The Fading Page 24

  Under the blinking lights and eye-in-the-sky cameras on the casino floor, everyone and everything was watched, taped, recorded, stored. But in the rooms, under the mattresses, in the rented pool houses, parking lots, and inside the safes and duffel bags and SUVs’ removable seat cushions, there were no cameras. In such places where the big money must eventually travel, the adrenaline players, Rain Man geniuses, techno-savants and Lear Jet jocks grew cocky, confident, as relaxed as train robbers who’ve galloped across the border.

  Sometimes they brought their own safes, sometimes they used the safes provided by the hotels and sometimes they entrusted their treasure to private security firms. But wherever and however they stashed their stashes, eventually they and their henchmen turned their backs. Or left the room. Or took a nap. The man who won ninety-two thousand at blackjack called for a pizza, pulled over at McDonald’s. The Hollywood ingénue and Turkish heiress who brought four hundred thousand in her Gucci bags and didn’t even like to gamble left hers in the six-room suite and left to rent out a nightclub.

  At which time the man who had become their shadow for the past forty-eight hours opened the safe, the box, the suitcase with its digital code and emptied its contents into a hotel-provided pillowcase. He took chips, cash, jewels, credit cards, cash and more cash. Using cleaning carts, trash cans, food trays, laundry hampers, or just carrying the damn thing himself, Noel found ways to migrate the sacks back to whichever of the empty rooms he had staked out as a way station or temporary home.

  Funny thing about pillowcases, something he learned from cleaning rooms – you cut your own finger, wipe a good smear of blood across one, fill it with cash and people walking down the hall don’t want to go near it. Doesn’t matter what’s inside. They see a bloody pillowcase in front of a hotel room door, they avert their eyes as soon as possible and keep on movin’. It was the jewelry store all over again, shuffling and kicking his bags of loot down the carpeted corridors, down the stairwells, under the ice machine until the coast was clear.

  He stole various passkeys from the maids and from behind the front desk, rotating through them as needed, changing hotels as needed. He used the vacant rooms to shower, to nap, to count his winnings, to lay low until six a.m., when the casino was at its slowest and most understaffed and he could transport his take. Whenever a new guest or a maid tried to enter, all he had to do was speak up with a gruff, ‘Not now, please, come back another time’, and they would move on. Thinking they had the wrong room, the front desk had made a mistake, they inevitably apologized and tried again later. By the time a manager was summoned, he would be gone.

  Sometimes he duct-taped the cash to his body, dressed and muled it out of the hotel. He rented half a dozen storage lockers by phone, the self-service kind. He used lockers in the employee rooms, the casino gyms.

  Before his first week in the blink had ended, he had amassed almost half a million dollars in cash plus other valuables. A single, two-day bender run against a sloppy Greek who’d made his fortune in olive plantations netted him so much cash his arms got tired. Soon he needed a larger receptacle and a more efficient way to transport the money. He stole a suitcase from a pharmaceutical salesman who was sleeping off a bachelor party, but soon this was overflowing and too much to kick down the road. Using a room phone and a stolen credit card, he called the front desk and asked them to transfer him to a local courier service. He gave the dispatcher clear instructions, promised a large tip for a successful delivery and had the suitcase shipped to his former address at the guest house.

  He followed the courier from pick-up to the elevators, all the way down to the lobby and out into the courier’s van. The courier was a goofy kid in his early twenties, probably a student, and he listened to the same Tupac track three times on the way out to the suburbs. As instructed, he dropped the case on the front porch and knocked on the door. Noel walked around the back, let himself in the sliding glass door and answered, standing out of sight, just behind the front door. He told the kid to set the slip on the floor, he had a disability. He closed the door, signed for his delivery, added a $100 tip and the kid went happily on his way.

  He used the same system with two other courier companies a total of twenty-three times.

