The Assassin boh-5 Page 5

  "Sir, what are you doing?"

  "Putting this in my suitcase," he said, and then added, when he saw the look on her face, "I'm a police officer."

  That, to judge from the look on her face, was either an unsatisfactory reply, or one she was not willing to accept. He found his badge and photo ID and showed her that. She gave him a wan smile and quickly walked away. A moment later someone higher in the American Airlines hierarchy appeared.

  "Sir, I understand you've placed a weapon in your luggage," he said.

  "I'm a police officer," Matt said, and produced his ID again.

  "We have to inspect the weapon to make sure it is unloaded," the American Airlines man said.

  "I just unloaded it," Matt said, and offered the handful of cartridges as proof.

  "We do not permit passengers to possess ammunition in the passenger cabins of our aircraft," the American Airlines man said.

  Matt opened the suitcase again, handed the Chief's Special to the man, who accepted it as if it were obviously soaked in leper suppuration, and finally handed it back. Matt returned it to the suitcase and dumped the cartridges in an interior pocket.

  By then, the American Airlines man had a form for Matt to sign, swearing that the firearm he had in his luggage was unloaded. When he had signed it, the man from American Airlines affixed a red tag to the suitcase handle reading UNLOADED FIREARM.

  If I were a thief, Detective Payne thought, and looking for something to steal, I think I'd make my best shot at a suitcase advertising that it contained a gun. You can get a lot more from a fence for a gun than you can get for three sets of worn underwear.

  "Thank you, sir," the man from American Airlines said. "Have a pleasant flight."

  ****

  A stewardess squatted in the aisle beside him.

  "May I get you something before we take off, sir?"

  "How about a Bloody Mary?"

  "Certainly, sir," she said, but managed to make it clear that anyone who needed a Bloody Mary at eight o'clock in the morning was at least an alcoholic, and most probably was going to cause trouble on the flight for thenice passengers in first class.

  The Bloody Mary he had on the ground before they took off had made him feel a little better, and the Bloody Mary he had once they were in the air made him feel even better. It also helped him doze off. He became aware of this when a painful pressure in his ears woke him and alerted him to the fact that the airliner was making its descent to Las Vegas. The stewardess, obviously, had decided that someone who drank a Bloody Mary and a half at eight A.M., and then passed out, had no interest in breakfast.

  Primarily to make sure that he still had it, he took the envelope containing the tickets from his pocket. There was something, a smaller, banknote-sized envelope, in the NESFOODS INTERNATIONAL Office of the President envelope he had not noticed before.

  He tore it open. There were five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, obviously expense money, and a note:

  Dear Matt:

  I am not much good at saying "Thank You," but I want you to know that Grace and I will always have you in our hearts and in our prayers for your selfless, loving support of Penny in her troubles. Our family is truly blessed to have a friend like you.

  Dick

  "Oh, shit," Matt moaned.

  "Please put your chair in the upright position and. fasten your seat belt," the stewardess said.

  ****

  There was a man wearing a chauffeur's cap holding a sign for MR. PAYNE when Matt stepped out of the airway into the terminal.

  "I'm Matt Payne."

  "If you'll give me your baggage checks, Mr. Payne, I'll take care of the luggage. The car is parked just outside Baggage Claim. A cream Cadillac."

  "If you don't mind," Matt said, "I'll just tag along with you."

  "Whatever you say, sir."

  Matt looked around the terminal with interest. It was his first visit to Las Vegas. He saw that it was true that there were slot machines all over. There was also a clock on the wall. It said it was 10:15, and it was probably working, for he could see the second hand jerk, although his wristwatch told him it was 1:15.

  It took him a moment to understand. He had been in the air four and a half or five hours. It was 1:15 in Philadelphia, which meant that he had missed lunch as well as breakfast. But they had changed time zones.

  His bag was the very last bag to show up on the carousel, and the red UNLOADED FIREARM tag on it attracted the attention of a muscular young man with closely cropped hair, who was wearing blue jeans and a baggy sweater worn outside the jeans. He looked at the chauffeur, and then at Matt, when he saw he was with the chauffeur, with great interest, and then followed them out of the baggage room and watched them get into the cream-colored Cadillac limousine.

  Clever fellow that I am, Matt thought, I will offer odds of three to one that the guy in the crew cut is a plainclothesman on the airport detail. He is professionally curious why a nice, clean-cut young man such as myself is arriving in Las Vegas with anUNLOADED FIREARMin his luggage.

  The chauffeur installed Matt, whose stomach was now giving audible notice that it hadn't been fed in some time, in the back seat and then drove away from the airport.

  I'm going to have to get something to eat, and right now.

  He pushed himself off the seat, and with some difficulty found the switch that lowered the glass divider.

  "How far is this place? I've got to get something to eat."

  "The Lindens, sir, or the Flamingo?"

  "What about the Flamingo?"

  "My instructions are to take you to the Flamingo, sir, and then pick you up there at seven-fifteen tomorrow morning and take you out to The Lindens."

  "Oh."

