'Mr. Hernandez, this is security. We have isolated the problem and there is no risk. You do not have to evacuate your room.'
'What was it?'
'We think someone left a cigarette on a room service cart near a smoke detector. It set off the alarm.'
'Well, can you turn it off now?'
'We're working on it, sir. Sorry for the incon – '
'Did Vincent tell you to call my room?'
Cassie was momentarily taken aback.
'Excuse me?'
'Vincent Grimaldi.'
'Uh, no sir. We're just following standard practice. Good night, sir.'
She hung up. It was the second time in the past half hour that the name Vincent Grimaldi had been mentioned. Cassie was sure she had heard it before. As she was thinking about it, the alarm from out in the hallway was finally turned off.
She went to the suite's door and listened at the jamb. She heard men talking from far down the hall. She could not make out the words but she assumed they had found the cigarette she had left burning on a room service cart under a smoke detector.
Now all she needed was for Hernandez to go to sleep.
She switched the receiver back to the bedroom cam and saw Hernandez had stripped to boxer shorts and a T-shirt. He was back on the bed watching television. All the lights were off except for the glow from the television. Cassie checked her watch; it was almost midnight. She thought about the name Hernandez and the security escort had used. Vincent Grimaldi. It had a resonance but she couldn't place it.
Cassie picked up the phone, dialed the hotel operator and asked to be connected to Vincent Grimaldi. A moment later the connection had been made and the call was picked up after one ring.
'Security,' a man's voice said. 'Mr. Grimaldi's office.'
'Oh,' Cassie said. 'I think I have the wrong number. I wanted to see about getting a line of credit in the casino. Does Mr. Grimaldi handle that?'
The man at the other end of the line chuckled.
'Well, you could say he's in charge of all of that but he doesn't handle applications. He runs the casino, ma'am. He's the director of all casino operations. So what you need to do is just go down to the casino and apply for credit at the big cashier's station next to the Sphinx. They'll take care of you.'
'Okay, I'll do that. Thanks.'
Cassie hung up as she now remembered the name Vincent Grimaldi and who he was. Six years earlier, his name had been in all of the papers in the days following Max's last caper. He had been part of the cover-up.
She remembered that at the time Grimaldi was identified as the chief of casino security at the Cleo. In the six years since, he had moved up the ladder to director. Maybe it was what had happened with Max that had sent him on his way.
Hernandez's having dropped Grimaldi's name did not seem unusual to Cassie. It seemed legit for a high- rolling, comped guest of the casino to know the casino's director by name. Cassie tried to dismiss the whole thing but remained troubled by the memories the name Vincent Grimaldi conjured in her mind.
Needing a distraction, she put the receiver/recorder on the floor next to the chair where she sat, then opened the front pocket of her backpack and took out the deck of cards she had bought at the Flamingo. She removed the jokers from the deck and put them back into the box and off to the side.
She began running through her old warm-up routine – one-handed deck cuts followed by spread and rolls and then up-and-down shuffling. The shuffling felt clumsy through the latex gloves and at one point the cards exploded in her hands, several falling to the floor. She stripped off the gloves and picked the cards up. She then began dealing blackjack to five nonexistent players at the table and to herself, the house.
As she played she went through the dealer's patter in her head as she turned cards over. Man with an axe, boy meets girl, jack takes five…
But soon her mind traveled and she remembered the first time she met Max. She would always remember it as the random collision of matching souls. Something that didn't happen often in the world, something that surely would never happen to her again.
She had been dealing Caribbean poker at the Trop on a slow midnight shift and he had taken the number two seat. She had one other player, an old Asian man in the seven seat. Max was a beautiful man. He had a presence and Cassie couldn't help watch the way he handled his cards, cupping them and opening them in a tight spread, then quickly laying them flat and making his bet.
But he bet recklessly and soon it became apparent that he wasn't a schooled gambler. He lost money but didn't seem to mind. After a dozen hands Cassie surmised that he wasn't at the table to gamble. He was there to watch the other player. Max was on a con of some sort and that made him all the more intriguing.
When she went on break she waited near the cashier's window and watched Max watch the Asian gambler. Eventually, the mark slid off his stool and called it a night. After a few moments, Max followed suit and started trailing the Asian. He turned off after watching the Asian step onto an elevator.
And that's when Cassie made her move. She walked right up to him.
'I want in,' she said.
Nonplussed, Max just looked at her.
'I don't know what it is you're doing but I want to learn it. I want you to teach me. I want in.'
He looked at her for a few more minutes and then a small smile curved his mouth.
'My name's Max. You want to get a drink or is that against the rules for the dealers here?'
'It's against the rules but I just quit the rules.'
Now his smile widened into a grin.
As she dealt the cards on the table Cassie periodically checked the screen on the receiver/recorder. When she checked at one o'clock the glow of the television still lit the room. But Hernandez was sprawled across the bed and under the covers with his face turned away from the screen. She noticed that the light from the screen was steady. There was no flickering from changing images. She knew that he was asleep and the pay movie he had been watching was over. On the television screen was probably just a blue screen or the unchanging movie menu.
She checked her watch. She figured that by two forty-five Hernandez would be in the deepest part of the sleep cycle. She decided she would go in at three. That would leave plenty of time for her to be in and out before Leo's void moon began.
She slid the playing cards back into their box and returned it to her bag. She decided to do something she knew put her at unneeded risk and that Max would have never done. But she felt she needed to do it. For Max and for herself.
16
CASSIE made her way through the still crowded casino to the cocktail lounge off the hotel lobby. It was crowded here as well but the table she wanted was empty. She sat down and looked out across the gaming room but no longer was really seeing it. She was remembering Max and the run they had had, how the Sun and the Review-Journal had called them the 'high-roller robbers' and the Las Vegas Casino Association had put a reward up for their arrest and conviction. She remembered how after a while it hadn't even been about the money. It was about the charge it put in their blood. She remembered how they could stay up the rest of the night making love after a job was finished.
'Can I help you?'
Cassie looked up at the cocktail waitress.
'Yes. A Coke with a cherry in it and whatever you have on draft.'
The waitress put down napkins, one in front of Cassie and the other opposite her spot at the small round table. She smiled in a world-weary sort of way.
