The van's rear plate was missing as well.

"Damn!" Karch cried out, surprised by his own outburst.

"Wait a sec," Cannon said.

He reversed the image and replayed it in slow motion. He then froze the picture and magnified it. Karch looked at him and then at the screen and then finally understood what he was doing. The van's plates were gone but there was a parking sticker on the left side of the bumper. Cannon expertly moved in on it and expanded it. The larger letters and numbers became almost clear. Karch could see the current year on the sticker and was trying to make out the letters when Cannon whistled.

"What?"

"It looks like HLS to me."

"Me, too. What's that?"

"That's Hooten Lighting and Supplies. Their logo. You know, the company that makes all of this shit."

He indicated the console with his hand.

"Okay."

Karch didn't know what else to say. The discovery was making the cover story he had told Cannon seem more and more of a stretch. For the first time he realized how cold it was in the tube room. He folded his arms across his chest.

"I don't get it," Cannon said. "A hooker driving herself in a van from Hooten's. You sure this, uh, client of yours told it to you straight?"

He looked up at Karch, who decided he had to extricate himself from this situation.

"Nope. But that's what I'm going to go find out before I take another step on this thing. If the guy's lying, I'm flying. Thanks for your help, Don. I better get back over there to the DI and talk to this guy."

"Yeah, it sounds kind of hinky to me. You want to look through the hooker bin anyway? Got some real beauties in there."

Karch frowned and shook his head.

"Nah, maybe later. Let me talk to this guy first and see what's what. Oh, and I'll catch you later with the rest of what I owe you for the trail."

Karch nodded at the video console.

"Forget about it. Anyway, looks like I opened more holes for you than I closed. The only thing I want from you is a little sleight of hand. You got something to show me?"

Karch went into his act, feigning that he had been caught off guard by Cannon's request.

"Well…"

He patted his pockets for change.

"You got some change? A quarter or something?"

Cannon leaned back in his seat so he could work his hand into his pocket. He finally came up with a palm full of change. Karch pulled the sleeves of his jacket halfway up to his elbows and then chose a recently minted and shiny quarter, taking it off Cannon's palm with his right hand. He then performed a variation on the classic French Drop with an added toss-away vanish devised by J. B. Bobo. It was a sleight-of-hand trick he had been practicing since he was twelve years old. It was one he could do in his sleep. He expertly accomplished it with fluid motions and a practiced ease.

With his right hand palm up and chest high he held the quarter by its edges between his thumb and four fingers, tilting it forward slightly so that Cannon could see its face. He then brought his left hand over the top of the coin as if to take it away. As his left hand closed over the coin he let it drop down into his right palm, completing the fake take.

Karch closed his left fist and held it out toward Cannon. He started manipulating the muscles and balling his fist as if he were pulverizing the coin supposedly held within it to dust. At the same time he moved his right hand in a flat circular motion above his closed left fist. He never took his eyes off his left hand.

"To powder it goes, where it ends up nobody knows."

He made the circle with his right hand wider and wider until suddenly he snapped his fingers and opened both hands, palms out to Cannon. The coin was gone. Cannon's eyes quickly moved from hand to hand, then a broad smile cracked across his face. It was the usual response. The trick was a double misdirection. The skeptical viewer believes the coin never left the right hand but is baffled when the coin shows up in neither hand.

"Fantastic!" Cannon cried. "Where'd it go?"

Karch shook his head.

"That's the problem with this one. You never know where that coin's going to turn up. That part I never got a handle on. I guess you can add two bits to what I owe you."

Cannon laughed loudly.

"You're cool, Jack. How'd you learn that one, your father?"

"Yeah."

"He still around?"

"Nah, he's gone. Long time ago."

"And he used to work the Strip, right?"

"Yeah, here and there. In the sixties. One week he opened for Joey Bishop, who opened for Sinatra at the Sands. I have pictures of the three of them."

"Cool! The Rat Pack. The good old days, huh?"

"Yeah, some of them were good."

Karch had a vision of seeing his father coming home from the hospital after the incident at Circus, Circus. Both hands bandaged white. It looked like he was holding two softballs. His eyes looked like they were staring at something far, far away.

Karch realized he had lost his smile and looked at Cannon.

"Anyway, I better hit the road and get on this thing. Thanks for the help, Don."

He offered his hand and Cannon took it.

"Anytime, Jack."

"I'll find my way out."

He turned toward the steps and started walking away. But then he stopped and leaned on the railing.

"What the…?"

He raised his left foot and worked the shoe off. Without even glancing at Cannon but knowing he was being watched, he looked inside the shoe and then shook it. Something rattled inside and he turned the shoe upside down, dropping the quarter he had planted earlier into his other hand. He held it up and looked at Cannon. The big man banged a fist on his console and started smiling and shaking his head.

"Son of a gun, I told you," Karch said. "Never know where the damn thing'll go."

He flipped the coin to Cannon, who caught it in his fist.

"I'm saving this one, Jack. It's fucking magic."

Karch saluted and headed down the steps and out of the tube room. He waited until he was out of the Flamingo and away from the view of Cannon's cameras before reaching into the breast pocket of his suit coat and removing the handkerchief and the quarter he had dropped into it while circling his hand during the trick.

He would get the dime out of his shoe later, when he had time to sit down.

NINETY minutes later Karch was standing outside the fenced employee lot of Hooten's Lighting amp; Supplies with a cell phone in his hand. Parked directly on the other side of the fence was the blue van that had been recorded driving out of the garage at the Flamingo about six hours earlier. Only now there was a license plate attached to the rear bumper. Karch was pacing a little bit, anxious as he waited for a call-back. The small tickle of an adrenaline rush was beginning to caress the back of his skull. He was getting close. To the money, to the woman. He cocked his head back and that seemed to accentuate the trilling up his spine and into his brain.

The phone rang and his thumb was already poised on the button.

"This is Karch."

"This is Ivy. I got it."

Ivy was a Metro detective named Iverson who ran plates for Karch for fifty bucks a shot. He'd do other things for other prices, using the power of his badge to generate two incomes. Karch was always circumspect about his requests, even on totally legitimate jobs. He had learned over the years to treat all Metro cops – and Iverson more than others – with the same caution and distance as the prostitutes, pawnbrokers and casino sharps he regularly dealt with on his cases.

Karch tilted his head and hooked the phone in the crook of his neck while he got out his notepad and pen.

"Okay, what've you got?"

"Plate comes back to a Jerome Zander Paltz, forty-seven years of age. Address is three-twelve Mission Street. That's North Las Vegas. I ran him on NCIC for you and he's got a clean ticket. I threw that in for free, by the way."