“He took a banker’s box of hundred-dollar bills out of the trunk of his car like it was chump change,” Dopey said. “You know how much he keeps around? Five million. All the time. Said he wouldn’t want to be caught short.”
O’Conner filed the information away for possible later use.
Later had arrived.
* * *
—
THE MORNING AFTER they’d ditched the phones, and with new burners in hand, Beauchamps and Cole found O’Conner in a motel downtown. He’d been drinking for several days but wasn’t too drunk to drive, he said. The night before, he’d gone to Tina’s Wayside and had seen Harrelson’s custom-yellow Porsche Cayenne in the parking lot.
“They’re back. When he’s here, he usually goes over to Tina’s at night to hang out and figure out who’s in town, where the big game is. His wife doesn’t go with him, it’s business,” O’Conner said. “He usually heads back home by ten o’clock or so, especially in the summer. If you’re gonna play golf in the summer in Vegas, you’ve got to be out there by six or you’ll die.”
Harrelson lived in an upscale neighborhood south of the airport, O’Conner said. That was also different than the situation in LA. In Beverly Hills, the houses were gated but not the streets. In Vegas, the streets were gated but not the houses—and, in Harrelson’s case, the gates had guards instead of electronic remotes. But there was a simple way around it if Harrelson went home after dark.
His house backed up to a street that was outside the walls. And the walls were only chest-high and easily climbable. They could follow Harrelson home, and when he went on to the nearest gate Cox could drop them behind his house. They’d cross the wall and wait for Harrelson to pull into his garage and take him there.
If whatever they took from the house was too large to carry, they could always use one of Harrelson’s cars to get themselves back out of the complex. The gates on the outbound lane opened automatically as a car approached.
* * *
—
WHEN THEY left O’Conner, Beauchamps asked Cole, “Tell me the truth: what do you think?”
“What I think is, these marshals are all over us. It makes me nervous that I’m not already on my way out of town. Way out of town. But—”
“You need the money after losing your stash in LA. And my idiot brother, the cannibal, is already hinting that he might need a loan. Geenie . . . Geenie doesn’t have anything and never has.”
“Cocaine,” Cole said. “Blow and hookers and casinos. They’ll get you every time.”
“Not hookers. Dancers. But a lot of them,” Beauchamps admitted. “And the blow. But what are we going to do? None of us could work a straight job. Maybe Geenie could get a sales clerk job, but she wouldn’t.”
“If we’re going to hit Harrelson, I say we go tonight,” Cole said. “We know he keeps a bundle on hand. Even if we don’t get the five mil, we could get enough that we could all run somewhere else. We need to fly.”
“I wish we had more time for the research.”
“This isn’t LA, where we had to do the research, checking out his old lady and all that. We already know who we’re targeting and where he lives,” Cole said. “We don’t need any gate codes. We cross the wall, put a gun in his face, and take the cash. End of story.”
“Aw, God.” Beauchamps rubbed his forehead, up and down, then started the Cadillac and said, “You’re right. Let’s talk to Deese. See if Geenie thinks she can handle the driving and the timing again. I hate to be in a hurry. I hate it. But with the marshals here . . . As far as we know, every cop in town has our pictures.”
* * *
—
THE TWO Airbnb houses were a mile apart. They’d wanted two houses here for the same reason they’d had two in LA: if the cops found the one, the other could fast become a refuge. They’d hoped to get two closer together, but the ones they got were the ones the Airbnb lady could get in a hurry and they hadn’t wanted to do any house hunting personally. Even at a mile apart, in a suburb without traffic lights, they could drive between the houses in two minutes or walk it in fifteen.
When Cole and Beauchamps got back, they found Deese watching a cable TV hunting channel