Good Thief’s Guide to Vegas
moves at a blistering pace through the sleazy backrooms of Las Vegas’s casinos, and – with more plot twists than a corkscrew – delivers a satisfying but unexpected denouement, and happily leaves the door open to Charlie’s next adventure’ Anne Zouroudi

‘A stylish and assured debut that introduces the fascinating Charlie Howard. Let’s hope Charlie’s as much of a recidivist as Highman’s Ripley, because he’s a character you’ll definitely want to see more of’ Allan Guthrie

‘Charlie Howard has the potential to be an amoral Simon Templar. Proof all round that the world is more amusing when saints and sinners blur’
The Times

‘This impressive debut owes much of its charm and success to its compelling anti-hero, Charlie Howard . . . The detection is first rate, and Howard is a fresh, irreverent creation who will make readers eager for his next exploit’
Publishers Weekly

‘Another sharp helping of wit and calamities . . . This novel is a lot of fun and the series is developing beautifully’ Patrick Nealle,
Bookseller

‘Ewan’s pacing is spot on, doling out the information in just the right quantities to keep his readers zinging along with the story . . . With such wonderful writing, readers are sure to be hopeful that Ewan decides to take on other cities, other mysteries’
reviewingthe evidence.com

About the author

Born in Taunton in 1976, Chris Ewan now lives on the Isle of Man with his wife Jo and their labrador Maisie.

His acclaimed debut,
The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam
, won the Long Barn Books First Novel Award and was shortlisted for CrimeFest’s Last Laugh Award for the best humorous crime novel of the year.

Visit
www.thegoodthief.co.uk

By the same author

The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam
The Good Thief’s Guide to Paris

First published in Great Britain by Pocket Books, 2010
An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright © Chris Ewan 2010

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
Pocket Books & Design is a registered trademark of
Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Grays Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB

www.simonandschuster.co.uk

Simon & Schuster Australia
Sydney

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library

ISBN-13: 978-1-84739-956-4
eBook ISBN: 978-1-84739-958-8

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Typeset by M Rules
Printed by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, Berkshire RG1 8EX

In loving memory of Carole Norton

thief:
bandit, burglar, cheat, cracksman, crook, housebreaker, larcenist, mugger, pickpocket, pilferer, plunderer, robber, shoplifter, stealer, swindler.

Jeez, talk about a bad reputation
. . .

ONE

Stealing a man’s wallet is easier than you might think. The trick is to wait for just the right moment and to make your move without hesitating.

Not convinced? Well okay, imagine your target is leaning across a roulette-table in Vegas when his trouser pocket gapes open. And let’s pretend that you’re standing beside him with a bottle of Budweiser in your hand, so that even if he feels something brush against him, he’ll think nothing of it. Believe me, it only takes a second to slip your spare hand inside his pocket and whisk his wallet away.

Maybe you doubt it can be that simple. Perhaps the most you’d concede is that it’s possible, but only if the target is a real chump. If I tried to pull that move on
you
, say, you’d be sure to catch me.

Well, that’s an understandable reaction, but I’m afraid it’s plain wrong. For starters, I’m good. And I don’t mean take-a-punt-and-brazen-it-out good. I mean talented good. I mean fast, nimble, experienced good.

Then there’s the psychology involved. After all, I don’t look like a pickpocket. I’m cleanshaven and smelling of cologne. I have on a sports jacket and smart jeans. My shoes are polished, my nails are clean, my breath is toothpaste-fresh. Plus, we’re in a classy venue, the Fifty-Fifty casino in the very heart of the Strip, across from Caesars Palace, along from the Venetian Hotel. And we’re at a high-stakes table in a high-roller area, separated from the hoi polloi by a velveteen rope and a raised plinth. You’ve been chatting for some time with my good friend Victoria. She’s immaculately groomed and kind on the eye, and smart and witty and a whole bunch of pleasing characteristics besides. Oh, and did I mention that we’re British? What ho! Tally pip! Hardly criminals, right?

So let’s just settle on the idea that I’d have stolen your wallet in half the time it’s taken us to get this far and that you wouldn’t have come close to catching me. And hey, don’t feel glum about it, because neither had the guy whose billfold I’d just lifted.

He was of average height with a cultured mane of dark, Hollywood hair, a wholly artificial tan and a keen awareness of his own minor celebrity. His name (if you can believe it) was Josh Masters, and he was the Fifty-Fifty’s resident stage illusionist, star of the casino’s second-string theatre for twelve performances a week, forty-eight weeks a year. His speciality was in making things vanish – showgirls, tigers, the Stratosphere Tower, his own credibility – and his capped smile and intense blue eyes gazed out from billboards and flyers all around the casino complex and the wider city beyond.

My reasons for taking his wallet needn’t delay us right now, but as a mystery writer by trade, I should probably let you know that I’m not a complete cad. So allow me to put on record that I don’t make a habit out of picking people’s pockets. I’ve done it in the past, and no doubt I’ll do it again in the future, but it’s nearly always as a means to a somewhat complicated end and never for the sheer hell of it. It wouldn’t be worth my time – a man can only use so many driving licences.

True, I’m a thief, but I’m what you might call a high-end thief. I tend to work on commission, and since I try not to work too often (in order to keep my chances of being caught as close to zero as possible), I only accept a job if I’m going to be handsomely paid. Usually, that means I steal from two kinds of people – the rich or the corrupt. And while that hardly makes me Robin Hood’s spiritual successor, I like to think that it nudges my moral compass away from the zone marked
absolute scum
.

