"Vincent?"

Grimaldi turned away from the window. He was a short man with a harsh and overtanned, V -shaped face with skin that looked as though it had been stretched too tight across the cheekbones. His iron-gray hair was slicked back perfectly and he wore an impeccable Hugo Boss suit. He always dressed as though the casino and hotel he ran was the Mirage. But he was the mirage. The Cleopatra was second tier, moving toward the third. Its location on the Strip was the only thing stopping that for the moment. But there was no doubt that Grimaldi was the captain of an old river barge in a sea of new luxury liners with names like Bellagio, Mandalay Bay and the Venetian.

"Jack! I didn't hear you. Where you been?"

Karch ignored the question. He looked at his watch. It was 8:10, only forty minutes since he had gotten Grimaldi's page with the 911 emergency code added at the end. Forty minutes wasn't bad, especially in light of Grimaldi's refusal to tell him what the problem was over the phone.

"What's up?"

"What's up is that we have a big fucking problem here."

He stepped over and held his hand out for the card key Karch still held in his hand. Karch gave him the key and thought about lighting his cigarette but decided to wait.

"You indicated that on the phone, Vincent. Now I'm here. What am I supposed to do, guess what the problem is or are you finally going to tell me?"

"No, Jack, I'll show you. Check it out."

He pointed to the bedroom door with his chin. It was a typical gesture with Grimaldi, who always employed an economy of physical movement as well as words.

Karch looked at him a moment, awaiting further explanation, but none came. He turned and went to the bedroom door. He opened it and stepped into the room.

The bedroom was dark save for a slice of sunlight that cut through the inch-wide break in the closed curtains. The light cut diagonally across the bed, where the body of an overweight man lay face up. The dead man's right eye was gone, obliterated when a bullet was fired almost point blank through the socket and into his brain. The wood headboard and wall behind the bed were splattered with blood and whitish-gray brain matter. Six inches above the headboard there was a bullet hole in the wall.

Karch came around the front of the bed and looked down, studying the corpse. The dead man was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of pale blue boxer shorts. Karch saw that a pair of handcuffs had been attached to his right wrist – both cuffs around the same wrist. Also on the bed, a handgun was lying between the dead man's legs. Karch bent down and studied it. It was a Smith amp; Wesson 9 mm with a satin finish.

Grimaldi came to the bedroom doorway but didn't come in.

"Who found him?" Karch asked, his eyes still on the corpse.

"Me."

Karch looked over, his eyebrows raised. He had expected the answer to be that a maid had found the body, though it seemed kind of early for that. Still, not the director of casino operations. That was out of left field. Grimaldi picked up on the vibe and offered an explanation.

"I had a seven A.M. breakfast with him. Rather, I was supposed to have one. When he didn't come down, I called. When he didn't answer, I checked. This is what I found. I called you."

Now things were getting curious, Karch thought.

"Who was he, Vincent?"

"Just a courier. From Miami. Name is – was – Hidalgo, though we had registered him under an alias."

Karch waited. Grimaldi said nothing else.

"Look, Vincent, you want to take me in and tell me what's going on or am I supposed to bring up Seymour the Psychic from the lounge to guess for me every step of the way?"

Grimaldi blew out his breath. Karch was enjoying the moment. The old man was in a jam and needed him. Karch already knew one fact for sure. He planned to milk this thing, whatever the fuck it was, for all he could get. And if that included finally putting Vincent Grimaldi back on his heels, then Karch would do that in a heartbeat. He thought about the crow's nest downstairs. He could see himself up there. Watching the money. Watching everything.

"Yeah, I'm going to tell you."

Grimaldi stepped into the room and looked down at the body.

"It's money, Jack. The fat fuck had two and a half million dollars with him. It's not here now and he can't exactly say what happened to it, can he?"

"Two and a half? For what? I assume he didn't bring it to put down on a blackjack table."

Karch saw a vein high on Grimaldi's temple start to tick. The old man was angry. Karch knew how dangerous he was when he was angry. But he was like a little boy standing at the Christmas tree with a broomstick. He had to see how fragile those glass balls really were.

"He came to make a drop," Grimaldi said. "This morning. That's what the meeting was about."

He gestured toward the body.

"I come up this morning and find this. The fucking mutt brought somebody in here and now the money's gone. We have to get that money back, Jack. It's spoken for, know what I mean? We need to get it quick. We – "

Karch shook his head, took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and cut in.

"Spoken for by who?"

"Jack, some things you don't need to know. You just need to get on this and find out who – "

"Take it easy, Vincent. And good luck with this."

Karch waved a hand and headed toward the door. He got all the way to the living room and was heading to the suite's front door when Grimaldi caught up with him.

"Okay, okay, hold on, Jack! I'll tell you, okay? I'll tell you the whole thing, you think you need to know."

Karch stopped. He was still facing the door with Grimaldi behind him. He noticed that the door's flip-over lock was missing. He reached up and touched the unpainted square on the door frame where it had been fastened. There was a grayish, waxy material in the screw holes. He rubbed some of this between his finger and thumb, thinking he had seen it before. He turned back to Grimaldi.

"Okay, Vincent, from the beginning. If you want my help on this you have to tell me everything. Don't leave anything out."

Grimaldi nodded and pointed to the couch. Karch stepped back into the room and sat down. Grimaldi went back to his position by the room's glass wall. From Karch's angle, he was completely framed in bright blue sky. He was the dark, angry cloud in the middle of that sky. Karch took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth and put it in his coat pocket with the one he had used during the elevator gag.

"All right, this is the story," Grimaldi said. "Two weeks ago I got the word from somebody that there was going to be a problem with the transfer. Something came up on the background. What they call an association problem."

Karch nodded. He wasn't as far inside the loop as Grimaldi, but his job gave him more than a general understanding of what was going on. The Cleopatra Resort and Casino was for sale. A Miami entertainment consortium called the Buena Suerte Group was lined up to buy. The Investigations Unit of the Nevada Gaming Commission had been working on a background inquiry of the buyers for twelve weeks and would soon submit a final report making a recommendation to the commission to approve or disapprove the sale. The commission – an appointed board – almost always followed the investigative branch's lead, making the report the key element in any bid to buy or open a casino in Nevada.

"What happened?" he asked. "From what I heard, Buena Suerte was gonna come up clean."

"It doesn't matter what happened. What matters is the money, Jack."

"Everything matters. I have to know everything. What came up?"

Grimaldi waved his hands in frustration and surrender.

"A name came up, okay? They found a connection between one of the directors and a man named Hector Blanca. Now, you'll ask, who is Hector Blanca. Suffice it to say that he's a silent partner who was supposed to have remained silent. And that's all I'm saying on him."