Runaway Model (5 page)

"Sometime this afternoon. I'll be back. It'll be OK."

Kyle didn't have nearly enough money left to chip in for rent. Not yet. He'd stolen a few odd chips and a wallet or two from sloppy drunks who got careless in spots the cameras missed. But he still needed more practice. Before Vegas, he'd always taken from houses and shops, not pockets and jackets. He was still learning how to make his fingers as deft as Michel's.

He knew he couldn't come back. Not without money. Michel was patient with him, but it wasn't Michel's house. The older boys expected fast payment—if not in cash, then in something else.

I'll probably never see Michel ever again. Good-bye, my brother.

Michel hugged him tightly. He seemed to know what Kyle couldn't say. It took a long time for him to let go.

***

L
as Vegas Boulevard in the early evening. Endless waves of mostly just-starting-to-get-loaded people going in all directions.

"Hey, buddy. Got a light?"

Kyle shook his head and kept walking. He wasn't in the mood to be hit on by a guy in his forties. He'd pretend to listen later, maybe get close enough to lift a wallet. A man had to eat.

But not right now.

Somewhere a little snippet from Stoney's breakout song was playing. Then he realized it was his own mobile.

A text message.

Kyle stepped out of the river of humanity and into an alcove. He noticed too late that some homeless guy was already sitting there, a plastic cup and a sign in front of him:
Why Lie? I Need the Money for Video Poker.

Kyle scooted away and leaned slightly forward to read the message.

It's me. Wanna party?

Stoney Rockland. For a minute Kyle forgot how to breathe.

All those reasons getting with an older rock star was a bad idea last night?

Still a bad idea today.

But Kyle's thumbs were already busy.

FUCK YEAH!

He owed it to his blog readers to see Stoney Rockland. Maybe get some more photos. Maybe even get an interview.

That's what he told himself anyway.

***

A
Chicago Bulls ball cap. A pair of oversized Oliver Peoples shades. Stoney seemed to feel they concealed his identity from the unwashed masses. But Kyle recognized him immediately.

He was where he said he'd be, playing blackjack with green chips at the table on the end. Twenty-five or fifty dollars a hand seemed like chump change for a man like Stoney. But Kyle supposed he didn't want the attention that came from betting thousand-dollar chips.

"Hey, mate." Kyle wasn't sure if he should use Stoney's name.

"Hey. Let me rack up and we can get going."

There wasn't much to rack. The dealer colored up for him, exchanging sixteen green chips for four black ones. Four hundred dollars.

"Not me lucky table," Stoney said. "Let's play craps."

"A complicated game."

"Are you a virgin then?"

Hell of a question. Kyle shrugged.

"Beginner's luck is a thing in craps. You shoot and I'll tell you where to place me bets."

Why not?

There weren't so many people at the twenty-five dollar dice table. The stickman took a hard look at Kyle and asked for his ID. Kyle handed it over without a word.

The stickman stared at the license, stared at Kyle, stared at the license. A man in a suit appeared at the stickman's elbow. Took the license, swiped it in a handheld scanner. Kyle couldn't tell from looking if it was the kind that connected to the DMV but it probably was. Nobody trusted those holograms any more.

Finally the suit handed it directly back to Kyle. "Welcome to Vegas, Mr. Marchane. Do you want to get one of our player's cards?"

Kyle looked at Stoney.

"Don't worry about it, mate," Stoney said. "I'm just teaching my friend to play. We don't need the paperwork."

If Stoney didn't believe Kyle was twenty-one before, he believed it now. Kyle knew he was digging a hole for himself. But he couldn't resist the opportunity to hang out with his hero. What a story he'd have to tell for his fan blog. He started to bring out his iPhone but Stoney stopped him.

"No photos at the dice table, mate. It's just not on."

"OK."

Stoney rolled first. Seven, seven, seven, eight, seven. At first it was good to roll seven, and then it wasn't and Stoney lost the chips stacked up on the line in front of him.

Confusing game.

"Your turn," Stoney said. He put three green chips on the line in front of Kyle. Seventy-five dollars.

Kyle rolled. A three. Craps.

The stickman swept the chips away. "Don't worry, sir, every good roll starts with a little crap."

