Cottage three was a bit smaller than cottage one, and had the faint chemical smell of a place with wall-to-wall carpet after it's been shut up for a while. Herman moved briskly through the place, turning on lights, making notes on his clipboard, doing small adjustments here and there. At the end, he left the small light on in the kitchen, the one under the upper cabinet that merely illuminated a bit of the white Formica counter beside the sink.

At the door, because he wasn't going to give his magic card away, Herman paused to take a roll of duct tape from inside his tuxedo jacket, tear off a length, and attach it to the edge of the door over the striker to keep it from locking. Spies, political agents, and other amateurs put such tape on a door horizontally, so that it shows on both front and back, and can be noticed by a pa.s.sing security person. Herman ran the tape vertically, which did the job just as well while remaining invisible when the door was shut.

Having made cottage three ready, Herman marched off and this time made his way around the Battle-Lake along the path illuminated by low-wattage knee-high flower-shaped fixtures. Beyond the lake, he approached a guard standing next to the walkway with his hands clasped behind him, observing the late-night stillness with the satisfied look of a man who likes peace and quiet for their own sake. This guard, however, was not actually a guard at all, but was another a.s.sociate of John Dortmunder's, named Ralph Demrovsky; he too wore a uniform copped earlier this evening from Finest Fancy Linen Service.

When Herman approached, Ralph smiled and held his right hand out. Herman took no notice of him, but somehow, as he strode by, the clipboard left his hand and wound up in Ralph's. And then, as Herman moved on through tree shadows between lighted areas toward the main building, his right hand brushed across the front of his tux jacket, and when next he moved into the light the nametag was gone from there, and he was now merely a handsome black man in a tux, surely a guest of the hotel, though better dressed than most these days. Still, there are always some well-dressed hotel guests in Las Vegas, even in these latter times, people who maintain the standards and joie de vivre of the good old days of mob bosses and Arab sheiks.

Herman entered the hotel not as though he owned it, but as though he were thinking of buying it. He strode past the open coffee shop and the closed boutiques and around the check-in desk, where things were very quiet at the moment, with only one clerk on duty. To get to the elevators, he had to skirt the edge of the slot machine area, and surrept.i.tiously he sniffed a little, to see if he could tell anything about the air, but of course he couldn't. And from the look of the few people he could see in among the slot machines, it hadn't started to take effect as yet.

Well, there was plenty of time.

Herman took an elevator to the fourteenth floor, and walked down a hallway chirping with the chatter of many television sets behind many closed doors. He was on his way to Anne Marie's room. A nice lady, he thought, he being a connoisseur in that area. If Andy Kelp needed a lady, then that was probably the one he needed. However, Herman would keep his opinion to himself. He did not intrude into other people's love lives unless he had hopes of becoming a partic.i.p.ant therein, and neither Andy Kelp nor Anne Marie Carpinaw interested him in that way, which was probably just as well.

Rap-a-de-rap; rap, rap. The agreed upon signal. The door opened, and it was Anne Marie standing there, giving him a skeptical look. "Room service," he suggested.

"Come on in," she said, and he did, and she shut the door behind him, saying, "Took you long enough."

"Well, you know how it is, ma'am," he said, playing along. "We get awful busy down there in the kitchen."

"That's all well and good," she said. "But there's no telling how upset I'd be, if it happened I'd ordered anything."

"Thank you, ma'am, I'll tell the manager you said so," Herman said, grinning at her. Then he turned away to see Dortmunder and Kelp both in chairs over by the window, looking out at the night. Dortmunder was in a guard uniform, Kelp dressed like a bank examiner in black suit, round-lensed black-framed eyegla.s.ses, and navy blue bow tie with white polka dots. Herman could see their backs in the room and their fronts reflected in the window they were looking out. He said, "There's nothing out there."

They turned at last to look at him, with glazed eyes, like people who've been at the aquarium too long. Dortmunder said, "That's what I'm hoping for."

