Vegas Knights (16 page)

  Bill nodded all the way through this, and the color returned to his cheeks. "All right," he said, "then what's the deal?"

  "Your salary starts at one hundred thousand dollars each, with a full raft of benefits. Your training will begin immediately." An idea struck him, and he held up his hand. "Wait? Are you boys here on spring break?"

  Bill and I nodded.

  "Then I would not deprive you of your vacation. Your training would begin next Monday."

  Bill looked at me. His reluctance had evaporated in the dry desert air, but I could tell he still wasn't sure what to do. "What do you say?" he asked.

  I rubbed my chin. "This sounds like exactly what we came out here for: to hit it big and live the high life in Vegas. Doesn't it?"

  "But without any of the risks that come with trying to rip off a casino," Gaviota said without a hint of menace in his voice.

  I screwed up my face as I tried to think about it, but I didn't feel sharp enough to handle it. "It's a generous offer," I said. "Especially considering what I thought was going to happen when Ben here hauled us out of the airport. But it's been a long day, and I – it's late. Can we sleep on it?"

  Houdini tapped the side of his head again and smiled. "You are smart boys," he said. "I think we'll work well together. Of course you can have the time. Take until the end of the week if you like."

  He became serious again. "A deal is only a good deal if everyone involved is happy with it. I've had enough bad deals in my life. Take your time to make this decision. I was here for decades before you arrived, and with any luck at all I will be here for decades to come."

  He stood, and the rest of us did too. "For now, Mr Gaviota will show you to your quarters. It is very late, and while I know that young men do not often require much sleep in a town like this, I suggest that you get yourself some rest. Tomorrow, we will take you behind the curtain and show you what Las Vegas is really all about."

  Houdini bowed to us, and we returned the gesture. Then we followed Gaviota and the bodyguards to the elevator. As the doors closed, I looked back to see Houdini standing on the balcony, his back to us, staring out at the Strip.

  Gaviota clapped a hand on Bill's back and mine, grabbing us by our shoulders. "You boys did good," he said. "Not everyone makes it through that meeting as well as you."

  Neither Bill or I decided to ask him what happened to those unfortunate others.

  Houdini's office had been on the sixty-sixth floor. We rode down to sixty and emerged into a vast, deserted lounge, complete with its own fully stocked bar.

  "The rest of our people are either sleeping, at work, or still out on the town, it looks like," Gaviota said. "I'll escort you boys to the guest suite."

  The undead bodyguards remained in the lounge. Gaviota, Bill, and I walked around the elevators and to the end of a long hall that terminated in a set of double doors. Gaviota waved his hand at the doors' lock, and it blinked from red to green. "If you boys want me to have keycards sent up, just say the word. Given the way you got out of the cooler downstairs, though, I'd guess you don't need them."

  I let out a nervous laugh at that. I had failed at opening the lock on the cooler, although I had been bleeding from a gunshot wound at the time – one that Gaviota had given me. If Bill hadn't managed to free us, neither of us might have survived to have this conversation today. I promised myself I'd study opening locks so much that I'd be able to manage it half-dead.

  We followed Gaviota into the suite, and any kinds of thoughts about studying flew out of my head.

  We stood there in the entrance of the most amazing gym-sized hotel room I'd ever seen and just gaped. It looked like something out of a movie, all high ceilings, pale walls, hardwood floors, dramatic lighting, and artdeco brushed-steel accents. The living room featured a pit of couches and chairs in a semi-circle around a stretch of wall on which hung a seven-foot flatscreen TV. On either side of the TV, a set of French doors let out onto balcony wide enough for a table, several chairs and a stainless-steel barbecue grill and beer cooler.

  "There are rooms on either side of this part of the suite," Gaviota said. "Each of you can have one. Someone will grab your bags from the airport and bring them up here while you sleep. Meanwhile, how's about a nightcap?"

