But to collect.
They had come to the next delivery. The armored car exited Las Vegas Boulevard for the casino’s driveway. Gask initialed his clipboard. “Ready back there, Re-Gil?”
“Ready.”
“OK, Scout. We got a lot of ATMs here. Going to be thirty minutes inside then we got four more big loads. You know the drill. Drop us at the back and pick us up out front. Main entrance. Think your half-breed brain can manage that?”
She was silent, maneuvering the truck through the casino’s parking lot.
“You hear what I said, Scout?” Gask looked at her.
“I know my job.” She stopped the truck neatly at the casino’s rear entrance, looked at Gask then radioed their arrival to Forged’s dispatcher. Gask’s jaw twitched. He spat out his toothpick and leaned toward her.
“Before this day is done, Scout, you and me are going to have a talk about your goddammed attitude.” Gask’s breath smelled of coffee and the celebratory retirement whiskey he mixed with it. “Maybe you fail to realize how close you are to having your Pocahontas ass kicked back to the reserve where you’ll be reading numbers off ping pong balls to old squaws with no teeth.”
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 towatch, 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 hadthe 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.”