Stoney put down one hundred and fifty dollars. He must be playing a double-up system of sorts.

Snake eyes. The stickman swept the chips away again.

The other players at the table vanished like smoke.

It was just him and Stoney now. "I believe in you, mate," Stoney said. He pulled out five hundred-dollar bills and tossed them down. "Money plays. Say it. Money plays."

"Money plays," Kyle said.

"No money plays here, sir." The stickman considered each bill individually, holding them up to the light as if he thought they might be counterfeit. Finally he dropped them in the slot and pushed Kyle five black chips.

He expected the drama to make him nervous. Instead, he was getting giddy from being the center of attention.

The center of Stoney's attention.

He rolled a six.

Stoney pulled out ten hundred-dollar bills. The stickman again inspected each one with irritating caution. At last they too were converted into black chips. Stoney put them behind Kyle's original bet.

"Double odds," he explained.

At least Stoney thought it was an explanation.

Kyle rolled another six. "Three and three, the victory vee, winner winner, chicken dinner," the stickman said.

Kyle croggled as the dealer put down a handful of black chips on the table in front of him.

"You just won seventeen hundred dollars, mate."

His turn wasn't over. The stick pushed the dice to him, and Kyle kept rolling. Six, six, six, eight, eight. Suddenly the table was crammed with gamblers trying to get their money down.

By the casino's rules, Kyle was the one gambling because the chips were in front of him. Didn't matter that they came from Stoney's pocket. Didn't matter that Stoney was whispering in his ear about what to do before every roll.

No one cared when the table was empty. But they cared now. The suit whispered something in the stickman's ear, and the stickman gave Stoney a look.

"I have to give up this spot, mate," Stoney said. "A live customer wants to stand here. I'll be right behind you."

Having Stoney at his rear instead of at his elbow could be dangerous. The singer crowded in close, bumping against Kyle's arse from time to time. Grinding him almost.

Every time Kyle hit a point, it took time to convert all the cash and make all the payouts. He had time to think. A virgin dice shooter might be lucky or not, but he couldn't believe Stoney would be best-pleased if he learned Kyle was a real virgin.

How did he let the deception get this deep this fast?

Everybody except Kyle was chain-smoking. You could still smoke indoors here in Nevada. In casinos and pubs you could anyway. His clothes would smell dirty tomorrow.

But he didn't care.

A girl without a skirt brought drinks. Stoney must have ordered them.

"It's pink." Kyle didn't mean to giggle. He reminded himself he couldn't act sixteen.

Not here. Not now.

"It's a pomegranate martini, mate," Stoney said. "Bad for the liver, good for the heart."

So this was pomegranate. Sweet and strong. Kyle's head began to spin.

Every time he rolled, the winners screamed—a magnet for even more players in search of the lucky table. There were soon so many people so packed in that it took almost ten minutes to make each payoff. The stickman quietly changed the sign from a twenty-five-dollar to a one-hundred-dollar minimum bet but he didn't need to. Everyone who joined the table was eager to bet that much or more anyway.

Another pomegranate martini. Kyle was pulling back hundreds if not thousands of dollars after almost every roll.

Stoney stood very close to him, pressed ever more tightly against his slender body by the growing crowd. Kyle was very aware of the lump in his hero's trousers.

Who knew a game with a vulgar name like craps could be so thrilling?

Kyle threw too hard, and one of the dice went spinning off the table. "Same dice!" Stoney shouted. "Say it! Same dice!"

"Same dice," Kyle said.

A dealer retrieved the errant die. The stickman frowned as he inspected it with a show of skepticism.

"Bets off," somebody said at the other end of the table.

Stoney: "Have faith, mate."

The stickman: "Hands high."

Kyle rolled. Seven.

A lot of voices all at once.

A man at his elbow: "And the devil jumped up."

The doubter from the other end: "It never fails."

The stickman: "Seven out. Dos away, don'ts to pay."

A few people groaned, but more of them applauded. "Good roll, sir," said the dealer, even as he was clearing away the chips on the table in front of Kyle.

Thousands of dollars. Gone just like that.

