"I didn't say that."
"You don't have to. It's just that, Leo, you believe in your stars and your I-Ching coins and all your other things. The one thing I have to believe is that that place, that night… that there was just a ghost or something in the mix. A jinx. And it was either on us or on that place. For six years I've been saying that it wasn't us, that it was that place. And now you… you want me to go back there."
Leo folded the file closed. Cassie watched the stack of money disappear.
"I only want you to do what you want to do. But I have to make some calls now, Cass. I need to set this up with somebody else tonight because the job has to be tomorrow night. The mark's supposed to check out Thursday morning."
Cassie nodded and felt this awful sense that if she passed on this job there wouldn't be another. She didn't know if this was because Leo wouldn't trust her or because of something else. It was just a premonition. Her mind flashed on the scene of a beach and the surf coming up and wiping out letters drawn in the sand. They were gone before Cassie could read them but she knew what they spelled. Take the job.
"What's my end if I do it?"
Leo looked at her and hesitated.
"You sure you want to know?"
She nodded. He opened the file again and slid the yellow page out from beneath the stack of currency. He spoke while looking down at his notes.
"Okay, this is the deal. We get the first hundred off the top and forty points on the rest. They've been watching this guy. They think he's got about five hundred K, all cash. In a briefcase. That pans out, that comes to two-sixty for us. I'd cut it sixty/forty, you on the big end. Better than a hundred and a half for you. I don't know if it's enough to disappear on permanently but it's a fucking A start and not bad for a night's work."
He looked up at her.
"Not bad for them, either," she said. "Two-forty for doing nothing."
"Not nothing. They found the mark. That's most important. They also have somebody on the inside who will make things very easy for you."
He paused for a moment to let the money and the details sink in.
"You interested now?"
Cassie thought a moment.
"You don't know when the next one will be coming, do you?"
"Never do. Right now, this one's all I got. But to be honest, I wouldn't count on the next one being this kind of money. Probably take two, three jobs to put this kind of bread together. This is the big one. This is the one you want."
He leaned back in his chair, looked over his glasses at her and waited. She knew he had played it just right. He'd let her run out with the line but now was slowly reeling it back in. She was hooked and she knew it. A job with a potential payoff of more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars didn't come along often. The most she and Max had ever pulled on a caper was sixty thousand dollars they took off an assistant to the sultan of Brunei. It was pocket change to the sultan but she and Max had celebrated until dawn at the Aces and Eights Club in North Vegas.
"All right," she finally said. "I'm interested. Let's talk about it."
8
LEO leaned over the counter where he was working and spoke without looking at his notes or at Cassie.
"The mark is registered under the name Diego Hernandez. He's a pro, a TexMex out of Houston. His game is baccarat. Far as anyone knows he plays clean. He's just good at it. Spends a few days at each casino and moves on, that way he isn't taking too much out of one place and raising eyebrows too high. They tracked him from the Nugget to the Stardust and now the Cleo. Cleaned up every place he went."
They were in the kitchen of Leo's house. Cassie sat at the kitchen table while Leo stood at the counter and made them peanut butter, honey and banana sandwiches. It was his specialty. He used seven-grain bread.
"Each night he takes his winnings in cash and keeps it all in a briefcase. If he leaves the building he takes the case with him. Locked to his wrist. The only time he doesn't have it with him is when he's down in the casino playing. What he does is take it to the front desk and have them hold it in the vault for him while he's playing, then he picks it up when he goes up to bed. Whenever he's carrying the case he's got a security escort. He doesn't take chances."
"So what you are saying is that the only time to get it is to go in while he's asleep."
"Exactly."
Leo came over to the table and put down two plates with two sandwiches each on them. He then went to the refrigerator and came back with two bottles of Dr Pepper. He sat down and opened the bottles as he talked.
"In the room he probably transfers the cash from the case to the closet safe as an added precaution. That's not for sure but we have to expect it. You want a glass with that?"
"No. What is the safe? I don't remember from before."
Leo looked down and studied his notes.
"It's a Halsey Executive five-button. Sits on the floor in the closet beneath the clothes rack. Bolted to the floor from the inside. You can't move it. You have to go in and open it – while the guy is right there in the room."
Cassie nodded and picked up half a sandwich. Leo had cut them into triangles. He always did it that way and she remembered he once got annoyed when she had made a sandwich and cut it lengthwise. She took a bite and immediately smiled.
"Gawd," she said, her mouth full of peanut butter and moving slowly. "I forgot how good these are, Leo. I remember you makin' them for Max and me after we drove all night to get back here after jobs."
"Made these sandwiches for him since he was six years old. Always his favorite. It always hits the spot."
Mentioning Max robbed her of the smile. Cassie turned back to the business at hand.
"The Halsey has a front-mounted keypad. I can do it with one camera – two to be safe if there's time. I'll have to know if the mark's right- or left-handed. I'll get that when I see him on the floor."
She was primarily talking to herself. Seeing the job in her mind. Then a question for Leo came up.
"You ask your man about the paint?"
Leo nodded.
"Swiss Coffee. The room was painted two months ago but it's a smoking room. Our guy smokes cigars."
"That'll help with the smell."
She committed the paint color to memory. She decided she'd pick up a pint and a pump bottle at Laurel Hardware in the morning before leaving.
"I'm also told he's a fat fuck," Leo said. "A snorer. Makes it a little easier."
"Nothing's easy, Leo. Not in Las Vegas."
That made her think about going back to the Cleopatra again and a foreboding came over her.
"If he's leaving Thursday, why don't we wait and see where he goes and hit him at the new place? Why does it have to be the Cleo?"
"Because we don't know if he's going anywhere else. He might be going back to Texas, for all we know. His briefcase might be full and he's going home. Besides, we have the inside man at the Cleo. Who knows if we'll get lucky like that if he moves on."
Cassie nodded. She knew Leo had thought about all of this and had decided that hitting the mark at the Cleopatra was the only way.
"I read that the Cleo's for sale," she said, just to be saying something that would take them away from her thoughts.
"Yeah, three thousand rooms and half of them empty on any given night. Big white elephant is what it is. Seven years old and already for sale. I heard Steve Wynn took a look at it but then took a pass. You know something must be fucked up there if he didn't see a way to turn it around. He touches something, it's gold."
"Maybe the place never got over the bad publicity – you know, with Max."
Leo shook his head.
"Old news. The problem is they made that place as cheap as Mother Hubbard's flophouse and now it's falling apart and nobody wants to stay there. Too many other nice places on the Strip for the same dough. You got the Bellagio now, the Venetian. The Mandalay Bay down at the end."