Jessie looked at Gask calmly and said nothing.
Gask stared back hard and cold for a long time, then said: “Let’s go, Refried.”
Gask and Perez got out. Perez quickly loaded the dolly with delivery bags containing nearly a million dollars in unmarked bills while Gask scanned the area. The casino’s security cameras recorded their work while rollers and families slowed to watch, making the old joke about their jackpots having arrived. They wheeled the cash into the casino, Gask glancing at the rear of the truck as Jessie headed for the main entrance.
A black wind was kicking up.
Half an hour after they’d finished loading the last ATM in the casino, Gask savored the air conditioning and decided to take a leak before he and Perez started for the main entrance to meet Scout.
“You’re taking part in Las Vegas history, Gil, did you know that?” Gask said at the urinal while relieving himself.
Perez was bent over a sink, running cold water over his face.
“No.”
“When I punch out at the end of the week, I’ll be leaving with a spotless loss sheet, one nobody in this town can touch.”
“Didn’t Roger Maddison retire from Titan Federal, a few months back? He put in twenty-seven years without a loss.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“It was in the newsletter. Your record would be second to his. Third actually. Pike Radeaux at Titan packed it in last year. Twenty-five loss-free years.”
“No. You’re wrong.”
“I’ve still got the newsletter somewhere. I’ll show you.”
“That newsletter’s bullshit,” Gask flushed. “What the hell do you know, Refried? Let’s go. Jesus. Why do I waste my breath on you?”
The wheels of the empty dolly cart sank in the lobby’s carpet as Perez pushed it to the main entrance. Amid the eternal clanking of the slots, Gask strained in vain to locate the familiar colors of the Forged armored car through the glass doors. No truck. No Scout.
“That damned squaw better have an explanation!” Gask’s fingers clasped his radio, knowing the instant he called for Scout on the air, a fuck-up attributed to him was exposed fleet-wide.
He held off.
“Perez, quick. Check the back. Maybe she had a breakdown. I’ll search the front lot. Meet me back here. Hurry.”
Gask shivered as the sun worked on him, his keys chiming as he trotted. No trace of the truck out front.
Perez returned, breathless. “She’s gone, Elmer,” he doubled over gasping. “Maybe it was the last drop? Those guys touching the truck?”
Gask’s stomach tightened. Four days from retirement. Twenty-two years. His twenty-two thousand dollar bonus was melting here in a casino parking lot because of that stupid god-dammed squaw.
“Better call it in, right, Elmer?”
Gask couldn’t believe he was being screwed like this. Why?
“Elmer, she could have been taken hostage. Jesus! Call it in!”
Gask scanned the lot, willing the truck to appear. God-dammit. It was a hit. Had to be. On his goddamn watch. His twenty-two grand.
“Elmer! Call it in!” Perez’s hand shook as he ran the back of it across his dried lips. “They could kill Jessie!”
Gask put his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Sixty-five. Sixty-five. This is three. Radio check?”
“Elmer.” Gask was wasting time covering his ass.
“Sixty-five. Sixty-five. This is three. Radio check?”
Nothing.
“Dispatch to three. Is there a problem?”
Perez watched him.
Gask swallowed hard. “There’s been a hit.”
“Say again three?”
“A hit. We can’t raise our driver.”
U.S. Forged Amored Inc., immediately activated its loss incident procedure, alerting a Las Vegas 911 dispatcher then Len Dawson, Forged’s manager for Las Vegas. He notified Wade Smith, his supervisor at headquarters in Kansas City. Smith warned Dawson he would “have somebody’s head on a stick if we lost points.” Dawson drove to the scene calculating a multimillion-dollar loss with a severe detrimental impact on the company’s insurance rates. Maybe the casino could be nailed for partial liability? Dawson cursed the fact Gask’s crew had the truck with no electronic location finder. Scout’s well-being did not enter his mind as he monitored Forged’s attempts to reach her through the truck’s radio and cellular phone.
Unit 1065 was not responding.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police launched a bulletin across Clark County and the Valley. The Las Vegas FBI and Nevada Highway Patrol were alerted. Within two minutes, four marked Metro units arrived at the casino, followed later by an unmarked sedan and detectives Todd Braddick and Chester King from the LVMP robbery detail. Before they could enter the lobby, a crew from Channel Three and Ray Davis, the Review Journal’s crime senior reporter, approached them.
“Chester, you got a second?” Davis opened his notebook. “We hear it’s an armored car heist with big numbers?”
King smiled. He was six feet six inches tall, a gentle giant whose confidence came from twelve years as a robbery detective. His partner was another story. Braddick had less than two years as a detective, yet he was a brash cock-of-the-walk. Handsome. Single. His laser-sharp eye for detail was earning him a reputation as fast as his switchblade tongue. He exhausted King. They tried unsuccessfully to blow by the reporters.
Davis said: “We heard three to four million, that right, Chester?” King wouldn’t take the bait. Then Seleena Ann Ramone from Channel Three thrust her microphone toward him: “Have you found the driver, yet?”
Braddick shook his head. “Give us a break, Hon.”
