"So, Jersey, too busy to say hello to an old friend?"
Paltz finished the line he was on and then looked up smiling. The smile faltered a little and his face showed the slow register of recognition.
"Cassie Black?"
Cassie nodded and smiled.
"Hey, girl, sure been a long time. When did you… uh…"
"Ten months ago. I just haven't been around. After High Desert I moved to California. I like it out there. Where I live the temperature only hits trips a few times a year."
Paltz nodded but there was hesitation there. Cassie could easily read him. He was realizing she wasn't there to make old acquaintances – there had never been anything but a business relationship between them in the first place. She glanced around to make sure their conversation was private and then leaned over the counter, her elbows on his open catalog and order book.
"I need a kit. Full rig, at least three cameras, and one has to be green."
Paltz put the pencil he'd been using behind his ear and shook his head once without looking directly at her.
"I'm going to need a pair of NVGs and a roll of Conduct-O tape, too," Cassie added. "I stopped at Radio Shack on the way over and they don't sell the tape anymore. The rest of the tools I brought with me."
"Well, that might be a problem," Paltz said.
"The goggles or the tape?"
"No, all of it. We don't… I mean, I just don't get involved in that sort of – "
"Look, Jersey. Don't you think that if I was going to set you up I would've done it six years ago when it could have done me some good? I mean, Max and me, we made you a lot of money back then. You remember that, don't you?"
He nodded his head once, reluctantly.
"It's just that things are different now in this town. You cross a line and they come after you. I mean they really come after you."
Cassie straightened up.
"You don't have to convince me of that. Or Max."
"Sorry. I know that."
He nodded once more and put his hands flat on the counter.
"So what do you think, Jersey? I've got cash and I'm ready to rock and roll."
She casually swung her backpack under her arm and flipped up the top flap, exposing the stack of hundreds Leo had given her. She knew that loyalty and trust were one thing in the outlaw world, but showing the cash was another.
"I gotta know now 'cause if you're not going to help me I've gotta find somebody else."
Paltz nodded. She could tell, the money had turned him.
"Tell you what," he said. "I might be able to do something for you. What time are we talking about?"
"We're talking right now, Jersey. Tonight. I'm here. I gotta job to do."
He looked up at her, maintaining his hands on the counter pose. His eyes moved around to make sure they were still talking in private.
"All right… I'm working till five. How about Aces and Eights at six?"
"That old dump's still in business?"
"Oh, yeah. Always."
"I'll see you at six."
She started to step away from the counter but Paltz made a low whistling sound with his mouth and she turned back to him. Paltz took the pencil off his ear and wrote something on a scratch pad. He tore the page off and handed it to her.
"You'll need to have that with you."
She took the page and looked at it. It had a price on it.
$8,500
She thought it was high. She had read enough about the current technology to know the costs for what she needed should be in the range of five thousand dollars, including a nice profit for Paltz. Before she could say anything Paltz apparently read her.
"Look," he whispered, "you're gonna pay high end for this stuff. What we make here is proprietary. You take a bust with this stuff on you and they'll trace it right back here. Now sellin' it to you ain't illegal per se, but they could get me on an aiding-and-abetting bit. They throw conspiracy charges around now like confetti. On top of that, I'd lose my job. So you gotta pay high to cover my exposure here. Take it or leave it, that's the price."
She now realized she had made a mistake showing him the cash before they had a deal.
"Okay, fine with me," she finally said. "I'm on an expense account."
"See you at six, then."
"Yeah, six."
10
CASSIE had two hours to kill before her meeting with Jersey Paltz. She thought about going to the Cleo and picking up the package waiting for her at the front desk but decided against it because it meant she would have to leave to make her meeting and then come back. That would mean two extra trips under the cameras. She didn't want to give the people on the other side of those cameras two extra chances at making her.
Instead she stayed away from the Strip. She first stopped at a nail salon in a strip mall on Flamingo and had the manicurist cut her nails as short as possible. It wasn't very stylish but the manicurist, who was Asian, probably Vietnamese, didn't ask any questions and Cassie tipped her nicely for it.
She then drove east on Flamingo out past UNLV and into the neighborhood where she had lived until she was eleven. On the drive from L.A. she had convinced herself that she wanted to see it one last time.
She passed the 7 -Eleven where her father took her to get candy and the bus stop where she was let off after school. On Bloom Street the little house her parents had owned was still painted pink but she could see that some changes had been made in the two decades since they had left it. The swamp cooler on the roof had been changed out with a real air conditioner. The garage had been converted into living space and the backyard was now fenced, just like all the other houses on the block. Cassie wondered who lived there now and whether it was the same family that had bought it at auction after the foreclosure. She had the urge to go knock on the door and see if she could be allowed a quick look at her old room. It seemed that the last time she had ever felt completely safe had been in that room. She knew how nice it would be to have that feeling again. The image of her room as it had been back then made her momentarily think of Jodie Shaw's room and the collection of stuffed dogs on the shelf over the bed. But she quickly dismissed that image and moved back to her own memories.
Staring at the house, she thought about the time she came home from school and saw her mother crying while a man in a uniform tacked a foreclosure notice on the front door. He told her it had to be in public view but as soon as he left her mother tore the papers off the door. She then grabbed Cassie and they got in the Chevette. Her mother drove with reckless abandon toward the Strip, finally pulling to a stop with two wheels up on the curb in front of the Riviera. Yanking Cassie along by the hand, she found Cassie's father at one of the blackjack tables and shoved the foreclosure papers into his face and down the front of his Hawaiian shirt. Cassie always remembered that shirt. It had topless hula dancers on it, their swaying arms covering their breasts. Her mother cursed her father and called him a coward and other things Cassie could no longer remember, until she was pulled away by casino security men.
Cassie could not remember all of the words but she vividly remembered the scene as through the eyes of a child. Her father just sat on his stool and kept his place at the gambling table. He stared at the woman screaming at him as though she were a complete stranger. A thin smile played on his face. And he never said a word.
Her father didn't come home that night or any of the nights after. Cassie saw him only one more time – when she was dealing blackjack at the Trop. But by then he was deep inside the bottle and didn't recognize her. And she didn't have the courage to introduce herself.
She looked away from the house and again images from the house on Lookout Mountain Road intruded. She thought of the drawing on the easel in Jodie Shaw's bedroom. The little girl in the picture was crying because she was leaving her home behind.
Cassie knew exactly how she felt.
11