the sliding door. She reached up and turned the van's overhead light off and then opened the door with one hand while holding the gun ready with the other.
It was clear. She climbed out of the van, grabbed the gym bag and then locked and closed the door. She came around to the driver's side, still holding the gun up and ready. The parking lot was crowded with cars but she saw nobody waiting in any of them or watching from nearby.
She unlocked the driver's door and opened it. Before getting in she ejected the Glock's clip and thumbed out the bullets, letting them drop onto the asphalt. She then ejected the last round from the chamber and threw the gun and the clip onto the flat roof of the Aces and Eights.
She got into the van, started it and headed out of the parking lot. She noticed that the dashboard radio had a hole torn in it. The bullet Paltz had fired had gone through the plywood partition and into the radio. It reminded her of the burning sting on her neck and cheek. She turned the overhead light on and checked herself in the mirror. Her skin was red and blotchy. It looked as if it had a poison ivy rash.
She checked her watch next. Paltz's play had put her behind schedule. She turned off the light and drove toward the neon Strip, the glow of which she could see in the distance.
12
KOVAL Road ran parallel to Las Vegas Boulevard and offered easy access to the parking garages behind the grand resorts fronting the always crowded boulevard, better known as the Strip. Cassie passed by the Koval Suites, the monthly apartment building where she and Max had once kept a safe house, and turned into the multilevel parking garage attached to the Flamingo Casino and Resort. The casino garage was centrally located to the casinos on the mid-Strip, the key being never to park at the target hotel. She parked Paltz's van on the roof of the eight-story garage because she knew there would be fewer cars up there and a lesser chance that her bound and gagged passenger would be discovered. She skipped the elevator in favor of the stairs down to the walkway leading into the casino.
Carrying her black bag over one shoulder and the gym bag down at her side, she went in the rear entrance of the Flamingo and walked through the casino to the front door, stopping briefly along the way in one of the lobby shops to buy a pack of cigarettes, in case she had to set off a fire alarm, and a souvenir pack of playing cards with which to pass the time while waiting for her mark to fall asleep. Once she stepped out the front doors, she crossed Las Vegas Boulevard and then walked the two blocks to the Cleopatra.
Cassie was carried past the reflecting pools on a moving sidewalk that delivered gamblers to the casino entrance. She noted that there was no automatic ride that took gamblers away from the casino after they were done losing their money.
The casino entry walls were lined with hieroglyphics that showed ancient Egyptian figures in headdresses playing cards and throwing dice. Cassie wondered if there was any historic precedent for these depictions but also realized that it was not a necessity because there was no historical precedent for anything about Las Vegas.
Farther past the drawings, the walls were dedicated to Cleo's Club – photographs of the big slots winners over the past year. Cassie noticed that many of the winners posed in front of their winning machines were smiling in a way that suggested they were hiding missing teeth. She wondered how many of the winners used the money to see a dentist and how many dumped it right back into the machines.
When she finally got to the casino floor, she paused and tried to take it all in without raising her face toward the cameras she knew were overhead. A visceral sense of dread took hold of her heart. Not for the job that was ahead this night. But for the memory of the last night she had been in the Cleopatra Casino. It was the night that all things in her life had changed with the permanency of death.
The casino looked no different to her. The same setup, the same interchangeable gamblers chasing desperate dreams. The cacophony of money and machines and human voices of joy and anguish was