  We strolled out onto the balcony, and Gaviota reached into the well-stocked, glass-doored cooler and grabbed us each a beer. As he cracked them open and passed them out, Bill and I took in the view, which looked out south over the Strip. The Thunderbird stood there on the other side of the street, and I could see Revolutions' spire towering over Circus Circus.

  Just hours ago, Bill and I had escaped from that building – and from this one not long before that. People had been shooting at us. The man handing me the beer had been one of them.

  "Is this for real?" I asked.

  Gaviota grunted. "I didn't conjure it out of thin air."

  "I think he meant the deal," Bill said, "not the beer."

  Gaviota took a swig from his bottle before he answered. "It's as real as it gets, boys. Mr Weiss sees something in you, and he'd like to capitalize upon that. One thing I've learned over the many years I've known him is to trust the man's instincts. He's almost never wrong."

  "And when he is?"

  "That's when it all goes spectacularly bad. He doesn't do anything by halves."

  "You shot me," I said. I resisted the temptation to rub my arm where the bullet had grazed me.

  "My apologies for that," Gaviota said. "It wasn't anything personal. Just part of the job. You look like you got it taken care of just fine."

  "He's just like new," said Bill. He shot me a "cool it" look.

  I wasn't about to let this go though. Not yet.

  "Is that part of the job then? Shooting people."

  Gaviota shrugged. "Just the ones that need it." Then he realized what I meant. "Oh, but that's just me. That's my role here. I'm the enforcer. I make sure people follow the rules. You guys won't have to do anything like that."

  "Unless we don't follow the rules ourselves."

  He spread his lips to show me a shark's smile. "You boys strike me as a lot smarter than that." Then he let his expression reach his eyes. "We give the guys on our side a lot of leeway. Stick with us, and you'll be fine. That's really the only rule."

  "Sounds good to me," Bill said as cheerfully as he could force it.

  "And if we don't join you in the first place?"

  "Not that this would happen," Bill said. "It's just a hypothetical, right?"

  I nodded to comfort his nerves. "Hypothetically. Of course."

  "Hypothetically?" Gaviota said. "You'd be fine. We'd bring you out to the airport, wish you luck, and send you on your merry way. But Las Vegas is a town in which you have to choose sides. If you're here and you're not with us, we gotta play it like you're against us."

  Gaviota polished off the rest of his beer.

  "Nothing personal," I said. "Right?"

  He reached out and gave me a pat on the cheek. "Now you got it." He put down the empty bottle and headed for the exit.

  Bill called after him. "Anything on the schedule tomorrow?"

  "Not until after dark," Gaviota said as he reached the door. "I'll take you out and show you the town. The real Vegas."

  He snapped off a quick salute as he left. "Sleep in tomorrow, boys. I know I will."

  Bill gave me his best "oh my god!" face and stuck out his hand for a high five. I gave it a lazy slap.

  "Do you believe this?" He brimmed with excitement. "What a turnaround! How lucky are we? Huh? Answer me that. How lucky are we?"

  "Let's hope," I said.

  "Jackson! Don't do this."

  "What?"

  "That thing you do where you analyze all the fun out of something. It's a buzzkill."

  "This isn't a party we're talking about, or some kind of game. It's our lives. If we screw this up, we could be dead or worse."

  "You think I don't know that? But we can't just walk away from this. Could you stand going back to Ann Arbor and leaving all this behind? Really?"

  "I've grown to like breathing." I knew what Bill meant. A part of me was just as amazed and enthusiastic as he was, but when I looked out at the Thunderbird, I couldn't stop thinking about Powi and my dad and what they would think about this.

  "Joining the winning team increases the chances that we get to keep doing that," said Bill. "I'd much rather be on the side of people with the guns than against them."

  "I'd rather be far out of the line of fire." I gazed into the suite and then down the Strip. "I don't see any good place to pull that off here."

  "Hey." Bill dropped his voice back to normal and put a hand on my arm – right where I'd been shot. It didn't hurt a bit. "I get it. We had a hell of a night, didn't we? There's so much swirling through my head right now it's a miracle I can still think at all."

