Valentine was impressed he’d strung all those words together himself. As he hoisted the bag off the counter, it occurred to him that something was wrong with this picture. Hugo hadn’t touched him. Security
“Know what they say about guys who lift weights?”
Hugo shook his head.
“They say they have little dicks. If they had big dicks, they wouldn’t spend so much time in the gym.”
Hugo still didn’t want to touch him. Valentine walked away shaking his head.
He checked into the Acropolis, put his twenty-five grand into the hotel vault, and rode the elevator still shaking his head. What good was a bodyguard who didn’t like to fight?
Nick had comped him into a penthouse suite. In the Acropolis, that meant three high-ceilinged rooms filled with polished chrome and cushy leather, the bizarre color schemes reminiscent of
He went into his suite and saw a chambermaid’s cart sitting in the living room. Chambermaids
“Anybody home?”
He heard something. He stood by the dining room entrance and stared through a pair of sliding glass doors leading to the outside balcony. No one out there.
Taking off his shoes, he flung them into the dining room. The second shoe struck a flower vase and shattered it. He heard movement inside the kitchen. Picking up a marble ashtray, he walked into the dining room.
A fat guy wearing a stocking over his head came out of the kitchen. His hands were balled into fists, and for a few seconds they danced around each other. The guy looked like he tipped the scales at two-fifty. Big guys usually just ran over people. Not this guy. He had an attitude.
“I thought you knew how to fight,” his intruder said.
Valentine held the ashtray like a Frisbee and shook his head.
“Guess that stuff in the movie was bullshit, huh?”
Valentine remembered Hugo’s earlier hesitation. “Guess so,” he said.
“You’re just an old fuck with a dried-up dick, huh?”
He placed the ashtray on the dining room table. “Take your best shot, asshole.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
His intruder threw a right hook with a telegraph attached. Valentine ducked the punch but didn’t see the second shot coming, a sneaky uppercut that caught him in the side of the head. Falling backward, he shot his leg out and kicked his intruder squarely in the shin.
The shins were one of the body’s weak spots. His intruder howled and danced on one leg. Valentine straightened and felt his head spin. He hadn’t been sucker-punched in a long time.
He considered his options. He could sweep his intruder’s legs out from under him, or he could flip him. Those were correct ways to deal with an attacker. Only the guy had pissed him off. So he punched him in the face.
His intruder staggered backward, hitting the glass doors leading to the balcony with his head. A thousand spiderwebs magically spread across the glass. He shakily drew a gun and pointed it at Valentine. It was a slimmed-down Glock .45, a weapon favored by detectives with the Metro LVPD.
“Why did you kill her?” he asked.
“Who?” Valentine said.
“Kris Blake. I found your stuff in her townhouse. You brought her home from the Pink Pony last night and shot her. Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, pal.”
“Tell me, goddamn it.”
He sounded like a lovesick boyfriend, not someone who really wanted to shoot him. Valentine said, “My stuff couldn’t be at your friend’s place, buddy. I don’t have any stuff. The airline lost it.”
Blood seeped out of the stocking. “Bullshit.”
Valentine pointed at the bedroom door on the other side of the suite. “I filled out a lost claim form for my luggage. It’s on the night table, lying in the same sleeve as my airline ticket. For Christ’s sake,
“If you’re lying, I’m going to kill you,” he said.
“I’m not lying.”
His intruder crossed the dining room. As he opened the bedroom door, a uniformed chambermaid came out, kneed his groin, and ran out of the suite screaming at the top of her lungs. Valentine ducked into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife from the utensil drawer. Then he glanced around the corner. His intruder was running away. He grabbed a cordless phone off the counter and punched zero.
“It’s a beautiful day at the Acropolis,” an operator said.
“Help!” he yelled.
Chasing someone with a gun was a stupid idea, and he hunkered down in the kitchen and waited for someone to rescue him. A minute later, Wily appeared, all out of breath. He slid the steak knife back in the drawer and came out of hiding.
“Did you catch him?”
“Who?” Wily said.
“The guy who broke into my room.”
Wily shook his head, staring at the broken vase on the floor and the cracked sliding glass doors. “You get in a fight?”
“No, I was recording a sound effects record. Of course I was in a fight.” He came over to where the head of security stood. “The guy was six-one, weighed about two fifty, and wore a stocking over his head. How could you miss him?”
Like most guys who ran casinos, Wily hated to be questioned, and he shrugged. “The casino is mobbed, and so is the hotel. You know how it is.”
Valentine felt his heart racing. He had reached the age when bad things upset him in ways he could not control. He pulled a chair out from the dining-room table and sat down. After taking several deep breaths, he said, “No, I don’t know how it is. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
Picking up the phone, Wily called the hotel’s maintenance department and ordered new sliding doors for the room. Hanging up, he said, “It’s like this. The Acropolis has a hundred eye-in-the-sky cameras. That sounds like a lot, but they can’t watch everything. So they watch one area of the casino, then they watch another.”
“So?”
“Do the math,” Wily said. “One hundred percent of the time, fifty percent of the casino floor isn’t being watched. The same is true for the hotel. Things happen that don’t get picked up. Like your guy.”
“What about security on the floor?” Valentine said.
“What about them?”
“The guy was bleeding from the nose. Think they would have spotted that?”
“You pop him?”
“He’s got a thing about heights. Yes, I popped him.”
Wily called downstairs. The Acropolis employed ex-cops to patrol the floor. They were sharp guys, and when Wily hung up a few moments later shaking his head, Valentine had his answer. His intruder was someone the guys on the floor all knew.
“Must have disappeared,” Wily said sarcastically.
Valentine rose from his chair. The side of his face really hurt. His intruder had said his girlfriend worked at the Pink Pony. So had the dead stripper Nick had told him about. Had to be the same woman.
It was time he paid Bill Higgins a visit. Bill was the director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board and one of the most powerful law enforcement figures in the state. If anyone would know what this was about, it was Bill.
He went into the hall, slammed the door, and listened as the broken sliders came down with a thunderous crash, followed by Wily’s string of four-letter expletives. He smiled all the way down in the elevator.