"Nothing out there," Kelp explained.

"A quiet night," Herman a.s.sured them, and went over to also look out the window.

Fascinating. By night, the hotel grounds became a sketch outline drawing of itself, the little flower-shaped lights becoming dots of amber against the black, defining the paths, drawing a pointillist line around the Battle-Lake, marking off the cottages. The only truly illuminated area was the pool; its underwater lights were kept on all night, creating a strange blue-green bouillon down there, its surface shadowed, its depths cool and crystal clear. Being the only center of light made the pool look much closer than it really was, as though you could open this window here and jump right in.

Herman looked until he realized he was about to become as mesmerized as Dortmunder and Kelp, and then he backed away from it, shook his head, grinned at the other two, and said, "What are you trying to see out there, anyway?"

"Trouble," Dortmunder said.

Kelp explained, "If anything goes wrong in the caper, we'll know it from up here."

"And," Anne Marie said, "they'll get out of here."

"Absolutely," Kelp a.s.sured her.

Dortmunder said, "Red lights coming from out there," and waved in the general direction of employee parking and Paradise Road, the parallel street behind the Strip.

Kelp showed a walkie-talkie. "Any problem," he said, "I warn the guys, and John goes to get his ring."

"And I turn off the light," Anne Marie said, "and I was asleep in bed here, all by myself, the whole time."

"Poor you," Herman said, with a little smile.

She gave him an oh-come-on look.

"Plan two," Dortmunder explained.

"Plan six or seven, actually," Kelp said. "And how are you doing, Herman?"

"Just fine," Herman a.s.sured them. "John," he said, "you got that rich man extremely worried. He's like a cat on a hot tin pan alley."

Dortmunder, interested, said, "You got in there all right?"

Herman did his big toothy ya.s.suhboss smile: "Jess as easy," he said, "as fallin off a scaffold."

Reverting to his former persona, he said, "I rigged one kitchen window and one bedroom window so they look locked but you just give them a tug. I sussed out the circuit breaker box; it's in the kitchen, the line goes straight down. There's no bas.e.m.e.nt under those buildings, just concrete slabs, so the line must go through conduit inside the slab. Give me pen and paper and I'll do you a drawing of the layout inside there."

"Good," Dortmunder said.

The room's furnishings included a round fake-wood table under a hanging swag lamp - some styles are so good, they never go away - which Dortmunder and Kelp had moved to make it easier for them to see out the window and hit their heads on the lamp. Now, while Kelp turned his chair and pushed it close to that table, Anne Marie produced sheets of hotel stationery and a hotel pen. Herman sat at the table, hit his head on the lamp, stood up, moved the chair, sat at the table, and did a very good schematic drawing of the cottage, using the proper architectural symbols for door, window, closet, and built-in furniture pieces, like toilet and stove.

As he drew, Herman described the look of the place, and as he finished he said, "There's four uniformed guards inside, four outside, but they're not from the hotel, they're imported."

"Extra security," Dortmunder commented.

"Extra, yeah, but they don't know the lay of the land."

Herman put down his pen. "I got cottage three ready," he said. "Door's open, one little light in the kitchen so's you can find your way around."

"I should go there now," Dortmunder decided. "You John the Baptist me," meaning Herman, looking more presentable, should go first, to be sure the coast was clear.

"Fine," Herman said, and got to his feet, not hitting his head.

"And I'll keep watch here," Kelp said. "Anne Marie and me."

Dortmunder looked one last time out the window. "Gonna get exciting out there," he said.

Herman grinned at the outer darkness. "I'd like to be here to watch it," he said.

"No way," said Anne Marie.

56.