“Hon?”
“Folks, please,” King spread his hands apart. “We just got here. You know more than we do. We’ll get back to you. Thanks.”
Inside, the detectives were directed to an office behind the main registration desk. Half a dozen people watched as Forged’s manager was going at it with Theo Fontaine, the casino’s security boss.
“ … this is on you, not the casino,” Fontaine said.
“Just answer me. Did you, or did you not, seal the perimeter of your facility once my people reported the theft?” Dawson said.
“Your people never breathed a word to us. It was Metro who called us, sir. Don’t be putting this on us.”
“Excuse us, gentlemen,” Braddick said. “Metro Robbery. Braddick and King. We’d like to interview the armored car crew, please. My guess is that is you two?” He pointed at Gask and Perez. They nodded.
“Theo, could you pull all your recorded security video for us,” King said.
“Already on it, Chester.”
King nodded to Gask. “Sir, could you come with me. Detective Braddick will interview your partner. Theo, we’re going to need separate offices.”
“No problem,” he led them away.
“Detective,” Dawson said. “I’d like a word with my staff first, if I may? I’d like to go over the log and drop sheets.”
“And you are … ?” King said.
“Len Dawson. Manager of Forged’s operations here.”
“Mr. Dawson, once we’re finished, they’re all yours.”
Fontaine led Braddick and Perez to a small meeting room. Plush carpet. Floor to ceiling one-way glass overlooking the outdoor pool. Big mahogany table. Thick leather chairs. Dark paneled walls. Gil Perez puffed his cheeks and exhaled as Braddick took his name and particulars, then asked:
“How much was in the truck when it vanished, Gil?”
“Three million seven hundred thousand. Unmarked nonsequential.”
“You sure about the number?”
“I’m the money man, the counter.”
“OK, tell me about the driver, Jessica Scout.”
“Jessie, was—is a good person. She always defended me in front of Elmer. He’s our crew chief.”
“You needing defending?”
“He called us names. Called me Refried. Called Jessie squaw, P
ocahontas. She’s an American Indian. She stood up to Elmer. He’s good at his job. Never had a successful hit on his watch. Retires this week after twenty-two years. He’s a very tough boss.”
“Gil, what was Jessie’s demeanor today?”
“Same as any other day. She was quiet. Alone in her thoughts, she was a very quiet woman. What if she’s dead? What if she’s been killed?”
“Gil, we don’t have any evidence of anything. We’re only one hour into this. Do you remember anything unusual today?”
“Two guys.”
“What about them?” Braddick wrote carefully.
“At the drop before this one. Here, I wrote it on my drop sheet,” Perez handed it to Braddick, explaining. “Jessie said two rollers got too close to the truck. She sounded the horn to make them back off.”
“Maybe a distraction for something else?”
“You think so? What if they killed her, there was three point seven million left in the load. I was the money man today.”
“Yes, you said. And she was scheduled to drive?”
“Yes.”
“And the truck without the finder? You knew about that today?”
“Yes. Each crew is scheduled in advance to take it.”
“In advance?” Braddick continued writing. “How long has Jessie been with the company?”
“Four, nearly five months.”
“And you? How long?”
“Three years.”
“What do you know about Jessie? You two socialize after work?”
“No. She’s shy, quiet.”
“Any money problems? Debts? Drugs? Gambling? She living beyond her pay?”
Perez shook his head.
“You know what she does after work? Who her friends are?”
“Like I said, she’s very quiet.”
“So you really don’t know her at all, do you Gil?”
“I—I guess, I, man, I worked with Jessie four months.”
“Gil, tell me why you said she was so quiet.”
“I figure, by the little she told me, she’d had a sad life.”
“How?”
“She started to tell me once how bad things always follow her.”
“What bad things?”
“Death.”
“Death?”
“Detective Braddick, what if she’s dead already?”
A few doors away, in a dim office, Elmer Gask fished out a stick of gum and a fresh toothpick from his chest pocket, crossed his arms, leaned back hard in his chair and watched King.
“She was a bitch to me all morning, is all I can attest to her ‘demeanor.’” Gask’s toothpick moved rhythmically with his chewing.
“What do you think happened?”
The toothpick froze as the gum chewing stopped.
“I’ll tell you what happened.” Gask’s eyes widened with cold rage. “I just lost a twenty-two thousand-dollar bonus because of that stupid squaw.”
King waited for an explanation.
“I retire at the end of the week. You clock out with a loss-free sheet, you get a grand for every year.”
“That’s a tragedy. What do you think happened?”
“If I knew that, we’d recover our load,” Gask resumed chewing. “She wasn’t careful. I told her to be cautious after the incident with the two jerks at the previous drop.”
“The two guys who approached the truck?”
“I told her to log it, to call it in to dispatch when we were in here servicing the ATMs.”
“Did she?”
“I doubt it.”
“What about her past, her personal and career history?”
“Squaw or half breed from some welfare-eating reserve in Montana, or some end of the world state like that. Supposed to have done a good job at security for some faggy antique dealer in New York. If you ask me, she was an equal opportunity hire. Right gender, right race, right useless.”