But anyway, the defence rests, and you’ll no doubt recall that Josh Masters’ wallet was out of his pocket and inside my own, courtesy of a neat piece of sleight of hand that Masters himself might have appreciated, if only he’d had cause to study my technique. And with my prize secured and my Bud set aside, I fled the scene of my crime by stepping down from the high-stakes area onto the main casino floor.

The Fifty-Fifty is one of the more recent mega-resorts to have been built on the Strip. It has a theme, like almost every other Vegas casino, and the subtle clue to the theme is in its name. Fifties America was what the place was all about, with the casino floor dedicated to the gangster world of
noir
movies, pulp films and popular imagination.

Take the cocktail waitresses as an example. They sported pageboy hairstyles, make-up that was heavy on the foundation, blusher and lipstick, and sequined bodices of a cream shade, over black micro-skirts and long, nylon-sheathed legs. Likewise, the pit bosses were dressed in grey sharkskin suits with wide lapels and trilby hats, and the security staff were kitted out in vintage cop uniforms, with blue polyester shirts, black slim-Jim ties and gold, five-pointed badges. Over by the cashing-out cage, the staff behind the gilded security bars wore green tinted visors, while the croupiers were dressed in white collarless shirts with black waistcoats, and spent their time calling the female patrons ‘dolls’ and ‘twists’ and ‘frails’, and the men ‘Mac’ or ‘chum’ or ‘buddy’.

Swing numbers were playing over the sound system, but the tunes were lost in the noise of the gaming floor – the trill and ding of the slots, the whoops and cheers around the craps table, the riffle of cards, the clack of the roulette ball, the general hum and chatter of the vast number of suckers laying down money against all odds.

With so much happening around me, it took a few moments until I spotted the security desk (which for obvious reasons had made an impact on me when we first checked in), but once I’d logged its position, I set off towards it, remembering that the main elevators were located just beyond. Sticking to my route was easier said than done. For one thing, there were a lot of people in my way, but more to the point, the casino appeared to have been designed like a maze that continually led me back to an area where I might like to risk a considerable amount of money.

I passed through corridors of kidney-shaped gaming-tables, all of them fashioned from walnut veneer, cream leather and burgundy felt. Blackjack, Blackjack Switch, Casino War, Pai Gow Poker and Texas Hold ’Em eventually gave way to the craps-tables and the roulette-tables, and afterwards the video poker games and the penny slots being played by elderly women in velour jogging suits.

As I walked, my feet beat down on a gaudy nylon carpet that charged my body with a frankly inhuman level of static electricity. I’d already learned to my cost that whenever I came into contact with anything metal I functioned much like a lightning rod, and the same was true of the call button for the guest elevators. I reached out a tentative finger to press it and . . .
zzzzzzz
. . . a charge raced up my arm. Damn. I snatched my hand away and yelped, and meanwhile the doors parted on a nearby carriage and a tubby black man in a baseball cap and shin-length denim shorts stepped out. Taking his place in the elevator, I removed Josh Masters’ wallet from my pocket.

I slid a key card from his billfold and popped it into the magnetic reader in front of me. I selected the button for Floor 20, and as the elevator climbed and a recorded voiceover encouraged me to buy a ticket for the
Josh Masters Magical Spectacular
, I took a tour through the remainder of his wallet.

He only had around sixty dollars in cash, which didn’t surprise me because everything he could desire inside the casino would be complimentary. He had a platinum credit card, a gold credit card and a black credit card, all issued by Nevada state banks. He had a glossy signed photograph of his own good self and a valet ticket for his car and a folded paper napkin with a telephone number scrawled on it. He also had something that only the very lucky are prone to find and the very dumb are prone to keep – the neat cardboard sleeve that had originally contained his key card. It had the Fifty-Fifty’s emblem on the front of it – a spinning fifty-cent coin – and his name just below. Oh, and it also featured his room number.

Suite 40-H
.

I guessed it made sense. Star talent is treated like royalty in Vegas, and Floor 40 was one of the most exclusive in the hotel. And while I might have queried the application of the words ‘star’ and ‘talent’ to Josh Masters, it was clear from the bewildering success of his show that I was in the minority. But what did I care? I’d just saved myself the trouble of trying his key card in the 3,499 other bedrooms it might just possibly have unlocked.

The moment the elevator reached Floor 20, I coaxed it on to Floor 24, which was as high as it could go. Then I stepped out and walked along another stretch of carpet towards another bank of elevators, where I poked the call button with the corner of Masters’ leather wallet – no flies on me – and made my way to the fortieth floor of the hotel. And there I reached a dead end. Because a short distance ahead of me was a concierge desk with an arresting blonde standing behind it.

The blonde had on a tailored black silk blouse that was elaborately ruffled and pleated beneath her very fine chin. Angular spectacles were balanced upon her nose, and diamond studs kissed her earlobes. She looked like she belonged on a catwalk and I wished to hell she was on one right now.

I suppose I should have seen it coming. In a resort like the Fifty-Fifty, the finest suites are nearly always serviced by a special type of concierge. They’re the smartest, most attractive, most motivated hotel employees. They remember the variety of flowers you like in your room, the vintage champagne you require on ice, the location of your favourite table in your preferred restaurant, the names of your kids, your wife, your mistress, your cat . . .

I could go on, but the point is they memorise a whole bunch of details, and they’re prone to excel at it because that’s how they score the really big tips. So there was no way this particular angel wouldn’t know that I didn’t belong on her floor. And that was a major problem.

By sheer coincidence, when she glanced over at me I happened to be acting a little gormless, so I hammed it up by turning on the spot, frowning at the number above the elevator and scratching the back of my head. I even gazed at the room card in my hand and slapped my forehead for good measure.

Then I stepped back inside the elevator and disappeared.