There are no actual slow times in Las Vegas, not even in August, when the climate in and around the Las Vegas desert is similar to that of the planet Mercury, but the closest the city and its casinos come to a slow period is very late on a Monday night, into Tuesday morning. The weekenders have gotten back into their pickup trucks and campers and station wagons and vans and gone home. The people who'd spent a week or two weeks left the hotel last night. The people who are just starting their week or two weeks in funland didn't get here until late this afternoon and they're exhausted; not even extra oxygen in the air will keep them up their first night in town. Conventions and business conferences, which last three or four days, start in midweek and end by Sunday.

So on Monday night, particularly into Tuesday morning, is when the casinos are at their emptiest, with the fewest tables open, the fewest dealers and croupiers and security people around, the fewest players. On this particular Monday night, Tuesday morning, by 3:00 A. M., there were barely a hundred people in the whole casino area of the Gaiety Hotel, Battle-Lake and Casino, and they were all giggling.

None of the Dortmunder crew were in with the gigglers, not yet. Tiny Bulcher and Jim O'Hara and Gus Brock, cause of the giggling, remained on duty near the air room. Not inside it; the air room was also on the sweetened air line. Tiny and Jim and Gus hung around the bas.e.m.e.nt corridors, keeping out of other people's way - not that many other people wandered around down here late at night - and from time to time checked on the equipment in the air room, where the technicians were now all fast asleep, with smiles on their faces.

In cottage three, Dortmunder sat in the dark living room, looking out at the lights behind drapes of cottage one; Max Fairbanks hadn't gone to bed yet. In their fourteenth-floor crow's nest, Kelp and Anne Marie looked out the window at the night and discussed the future. Herman Jones, now in chauffeur's cap, sat at the wheel of a borrowed stretch limo near the front entrance of the Gaiety, ready to be part of the general exodus should trouble arise.

Across town, on a dark industrial street near the railroad tracks, Stan Murch napped in the cab of the big garbage truck borrowed from Southern Nevada Disposal Service. Out of town, up by Apex, in a wilderness area off a dirt road leading up into the mountainous desert, Fred and Thelma Lartz had parked the Invidia, in which at the moment Thelma was asleep in the main bedroom, lockman Wally Whistler was asleep in another bedroom, and Fred and the other lockman, Ralph Winslow, and the four other guys aboard were playing poker in the living room, for markers; they'd settle up after the caper.

Who else? Ralph Demrovsky, in guard gear, patrolled the dark paths in the general vicinity of the cottages. And three other guys, dressed all in black and holding pistols in their hands, stood in the shrubbery at the rear of the main building, near an unmarked door that opened out onto a small park- ing area. This parking area held an ambulance, a small fire truck, and two white Ford station wagons bearing the logo of the Gaiety security staff. The unmarked door beside them led into the security offices, where at this moment five uniformed guards were yawning and giggling and trying to keep their eyes open. "Jeez," one of them said. "I don't know what's the matter with me tonight."

"Same thing's the matter with you every night," another one told him, and giggled.

The guy who was supposed to be watching the monitors - fed by cameras pointed at the front entrance, at the side entrance, at various spots within and without the hotel, a whole bank of monitor screens to watch for stray movement - that guy gently lowered his head to the table in front of him and closed his eyes. His breathing became deep and regular.

"Jeez," said the first guy again. "I need some air."

That made all the others, except the sleeper, laugh and chortle and roll their heads around.

The first guy lunged to his feet, staggered, said, "Jeez, what's the matter with me?" and moved, tottering, to the door. "I'll be back," he told the others, and opened the door, and then, true to his word, backed directly into the room, blinking, coming somewhat more awake, as the three guys dressed in black pushed their way inside, guns first, one of them saying, "I was beginning to wonder when one of you birds would come out."

