Never Coming Back (13 page)

•   •   •

After I left Katie Francis, I walked out into the fields a little way. The wind was icy coming in off the water, and the waves made an immense roar as they crashed on to rocks somewhere over the edge of the cliff. I stopped in the middle of the first field and looked ahead to where the barn stood—disused and open now, its basic structure still intact, but only a few of its panels in place.
I think police doubted his abilities to spot anyone from further than about six feet
, Ewan Tasker said.
He had some kind of a degenerative eye problem. This quack said he was a year out from full blindness
. It was hard to make out detail on it, even with good eyesight like mine. I didn't see how it was possible for Ray Muire.

I turned around and headed back to the car.

Friday, August
19, 2011
| Fifteen Months Ago

The diner was at the north end of Paradise Road, squeezed between a run-down motel and an adult bookstore. On the opposite side of the street was a square of undeveloped land, scorched brown by the desert sun and fenced off from passersby. A
FOR LEASE
sign stood in the middle, burned and weathered by age. Beyond that, looming over Las Vegas Boulevard, was the Stratosphere hotel, its tower reaching up into a cloudless sky. Apart from the occasional cab ride to the neon lights of Fremont Street, taking the elevator to the top of the
1,149-foot observation deck was about as far north as most tourists came, and none made the journey east to Paradise; certainly not since the Sahara had closed.

That's probably why Cornell had wanted to meet here.

Carlos Soto nosed the black Lincoln into the corner of the parking lot and killed the engine. It was lonely, litter blowing across the tarmac, no one else here this early. Beyond the gentle tick of the engine cooling, he could hear the hum of an air-conditioning unit on the outside wall and the faint sound of people's voices through a side door, left ajar, about twenty feet further back. He adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could see when Cornell pulled into the lot, then buzzed open his sunroof.

Warm air drifted in. Early mornings in the desert could be cool late in the year, but this was August and there was nothing cool about August. It was already sixty-eight, even though the sun was still a pale molten disc shimmering above the horizon.

The sun was the only thing that closed in Vegas.

His old man used to tell him that all the time growing up. They'd lived in a house near Hartke Park, just him, his pa and his mom, and often Soto and his dad used to sit on the back stoop and watch the sun bleed out along the ridges of the Spring Mountains. They'd never had any money, never went on vacation, never even saw his mom's family, even though they only lived down in Henderson. His childhood wasn't bad exactly, it was just small and unremarkable. All he'd done growing up was ride with his pa down to the Strip where Carlos Sr. had worked as a cage manager. The abiding memory of his youth was hanging around in the foyer at the Desert Inn for two hours every day, waiting for his mom to come and collect him after she'd finished her cleaning shift at The Dunes.

His mom had gone on to higher service when he was eighteen and, after that, he and his pa got closer, leaning on each other; basically, two men completely out of their
depth. His mom had been the glue that had held the house together, and without her it felt like every minute of every day they were waiting for things to fall apart. So, four months later, he lied his way into an entrance exam for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and a month after, he started as a cadet. He'd made his dad proud that day, so proud Pa had taken him out for a steak. It was the first time Soto ever remembered that happening, and the last: the old man went downhill after that, and two years later Soto was burying him in Woodlawn Cemetery.

A minute passed.

Then two.

He glanced in the rearview mirror, checked his watch, then checked his phone to see whether he'd missed any messages. After fifteen years on the force, he'd been offered the job of Director of Security at the Bellagio, the equivalent of a city police chief, by an old friend who was now the HR Director there. He'd taken it in a heartbeat. He'd been looking for a way out, and knew, if he failed to do anything about it, the Department would eventually destroy him. So he made the move, leaving behind a life that had been his entire existence for a decade and a half, for neon and noise and camera feeds.

He cycled through his messages. They were all from the keno manager: there'd been an incident the night before in the keno lounge, where a couple of men had started throwing punches. Soto didn't give much of a shit about it—drunk people tended to fight; there was no mystery in that—but there was paperwork to fill out and a report to file with LVMPD. All that was secondary, though, at least for now: he wasn't looking for texts or missed calls from the keno manager, any other manager or any department head. He was looking for messages or calls from the guy he was supposed to be meeting.

Soto didn't know much about Jeremy Cornell. All he could say for sure was that Cornell was English and he organized a get-together every three months for a bunch of international high rollers in the Lakeview villa. Neither Soto, the casino manager or the Director of Operations asked much more than that: the villa cost six grand a night, which the casino waived because the whales spent their evenings playing six-figure hands in the baccarat bar, before running up drinks tabs into the tens of thousands of dollars at their villa. They came to Vegas for anonymity, and—for better or for worse—that's what the casino gave them. No one was about to ask questions that didn't need asking, and no one was going to say no if Cornell wanted something done.

Soto glanced at the clock again.

Checked the rearview mirror.

He started to remember the Saturday before—the last time they'd been in—and then all the times before that. Most of the men were pretty normal: rich guys letting off
steam, pissing money away like it was water, and screwing anything that moved. But Cornell was different. He was pleasant enough on the surface, but, underneath, he had this way about him; this stillness. The times Soto had spoken to him face to face, Cornell would talk blandly, refusing to commit to any point of view unless it directly affected him or the group, but while he could keep up a conversation, it was always obvious that he wasn't engaged in it. The times Soto had watched him from afar, he'd seen a man who liked to stand there in the shadows, barely communicating, watching the rest of the high rollers, like he was waiting for someone to make a mistake—say something or do something they shouldn't. Soto assumed Cornell was a firefighter: the minute one of the whales screwed up, he stepped in to put the flames out, to maintain the sanctity of the group, to brush whatever had been done under the carpet. Whatever Cornell was, Soto didn't like him.

