holding her plastic change cup and waiting. She looked at Karch's severe face and then turned away, putting her free hand over the top of her cup as if guarding its contents. He casually stepped over to the sand jar beneath the call button and brought his foot up onto the edge of it, bending over as if he were about to tie his shoe. He did this so his back was to the woman. Instead of tying his shoe he dipped his finger into the black sand, which had been freshly cleaned of cigarette butts and smoothed. He cut his finger through the sand until it found what he knew would be there. He withdrew the card key and straightened up just as an elevator chimed its arrival.
After following the woman into the elevator, he blew the dust off the card key and used it to engage the PH button after the woman had pushed the six button. Standing next to her Karch could glimpse between her splayed fingers and into her cup. It was about half full of nickels. She was the smallest of the small-timers and either didn't want him to know it or she actually thought there was something suspicious about him. She was about his age, with big hair. He guessed she had come to Las Vegas from somewhere in the south. She stood with her face cast downward but he knew she was keeping an eye on his reflection in the polished wood veneer of the door. Karch knew he had the kind of face that made people wary. His nose and chin were sharply drawn, his skin was always sallow despite a life beneath the desert sun, and his hair was as black as a limousine. These features all took a backseat to his eyes. They were the color of puddle ice and looked just as dead.
Karch reached into his pocket and pulled out his smokes. Holding the four fingers of his right hand together as a blind to the reflection, he shook two cigarettes out, palming one while passing the second to his left hand. He half expected her to protest the very sight of a cigarette but she said nothing. He then expertly performed the ear-to-mouth trick his father had taught him so many years ago. Holding the second cigarette at the end of all four fingers and the thumb of his left hand, he created the illusion of pushing the cigarette into his ear and then using his right hand to pull it out of his mouth and into place between his lips.
He watched her reflection and could tell she had seen the gag. She turned slightly as if she was about to say something but then caught herself. The door opened and she stepped out on six. As she turned to the left to leave the alcove and the elevator doors began to close, Karch called out to her.
"Made you look."
He then laughed to himself as the doors closed on his vision of the woman turning back toward him.
"Next time take your nickels to Branson," he said after the elevator began its ascent again.
Karch shook his head. The Cleo had once had such promise. Now it was the destination of the nickel-and-dimers, a place where the carpets were worn thin and the pool was crowded with men wearing sandals and black socks. One more time he wondered what he was doing, how and why he had ever sold out to Vincent Grimaldi.
Ten seconds later he stepped out on the twentieth floor. He stepped into the hallway and found it empty except for a room service cart somebody had shoved into the hallway. It smelled rancid as Karch walked around it and headed down the hallway to the right.
He looked up at the first door he passed and saw it was 2001. He remembered that room from a long time before. It was in that room that he had made his first play to Vincent Grimaldi. It seemed to Karch to have been so long ago and so the memory annoyed him. How far had he come since then? Not far, he knew. Not far at all. Perhaps he, too, was a nickel-and-dimer in a nickel-and-dime palace. His thoughts jumped to the empty pulpit down in the casino and he imagined what the view of the gaming room was like from there.
He came to room 2014 and used the card key to open the door.