A second guy in black pointed his pistol at the seated guards, and snapped at one of them, "Stay away from that b.u.t.ton! Your foot moves over by that b.u.t.ton, I'll shoot your knee off" These guards were professional, highly paid, three of them ex-cops and the other two formerly military police. Normally, they would have caused a great deal of trouble for any three wiseguys with guns blundering in here. But tonight their reaction time was nil, their coordination was off, their brains were wrapped in cotton and their bodies in bubblewrap. Before the guard sitting near the emergency b.u.t.ton could even think about moving his foot over to press that b.u.t.ton - which would send alarms both to police headquarters and to the manager's office behind the check-in desk - he'd been roughly hustled out of his chair and over against the wall, with his friends, including the sleeper, who was very rudely awakened indeed. All five of them were briskly disarmed, and then, blinking, open-mouthed, fuzzy-brained, they stared at their captors and waited for whatever would happen next.

"Uniforms off," one of the guys in black said.

The guards didn't like that, not at all, but the guys in black were insistent, so off came the trimly pressed shirts with the pleats, and the shiny gun belts. More difficult were the trousers; all five guards had to sit on the floor to remove their pants, or they would have fallen to the floor and possibly hurt themselves.

There was a locked gunrack full of shotguns and rifles and handguns along one wall, with a heavy barred gate locked across the face of it. The guys in black forced the guards, now in their underwear, feeling foolish and ill-used but unable to stop the occasional giggle at the sight of one another, to sit on the floor under this gunrack. Then they were trussed, ankles and wrists (behind back), with duct tape, and more duct tape was looped under their armpits and through the bars of the gunrack gate, so they wouldn't be able to crawl across the room; toward the emergency b.u.t.ton, for instance.

"Let's move this along," said one of the guys in black. "I'm beginning to feel it.

"Jeez," the first guard said, shaking his woolly head, body hanging there suspended from the gunrack by duct tape. "What's goin on here?" he wanted to know.

The guys in black were stripping out of the black and into the uniforms. One of them paused to say, "Oh, don't you know? It's a heist goin on here."

One of the other guards, the one who hadn't managed to get to the b.u.t.ton, tried to snarl, "You won't get away with this," but the threat came out softer than he'd intended, almost caring, and was further diminished by a loud snore: the sleeper had returned to sleep. All of which should have made the failed snarler mad, but somehow it didn't. He chuckled instead, and shook his head, and grinned at the heisters now zipping up the uniforms. "You're crazy," he told them, and laughed. So did the other still-awake guards.

"That's okay," one of the heisters said. He had the extra uniforms and their own former clothing wrapped in a big ball in his arms. "See you later," he said.

Which the still-awake guards - now down to three - found very funny indeed. They were still laughing as the heisters went out and the door swung shut behind them, leaving the guards in their underwear alone on the floor in here with nothing but the air-conditioning.

57.

It's quiet out there. Too quiet.

That's what Earl Radburn told himself, as he patrolled the general area of the hotel, moving around the BattleLake, the pools, the tennis courts, the outside bar (shut for the night), the parking lots, the main entrance. He never went into the casino or the coffee shop or the lounge; there was nothing in there of interest to him. What was of interest was outside, was somewhere around cottage one, was one insane but determined burglar aimed at Max Fairbanks.

But where was he? Earl knew the fellow was around some place, he could feel it, like a tingle on the surface of his skin, as though all his pores were breathing in, smelling the villain out there. But where? Quiet; too quiet. Earl saw his own guards here and there, saw the hotel's security people, other hotel staff around and about. He saw the bored doorman at the main entrance, saw the black chauffeur in the stretch limo waiting for the last of the high rollers, saw the parked cars in the employee parking lot around back and the guest parking lot to the left of the entrance, and the nonresident visitor parking lot off to the right of the entrance, and nothing was suspicious. That's what was so suspicious about it all; nothing was suspicious.

The local head of security, Wylie Branch, had gone home at midnight, stating his opinion that nothing would happen in the middle of the night, and his intention to be back on duty "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed," as he'd phrased it, at six in the morning. Which was all well and good for Wylie Branch, but Earl Radburn knew you could never be sure, never be absolutely sure, what would happen, or when. This was the burglar's last clear shot at Max Fairbanks. Would he wait till morning to make his move? Earl didn't believe it.