But there were thousands more in colorful chips pulled back on the rack in front of him. A jumble of black, purple, and orange—hundreds, five hundreds, and thousands. Some reds and greens, fives and twenty-fives maybe adding up to as much as three or four hundred dollars. But Stoney told him to drop those on the table to tip the boys, so they weren't really part of the take.

If it was anybody else, Kyle would have already pocketed a few of the purple ones by now. He knew from Michel that the casinos weren't so careful about tracking blacks and purples.

"It is too heaty to cash in thousand-dollar chips," Michel had said. "They want a story about how you got them,
mon ami
. And they will not believe our story. But they cash blacks and purples without a care."

Kyle knew Michel wouldn't have hesitated.

But Kyle didn't want to steal from Stoney.

Just being near him was enough. You couldn't steal that kind of magic.

"Brilliant roll," Stoney said. "You changed me luck. And now me cover is blown."

At first Kyle didn't get it. It seemed to be taking a long time for the dealer to count out all the chips and exchange them for five-thousand-dollar tokens. The man in the suit reappeared. He frowned every time he looked at the chips, then remembered to smile every time he looked at Stoney.

It was a painfully strained smile.

That man knew exactly who Stoney Rockland was. That's what Stoney meant. Shades and hat or not, he was no longer quite incognito.

"Would you like to pay off your marker, Mr. Rockland?" A marker was Vegas for a loan from the casino to gamble with.

Stoney must have borrowed the money at the blackjack table before Kyle arrived. That four hundred dollars in green chips must have been the last of a multi-thousand dollar loan.

"Sure, mate. I won't see a better roll tonight. Might as well quit while I'm ahead."

"A very wise policy, sir."

Twenty thousand dollars in chips disappeared down a hole along with a tiresome bit of paperwork. Funny how they never showed that side of it in the movies. Stoney's pink sapphire ring flashed in the pinpoint lights of a chandelier as he signed the form.

There was plenty of time for Kyle to drink a third martini.

Stoney took him to the cage to cash out the rest. The casino's surveillance cameras could easily follow them as they threaded their way through the crowd because Stoney still had a five-thousand-dollar chip in his pocket. Chips that size, Michel said, contained RFID tags so the casino could track them at a distance. He must have been right. As they were walking up, Kyle could hear a woman in the back of the cage talking about them on the phone.

A clerk counted the bills out under her supervisor's eagle eye even after the currency counter had already done it twice. The supervisor held the phone to make sure a third pair of eyes in the sky was watching the whole transaction in real-time—not just letting it unspool on video.

Well, nobody got that kind of money with a snap of the fingers, did they? Kyle watched everything and everyone. He'd need to know exactly how it worked. He might not steal from Stoney, but he'd have to steal from someone to eat. And so he'd have to know the safest ways to cash out.

At last Stoney had the money. Eighty one-hundred-dollar bills. "The Americans need some bigger notes, innit? The bulge quite spoils the line of me Italian jacket."

"I can't believe it was so easy," Kyle said. "I didn't even know what I was doing." He hoped he wasn't burbling.

"That's the bitch of it with craps," Stoney said. "Once you get good at the game, once you know what you're doing, fuck me if you can beat it."

Stoney took Kyle by the arm. Steered him toward a shimmering gold bank of elevators. A security guard stood there checking IDs.

He nodded at Stoney and waved them through. He knew who the resort's celebrity guests were.

Kyle suddenly realized he was headed upstairs to Stoney's hotel suite.

"Where's your guards?"

"I gave 'em the night off. Safe as houses in the middle of a fancy-pants casino, innit?"

Stoney wanted him. Stoney wanted him!
I must be dreaming. I'll wake up and I'll be back on the plane somewhere over the ocean. Or I'll be back in me bed in Vixensfox.

It was a mirrored elevator with endless reflections of the two of them on every side. "Don't look so nervous, mate." Stoney's voice was an erotic purr. "You don't do this much, do you?"

Kyle wouldn't behave like a child. He wouldn't. He wouldn't. He. Would. Not.

It was the perfect time to tell Stoney he was sixteen, not twenty-one, but he missed it. Blame the martini in his blood and the second-hand smoke in his lungs.

"I never did it with a celebrity before." Technically true.

"Am I a celebrity then, mate?"