Vegas Knights (18 page)

  "I think you two will fit in just fine," Gaviota said. He looked us up and down. "Would you like to meet some of the others? It's happy hour out in the lounge."

  "The drinks there are free," said Misha. "Every hour is happy hour."

  Bill and I glanced at each other. "All right," Bill said. "Why not?"

  "It's not like we're going anywhere anyway," I said. "We might as well have a beer."

  I left my backpack in the room. The only thing of any real value in it was my laptop, and anyone who grabbed it would need a password to get in. I backed up all my data regularly over a cellular connection, so even if it was destroyed, I'd still be all right. Leaving it behind, though, might give the impression that I was here to stay and had no reason to run. If anyone wanted to think that, I was happy to encourage them.

  We walked down the hall to the lounge, and I could hear it thrumming with conversation long before we got there. At least twenty people filled the place, every one of them seemingly under thirty years old.

  As we entered the room, the conversations ground to a halt as everyone turned to stare at us. I couldn't tell if they were more interested in Bill and me or Gaviota and Misha. Gaviota held up his hands for attention despite the fact he already had it. Everyone from the bartender to a couple of staggering beauties chatting near the farthest window sat, stood, or reclined there in silence.

  "My friends," Gaviota said in a clear, even voice, "I'd like to introduce you to the two newest members of our exclusive club: Jackson Lafitte and Bill Teach. They'll be here for the rest of the week and – if that works out well – for a good deal longer than that. I hope you'll do your best to make them feel welcome."

  He pointed toward the bar. "Now, to celebrate this new beginning, the next round's on me!"

  The people in the room all cheered. They parted as Gaviota led us straight to the bar, some shaking our hands with a smile, others making a point to ignore us.

  "I thought the drinks here were always free," I said to Misha.

  He grinned. "True. The boss here, he likes to play magnanimous whenever he can though."

  Gaviota turned and pulled Bill and me toward the bar with a smile. "The drinks are free here because I say they're free. I just like people to remember it."

  I ordered an Abita Turbodog, and Bill went for a Tanqueray and tonic.

  "We have better stuff than that available, boys," Gaviota said. "Experiment. Try new things. See what you like. It's all on the house." He clapped Misha on the shoulder. "I'm going to mingle."

  After Gaviota left, most of the eyes in the room remained on us rather than him. I didn't feel much like making small talk with people I soon hoped to be on the run from, so I nursed my drink and watched them back.

  Everyone in the room seemed healthy, wealthy, and well-dressed. If I'd been expecting grizzled ancients or witches and wizards in flowing robes and pointy hats, I'd have been disappointed. Instead, they seemed like vibrant young businesspeople in town for a convention, ready to loosen up a bit before painting the town that night. We could have been in any of the classier lounges in the city.

  "At least they don't have a cheesy musical act," I said.

  "Only on Thursday nights," Misha said. I couldn't tell if he was joking.

  "This doesn't seem quite so frightening as I'd been led to believe," Bill said between sips of his drink.

  "What, these folks?" Misha said. "They're nothing to worry about. They might be some of the best magicians in the city, but they're just people underneath all that. Every one of them was once in the exact same situation as you – even if some of them sometimes tend to forget that."

  While the majority of the magicians seemed to be men, it came down to maybe a sixty-forty split. They were predominantly white, but I saw Asians, AfricanAmericans, Hispanics, and Middle Easterners represented too. It wasn't exactly a snapshot of America, but it would do in a pinch.

  Everyone in the room could have stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. The male dress code seemed to consist of a stylish suit with an open-collared blue shirt, no tie. There were some variations, but they were mostly by degree rather than design. The women wore even more stylish clothes in all sorts of cuts and colors. Most outfits featured skirts above the knee, although a few wore slacks instead.

  "Not exactly Hogwarts, is it?" a brown-skinned man with slicked back hair said as he sidled up to us along the bar, a half-empty Corona in his hand.

  "Maybe if Harry Potter had grown up reading
Esquire
or
GQ
," I said.