But where was the fellow? Earl roamed and roamed the territory, moving constantly back around the cottages, then out again, moving, moving, questing, like a hunting dog that's lost the scent. And it remained quiet out there. Too quiet.

He walked again around the side of the hotel toward the front, one more time, and saw the big motor home just turning in from the Strip, bowing and nodding up the entrance drive to turn rightward, toward the nonresident visitor parking lot. There seemed to be a woman driving it, in a hat.

Earl watched the big vehicle move across the nearly empty lot, the only moving vehicle in sight. It came to a stop over there, and Earl turned away, aiming his attention elsewhere. He walked past the front of the building and saw the doorman seated beside the entrance on a little stool, half asleep. The stretch limo was still there, the patient chauffeur at the wheel; he gave Earl a friendly wave, and Earl waved back. Poor fellow; had to wait out here hour after hour. And here it was, almost four in the morning.

Earl turned back, retracing his steps, looking this way and that, and his eye was snagged by that motor home. The woman was still seated there, at the wheel. n.o.body had got out of the motor home, though its lights were on inside, behind drawn shades.

Why would a motor home come visiting at four in the morning? Why would it stop, and n.o.body get out of it? Hmmmm. Earl strolled over that way, seeing that the woman's hat was one of those tall things with fruit, like a salad. She was just sitting there, as patient as the chauffeur, hands on the wheel.

Was she waiting for somebody who was supposed to come out of the casino at this hour? Waiting, like the limo driver? Earl's curiosity was piqued. A sixth sense told him there was something meaningful about this motor home. He walked closer to it, wary, watching this way and that, watching the door in the side of the thing, waiting for it to open, but it didn't.

The woman finally did turn her head to smile down at him when Earl stopped beside her window. "h.e.l.lo, there," he said.

The window was closed, and probably she couldn't hear him. She smiled, and nodded.

Mouthing carefully, raising his voice a bit, Earl said, "Who are you waiting for?"

Instead of answering, the woman smiled some more and pointed backward, gesturing for him to walk along the side of the motor home. He frowned up at her, and also pointed down in the same direction: "Down there?"

Her smile redoubled. She nodded, and made rapping motions in the air with one fist, then pointed down along the vehicle again.

She wanted him to go down there and knock on the door. All right, he would, and he did. The woman, and her smile, and her hat, had made him less suspicious than before, but still just as curious. He knocked on the door, and a few seconds later it opened, and a smiling guy in T-shirt and brown pants stood there, saying, "Hi."

Earl said, "You folks waiting for somebody?"

"We are," the guy said. Who?

"You," the guy said, and brought his hand out from behind his back with a Colt automatic in it. "Come on in," he invited.

58.

It was just a horrible night for Brandon Camberbridge. His hotel, his beloved hotel, under siege, full of strangers, mercenaries. Nell not here to console him, and the big cheese over there in cottage one acting as though he blamed Brandon for something. Blamed Brandon! For what? For loving the hotel? He couldn't follow his normal routine tonight, he just couldn't. Normally, he was out and about, everywhere in the hotel, smiling, greeting, nodding, encouraging the staff, beaming on the beauties of his paradise, circulating all night as the great hotel sailed like a wonderful ship through the darkness, himself out and about until his bedtime at four in the morning, like the captain of the wonderful ship, walking the decks, feeling the great hum of it, alive beneath his feet.

But not tonight. He couldn't stand to be out there tonight, the tension, the strange faces of the imported security people, the knowledge that the big cheese was brooding in cottage one, festering in cottage one.

No, no, Brandon couldn't walk the deck of his great ship tonight; the hotel had to sail without him, while he sat here in his office, the control center of it all, waiting for disaster to strike.

For a while, he'd phoned security every now and then, just to check in, but at 11:30 Wylie Branch had come on the line and had been extremely sarcastic: "Let my boys do their job," he suggested. "Anything you need to know, they'll be in touch. They got your number, believe me."