  Counting one hundred paces off the north-east corner of the Bagley’s property wall, he found a one-armed saguaro cactus and dug a deep hole. Wrapped the suitcase and additional duffels in Hefty bags, and dragged a large rock over to cover the turned earth. When his present blinding run came to an end, he would rent a car, dig up his treasure and split town. He would set up a new life in a new city, buying a humble house and average American car and hide the remainder of his life savings in various safety deposit boxes, attic boxes, home safes and new holes in the ground.

  He started at Caesars because he was familiar with the layout and felt the casino owed him for the winnings he had been forced to abandon at the roulette table. But soon he moved onto the newer resorts, where the uber-rich tended to mine lady luck. MGM Grand, Bellagio, Mirage, Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Rio, the Venetian. It was like fishing. You just had to learn where to cast your net, find the hidden sharks under the reef. Sometimes days would pass without a nibble, other times he netted two or three great whites in a single night. He followed them to their condos, to their second (third, fourth, their fifteenth) homes in the gated communities. He followed some to McCarran International Airport and hit their luggage before they ever set foot inside the terminals. He waited until they had parked, and sometimes he used a short length of pipe or rope to put them out.

  Timing and luck were not always on his side. But when the risk was too great, he simply walked away. When the prospect woke up at the wrong time, returned to his room because he had forgotten his lucky inhaler, when anything threatened to trap him, all Noel had to do was freeze, step quietly behind a door, step onto an elevator, or blend into the crowd. On the few occasions when the victim or his people realized something was missing, every visible human in the vicinity became suspect. But Noel blended in everywhere he stood.

  Sin City opened its doors for him, and he sinned repeatedly. The constant movement took its toll, his paranoia went up and down like one of the elevators, but in truth there were no close calls or brushes with death. Hunting and foraging, employing his superior evolutionary advantages to survive, to thrive, to break the weaker links in the chain. It was human nature in all its glory, the biggest game on earth. He felt no more guilt than the CEOs of the billions-earning corporations who sucked the lifeblood out of their guests. Like the house itself, he was a force, he was risk, he was fate and luck. Sometimes the money you brought to Vegas stayed in Vegas. Sometimes you went home a loser, and pointing a fingers at the unfairness of it all might have meant something if they knew who to point it at. Most of the responsible parties – the greedy house, the rigged machines, your own addictions, the God who had turned his back on you – were faceless, impossible to see let alone argue with. Noel Shaker was just another of the invisible predators, the ones you didn’t realize had turned your pockets out until it was too late.

  The dead, for their part, had decided to leave him alone. Based on previous experience, he should be seeing them everywhere he looked now. But he wasn’t. Since the lingering rabble of them had appeared in the casino amidst his roulette triumph, he had not seen a single ghost, spirit, or psychic reverberation – whatever they were. And whatever they had to do with his disappearances, however they were provoked and stirred to animation before him, something had changed. Either they had grown bored with him, or he them, and the borderland that once existed between his invisibility and the revenants was paved over by something else. The mental blockade of his acceptance of the curse? The defensive energy of his newfound confidence? Some higher power or referee that controlled the playing field, a law of physics rewarding him for surrendering to it? Maybe they were a symptom of the transition in and out, powerless to heckle him now that he was in full immersion.

  He didn’t know the reasons.
He was only grateful for the reprieve.

  Prior to the blinding run that began on his birthday at the roulette table, Noel’s longest stint had been four and a half days. Back in Boulder, with Julie. Then he’d dried up for four years, the pressure and misery of his existence mounting until he had shed all other concerns, including Julie. Indeed, he had felt it shift gears the moment he read Julie’s goodbye note. His encounter with the dead family had only poured fuel on the fire. It had led him to roulette table, and when he insisted on playing 29 not once but twice, the leviathan finally tossed the seas and swallowed him like Pinocchio. He knew at once it was going to be an epic jaunt. His first estimates were triple his previous record, or about two weeks, and he welcomed the possibility.

  But he hadn’t expected this. Nine weeks in the bubble, Noel was scared he might never come out again.