  "They have very nice restaurants in the Flamingo, sir. It's about fifteen, twenty minutes. But I can stop…"

  The Flamingo, Matt recalled, was a world-famous den of iniquity, a gambling hall where Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and other people of that ilk entertained the suckers while they were being parted from their money at the roulette and blackjack tables. He also recalled hearing that the world's best-looking hookers plied their trade in the better Las Vegas dens of iniquity.

  "No. That's fine. I can wait."

  ****

  There was a basket of fruit and a bottle of champagne in a cooler in Suite 9012, which consisted of a sitting room overlooking what Matt decided was The Strip of fame and legend, and a bedroom with the largest bed, with a mirrored headboard, Matt had ever seen.

  The bellman also showed him a small bar, stocked with miniature bottles of liquor, and a refrigerator that held wine and beer. As soon as he had tipped the bellman, he headed for the refrigerator and opened a bottle of Tuborg, and drank deeply from it. A moment later he felt a little dizzy.

  Christ, I haven't had anything to eat since that cheese-steak in McGee's. No wonder the beer's making me dizzy.

  He ripped the cellophane off the basket of fruit and peeled a banana. And noticed that there was an envelope in the basket.

  Flamingo Hotel amp; Casino

  Dear Mr. Payne:

  Welcome to the Flamingo! It is always a pleasure to have a guest of Mr. Detweiler in the house.

  A $10,000 line of credit has been established for you. Should you wish to test Lady Luck at our tables, simply present yourself at the cashier's window and you will be allowed to draw chips up to that amount.

  If there is any way I can help to make your stay more enjoyable, please call me.

  Good luck!

  James Crawford

  General Manager

  It took Matt only a second or two to conclude that Mr. James Crawford had made a serious error. Dick and Grace Detweiler might feel themselves blessed to have a friend like him, and they might really have him in their prayers, but there was no way they were going to give him ten thousand dollars to gamble with.

  Detweiler probably entertains major clients out here, and the general manager made the natural mistake of thinking I'm one of them, someone
in a position to buy a trainload of tomato soup or fifty tons of canned chicken.

  The possibilities boggle the mind, but what this nice, young, nongambling police officer is going to do is find someplace to eat and then come back up here and crap out in that polo-field-sized bed.

  ****

  To get to the restaurant from the lobby, it was necessary to walk past what he estimated to be at least a thousand slot machines, followed by a formidable array of craps tables, blackjack tables, and roulette tables.

  He felt rather naive. As far as gambling was concerned, he had lost his fair share, and then some, of money playing both blackjack and poker, but he really had no idea how one actually shot craps, and roulette looked like something you saw in an old movie, with men in dinner jackets and women in low-cut dresses betting the ancestral estates in some Eastern European principality on where the ball would fall into the hole.

  The restaurant surprised and pleased him. The menu was enormous. He broke his unintended fast with a filet mignon, hash-brown potatoes, two eggs sunny side up, and two glasses of milk. It was first rate, and it was surprisingly cheap.

  He started to pay for it, but then decided to hell with it, and signed the bill with his room number.

  Why should I spend my money when I'm out here doing an unpleasant errand for Dick Detweiler?

  He walked past the blackjack, craps, and roulette tables and was almost past the slot machines when he decided that it would really be foolish to have been out here in Las Vegas, in one of the most famous gambling dens of them all, without having once played a slot machine.

  He looked in his wallet and found that he had a single dollar bill and several twenties. There were also, he knew, two fifties, folded as small as possible, hidden in a recess of the wallet, against the possibility that some girl would get fresh and he would have to walk home.

  He took one of the twenties and gave it to a young woman in a very short shirt who had a bus driver's change machine strapped around her waist.

  She handed him a short, squat stack of what looked like coins, but what, on examination, turned out to be one-dollar slugs.

  He found a slot machine and dropped one of the slugs in and pulled the handle. He did this again seventeen times with no result, except that the oranges and lemons and cherries spun around. On the nineteenth pull, however, the machine made a noise he had not heard before, and then began noisily spitting out a stream of slugs into a sort of a shelf on the bottom of the machine.

  "Jesus Christ!"

  There were more slugs than he could hold in both hands. But the purpose of the waxed paper bucket he had noticed between his machine and the next now became apparent. Successful gamblers such as himself put their winnings in them.

  And wise successful gamblers such as myself know when to quit. I will take all these slugs-Jesus, there must be two hundred of them-to the cashier and turn them in for real money.

  He didn't make it to the cashier's cage. His route took him past a roulette table, and he stopped to look. After a minute or two he decided that it wasn't quite as exotic or complicated as it looked in the movies about the Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.

  There were thirty-six numbers, plus 0 and 00, for a total of thirty-eight. The guy with the stick-thecroupier, he recalled somewhat smugly-paid thirty-six to one if your number came up. Since there were thirty-eight numbers, that gave the house a one-in-nineteen advantage, roughly five percent.

  That didn't seem too unfair. And in another minute or two he had figured out that you could make other bets, one through twelve, for example, or thirteen to twenty-four, or odd or even, or red or black, that gave you a greater chance of winning, but paid lower odds.

  Since 0 and 00 were neither odd or even, and were green, rather than black or red, the house, Matt decided, got its five percent no matter how the suckers bet.