He checked the rearview mirror again.

Still no sign of him.

“Where are you, asshole?”

Then there was a tap at his window.

Soto turned in his seat, in the direction of the motel next door—and then recoiled. “Shit!” Cornell was standing right outside the driver's door, one hand already on the roof, the other at his side. For a brief second the early morning sun cut across his face, across his smooth, tanned skin, and all Soto could see was his eyes, dark, as if even the sun couldn't light them.

Cornell leaned right into the glass. “Morning,” he mouthed.

Soto buzzed down the window, glancing in the rearview mirror again. No car, which meant he'd walked from somewhere. So, how the hell did Soto manage to miss him?

When the window was all the way down, Cornell's eyes moved quickly around the interior of the Lincoln and then pinged back to Soto. “How are you today?” he asked.

“I'm good. I didn't see you come in.”

Cornell said nothing in response, just tilted his head slightly to the left.

Soto scanned the parking lot again and turned back. “You said on the phone you had a problem when you were in on the weekend?”

“Yes,” Cornell said, mouth peeling back to reveal two lines of perfectly white teeth. That was another thing Soto didn't like: Cornell dressed smartly, had a desert tan and teeth that cost money. He looked completely normal when you saw him at a distance. But then you got up close, and things started to change, subtly, slowly, as if his appearance was a deliberate reverse of the person he actually was. Some kind of trap.

“So, what's the problem?” Soto asked.

“It's a delicate issue.”

“When is it not?”

Cornell nodded, as if he agreed. “When we were at the hotel on Saturday, one of our group . . .” He paused; tilted his head a little further. “How shall I put this? Eric, unfortunately, had something taken from his room.”

Soto frowned. “Taken?”

“His laptop was stolen.”

“Why didn't you report it?”

“We didn't feel it was necessary.”

“You need to report all break-ins otherwi—”

“It wasn't a break-in.”

Soto paused. “I'm not sure I follow.”

Cornell blinked a couple of times and then the point of his tongue emerged from between his lips. “He met someone in the bar. This is all very embarrassing.”

“She was a prostitute?”

“Correct.”

Carlos looked away. He'd come all the way up here for this crap.

“I need to find that laptop,” Cornell said.

“Okay.”

“It contains some 
. . . sensitive material.”

“Such as?”

No response. Cornell blinked again, almost in slow motion.

“Such as?”

“I don't think we need to get into that, Carlos.”

Soto shrugged. “Fine. I'll go back and see—”

“No.”

“No what?”

“We'd like to handle this internally.”

“Who's ‘we'?”

Cornell didn't react. “I'd like to keep this quiet.”

“Who am I likely to tell?”

“I know the room keys at the hotel keep a record of the time, date and whether they've been issued to a guest or a hotel employee,” Cornell continued, as if he hadn't heard the sarcasm in Soto's reply. “I know each lock keeps track of the last two hundred times the key has been used to open the door. I know there's a camera forty feet to the left of the room. Given that level of technology, I feel confident we can handle this ourselves, internally, so you don't have to worry yourself about it.”

“You're asking me to distribute guest information and CCTV footage.” Soto shook his head. “There's absolutely no way I can sign off on that.”

Cornell said nothing.

“Look, we value your—”

“I'd like that information.”

“I can't give it to you.”

“I'd like you to give it to me.”

“Look, I cannot give you that information. We'll always try to accommodate any and all requests you have, because we value your custom, but I ca—”

“You live down at Southern Highlands, right?”

Soto felt a flutter of disquiet. “What?”

Cornell nodded. “San Sevino. You bought a little two-story place down there after your father died. Very nice. All gated and safe, mountain views, three-car garage.”

“How do you know where I live?”

Cornell just stared at him.

“Are you threatening me now—is that it?”

Again, no reply. Cornell stepped away from the Lincoln for the first time but kept his hand on the roof. “Carlos, people like you don't need to be threatened, because you can see the bigger picture. You can see this isn't worth you losing your job over.”

“Fuck you.”

Suddenly—a flash of movement—Cornell leaned right into the Lincoln. Soto jolted, shifting back automatically, his knee banging against the steering column.

“You listen to me, you fucking wetback,” Cornell spat, his diction immediately changing. “One click of my fingers and you're gone. You get that, right? The people in that group, they've got more money in their wallets than you've got in your whole fucking life. So you're going to do this for me, because you want to know what happens if you don't? I make one call, and inside an hour you lose everything.”

Soto stared at him.

Cornell must have seen something in Soto's eyes—some kind of acquiescence—and straightened, adjusting his jacket. “In three days we'll meet back here,” he said, playing on his Englishness again, pronouncing every word. This was the image he'd built: the quiet, thoughtful, articulate expat. “Same time. You'll bring all the relevant CCTV footage for the night of August 13: foyer, reception, casinos, bars, restaurants and, most importantly, the thirty-second floor. You'll bring all relevant information from every card used on that floor to help me narrow down the search.”

“And if I don't?”

He sighed. “Do we need to go over this again?”

“Maybe I don't care if I lose my job.”

“Maybe it's not your job I'm talking about.”

A smile pierced Cornell's face—like a crack in a pane of glass—and then, slowly, all the light seemed to leave him: his expression, his eyes, the way he spoke. For the first time, Soto really saw the man beneath the disguise: not the regular guy in the regular clothes, but the person he'd only glimpsed in flashes.

The teeth of the trap.

“Are we clear, Carlos?”

Soto nodded once.

Cornell nodded in return.

Then, a second later, he was walking off, across the parking lot, and—as quickly and silently as he'd arrived—he was gone again.