  The man laughed. "I'm Alejandro Gomez," he said. "I was the last one to join before you."

  "So you're no longer the new kid," said Bill. "I guess the blush is off your rose."

  "I'm all right with that. Maybe that means I move up the totem pole."

  "That only applies if you're working at the Thunderbird across the street, fellas," Misha said. He laughed at his own joke, but I couldn't find it in me to fake amusement.

  "So what do you do here, Alejandro?" I asked. It might have sounded like small talk, but I wanted to know, if only so I could figure out who and what Bill and I were up against here.

  "They have me handling the night watch at Revolutions," he said. "I keep an eye out for any statistical aberrations, intentionally caused or otherwise, and I bring them to Ben's attention."

  "Kind of the same thing you do here?" I asked Misha.

  "Sort of. I'm more like a pit boss here," he said. "Normally I don't get involved until Mr Gaviota asks me to. Most nights I babysit the Bolthole instead. It's one of the few joints where magicians can play without worrying about causing trouble."

  That surprised me. It must have showed on my face.

  "You didn't realize that when you came in last night?" Misha grinned. "Oh, yeah, the place was lousy with magicians last night. That's what made what you did so impressive."

  "What? I didn't think using my mojo to cheat at cards would impress anyone in this room."

  "Normally not," said Alejandro, "but when you have someone else at the table using magic at the same time to try to stop you, it gets a little more interesting."

  I blushed a bit at that. "I was so focused on the game that I barely noticed."

  "That's the impressive part," said Misha. "I watched the whole thing. You remember when your pal there started losing?" He jerked his chin toward Bill, who was standing behind me, chatting with a pretty blonde woman who had her back to me.

  I shrugged. "Sure, but at the time I figured he'd just hit a rough patch. A bit of bad luck."

  "That he did, but it wasn't natural luck, you follow?"

  I nodded.

  "You two sure pissed off Ming Liu," Alejandro said. He gestured toward a woman sitting at a nearby table. She'd been sitting at the table with Bill, Gaviota, and me last night. I'd never forget that anime-spiked hair.

  "How's that?"

  Alejandro smirked and spoke in a low, confidential tone. "Ben had sent her in there to destroy you two, to take all your money at the table. It's always easier to confront people when they're already broke. It eliminates the need to take the money back from them more forcefully."

  "But she didn't."

  "She couldn't. She tried as hard as she could, but she couldn't stop either one of you. Man, was she embarrassed."

  "Nothing stopped either one of you fellas until Mr Gaviota took a personal hand in the matter," said Misha. "That's when your man Teach there took a beating."

  "But shouldn't he have been able to beat me too?" I asked.

  "That just it, man," Alejandro said. "He tried. Did his best too, but he couldn't do a damned thing to stop you. You schooled him in that little duel, and you didn't even know you were fighting."

  "Pissed him off good too," said Misha.

  I searched the room and spotted Gaviota talking with a pair of young ladies who laughed at everything he said. Either he was entertaining as hell or they were determined to give him every ounce of respect they could muster.

  "Is that why he shot me?"

  Alejandro's jaw dropped. "He shot you?"

  "That's exactly why," Misha said. "If it hadn't been for Mr Weiss, he'd have come back and killed you too, he was in such a rage. When Mr Weiss figured out what had happened, though, he insisted that Mr Gaviota bring you fellas up to see him – unharmed."

  "That didn't go too well," I said.

  "Not for lack of trying on our part," said Misha. "I don't blame you guys for rabbiting like that though. After how we started out, you had every reason to be scared."

  "Guess we just got lucky."

  "You don't know the half of it. If Mr Weiss hadn't figured out what you'd done at the table, you'd have been dead before you even knew it. Mr Gaviota may not be the sharpest card player around, but when it comes to making people disappear, there ain't nobody does it better than him."

  I suppressed a shiver. Talk like that made me more eager to leave Las Vegas than ever. I just didn't know how I was going to manage it.

  Bill turned back to me then to introduce me to the woman he'd been chatting up. "This is Melody, the lady who helped cash us out the first night," he said. "Remember her?"