  He was wealthy enough to spend the rest of his life living like a senator, but he was bored with the taking. He was mentally fried, physically exhausted, and repulsed by Las Vegas itself. The smoke, the food, the noise, the lights and the never-ending parade of debauchery and delusion. He was surrounded by people and he had never felt lonelier. Living on room service and sleeping in anonymous beds, sneaking from hotel to hotel, he longed for peace, quiet, security, a home. But he could not leave like this, transparent as air. He didn’t want to squander his best chance at a secure future by blowing town in a stolen car, losing it all in a hot pursuit across the Mojave. He needed to wind down, get away from the resorts and clear his mind so that when he was restored he would have a plan in place.

  Which is why at the eight-week mark he stopped stealing so much as a pillow chocolate. Not to atone with karma, for he knew that if karma existed he was quite screwed for life. He stopped because he had enough and needed to consolidate his resources. He spent three days rounding up his money from the various employee locker bays, storage units and patched-up walls inside the guest house, relocating everything to the hole in the sand out beside the saguaro. He didn’t like being at the guest house, knowing what mind-altering, self-inflicting nightmare visions awaited him in the main house. But like those in the casino, they’d not shown themselves again, as if the horror had been ventilated through the psychic mine-shaft he had dug for them. Still, he knew he was pushing his luck by even remaining in the city, in the state where he had committed so much larceny.

  He kept off the Strip, touring pawn shops until he found one with an open cabinet and sleepy clerk, then stole a gun and a box of shells. He slept for sixteen hours, the filed down .38 under his pillow.

  He took long hot baths and debated calling Julie. Things were very different now. He was no longer Noel the minimum-wage bum and basket of anxiety. He was a man with resources. But he couldn’t sell her on the new life he planned to offer her over the phone. He had to see her in person, and to do that he needed to be whole again. She’d accepted him this way once before, of course, but the past four years had changed all that. She’d run away from his problems, from him, and if she wasn’t half insane by now, he needed to approach her in the sober light of his own body and earn back some trust before announcing he happened to be filthy rich.

  Week eight in the void turned to week nine, and he grew restless. He was drowning in memories of her, the good times and bad, but he clung to the good. He remembered a night they had spent together at Caesars, not long after their arrival, when the future had seemed so bright. They’d had some minor luck gambling, but were not yet consumed by the promise of more more more.

  They decided to take a night off from gaming and enjoyed a simple but romantic dinner at, of all places, In N Out Burger. The renowned fast-food chain was a few blocks off the Strip, and with the line of more than a dozen cars at the drive-thru it had cost them a $30 cab ride on top of the eighteen bucks spent on Double-Doubles, fries and shakes. Almost $50 for a fast-food dinner. But feeding each other their wrapped burgers with grilled onions and dripping cheese in the back of the cab, he’d never felt so at home with her, humbled by her acceptance of him. That they could have fun on a date like this, that this was enough, that he was enough, just him, no superpowers or fortunes – it was his only memory of true happiness since they’d left Boulder.

  They’d finished their burgers and shakes in their room, watched an hour of TV, cuddling on the bed but too lethargic for sex, and then headed down to one of the quieter lounges for a beer or two. Noel couldn’t remember the name of the bar, or if it even had one, but he recalled sitting there with Julie, watching the people stroll by, making up false histories for the strangers, laughing, studying people.

  After an hour or two she wanted to go back to their room and sleep. They’d turned around to pay their bill and Julie fell into a trance, staring at something behind the bar with an intense longing he’d never seen on her before. He followed her gaze.

  Sitting on a small glass shelf raised above the cash register was a set of what he first mistook as figurines but were actually toys. Little plastic action figures with a safari or circus theme, arranged as if on display in a toy store window. Julie explained that they were the Adventure People; she’d gotten the same set for Christmas when she was eight or nine. There was a bearded man in macho boots and zookeeper shirt. On the other end was a woman, a fierce gal with cute legs and khaki shorts, a bandana tied at her throat, her hair tied back in a ponytail, a toy whip raised in her plastic fist. Between them was a caravan – cage-like train cars on rubber wheels, a real canvas pop-up tent where the couple slept, and of course an assortment of wild animals they kept and, presumably, trained for the circus or whatever traveling show they put on around the world. A pair of lions, a tiger, a gorilla, a bear, chimp, alligator and so forth.