“You don’t think she was qualified?”
“I don’t hire ’em, Chester.”
“What kind of driver was she?”
“Substandard.”
“What about her past, any debts, habits, anybody leaning on her?”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that shit.”
“Tell me about today, what sort of day was it?”
“Routine, we were just making our drops.”
“What about the truck? It had no finder?”
“That was her job as driver to deal with that. I told her to get that finder fixed. She ignored me.”
“Aren’t you her supervisor?”
Gask gave some thought to how he should answer.
“Yes and I supervised her to see the finder was fixed. I was intending to write her up for not following through.”
“I see. What do you know about Jessica Scout, her circles?”
“Not a goddamned thing. She never spoke to me. I told you, she was an ice bitch who acted like she was better than everyone.”
“Tell me about Gil Perez?”
“He’s kind of a shifty beaner.”
“That right?”
“Always talking about his dream of going away and starting his own car wash business. Only thing holding him back was lack of cash.”
“That so?”
“That’s so.”
“And what about you, Elmer, what do you talk about?”
“Football and America.”
“What about America?”
“She’s fucked up real good.”
“What really happened to the money?”
“Jessica Scout got herself jammed. Thought she knew it all. Let her guard down, now she’s gone.”
“That prospect doesn’t exactly bring tears to your eyes.”
Gask shifted his toothpick to the opposite side of his mouth then leaned to King. “Her stupidity cost me twenty-two grand.”
“But you break even.”
“How’s that, Chester?”
“Scout may have paid with her life.”
Later, Braddick and King compared notes at a quiet table at the casino’s nearest bar, which serviced a keno lounge.
Braddick started. “My guy fears she is dead.”
“Mine hopes she is,” King said before his pager went off. He read the caller’s number. “Looks like the feds.” He squinted, tilting the pager for better light. “Yup. FBI’s offering to help. I’ll call.”
“Three point seven. What do you make, Chester? Inside? Outside?”
“All of the above.”
Joe Two Knives’s dark glasses reflected the sun, cloudless sky and warehouses of a light industrial section of Las Vegas.
What if something went wrong? He watched the garage one hundred yards away. He did not want to be near it in case something went wrong. Nothing appeared suspicious. Everything had gone smoothly. Every detail of preparation had come off cleanly.
He checked his watch then the cell phone on the seat beside him. His hands were sweating inside the two pairs of surgical gloves he wore. The car’s air conditioner kept him cool. He kept himself calm. He had been through this before. Twenty-five years ago. No one will die this time. But what if she didn’t make it? What would he do? He didn’t know. It was the one event he did not plan for.
His phone trilled.
“Yes,” he said.
“ETA seven to ten.”
“Thank you.”
Two Knives drove along a back service alley, stopping at the rear of the garage which bore a small painted sign: AAA Armored Repair. It was a rectangular cinder block building. One story. The garage had three auto bays each with an electronic door in the front and rear. He unlocked the building, parked his car in one of the bays then closed the rear electronic door. The garage was clean and empty. It had a small office and a bathroom. He went to a worktable, switched on a scanner, listening as Las Vegas police dispatches echoed clearly.
A horn sounded two quick beeps in front of the building.
Two Knives hit a switch, the door rose, a mo
tor revved, and a U.S. Forged armor-plated Ford van edged inside, the electronic door closing behind it. Jessica Scout stepped out and studied her watch.
“Nineteen minutes since I left.”
He tossed Scout two pairs of rubber gloves. “Every second counts. You know what to do.”
Scout unlocked the truck’s side door, entered, then slid three canvas bags to him. All together, they weighed about forty pounds, he figured, carrying them to the work table. The cash was wrapped in blue plastic, three packages of one hundreds, fifties, and twenties. They covered the table with the bundles, laying each one flat.
“Three million, seven hundred thousand,” she said. “Unmarked.”
He then took a metal detector wand and slowly passed it over the cash several times. No transmitters. He took one bundle, pulled up his pants leg and rubbed it against his moist skin. Then he took an ultraviolet lamp and illuminated his leg. Nothing. No chemicals. He carefully packed the bundles into white plastic medical containers, with lids cautioning:
DANGER DO NOT OPEN
MEDICAL WASTE
CONTAMINATED CADAVER TISSUE
He sealed the containers, placed them into three small, black suitcases, then loaded them into the car’s rear seat. Then he grabbed a utility knife, a roll of silver duct tape, and a small box. His eyes met Scout’s. “Ready?”
She nodded and climbed into the back of the truck. He taped her ankles together, then her knees, then her wrists, avoiding the rubber gloves, then her mouth. Again he looked in her eyes and stroked her hair.
She was prepared. Scout rolled onto her stomach.
Two Knives pulled her Glock from her holster. Examined it. He removed the safety, chambered a round, placed the muzzle against Scout’s back, laying it nearly flat while pressing it slightly into the fleshy part of her hip. The bullet would graze her. His finger slid around the trigger. Two Knives saw Scout’s pretty half-turned face, blinking in anticipation.
Just enough to bleed, he instructed himself.