  And he also decided that since he had already made the mental decision to throw twenty dollars away, so that he could say he had gambled in Las Vegas, there was no reason to change simply because the slot machine had paid off.

  He would now be able to say, he thought, as he put five of the slot machine slugs on EVEN that he had lost his shirt at roulette. That sounded better than having lost his shirt at the slot machines.

  Six came up.

  The croupier looked at him.

  "Pennies or nickels?"

  What the hell does that mean?

  "Nickels," Matt said.

  The croupier took his slot machine slugs and laid two chips in their place.

  Obviously, a "nickel" means that chip is the equivalent of five slot machine slugs.

  Matt let his two-nickel bet ride. Twenty-six came up. The croupier added two chips to the two on the board. Matt decided it was time to quit, since he was ahead. He picked up the four chips, and felt rather wise when the ball fell into a slot marked with a seven.

  He waited until the wheel had been spun again, odd again, and then placed another five slot machine slugs on the green felt, this time on One to Twelve.

  Nine came up. The croupier took the slot machine slugs and replaced them with three nickel chips.

  "Sir, would you like me to exchange your coins for you?"

  Obviously, it was for some reason impolite to play roulette with slot machine slugs.

  "Please," Matt said, and pushed the waxed paper bucket to the croupier.

  "All nickels?"

  "Nickels and dimes," Matt said.

  Two small stacks of chips were pushed across the table to him.

  ****

  Matt yawned, and then again.

  Jesus, what's the matter with me? I was just going to get something to eat and then crap out. How long have I been doing this?

  His watch said that it was quarter to six.

  Time to quit.

  He watched the ball circle the wheel and then bounce around the slots before finally dropping in one.

  Obviously, it is time to quit. I have been betting on 00 every fourth or fifth bet since I have been here, and that's the first time I ever won.

  As the croupier counted out chips to place beside the chip he had laid on 00, Matt said, "Quit when you're ahead, I always say."

  "You want to cash in, sir?"

  "Please," Matt said, and pushed the stacks of chips, nickels, dimes, and quarters in front of him to the croupier.

  He wondered where the cashier kept the real money to cash him out. There was no money, no cash box, in sight.

  The croupier put all the chips in neat little stacks, and then said "Cash out." A man in a suit who had been hovering around in the background came up behind the croupier, looked, nodded, wrote something on a clipboard, and then smiled at Matt.

  The croupier pushed a stack of chips, including some oblong ones Matt hadn't noticed before, across the felt to him.

  "What do I do with these?" he wondered aloud.

  "Take them to the cashier, sir," the croupier said.

  Matt reclaimed his waxed paper bucket, and as he dumped the chips into it, he recalled that the polite thing to do was tip the croupier. He pushed one of the oblong chips across the table to the croupier.

  "Thank you very much, sir," the croupier said. It was the first time, Matt noticed, that he had sounded at all friendly.

  He walked to the cashier's cage and pushed the waxed paper bucket through what looked like a bank teller's window to a gray-haired, middle-aged woman.

  She put all the chips in neat little stacks and then counted to herself, moving her lips. She looked at him.

  "Would you like me to draw a check, sir?"

  What the hell would I do with a check? I couldn't cash a check out here.

  "I'd rather have the cash, if that would be all right."

  The gray-haired woman took a stack of bills from a drawer and started counting them out. Matt was surprised to see that the bills were hundred-dollar bills, and then astonished to see how many of them she was counting out into thousand-dollar stacks. When she was finished there were fo
ur one-thousand-dollar stacks, one stack with six hundred-dollar bills in it, and a sixth stack with eighty-five dollars in it, four twenties and a five.

  "Four thousand six hundred eighty-five," the gray-haired woman said.

  "Thank you very much."

  "Thankyou, sir."

  I don't believe this.

  Matt divided the money into two wads, put one in each pocket, and walked out of the casino.

  ****

  The first thing Matt Payne experienced when he woke up was annoyance. He had fallen asleep with his clothes on. And then he remembered the money and sat up abruptly. It was still there on the bed. No longer in the one thick wad into which he had counted it, three or four times, but there.

  He counted it again. $4,685.

  Jesus H. Christ!

  He put the stack of bills in the drawer of the bedside table, then undressed and took a shower. He wrapped himself in a terry-cloth robe, went back into the bedroom, sat on the enormous bed, took the money from the bedside table, and counted it again.

  Then he laid on the bed with his hands laced behind his head and thought about it.

  The first thing he thought was that he was a natural-born gambler, that his quick mind gave him an edge over people who lost at roulette. He knew when to bet and when not to bet.

  That's so much bullshit! You were just incredibly lucky, that's all. Dumb beginner's luck. Period. If you go back down there and try to do that again, you will lose very dime of that, plus the two fifties mad money.

  The thing to do is put that money someplace safe and forget about it.

  He figured that he might as well round it off, to forty-five hundred, keeping one hundred eight-five to play with, and then he changed that to rounding it off to four thousand even, which left him six hundred eight-five to play with, which meant lose.

  He took out his toilet kit, and with some effort managed to cram forty hundred-dollar bills into the chrome soap dish.