  ‘That’s who I wanted to be,’ Julie said, eyes glinting. ‘When I grew up, I was going to be that woman, strong and adventurous and free, taking care of all those wild animals, living with a handsome man in a little red tent. We’d go to Africa and Asia and South America, meeting new animals and dazzling crowds everywhere with our amazing shows. Look how strong she is, standing there with her whip. She’s not afraid of anything and even the lions love her. Doesn’t she look happy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She didn’t speak for a long time, only stared at the Adventure People.

  ‘We could still do that,’ Noel told her. ‘If that’s what you want, I’ll live in a tent with you. We can travel, go on safari, buy some tiger cubs and a zebra, all of it.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t be the same,’ Julie said. ‘Look at them. This isn’t a vacation for them. This is their life. They are fearless and this is what they do.’

  When the bartender came back with their tab, Noel asked him why there happened to be a set of twenty-year-old safari toys sitting in a place normally reserved for old photos of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. The bartender said he didn’t know the whole story, but it involved a vintage toy collector who’d come through the casino one night. The toy collector, an old man with a drinking problem, had run some con and tried to skip out on a tab, but the manager busted his ass and started to lead him off to security. The old man had pleaded for mercy and offered some toys in lieu of payment, promising they would be worth a lot someday. The manager, who was a nut for model cars and boats and dolls, had taken pity and set the old booze hound free, and now there was a set of Adventure People sitting behind the bar, collecting dust until the manager decided enough time had passed for them to be worth real money.

  Noel had promptly stood and counted everything in his wallet. ‘I’ll give you three hundred and six dollars for the whole set.’

  ‘Sorry,’ the bartender demurred. ‘The manager’s holding out for a couple grand.’

  Noel was incredulous. ‘Some old man toy collector drank two thousand dollars’ worth of booze?’

  ‘No, but the manager’s gotten attached to the little guys. Especially that dude with the beard. Don’t ask me why. He’s a weirdo. Likes to go home and make sculptures out of melted Barbie dolls.’

/>   ‘I want to talk to him,’ Noel said. ‘Call him at home.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Julie said, leading him away. ‘That’s crazy. We’re not spending two thousand dollars on some old toys.’

  ‘I’m getting you those Adventure People,’ Noel promised her. ‘Soon as we strike it big, I’m coming back.’

  ‘Aw, Noel.’

  But he never did. In the heady rush of their rise and fall, he’d forgotten about Julie’s Adventure People. Now he wondered if they were still there. Probably not. Probably the hotel had remodeled and the entire bar was gone, replaced by one of those ridiculous slushy machine places, where waitresses in halter tops served thirty-two-ounce blue and orange frozen margarita and hurricane concoctions that poured out of transparent volcanoes and came with a glow-in-the-dark straw.

  But damned if he wasn’t going to find out. If the set was there, he’d steal the Adventure People for her, or leave two grand on the register with a thank-you note. Either way, it would make a nice gift, one he hoped would convey all the right things about their future. We can go anywhere and do anything, baby. We can be whoever we want. All we need is a tent and each other.

  That, and maybe a couple of lions to guard the $6.3 million I stole for you.

  He woke early on a warm May morning and set out for the Strip one final time. He made it to hotel’s main entrance and paused in the lobby to read the signs. Funny, he’d spent so much time here and couldn’t remember behind which bar Julie’s souvenir was kept. It had been set deep in the Palace, tucked back somewhere between the sportsbook and the newer mall that led to the Forum Shops. The kind of place you could walk by three times and never even notice.

  Noel veered right, into the casino, past the noodle restaurant with its large tanks of bright orange goldfish. Business had picked up with the warmer weather and the solids swarmed all around him. He knew there was a short cut through Cleopatra’s Barge, and he followed the signs and arrows in that direction. He took his time, careful to avoid bumping into anyone. He watched the people, families and a gaggle of businessmen, a beautiful young couple sharing a waffle cone filled with pistachio gelato. Good people, average people, happy people.