  "Of course," I said as I shook her hand. "So you're a magician too? Not to insult you, but I never would have guessed."

  She gave me the chirpiest shrug I'd ever seen. "We can't all be the big players. I like playing hostess. It gives me a chance to watch and learn."

  "Do you run into lots of magicians on the floor?"

  "More than you might think." She winked. "Some of them don't even know they're doing it. They just instinctively muck around with the probabilities without understanding how. They think they're lucky. Most times we just let them down easy and send them on their way."

  "And the other times?"

  Melody made a face. "Ben and Misha here take care of the details then."

  I forced a laugh and wondered how long it would take before Bill and I became one more detail to be marked off Gaviota's to-do list.

 
 

CHAPTER NINETEEN
 

After drinks in the lounge, we hit the Strip. Gaviota took about twenty of us to Samba, a Brazilian steakhouse in the Mirage. Misha called it "meat on swords," and he wasn't kidding. The waiters brought out skewer after skewer of barbecued meat in a stomach-stunning variety, and we stuffed ourselves silly for nearly two hours.

  Alejandro and Melody sat across from Bill and me, and they showed us how to use the double-sided token to tell the waiters when to give us a break. It started out with the green side up, but if you flipped it over to show the red side, the servers would pass you by – at least until you flipped it back to green. We used it judiciously, just enough to keep us from falling straight into a meat-induced coma.

  Maybe the food overload made me fuzzy. Or it could have been the rum in the head-sized glasses of caipirinhas that made my head spin. Or maybe the lively conversation roaring around the table. As we staggered out of the restaurant, though, bellies full and heads buzzing, I found it hard to latch on to a good reason why I needed to leave Las Vegas right away.

  Professor Ultman's warnings had been about something that had happened a long time ago, before I'd even been conceived, much less born. And I only had his alarmist side of the story. Things had probably changed in Las Vegas in the past twenty years, right?

  The fact that the professor hadn't mentioned Weiss – or Houdini – at all made that notion seem all the more solid. Bill and I had stumbled into the chance of a lifetime, and if signing up with Houdini meant having nights like this, I was having a hard time seeing the downside to it.

  After the meal, Gaviota led us over to the theater at Revolutions. Due to the revolving theme of the place, it featured a different act every night of the week. As we approached the box office, I saw the name on the marquee – "Tonight Only: Luke Wisdom!" – and the warmth of the food and booze faded away.

  "Hey, Jackson." Bill grabbed me by the elbow and whispered at me. "That's got to be your dad!"

  I shushed him.

  "Seriously," Alejandro said, half-joking. "On my night off, we have to go see a magic act? I mean, sure, Wisdom's good, but don't I get enough of this during the week?"

  "Wisdom's a class act, fella," Misha said. "Pay attention, and you might learn something for a change."

  "What do you think, Mr Lafitte?" Gaviota said as he strolled up with a fistful of tickets and handed them out. "Might the show prove educational?"

  "I'm sure," I said carefully. "He has a great act. It's been a while since I've seen it though."

  "Really?" I felt myself in the crosshairs of Gaviota's interest. "How long?"

  "Almost five years."

  Gaviota gave me a wry smile. "That might explain a few things." He clapped me on the back and walked me into the theater. Bill and the others followed as Gaviota led us to our seats.

  "You have to know that Luke Wisdom is my father." I kept my voice soft enough that the others could not hear.

  "Of course," Gaviota said, matching my tone. "He's spoken about you before. Does he know you're here?"

  "He did." I stared at the empty stage. Black curtains stood drawn across its front still, and the lights remained low. "He thinks I'm gone again now."

  Gaviota directed me into a seat next to his, only three rows back from the stage. "I apologize if this is awkward for you. I didn't understand your situation."

  I couldn't tell if that was a lie or not. I decided it didn't matter.

  "It's a dark theater," Gaviota said, "with bright spotlights. You could make it through the entire show without him being able to see that you're here. Or you could leave now. Hang out at the Speakeasy or the Bolthole. We'll meet you when we're done."