Free Smoke & Mirrors by John Ramsey Miller

thirty-five thousand. That was about to be collected and returned to the casino.
    Beals waited to call Albert White until Scotoni had gone into his room on the second level.
    “Target is in a motel room on the second floor of the Gold Key,” Beals told him. “Easy access. I’ll come by tonight and deliver it.”
    White said, “He cashed out for over thirty-five, and he’s won in other places. The thirty-five comes back here. The other we cut up as usual.”
    “Your wish is my command,” Beals said, before hanging up. Whatever he’s taken from the others. Not bad money for a day’s work.
    He screwed the silencer on the .380. The professional from the outside who Jack had been helping to get the lay of the land, the guy whose name was or wasn’t Pablo, had given it to him. Nice fellow, some kind of top-dollar hit man always measuring the world and the people around him like a film director looking for the perfect shot. After putting on a pair of tight leather gloves, Beals climbed from his 1999 Trail Blazer and made sure nobody was watching as he moved up the stairs to Scotoni’s room. Stopping outside the door, he took out his badge case and knocked hard on the door three times. A TV set went off and a voice asked tentatively, “Who’s there?”
    When the young cheater looked out through the peephole, Beals held up a gold five-star badge for the kid to see. “Sheriff’s department, Mr. Scotoni,” he said. “Open the door, please.”
    “What’s the problem, Officer?” the kid asked without opening the door. Beals felt anger rise from within, his heart beating like a bass drum.
    “I’d prefer not to discuss it from out here, sir. We’ve had a complaint.” Beals looked both ways and down at the parking lot. The lot was graveyard still.
    When the kid cracked open the door, Beals shouldered it, propelling Scotoni deep into the room. From the floor, a naked Scotoni looked up at the silenced weapon. The towel he’d been wrapped in was beneath him, and when Scotoni reached to gather it back up, Beals put a boot on it. He heard the sound of water running in the bathtub and he had an idea. He’d been thinking the kid would commit suicide by cutting his wrists, but this was even better. Motioning to the bathroom with the gun’s barrel, he said, “Dave. You need to take that bath.”

20
    AFTER FOLLOWING JACK BEALS FROM THE CASINO to a motel where Beals seemed to have some business with the man he himself was following, Paulus Styer turned to look into the rear of the van at the tarp under which lay the bound and drugged Gardner girl.
    He turned his attention to the Gold Key—one of several old motels that had been hastily thrown up on a stretch of highway near the original casinos. When larger and finer casinos were built miles away, with newer and fancier motels to accompany them, the Gold Key and its neighbors had been abandoned by the better-heeled clientele, and now subsisted on dregs and scraps from their poorer replacements.
    The Gold Key was a long two-story box, whose rooms faced a parking lot on either side. To access the second and third floors, patrons took one of several stairways or the elevator that was located behind the lobby. Time and lack of maintenance had turned the Gold Key into a place where the clientele, even on days when it wasn’t bone-chillingly cold, wouldn’t pay close attention to the comings and goings of strangers. And most of the clients would be sleeping in after a long night of losing money or turning tricks.
    Styer waited until Jack had sneaked up the stairs and shouldered his way inside a room on the second floor. Then he spoke.
    “Cynthia dear?”
    She was still out.
    Styer pocketed his lock-picking tools and patted the survival knife at his side. Then, after checking for witnesses, he climbed from the van, locked it, and walked swiftly but casually toward the stairs.

21
    WHEN LEIGH GARDNER WALKED INTO BRAD Barnett’s office, the sheriff had just returned from making