  I nodded. "My guts don't lie to me though," I said. "And they're telling me to get the hell out of here as fast as we can."

  "Sure, but we tried that once already tonight. We didn't get far." He moved over to the balcony and stared out at the Strip. I joined him and looked down at the long drop to the Las Vegas Boulevard below.

  "One thing," he said. "We make the decision together. It has to be unanimous. Right?"

  He put out his fist, and I gave it a tired bump.

  "You got it," I said. "Right or wrong."

 
 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
 

I didn't emerge from my room until after noon. Bill was already up, and he sat at a dining table in a niche near my door, eating a big brunch. He looked up at me with a grin as I stumbled into the blinding rays of the desert sun streaming in through the French doors' glass.

  "I ordered a big mess of room service," he said. "I figure if this is all on Houdini's bill, we might as well live large."

  "The smell woke me up," I said as I sat down and dug into a ham and cheese omelet. "I'm starving."

  We said nothing as we stuffed our faces with food. When I came up for air, I said, "So, we're doing this?"

  "So far. You going to call your dad?"

  I put down my fork. "I've been thinking about it. I don't know. I don't think so."

  "Why not?"

  I sat back in the chair. "The man abandoned me after Katrina. Left me with my grandma and never looked back. I know what he'd tell me to do about all this, but I don't much value his opinion these days. I'm an adult. Now that I'm not being chased out of town by gun-toting wizards, I'll take my time and make up my own mind."

  "I like that attitude." Bill grinned. "What about Powi?"

  I went back at my food. "What about her?"

  "You going to call her?"

  "You're not?"

  Bill grinned. "I thought you two had a moment there at the airport. I don't think she likes me much."

  "Just because she keeps calling you an idiot?"

  "I don't think I made the best first impression."

  "I don't think she'd like me calling her from the magicians' lounge at Bootleggers."

  "True."

  "Did our clothes ever show up?"

  Bill shook his head. "Better."

  He walked me over to the closet near the suite's entrance, and he slid the folding doors wide. Inside hung a dozen high-priced big-label outfits, six to each side. The ones on the right fit me. As I looked them over, I saw the note.

  It read: "We found your luggage. Your clothes weren't worth burning. If you're going to work with us, you need to look the part. Enjoy!"

  Gaviota had signed it.

  Bill held up an Armani jacket in front of himself. "I think I could learn to like this."

  Once we got cleaned up and dressed in our finest new rags, we had nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon. Bill checked his e-mail and social feeds on his smartphone, and I broke out my laptop to do the same.

  When I was done, I realized who I needed to talk to.

  I launched my video chat program and checked the list of people available to ping. I spotted my intended target at once and shot him a request to chat.

  A moment later, Professor Ultman's face appeared on my laptop's screen.

  "Mr Wisdom!" he said, smiling through his wispy gray beard, his dark skin wrinkling around his brown eyes. "How are you? I did not expect to hear from you during break." He still spoke with the slight lilt of an Indian accent, even though he'd been in America for longer than I'd been alive.

  "We're all right, Professor. I just wanted to check in with you."

  Bill got up from where he'd been lying on a couch across the room and made silent gestures of disbelief at me, well out of the field of vision of my computer's webcam. I ignored him.

  "We?" Professor Ultman said. "Is Mr Chancey there with you then? Give him my best."

  I glanced up at Bill, who mimed strangling himself.

  "I will, Professor."

  "So," he said, "what is it that you wanted to talk about? As much as I enjoy our classes together, I do not wish to fool myself that your call is purely a social one."

  I grimaced, sad to realize I was so transparent. "You got me, Professor. Bill and I are out here on vacation, and we've run into a pretty amazing situation. We could use your advice."

  Professor Ultman squinted into the screen, trying to see behind me. "Where are you two?" he asked. "You never said where you were going. I had thought you might wind up at Bill's house in Grosse Pointe Woods."

  I hesitated. Beyond the laptop's screen, Bill stood shaking his head, waving his arms back and forth, and mouthing, "No!"